Mahatma Gandhi Speech In English 10 Lines

[Jennifer Leos]

Asa child growing up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, my connection to my Indian roots came from summer visits to New Delhi where my grandparents lived. My grandfather, or Nana Ji, as we called him, was a family legend. Amarnath Vidyalankar spent his life fighting for India's independence, which included spending four years in prison in Mahatma Gandhi's movement. I still remember the conversations we had together, many of them while playing chess. These conversations, and the stories that lived on after his passing left a lasting impression on me.

Our family's values come from my grandfather's embrace of a Gandhian worldview. On Gandhi's 150th birthday, I want to touch on the aspect of Gandhi's principles that stuck with my family and me the most: Hinduism, at its core, is an inclusive philosophy grounded in a respect for all faiths and all that lives.

Gandhi reminded those who followed his faith that perhaps its most important aspect was its commitment to oneness. To quote Gandhi directly, he said Hinduism led him to believe "in the oneness not of merely all human life but in the oneness of all that lives."

One scholar he respected deeply, his peer Swami Vivekananda, shared the same philosophy. In 1893, Vivekananda brought Hinduism to America by giving a speech at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He preached the same principles of Hinduism Gandhi would go on to live, saying that as Hindus, "We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true." Today's leaders would do well to consider a few of the closing lines Vivekananda delivered: "Sectarianism, bigotry, and it's horrible descendant, fanaticism have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now."

By choosing to have many different religious texts next to his bedside, Gandhi respected and tried to understand other world views. When asked how he felt about religion, Gandhi said, "The essence of all religions is one; only their approaches are different." He saw the value and universal truths in the Torah, the Gita, the Koran, and the Bible. In the New Testament, Gandhi-ji said the Sermon on the Mount went "straight to [his] heart" and he "tried to unify the teaching of the Gita and the Sermon on the Mount." Gandhi called Jesus "one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had."

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. Gandhi lived these challenging lessons in his nonviolent struggle against the British, later inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. and the US civil rights movement. I recently learned that King always carried two books with him: the Bible and The Gandhi Reader. His civil rights movement led to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which paved the way for my parents to immigrate to America.

When my parents first arrived in the 1970s, they brought with them this Gandhian Hinduism they inherited. In Bucks County, the Indian community was at most one half of 1 percent. Our neighbors were warm and inviting, even though they hadn't met too many people with our names or stories. Many of them would shape my childhood, as my teachers, mentors, and little league coaches.

In our own small way, we felt this was a chance to extend the Gandhian tradition into Bucks County. Later, when I was 14, I authored an op-ed in my county paper for a high school English assignment. I asked George H.W. Bush to get out of the Middle East, criticizing our participation in the Gulf War. Today, at 43, I retain that passion in the halls of Congress. As I reflect on my commitment to peace in South Asia and my bipartisan legislation to end the bombing of civilians in Yemen or prevent a war with Iran, I know where my values come from.

Gandhi : Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always.

Gandhi : Sir, I was called to the bar in London, and enrolled in the High Court of Chancery. I am therefore an attorney. And since I am, in your eyes, 'colored,' I think we can deduce that there is at least one colored attorney in South Africa.

Gandhi's voice : When I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it: always.

Gandhi : What do you want me not to do? Not to meet with Mr. Jinnah? I am a Muslim, and a Hindu, and a Christian, and a Jew, and so are all of you. When you wave those flags and shout, you send fear into the hearts of your brothers. That is not the India I want! Stop it! For God's sake stop it!

Gandhi : We think it is time that you recognized that you are masters in someone else's home. Despite the best intentions of the best of you, you must, in the nature of things, humiliate us to control us. General Dyer is but an extreme example of the principle... it is time you left.

Gandhi : Where there's injustice, I always believed in fighting. The question is, do you fight to change things or to punish? For myself, I've found we're all such sinners, we should leave punishment to God. And if we really want to change things, there are better things than derailing trains or slashing someone with a sword.

Gandhi : I want to welcome you all. Every one of you. We have no secrets. Let us begin by being clear... about General Smuts' new law. All Indians must now be fingerprinted... like criminals. Men and women. No marriage other than a Christian marriage is considered valid. Under this act our wives and mothers are whores. And every man here is a bastard.

Gandhi : [thinks] Not without defeats, and great pain. But are there no defeats in war? No pain? What you cannot do is accept injustice. From Hitler, or anyone. You must make the injustice visible, and be prepared to die like a soldier to do so.

Gandhi : I'm simply going to prove to Hindus here and Muslims there that the only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts. And that is where all our battles ought to be fought.

Gandhi : We must defy the British... Not with violence that will inflame their will but with a firmness that will open their eyes. English factories make the cloth that makes our poverty. All those who wish to make the English see bring me the cloth from Manchester and Leeds that you wear today and we will light a fire that will be seen in Delhi, and in London!

Gandhi : I praise such courage. I need such courage because, in this cause, I too am prepared to die. But, my friend, there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill. Whatever they do to us, we will attack no one, kill no one. But we will not give our fingerprints, not one of us. They will imprison us. And they will fine us. They will seize our possessions. But they cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.

Gandhi : I am asking you to fight. To fight against their anger, not to provoke it. We will not strike a blow, but we will receive them. And through our pain, we will make them see their injustice, and it will hurt, as all fighting hurts. But we cannot lose. We cannot. They may torture my body, may break my bones, even kill me. Then they will then have my dead body, not my obedience.

Gandhi : Since I returned from South Africa, I have traveled over much of India. And I know that I could travel for many more years and still only see a small part of her. And yet already I know that what we say here, means nothing to the masses of our country. Here we make speeches for each other, and those English liberal magazines that may grant us a few lines. But the people of India are untouched. Their politics are confined to bread and salt. Illiterate they may be, but they're not blind. They see no reason to give their loyalty to rich and powerful men who simply want to take over the role of the British in the name of freedom. This Congress tells the world it represents India. My brothers, India is seven hundred thousand villages, not a few hundred lawyers in Delhi and Bombay. Until we stand in the fields with the millions that toil each day under the hot sun, we will not represent India, nor will we ever be able to challenge the British as one nation.

Gandhi : [explaining why everyone at his ashram does menial chores] It's one way to learn that each man's labor is as important as another's. In fact, while you're doing it, cleaning the toilet seems far more important than the law.

Gandhi : I try to live like an Indian, as you see. It's stupid of course, because in our country it is the British who decide how an Indian lives, what he may buy, what he may sell. And from their luxury, in the midst of our terrible poverty, they instruct us on what is justice, what is sedition. So it's only natural that our best young minds assume an air of Eastern dignity, while greedily assimilating every Western weakness as quickly as they can acquire it.

Gandhi : I'm not so sure. I have thought about it a great deal, and I suspect he meant you must show courage... be willing to take a blow... several blows... to show you will not strike back, nor will you be turned aside. And when you do that, it calls on something in human nature, something that makes his hatred for you decrease and his respect increase. I think Christ grasped that, and I have seen it work.

Advocate General : [quoting an article by Gandhi] 'Non-cooperation has one aim: the overthrow of the Government. Sedition must become our creed. We must give no quarter, nor can we expect any.' Do you deny writing it?

Gandhi : [to a British supporter of Gandhi] I think, Charlie, that you can help us most by taking that assignment you've been offered in Fiji. I have to be sure... they have to be sure... that what we do can be done by Indians... alone.

3a8082e126