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Gandhi and the World (Text of lecture presented by Ambassador(Retd) Alan Nazareth, Managing Trustee, Sarvodaya International Trust, at the Asian Institute of Management, Manila on February 5, 2004)

Distinguished Presidents of the Asian Institute of Management, Asia Society, and Phillipino-India Friendship Society, your excellency Mrs Navrekha Sharma, Ambassador of India to the Phillipines, ladies and gentlemen. I am indeed honoured, and grateful, to have this opportunity to speak about Mahatma Gandhi at this important meeting, organized by the reputed Asian Institute of Management in collaboration with two other equally reputed institutions of this great country. In our contemporary world, plagued with untruth, corruption, disharmony, terrorism, and a widespread feeling of fear and helplessness, we need to recall Gandhi's achievement in confronting the injustices, exploitation and oppression of colonialism and bringing down the most extensive empire in history with only Truth and non violence as his weapons, concurrently emancipating India's untouchables, bringing house bound Indian women into public life, breathing new life into India's village industries and ensuring the demise of feudalism in India. As I am speaking from this renowned management platform, I would venture to assert this was the greatest management achievement of the twentieth century, and perhaps in all of history. 

How did Gandhi achieve this? He had no training in management. He had studied law. Yet he managed to get his message across to the millions of his countrymen, to enthuse, inspire, train and lead them, to convince them that Satyagraha and Ahimsa were potent and effective weapons for political, economic and social emancipation, that the mere 100,000 Englishmen in India could not continue to rule 350 million Indians if the latter refused to cooperate, and that all Indians, men and women, rich and poor, high caste, low caste and untouchable, had a vital role to play in the liberation of India and all subject peoples. Millions responded to his call, they spun cotton, they burnt foreign cloth, they made salt in defiance of the law, they submitted to beatings, imprisonment and hanging but never retaliated with violence. "He who fears fails" Gandhi had declared. This exhortation was heard and adopted. The moment fear was conquered, the colonial master lost his psychological hold on India, and Indians became free long before Independence came. This was the most amazing transformation of a subcontinental nation, long gripped with fear and despair, into a landmass throbbing with vigour and patriotic fervour, with disparate political, economic, ethnic, religious, cultural and social interests brought together, imbued with common purpose and goals, all ready to die for the cause but never to kill. 

The most important aspect of management is leadership. In this too Gandhi excelled. By identifying himself with the masses, dressing like them, living among them and empathizing with them, he won their respect, confidence, and allegiance. 

Judging from these remarkable achievements and the brilliant manner in which he selected and negotiated his satyagraha issues, and planned and conducted his campaigns, one cannot but conclude he was either born with innate management skills or that he acquired them during the course of his "Experiments with Truth"; In his striving to reach the greatest of all Truths - God - he must have found truths in other fields, including management. 

Gandhi was neither a philosopher nor a theoretician. "I do not claim to have originated any philosophy, nor am I endeavouring to do so. I have simply tried in my won way to apply the eternal principles of Truth and Non Violence to our daily life and problems" He was a practical idealist and a man of action. His original thinking was mainly ethical and social rather than political, economic or managerial He wrote and spoke extensively and it is from the vast corpus of his speeches, writings and actual campaigns that his seminal ideas in various fields have to be gleaned. There is at times inconsistency in his ideas. Indeed, one can discern the evolution of his ideas. He was, to use his own words, "growing from truth to truth." 

Gandhi ardently believed that Truth was an objective moral reality as real and mighty as God himself. Therefore Truth was what constituted the 'Right Path'. It was not 'Might which was Right' but 'Right which was Might'. Since Humans have been created "in the image of God" and have the "Divine Spark" in them they have to be motivated and governed by reason and love rather than by fear and violence. One has to live, and be ready to die, for Truth, Love and Righteousness, but never to kill. For him, there was no greater strength than the strength of the Human Spirit when it is imbued with Truth and unafraid to die, unarmed, upholding it. 

For Gandhi Truth was so important and fundamental that it was Divine. "Truth is God" he often affirmed. Though a deeply religious Hindu, for him religion was that "which transcends Hinduism, which changes one's very nature, binds one indissolubly to the truth within and ever purifies". His favorite hymn began with the line "He alone is a true devotee of God who understands the pains and sufferings of others". For him "The hands that serve are holier than the lips that pray". Gandhi's religion was synonymous with a spiritualized humanism. Fasting had long been part of the spiritual regimen of India. Gandhi made it a powerful weapon in the armoury of satyagraha. His ashrams were not mere places for spiritual seeking; they also offered training in social service, rural uplift, elementary education, removal of untouchability and practice of non violence. 

