For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Cultural Diversity, its Development and Mahatma Gandhi

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No.- 09404955338

E-mail- dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net

Cultural Diversity, its Development and Mahatma Gandhi

Cultural diversity should be defined as the capacity of maintain the dynamic of change in all of us. Cultures are not equal in face of globalization processes and every effort must be made to safeguard cultural expressions struggling to survive. The principal challenge for education in the 21^st century is to learn to live together, which require our ability to equip people with capacities to deal with cultural change within increasingly multicultural societies. The universal ambition of education for all is synonymous with lifelong learning for all and must allow for the diversity of culturally embedded learning environments that exit throughout the world.

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about culture, “I say, that the Indian culture demands that we shall trust the man who extends the hand of fellowship. The King-Emperor has extended the hand of fellowship. I suggest to you that Mr. Montagu has extended the hand of fellowship, and if he has extended the hand of fellowship, do not reject his advances. Indian culture demands trust, and full trust.”1 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about culture, “My message to you is that an Indian journal outside India has a need for double caution. I hope that your journal instead of pandering to the evil tastes of the people wherever they exist will stand out boldly for social and moral reforms and show the emigrants that it is their duty to represent the best of Indian culture in the land to which they may migrate and to keep up the bond between themselves and the motherland by adopting khaddar at least.”2

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about culture, “Babu Brijkishore Prasad and Babu Rajendra Prasad who from far-off London is keenly watching and supporting the movement are no westernized specimens of Indian humanity. They are orthodox Hindus, lovers of Indian culture and tradition. They are no blind imitators of the West and yet do not hesitate to assimilate whatever is good in it. There need therefore be no fear entertained by the timid and the halting ones that the movement is likely to be in any shape or form disruptive of all that is most precious in Indian culture and especially in feminine grace and modesty so peculiar to India’s womanhood.”3 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about culture, “Those who offered their services as teachers were duly warned by me of the responsibility they shouldered. They were to be not merely Hindi teachers but interpreters of Indian culture and Indian purity. Hindi was to be taught not merely as any language but as the national language. As Hindi for Hindus it was a language of religion and morals. Millions could not be expected to learn Sanskrit but they could receive the message of the Vedas through Tulsidas, Surdas, Kabir and a host of other saints who kept the well of religion undefiled. They were moreover to teach Hindi as also Hindustani, not as a rival to Urdu. It was to be a blend of Hindi and Urdu. They had therefore to be repositories of purity of character and strength of purpose. Theirs was a noble mission demanding nobility of conduct.”4 Languages are not just a means of communication but represent the very fabric of cultural expressions, the carriers of identity, values and world views. A guiding principal of cultural diversity is to continue to strengthen and maintain the diversity of languages.

