The new generation has to experiment with the Mahatma, and his art of resistance | The Indian Express

The new generation has to experiment with the Mahatma, and his art of resistance | The Indian Express

Written by Avijit Pathak |Updated: October 26, 2019 1:25:48 pm

Avijit Pathak teaches at JNU

The new generation has to experiment with the Mahatma, and his art of resistance

I ask myself: How was it possible for him to be religious, yet so elastic, dialogic, open and inclusive? Even though he chose the political domain as his field of sadhana, never did he allow religion to be reduced to an ideology of hatred and division.

For Gandhi, Freedom would mean the activation of the “soul force”. (Illustration: C R Sasikumar)

Truth, Jiddu Krishnamurti said at the finest moment of his self-realisation, is a pathless land. Yes, no dogma, no sect or no organisation can take us to the realm of truth because fixed ideologies often condition the mind, and limit our horizons. Hence, I have no hesitation in saying that I am not a Gandhian — the way I am neither a Marxist nor an Ambekarite. Yet, as a wanderer, I keep the windows of my mind open, and converse with all these thinkers; and these days, I feel, my engagement with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has acquired a new meaning.