Why Mohandas Gandhi didnt win the Nobel Peace prize?

[Ali.009]

Why Mohandas Gandhi didn’t win the Nobel Peace prize?​

Many ask, why Gandhi didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize? What if Dr. Martin Luther had known about Gandhi’s racism?

If Dr. King had known about about the Zulus (African tribe) and the Kaffirs (African tribe), he surely would have voiced his concern.Gandhi condones Zulu massacres and defends the British. Aug 4 1906

Dr. King may not have read Time Magazine and the explosive stories about Mr. Gandhi’s personal life. The sex life of Mr. Gandhi, and his failures as a politician

Dr. King probably knew only about the propoganda clips of Mr. Gandhi and never really new the man. The myth of Mohandas K. Gandhi debunked. He gets an “F” on South Africa, Salt Match, Non-Violence, and independence
Dr. King on moral high ground condemned wars. He would have been shocked to find out that Gandhi supported the British wars extending the British empire.Which war did Mohandas Gandhi support. All of them. There wasn’t a war that the prophet of Non-Violence did not support. He was Sergeant Major in the British Army and won a medal for his war duties

Dr. King was probably unaware about Gandhi’s open racism.Gandhi’s racism. The truth behind the mask. Behold Sergeant Major Gandhi who supported the British during the Boer war, Zulu rebellion. Behold the prophet of peace who worked to stratify the South African society.

Dr. King did not know that Gandhi did not bring the British Empire down.

Dr. King would have been appalled if he knew that Gandhi insisted on calling Hitler his “friend” and that his advice to the Jews was horribe piece of Anti-SemitismGandhi’s letter to his friend Hitler.

Dr. King would have been horrified if he had known about Mr. Gandhi’s personal fetishes.Sex life of Mohandas Gandhi, his failures and sexual perversion

Martin Luther probably would be appalled if he knew about what Gandhi said about Africans and blacks in South Africa

Mr. Gandhi was nominated twice. The first time his efforts in South Africa were considered benefiting the Indians only.

In his report, Professor Worm-Müller expressed his own doubts as to whether Gandhi’s ideals were meant to be universal or primarily Indian: “One might say that it is significant that his well-known struggle in South Africa was on behalf of the Indians only, and not of the blacks whose living conditions were even worse.“

The 2nd time his name was disqualified for proposing war against Pakistan. Based on a telegram from Reuters, The Times, on September 27, 1947, under the headline “Mr. Gandhi on ‘war’ with Pakistan” reported:

“Mr. Gandhi told his prayer meeting to-night that, though he had always opposed all warfare, if there was no other way of securing justice from Pakistan and if Pakistan persistently refused to see its proved error and continued to minimise it, the Indian Union Government would have to go to war against it. … (Mohandas K. Gandhi, Spetember 27th, 1947)

Here is an excerpt from the Nobel peace prize web site. (Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate)

In 1937 a member of the Norwegian Storting (Parliament), Ole Colbjørnsen (Labour Party), nominated Gandhi for that year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and he was duly selected as one of thirteen candidates on the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s short list. Colbjørnsen did not himself write the motivation for Gandhi’s nomination; it was written by leading women of the Norwegian branch of “Friends of India”, and its wording was of course as positive as could be expected.

An ordinary politician or a Christ? In this photo Gandhi listens to Muslims during the height of the warfare which followed the partition of India in 1947.
Photo: Copyright © Scanpix

The committee’s adviser, professor Jacob Worm-Müller, who wrote a report on Gandhi, was much more critical. On the one hand, he fully understood the general admiration for Gandhi as a person: “He is, undoubtedly, a good, noble and ascetic person – a prominent man who is deservedly honoured and loved by the masses of India.” On the other hand, when considering Gandhi as a political leader, the Norwegian professor’s description was less favourable. There are, he wrote, “sharp turns in his policies, which can hardly be satisfactorily explained by his followers. (&#8230 He is a freedom fighter and a dictator, an idealist and a nationalist. He is frequently a Christ, but then, suddenly, an ordinary politician.”

Gandhi had many critics in the international peace movement. The Nobel Committee adviser referred to these critics in maintaining that he was not consistently pacifist, that he should have known that some of his non-violent campaigns towards the British would degenerate into violence and terror. This was something that had happened during the first Non-Cooperation Campaign in 1920-1921, e.g. when a crowd in Chauri Chaura, the United Provinces, attacked a police station, killed many of the policemen and then set fire to the police station.

A frequent criticism from non-Indians was also that Gandhi was too much of an Indian nationalist. In his report, Professor Worm-Müller expressed his own doubts as to whether Gandhi’s ideals were meant to be universal or primarily Indian: “One might say that it is significant that his well-known struggle in South Africa was on behalf of the Indians only, and not of the blacks whose living conditions were even worse.”

The name of the 1937 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate was to be Lord Cecil of Chelwood. We do not know whether the Norwegian Nobel Committee seriously considered awarding the Peace Prize to Gandhi that year, but it seems rather unlikely. Ole Colbjørnsen renominated him both in 1938 and in 1939, but ten years were to pass before Gandhi made the committee’s short list again.

A frequent criticism from non-Indians was also that Gandhi was too much of an Indian nationalist. In his report, Professor Worm-Müller expressed his own doubts as to whether Gandhi’s ideals were meant to be universal or primarily Indian: “One might say that it is significant that his well-known struggle in South Africa was on behalf of the Indians only, and not of the blacks whose living conditions were even worse.“

Without that millstone Gandhiji around its neck, India would be a Great Power today and not just a vector for disease and late night appeals from missionary groups seeking to deculturalize Indians.

Gandhi’s limitations as a family man. Where the world sees a saint, Rajmohan Gandhi sees a cruel husband and a mostly absent father, paying scant attention to his children’s schooling and dragging wife Kasturba across continents at will, belittling her desire for the simplest of material possessions, then expecting her to comply when he turns from amorous husband to platonic companion to apparent adulterer. Gandhi took on a magnetic personality in the presence of young women, and was able to persuade them to join him in peculiar experiments of sleeping and bathing naked together, without touching, all apparently to strengthen his chastity. (Whether these experiments were always successful is anyone’s guess.) It is also revealed that Gandhi began a romantic liaison with Saraladevi Chaudhurani, niece of the great poet Rabindranath Tagore—a disclosure that has created a buzz in the Indian press. The author tells us that Gandhi, perhaps disingenuously, called it a “spiritual marriage,” a “partnership between two persons of the opposite sex where the physical is wholly absent.”
Books: Being Mohandas - TIME

1. gandhi hated blacks Gandhi hated blacks, say critics of African statue - www.theage.com.au ” But, when forced to share a cell with black people, Gandhi wrote: “Many of the native prisoners are only one degree removed from the animal.”
” Mar. 7, 1908 (Reference: CWMG, Vol VIII, pp. 135-136) Mohandas Gandhi’s description of black inmates. [Kaffirs are a tribe in South Africa]

2. gandhi enjoyed enemas in a sexual way: “Gandhi would do enemas twice a day and if he liked you allowed you to enter the piece up his rectum.

3. gandhi slept with young girls to test if he was still a man: “Each night he slept naked between two young girls to prove his sanctity” Gandhi the Man

4. gandhi advised the jews to commit mass suicide: “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” Gandhi and the Jews - Sepia Mutiny

5. gandhi praised hitler: In a letter to Hitler in 1941, Gandhi wrote: “Nor do I believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.”

6. gandhi did nothing for blacks in south africa, only indian: “In 1906 Gandhi had participated in a war against Blacks. The Gandhian literature either keeps quiet on the subject or tries to paint him as a great humanitarian who actually helped Blacks by rendering to them urgent medical care. Had he not done so, we are told, many Blacks would have died. While researching the historical documents, however, I found that Gandhi’s participation had nothing to do with “humanitarian concerns” for Black people. He was more concerned with “allying relationships” with the colonial Whites living in Natal colony. Driven by his racial outlook, he went out of his way to enlist Indians to join the army under him to fight for his cause against the Blacks. He also considered Indians living in South Africa to be “fellow colonists” along with the White colonists, over the indigenous Blacks.” Would the Real Gandhi Please Stand Up?

7. gandhi scorned blacks so much that he successfully changed legislation to give indians a separate door from blacks at the post office. Gandhi wrote: “In the Durban Post and telegraph offices there were separate entrances for natives and Asiatics and Europeans. We felt the indignity too much and many respectable Indians were insulted and called all sorts of names by the clerks at the counter. We petitioned the authorities to do away with the invidious distinction and they have now provided three separate entrances for natives, Asiatics and Europeans.” http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sentletsediakanyo/2008/1…ion-of-black-people/
8. gandhi was a wife beater : “Despite his pacifist philosophy, he was a wife-beater.” Mahatma Gandhi - Biography

GANDHI ON BLACKS AND RACE RELATIONS (Zulus and Kaffirs were African tribes in South Africa)​

“A general belief seems to prevail in the colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than the savages or natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.” (Reference: The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Government of India (CWMG), Vol I, p. 150)
Regarding forcible registration with the state of blacks: “One can understand the necessity for registration of Kaffirs who will not work.” (Reference: CWMG, Vol I, p. 105)

“Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian Location should be chosen for dumping down all the Kaffirs of the town passes my comprehension…the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location.” (Reference: CWMG, Vol I, pp. 244-245)

His description of black inmates: “Only a degree removed from the animal.” Also, “Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized - the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.” - Mar. 7, 1908 (Reference: CWMG, Vol VIII, pp. 135-136)

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1947: Victory and Defeat

In 1947 the nominations of Gandhi came by telegram from India, via the Norwegian Foreign Office. The nominators were B.G. Kher, Prime Minister of Bombay, Govindh Bhallabh Panth, Premier of United Provinces, and Mavalankar, the President of the Indian Legislative Assembly. Their arguments in support of his candidacy were written in telegram style, like the one from Govind Bhallabh Panth: “Recommend for this year Nobel Prize Mahatma Gandhi architect of the Indian nation the greatest living exponent of the moral order and the most effective champion of world peace today.” There were to be six names on the Nobel Committee’s short list, Mohandas Gandhi was one of them.

The Nobel Committee’s adviser, the historian Jens Arup Seip, wrote a new report which is primarily an account of Gandhi’s role in Indian political history after 1937. “The following ten years,” Seip wrote, “from 1937 up to 1947, led to the event which for Gandhi and his movement was at the same time the greatest victory and the worst defeat – India’s independence and India’s partition.” The report describes how Gandhi acted in the three different, but mutually related conflicts which the Indian National Congress had to handle in the last decade before independence: the struggle between the Indians and the British; the question of India’s participation in the Second World War; and, finally, the conflict between Hindu and Muslim communities. In all these matters, Gandhi had consistently followed his own principles of non-violence.

The Seip report was not critical towards Gandhi in the same way as the report written by Worm-Müller ten years earlier. It was rather favourable, yet not explicitly supportive. Seip also wrote briefly on the ongoing separation of India and the new Muslim state, Pakistan, and concluded – rather prematurely it would seem today: “It is generally considered, as expressed for example in The Times of 15 August 1947, that if ‘the gigantic surgical operation’ constituted by the partition of India, has not led to bloodshed of much larger dimensions, Gandhi’s teachings, the efforts of his followers and his own presence, should get a substantial part of the credit.”

The partition of India in 1947 led to a process which we today probably would describe as “ethnic cleansing”. Hundreds of thousands of people were massacred and millions had to move; Muslims from India to Pakistan, Hindus in the opposite direction. Photo shows part of the crowds of refugees which poured into the city of New Delhi.

Having read the report, the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee must have felt rather updated on the last phase of the Indian struggle for independence. However, the Nobel Peace Prize had never been awarded for that sort of struggle. The committee members also had to consider the following issues: Should Gandhi be selected for being a symbol of non-violence, and what political effects could be expected if the Peace Prize was awarded to the most prominent Indian leader – relations between India and Pakistan were far from developing peacefully during the autumn of 1947?

From the diary of committee chairman Gunnar Jahn, we now know that when the members were to make their decision on October 30, 1947, two acting committee members, the Christian conservative Herman Smitt Ingebretsen and the Christian liberal Christian Oftedal spoke in favour of Gandhi. One year earlier, they had strongly favoured John Mott, the YMCA leader. It seems that they generally preferred candidates who could serve as moral and religious symbols in a world threatened by social and ideological conflicts. However, in 1947 they were not able to convince the three other members. The Labour politician Martin Tranmæl was very reluctant to award the Prize to Gandhi in the midst of the Indian-Pakistani conflict, and former Foreign Minister Birger Braadland agreed with Tranmæl. Gandhi was, they thought, too strongly committed to one of the belligerents. In addition both Tranmæl and Jahn had learnt that, one month earlier, at a prayer-meeting, Gandhi had made a statement which indicated that he had given up his consistent rejection of war. Based on a telegram from Reuters, The Times, on September 27, 1947, under the headline “Mr. Gandhi on ‘war’ with Pakistan” reported:

“Mr. Gandhi told his prayer meeting to-night that, though he had always opposed all warfare, if there was no other way of securing justice from Pakistan and if Pakistan persistently refused to see its proved error and continued to minimise it, the Indian Union Government would have to go to war against it. No one wanted war, but he could never advise anyone to put up with injustice. If all Hindus were annihilated for a just cause he would not mind. If there was war, the Hindus in Pakistan could not be fifth columnists. If their loyalty lay not with Pakistan they should leave it. Similarly Muslims whose loyalty was with Pakistan should not stay in the Indian Union.”

