Mahatma Gandhi is an unrivalled pioneer of goodness. He is the eternal torch-bearer and guide to goodness in society anywhere and everywhere. In today’s world, amidst the tremors of conflicts, he stands apart like a colossus, as the ardent apostle of tolerance and tranquillity, peace and harmony.

An untiring follower of the altruistic spirit of the Upanishads and Vaishnavism, he has singularly envisioned and experienced “God walking with him and with others in society ~ the joy of equality, humility, non-attachment, the joy in conquering greed, hypocrisy, passion and anger as reflected in the society that stands against the efflorescence of true religion.”

(Robert Paine: The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, p.23) Purity in thought, word and deed, as Gandhi once pointed out, are the invaluable components of goodness. Such values are now almost extinct. To be a workaholic is to be ‘good’ in action, indifferent to the terrific tremors of exhaustion which simply reward one with psychological insensibilities of boredom and isolation.

In a tension-ridden world, man is simply an inhabitant of utter hopelessness and loneliness. Gandhi has distinctly prioritised man and not machine which replaces man with a robot and goodness with reality. A craze for ultra-modernism crushes the dream of purity and happiness with a desire for inanity. Gandhi’s concept of goodness, on the other hand, is the all-time hope and pathfinder of progressive and enlightened humanity.

It is a positive step to avert annihilation of man aggravated by greed, hypocrisy, impurity, hatred and violence. Politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice ~ these seven social sins, as he has observed in Young India, 1925, are now tearing off the entrails of man and society, culture and civilisation, sense and sensibilities.

There is an appalling absence of goodness. Gandhi had long ago warned against this. His vision of Sarvodaya, the awakening of all, upholds the good of the individual for the good of all and vice versa. By goodness he categorically asserts that everyone has the right to live, dress, house and feed himself. Bereft of these elementary rights, goodness is a myth.

Moreover, the exercise of goodness is never a one man’s job. It welcomes and embraces all in extending the warmth of love and brotherhood, peace and harmony, catholicity of vision and purity in contemplation. Needless to say, the concept of goodness must not be camouflaged and vitiated in narrowness and vested interests.

After his prayer speech at Patna in 1947, he asserted: “Although evil seemed at times to rule the world, the eternal truth was that the world lived so long as goodness resided even in one person.” (D. G. Tendulkar: Mahatma, Publications Division, New Delhi, Vol. 7, p. 377) Love, as Gandhi once pointed out, is the hallmark of goodness.

It is love that crowns the meaning and glory of goodness. How is it possible to establish the Kingdom of Heaven in this battered and bruised world that hardly cares for love and to be loved? How is it possible to eliminate anger and hatred, apathy and ignorance? Gandhi’s ever transparent answer is non-violence. It is goodness. It never betrays humanity. Rather it confirms and consolidates humanity. It is the greatest shield of humane development and efflorescence. “If we are non-violent through and through,” as he characteristically elucidates,

“Our non-violence would have been self-evident. Nor were we able to show to the terrorists that we are greater in our non-violence than they are in their violence. On the contrary, many of us made them feel that we had the same spirit of violence in our breasts than they had.

Only, we did not believe in the deeds of violence. The terrorists rightly argued that if the spirit of violence was common to both, the policy of perpetrating or not perpetrating violence was a matter of opinion.

I need not repeat what I had said before, that the country has made great strides towards non-violence and that many have exhibited great courage and self-sacrifice. All I want to say is that ours had not been unadulterated non-violence in thought, word and deed. It is now my paramount duty to devise ways and means of showing demonstrably to the Government and the terrorists the efficacy of non-violence as a means of achieving the right thing including freedom in the right sense of the term.”

“For this experiment to which my whole life is dedicated, I need complete detachment and absolute freedom of action. Satyagraha of which civil resistance is but a part is to me a universal law of life. Truth is my God. I can only search Him through non-violence and in no other way. And the freedom of my country, as of the world, is surely included in the search for Truth.

I cannot suspend this search for anything in this world or another.” (Ibid., Vol. 3, p.298) Truly, goodness stands for truth, non-violence and love. In other words, it is truth-force, soul-force and love-force. It heightens man in honouring and cultivating the finer feelings and nobler sensibilities of life almost lost now in the process of de-living or sham living.

What an irony. Goodness as Gandhi envisions and manifests, encompasses a seven-fold truth.

First, it is for the welfare of all and never a show or a mockery in the name of human behaviour.

Second, the good of all is actually the good of the individual and vice versa.

Third, in the best manifestation of goodness, each individual is an inseparable and unavoidable partner.

Four, the decency and decorum inherent in goodness must be an abiding and stimulating factor in theory and practice.

Five, the energising principle of goodness is spontaneity. It must always be remembered that goodness cannot be taught but can only be caught. As such, it is never forced but it always comes out of an inner and deeper urge for upholding the true identity of man.

Six, goodness always upholds adherence, devotion and dedication. There is no short cut to it.

Seven, to be transparent and crystallised is to be on the ideal avenue of goodness. It is invaluable not only for the present but also for the future and the beyond.

It must be rooted to life and work even under the unfathomable sea, as it were, of confusion and constraints. “My life,” as Gandhi remarks, “is my message”. It stands for heralding the true philosophy of goodness.

(The writer is retired Professor of Education, Visva-Bharati University)

(To be concluded)