POLITICAL SCIENCE

1. POLITICAL SCIENCE

2. RELEVANCE OF GANDHISM IN
TODAY'S WORLD

3. Mahatma Gandhi the Indian leader, full name by
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on
October 2, 1869 in Porbander, India. A lawyer,
politician, social activist and writer he became
the leader of the Nationalist Movement. He was
one of the greatest leaders of mankind. His
message is perennially relevant, and few could
achieve his moral stature. As a mass
communicator he reached and influenced more
people in his life time than any other person in
history.

4. India’s freedom movement has now become a distant
memory and most of its stalwarts have walked in to
the penumbra of history. But Gandhi just refuses to
fade away. He resides as our bad conscience and the
echo of his chanting the mantras of satya and ahimsa
spoils the singing of the nightingale. It is not essay to
write a research paper about Gandhi. His collected
works cover a hundred times comprising thirty million
words. He wrote and spoke on all sorts of subjects
and did so day in and day out without any regard for
consistency.

5. After all Gandhi is our only surviving national icon, even
though our reverence to him is confined mainly to the
ritualistic observance of his birth and death
anniversaries. Anybody who observed Gandhi for the
first twenty five years of his life would have at best
rated him a person of modest abilities. It was after
his return from South Africa that he started
discovering his mission and during the next twenty
years he had formulated and concretized practically all
his concepts and techniques which he used in later
years.

6. In the eyes of millions of his fellow Indian’s Gandhi
was the great soul. His fame spread the world wide
during his life time and only increased after his
death. The name Mahatma Gandhi now one of the
most Universalist recognized on earth. Time
magazine named Mahatma Gandhi, the person of the
year in 1930. The United Nations declared Gandhi’s
birthday October 2nd as the International day of
non violence in 2007. Gandhiji was nominated for
the Nobel Peace Prize five times but never received
the award.

7. GANDHIJI AND SWADESI
As a matter of fact, India is not only following any of Gandhi’s
teachings which are mostly contained to text books in fact, since
independence, the country has witnessed many violent communal riots
in this multi communal country. Gandhiji’s message of Swabalambi,
self-sufficiency with home spun Khadi cloth is not used now a day’s
even as a social slogan. Statistics shows that the country is definitely
not following sarvodaya, a broad Gandhian term meaning Universal
upliftment or progress of all, reaching the masses and the
downtrodden, on the contrary, India today has the unique distinction
of being the only country in the world which has the richest man in
the world while at the same time more than 30% of its population
lives in dire poverty.

8. GANDHIJI AND ISM
The above shows that today Gandhism is a very confused ism in India.
Today many politicians in India the term merely used as a slogan and
the common man Mahatma Gandhi almost out of reach of the younger
groups by making Gandhiji an unwilling ‘avatara’. That may be one
reason why the only photo use see of Gandhi in India is always that of
an old man which brings the image of a very simple and pious man who
was meek and mild like Jesus Christ. While Gandhi was not a simple man
to say the least, the above does not gives the right image of Gandhi and
does not bring any inspiration to the younger group, the group most
relevant for Gandhi.

9. GANDHIJI AS A POLITICIAN
In real world, Gandhiji was a politician, a shrewd politician, who was trying to bring peace
and harmony to India on one hand while trying to bring her independence at the same time.
For Gandhiji, the process of change was very important which must be ethical, non violent
and democratic giving rights to all minorities. In this respect, he resembles the Buddha for
whom the noble eight fold path of right wisdom, right conduct and right effort is the goal
and essence of life.One we realize this, we understand the essence of Gandhism and realize
that it would be wrong to premise that Gandhism is dead in the world like Buddhism which
is mostly prevalent now a day’s outside India, the country of its birth, Gandhism today is
alive and active outside India, in fact, today here is hardly any country in the world where
some activities are not going on along Gandhian lines.

