Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

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JAINISM AND WESTERN INFLUENCES ON GANDHIJI
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in order to ascertain whether he could feel free with the community, he landed in prison for refusing to pay taxes. A friend got him released. But this experience led him to write the essay on Civil Disobedience. It is claimed that Gandhi received the idea of Satyagraha, as the Mahatma called his method of Civil Disobedience, from Thoreau. Gandhi however, refutes it: The assertion that I took my idea of Civil Disobedience from Thoreau does not correspond to facts. The resistance against the South African powers existed before I got acquainted with Thoreau's essay on Civil Disobedience. But the movement was called passive resistance then. As this connotation did not suffice for its meaning I coined the word Satyagraha for the Gujarati Readers. Then when I read the title of Thoreau's significant essay I used the term to explain our fight to English readers. But I found that the expression “Civil Disobedience" did not interpret the full meaning of the fight. So I decided on the term “Civil Resistance”.
Again it is elucidating to observe, how much Gandhi clarifies in a discussion of Western Ideas, how he formulates his own ideas thereby more keenly and how he is also satisfied to see confirmed and to find related thoughts in the West. What he brought along from his own Indian tradition ideals of non-violence and Jain ascetism and what he read in the books of the West interwove inseparably with one another. The following explanation on the definition of civil disobedience which comes from Thoreau's pen, could well have been word for word by Gandhi: One thing I know for a fact, if 1000, 100, 10 people, whom I could name --if only 10 honest human beings, only one honest man in the state of Massachussetts desists from keeping slaves and surrenders his partnership and would be imprisoned in the country prison, then this would mean the abolition of slavery in America. It is of no importance, how small the beginning may be, what is done well remains forever. But we only talk about it. Tolstoy
"But we only talk about it was fuel for Gandhi's fire. For he considered words and ideas very seriously. He was Karma