Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the preeminent leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma—applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa,—is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapuin India. In common parlance in India he is often called Gandhiji. He is unofficially called the Father of the Nation...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth2 October 1869
CityPortbandar, India
CountryIndia
If it was wrong to seek God in a stone, how was it right to seek Him in a book called the Gita, the Granth Sahib or the Koran?
My heart is drawn backwards and forwards between the spinning wheel and books.
Untouchability, I hold, is a sin, if Bhagavadgita is one of our Divine Books.
As a rule I had a distaste for any reading beyond my school books.
What better book can there be than the book of humanity.
When there is war, the poet lays down the lyre, the lawyer his law reports, the schoolboy his books.
Dharma is that which is enjoined by the holy books, followed by the sages, interpreted by the learned and which appeals to the heart.
To me the Mahabharata is a profoundly religious book, largely allegorical, in a way meant to be a historical record.
Tulsidas's Ramayana is a notable book because it is informed with the spirit of purity, pity and piety.
The propagation of truth and nonviolence can be done less by books than by actually living on those principles.
Hinduism does not rest on the authority of one book or one prophet, nor does it posses a common creed like the Kalma.
Let our lives be open books for all to study.
Hinduism is a living organism liable to growth and decay subject to the laws of Nature. One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with innumerable branches. The changes in the season affect it. It has its autumn and its summer, its winter and its spring. It is, and is not, based on scriptures. It does not derive its authority from one book. Non violence has found the highest expression and application in Hinduism.
I recall having read, at the brothers' instance, Madame Blavatsky's Key to Theosophy. This book stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism, and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition.