Sarvodaya: Welfare of All
TheTransformation of Gandhi
The genesis of Gandhi's transformation lies in his discovery and reading of the book entitled, 'Unto This Last' by John Ruskin.
In his autobiography, Gandhi wrote:
"The book was impossible to lay aside, once I had begun it. It gripped me!
"Johannesburg to Durban was a twenty-four hours' journey. The train reached there in the evening. I could not get any sleep that night.
"I determined to change my life in accordance with the ideals of the book.
"I believe that I discovered some of my deepest convictions reflected in this great book of Ruskin, and that is why it so captured me and made me transform my life."
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The teachings of Unto This Last I understood to be:
-that the good of the individual is contained in the good of all:
-that a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work:
-that a life of labor, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living.
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"The first of these I knew. The second I had dimly realized. The third had never occurred to me:
" 'Unto This Last' made it as clear as daylight for me that the second and the third were contained in the first.
"I arose with the dawn, ready to reduce these principles to practice".
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Slowly, Gandhi evolved an entirely novel technique which he called 'Satyagraha'.
Literally, it means remaining firm on the Truth and resisting the Untruth actively but using only Non-violent means.
Gandhi devoted all his life to perfecting the Satyagraha technique, teaching it to his followers and applying it in every kind of conflict that he encountered.
With his phenomenal success he proved that Satyagraha is the most pragmatic and potent technique of conflict resolution, and it is also the morally correct way of life.
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Gandhi later wrote and published a gist of Unto This Last, first into Gujarati and then into English with the title, 'Sarvodaya' and implemented its principles in everything that he did.
The Sanskrit word 'Sarvodaya' means 'the welfare of all' !
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