Activists From India

"Economic power has to precede political power. Gandhi understood this when, in 1930, he and his followers resolved to defy the British government's salt monopoly by making their own salt from the sea; this boycott was one of the crucial steps in the Indian fight for independence."

"Gandhi proved it is possible to fight for one's people and win without for a moment losing the world's respect."

"It is impossible for me to ignore that you are in a different category from any person I have ever tried, or am likely to try. It is nevertheless my duty to sentence you – to six years imprisonment. [A stunned intake of breath from the whole courtroom, then in absolute silence the clerk scribbles the sentence in his notebook. A pause. The Judge lowers his eyes.] If however His Majesty's Government could – at some later date – see fit to reduce that term, no one would be better pleased than I."

"Under the Gandhi Raj there is no Free Speech, no open meeting except for Non-Co-operators Social and religious boycott, threats of personal violence, spitting, insults in the streets, are the methods of oppression. Mob support is obtained by wild promises, such as the immediate coming of Swaraj, when there will be no rents, no taxes, by giving to Mr. Gandhi high religious names, such as Mahatma and Avatara, assigning to him supernatural powers and the like."

"It is sometimes said that Britain liberated India. In fact the reverse is the truth. Gandhi and Nehru liberated us. By winning their freedom, they freed us from the ignorance and prejudice that lay behind the myth of Britain's imperial destiny."

"He carried his own tune, and millions of people heard it."

"It seemed a miracle that I would meet, and have the blessing to know and work with, one of the two saints of the phenomenon which had won my heart when I was barely sixteen years old: the concept of radical nonviolence, introduced to the world as a revolutionary political tool by Mahatma Gandhi in India, and reintroduced now by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States of America."

"[They] would not oppose Gandhiji even when they were not fully convinced, ...were generally content to follow Gandhiji’s lead.... They rarely tried to judge things on their own, and in any case they were accustomed to subordinate their judgment to Gandhiji. As such discussion with them was almost useless. After all our discussions, the only thing they could say was that we must have faith in Gandhiji. They held that if we trusted him he would find some way out."

"...I am not right in saying that Gandhi is a Russian Christian, because he is so very dry. He has got the intellectual passion and a great moral will-force, but he is more dry than the Russians. The gospel of suffering that he is preaching has its root in Russia as nowhere else in Europe... other Christian nations don't believe in it. At the most they have it in the mind, but the Russians have got it in their very blood. They commit a mistake in preaching the gospel of suffering, but we also commit in India a mistake in preaching the idea of vairagya [disgust with the world]."

"Some prominent national workers in India seem to me to be incarnations of some European force here. They may not be incarnations, but they may be strongly influenced by European thought. For instance Gandhi is a European - truly, a Russian Christian in an Indian body. And there are some Indians in European bodies! Yes. When the Europeans say that he is more Christian than many Christians (some even say that he is “Christ of the modern times”) they are perfectly right. All his preaching is derived from Christianity, and though the garb is Indian the essential spirit is Christian. He may not be Christ, but at any rate he comes in continuation of the same impulsion. He is largely influenced by Tolstoy, the Bible, and has a strong Jain tinge in his teachings; at any rate more than by the Indian scriptures - the Upanishads or the Gita, which he interprets in the light of his own ideas."

"As for Gandhi, why should you suppose that I am so tender for the faith of the Mahatma? I do not call it faith at all, but a rigid mental belief and what he calls soul-force is only a strong vital will which has taken a religious turn. That, of course, can be a tremendous force for action, but unfortunately Gandhi spoils it by his ambition to be a man of reason, while in fact he has no reason in him at all, never was reasonable at any moment in his life and, I suppose, never will be. What he has in its place is a remarkable type of unintentionally sophistic logic. Well, what this reason, this amazingly precisely unreliable logic brings about is that nobody is even sure and, I don't think, he is himself really sure what he will do next. He has not only two minds but three or four minds, and all depends on which will turn up topmost at a particular moment and how it will combine with the others. There would be no harm in that, on the contrary these might be an advantage if there were a central Light somewhere choosing for him and shaping the decision to the need of the action. He thinks there is and calls it God... but it has always seemed to me that it is his own mind that decides and most often decides wrongly. Anyhow I cannot imagine Lenin or Mustapha Kemal not knowing their own minds or acting in this way... even their strategic retreats were steps towards an end clearly conceived and executed. But whatever it be it is all mind action and vital force in Gandhi. So why should he be taken as an example of the defeat of the Divine or of a spiritual Power? I quite allow that there has been something behind Gandhi greater than himself and you can call it the Divine or a Cosmic Force which has used him, but then there is that behind everybody who is used as an instrument for world ends,... behind Kemal and Lenin also; so that is not germane to the matter."

