Revision as of 20:56, 31 January 2018

Philosophy of life

Teaching the Bible

January 28, 2018: The Times of India

WHEN GANDHI TAUGHT THE BIBLE

…And saw it as wholly consistent with Hinduism, writes noted Gandhi scholar Tridip Suhrud

Gandhi first read the Gita as a student in London with theosophist friends — Bertram and Archibald Keightley — in Sir Edwin Arnold’s translation, The Song Celestial. Gandhi recalled in his autobiography that he was captured by Verses 62 and 63 of the second discourse.

‘If one Ponders on object of the sense, there springs Attraction; from attraction grows desire, Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds Recklessness; then the memory – all betrayed Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind, till purpose, mind, and man are all undone.’

What awakened in Gandhi a religious quest and longing that was to govern his entire life henceforth was the message contained in these two verses — that the only way to be in the world was to strive to reach the state of brahmacharya. The Gita became a lifelong companion and a spiritual guide.

Later when Gandhi dwelled in the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, he decided to give a daily discourse on the Gita, hoping to elaborate on the incessant striving to lead his life by its ideals. On February 24, 1926 Gandhi gave the first discourse; by the time he concluded the lecture series on November 23, 1926 he had given 218 discourses on the Gita. Gandhi had been commenting on stray verses and deducing his own meaning from them, often leaving his co-workers confounded by his interpretation. They demanded that Gandhi also translate the Gita into Gujarati with notes. Thus, Gandhi began the Gujarati translation of the Gita so that the meaning he derived from it could be fully comprehended.

Gandhi rarely made a claim to originality and even rarer it was for him to claim literary merit for his writings. But while presenting his translation he made a claim that no translation had made thus far. ‘This desire does not mean much disrespect to other renderings. They have their own place. But I am not aware of the claim made by the translators of enforcing their meaning of the Gita in their own lives. At the back of my reading there is the claim of an endeavour to enforce the meaning in my own conduct for an unbroken period of 40 years. For this reason I do indeed harbour the wish that all Gujarati men or women wishing to shape their conduct according to their faith should digest and derive strength from the translations here presented.’ The path of the Gita, Gandhi said, was neither contemplation nor devotion; the ideal was sthitaprajna. Gandhi adopted, and wanted the Ashram community to adopt, a mode of conduct, a self-practice to attain a state where one acts and yet does not act. This mode, this disposition was yajna, sacrifice. Gandhi found the word yajna full of beauty and power. He saw this ideal of sacrifice as the basis of all religions. Gandhi emphasised the aspect of cultivating the disposition of a yogi, and his exemplar was Jesus Christ. It was he who had shown the path. Gandhi said that the term yajna had to be understood in the way ‘Jesus put on a crown of thorns to win salvation for his people, allowed his hands and feet to be nailed and suffered agonies before he gave up the ghost’.

For Gandhi, an act of service was sacrifice, or yajna. But how does one perform sacrifice in daily life? His response was twofold; for one, he turned to the Bible and other was uniquely his own. ‘Earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow’, says the Bible. Gandhi made this central to the life of the Ashram and borrowed the term ‘bread labour’ from Tolstoy to describe the nature of work. It was dharma, duty, to perform bread labour, and those who did not perform this yajna, ate, according to the Gita, ‘stolen’ food. The other form of yajna was known as Yug-dharma, duty entailed upon one by the particular age. For Gandhi, the yajna of his times was spinning, his Yug-dharma. Spinning was an obligatory Ashram observance; each member was required to spin 140 threads daily, each thread measuring four feet. This spinning was called sutra-yajna, sacrificial spinning.