Celebrating life and creativity in freedom are basic to cultural diversity and it is the lived reality of diversity that emerges in narratives, songs, rituals, beliefs and languages. Mahatma Gandhi wrote about culture, “When I was touring in U.P. in 1924 a peasant called out to me near Ayodhya and threw a sheet of paper in my car. I picked up that sheet and found that he had written on it many precious quatrains and couplets from Tulsidas’s Ramacharitamanasa. This made me very happy and enhanced my reverence for Indian culture. I preserved this sheet in my file hoping to publish it someday. I would take it up every week and put it aside. For, at the time I got it, I was not writing anything for Hindi Navajivan and I did not feel that it would be so useful for the Gujarati Navajivan. Part of what he had written on it was published in both the Gujarati and Hindi editions in 1927. As these days I am regularly writing something every week for Hindi Navajivan and also as my tour of U.P. is to begin shortly, I am publishing below the remaining part: I have left out the words of praise. This peasant brother has a neat hand and he has formed his letters with care. Historians have testified that nowhere in the world are the peasants as civilized as in India. This sheet of paper is proof of it. Tulsidas has played a leading part in the preservation of Indian culture. Without the awakening influence of Ramacharitamanasa of Tulsidas, the life of the peasants would become dull and dry. One cannot say how it happened but it is unquestionably true that the life giving force in Tulsidas’s language is not found in other writers. Ramacharitamanasa is a storehouse of gems of thought. The above couplets and quatrains give us some idea of its value. I firmly believe that the peasant writer did not have to put in much effort in the selection of quotations. He has supplied them from his repertory. We need not despair as to our morality, when we hear from a peasant’s mouth saying like, “Can an adulterer find salvation?”, “Can a kingdom stand without knowledge of statecraft?”, “Is there any vice to match backbiting or any virtue to match compassion?” and so on. It is said these days that the peasants are living in darkness, that in our country tamas is predominant and that it must move on into rajas. First of all I do not believe that tamas, rajas and sattva can be divided into such watertight compartments. I feel that everyone has within him all the three gunas in some measure or other. The difference is only of degree. I firmly believe that in our country it is not tamas which rules supreme but sattva. This sheet of paper is a proof of this. If this had been an exception, it would not have served as a proof of the predominance of sattva in India. But when we know that millions of peasants know by heart the quatrains and couplets of Tulsidas and that they also understand them, then we can say with a measure of certainty that people who have such ideas have a sattvik civilization and that these quatrains and couplets are a proof of it.”5

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about culture, “Then there is the question of the whole Hindu culture. I see, even at the present moment, a conflict going on between Hindu culture and the Christianity of Indians; the latter are being torn between two almost opposite attractions. Somehow or other, Christianity has become synonymous with Western culture. Perhaps rightly so, for, the religion of the Western people is predominantly Christianity and therefore Western culture may be fittingly described as Christaian culture as Indian culture would certainly be described as Hindu culture. The progeny of Elizabeth must be brought up in entirely different surroundings unless Manu decides to tear himself away from his own surroundings and lives an exclusive life or decides to settle down in the West. I think that, spiritually considered, Elizabeth herself should not be a party to the possibility of Manu having to tear himself away.”6

Gandhiji’s life, work and messages have assumed great contemporary relevance for averting the day of reckoning for the human race. He has to be read anew to arrest to growing improvement of planetary resources, accelerated extinction of species, destruction of habitates climate change etc. Mahatma Gandhi wrote about culture, “The Indian culture of our times is in the making. Many of us are striving to produce a blend of all the cultures which seem today to be in clash with one another. No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive. There is no such thing as pure Aryan culture in existence today in India. Whether the Aryans were indigenous to India or were unwelcome intruders, does not interest me much. What does interest me is the fact that my remote ancestors blended with one another with the utmost freedom and we of the present generation are a result of that blend. Whether we are doing any good to the country of our birth and the tiny globe which sustains us or whether we are a burden, the future alone will show. So far as I am concerned the new Parishad and the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan have the common good of all through a blending of the best in all India’s languages. If they have not, they will perish. But blending to be that must not mean exclusion of everything that has an Aryan flavour any more than that of everything that has an Arabian or for that matter English or any other flavour.”7

Modernity has brought about a fundamental transformation in the socio cultural and politico-economic structure across the globe by making identities more exclusively defined less flexible and homogenized marking a shift away from earlier periods. Mahatma Gandhi wrote about culture, “And yet all this is happening in the Benares Hindu University which has been extolled today as the living embodiment of Indian culture. Malaviyaji did all that was necessary to draw the best possible teachers by attractive salaries, but he could not do the rest. It was not his fault that Hindi did not take the place of English. The teachers are the product of the tradition which they have inherited, and the students are content to accept what they get from them. They need not be. They go on strikes and even hunger-strikes, often for trivial reasons. Why will they not insist on having their tuition in the all-India language? There are, we were told today, 250 students here from the Andhra Province. Let them go to Sir Radhakrishnan and ask for an Andhra section of the University and ask to be taught through the medium of Telugu if they will not learn the all-India language. But if they were to be guided by my lights, being Indians they should demand as the medium of instruction a language understood throughout India. And Hindustani alone can be that language.”8

