It is not easy to find our path in life, especially during our youthful days. Mahatma Gandhi’s example offers answers to profound questions
What do I believe?
Mahatma Gandhi truly treasured his Hindu tradition. As he recounted in his autobiography, Story of My Experiment with Truth, it was an elderly family servant who helped him appreciate the depths of his religion.
Responding to his childhood fear of ghosts, she taught him to chant the Ramanam, a prayer for the triple power of destroying sins, conferring peace and dispelling ignorance. Over the course of his life, this prayer took on profound depths for him and became a constant support in his struggles. He had its words on his lips as he lay dying from an assassin’s bullet.
He was also guided by the Hindu Gujarati precept “The truly noble know all men as one, and return with gladness good for evil done.” It was not easy to adhere to this principle when he was pushed into the street and kicked by a racist police patrol. He could have sued, especially as there were a number of witnesses.
But he decided to forgive.
In another instance, he won a court case against dishonest government officers, who were later fired. Instead of gloating, he helped the officers find other jobs. “To slight a single human being,” he wrote in his diary, “is to slight those divine powers, and thus to harm not only that being, but with him the whole world.”
Deeply rooted in his own tradition, Gandhi further asked: how are these beliefs in conversation with the world around me? While studying in England, he read many religious books and befriended people of different religions. Deeply struck by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he carried on a profound conversation with Christian writers throughout his life.
What about my limitations?
Gandhi realized that it was not easy to live the principle, “Return with gladness good for evil done.” Our own limitations can be a springboard for reflection and growth, and Gandhi’s life is a model of this.
He married very young, and lack of maturity permeated much of his early relationship with his wife.
However, his regret helped him to eventually deepen the relationship.
He also regretted making wrong choices as a teenager, such as when he stole money from his brother to buy cigarettes. He courageously confessed to his dying father, whose love and forgiveness deeply touched him. “Those pearl-drops of love cleansed my heart and washed my sins away ... only he, who is smitten with the arrows of love, knows its power.” Facing the truth about his own limitations became a powerful resource in Gandhi’s work for truth and love.
Gandhi also gradually learned to work through the obstacle of his shyness. Later he reflected, “I must say that beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever ... it has taught me the economy of words.”
How can I serve humanity?
Returning to India after completing his legal training in England, Gandhi encountered a number of obstacles in getting a practice up and running, and so he decided to accept work in South Africa. His dream was to realize his own approach to the law, settling disputes through conciliation and working to “unite parties riven asunder.”
However, the Indian community in South Africa was suffering from severe discrimination, which limited access to restaurants, hotels and trains. Gandhi realized that he could not be oblivious to the concrete needs of the people around him. He began working to ensure representation in the local government, campaigning against unjust laws and defending Indian indentured labourers and the most marginalized.
Gandhi let himself be changed by this experience, increasingly drawn to living a simpler and more communitarian lifestyle based on recognizing the value of each person.
Gandhi would have been proud of the Youth for a United World, determined to live the Golden Rule in their relationships and endeavours. He would have been delighted to see their capacity to treasure the depths of their own religious traditions while welcoming the beauty of others.
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