"When Gandhi's movement was started, I said that this movement would lead either to a fiasco or to a great confusion. And I see no reason to change my opinion. Only I would like to add that it has led to both."

"A divinely inspired saint I know that I am expressing the views of the British people in offering to his fellow countrymen our deep sympathy in the loss of their greatest citizen. Mahatma Gandhi, as he was known in India, was one of the outstanding figures in the world today, but he seemed to belong to a different period of history. Living a life of extreme asceticism, he was revered as a divinely inspired saint by millions of his fellow countrymen. His influence extended beyond the range of his co-religionists. For a quarter of a century, this one man has been the major factor in every consideration of the Indian problem. He had become the expression of the aspirations of the Indian people for independence, but he was not just a nationalist. His most distinctive doctrine was that of non-violence. He believed in a method of passive resistance to those forces which he considered wrong. The sincerity and devotion with which he pursued his objectives are beyond all doubt. The hand of the murderer has struck him down and a voice which pleaded for peace and brotherhood has been silenced, but I am certain that his spirit will continue to animate his fellow countrymen and will plead for peace and concord."

"Tagore is essentially a modern; Mahatma Gandhi is the St. Francis of Assisi of our own days."

"But Mr Gandhi has never protested against such murders. Not only have the Musalmans not condemned these outrages but even Mr Gandhi has never called upon the leading Muslims to condemn them. He has kept silent over them. Such an attitude can be explained only on the ground that Mr Gandhi was anxious to preserve Hindu-Moslem unity and did not mind the murders of a few Hindus if it could be achieved by sacrificing their lives. This attitude to excuse the Muslims any wrong, lest it should injure the cause of unity, is well illustrated by what Mr Gandhi had to say in the matter of the Mopla riots.... He has never called the Muslims to account even when they have been guilty of gross crimes against Hindus."

"Well, I must say at the outset that I feel quite surprised you see the interest the outside world western world particularly seems to be taking in Mr Gandhi. I can’t understand that so far as India is concerned, He was in my judgement, he was an episode in the history of India, never an epoch-maker. Gandhi has already vanished from the memory of people of this country, His memory is kept up because Congress party you see annually gives holiday, either on his birthday or some other day connected with some event in his life, has a celebration every year going on for seven days in a week, naturally people memory is revived, but if this artificial respiration were not given, I think Gandhi would belong long forgotten."

"I always say that as I met Mr Gandhi in the capacity of an opponent, I have a feeling that I know him better than most other people, because he had opened his real fangs to me, I could see the inside of the man, you see while others who generally went there as devotees, saw nothing of him, except the external appearance, which he had put up as a Mahatma. But I saw him in his human capacity, the bare men in him, and so I say that I understand him better than most of the people who have associated themselves with him."

"My own view is that great men are of great service to their country but they are also at certain times a great hinderance to the progress of their country. There is one incident in Roman History which comes to my mind on this occasion. When Caesar was done to death and the matter was reported to Cicero, Cicero said to the messengers, "Tell the Romans your hour of liberty has come." While one regrets the assassination of Mr Gandhi, one can't help finding in his heart the echo of the sentiments, expressed by Cicero on the assassination of Caesar. Mr Gandhi had become a positive danger to this country. He had choked all free-thought. He was holding together the Congress, which is a combination of all the bad and selfseeking elements in society who agreed on no social or moral principle governing the life of society except the one of praising and flattering Mr Gandhi. Such a body is unfit to govern a country. As the Bible says 'that sometimes good cometh out of evil', so also I think that good will come out of the death of Mr Gandhi. It will release people from bondage to a superman, it will make them think for themselves and it will compel them to stand on their own merits."

