Ahimsa - the brave weapon of Gandhi

Ahimsa, the sacred weapon which brought the Indian independence has some undesired qualities as well. I was going through an article about Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. He seems to be an interesting character full of self belief and was a great follower of his idol(Savarkar). As known, he was not an ardent follower of his idol but highly characterized by illative qualities. Having born in an orthodox devotional Brahmin ancestry, he never had any personal vengeance on Gandhi and never ever spoke anything about Gandhi. It was Gandhi's ideologies which disturbed him a lot.

His charge sheet statement referring to Gandhi as "Gandhiji", clearly marks the respect he had for him. It states like "I studied very closely what Veer (brave) Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more on the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other factor has done." He said that Gandhi's ideologies were more biased towards the muslims and the Ahimsa which he led was a clear mark of self inflicted violence.

Many of the leaders who were contemporary to Gandhi, often complained of the same. Ambedkar was one of the victims. Gandhi made him to act in favour of the muslims, by fasting till death. Ambedkar ultimately was succumbed by Gandhi. Like Ambedkar many are in the list to detest Gandhi. Ahimsa, which brought us independence also acted like a force against most of our own leaders in the late 1940s.

When going through the article, I came across the interesting saying of Osho on Gandhi in his "Krishna". It stated that, if you are oppressing or affrighting anyone to cause his death, then the decision depends on the person who is frightened. That is, he can take up your challenge or can annihilate himself, thereby declining your motive of killing him. But if you are frightening anyone by killing yourself, then the opposer has two options, either to kill you or he shouldn't care about your frights. In both the case, the opposer will be the martyr, he will be scolded somehow. Gandhi used this as a tactics not only against the british but also inside India to impose his ideologies which he named AHIMSA. As per the philosophies of AHIMSA, you shouldn't deter any living being (including you). Therefore Gandhi had surely overstepped the dharma of AHIMSA.

Above all such disputes, what made Gandhi a unique leader whom we like to worship? He made a compromise in the dharma of AHIMSA, which depends only on him.(again self belief and self confidence) If two of greatest ideologues oppose each other, then nevertheless to say its AHIMSA (which Gandhi followed) will win. Only the purity, sanity and self confidence (of taking decisions dependent only on him) of Gandhi made a Mahatma out of him! not the AHIMSA he followed.