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “We shall not be able to remove the growing intellectual and cultural gulf between our men and women and between the classes and the masses. It is also equally certain that the vernacular medium alone can stimulate originality in thought in the largest number of persons.”9 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “The cultural is infinitely worse. For, whilst we resent and, therefore, endeavour to resist the political domination, we hug the cultural, not realizing in our infatuation that, when the cultural domination is complete, the political will defy resistance. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not wish to imply that, before the British rule, prostitution was unknown in India. But I do say that it was not as rampant as now. It was confined to the few upper ten. Now it is fast undoing the youth of the middle classes. My hope lies in the youth of the country. Such of them as are prey to the vice are not vicious by nature. They are helplessly and thoughtlessly drawn to it. They must realize the harm that it has done them and society. They must understand, too, that nothing but a rigorously disciplined life will save them and the country from utter ruin. Above all, unless they visualize God and seek His aid in keeping them from temptation, no amount of dry discipline will do them much good. Truly has the Seer said in the Gita that “desire persists though man may by fasting keep his body under restraint? Desire goes only when one has seen God face to face.” Seeing God face to face is to feel that He is enthroned in our hearts even as a child feels a mother’s affection without needing any demonstration. Does a child reason out the existence of a mother’s love? Can he prove it to other? He triumphantly declares: It is. So must it be with the existence of God. He defies reason. But He is experienced. Let us not reject the experience of Tulsidas, Chaitanya, Ramdas and a host of other spiritual teachers even as do not reject that of mundane teachers.”10

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “Therefore free India will have its geographical, ethnic and cultural limits. A free India will therefore recognize the differences in race and culture of the Burmese, and while it will extend the hand of fellowship and help to the Burmese nation, it will recognize its right to complete independence and help it to regain and retain it in so far as it lies in India’s power. Needless to say that therefore in my scheme there is no demand upon the Burmese to learn Hindi or Hindustani. I expect those who are within the real Indian border to learn Hindustani because they are the children of a common land and heirs to a common culture and are bound together by various other considerations and their provincial dialects contain so many common words.”11 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “It is more than enough to be able to say without fear of contradiction, that Independence means the removal of the greatest obstacle in the path of our economic, political, cultural and spiritual progress, that without the removal of that obstacle there is no progress, and that delay means national bankruptcy, suicide.”12

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “I can quite understand your anxiety to retain your culture. You do not seem to believe in common educational institutions which, in your opinion, are calculated to lead you astray from your religious and cultural wealth. I look on this question of sectarian education differently. Common schools or communal schools do not matter with me. What is the good of the common schools when prejudices create differences of heart? What harm is there in communal schools when there is purity of heart for all? So you will see that communal schools or common schools are of little importance. Purity of heart, trust in each other and love for others are things more important than the question of sectarian education.”13 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “A certain degree of physical harmony and comfort is necessary, but above a certain level it becomes a hindrance instead of help. Therefore the ideal of creating an unlimited number of wants and satisfying them seems to be a delusion and a snare. The satisfaction of one’s physical needs, even the intellectual needs of one’s narrow self, must meet at a certain point a dead stop, before it degenerates into physical and intellectual voluptuousness. A man must arrange his physical and cultural circumstances so that they do not hinder him in his service of humanity, on which all his energies should be concentrated.”14

