GANDHI WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS "GREAT SOUL"

The following article on the life of Gandhi, the leader of the recent popular uprisings in India, was written for the Crimson by Mr. R. V. Gogate, an Indian who is now a student in the Graduate School of Education at the University. He is a native of the Indore State in Central India, and during his life in India was intimately acquainted with Gandhi.

"It is an exclusive trait of the human mind to be appreciative of anything that is transcendental whether that thing belongs to the physical, moral, or intellectual world. All normally developed human beings are as a rule fascinated by the presence of the true, the good, and the beautiful irrespective of race, caste, or any such man-made differentiation.

"Shri Krishna of the prehistoric India, Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, Confucius, Mohammed, Zoroaster,--all these through the avenue of religion appeared before the human race and helped the human mind to evolve many of its rich potentialities of faith, righteousness, and spirituality. Personalities such as Ashoka, Charlemagne, Peter the Great, Napoleon, Mazzini, Shiwaji, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and others rose to eminence and power through sincere and farsighted service to their fellow men in organizing programs of human conduct conducive to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness in the worldly sense.

He Attained World-Wide Attention.

"There has appeared on the scene, in our days, a man who is attracting just such attention of the entire civilized world. He is Mahatma Gandhi of India. He is a man who has tried and is still trying an experiment in the field of politics; the sanctifying of politics by the inception of moral and spiritual laws. Mr. Gandhi says that all that is immoral, unholy, and unjust in the life of an individual is equally so if it is found in the life of a nation. Governments should be judged with the same strict standards of morality that we all wish to apply in judging the conduct of an individual. The moral code in the public life of a man cannot be different from the moral code in his private life; in the same manner no nation or government can have one set of moral standards for its domestic policy and diametrically opposite standards for its foreign relationship. Truth is not a matter of convenience, but it is one eternal law binding all, rich and poor, weak and strong, visible or invisible.

"Too much opportunism has crept into the system of the body politic of today and in one form or another the human beings of today are demonstrating the old brutal principle of might is right. By force we are trying to establish peace. By deception we except to establish credit. Indulging in an ordinary butchery of the human race our politicians promise to evolve the brotherhood of man! ! All this evil has to be stopped; evil can never be remedied by evil but by truth. 'Love', says Mr. Gandhi, 'alone can conquer and the conquest of a true love is eternal and imperishable. Just as love begets love so does love beget hate.' Hence he inculcates the necessity of using 'right' weapons to remove the 'wrongs'.

Gandhi Follows His Teaching

"What Mr. Gandhi preaches has a meaning because he practices it, urging others to practice and not merely voice opinions about it. When Mr. Gandhi was tried for sedition in the court of "British Justice" in India and when the English judge, being overcome by the magnetic personality of the accused, began to make apologetic remarks, Mr. Gandhi relieved him of his embarrassment by saying: "I am indebted to your Lordship for the kind words you have used in referring to my case. There is but one course open to your Lordship in this matter, either you should execute the dictates of the British laws in India which you are appointed to administer in which case I suggest, if I may, that your Lordship ponounce on me the highest punishment enjoined by the law for the crime of which I am held guilty, or if your moral scruples do not permit you to do as the law you are supposed to administer bids you, please vacate the chair and come over to join me in this stand. I know and understand the British laws and it so far as they are concerned of plead guilty'. Mr. Gandhi added that according to the eternal law of truth he was right in loving his motherland and that if not sentenced he would continue pursuing his policies in the interest of the freedom of his country and the vindication of the principle that he held true. Mr. Gandhi, who made the work of the trial so simple and brief, was sentenced to six years imprisonment without further procedure and he is now behind the bars; but that is not what we are interested in hers. The trial scene simply demonstrates what he believes and preaches.

"In the whole history of the Indian National Congress there was never a leader who was given the sole dictatorship of the nation until Mr. Gandhi was elected dictator for India by the All-India National Congress chiefly because of his chastity of life, firmness of principle, and righteousness of vision.

"As a politician in the modern accepted sense of the term, I do not know what place Mr. Gandhi would be accorded, but there is no doubt that apart from the local and temporal part that Mr. Gandhi has played he will go down in the history of the World as one of the great souls that has been born on this planet to express the will of providence, to demonstrate with all human firmness the truth of the eternal moral order, and to lay bare the guilt of man against man which in the outcome of sheer ignorance and moral degeneration.