Non violence for Gandhi was not mere abstention from physical violence against others but purging oneself of all anger, resentment, arrogance and hatred against others and to sincerely love them inspite of whatever injuries they might have done to us. 

For Gandhi "Given a just cause, capacity for endless suffering, and avoidance of violence, victory is a certainty"; "The objective of all non violent activity is always a mutually acceptable agreement, never the defeat, much less the humiliation of the enemy" and "A non violent revolution is not a programme of seizure of power. It is a programme for transformation of relationship ending in a peaceful transfer of power"

Gandhi embarked on a number of satyagraha campaigns the most important of which were the Ahmedabad textile mill workers strike, Champaran Indigo cultivators oppression, Khilafat abolition issue, Bardoli peasants' enhanced taxes, Harijan temple entry, boycott of foreign goods, the Salt march,and the Quit India movement. Each of these was bigger and more impactful than the one that preceded it and involved inspiring, organizing and leading thousands of men and women in disciplined non violent struggle.

Even more amazing is the fact that while engaged in these Herculean efforts Gandhi never lost sight nor involvement in the world at large. Gandhi was not a narrow political or economic nationalist but a globalist, and universalist. His was an all inclusive world view. He had studied in England and was well acquainted with its politics, culture and people. Subsequently he had gone to South Africa and spent 21 years there. It was while he was here that he first confronted racialism and British Imperialism. It was also here that he first became aware of conditions in Russia through his South African Jewish friends. As early as 1905, in an article titled 'Russia and India', in his paper 'Indian Opinion', he wrote: "The power of the Viceroy is no way less than that of the Tsar. The difference is that the British are more efficient and less crude in their brutal oppression. As a result the Russians, in desperation, become anarchists and terrorists." Subsequently he read Tolstoy's book 'The Kingdom of God is within You' and was deeply impressed. In a letter dated April 4, 1910 Gandhi wrote reverentially to Tostoy thus " As a humble follower of yours, I send you herewith a booklet which I have written. I am most anxious not to worry you but if your health permits and you can find the time to go through the booklet, I shall value very highly your criticism of it". The latter replied " I have received your letter and your book 'Indian Home Rule'. I read your book with great interest because I think that the question you treat in it - passive resistance - is a question of the greatest importance not only for India but for whole humanity." 

After Gandhi's return to India his confrontation with the British Empire was far more challenging than it had been in South Africa. It required nearly all his time and energy. Yet he did not lose sight of the world. "My Nationalism includes the love of all nations of the earth, irrespective of creed. I will not hurt England or Germany to serve India..…I live for India's freedom and would die for it. But my patriotism is not exclusive. It is calculated to benefit all in the true sense of the word. Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so called weaker races of the world." 

A good example of Gandhi's non-exclusive patriotism is his availing of his visit to London for the 1931 Round Table Conference to visit, ascertain the welfare and explain to the Lancashire textile workers the rationale of the boycott of foreign cloth which he had launched three years earlier in India. 

When the Munich agreement was signed he described it as "a peace that is no peace. It is only war postponed" About the Czech people he said "They do not yet know what is in store for them. They can lose nothing by trying the way of non violence" and added "The fate of Republican Spain is hanging in the balance. So is that of China. If in the end they all lose, they will not do so because their cause is not just…I suggest that, if it is brave, as it is, to die as a man fighting against all odds, it is braver still to refuse to fight and yet to refuse to yield to the usurper" 

The tragedy of Germany's Jews touched him deeply. In his paper 'Harijan' he wrote on November 11, 1938 : "My sympathies are all with the Jews. They have been the untouchables of Christianity…..The German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have done. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, war against Germany to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war." 

Gandhi's great sympathies for German Jews notwithstanding, he did not approve of the creation of a separate state for them on Palestinian land. He wrote in 'Harijan' : "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense as England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war." 

In the spring of 1942, Louis Fischer, American journalist and later Gandhi's biographer visited Gandhi in his ashram at Sevagram. Through him Gandhi sent a letter to President Roosevelt in which he wrote :

"Dear Friend,

I twice missed coming to your great country. I have the privilege of having numerous friends there, both known and unknown to me. Many of my countrymen have received and are still receiving higher education in America. I know too that several have taken shelter there. I have profited greatly by the writings of Thoreau and Emerson. I say this to tell you how much I am connected with your country……..My personal position is clear. I hate all war. If therefore I could persuade my countrymen, they would make a most effective contribution. Under foreign rule however we can make no effective contribution in this war, except as helots…..I have suggested that if the Allies think it necessary, they may keep their troops in India, at their own expense, not for keeping internal order, but for preventing Japanese aggression and defending China. So far as India is concerned she must become free even as America and Britain are. It is on behalf of this proposal that I write this to enlist your active sympathy. I hope you will not resent this letter as an intrusion but take it as an approach from a friend and well wisher of the Allies. 

