It is never the person. It is the principles and teachings that truly
While on the threshold matter. Prioritise wisdom, not intelligence says Suma Varughese
of death, the Buddha wisely advised his
principal follower, Ananda, “Be a lamp unto yourself.” Sadly, this same person (the Buddha) has been converted into a god and worshipped. Statues of him abound, particularly in Buddhist countries, and minute vestiges of his body such as nail parings and locks of hair are preserved like precious artefacts in many of the temples.
This same fate has overtaken prophet after prophet. Jesus Christ is, of course, God Incarnate for Christians, and Ram and Krishna too are part of the Indian pantheon. I hear a temple for Mahatma Gandhi has recently come up. The problem is not with deifying anyone. The problem is that in the process, we prioritise the person and not the teachings. And that is a tragedy because the person’s sole mission was to have brought us the teachings. We are short-changing not only the prophets but ourselves too when we worship them. For one thing, the gulf between us and them becomes so vast as to be unbridgeable. The teachings are meant to help us attain their status, but the pedestal we place them on defeats the purpose. I suspect that the hero worship is deliberate. It is so much easier to worship someone than it is to aspire to be them.
Now I am an ardent disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, but I do not
have a single portrait of him in my house. I have a tiny wooden charkha (spinning wheel) showpiece someone gave me, and a line drawing of the back of his head, with the famous saying, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” For me, it is this quote that matters, though the line drawing is beautiful too.
I idolise his principles, his single minded devotion to the truth and non-violence, his compassion and commitment to the poorest of the poor, and his broad embrace of differing practices, ideologies, religions, and ideas. And I am in love with his ideals and the tools that were crafted from them that enabled this country to nobly win freedom from British rule. His concepts of satyagraha (truth or soul force) as the sole weapon in the freedom struggle and antyodaya (compassion for the poorest of the poor and placement of their welfare first), and his personal conviction that it is not correct to own anything unless everybody has the capacity to own it have influenced me deeply.
I am also enamoured of his economic ideas for India, which include his concepts of trusteeship and Panchayati Raj. The former means that those who have means beyond their needs hold the surplus money as a trust for the rest of society, and the latter hinges on small village units that combine
to form consecutively larger concentric circles that eventually include the whole country, thereby linking the smallest with the largest. I also subscribe to his concept of political self-rule, which anticipates that as every individual becomes more and more established in self-rule, the state will eventually atrophy because it will not be needed. A nation of self-ruled people will together create an orderly, law-abiding, other-focussed society. Each of these ideals thrills me and inspires me to strive ever harder to get to the space where I too will be able to contribute to their propagation. Do I love Gandhiji? I revere him, but I do so because of all that he has done for this country and because of the nobility of his concepts. And I strive every day to be a little more him and a little less me. I hope and pray that there will be many more Gandhis emerging to take our country forward along the highest spiritual and ethical lines. We do not need more temples for Gandhiji. We need more Gandhijis.Just like we need more Rams, Krishnas, Buddhas, and Jesus Christs.
Suma Varughese is a thinker,
writer, and former Editor-in
Chief of Life Positive. She also
holds writer’s workshops. Write
to her at sumavarughese@
hotmail.com.
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