Thoughts Of Mahatma Gandhi

I am a firm believer in the principle of free and compulsory primary education for India. I also hold that we shall realize this only by teaching the children a useful vocation and utilizing it as a means for cultivating their mental, physical and spiritual faculties. - Mahatma Gandhi

Craft, Art, Health and education should all be integrated into one scheme. Nai Talim is a beautiful blend of all the four and covers the whole education of the individual from the time of conception to the moment of death....Instead of regarding craft & industry as different from education, I will regard the former as the medium for the latter.

It is popularly and correctly described as education through handicrafts.

I hold that, as the largest part of our time is devoted to labour for earning our bread, our children must from their infancy be taught the dignity of such labour. Our children should not be so taught as to despise labour. There is no reason why a peasants son after having gone to school should become useless as he does become, as an agricultural labourer.

Man is neither mere intellect, nor the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone. A proper and harmonious combination of all the three is required for the making of the whole man and constitutes the true economics of education....

I am a firm believer in the principle of free and compulsory primary education for India. I also hold that we shall realize this only by teaching the children a useful vocation and utilizing it as a means for cultivating their mental, physical and spiritual faculties.

What kind of vocations are the fittest for being taught to children in urban schools? There is no hard and fast rule about it.

In my scheme of things the hand will handle tools before it draws or traces the writing.

 True development of the mind commences immediately the apprentice is taught at every step why a particular manipulation of the hand or a tool is required. The problem of the unemployment of students can be solved without difficulty, if they will rank themselves among the common labourers.

You have to train the boys in one occupation or another. Around this special occupation you will train up his mind, his body, his handwriting, his artistic sense, and so on. He will be a master of the craft he learns.
Literary training by itself adds not an inch to one's moral height and that character building is independent of literary training.

https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/on-education/buniyadi-shiksha-fundamental-education.php 

Deal with your enemy in such a way that you can become friends.

"You must deal with your enemy so that one day he may be your friend...."  Included in a passage by Shri Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Published in The Speaking Tree, Mumbai dated May 14, 2017, page 4.

    Prof Narayana Rao beside the Gandhi Status in Geneva, Switzerland

                                       

 International Day of Non-Violence, 2 October

"It is health that is real wealth and not

pieces of gold and silver."
- Mahatma Gandhi
(via @quotme)

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A 5 hours. 10 minutes.  Documentary covers almost all events and principles of Gandhi's life and thought are viewed as integrated parts of his truth-intoxicated life depicting permanent and universal values.  

Quotations used in advertisements 2012
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"The shape of the world would indeed be transformed if all of us lived in a spirit of love and amity with one another."

"India can't prosper if rural India lags behind, and I think rural electrification is the first step towards this."

"I would make the spinning wheel the foundation on which to build a sound village life and I would make the wheel the centre around which all other activities will revolve."


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If you love peace

"If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed, but hate these things in yourself, not in another."

 

Labor of a man

The divine law, that man must earn his bread by laboring with his own hands, was first stressed by a Russian writer named T.M.Bondaref. Tolstoy advertised it and gave it wide publicity. In my view the same principle has been set forth in the third chapter of the Gita, where we are told, that he who eats without offering sacrifice eats stolen food. Sacrifice here can only mean bread labor.(Gandhi exhorts every body to put in efforts to create useful articles first and then consume what he needs out of it).

 

In  From Yeravda Mandir, Chap IX. Navjivan Publishing House, 1945

 

Leadership

A leader is only first among equals....

Having made our selection we must follow him or the chain is broken and all is loose.

 

Young India, 8.12.1921

 

Discipline and Freedom

The highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline and humility. Freedom that comes from discipline and humility cannot be denied, unbridled license is a sign of vulgarity alike to self and one's neighbors.

 

Young India, 3.6.1926

 

Congress Ministers

If the Congress wants to continue as a people's organization, the Ministers cannot live as sahib log nor use for private work facilities provided by Government for official duties.

 

Harijan, 29.9.1946

 

Caste System of Hindus

Today Brahmanas, and Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras are mere labels. There is utter confusion of Varna as I understand it and I wish that all the Hindus will voluntarily call themselves Shudras. That is the only way to demonstrate the truth of Brahmanism and to revive Varnadharma in its true state.

 

Harijan, 25.3.1933

 

Children

The real property that  a parent can transmit to all equally is his or her character and educational facilities.... Parents should seek to make their sons and daughters self-reliant, well able to earn an honest livelihood by the sweat of the brow.

 

Young India, 29.10.1931

 

Our Potential Contribution to World's Problems 

 "The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world's problems "-

 

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Gandhi's Thoughts
T-Series Video
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More Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi

 

Soldier in arms is trained to kill. Even his dreams are about killing

 

Ahimsa is the highest ideal. It is meant for the brave, never for the cowardly

 

The platform of service is as big as the world. It is never overcrowded.

 

Man believes and dies.

 

The morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearless following.

 

If by strength is meant moral power, the woman is immeasurably man's superior

 

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by their humiliation of their fellow beings.

 

I have never in my life regarded any one as my servant, but as a brother and sister.

 

The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character and not clothing

 

Non-violence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy , and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not the human beings themselves (You can transform human beings throughs display of non violent anger [satyagraha] in support of truth and justice.)