Gandhi saw “no place for him in a new order where they wanted an army, a navy, an air force and what not”. In the picture, Gandhi’s spiritual heir, Prime Minister Pandit Nehru, Defense Minister Sardar Baldev Singh, and the Commanders-in-Chief of the three Services, are inspecting a Guard of Honour at the Red Fort, Delhi, in August, 1948. Fifty years later, both India and Pakistan had developed and tested their own nuclear weapons.

Gandhi had immediately stated that the report was correct, but incomplete. At the meeting he had added that he himself had not changed his mind and that “he had no place in a new order where they wanted an army, a navy, an air force and what not”.

Both Jahn and Tranmæl knew that the first report had not been complete, but they had become very doubtful. Jahn in his diary quoted himself as saying: “While it is true that he (Gandhi) is the greatest personality among the nominees – plenty of good things could be said about him – we should remember that he is not only an apostle for peace; he is first and foremost a patriot. (&#8230 Moreover, we have to bear in mind that Gandhi is not naive. He is an excellent jurist and a lawyer.” It seems that the Committee Chairman suspected Gandhi’s statement one month earlier to be a deliberate step to deter Pakistani aggression. Three of five members thus being against awarding the 1947 Prize to Gandhi, the Committee unanimously decided to award it to the Quakers.

 

[vish]

Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate

 

[Ali.009]

How very stupid of you? Another proof that indians dont read anything. The link you pasted after searching google.com is stated inside the above article. Kindly spare sometime from **** and read whats written above. You did nothing great by posting that link, instead, made yourself look like a fool.

-Regards

 

[Flintlock]

How very stupid of you? Another proof that indians dont read anything. The link you pasted after searching google.com is stated inside the above article. Kindly spare sometime from **** and read whats written above. You did nothing great by posting that link, instead, made yourself look like a fool.

-Regards

Can you write a single sentence without abusing someone? I have read very few posts from you which haven't included some personal attack.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Einstein and Gandhi – the meaning of life
Ramanath Cowsik

Motivated by the extraordinary lives and thoughts of Einstein and Gandhi, the aim of this presentation is to show that science and spirituality provide us with complementary perspectives on truth – both unbiased and universal. Such a perspective motivates us to realize the futility of human desires and mundane passions, and to develop a feeling of universal empathy and thus induce us to work for the betterment of the world. It is this selfless toil that imbues life with meaning.

Einstein’s scientific contributions revolutionized almost every aspect of modern physics: Quantum Theory, Theory of Space-time, Gravitational Physics and Statistical Physics. The very concept of space-time in which the physical events take place and the objective reality in quantum systems were redefined by him. Whereas the Copernican revolution which started nearly 500 years ago, moved us away from a geocentric point of view, the theories of relativity of Einstein connected up space and time into a single manifold and made the very question, as to where does the center of the Universe lie, itself meaningless – there is the absolute freedom of choice. Moreover the equations of Einstein’s Theory of gravitation revolutionized cosmology in the following way: The Earth on which we live is about 150 million kilometers away from the Sun which is a star. The stars that fill the firmament, about 100 billion of them are conglomerated as the Milky Way galaxy. Again there are scores of billions of galaxies filling space distributed in a quasi-random way. Thus the cosmological principle was stated: The Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales. When Einstein’s equations were used to investigate the consequences of this aspect of the Universe, the solutions indicated that the Universe was expanding in a very special way – the galaxies moving apart from one another similar to dots on an expanding balloon. It was as though the fabric of space was being created distancing the galaxies from one another. Edwin Hubble established that the galaxies were indeed moving away as predicted by Einstein’s equations. All this was about 90 years ago.

Astronomical research during these intervening years has shown that indeed the Universe expanded from an extremely hot condensed state called the big bang. As the Universe expanded and cooled, the primordial exotic particles and fields gave birth to the quark-gluon plasma, familiar to the Standard Model of particle physics today. When the Universe was just 1 second old, the quarks had combined and we had the particles of nuclear physics – neutrons, protons, electrons, positrons, neutrinos and neutrino-like particles and, of course, radiation. But they were still too hot. By about 5 minutes the Universe cooled enough to synthesise helium. Since the nucleus with mass 8 is unstable, helium nuclei could not fuse to give heavier nuclei and the Universe consisted of neutrinos and neutrino-like particles, electrons, protons, -particles or nuclei of Helium and radiation. There was no carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron or other elements – the building blocks of life and our familiar world were yet to be made.

