Page:Manshardt - The Terrible Meek, An Appreciation of Mohandas K. Gandhi.pdf/11

 gorges himself and makes the sacred vessel a stinking gutter… Brahmacharya means control of the senses in thought, word and deed.”

During Gandhi’s lifetime I was often asked by American friends: “Why does Mr. Gandhi dress as he does?” The answer is that Gandhiji identified himself completely with the Indian masses. Since the great majority of the peasants are so poor that they can afford only a minimum of clothing, Mr. Gandhi accepted their lot as his own and dramatized Indian poverty to the world at large. He lived as a humble peasant, though he could have maintained himself in luxury.

In Gandhi’s thinking, theft was not just a matter of one person taking another person’s property. With millions starving for lack of food, he regarded it as theft for any person to take food that he did not require, or in larger quantities than his bodily needs demanded. “Perfect fulfilment of the ideal of non-possession requires, that man should, like the birds, have no roof over his head, no clothing and no stock of food for the morrow.” But only the fewest possible, if any at all, can reach this ideal. Nevertheless, the ideal must be kept in view, and every seeker after Truth must critically examine his possessions and seek to reduce them. It is in this connection that Mr. Gandhi gave utterance to one of his most profound insights. “Civilization, in the real sense of the term,” he says, “consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment, and increases the capacity for service.”

Mr. Gandhi believed that the scriptures of the world are sounder treatises on the laws of economics than many modern textbooks. Jesus, Mahomed, Buddha, Nanak, Kabir, Chaitanya, Shankara, Dayanand and Ramakrishna were all men who made the world the richer, and all of them had voluntarily accepted poverty as their lot. Instead of accepting American wealth as the standard of progress, Gandhi would have India strive to be morally supreme. “Instead of boasting of your glorious past,” he says, “let us express the ancient moral glory in our own lives and let our lives bear witness to our boast… Ours will only be a truly spiritual nation when we shall show more