10. There are very few countries in the world something or the
other is not being done, achieved or organized in the name of
Gandhi. In short there is global non-violent awakening and
awareness after Gandhi. The name of Mahatma Gandhi
transcends the bonds of race, religion and nation states, and has
emerged as the prophetic voice of the twenty first century.
Today, Gandhi is remembered for his passionate adherence to
the practice of non violence and his supreme humanism in every
corner of the world.One would wonder, that may be the relevance
of Gandhi in this all pervading materialistic, agnostic and
consumerist culture, what the significance of Gandhiji to the
modern world is and what is the secret of his success.

11. Gandhiji has been great light for the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama
who puts Gandiji’s success in right perspective. He said, many
ancient Indian masters have preached him, non violence as a
philosophy. This was more philosophical understanding. But
Gandhiji in this twentieth century produced a very sophisticated
approach because he implemented that very noble philosophy of
ahimsa in modern world politics, and he succeeded. That is very
great thing, and that is precisely the greatness of Gandhiji and
that is the message of Gandhiji to the modern world in the past
century. Many places in the world have been drastically changed
through the use of brute force, by the power of gun-the Soviet
Union, China, Tibet Burma, many communist countries, and in

12. But eventually the power of Guns will have to be changed by
the will of the ordinary people. As Dalai lama said, we have
big war going on today between world peace and world war,
between the forces of mind and force of materialism,
between democracy and totalitarianism. To fight there big
wars the common ordinary people in this modern age need
Gandhis.If we try to analyze the secrets of Gandhiji’s
success, we would probably find faith, action and populism,
the three most important aspects of his life. Gandhiji’s
extra ordinary communion with the masses of ordinary
people was another of his secrets. In contrast to many of
our present day leaders of this highly democratic world,
Gandhi was a true leader and friend of the people.

13. The phenomenal success Gandhiji registered in far away
South Africa fighting for human rights and civil liberties
has great significance. When we find that later his
teachings were adopted not only by Nelson Mandela, the
South African freedom fighter, but it was also
subsequently revealed that the former South African
President William De Klerk was greatly influenced by
Gandhiji’s principles, in fact from Dalai Lama to Desmond
Tutu and from Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela.
Many world leaders were inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, all
in their own different ways.

14. RELEVENCE OF GANDHIAN PRINCIPLES IN TODAY'S WORLD
There are six principles that Mahatma Gandhi put forward
1. Truth: learning from your own mistakes and conducting
experiments on yourself
2. Non violence: nonresistance connected in way to religion.
3. Vegetarianism: carved in the Hindu and Jain traditions in
India
4. Brahmacharya: spiritual and practical purity
5. Simplicity: giving up unnecessary spending
6. Faith: belief in higher power and that all religions are real
and are equal.

15. Non violence is control the temper and also the thoughts. What we
think, we become and therefore if you always are thinking hurting
someone or feeling extremely angry at someone, those are the vibes
you, be giving to others. Best way to be non-violent is to think positive
and believe that whatever happens, it is for a good reason.Gandhi’s
spirituality was a highly evolved and spirituals human being. To him
spirituality came first. Other things like politics, public life, etc were
by products of his spirituality. Also as a person’s progress on the path
of spirituality is, his or her priorities in life change. The focus of life
shifts more towards getting personal happiness though mental peace or
by helping others and less on material needs, greed and desires.
Gandhiji’s experiments on simple and sustainable living followed his own
spiritual progress.

16. He also realized from an early age the importance of a
great body of a mind in this he was following the tenants
of ancient yogic system which stress on a healthy body
and powerful mind. Thus all his experiments on food,
brahmacharya and fasting came from this belief. Besides
he also realized that to fight a powerful enemy like
Britain, he had to make his body-temple extremely
powerful so that it could sustain long fights. This meant
that it had a need least amount of comforts and external
inputs and thus Gandhi should that with simple living he
could produce the highest quality of thought. To my mind
this was an ultimate example of sustainable living.

17. WELCOME