During the same year, students of the Gujarat Vidyapith that he had founded in 1920, and whose chancellor he was, invited him to give lectures. They wanted him to reflect on the life of Christ. The lectures on the Bible, specifically the Sermon on the Mount, began on July 24, 1926. The plan was to conduct these classes on each Saturday thereafter. But as soon as Gandhi began teaching the New Testament, he was ‘taken to task’ for reading it to the students. One correspondent asked, ‘Will you please say why you are reading the Bible to the students of the Gujarat National College? Is there nothing useful in our literature? Is the Gita less to you than the Bible? You are never tired of saying that you are a staunch Sanatani. Have you not now been found as a Christian in secret? You may say that a man does not become a Christian by reading the Bible. But is not reading the Bible to the boys a way of converting them to Christianity? Can the boys remain uninfluenced by the Bible reading?’ Gandhi saw this hypersensitivity as an indication of the intensity of ‘the wave of intoleration that is sweeping through this unhappy land’ and refused the correspondent’s request to give preference to the Vedas over the Bible. To him, his study and reverence for the Bible and other scriptures was wholly consistent with his claim to be a Hindu. ‘He is no Sanatani Hindu who is narrow, bigoted and considers evil to be good if it has the sanction of antiquity and is to be found supported in any Sanskrit book.’ The charge of being a Christian in secret was not new. He found it both a libel and a compliment. It was a libel because there were still people in the world, especially at a time when he was writing and publishing the Autobiography, who believed that he was capable of being anything in secret, for the fear of being that openly. He declared, ‘There is nothing in the world that would keep me from professing Christianity or any other faith the moment I felt the truth of and the need for it.’ This was a compliment, because therein Gandhi felt an acknowledgement, however reluctant, of his capacity for appreciating the beauties of Christianity. He wished to own up to that charge and the compliment.

Edited excerpts from Tridip Suhrud’s introduction to Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth’ (Critical Edition) courtesy Penguin Random House India

Isha Upanishad’s ‘Renounce and enjoy!’

Madan Mohan Mathur, Gandhiji’s Secret Mantra: Renounce & Enjoy!, November 29, 2017: The Times of India

When Gandhiji was asked if he could put the secret of his life into three words, he quoted from the Isha Upanishad: ‘Tena tyaktena bhunjithah’ – ‘Renounce and enjoy!’ But does this not seem contradictory? How can we enjoy something if we renounce it?

The Isha Upanishad is universally acclaimed for the precision with which it conveys the essence of Vedic philosophy. Therefore, in order to fully appreciate the importance of these three words quoted by Gandhiji, we need to understand the full meaning of the shloka referred to by him.

The first shloka of Isha Upanishad reads as follows: ‘Ishavasyamidam sarvam, yatkinca jagatyam jagat; Tena tyaktena bhunjitah, ma grdha kasya svid dhanam’.

Swami Ranganathananda, of the Ramakrishna Mission, translates this shloka as follows: ‘Whatever there is changeful in this ephemeral world, all that must be enveloped by the Lord. By this renunciation, support yourself. Do not covet the wealth of anyone.’ The same idea has been expressed somewhat differently by Swami Prabhavananda: “In the heart of all things, of whatever there is in :. . the Universe, dwells the Lord. He . alone is reality. Wherefore, reno- R N , C uncing vain appearances, rejoice in him. Covet no man’s wealth.”

It will appear that the shloka has three distinct, though interconnected, parts. Firstly, whatsoever moves on earth or whatever exists or is changeful in this ephemeral world, should be covered or enveloped by the Lord. Elaborating on this, Swami Parmananda says: “We cover all things with the Lord by perceiving the Divine Presence everywhere. When consciousness is firmly fixed in God, the conception of diversity naturally drops away; because the One Cosmic Existence shines through all things.”

The second part of the verse brings us to the crucial three words which Gandhiji has interpreted as ‘renounce and enjoy’. As explained above, ‘tena tyaktena’ means ‘through renunciation or detachment’ and ‘bhunjithah’ means ‘protect or support yourself’. Adi Shankra also interprets it as ‘protect’ because knowledge of our true Self is the greatest protection and sustainer. Although Gandhiji uses the word ‘enjoy’, it is intended to mean that having renounced the ‘unreal’, we may enjoy the ‘real’.

As Swami Ranganathananda explains, “In the language of Vedanta there must be both negation and affirmation. Therefore, if we are to enjoy this world, we must protect ourselves by renouncing whatever is not real.”

The shloka ends with a forthright directive: ‘Do not covet the wealth of another.’ This is a very plain statement but it involves a number of ethical and spiritual values. Whatever you have gained by your honest labour, that alone belongs to you; enjoy life with that and do not covet what belongs to others.

The whole purport of the first shloka of the Isha Upanishad, has been summed up as follows: Renunciation is an eternal maxim in ethics as well as in spirituality. There is no true enjoyment except what is purified by renunciation. This world is worth enjoying and we should enjoy it with zest.

Zest for life is expounded throughout the Bhagwad Gita and the Upanishads. Great teachers who discovered these truths were not killjoys; they were sweet and lovable people. Sri Ramakrishna was full of joy and Sri Krishna too was full of joy. But before we can enjoy this world, we have to learn the technique of enjoyment and this technique is: ‘Renunciation’.