The Gandhi Mind

Gandhi's loyalty to truth exceeded his loyalty to political dogma or party. He allowed truth to lead him without a map. If it took him into an area where he had to discard some intellectual baggage or walk alone without past associates, he went. He never impeded his mind with STOP signs. Many groups have claimed him. But he was private property of none, not even of Congress. He was its leader for years, yet at the Congress convention in Bombay in December 1934, having immersed himself in Harijan and peasant uplift work, he ceased to be a dues-paying member, let alone an officer, of the Congress party. 'I need complete detachment and absolute freedom of action,' he said.

Gandhi's individualism meant maximum freedom from outward circumstances and maximum development of inner qualities. His antagonism to British rule was part of a larger antagonism to fetters of all kinds. His goal was Gita detachment, in politics as in religion. Gandhi's intellectual receptivity and flexibility are characteristics of the Hindu mind. There is a Hindu orthodoxy but it is not characteristic of Hinduism. In Hinduism it is the intensity and quality of the religious zeal, not so much the object, which constitutes religion. In 1942, when I was Gandhi's houseguest for a week, there was only one decoration on the mud walls of his hut: a black and white print of Jesus Christ with the inscription , 'He is our Peace.' I asked Gandhi about it. 'I am a Christian,' he replied. 'I am a Christian, and a Hindu, and a Moslem, and a Jew.'

'All faiths', Gandhi wrote in From Yeravada Mandir in an unintended definition of religious tolerance, 'constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect, and liable to error. Reverance for other faiths need not blind us to their faults. We must be keenly alive to the defects of our own faith also, yet not leave it on that account, but try to overcome those defects. Looking at all religions with an equal eye, we would not only not hesitate, but would think it our duty to blend into our faith every acceptable feature of other faiths.

That paragraph is a portrait of the Gandhi mind: he was the conservative who would not change his religion, the reformer who tried to alter it, and the tolerant believer who regarded all faiths as aspects of the divine. he was loyal yet critical, partisan yet open-minded, devout yet not doctrinaire, inside yet outside, attached yet detached, Hindu yet Christian, yet Moslem, yet Jew.

Louis Fischer - The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi