Where, then, does Gandhi’s greatness lie?
Gandhi is the Indian icon. There’s no one who matches him. I would agree with Einstein’s statement that posterity would find it difficult to believe such a man actually lived on this planet. Somehow he is dismissed by young India. That’s sad. He’s become something to be used by “Munnabhai”, for instance. As for explaining his greatness, I will take his words for it. He said of wanting to follow the spiritual path; everything is secondary. Even non-violence is not a strategy, unless there is love behind it; unless you love the person you protest against, it means nothing. He wanted to love others, much further than tolerate. I don’t know how successful he was or would have been as a politician, probably not much. He was more of a spiritual person acting in the world. People sensed that there was something unusual behind him, that there wasn’t any hatred or manipulations; there was purity and they could sense it. Lots of people, saints for instance, have that kind of purity, but not ever
