Mahatma Gandhi and Sahaja Yoga
- Broadcaster: Well, you mentioned Mahatma Gandhi – we have a couple of minutes left, what was it like being around him?
- Shri Mataji: Oh, he was a very sweet person because – I was a child when I joined, he used to call me Nepali because my face has little Nepali features – and you see, he was very strict, with everybody else, I should say, with all elders, and all that, but with children, he was very sweet, extremely sweet person. And he would sit down with me, very seriously ask me very sweet questions and things. It fills me with great pride and happiness that we had such a great man in our country, who delivered us from the bondage of slavery, which is the worst thing that one can have. And I myself took a very dynamic role for that; myself, I went to jail and they gave me electric shocks and put me on the ice and all sorts of things they did to me
- Broadcaster: How terrible!
- Shri Mataji: Yeah, horrible – I was about eighteen years of age, that time, and … but doesn’t matter; my father himself was sent to jail and my mother, she was sent to jail, and had problems. But then my father was the member of parliament and all that. Whatever has happened has happened; we should forget about it.
- Broadcaster: It’s in the past.
- Shri Mataji: All in the past …
- Broadcaster: Do you think that movie “Gandhi” was a realistic portrayal?
- Shri Mataji: Yes, it was quite realistic, in the sense, whatever was shown was realistic, and it was nice they didn’t show much of it because it doesn’t look gracious. I think it was all very nicely done. But one thing is there, after all – you see, Gandhiji had his own style of talking, and Indians don’t talk that way, you see, in that sharp, brilliant manner; they talk in a very … I should say, very persuasive, sweet manner. So, I think that actor was good but little bit sharp in his answers and rather over-brilliant.
Mahatma Gandhi and children
"I was with Mahatma Gandhi also because he liked me very much as a child. So, I stayed on with him then I used to come back to study again, go back to him. He used to call me “Nepali” because my face is a Nepali face. And, he used to talk to me as if he is talking to his grandmother sometimes. [laughter] It was very sweet and he was a very sweet man – extremely sweet person to children. Very strict with himself and strict with others - elderly people - but with children he was very, very sweet and kind and would try to learn from children lot of things. It was surprising how he understood that there’s lot of wisdom with the children sometimes than with the older people who are mixed up."
Biography of Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi
Major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of Satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence—which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. He is commonly known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi (Sanskrit: mahātmā or "Great Soul", an honorific first applied to him by Rabindranath Tagore) and in India also as Bapu (Gujarati: bāpu or "Father"). He is officially honoured in India as the Father of the Nation; his birthday, 2 October, is commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Non-Violence.
Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers in protesting excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, for expanding women's rights, for building religious and ethnic amity, for ending untouchability, for increasing economic self-reliance, but above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from foreign domination. Gandhi famously led Indians in the Non-cooperation movement in 1922 and in protesting the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (249 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, on numerous occasions, in both South Africa and India.
Gandhi was a practitioner of non-violence and truth, and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and social protest.
(read more about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi - source wikipedia encyclopedia)
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