For a million years the Universe went through an uneventful expansion, just cooling down continuously. Now the temperatures were cool enough for the electrons and protons to combine to form atoms of hydrogen. This suddenly released the close coupling between radiation and matter with dramatic effects. During the cooling down process the neutrino-like particles had also cooled and their random motions had become slow, allowing their self-gravitation to clump them together into clouds. Since these neutrino-like particles do not emit or scatter light they are called particles of dark matter. The clouds of dark matter gravitationally attracted the atoms, which radiated and slowly settled into the central regions of the clouds. Such clouds with atomic gas merged to form galaxies. Our Milky Way is one such system.

The gas in the central regions in such systems condenses into stars. The central core of stars has a temperature of about 10 million degrees and here nuclei of hydrogen and helium fuse to form the heavier elements, which are then dispersed back into the interstellar space by stellar winds. Occasionally, when the mass of the stellar core exceeds the Chandrasekhar mass, it undergoes a collapse under self-gravity and the outer regions are expelled in an explosion and this debris contains the heaviest elements, even up to uranium. In about 8-10 billion years since the birth of the Universe, such processes had seeded most of the galaxies with heavy elements and in one such galaxy our solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago. Thus everything that we see about us has an intimate connection with the birth of the Universe and with the subsequent stages of its evolution - we are all made of star-dust.

It is only perhaps during the last billion years that life appeared on this Earth, in the form of unicellular organisms, and the slow evolution of the species led finally, within the last hundred thousand years, to humankind as we know it – and the history of civilized man with agricultural capabilities is even shorter – a mere ten thousand years – say.

Two points are to be noted here: A systematic and a progressive sequence of evolution has brought the world to its present state. Man himself with his intelligence and capacity for articulation and organization is shaped by the progressive evolution of the exotic particles and fields of the early Universe, the formation of galaxies, nucleosynthesis in the stars, the origins of life on this planet and its subsequent evolution into the modern man. The second point that is to be underscored is that the span of man’s existence is but a minuscule speck in this vast Universe, which is about 14 billion years old and has an extent of 1023 km. Yet, man’s indomitable spirit has strived to comprehend this cosmos. I would like to return to the discussion of these two points shortly.

Continuing with our description of Einsteinian cosmology, we note that normal matter like hydrogen and helium contribute only about two percent to the average mass density of the Universe. In contrast the neutrino-like-particles of dark matter contribute about one third of the mass density on the average and these dominate the formation and dynamics of the galaxies. What is the rest of the 65% made of?

Einstein at the time of inventing the relativistic cosmologies, had also discovered a way of causing the expansion to be either halted or accelerated. In a manner that was in perfect consonance with the mathematical aesthetics of physics, he had introduced the -term into his field equations. Such a term finds support with the concept of the “Quantum-vacuum”, according to which even perfectly empty space has a dynamics of its own, with particles, antiparticles and radiation continuously being created and annihilated, all in a manner perfectly in agreement with the conservation of energy and quantum mechanics. It is remarkable that during the last ten years astronomical evidence is mounting that such a vacuum or dark energy indeed is present to account for the 65% missing energy density. It is showing its unique vacuum character, of a gravity that repels, by making the Universe accelerate in its expansion! Thus we see that normal matter, with which we are all made of, is only a tiny fraction of dark matter and further more the dynamics of the Universe now is controlled by vacuum energy, which is not matter at all. All this reinforces our connectivity with the Universe and at the same time leads us away from a simple anthropocentric view.

Let us now briefly turn to Einstein’s spirituality. His god-concept was more sophisticated than the common view of a personalized God who is the lawmaker, punishing man for his sins and rewarding him for his virtues. He said “my comprehension of God comes from the deeply felt conviction of a superior intelligence that reveals itself in the knowable world”. His religion was an attitude of cosmic awe and a devout humility before the harmony in nature. Einstein considered himself an agnostic and his spirituality was closely similar that taught by Buddha and much later by Spinoza – not unlike the ‘paramarthika’ or the transcendental interpretation of the Vedanta delineated by Shankara in contrast to the Vyavaharika view held by the common man. In close parallel with the Hindu saints, especially Gautama Buddha and Shankara, he felt the futility of human desires….individual existence in pursuit of mundane materialistic goals impressed Einstein as a sort of prison and he felt a deep inner urge to experience the Universe as a significant whole. Thus Einstein’s spirituality is close to the philosophy of Advaita of Shankara. Just as Einstein opened up science which had reached a watershed in the beginning of the 20th century, so did Shankara revitalize the religions of India with spirituality in the 6th century. Einstein felt that whatever there is of God and goodness, it must work itself out and express itself through us – we cannot stand aside and “let God do it”. He was truly a karmayogi and followed the diction of Gita mā té sangōstvakarmani (do not detach yourself from your duty), as he strove incessantly to prevent war and bring peace amongst the nations.

It should be emphasized that there is a universality to Einstein’s cosmic experience which is closely akin to that of the monks and nuns in deep and fervent prayer or of the mystics of the east during meditation. A common characteristic is that these experiences are so intense that they transform the individual in a fundamental way. The neuroscientist Andrew Newberg has noted that these “religious” experiences are common to all faiths, they induce a sense of oneness with the universe and a feeling of awe that impress such experiences with great importance. They feel their sense of self dissolve, they feel a loss of boundary and their sensory inputs weaken and even turn off completely. The attendant psychosomatic reactions imbue such experiences with deep significance characterized by great joy and harmony – similar to the feeling of parents when they see their new-born off-spring – a feeling described as Bhakti by the spiritual leaders of India. A part of the nervous system of creatures, including humans, has been perhaps hardwired this way to ensure the survival of the species and sustain evolution.

Jean Staune, Philip Clayton and other organizers of this meeting have noted that a shroud of disenchantment progressively covers all of us, as science describes both humankind and nature in purely reductionist terms, somehow depriving life of meaning and values. Ever since Descartes and Locke made their powerful and important contributions, the theory of knowledge has progressively banished the considerations of values from their central place in human thought. It is fair to say that over the recent decades, the discussion of values is again taken up so as to provide the foundations for ethical and moral systems. One of the distinguishing features of the Indian philosophy is the continual unwavering importance attached to the discussion of values, a characteristic preserved over the times, perhaps because the barriers of distance and language from Europe prevented an over emphasis of the reductionist paradigm.

Postponing a detailed discussion of the Indian values, to a later occasion, let us focus attention on implications of Einsteinian cosmology to the question at hand. The two points that were underscored during the discussion of cosmology are: (1) Our connectivity with the grandest events in the Universe and even to the big bang, through a sequence of evolution, and (2) the extremely miniscule span of humans in the vastness and enormity of cosmic space and time. Even this Earth upon which we live is more than 4 billion years old – enormous compared with man’s sojourn on it. Subtlest conditions of light, temperature, water and a proper mix of the elements more than a billion years ago led to the birth of life on this planet. During most of the epochs of evolution, nature was all powerful. Nature nurtured life and made life forms that became stronger progressively, and man appeared on the scene. He too was nurtured by nature and even though he is but Nature’s creature, he for the first time has become so powerful that he can control Mother Nature. He can choose to destroy her or he can protect her and make her even more beautiful. Science alone can not and will not tell us what we should do. Spirituality has a prescription but can not adequately defend it. But a complete perspective jointly provided by science and spirituality can point to a set of values which will guide us to make the right choice.

Let us for a moment take inspiration from our connectivity with the rest of the Universe and sensitize ourselves to the character of progressive evolution to higher levels that is innate in us. To assume that those values that support such an evolution are the right ones is both natural and consistent with the teachings of the great leaders of mankind like Buddha, Jesus and Shankara. When we recognize our connectivity with the rest of the world – with the inanimate mountains, deserts, rivers and the oceans and the living things upon this earth – the trees, grass and flowers of every hue and birds and animals including man, and we sensitize ourselves to our common origins, we will be endowed with an empathy that will give us strength to follow the precept of Universal love, including “love thy enemy” taught by Jesus amongst others. Is this really true or is it just an ideal?

Mohandass Karamchand Gandhi with his deep commitment to ahimsa (non-violence) and satyagraha (pursuit of truth) showed that one can live by the precept of the Christ. In Einstein’s own words, speaking of Mahatma Gandhi and the peaceful movement he launched in South Africa and India to gain freedom from prejudice and oppression, he said “A leader of his people, unsupported by any outward authority; a politician whose success rests not upon craft nor on mastery of technical devices; but simply on the convincing power of his personality; a victorious fighter who has always scorned the use of force; a man of wisdom and humility; armed with resolve and inflexible consistency, who has devoted all his strength to the uplifting of his people and the betterment of their lot; a man who has confronted brutality with the dignity of a simple human being, and thus at all times risen superior. Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”.

Volumes have been written about Gandhi. The quotation from Einstein touches upon some of the salient aspects of his personality. Let me merely add that Gandhi was born in India, about 10 years before Einstein, and discovered the method of peaceful non-cooperation in South Africa. This method of bringing about socio-political change peacefully through moral persuasion rather than through the use of force is called satyagraha. Even General Smuts, who always exerted iron-handed control, is said to have remarked “I do not like your people and I do not care to assist them at all. But what am I to do? You help us in our days of need. How can we lay hands upon you? I often wish you took to violence like the English strikers and then we would know at once how to dispose of you. But you will not injure even the enemy. You desire victory by self-suffering alone and never transgress your self-imposed limits of courtesy and chivalry. And that is what reduces us to sheer helplessness”. As the quintessence of Gandhi’s virtues, I may perhaps state universal love, ahimsa (or non-violence) and satya (truth). These three qualities blend in him, supporting and adding glory to one another. These qualities became luminously clear during the long struggle for freedom in India. The unflinching and unwavering adherence to truth, not unlike that of an exemplary scientist, is at the heart of his personality, a quality from which emerge his Christ-like love and his non-violence even in thought. In support of this idea, we may quote Gandhi himself: “To see the universal truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest creation as oneself…For me the road to salvation lies through incessant toil in the service of my country and humanity. In the language of the Gita, I want to live in peace with both friend and foe”. Thus, not surprisingly, he called his freedom struggle – Satyagraha – or pursuit of truth. This method proved remarkably successful – time and again – in bringing freedom from discriminatory control of one people by another – a freedom which was permanent and which left both the people not in antagonism but in friendship. Thus we see the two facets of Gandhi’s personality – the spiritual inner-self forever devoted to the pursuit of truth and the outer-self which found expression in this world as his deep love of humanity and as his untiring efforts towards its betterment.

Apart from these personal qualities that helped Gandhi face fearlessly any onslaught, including incarceration, during his satyagraha movement, he had another deep idea that has relevance even today: He felt that no individual, no group nor nation, whether poor or rich should be without gainful employment. Just as the poorest eking out a living can be redeemed when provided with an opportunity to work and earn a living, even the rich either through inheritance or in a nation with easily accessible mineral deposits, would benefit greatly if they work hard regularly in their chosen fields of interest . The Charka or Khadi programme of Gandhi was a tremendous help to the poor in India in the 1930s. Even today no one can remain merely a consumer. All of us should be engrossed in creative effort – this will give ‘meaning’ to our lives.

Impressed by Gandhi’s Christian love and indefatigable energy, Romain Rolland describes Mahatma Gandhi as the “St. Paul of our days” and equally impressed by the frugality and asceticism and his self-identification with the poorest of the poor, C.F.Andrews aptly likens him to St. Francis of Asissi. To use the words of Martin Luther King - “there is another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. There is a power in love that our world has not discovered yet. Jesus discovered it centuries ago. Mahatma Gandhi discovered it a few years ago, but most men and women never discover it. They believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; but Jesus comes to us and says ‘this isn’t the way’ ”. Nelson Mandela was also inspired by Gandhi and in a remarkable achievement, he brought apartheid government in South-Africa to an end and established universal democracy. King and Mandela, each of them was awarded the Nobel Prize in profound recognition that the Gandhian method of non-violence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our times and the need of the hour is to overcome our fears and move courageously towards peace along the Gandhian path.

Thus we see that science and spirituality both tell us that we should work to sustain the positive universal evolution, or, in other words, follow ‘dharma’ according to the Hindu scriptures. And in our incessant effort towards peace – which is essential for this positive evolution – we should follow the path shown by Buddha, Jesus and Gandhi. This method is not restricted to the oppressed and the poor but to the rich and powerful as well, as indeed Asoka the Great showed more than 2000 years ago. To summarize, we see that the reductionist approach of science has clearly pointed out our connectivity with the rest of this vast Universe and events that occurred in the depths of time. Science has also shown that a positive vector of evolution has transformed the exotic fields and particles of the big bang into the world in which we live. But the reductionist approach, as it stands today, can not tell us how to attach value to things or actions. We can resolve this impasse by augmenting the reductionist approach with an additional axiom: Let us say that all actions and attributes that support the positive evolution we referred to as having a positive value. For example, love of humanity, non-violence and efforts towards betterment of the world will now be endowed with positive value, just as the great spiritual leaders have been telling us all along. But their message could not find support in the minds rigorously trained in the reductionist approach, which tended to ignore the subtle urgings of our inner self. This extra axiom allows us bridge the gap between science and spirituality and gives meaning to lives dedicated to bringing about peace and tranquility in this world and to lives engaged in the creation of beautiful art, sensitive poetry and yes, to lives engrossed in science bringing us ever closer to truth. I cannot do better to end this brief essay than by quoting Rabindranath Tagore

“where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

where knowledge is free;

where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

where the words come out from the depths of truth;

where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

where the mind is led by thee into ever widening thought and action

— into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

 

[Nihat]

ya ya Ali - I see you are at it again.

What Gandhiji did for us as a nation has earned him accolades throughout the world as a propagator of peace and forever the title of father of the nation.