 

Fear of disease killed more than disease itself

 

Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone

 

Take away the idea of perfection, and you take away enthusiasm

 

When you have a good cause, never descend to personalities

 

I must not serve distant neighbors at the expense of the nearest

 

The essence of education lies in drawing out  the very best that is in you

 

Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

 

To believe in something and not to live it, is dishonest

The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong

Contributed by  Ramam DSS

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 Mahatma Gandhi in Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule

First Edition 1938, Twentieth Reprint, November 2008 (10,000 copies), Navjivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad.

 

"It is a bad habit to say that another man's thoughts are bad and ours only are good and that those holding different views from ours are the enemies of the country"

"The seed in never seen. It works underneath the ground, is itself destroyed,and the tree which rises above the ground is alone seen."

 

"The English have not taken India. We have given it to them. They are not in India because of their strength, but because we keep them."

 

"Humdug there undoubtedly is about all religions. Where there is light, there is also shadow."

 

"India cannot cease to be one nation because people belonging to different religions live in it. The introduction of foreigners does not necessarily destroy the nation, they merge in it. A country is one nation only when such a condition obtains in it."

 

"God set a limit to a man's locomotive ambition in the construction of his body. Man immediately proceeded to discover means of overriding the limit. God gifted man with intellect that he might know his Maker. Man abused it so that he might forget his Maker."

 

On Globalization

 "I am so constructed that I can only serve my immediate neighbours, but in my conceit I pretend to have discovered that I must with my body serve every individual in the Universe. In thus attempting the impossible, man comes into contact with different natures, different religions, and is utterly confounded."

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More

A series of knols on Mahatma Gandhi's thoughts on various issues are being developed by me.

 
There are news items all around that copy right of various parties on books and articles written by Mahatma Gandhi have expired and people can print books written by Gandhi without paying royalty to anybody. Hope this will help in spreading Gandhiji's message to more people if some interested parties can come forward and print books at lower costs. But certainly they can be published on the net and made accesible to large number of people.

 
All knols on Gandhiji's thoughts will be open collaboration knols so that visitors can add relevant thoughts and also write their comments on Gandhian philosophy.

 

 

Directory - List of Knols - Thoughts Of Mahatma Gandhi

 

Mahatma Gandhi on India

Mahatma Gandhi on Swaraj

Mahatma Gandhi on Nationalism

Mahatma Gandhi on Democracy

Mahatma Gandhi on Socialism

Mahatma Gandhi on Communism

Mahatma Gandhi on Industrialisation
Mahatma Gandhi on Indian Tradition
Mahatma Gandhi on Wages to Workmen
Mahatma Gandhi on Embracing Poverty Voluntarily
Mahatma Gandhi on Alcohol
Mahatma Gandhi on Wisdom
Mahatma Gandhi on Teachers
Mahatma Gandhi on Villages
Mahatma Gandhi on Business and Ethics
Mahatma Gandhi on Brahmacharya
Mahatma Gandhi on Avatars (Incarnations) of God
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About Gandhian thinking by Krishan Saigal

For Gandhi, human existence was chacterized by two fundamental features. First each individual was uniquely constituted and had a right to live by the truth as he saw it. Second, all men were one; what united them was far more important than what divided them and there were no differences that could not be resolved or lived with in the spirit of charity and goodwill. Since  both unity and difference, harmony and disagreement, were the necessary features of human existence, Gandhi argued that every human association must fully acknowledge and find ways of reconciling them. 

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Web Pages Related to Gandhian Thought

http://www.mkgandhi-sarvodaya.org/
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Mahatma Gandhi - Videos
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgK_Nq9NLw
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More videos
Mahatma Gandhi - Videos
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Gandhi's Dream for Villages of India

A cow in every house
provided with plentiful green grass
carpenters, tailors
potters and shoppers
business every where
with plenty to share
A doctor to look after
Good leader to administer
A teacher for children to grow
A bank for wealth to flow
Gandhi's dream
For me, it is supreme

by Narayana Rao, Vamsi, Priyanka

http://nraopoems.blogspot.com/2012/01/prosperous-enterprises-in-every-village.html 

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Original Knol Number 909
Coauthors contributed on Knol - D.S.S. Ramam and P.V. Ariel

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More Quotations from Gandhi
• I have nothing to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old the hills
• Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty
• I do not seek kingdom, I do not seek heaven, I do not seek moksha. I pray that the suffering humanity be relieved from pain
• If untouchability lives, Hinduism perishes, and even India perishes
• Knowledge without character is a power for evil only as seen in the instances of so many talented thieves • English is so beautiful that no other language can stand comparable to it
• The king was wearing enough for both of us – M.K.Gandhi when asked why he did not wear a suit to meet the king
• Our temple is in our hearts. A temple constructed of a few stones has no meaning
• A man is but a product of his thoughts; what he thinks that he becomes • The outward behavior of a man is at once the sign and proof of the inner state
• Action expresses priorities
• Truth and non-violence are my God
• The only real dignified human doctrine is the greatest good of all, and this can only be achieved by utmost self-sacrifice
• Every village has to become a self-sufficient republic
• India can win over conquerors culturally, traditionally, spiritually but never politically
• My writing should be cremated with my body. What I have done will endure, not what I have said and written
• He who wants to please all will please none
• Humility is the key to guide success
• No matter how weak a person is in body, if it is a shame to flee, he will stand his ground and die at his post. This would be non-violence and bravery

Contributed By D.S.S. Ramam

Updated  6 September 2019,  2 October 2017,  14 May 2017, 2 October 2014,  29 August 2014, 2 October 2012