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www.abplgroup.com - Asian Voice 21st March 2015
As I See It
Non violence is the only way for world peace Most of the present day religious hatred and painful bloodshed is occurring in Muslim majority countries. This is sad but true. It is certainly not due to the teachings of the holy Quran. It is happening because some opportunist - a tiny minority pretending to be the followers of Islam - wrongly believe that they can bully the vast majority and force their views upon them. In my view never before have so many Muslims been killed everyday and mainly in the Muslim countries. The saddest fact is that most of the murderers happen to be their fellow
Muslims. What is the way out? The average Muslims, and I know many of them, wish to live in peace and they strive for the prosperity, well being and happiness of their loved ones. Please read carefully the extracts from one of Gandhiji’s books ‘The non violent way to world peace’ that was read so eloquently by Amitabh Bachchan last Saturday and also the speech by Gandhiji’s upright grandson Gopalkrishna. Surely there is a better way to coexist. The present day India, though imperfect in many ways, is a shining beacon for all to see and perhaps to
learn from as well. India today is a much better place to live and work for all its citizens irrespective of several contradictions and faith traditions. Compared to its neighbours and several other nations were bigotry is bleeding so painfully, in India Muslims - both Shias and Sunnis - coexist in peace with their fellow beings be they Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, adherents of other faith traditions or none. Non violence is the only way forward. There is no other option!
Gopal Gandhi’s speech at the unveiling ceremony
He looked rather like this, sixty-eight years ago, to his assassin. He looked straight into his eyes, quite exactly like this. Gandhi was walking, of course, not standing. And he walked straight into those three bullets. He embraced those darts, he did. With the might of his pain for others, the depth of his faith in God. He hugged them. He had fought for years to prevent the division of India along the lines of religions. But with that division a fact, he fasted for peace amongst the two main peoples of India – Hindus and Muslims – and for trust between the newly independent India and new-born Pakistan. Had he lived, he would have fought to have the man who shot at him, freed. And he would have fought to have trust return, stay and grow. Gandhi had just begun to dream to work for a new India that may or may not be rich, may or may not be powerful, but which will be fair and just, to its own poor, and to the miserable everywhere. He believed in facing the truths of India, not running away from them, papering them over or pretty-fying them, for, he said “the way of truth is the way to peace”. And peace for him was not a pigeon. Gandhi scorched by his love, he healed by his fire. We need him in India today more than we ever have. He said there was so much he had left unfinished he would like to be re-born. But he would not want us to be looking out for the reborn Gandhi. In any case, that would be a loser’s way of doing things. India is no loser. India finds herself, from the
debris of her mistakes, the ruins of her aspirations. Whenever she has been considered ‘lost’, she has been found by an astonished world, a relieved world, to be as true as she can be to the message of her greatest son, Gautama the Buddha, and to the genius of her immensely wise and even sagacious people, of all faiths and of the other great faith – faith in their striving hands. I have used ‘she’ for India with deliberation for that ‘she’, the woman in India, worshipped in concept but neglected, exploited, abused in reality, is the one of the scorching truths of India. The fact that London, the capital of the then Imperial Power he disengaged India from, raises a statue for him even as India has some of her people contemplate a temple for his assassin, shows that Gandhi’s work for truth in freedom succeeds in the most unbelievable ways. You were not infallible Mohandas Gandhi, you erred often, as your wife, Kasturba knew more than any other person. But you owned your
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errors, tried always to be better than your best. Bronzed and hearkening , here, in what is your ‘opposite ground’, you will give heart to those who believe in a world without fear of the bully, fear of the bomb and fear of the blatant lie. You will show us, too, that money cannot buy, nor power suborn the truth. On behalf of the ‘Gandhi family’, by which I mean not his biological descendants – for he did not elevate family descent – but all those anywhere who fight against the tyranny of bigotry and exploitation, I felicitate Great Britain and Her Majesty’s Government for creating space for this Gandhi statue on this great Square. That large ‘family of Gandhi’s values’ celebrates the fact of his statue taking its place right beside that of his political descendant , Nelson Mandela. On behalf of all present here today and the generations of pedestrians, young and once-young, from all nationalities and customs who will see it, I offer to the mastersculptor of this statue, salutations.
