Mahatma Gandhi`s Self-Sufficiency Concept
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use Sanskrit terms because I find that in your language there are many
words derived from Sanskrit but the pronunciation is different. But first I will
use the Sanskrit terms and then try to translate them into English which is
not my language. In all ideas that come from great men like Mahatma
Gandhi, there are some ideas which can be termed as Tatva or the
fundamentals of those big people. There are other ideas which we term as
Tantra or the incidentals. We should distinguish between the fundamentals
and the incidentals of these great thinkers. Sometimes, we confuse and
therefore we think oh! Gandhi is taking the hand of the clock back. But if we
think of the fundamentals of Gandhi’s principle; can love ever be out-
dated? Can truth ever be out-dated? And the soul can be ever out dated?
Truth, love and soul, they are beyond time, they are beyond space.
Incidentals come from the technique, the technology that he suggested.
The incidentals have got to change. Gandhi himself experienced with
changing his technology. Gandhi was spinning on a small piece. He found
the big spinning wheel. But he was hoping for better technological methods.
Technological methods he would first consider man’s survival. Man’s
growth in the future. Man’s dignity which should not make people, which
should not turn people into coax of machinery, centralized society not only
industry but also power, political power, also in management. Centralization
turns human beings into coax. This centralization gives human dignity to
human beings. And that is what Gandhi wanted to give by self-sufficiency or
self-reliance and we would like to call it. Rely on the self and the self is not
restricted to individual itself. It was always individual in one sense social in
fact the work in Sanskrit used for both the individual self and the social self
as
Atman
. It is a common word for both, so there is not a distinction
between the individual and the self. If you make this distinction between
the individual and the soul, then there would be always be a constant
struggle between individual and the soul which is now in this society which