I remain, yours sincerely, 

M. K. Gandhi "

President Roosevelt replied : 

"My dear Mr Gandhi, 

I have received your letter of July 1, 1942, which you have thoughtfully sent me in order that I may better understand your plans, which I well know may have far reaching effect upon developments important to your country and mine…….I am enclosing a copy of an address of July 23 by the Secretary of State, made with my complete approval, which illustrates the attitude of this Government. I shall hope that our common interest in democracy and righteousness will enable your countrymen and mine to make common cause against a common enemy.

Very sincerely yours, 

Franklin D. Roosevelt"

Gandhi's arrest and imprisonment in 1942 undermined Roosevelt's hopes of securing India's voluntary contribution to the war effort. He therefore sent a personal emissary, Ambassador William Phillips, to India in January 1943. Phillips requested permission to visit Gandhi in detention, but this was denied. His efforts to secure an easing of British rigidity on the issue on Indian Independence also met with failure. He returned to Washington at the end of April, 1943, and made a sombre report on the Indian situation. In July 1944, the Washington Post published a letter which Ambassador Phillips had written to President Roosevelt detailing a plan for India's emancipation, in keeping with the ideals of the Atlantic Charter. The "Phillips plan" caused a furore. Ambassador Phillips was declared personsa non grata in London and New Delhi. Indian nationalists were however encouraged by the "Phillips Plan"

Gandhi was greatly horrified by the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and described it as "the supreme tragedy". He asserted "The moral to be legitimately drawn from the supreme tragedy of the bomb is that it will not be destroyed by counterbombs….Non Violence is the only thing the atom bomb cannot destroy...... Unless the world now adopts non violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind." 

On Mahatma Gandhi's assassination in January 1948, President Truman declared :"Gandhi was a great Indian nationalist, but at the same time was a leader of international stature. His teachings and his actions have left a deep impression on millions of people"

Martin Luther King, who had been won over to Gandhi's non violent strategy after listening to a speech by Dr Mordecai Johnson, President of Howard University, visited India In 1959 and met many of Gandhi's disciples. From them he learnt first hand how the Gandhian strategy of non violent resistance was planned and implemented. On his return to the US he said "I left India more convinced than ever before that non - violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom." It was in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1961 that King first tried out non violence in his struggle for racial equality and justice. Using it consistently thereafter he brought about more beneficial change for American blacks in eight years of non violent struggle, than there had been in the century after the Civil War. 

After India's independence in 1947, over 130 European colonies in Asia and Africa won their freedom. This happened partly because most of them used Gandhi's efficacious tool of non violent struggle, and partly because the movements led by him and Martin Luther King effectively changed the global mindset on the acceptability of colonialism and racialism. In the 80s and 90s non violent movements have successfully brought down oppressive regimes in GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Phillipines, the Soviet Union, South Africa and most recently in Georgia. Using the same potent technique, one lone, frail woman, Aung San Su Syi, has bravely stood up against oppressive military might in Mynmar and effectively swung world public opinion in support of her democratic cause. 

Interestingly, Gandhi's non violent strategy inspired not only national liberation, civil rights, peace and peoples' resistance movements all over the world but also military strategists. Paul Wehr writing on 'Non Violence and National Defence' in the Book 'Gandhi in the Post Modern Age' states "Gandhi's ideas on non violent national defence made their way to a western world on the brink of war. Pacifists there were looking desperately for a viable alternative. Kenneth Boulding's essay 'Paths of Glory: A new way with War' (1937) proposed non violent resistance as a functional substitute for war. He observed that the technological revolution has made war dysfunctional. Boulding appears to have been the first to suggest that a nation, in this case Great Britain, adopt a non violent defence policy, though others like Lindberg in Denmark, and Vrind in Holland were thinking along the same lines. In Norway, Johan Galtung and Arne Naess extolled Gandhi's thinking about non violent national defence. Their work was a direct link between Gandhi and modern social defence policy. By the late 1950s, the real threat of nuclear war further confirmed Bouldings prognosis. In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, social defence seemed more credible as an option for national defence. The 1964 Oxford Conference on Civilian Defence brought together peace researchers, military strategists and people having direct experience with non violent resistance. By 1980 'Social Defence' or 'Non miltary resistance' had in one form or the other become an integral element of national defence policy in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland."

Gandhi's impact is also seen on management theory and practice. Whereas in the early 1930s, the guideline for economic management given by the distinguished Lord Keynes was : "For atleast another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury must be our gods for a little longer. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight", by the 1980s, the renowned American management guru, Peter Drucker, in his 'The New Realities' was writing : "Because management deals with the motivation and direction of people in a common venture, it is deeply embedded in culture. A basic challenge managers therefore face is to identify those elements of the traditions and culture of their workers that can be used as management building blocks. Besides, as everyone like myself, who have worked with managers of all kinds of institutions for long years, have become aware, management is deeply involved with spiritual concerns - the nature of man, good and evil." 

