GREAT INDIAN PERSONALITIES : Gandhiji
Generations to come.....will scarcely believe that such a one as this (Gandhi) ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. - ALBERT EINSTEIN
Gandhiji’s life was dedicated to the ideals of Truth, Non-violence and Love. 'The Bhagavad Gita is my mother,' he once said; and the name of Sri Rama was his shield. He was the architect of India's freedom and one of the greatest men of this century. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2nd October in 1869. His family belonged to the the Hindu religion and practiced the ahimsa principle of never injuring a living thing. At eight he was engaged, and at twelve he was married to Kasturbai. At eighteen he passed examinations for the university, and went to London to study law. There he read eighty books on Christianity.
He took the counsel to return good for evil, and to love even one's enemies as the highest expression of all human idealism; and he resolved rather to fail with these than to succeed without them. Returning to India in 1891, he practised law for a time in Bombay. One case led him to South Africa; there he found his fellow-Hindus so maltreated that he forgot to return to India and gave himself completely without remuneration, to the cause of removing the disabilities of his countrymen in Africa. For twenty years he fought this issue out until the Government yielded. Only then did he return to India.
Travelling through India he realized for the first time the complete destitution of his people. He plunged himself to work for his country men always adhering to his principles of non-violence. Fondly known as 'Bapuji', he was a great soul and the gentle prophet of a non-violent revolution. He criss-crossed the country on foot and in third-class railway carriages to stress his identity with the impoverished masses.
He had tea at the Buckingham Palace with the King-Emperor, dressed in homespun cotton chaddar and loincloth that were his trademarks. He practiced a life of simplicity. The symbol of his challenge to the age of imperialism was the primitive wooden spinning wheel on which he labored religiously every day. Amidst all the violence, hatred and pettiness rife in modern society, he was a person who believed in the dignity of man and left us all a legacy of ahimsa, love and tolerance. It was the poet Rabindranath Tagore, who first called Gandhi the, 'Mahatma' or a 'Great Soul'.Gandhi was the architect of India's freedom. He saw the subcontinent freed from British rule though to his anguish he could not prevent its partition. He died in the cause of human harmony, assassinated by a man of his own faith. Gandhiji is the 'Father of the Nation.
