Mahatma Gandhi`s Self-Sufficiency Concept
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spirituality were the seeds and the root, the trunk and Gandhi’s social
economic idea, the fruit and the flowers, but the way he showed us the
non-violence struggle or what he called Satyagraha, all together is the one
whole idea, the idea of self-sufficiency in its root. The whole idea was first
expressed in 1909 in his seminal book called Hind Swaraj in Gujarati. And it
was translated by him; the only book that Gandhi translated himself in
English, “the Indian Home Rule”. There was a radical definition of Swaraj or
Home Rule in that book. To ordinary Indian citizen, the average Indian
citizen, Swaraj means rule of the self. We rule instead of the British, the
Indian tricolour flag is hoisted instead of the Union Jack. Gandhi’s definition
of Home Rule was much deeper than that. Not rule of the self but rule over
the self. One who controls the self controls the world, controls the
atmosphere around him. And so, first of all we think about self sufficiency,
not in order to win in a war but in order to win over and make Gandhi
enemies into friends. That is the idea of non-violence which if you try to
explain in English because the word non-violence has come from the
Sanskrit word ahimsa, it means active love. Non-violence sounds to be a
negative term, the absence of violence, but to Gandhi non-violence was
very positive force. When he explained it in three synonyms; He said
Satyagraha is a first of all, truth force, and secondly, Satyagraha is a, love
force, and the third, Satyagraha is the soul force. Truth, love and soul
combined means Satyagraha. That was his broad definition of non-violence.
I must now come to the details of some of his ideas but I am now
also at the same time trying not to lose the concept of the whole total
idea. I was not fortunate enough to understand the beautiful script, Thai
script that was there on the screen, but I could understand some of the
English words that were written on margin: back to the roots, back to the
basics, back to nature etc., etc. With all humility, I would like to make one
amendment: instead of back to the root, I would like to say forward to the