Timeless Lesson from Bapu Gandhi

There was a chapter in my primary school History lesson highlighting Mahatma Gandhi as the 'sacred hero' of India [印度圣雄甘地]. At that time it never occurred to me that a short,skinny and half-naked fellow carrying a long stick, could emerge as the icon of the struggle for the Independence of India. Fifty years later, reading the book ‘The Life of Mahatma Gandhi’ written by Loise Fischer, I am more than convinced that he deserves such a recognition.

Bapu Gandhi was indeed a great man with credibility,integrity and sincerity. Though he was small in size, he stood tall among men. He has travelled the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent and the people of India respected him like a godly figure to the point of kneeling before him to kiss his toes and even kissing the dust of his footsteps he trod past.

For more than thirty years, Bapu Gandhi tirelessly led numerous non-violent and non-cooperation movements against the British Empire. Many a time he was charged with the seditious act and thrown into prison which he gladly accepted without the slightest complaint. He had spent a total of 2,089 days in Indian prisons and 249 days in South African prisons. Bapu Gandhi loved it in jail: “I have been quite happy and making up for arrears in sleep (which he missed outside the jail),” he wrote to his follower, Miss Madeleine Slade. To him going to prison was part and parcel of the Indian politics as it was a basic part of his doctrine of non-co-operation to arouse the nation for liberation.

In the subsequent years prior to the Independence of India, the Muslims in India encountered considerable difficulty in joining the government service as their education was usually inferior to that of Hindus, Parsis and Christians. The Muslim urban middle class looked to their leader, Mr. Jinnah, to get them British government jobs, and he did so by persuading the authorities to establish quotas for Muslims irrespective of qualifications. However, Bapu Gandhi was against it as he maintained that meritocracy should not give way to quotas based on religious affiliation. He argued that, “For administration to be efficient it must be in the hands of the fittest. There should certainly be no favoritism. If we want five engineers we must not take one from each community but we must take the fittest five even if they were all Mussulmans or all Parsis. ..... The educationally backward communities will have a right to favoured treatment in the matter of education at the hands of the national government... But those who aspire to occupy responsible posts in the government of the country can only do so if they pass the required test.”

Unfortunately, up to this very day, there are people who are still against meritocracy, among them there is a prominent figure, who goes to the extent 'to label those who pushed for meritocracy as being as racists as those who defended Malay rights.'

Luckily we have other pragmatic and open-minded leaders like Dato’ Zaid Ibrahim, who shares the opinion of Bapu Gandhi:
“If by open competition and transparent policies the net effect is that some Malays still need extra help and support, then of course a responsible government will have to step in; to provide the incentives and the safety net to bridge the gap.”

One great achievement of Bapu Gandhi was his social revolution to lead the movement for the emancipation of untouchables by abolishing the Caste system as he regarded the system as a cruel inequality imposed by Indians on other Indians in India. To him all Indians should be treated equally.
He said, “if it was proved to me that it (Caste System) is an essential part of Hinduism I for one would declare myself an open rebel against Hinduism itself.”

No man who cared more for popularity than principle would have made such a public statement like Bapu Gandhi. Bapu took the risk of losing the support of the majority of the Indians who were Hindus. Regardless of the consequence, he made the stance against the caste system in order to purify his religion.

Unlike Bapu Gandhi, most of the politicians around us like to sing tunes that soothe the ears and hearts of the masses they represent. These politicians are cunning hypocrites; they are not that ‘dumb and stupid’ as to commit political suicides by following the deeds of Bapu Gandhi.

Albert Einstein once wrote about Bapu Gandhi: “He had demonstrated that a powerful human following can be assembled not only through the canning game of the usual political manoeuvres and trickeries but through the cogent examples of a morally superior conduct of life. In our time of utter moral decadence he was the only statesman to stand for a higher human relationship in our political sphere.”

Bapu Gandhi had reminded the people that ‘rights’ should go hand-in-hand with ‘duties’. It was not right for one to demand for his rights but conveniently or intentionally forget about his duties to others.

If only those who live off the generosity of others and do nothing in return could take heed the advice of the late U.S. President, John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address to the nation, “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”[“别问国家能为你做什么,问问你自己能为国家做什么."], or to adhere to the true spirit of the slogan of the People’s Republic of China during the years of early fifties , “To serve the people”[为人民服务], they ought to be ashamed of their unjustified demand of rights as they should understand that “In this world there is no such thing as a free lunch!”.[天下没有白吃的午餐!]。

On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot with three bullets while he was walking to a platform from which he was to address a prayer meeting. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment of 550,000,000 rupees to Pakistan. Godse resented Bapu Gandhi’s insistence that the Hindu refugees be evacuated from the mosques in Delhi. He was bitter because no demands were made on the Muslims. In striving to restore religious harmony, Bapu Gandhi paid with his own life which he had no regret as he had expected it. He had once mentioned forty years before the assassination, “Death is the appointed end of all life. To die by the hand of a brother, rather than by disease or in such other way, cannot be for me a matter of sorrow. And if, even in such a case, I am free from the thought of anger or hatred against my assailant, I know that that will redound to my eternal welfare, and even the assailant will later on realize my perfect innocence.”

Bapu Gandhi had sacrificed his life in an effort to promote religious tolerance in his country. In retrospect, we need to ask ourselves, or our political leaders for that matter, what we have not done in the past, and what we are striving to do in the future. Is it not our mission to promote and improve our inter-racial and inter-religious harmony in the true spirit of 1Malaysia? Or is it just a gimmick, and nothing else?