For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

God is truth and Mahatma Gandhi

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

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

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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

dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com

Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

God is truth and Mahatma Gandhi

Beyond these limited truths, however, there is one absolute Truth which is total and all embracing. But it is indescribable, because it is God. Or say, rather, God is Truth. All else is unreal and false. Other things, therefore, can be true only in a relative sense. 1 I would, however, warn the Hindu brethren against the tendency which one sees nowadays of exploiting the suppressed classes for a political end. To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves. The purification required is not of untouchables but of the so-called superior castes. There is no vice that is special to the untouchables, not even dirt and insanitation. It is our arrogance which blinds us “superior” Hindus to our own blemishes and which magnifies those of our downtrodden brethren whom we have suppressed and whom we keep under suppression. Religions like nations are being weighed in the balance. God’s grace and revelation are the monopoly of no race or nation. They descend equally upon all who wait upon God. The religion and that nation will be blotted out of the face of the earth which pins its faith to injustice, untruth or violence. God is Light, not darkness. God is Love, not hate. God is Truth, not untruth. God alone is great. We His creatures are but dust. Let us be humble and recognize the place of the lowliest of His creatures. Krishna honoured Sudama in his rags as he honoured no one else. Love is the root of religion or sacrifice and this perishable body is the root of self or irreligion, says Tulsidas. Whether we win swaraj or not, the Hindus have to purify themselves before they can hope to revive the Vedic philosophy and make it a living reality. 2

Satyagraha is search for Truth; and God is Truth. Ahimsa or non-violence is the light that reveals that Truth to me. Swaraj for me is part of that Truth. This Satyagraha did not fail me in South Africa, Kheda or Champaran and in hosts of other cases I could mention. It excludes all violence or hate. Therefore, I cannot and will not hate Englishmen. Nor will I bear their yoke. I must fight unto death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India. But I combat the attempt with non-violence. I believe in the capacity of India to offer non-violent battle to the English rulers. The experiment has not failed. It has succeeded, but not to the extent we had hoped and desired. I do not despair. On the contrary I believe that India will come to her in the near future and that only through Satyagraha. The proposed suspension is part of the experiment. Non-co-operation need never be resumed if the programme sketched by me can be fulfilled, Non-violent non-co-operation in some form or other, whether through the Congress or without it, will be resumed if the programme fails. I have repeatedly stated that Satyagraha never fails and that one perfect satyagrahi is enough to vindicate Truth. Let us all strive to be perfect satyagrahis. The striving does not require any quality unattainable by the lowliest among us. For Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within. It is latent in every one of us. Like swaraj it is our birthright. Let us know it. 3

To me God is truth and love; God is ethics and morality; God is fearlessness. God is the source of Light and Life and yet He is above and beyond all these. God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist. For in His boundless love God permits the atheist to live. He is the searcher of hearts. He transcends speech and reason. He knows us and our hearts better than we do ourselves. He does not take us at our word for He knows that we often do not mean it, some knowingly and others unknowingly. He is a personal God to those who need His personal presence. He is embodied to those who need His touch. He is the purest essence. He simply is to those who have faith. He is all things to all men. He is in us and yet above and beyond us. One may banish the word “God” from the Congress but one has no power to banish the Thing Itself. What is a solemn affirmation if it is not the same thing as in the name of God? And surely conscience is but a poor and laborious paraphrase of the simple combination of three letters called God. He cannot cease to be because hideous immoralities or inhuman brutalities are committed in His name. He is long suffering. He is patient but He is also terrible. He is the most exacting personage in the world and the world to come. He metes out the same measure to us that we mete out to our neighbours men and brutes. With Him ignorance is no excuse. And withal He is ever forgiving for He always gives us the chance to repent. He is the greatest democrat the world knows, for He leaves us “unfettered” to make our own choice between evil and good. He is the greatest tyrant ever known, for He often dashes the cup from our lips and, under cover of free will, leaves us a margin so wholly inadequate as to provide only mirth for Him at our expense. Therefore, it is that Hinduism calls it all His sport Lila, or calls it all an illusion maya. We are not, He along Is. And if we will be, we must eternally sing His praise and do His will. Let us dance to the tune of His bansi lute and all would be well. 4