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “The only true and just way is the way of unity and non-violence of regarding one another not as members of hostile cultures but as sons of the same great motherland. Hindus and Muslims have worked and do work together in peace; they lived together in peace in the past; they can live together in peace in the future. Our task is to assure each son of the motherland that whatever his beliefs, his rights and religious and cultural interests will be protected by the laws of the land, formulated by a national assembly democratically elected.”15 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “I attach far more importance to the cultural aspect of education than to the literary. Culture is the foundation, the primary thing which the girls ought to get from here. It should show in the smallest detail of your conduct and personal behaviour, how you sit, how you walk, how you dress, etc., so that anybody might be able to see at a glance that you are the products of this institution. Inner culture must be reflected in your speech, the way in which you treat visitor and guests, and behave towards one another and your teachers and elders. I was pleased too that you walked all the distance to and from Bhangi Nivas, when you came to see me. But if you came only to please me, your trudging had no merit. It will do you no good. You must make it a rule to prefer walking to using a conveyance. Motorcar is not for the millions. You will therefore shun it. Million cannot afford even train journey. Their world is their village. It is a very small thing but if you faithfully adhere to this rule it will transform your entire life and fill it with a sweetness that natural simplicity carries with it. Education here won’t qualify you for luxurious living. I want the Harijan girls here to show such a degree of culture that everybody should feel ashamed to regard them as untouchables. That is the goal of the Harijan Sevak Sangh’s activities. This institution should demonstrate to the whole world the heights to which Harijans can rise, if they are free from the incubus of untouchability and conversely the sacrilege and inhumanity of the institution of untouchability itself. I look forward to the day when this institution will fill the whole country with its fragrance and become a centre of attraction for girls from near and far.”16

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “I give more importance to cultural education than to knowledge of the three R’s. Good cultural background should be evident from the minutest detail of children’s daily behaviour from the way they sit, talk and dress, and so on.”17 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “I am deeply interested in the efforts of the United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organization to secure peace through educational and cultural activities. I fully appreciate that real security and lasting peace cannot be secured so long as extreme inequalities in education and culture exist as they do among the nations of the world. Light must be carried even to the remotest homes in the less fortunate countries which are in comparative darkness, and I think that in this cause the nations which are economically and educationally advanced have a special responsibility. I wish your Conference every success, and I hope that you will be able to produce a workable plan for providing the right type of education particularly in countries in which opportunities for education are restricted owing to economic and other circumstances.”18

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “Interdrinking, interdining, intermarrying, I hold, are not essential for the promotion of the spirit of democracy. I do not contemplate under a most democratic constitution a universality of manners and customs about eating, drinking and marrying. We shall ever have to seek unity in diversity, and I decline to consider it a sin for a man not to drink or eat with anybody and everybody. In Hinduism, children of brothers may not intermarry. The prohibition does not interfere with cordiality of relations; probably it promotes healthiness of relationships. In Vaishnava households I have known mothers not dining in the common kitchen, nor drinking from the same pot, without their becoming exclusive, arrogant or less loving. These are disciplinary restraints which are not in themselves bad. Carried to ridiculous extremes they may become harmful, and if the motive is one of arrogation, of superiority, the restraint becomes an indulgence, therefore hurtful. But as time goes forward and new necessities and occasions arise, the custom regarding interdrinking, interdining and intermarrying will require cautious modifications or rearrangement.”19

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “We want to reach not the dead level, but unity in diversity. Any attempt to root out traditions, effects of heredity, climate and other surroundings is not only bound to fail, but is a sacrilege. The soul of religions is one, but it is encased in a multitude of forms. The latter will persist to the end of time. Wise men will ignore the outward crust and see the same soul living under a variety of crusts. For Hindus to expect Islam, Christianity or Zoroastrianism to be driven out of India is as idle a dream as it would be for Mussalmans to have only Islam of their imagination rule the world. But if belief in One God and the race of His Prophets in a never-ending chain is sufficient for Islam, then we are all Mussalmans, but we are also all Hindus and Christians. Truth is the exclusive property of no single scripture.”20 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “Still the people in British India as well as in the Indian States are one, for India is one. There is no difference, for example, between the needs and the manners and customs of Indians in Baroda and of Indians in Ahmadabad. The people of Bhavnagar are closely related with the people of Rajkot. Still, thanks to artificial conditions, the policy of Rajkot may be different from that of Bhavnagar. The existence of different policies in connection with one and the same people is a state of things which cannot last for any length of time. Consequently, even without any interference by the Congress, the unseen pressure of circumstances alone must lead to the unification of policies in spite of a multitude of separate jurisdictions. Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.”21

