World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 254

also. He did not want people to blindly follow traditional values. It may be said that Gandhi is Socratic in this. An examination of the Ashram Vows would reveal that Gandhi amalgamated a package of six vows put together by the Ashram community after due deliberations with the five Yamas or Cardinal Vows of Patanjali's Yogasutra. This is experiment, indeed. He wrote: "True morality consist not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it." (M.K.Gandhi, Ethical Religion).
A final point also needs to be added and that is about moral courage. For Gandhi the choice and practice of moral values entails moral courage. Gandhi, in fact, epitomized such moral courage. He lived his preferred values vigilantly, valiantly and in a spirit of sanctity and thus demonstrated their supreme importance and efficacy. One can, therefore, easily agree with the conclusion (Raghavan Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, 1983), that Gandhi tended to assimilate all the virtues to that of moral courage.
205