mindofmahatmagandhi

The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi
My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes
and my talents, and I lay them both at His feet. Why should He have chosen
me, an imperfect instrument, for such a mighty experiment? I think He
deliberately did so. He had to serve the poor, dumb, ignorant millions. A
perfect man might have been their despair. When they found that one with
their failings was marching on towards ahimsa, they too had confidence in their
own capacity. We should not have recognized a perfect man if he had come as
our leader, and we might have driven him to a cave. May be he who follows me
will be more perfect and you will be able to receive his message. (H, 21-7-
1940, p211)
No Gandhian Sect
I claim to be a humble servant of India and humanity, and would like to die in
the discharge of such service. I have no desire to found a sect. I am really too
ambitious to be satisfied with a sect for a following. For I represent no new
truths. I endeavor to follow and represent Truth, as I know it. I do claim to
throw a new light on many an old truth. (YI, 25-8-1921, p267)
I have presented no new principles, but tried to restate old principles. (YI, 2-
12-1926, p419)
There is no such thing as 'Gandhism', and I do not want to leave any sect after
me. I do not claim to have originated any new principle or doctrine. I have
simply tried in my own way to apply the eternal truths to our daily life and
problems….
I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the
hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could
do. In doing so I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors. Life and its
problems have thus become to me so many experiments in the practice of truth
and non-violence.
By instinct I have been truthful, but not non-violent. As a Jain muni once rightly
said, I was not so much a votary of ahimsa as I was of truth, and I put the latter
in the first place and the former in the second. For, as he put it, I was capable
of sacrificing non-violence for the sake of truth. In fact, it was in the course of
my pursuit of truth that I discovered non-violence. (H, 28-3-1936, p49)
www.mkgandhi.org Page 36