Srila Prabhupada on Gandhi

[Gauradasa 0]

A living being is placed in a particular position or moved by the order of the Supreme Lord. In modern history, Napoleon, Akbar, Alexander, Gandhi, Shubhash and Nehru all are servants of the Lord, and are placed in and removed from their respective positions by the supreme will of the Lord. None of them is independent.

 

Within this material world, one should understand the value of material opulence, longevity and influence. There have been many great politicians and military commanders like Napoleon, Hitler, Shubhash Chandra Bose and Gandhi, but as soon as their lives were finished, their popularity, influence and everything else were finished also. Prahläda Mahäräja gathered the same experience by seeing the activities of Hiraëyakaçipu, his great father.Prahläda Mahäräja did not give any importance to anything in this material world. No one can maintain his body or material achievements forever. A Vaiñëava can understand that nothing within this material world, not even that which is powerful, opulent or influential, can endure. At any time such things may be vanquished. And who can vanquish them? The Supreme Personality of Godhead. One should understand that no one is greater than the Supreme Great. Since the Supreme Great demands surrender, every intelligent man must agree to this proposal to be saved from the wheel of repeated birth, death, old age and disease.

 

Mahatma Gandhi started the hari-jana movement to purify the untouchables, but he was a failure because he thought that one could become a hari-jana, a personal associate of the Lord, through some kind of material adjustment. That is not possible. Unless one fully realizes that he is not the body but is a spiritual soul, there is no question of his becoming a hari-jana. Those who do not follow in the footsteps of Lord Caitanya Mahäprabhu and His disciplic succession cannot distinguish between matter and spirit, and therefore all their ideas are but a mixed-up hodgepodge of problems. They are virtually lost in the bewildering network of Mäyädevé.

 

Gandhi is known for having started the movement of nonviolent civil disobedience in India, but about five hundred years before him, Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu started His movement of nonviolent civil disobedience to the order of Chand Kazi. It is not necessary to commit violence to stop the opposition from hindering a movement, for one can kill their demoniac behavior with reason and argument.

 

I was one of the managers of Dr. Bose’s laboratory in Calcutta. I was a newly married young man, addicted to Gandhi’s movement and dressed in khadi. Fortunately, even at our first meeting His Divine Grace ( Srila Bhaktissidhanta Sarasvati Thakura ) advised me to preach the cult of Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu in English in the Western countries. Because at that time I was a complete nationalist, a follower of Mahatma Gandhi’s, I submitted to His Divine Grace that unless our country were freed from foreign subjugation, no one would hear the message of Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu seriously. Of course, we had some argument on this subject, but at last I was defeated and convinced that Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu’s message is the only panacea for suffering humanity.

 

In the Viñëu-dharmottara it is said "Only a person who is initiated as a Vaiñëava and executing devotional service in Kåñëa consciousness has the right to touch the body of the Deity." In India there was agitation during Gandhi's political movement because the lowborn classes of men like street-sweepers and caëòälas are prohibited, according to the Vedic system, from entering the temple. Due to their unclean habits they are prohibited, but also given other facilities to be elevated to the highest grade of devotional service by association with pure devotees. A man born in any family is not barred, but must be cleansed. Gandhi wanted to make them clean simply by stamping them with a fictitious name, harijana ("children of God"), and so there was a great tug-of-war between the temple owners and Gandhi's followers. Only one who is properly initiated & following the rules and regulations, can enter, and touch the Deity—not all. And one who touches the body of the Deity, following such regulative principles, is immediately delivered from the contamination of material sins, and all of his desires become fulfilled without delay. ( 23 of 1,402 quotes )