Mahatma Gandhi: Other

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”

Mahatma Gandhi

Attributed to Gandhi in Stone, The Full Spectrum Synthesis Bible, iUniverse, 2001. link to Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=K6NiilgGaqMC&pg=PA168&dq=%22lose+yourself+in+the+service+of+others%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMI9pbPuNK_yAIVVMxjCh0RxgLp#v=onepage&q=%22lose%20yourself%20in%20the%20service%20of%20others%22&f=false. However, very similar quotes are found in the nineteenth century:
"Have you sorrows or trials that seem very heavy to bear? Then let me tell you that one of the best ways in the world to lighten and sweeten them is to lose yourself in the service of others ..." from Trine, What All The World's A-Seeking (1896) Google Books link https://books.google.com/books?id=9oM7AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA78&dq=%22lose+yourself+in+the+service+of+others%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAWoVChMIrZvI7tG_yAIVEcVjCh0WsgJW#v=onepage&q=%22lose%20yourself%20in%20the%20service%20of%20others%22&f=false;
"To lose yourself in the service of others may be to truly find yourself" from Usher, Protestantism (1897) Googe Books link https://books.google.com/books?id=kftDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA43&dq=%22lose+yourself+in+the+service+of+others&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMI4_Ls6NG_yAIVQsdjCh1iSAL7#v=onepage&q=%22lose%20yourself%20in%20the%20service%20of%20others&f=false.
Disputed

Way

“In judging myself I shall try to be as harsh as truth, as I want others also to be.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Introduction
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)
Context: In judging myself I shall try to be as harsh as truth, as I want others also to be. Measuring myself by that standard I must exclaim with Surdas: ' Where is there a wretch So wicked and loathsome as I? I have forsaken my Maker, So faithless have I been.' For it is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from him, who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am. I know that it is the evil passions within that keep me so far from Him, and yet I cannot get away from them.

Truth

“Tolerance gives us spiritual insight, which is as far from fanaticism as the north pole is from the south. True knowledge of religion breaks down the barriers between faith and faith and gives rise to tolerance. Cultivation of tolerance for other faiths will impart to us a truer understanding of our own.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India, (Bulletin), 2-10-1930, p. 2 In: My God (1962), Chapter 13. Pathways of God http://www.mkgandhi.org/god/mygod/pathwaystogod.html, Printed and Published by: Jitendra T. Desai, Navajivan Mudranalaya, Ahemadabad-380014 India
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)
Context: All faiths are a gift of God, but partake of human imperfection, as they pass through the medium of humanity. God-given religion is beyond all speech. Imperfect men put it into such language as they can command, and their words are interpreted by other men equally imperfect. Whose interpretation must be held to be the right one? Every one is right from his own standpoint, but it is not impossible that every one is wrong. Hence the necessity for tolerance, which does not mean indifference towards one’s own faith, but a more intelligent and purer love for it. Tolerance gives us spiritual insight, which is as far from fanaticism as the north pole is from the south. True knowledge of religion breaks down the barriers between faith and faith and gives rise to tolerance. Cultivation of tolerance for other faiths will impart to us a truer understanding of our own.

Faith , Religion , Understanding , Knowledge

“I intend to make a careful study of my own religion and, as far as I can, of other religions as well.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Part II: First Day in Pretoria
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)
Context: I am a Hindu by birth. And yet I do not know much of Hinduism, and I know less of other religions. In fact I do not know where I am, and what is and what should be my belief. I intend to make a careful study of my own religion and, as far as I can, of other religions as well.

Religion , Study

“The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and slavery are mental states. Therefore, the first thing to say to yourself: 'I shall no longer accept the role of a slave. I shall not obey orders as such but shall disobey them when they are in conflict with my conscience.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Harijan (24 February 1946). As quoted in The Politics Of Nonviolent Action, Gene Sharp, Porter Sargent Publishers (1973), p. 59
1940s

Way , Freedom

“Only 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 Hindus, 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.”

Mahatma Gandhi

‘Harijan’, English weekly (founded by M.K. Gandhi), Poona, May 11, 1935
1930s

Men , Money , God

“Man's excellence lies in his readiness to let others live and lay down his own life. As he progresses, his food also changes for the better. He has the capacity to grow still further. There have been many more discoveries after Darwin's. The book which you have been reading seems to be an old one. Whether it is old or new, the "Principle of the greatest good of the greatest number," or "survival of the fittest" is false.”

