World of Philosophy

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

Page 424

lessness-a kind of thirst, which enables him a true moral man. Fourthly, the religious aspiration is based on a desire and a cognitive urge to know the beyond, which means the realization of god. Fifthly, religion involves a conscious and sincere love and striving for truth. For Gandhi there is no religion higher than truth. Religion is practical because it pervades social, political, and moral aspects of our life. If everyone in the world treats religion in Gandhian thought then there cannot be any war in the name of religion. According to Gandhi, there is an underlying unity among the religions of the world. That under lying unity is the truth and non-violence. Truth is God, Non-violence is the means of realizing him. Thus belief in one god is the corner stone of all religions, which is necessary to maintain world peace.
Gandhi primarily based all his social and political doctrines on the religious and spiritual view of human life. According to him politics devoid of religion is a deathtrap because it kills the soul. In Young India he wrote, " At the back of every word that I have uttered, since I have known what public life is and of every act that I have dine, there has been a religious consciousness and a down-light religious motive". For him there was no religion apart from human activity, He did not believe in any particular religion and his religion was the service of the whole humanity. Religion when particularized gives a partial outlook of life but in reality, it is a passion for love, which sees the whole world. There is one and one truth only, although it is put in different ways-"Ekam sad Vipra Bahuda Vadanti". God lives even in the smallest atom. To love god is to love His creation. Hence, Gandhi was justified to love and extended his sympathy to the lowest creature and combine religion and politics for world peace. His idea of combining religion with politics is a challenge to those political thinkers who take a partial view of human life. He admits that the thinkers and the people all over the world may differ on the conception on religion and god, they may also deny the existence of god and religion, and religion of them may appear some loathsome, but no one denies the idea of truth. That is why Gandhi inverted the phrase and said, "Truth is God", in place 'God is Truth. And truth, according to him can be realized in perfect sense through ahimsa.
Our Indian history has been primarily made by spiritual individualities. His idea was of a new social order based on universal love and ahimsa. Under his thesis of new social order he discussed the idea of establishing a non-violent society and related to it his conceptions of stateless society, democracy, decentralization of economic and political powers, vama-vyavastha, and trusteeship and so on. All these ideas of Gandhi are related to the world peace and harmony.
Gandhi did not formulate any philosophical principles and religious doctrine of his own. The aim of human life is to realize the spiritual basis, which is the attainment of moksa. According to him life is a unity. It cannot
375