Mahatma Gandhi and some other latter-day saints

If anyone had to ask me who the greatest man of the 20th century was I would reply Mahatma Gandhi without any hesitation at all. In fact, Gandhi was the most profound and most spiritual human being to exist since Jesus Christ.

There is much in common between all spiritual leaders, the most obvious being the elimination of materialism. In our New Testament we learn that Jesus was always poor from day one whereas in the East both Buddha and Gandhi divested themselves of princely and upper middle class trappings and privileges respectively to live the simple life of an ascetic.

Very few of us would not immediately recognise a bald and bespectacled man, who, painfully thin, leans on a large stick wearing a simple white dhoti and, only when its cold, a simple white shawl.

This is the universally known iconic image of Mahatma Gandhi; the one that is found on stamps and coins, instantly recognisable and still very much revered.

I have visited the cenotaph in Delhi where the mortal remains of the great teacher Gandhi-gi or Bapu, father, were cremated. Set in a lovely park on the west bank of the river Yamuna, the black marble monument bears just the final words of the martyred Gandhi - "Hey Ram" (Oh God) - as the Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse shot him in the chest not even six months after independence.

Whenever I have been to Delhi, whatever the season, there are always queues and queues of people waiting to file past the cenotaph. People from all over India and the world still cherish the memory of one of the very few living saints the world has had the privilege to host. The park in which the cenotaph lies is a haven of peace in the middle of the hustle and bustle of New Delhi.

India won its independence 60 years ago this August. It is common knowledge that this would have been impossible to achieve without Gandhi. The non-aggression civil resistance that he directed against the British Raj took a long time to reap dividends but in the end there was no choice and Lord Mountbatten was sent as the last viceroy to grant independence to a nation of teeming millions. That was 1947.

Sadly, the great religious divide that fomented the most horrendous sectarian violence marred it all. The millions of Hindus and the millions of Muslims who crossed the newly-created borders between the newly-created Islamic haven of Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India deeply resented the complete and cataclysmic upheaval that the disagreements of Jinna and Nehru had brought about. Violence was inevitable and soon a bloodbath of unprecedented proportions enveloped India. Families that had lived peacefully cheek by jowl for centuries began to kill each other all in the name of religion. The final death toll is unknown.

Gandhi went to Calcutta and there embarked on his second hunger strike, which, in the end, when he was near death, single-handedly brought sectarian violence to a close; such was the power of Gandhi's simplicity and his sincere devotion to the common man by living as such.

Unlike other do-gooders like Evita Peron he practised what he preached and did not cover himself in silks and satins and place diamond parures around his wife's neck. Gandhi owned nothing apart from the clothes he stood up in and the spinning wheel that he used to make them! People who are taken in by soi-disant spiritual leaders who go around in gold-plated Rolls Royces should have their heads examined.

Gandhi's genuine asceticism was what made him truly revered. The huge respect the enormous population held him in is what caused the bloodletting to finally cease in those terrible months in 1947.

Above all it was his attitude to organised and institutionalised religion that has always impressed his admirers, myself among them. When confronted by Muslim and Hindu extremists he rebuked them by saying that he was a Hindu, also a Muslim, also a Christian, also a Sikh and also a Jew. He had no patience at all for the materialistic and bigoted ritualistic side of religion that engenders fear and hatred. In fact he said that "...we can only win over the opponent by love, never by hate. Hate is the subtlest form of violence. Hatred injures the hater, never the hated".

Such moral rectitude comparable to Jesus' own dictum of "turning the other cheek" can only be maintained at a very high personal cost and this was a price Gandhi was prepared to pay to emancipate his hitherto fragmented feudal country and set it on its way to becoming the "world's largest democracy".

"Modern civilisation as represented by the West today in my opinion has given matter a place which, by rights, belongs to the spirit. It has therefore put violence upon the throne of triumph and held truth and innocence under bondage." These words spoken by Gandhi could not be more appropriate to the sorry situation of the world today.

Where is the spirit of Bapu today? The only human being to come anywhere near the spirituality and determined strength that is found in Gandhi's self-denial was another by-product of India, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, of whom there is absolutely no doubt that Gandhi-gi would have thoroughly approved.

I sometimes ask what it is about this fascinating subcontinent, which I have come to love so much, that can produce superhuman figures like Buddha, Gandhi and, by adoption, the Albanian Mother Teresa whose power, like our own Jesus Christ, lies in the denial of materialism and in truly and sincerely loving one's neighbour as oneself.

As the world remains strangled, like Laocoon and his sons, by the serpents of greed and lust, there seems to be no one of the stature of Mahatma Gandhi to put a stop to it or at least try to.

The governments of the world wrestle in vain with the daily nightmares of Iraq and Afghanistan and the psychological vortex of contention, Jerusalem, and all it entails. They try to be peacekeepers uselessly fighting fire with fire. The war on terrorism is in direct conflict with the words of Christ that he who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Since 9/11 we have been living under threat as never before.

It is not just the maniac who could press the nuclear button who invades and disturbs our nightly sleep now but also the man next door who could be a terrorist too! We have become suspicious of everyone; of people with a different skin-colour especially. We forget our Christian principles and would rather bury our heads in the sand and pretend we do not know that desperate people are drowning in the Mediterranean around us as they risk everything they have, even life itself, to escape famine, repression, torture and death. Where is our much-vaunted Catholicism then? Burnt in a kaxxa infernali (aerial fireworks display?

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