Gita and Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Gita and Mahatma Gandhi

 

The purse is doubly welcome to me as also the address after the knowledge that I have now gained that Mr. Sastri was the Headmaster of this school. I congratulate you on having given to the Servants of India Society, Mr. Gokhale’s successor, and to India one of her most brilliant and devoted sons. Your school professes to be a Hindu school, with emphasis on the word “Hindu”. I suppose therefore I have a right to expect something characteristic of the Hindu about all of you. If you will live up to your name you would be expected to show Hindu culture at its best in every one of your acts. I wonder if all of you are able to say that you have read the Bhagavad Gita. Those who have, will please raise their hands, honestly of course (about 10 persons raised their hands). Now it seems to me that in the very test I have applied the vast majority of you have failed. “If the salt loses its flavour wherewith shall it be salted?” I have given an English proverb, but there is a corresponding one which we know in the North and it is this: “When the ocean is on fire that will be able to quench the fire?” Will you not in all humility ask that question very seriously of every one of you? Will you not make a confession that you have been weighed and found wanting? Imagine a Christian High School and its Old Boys’ Association being unaware of the contents of the Bible! Imagine a Mahomedan High School and the Muslim Old Boys’ Association of that school not knowing the Koran, and don’t you feel with me that every Hindu boy and, for that matter, every Hindu girl, should know the book in the Hindu scriptures which is equal to and should be in the estimation of the Hindu, the Koran and Bible?

I hope therefore that now that your eyes have been opened publicly you will immediately set about correcting yourself and understanding the message of the Gita. I would like to know how many of you know the elements of Sanskrit. Those of you, who do know it, please raise your hands (A number of hands were raised). Thank you. Half or perhaps a little more than half of you know Sanskrit. Then let me inform you that the Sanskrit of the Gita is incredibly simple. Those of you who know Sanskrit should tomorrow, if possible today, buy the Gita and I understand you can get the book for a very small price and begin to study the book. Have private Gita classes for yourselves. Those of you who do not know Sanskrit should study Sanskrit only for the sake of the Gita. If you have not got that much facility, then you should read Gita written in English or in Tamil, if there is a Tamil translation of it. I tell you that it contains treasures of knowledge of which you have no conception whatsoever. I suggest to you that at first you may begin to read the third chapter of the Gita. You will find there the gospel of selfless work expounded in a most convincing manner. Selfless work there is described characteristically by one beautiful word called yajna. If you will read the book with my eyes you will find charkha also described there. There is one passage which says that “He who eats without serving, without yajna, is a thief.”

I want you not to go to the dictionary for finding out the meaning of the word yajna. Do not run away with the idea that by purchasing a few faggots of wood and then burning them with ghee to the accompaniment of certain hymns, you have performed yajna. That the word has had that meaning at one time, there is no doubt about it; and when it did bear the meaning, it had its use. You will find in another part of the Gita an injunction almost that you must bring your intelligence and your reason to bear upon the meaning of the Shastras. Applying my reason to find out the meaning of this beautiful word I come to the conclusion that the yajna that you, I and these sisters and the old boys and the little girls can perform must be a yajna of that character in order to follow the context of the Gita is nothing apart from the spinning-wheel. But I do not want to give you a discourse on the spinning-wheel. What I desire to tell you is that, if you will search that book through and through, you will find there mentioned in such simple words, brahmacharya, satya, ahimsa, abhayam and others which ought to be the primary qualities of everyman of God. The last word I leave with you is that you should read that book with a prayerful spirit, not in a carping spirit, and to obey the dictates of that book.

 

Reference:

The Hindu, 5-9-1927