Now , nobody ever lived a perfect life (if ever there could be one) and Mahatma made some mistakes too . Tbh , I cannot be arsed enough to read that entire article but you cannot expect every Indian to agree with you on this issue and when that happens please refrain from personal attacks on others such as "get off watching ****" etc.

I'm sure you can be more dignified in your approach

 

[Smooth Operator]

Nobel Prize panel regrets not honouring Gandhiji

NEW DELHI: As the country marks the 138th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation, the Nobel Foundation has regretted not giving the Peace Prize to Mahatma Gandhi.

The “Apostle of Peace” was nominated five times for the Prize but the Norwegian Nobel committee believed that he could not be given the honour as he was “neither a real politician nor a humanitarian relief worker.”
A mistake

However, Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation in Sweden Michael Sohlam said the decision not to extend him the prize was a mistake.

“We missed a great laureate and that’s Gandhi. It is a big regret,” he told CNN-IBN.

“I usually don’t comment on what the Nobel Committees or prize awarding institutions decide. But here, they themselves think he is the one missing,” he said.

Gandhiji was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and finally a few days before he was shot dead in January 1948.

In 1948, the Nobel Committee declined to award the Prize on that ground that “there was no suitable living candidate that year.” — PTI

 

[vish]

The reason I merely pasted the above link was to highlight how that Ali… fellow was quoting things out of context from multiple sources and skewing the reality.

Plus, how readable is Ali's post? It's obvious that it is so full of personal vendetta; hence, I did not, and would not, read it entirely. He is right; I did not observe that he had posted the same link.

Guys try not to be logical with him; it’s a waste of time. Getting stabbed is more constructive than arguing with him.

 

[Smooth Operator]

The committee’s adviser, professor Jacob Worm-Müller, who wrote a report on Gandhi, was much more critical. On the one hand, he fully understood the general admiration for Gandhi as a person: “He is, undoubtedly, a good, noble and ascetic person – a prominent man who is deservedly honoured and loved by the masses of India.” On the other hand, when considering Gandhi as a political leader, the Norwegian professor’s description was less favourable. There are, he wrote, “sharp turns in his policies, which can hardly be satisfactorily explained by his followers. (&#8230 He is a freedom fighter and a dictator, an idealist and a nationalist. He is frequently a Christ, but then, suddenly, an ordinary politician.”

Pontuis Pilate failed to fathom the depth of one Jesus Christ.........would it matter if the Roman empire had treated him well or honored him with a crown of Olives

 

[DarkStar]

I am not surprised to see, that not one of the distinguished Bhaaratiyas on this forum have even bothered to reply to any of the excelelntly sourced points in the lead post.

You can call it, de-facto defeat, in that no one has yet stood up for M.K. Gandhiji, a.k.a. Mahatma.

I guess, not even they can defend the indefensible.

 

[vish]

I am not surprised to see, that not one of the distinguished Bhaaratiyas on this forum have even bothered to reply to any of the excelelntly sourced points in the lead post.

You can call it, de-facto defeat, in that no one has yet stood up for M.K. Gandhiji, a.k.a. Mahatma.

I guess, not even they can defend the indefensible.

The original post contains paragraphs and points taken out of context. Read the links in the original post, and you will realize this.

Hence, why would anybody bother to "defend" the Mahatma, and that too over baseless allegations?

 

[Ali.009]

Anything you dont have answer to dsnt becomes a baseless allegation, you 10th grader. People making such 'allegations' have far more qualification then you and your kind. There are links to contact them. Kindly reply sensibly or your free to remain out of this thread. And as said above, none of you have bothered replying to any of the points raised above. Because you cannot.

 

[Vinod2070]

I am not surprised to see, that not one of the distinguished Bhaaratiyas on this forum have even bothered to reply to any of the excelelntly sourced points in the lead post.

You can call it, de-facto defeat, in that no one has yet stood up for M.K. Gandhiji, a.k.a. Mahatma.

I guess, not even they can defend the indefensible.

Its just hate literature from a hate filled person. There is nothing "excellent" there but I can see why you would see it that way.

You were the same one who accused the Mahatma of saving the people in Bengal and accused the Hindus of being disproportionately intellectual. Then you ran away from the thread when challenged as you have done multiple times so far.

You also presented one sided picture a number of times and ran away from the truth.

I am beginning to see you as someone who is just interested in making some random comments and then running away when challenged by facts.

The world recognizes the Mahatma for the great leader that he was. Ask them for Mr. Jinnah and they will have to google for him. Not many will take the trouble I can assure you.

As I mentioned earlier, its not your fault, its that Pakistan studies in lieu of history that has the effect on its students!