"His life, as you know, is as a beacon which shines [ever] bright to those that need it most."

"All of us are limited and contextualised by our circumstance of body, mind, etc in ways that are very different from others. These are our relative truths. Gandhi worked upon them to evolve a higher understanding and move towards the absolute truth."

"And Gandhi is my inspiration as I have with joy given up everything to dedicate my life to public service to be your public servant, inspired by Gandhi. It was Mahatma Gandhi who inspired Martin Luther King Jr, one of our nation's greatest civil rights heroes."

"My family instilled in me the story of Gandhi who freed India from British rule without firing a single bullet. Gandhi famously gave up all of his worldly possessions except for five, his dhoti, his walking stick, his book. He gave up everything to dedicate himself to public service."

"A patient is the most important person in our hospital. He is not an interruption to our work, he is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our hospital. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so. Attributed to Gandhi since the 1970s. While Gandhi was in charge of a company of stretcher bearers, he did not run a hospital. The origin of this quote can be found in a number of business publications in the 1940s. A version attributed to Gandhi in a 1970 advertisement in Foreign Trade of India states "A customer is the most important visitor on our premises." The quote is the motto of Bombay Hospital, but no attribution to Gandhi is currently given."

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it—always... When you are in doubt that that is God's way, the way the world is meant to be... think of that."

"We need to be the change we wish to see in the world."

"There is enough wealth in the world to satisfy everyone's needs, ...'. This quote is actually credited to an American pastor of Swiss origin Frank Buchman, founder of the Moral Rearmament movement. Misquotes that Bapu is forced to wear."

"Action expresses priorities."

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world — that is the myth of the "atomic age" — as in being able to remake ourselves."

"Hate the sin and love the sinner."

"God has no religion."

"An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind."

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

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

"What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another."

"[asked what he thought of modern civilization] That would be a good idea."

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it's not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time."

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

"I have never advocated "passive" anything. We must never submit to unjust laws. Never. And our resistance must be active and provocative."

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

"If you don't ask, you don't get."

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

"Poverty is the worst kind of violence."

"I may defend a Muslim's stand that he is a Muslim first and an Indian afterwards , for I myself say that I am a Hindu first and am therefore a true Indian ."

"The police... should never go on strike. Theirs was an essential service and they should render that service, irrespective of their pay. There were several other effective and honourable means of getting grievances redressed."

"I have a great respect for Christianity. I often read the Sermon on the Mount and have gained much from it. I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity, but the trouble is with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings."

"If Brahmanism does not revive, Hinduism must perish. [...] I will not like to live in an India which has ceased to be Hindu."

"If all the Punjabis were to die to the last man without killing, Punjab will be immortal. ... Offer yourselves as non-violent, willing sacrifices."

"A universal language for India should be Hindi, with the option of writing in Persian or Nagari characters. In order that Hindus and Mahomedans may have closer relations, it is necessary to know both the characters. And, if we can do this, we can drive the English language out of the field in a short time. All this is necessary for us, slaves. Through our slavery the nation has been enslaved, and it will be free with our freedom."

"In my opinion, they are not examples of real conversion. If a person through fear, compulsion, starvation or for material gain or consideration goes over to another faith, it is a misnomer to call it conversion. Most cases of mass conversion, of which we have heard so much during the past two years, have been to my mind false coin... I would, therefore, unhesitatingly re-admit to the Hindu fold all such repentants without much ado, certainly without any shuddhi... And as I believe in the equality of all the great religions of the earth, I regard no man as polluted because he has forsaken the branch on which he was sitting and gone over to another of the same tree. If he comes to the original branch, he deserves to be welcomed and not told that he had committed sin by reason of his having forsaken the family to which he belonged. In so far as he may be deemed to have erred, he has sufficiently purged himself of it when he repents of the error and retraces his step."

"If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytising. It is the cause of much avoidable conflict between classes and unnecessary heart-burning among the missionaries... In Hindu households the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink. ... The other day a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, distributed it among the famine-stricken, converted them to his fold, took charge of their temple and demolished it. This is outrageous. The temple could not belong to the converted, and it could not belong to the Christian missionary. But this friend goes and gets it demolished at the hands of the very men who only a little while ago believed that God was there."