E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

52 Contextualising Gandhian Thoughtprimarily sticking to his advaitic position, was fully aware thatmost of the people needed personalised and quality-filled Godto meet their intellectual and emotional needs. And that is whydespite his commitment to advaitic position, he did not totallyreject the need for a personal God. To quote him ‘He ispersonal God to those who need his personal presence. He isembodied to those who need His touch’ 7 . Not only that, heexplained the need for a personal God in his own imitable style:‘But a full realisation of the Absolute is almost impossible foran embodied being. The Absolute is devoid of all attributesand, thus, difficult for man to imagine. Therefore, they are allworshippers of a personal God whether they are aware of it ornot’ 8 Thus at the metaphysical level, Gandhi asserted theprimacy of absolute truth as Shankara and other philosophers ofAdvaitic School have done earlier.But as a practical visionary, Gandhi was aware that thisidea of absolute truth/God could not be taken as a workingprinciple by an average man in the street. Hence, he hadsimultaneously propounded the principle of relative truth. Hewas firmly of the opinion that the absolute truth may work aspole star, but in day to day life an average man has to perceivetruth in his own light. Accordingly, relative truth is that truthwhich man perceives and pursues according to his own lightand understanding. He denies that such an open-endeddefinition of relative truth might create a situation of perpetualconflict, chaos and confusion, as every man would be free topursue his lonely furrow of relative truth. In fact, he favoursthe idea of every one pursuing his own relative truth. He avers:‘As long as I have not realised Absolute Truth, so long I musthold to my relative truth as I have conceived it. Relative truthmust meanwhile be my beacon, my shield and my buckle’. 9 Forthe dogged pursuit of one’s own relative truth he advances twomajor arguments. One, that relative truth is also of the samegenre as the absolute truth. It could not be untrue as the