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “All these are questions which involve discrimination and love. A thing may be proper on one occasion and improper in another. Man is a living being and not an inanimate object like a machine. Hence, among human beings and in the acts of every one of them, there is variation, novelty, apparent contradiction, etc. However, under the divine guidance of truth and love a discriminating observer could but perceive identity in difference, harmony amidst discord and unity in diversity.”22

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “We may call ourselves Christians, Hindus or Mohammedans. Whatever we may be, beneath that diversity there is a oneness which is unmistakable and underneath many religions there is also one religion. As far as my experience goes, at one time or other, we, the Mohammedans, Christians or Hindus, discover that there are many points of contact and very few points of difference. Then I would like you to ask yourselves whether you have any message for the villages, for the women of the villages, for your sisters there. I am afraid you will also come to the same conclusion as I have, that you will never have a message unless something is added to your education. It is true that the present educational system takes no notice of the village life. It is not so in other parts of the world. In the others parts of the world, I have noticed that those in charge of education take note of the masses of the people among whom these products of schools and colleges have to live and have to disperse, among whom they have to act. But in India, I have noticed that the student world is isolated from the masses of the people. I have no doubt that some of you are poor girls descended of poor parents. If you have not made that discovery yourselves, I ask you to make it for yourselves and ask yourselves whether the things that you learnt here you are able to take to them or whether there is real correspondence between home life and school life. The lack of that correspondence has appeared to be the tragedy. I have suggested, therefore, to the whole student world of India to add something to what they are learning in schools, and then you will find there will be some satisfaction for themselves and some satisfaction for the masses also and to those who will be so good as to think of the masses.”23 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “I want my missionary friends and Christian Indians to reciprocate the spirit in which these lines are written. I write in the name and for the sake of heart-unity which I want to see established among the people of this land professing different faiths. In nature there is a fundamental unity running through all the diversity we see about us. Religions are no exception to the natural law. They are given to mankind so as to accelerate the process of realization of fundamental unity.”24

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “I agree that whereas amongst some communities marriage is permitted amongst very near relations, it is prohibited among other communities, that whereas some communities forbid polygamy some permit it. Whilst one would wish that there was a uniform moral law accepted by all communities, the diversity does not point to the necessity of abolishing all restraint. As we grow wise in experience our morality will gain in uniformity. Even today the moral sense of the world holds up monogamy as the highest ideal and no religion makes polygamy obligatory. The ideal remains unaffected by the relaxation of practice according to time and place. I need not reiterate my views regarding remarriage of widows, as I consider remarriage of virgin widows not only desirable but the bounden duty of all parents who happen to have such widowed daughters.”25 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “For a religious ideal must be proved by faith and how can faith have play if perfection could be attained by the spirit while it was still surrounded by its “earthly vesture of decay”? Where would there be scope for its infinite expansion which is its essential characteristic? Where would be room for that constant striving, that ceaseless quest after the ideal that is the basis of all spiritual progress, if mortals could reach the perfect state while still in the body? If such easy perfection in the body was possible all we would have to do would be simply to follow a cut-and-dry model. Similarly if a perfect code of conduct were possible for all there would be no room for a diversity of faiths and religions because there would be only one standard religion which everybody would have to follow.”26

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “I do not wish to disparage the strength of numbers. It has its use but only when it is backed by the latent spirit force. Millions of ants can kill an elephant by together attacking it in a vulnerable place. Their sense of solidarity, consciousness of oneness of spirit in spite of the diversity of bodies, in other words, their spirit force, makes the ants irresistible. Even so that moment we develop a sense of mass unity like the ants, we too shall become irresistible and shall free ourselves from our chains.”27 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “I have implicit faith that Hindus and Mussalmans will one day come together and that faith is derived from my faith in Hinduism and ultimately in human nature. If Hinduism deserves to live it must disarm all opposition. Going a step further, I believe that all mankind will never possess one faith but all the faiths that deserve to live will tolerate one another and they will be like flowers of the same plant all beautifully scented, all looking similar and yet each having a distinct individuality. Nature abhors lifeless unity. She conceals unity behind sympathetic diversity.”28