The United Nations Environmental programme (UNEP) has adopted as its prime publicity slogan a sentence Gandhi had written as early as 1907, "The earth provides enough to provide for every man's need, but not enough for every man's greed". 

Gandhi's impact on historians, scientists, religious leaders and men of action is reflected in the following quotations : 

The eminent American historian Will Durant, in his 'Story of Civilization' commenting on historic developments in China and India in the first half of the twentieth century wrote "China followed Sun Yat Sen, took up the sword and fell into the arms of Japan. India, weaponless, accepted as her leader one of the strangest figures in history, and gave to the world the unprecedented phenomenon of a revolution led by a saint, and waged without a gun.......He did not mouth the name of Christ, but acted as if he accepted every word on the Sermon on the Mount. Not since St. Francis of Assissi has any life known to history been so marked by gentleness, disinterestedness, simplicity and forgiveness of enemies." 

The renowned British historian Arnold Toynbee : "Gandhi waded into the slough, showed how the slough could be purified and remained personally uncontaminated by his immersion in it. This gives the measure both of Gandhi's own spiritual stature and the magnitude of his service to mankind at a turning point in human history.

For Martin Luther King :" Mahatma Gandhi was the first person in human history to lift the ethic of Love of Jesus Christ, above mere interaction between individuals and make it into a powerful and effective social force on a large scale …. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. We may ignore him at our own risk". 

Albert Einstein, renowned scientist and contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, paid him an even greater tribute as "A leader of his people, unsupported by any outward authority, a victorious fighter who always scorned the use of force, a man of wisdom and humility who has confronted the brutality of Europe with the dignity of the simple human being and has at all times risen superior .......Generations to come will scarce believe that such a man as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth"

His Holiness the Dalai Lama in accepting his Nobel Prize in December 1989 spoke thus : " I accept the prize with profound gratitude on behalf of the oppressed everywhere, and all those who struggle for freedom and work for world peace. I accept it as a tribute to the man who founded the modern tradition of non violent action for change - Mahatma Gandhi - whose life taught and inspired me. And of course, I accept it on behalf of the six million Tibetan people, my brave countrymen and women inside Tibet, who have suffered and continue to suffer so much…." 

For Lord Attenborough "The legacy of Mahatma Gandhi is not only vested in the Independence of India and her position as one of the world's great democracies. His abiding greatness lies in the fact that the whole world needs Gandhi's philosophy as much today as it did during his lifetime"

Prof. Ralph Bultjens, Toynbee History Prize Laureate, in his foreword to the book 'Gandhi in the Post Modern Age' : "The fragility of modern civilization is exposed by the frighteningly ineffective way in which our world approaches conflict resolution. In international relationships, neither conventional diplomacy nor various uses of military deterence have improved the thin margin on which the world exists. This somewhat pessimistic reading of history is challenged by one major exception, Mahatma Gandhi's application of policies and techniques of non violence in India. Gandhi's success both redeems human nature from the inevitability of its historical experience and also suggests the viability of non violence in modern situations." 

Gandhi's steadfast insistence on Truth, which for him implied Justice, and his non violent mutually acceptable approach to conflict resolution, is very pertinent to the contemporary scenario. The spate of corporate scandals in Enron, Worldcom, Marconi and others, resulting in bankruptcies of these companies and loss of savings of thousands of their employees and share holders, highlight the calamitous consequences of corporate leaders forsaking path of Truth, because of self interest or the compulsion to meet share holder expectations. The same holds true for political leaders who invade and occupy countries on the false pretence of liberating oppressed peoples and establishing democracy among them, The reprehensible recent spate of terrorist attacks in Iraq, Morocco, Djakarta, Istanbul, Tel Aviv and elsewhere, are nonetheless stark reminders of the disastrous consequences of dishonest and unjust policies in international affairs, and a sobering lesson that though expediency might bring short term gains, it ultimately leads to calamities.. In the long run it is Truth alone that triumphs. 'Satyameva Jayate' as the ancient Sanskrit maxim states. 

Does truth and non violence work in international affairs? It does indeed. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's faced the truth that wars are destructive and unproductive and undertook his histoic visit to Jerusalem in 1977. This opened the way to his subsequent negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at Camp David with President Carter's assistance, and brought not only peace between Egypt and Israel but also the restoration by the latter of all the land it had taken from the former. This is clear proof that the non violent, negotiated path to peace does produce beneficial and enduring results for both parties even in the most intractable situations.