E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

54 Contextualising Gandhian Thoughthis concept of absolute truth is God centric and, as such, maynot be of much intellectual and practical use for the class ofnon-believers. It could be further argued that even his laterformulation of ‘Truth is God’ hardly solves the problem ofnon-believers. God remains a common and crucial factor inboth of his formulations. Moreover, his concept of absolutetruth is too abstruse and primarily based on faith rather thanhuman rationality. It also creates an epistemological problemon how to find the most effective medium for the perception oftruth/God. For Gandhi, of course, the ‘inner voice’ was the realmeans for such a perception of truth. As he put it, ‘For me thevoice of God, of conscience, of Truth or ‘the inner voice’, or‘the still small voice’ mean one and the same thing’! Thus, inGandhian scheme of perception of truth, intuition, inner voiceand conscience plays a bigger role than the scientific methodbased on discursive reason. That is why, he insisted during his21 days fast in 1932 and even his last fast unto death in January1948 that they were undertaken on the prompting of God or thestill small voice. This created an intellectual problem even for aclose follower like Jawaharlal Nehru, who found it rather‘strange’. Such a view of perception of truth could create adifficult situation of confusion and chaos as any body couldclaim that his truth is a straight call from God or ‘the still smallvoice’. One could legitimately ask who could work as the finalarbiter in the case of too many truths claiming God or the innervoice as their ultimate source.Such a criticism could be countered in several ways.One, that Gandhi never had any superstitious belief. Nor did heclaim any supernatural power for himself. In fact, he alwaystries to strike a delicate but right balance between human faithand rationality. And that is why he always maintained that eventhe scriptural truth would have to be tested on the anvil ofhuman rationality. In other words, he never wanted to make afetish of either reason or faith. In this respect he was quite close