I know that in this land of ours we have enough philosophy and but little life. But I know also that the laws governing the conduct of man have still to be explored and the condition of exploration is imperative and unalterable. We shall explore them only by dying, never by killing. 5 Truth and Love have been jointly the guiding principle of my life. If God who is indefinable can be at all defined, then I should say that God is truth. It is impossible to reach him, that is, truth, except through love. Love can only be expressed fully when man reduces himself to a cipher. This process of reduction to cipher is the highest effort man or woman is capable of making. It is the only effort worth making, and it is possible only through ever-increasing self-restraint. 6

God is Truth. The way to reach Truth is through the loving service of all that lives. Usually I had been saying and writing that God is Truth. In the new manual I have deliberately improved upon that definition and I now say Truth is God. I am here thinking of that Truth which transcends even God. It is not only at prayer time that I have this realization. I may say it is in me while eating and drinking, evacuating, reading, writing this, writing other things, delivering speeches it is there every moment. In spite of that, there is no limit to my imperfections, because the realization is only awareness; it has not permeated my being. That may not even happen during this life. However, why should I worry about it? It is within my power to make an effort. The result is in the hands of Satyanarayana. 7 The word ‘satya’ is derived from sat, which means that which is. Satya means a state of being. Nothing is or exists in reality except Truth. That is why sat or satya is the right name for God. In fact it is more correct to say that Truth is God than to say that God is Truth. But as we cannot do without a ruler or general, the name God is and will remain more current. On deeper thinking, however, it will be realized that sat or satya is the only correct and fully significant name for God. 8

You have asked me why I consider that God is Truth. In my early childhood or youth, I was taught to repeat what in Hindu scriptures are one thousand names of God. Among the several little things one of the religious teachers my family had was a little pamphlet which contained these thousand names of God. But these thousand names of God were by no means an exhaustive list.

We believe and I think it is the truth that God has as many names as there are creatures and, therefore, we also say that God is nameless and since God has many forms we also consider him formless, and since he speaks to me through many tongues we consider him to be speechless and so on. And so when I came to study Islam, I found that Islam too had many names, but I had not come to recognize God for my personal satisfaction as Truth. I would say for those who say God is love, God is love. But deep down in me I say God may be love, but God is Truth. If it is possible for the human tongue to give the fullest description of God, for myself I have come to the conclusion that God is Truth. But two years ago I went a step further and said Truth is God. You will see the fine distinction between the two statements: God is Truth and Truth is God. And that conclusion I came to after a continuous, relentless search after Truth which began so many years ago. I found that the nearest approach to Truth is through love. But I found also that love has many meanings, in the English language at least, and human love in the sense of passion becomes a degrading thing also. I found too that love in the sense of ahimsa and non-violence has only a limited number of votaries in the world. And as I made progress in my search, I made no dispute with “God is love”.

It is very difficult to understand “God is love” (because of a variety of meanings of love) but I never found a double meaning in connection with Truth and not even atheists have denied the necessity or power of Truth. Not only so. In their passion for discovering Truth, they have not hesitated even to deny the very existence of God from their own point of view rightly. And it was because of their reasoning that I saw that I was not going to say “God is Truth”, but “Truth is God”. Therefore I recall the name of Charles Bradlaugh a great Englishman who lived 50 years ago. He delighted to call himself an atheist But knowing as I do something of his life. I never considered him an atheist. I would call him a god-fearing man although he would reject the claim, and I know his face would redden. I would say: No Mr. Bradlaugh, you are a truth-fearing man, not a god-fearing man, and I would disarm his criticisms by saying “Truth is God” as I have disarmed criticisms of many a young man. Add to this the great difficulty that millions have taken the name of God and have committed nameless atrocities in the name of God. Not those scientists do not very often commit cruelties in the name of Truth. I know today in the name of Truth and science inhuman cruelties are perpetrated on animals when men perform vivisection. To me it is a denial of God whether you recognize Him as Truth or by any other name. So I know that there are these difficulties in one’s way no matter how you describe God. But human mind is a limited thing, and you have to labour under limitation when you think of a being or entity that is beyond the power of man to grasp. But we have another thing in Hindu philosophy viz., God alone is and nothing else exists. Now the same truth you find emphasized and exemplified in the Kalama of Islam. There you find it clearly stated a Mussalman has to recite it at all his prayers that God alone is and nothing else is and that is the same about Truth. And the name that Sanskrit has for Truth literally means that which is sat. For these and several other reasons that I can give you I have come to the conclusion that the definition. “Truth is God” gives me the greatest satisfaction. And when you want to find Truth is God, the only inevitable means is love, non-violence and since I believe that ultimately means and ends are convertible terms I should not hesitate to say that God is love. 9

God is Truth. For the past few years I have been saying that ‘Truth is God’ instead of saying that ‘God is Truth’. I feel that this is a more logical way of putting it. Truth is the only reality in this world. 10 In ‘God is Truth’, ‘is’ certainly does not mean ‘equal to’ nor does it merely mean ‘is truthful’. Truth is not a mere attribute of God but He is that. He is nothing if He is not that. Truth in Sanskrit means Sat. Sat means ‘Is’. Therefore Truth is implied in ‘Is’. God is, nothing else is. Therefore the more truthful we are, the nearer we are to God. We are only to the extent that we are truthful. 11 If we believe that we are all children of one and the same God and that God is Truth and Justice, how can there be untouchability amongst us, His children? God of Truth and Justice can never create distinctions of high and low among His own children. I, therefore, invite all without distinction of race and religion to assist this movement by praying for its complete success, so that we may all live in peace and friendship. 12

I take it that the present tense in the second question has been purposely used instead of the past. I am being led to my religion through Truth and Non-violence, i.e., love in the broadest sense. I often describe my religion as religion of Truth. Of late, instead of saying God is Truth I have been saying Truth is God, in order more fully to define my religion. I used at one time to know by heart the thousand names of God which a booklet in Hinduism gives in verse form and which perhaps tens of thousands recite every morning. But nowadays nothing so completely describes my God as Truth. Denial of God we have known. Denial of Truth we have not known. The most ignorant among mankind have some truth in them. We are all sparks of Truth. The sum total of these sparks is indescribable, as-yet-Unknown Truth, which is God. I am being daily led nearer to it by constant prayer. 13 That means to say that you want a God who has form. Truth is too impersonal for you. Well, idolatry is embedded in human nature. But you may if you like worship God as Truth, if not Truth as God. God is Truth, but God is many other things also. That is why I prefer to say Truth is God. But you need not go into what may sound like mystic lore; you may simply worship what you find to be the Truth, for Truth is known relatively. Only remember that Truth is not one of the many qualities that we name. It is the living embodiment of God, it is the only Life, and I identify Truth with fullest life, and that is how it becomes a concrete thing, for God is His whole Creation, the whole Existence, and service of all that exists. Truth is service of God. 14

I have put it somewhat differently. God is Truth, for as our scriptures say nothing is but Truth, which is the same thing as God is Life. And then I have said that Truth and Love are faces of the same coin, and Love is the means to find Truth which is the end. 15 An institution founded on truth is bound to succeed. The world is based on Truth. Truth is better than any other religion. God is Truth and vice versa. Truth alone lives even though all things perish. I bless this institution whose guiding principle is stated to be Truth, and appeal to you all to give your blessings and help it whole-heartedly. 16

I claim to be a votary of truth from my childhood. It was the most natural thing to me. My prayerful search gave me the revealing maxim ‘Truth is God’ instead of the usual one ‘God is Truth’. That maxim enables me to see God face to face as it were. I feel Him pervade every fiber of my being. With this Truth as witness between you and me, I assert that I would not have asked my country to invite Great Britain to withdraw her rule over India, irrespective of any demand to the contrary, if I had not seen at once that for the sake of Great Britain and the Allied cause it was necessary for Britain boldly to perform the duty of freeing India from bondage. Without this essential act of tardy justice, Britain could not justify her position before the unmurmuring world conscience, which is their nevertheless. Singapore, Malaya and Burma taught me that the disaster must not be repeated in India. I make bold to say that it cannot be averted unless Britain trusts the people of India to use their liberty in favour of the Allied cause. By that supreme act of justice Britain would have taken away all cause for the seething discontent of India. She will turn the growing ill-will into active goodwill. I submit that it is worth all the battleships and airships that your wonderworking engineers and financial resources can produce. I used to say ‘God is Truth’. That did not completely satisfy me. So I said ‘Truth is God’. He and His law are not different. God’s law is God Himself. To interpret it man has to resort to intense prayer and merge himself in God. Each one will interpret the same in his or own way. As for the relationship between man and God, man does not become man by virtue of having two hands. He becomes man by becoming a tabernacle of God. 17

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