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “Differences are verily offshoots of the curse of untouchability, for they proceed from a sense of superiority and inferiority. The fourfold division of Varna is based on duty and not on right. Dharma does not confer rights but lays down obligations. Where all perform the duties that have fallen to their lot, no one is higher than the others. Once we are able to purge ourselves of untouchability and with it the spirit of high and low, we shall realize the unity underlying all races and religions. In spite of the differences of races and religions, we shall learn to tolerate and respect one another and consider all human beings as children of one God and, therefore, brothers and sisters of one another. God is the Creator of all life; all his creatures are, therefore, equal in His eyes. Humanity is a gigantic tree having innumerable branches and leaves, and the same life throbs through them all. The realization of unity in diversity is implied in the removal of untouchability.”29

Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “There is untouchability in the Shastras in a particular sense. Anger, lust and other evil passions raging in the heart are the real untouchables. It is a prostitution of Shastras to interpret them as sanctioning the distinctions we observe today. A true man of piety will consider himself a sinner and, therefore, untouchable. We in our haughtiness have hitherto misinterpreted the Shastras and have raised a sin to the status of a religious tenet. I claim to be a true sanatanist, because I make the greatest effort I can to live up to the truth as I see it. Diversity there certainly is in the world, but it means neither inequality nor untouchability. An elephant and an ant are dissimilar. Nevertheless God has said that they are equal in His eyes. The inner oneness pervades all life. The forms are many, but the informing spirit, is one. How can there be room for distinctions of high and low where there is this all-embracing fundamental unity underlying the outward diversity? For that is a fact meeting you at every step in daily life. The final goal of all religions is to realize this essential oneness.”30 Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “I think that we have to find unity in diversity. I need say no more about caste beyond this that, in so far as abolition of distinctions of high and low is concerned, there is but one caste. We are all children of one and the same God and, therefore, absolutely equal.”31

Development generally perceived as the means of opening up opportunities for sustaining livelihood of the population of a country. However in India the problems of uneven development has intensified due to globalization and accentuated greater civic, economic and ecological rift among Indian citizen. Mahatma Gandhi wrote about cultural diversity, “The four varnas have been compared in the Vedas to the four members of the body, and no simile could be happier. If they are members of one body, how can one be superior or inferior to another? If the members of the body had the power of expression and each of them were to say that it was higher and better than the rest, the body would go to pieces. Even so, our body politic, the body of humanity, would go to pieces, if it were to perpetuate the canker of superiority or inferiority. It is this canker that is at the root of the various ills of our time, especially class-wars and civil strife. It should not be difficult for even the meanest understanding to see that these wars and strife could not be ended except by the observance of the law of Varna. For it ordains that everyone shall fulfil the law of one’s being by doing in a spirit of duty and service that to which one is born. Earning of livelihood is the necessary result. But the law has to be fulfilled for its own sake. Its due observance by a large part of mankind will end the conflicting inequalities and give place to equality in diversity. All callings would be equally reputable whether that of the minister or of the lawyer, of the doctor or the leatherworker, of the carpenter or the scavenger, of the soldier or the trader, of the farmer or the spiritual teacher. In this ideal state of things, there would be no room for the monstrous anomaly of the three varnas lording it over the Shudra, or of the Kshatriya and the Vaishya enjoying themselves in their palaces and the Brahmin contenting himself with a cottage and the Shudra toiling for the rest and living in a hotel. This chaotic state of things indicates that the law of Varna has become a dead letter.”32 Cultural diversity is celebrated theme of contemporary public discourse in every domestic society.

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