Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Birth:  2 Oct. 1869  —  2 Oct. 2019

PART I – Gandhi’s Message for the 21st Century

Mohandas Gandhi started his journey to nonviolence and human dignity in a crisis inspiring anger: He was forced off a train in South Africa because of his ethnicity. Indians were not allowed in first class coaches. He stood his ground, refusing to be humiliated. He spent the night in a train station after his ejection, trying to control his anger and vowing to fight this injustice to his people with all his energy and character. He would build a road of resistance rather than be treated as less than human. His resistance was nonviolent because that was both humane and effective.

Today, almost a century and a half after Gandhi’s birth, many people are still treated as less than human: in war zones, in urban ghettos, in places of work, even in homes. Why is the world this way? Why do the “powers that be” do such damage? Why do humans treat each other so shabbily and even lethally? And what is to be done about it? A review of what Gandhi learned and reclaimed from both eastern and western spiritual traditions can be of help to us. We can study what he taught.

As his 150th birthday approaches in 2019, we can invite our neighbors of all spiritual traditions to reexamine our responses to social inequality, racism, militarism, and environmental degradation.
PART II – Reflecting on Gandhi’s “Seven Social Sins”

Gandhi, the “Mahatma,” (great soul) spoke of seven social sins. The first of these was what he called Politics without principles. The concept of “public leadership” implies a desire to serve the common good. Self-serving or bigoted motivations have no place in democratic societies. It is never acceptable to enforce laws differently for members of one’s own social group, class or color than for others. It is never acceptable to oppress or neglect women, cultural or sexual minorities, children, or people with disabilities. Each society, as well as the global community of nations, has a responsibility to assure that all persons have access to good quality food, shelter, and health care.

Wealth without work brings into question the existence of a social class with investment income surpassing the salary levels of ordinary high-achieving workers. When one small class of people can derive fabulous amounts of income from “work” that benefits themselves, but serves little or no public good, that society has become corrupt. All who are able must contribute, but those unable to work must be able to meet their basic needs. As we experience increasing automation, where essential production can be accomplished with few workers, we must devise means for wealth to be allocated responsibly. It is not acceptable for one person to make $2 million an hour—as one North American hedge fund trader did in a recent year—while others starve.

Pleasure without conscience:   Living the high life, stashing cash in overseas banks and offshore tax havens, while billions of people exist on a few dollars a week, is both immoral and unsustainable.

Knowledge without character:   If education is only a fast track to affluence, but not a means to serve, or to lift the human spirit, one may have learned skills but not wisdom. It is not a good life that does not respect and enhance other lives. It is not a good life that does not show compassion to the vulnerable.

Commerce without morality:   Business is valuable when it organizes economic life so that work is made effective, producing products and services to benefit human society. Corporations were created for human good. Apart from that purpose they have no inherent right to exist.

Science without humanity:   Research that threatens human existence is without morality. When science is pursued for military domination, for genocide, or promotes the slow extinction of vital earth systems, humans must redirect it for good.

Worship without sacrifice:   Self-serving religion, designed to make individuals feel good, but not motivating them to better respect and love their neighbors, is no religion at all. Said John Greenleaf Whittier: “To worship rightly is to love each other, Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. Follow with reverent steps the great example of Him whose holy work was doing good; So shall the wide earth seem our Father’s temple. Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.”

PART III – Additional sources of inspiration and energy

As we commemorate Gandhi’s work, we draw upon other sources of energy as well, including the work of persons inspired by him. The following quotations are illustrative:

Dorothy Day said: The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us. When we begin to take the lowest places, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion which led to the cross, then we can truly say, ‘Now I have begun.’

Martin Luther King, Jr. directed these words to bishops and leaders of universities: “Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular – but one must take it because it’s right.”

Daniel Berrigan, SJ, reflected: “One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better.”

Once again, Dorothy Day: “What we would like to do is change the world – make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do….We can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing that we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.”

PART IV – A commitment to action

Along with other organizations—public and private, worldwide—we commit ourselves to act cooperatively, contributing our own energy & resources as we collaborate with others.    We call for 1) universal medical care as a human right;  2) adequate funding to make all public schools effective–irrespective of differences in  wealth among districts;  3) environmental justice–including rapid development of non-polluting, renewable energy;   4) racial justice–including significant reformation of our criminal justice system, with greater emphasis on restorative justice and healing broken lives;  and  5) a return to truly progressive taxation, narrowing inequality.  We call for a re-ordering and re-structuring of our society from its focus on perpetual war to actions and investments fostering global structures of respect and justice, creating habits of peace-thinking and peace-making.  We endorse a common struggle for human dignity, freedom, and fulfillment.

October 13, 2015 / revised by G.D. Jan. 2018 and Jan. 2019
Gandhi Commemoration Committee, Binghamton, NY region
Gary Doupe and James Clune, principle authors