Mahatma Gandhi

In his Letter to Premabehn Kantak, in Collected Works, , Delhi. Ministry of Information (1969-94)., 50:309-10
1930s

Life , Books , Food , Change

“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Farewell, p. 453
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

God , Truth

“I came to the conclusion long ago … that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them, and whilst I hold by my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu … But our innermost prayer should be a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (19 January 1928)
1920s

Religion , Error

“All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.”

Mahatma Gandhi

citation needed
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

Family , Soul

“For one man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (27 January 1927)
1920s

Life

“Now when we talk of brotherhood of men, we stop there and feel that all other life is there for man to exploit for his own purposes. But Hinduism excludes all exploitation.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (26 December 1926)
1920s

Life , Men , Feeling

“On examination, I have found [Hinduism] to be the most tolerant of all religions known to me. Its freedom from dogma makes a forcible appeal to me in as much as it gives the votary the largest scope for self-expression. Not being an exclusive religion, it enables the followers of the faith not merely to respect all the other religions, but it also enables them to admire and assimilate whatever may be good in the other faiths. Non-violence is common to all religions, but it has found the highest expression and application in Hinduism. (I do not regard Jainism or Buddhism as separate from Hinduism.) Hinduism believes in the oneness not of merely all human life but in the oneness of all that lives.”

Mahatma Gandhi

October 1927. The Collected Works, Volume 35, New Delhi, 1968, pp. 166-67. As quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
1920s

Life , Faith , Religion , Freedom

“You say that the magistrate's decision is unsatisfactory because it would enable a person, however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the Kaffirs would be able to do so. But the magistrate's decision is quite different. The Court declared that the Kaffirs have no legal right to travel by tram. And according to tram regulations, those in an unclean dress or in a drunken state are prohibited from boarding a tram. Thanks to the Court's decision, only clean Indians or coloured people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Comments on a court case in The Indian Opinion (2 June 1906)
1900s

People , Travel , Decision , Personality

“[R]eal Swaraj will come, not by the acquisition of authority by a few, but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when it is abused. In other words, Swaraj is to be attained by educating the masses to a sense of their capacity to regulate and control authority.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (29 January 1925) p. 41
1920s

Education , Sense

“The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?”

Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi's Collected Works, Vol 74 (1938)
1930s

People , Home , Cry , Country

“There was a time when people listened to me because I showed them how to give fight to the British without arms when they had no arms and the British Government was fully equipped and organised for an armed fight. But today I am told that my non-violence can be of no avail against the communal madness and, therefore, people should arm themselves for self-defence. If this is true, it has to be admitted that our thirty years of nonviolent practice was an utter waste of time. We should have from the beginning trained ourselves in the use of arms. But I do not agree that our thirty years' probation in nonviolence has been utterly wasted. It was due to our non-violence, defective though it was, that we were able to bear up under the heaviest repression and the message of independence penetrated every nook and corner of India. But as our non-violence was the nonviolence of the weak, the leaven did not spread. Had we adopted non-violence as the weapon of the strong, because we realised that it was more effective than any other weapon, in fact the mightiest force in the world, we would have made use of its full potency and not have discarded it as soon as the fight against the British was over or we were in a position to wield conventional weapons. But as I have already said, we adopted it out of our helplessness. If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Speech (16 June 1947) as the official date for Indian independence approached (15 August 1947), as quoted in Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase (1958) https://books.google.com/books?id=sswBAAAAMAAJ&q=%22+I+have+already+said,+we+adopted+it+out+of+our+helplessness%22&dq=%22+I+have+already+said,+we+adopted+it+out+of+our+helplessness%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6ydqTtK7LAhUI4D4KHW3-DwEQ6AEIHTAA by Pyarelal Nayyar, p. 326 http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/mahatma-gandhi-volume-ten.pdf
1940s

People , World , Communication , Strong

“Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Harijan (28 July 1949) p. 219
1940s

Evil

“What the divine author of the Mahabharata said of his great creation is equally true of Hinduism. Whatever of substance is contained in any other religion is always to be found in Hinduism, and what is not contained in it is insubstantial or unnecessary.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (27 September 1925)
1920s

Religion

“Nor, do I believe in inequalities between human beings. We are all absolutely equal. But equality is of the souls and not the bodies. Hence, it is a mental state. We need to think of, and to assert, equality because we see great inequality in the physical world. We have to realize equality in the midst of this apparent external inequality. Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man. Thus caste, in so far as it connotes distinctions in status, is an evil.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, by Joan V. Bondurant (1965) University of California Press, Berkeley: CA, pp. 168-169
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

God , World , Soul , Thinking