Reading of Gandhi’s teachings by Amitabh Bachchan at the unveiling Non-Violent Way To World Peace” by M K Gandhi
“Perhaps never before has there been so much speculation about the future as there is today. Will our world always be one of violence? Will there always be poverty, starvation, misery? Will we have a firmer and wide belief in religion, or will the world be godless? If there is to be a great change in society, how will that change be wrought? By war, or revolution? Or will it come peacefully? “Different men give different answers to these questions, each man drawing the plan of tomorrow’s world as he hopes and wishes it to be. I answer not only out of belief but out of conviction. “The world of tomorrow must be, will be, a society based on non-vio-
lence. That is the first law; out of that all other blessings will flow. It may seem a distant goal, an impractical Utopia. But it is not in the least unobtainable, since it can worked for
here and now. “An individual can adopt the way of life of the future - the non-violent way - without having to wait for others to do so. And if an individual can do it, cannot whole groups of individuals? Whole nations? Men often hesitate to make a beginning because they feel that the objective cannot be achieved in its entirety. This attitude of mind is precisely our greatest obstacle to progress - an obstacle that each man, if he only wills it, can clear away.”
Speech by Shri Arun Jaitley, Minister of Finance
Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am extremely grateful to the Hon’ble Prime Minister and all those who made today’s event possible, for inviting me to this historic and nostalgic occasion when Gandhiji’s Statue is being unveiled. Nobody embodies the deep and enduring connections between the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy as well as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – the Mahatma – whose statue is being unveiled in Parliament Square today. Gandhiji will find himself set permanently in stone very close to the place he occupied transiently, in flesh and blood, on his first night in London more than one hundred and twenty five years ago. Gandhiji’s struggle to break Britain’s imperial hold over India and to force the world’s oldest democracy to create the world’s largest one are the stuff of history and legend. But even as he waged this struggle, he admired Britain, valued many of the things it stood for, and cherished his friendships with scores of Britons. During the Battle of Britain he was moved to tears at the thought that Westminster Abbey might be bombarded. So great was his regard for British values that he would condemn many unfair and unjust practices as “unBritish”. His closest friends, confidantes, and counsellors, in South Africa, which proved to be the training ground for his experiments with non-violent means of resisting oppression and satyagraha (truth force) were English. One of his deepest
spiritual bonds was struck with C.F. Andrews, the only person who called him by his first name “Mohan” whereas the world referred to him more respectfully as Bapu or Gandhiji. In short, Mohandas Gandhi became the Mahatma not just because Britain gave him the cause that would define his life but also the human and other connections that made the fight for that cause possible. Today, India and Britain have come a long way since the parting at the “midnight hour” of 1947. Historical legacies form the ties that bind our two countries: language, the enlightenment values of democracy, free speech, pluralism, religious freedoms, and rule of law, and institutions such as the merit-based civil service, civilian-controlled army, independent judiciary, and a raucously vibrant press. These bequests have had lasting effects on us. Mature nations transcend bitterness and acrimony. In Parliament Square
there is also a statue of Sir W i n s t o n Churchill, arguably the man who o p p o s e d Gandhi most r e s o l u t e l y. Some would detect an irony in the great Prime Minister sharing a public space with the man he once decried as a ‘halfnaked fakir’. May be there is irony but even Churchill would have acknowledged that the resolve, determination and even cunning he showed in standing up to a mighty military machine that threatened the very existence of a proud and free people was replicated by Gandhi in his seemingly unequal battle against the world’s mightiest Empire. What will link Churchill and Gandhi together is their strength of character. But it is a greater tribute to Britain to recognize Gandhiji’s contributions and choose to place the “seditious, half-naked fakir” next to his one-time nemesis, Churchill and, of course, next to the man Gandhiji inspired, Nelson Mandela. For that gracious gesture, my government and all of India are deeply thankful to the tireless work of the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust, including its Chairman, Lord Meghnad Desai, to the prodigious talent of sculptor Philip Jackson, and above all to the capacious, Gandhilike spirit of the British government and its people.