Ashes, again

(Note: I had planned on writing about Gandhi today regardless, but after yesterday's bombing in Mumbai, his message is unfortunately even more pressing and poignant than ever. My heart goes out to those who died in Mumbai and to those friends and loved ones they left behind in the wake of yet again, senseless violence. May they rest in peace.)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Mahãtmã, the grand soul, has become synonymous with the independence of India. Today, I picked up my visa for my journey to India, where I will be flying into Mumbai in a month and moving southwards to Madurai, where the Gandhi memorial museum is, and where I intend to be on October 2 to honor his birthday. It is because of his thoughts and actions that that visa reads "Bhãrata Ganarajya," the Republic of India. The sub-continent of India has gone through many reincarnations over the centuries including the Aryan Invasion, Ashok's Buddhist Empire, the Mughal Dynasty responsible for building the Taj Mahal, and most recently as a colony of the United Kingdom.

Gandhi, went to study law in London and returned to his India where he took up the cause for her independence. He is recognized for donning the dhoti, or loin cloth of the working class, the symbol of India's poverty. He was a main voice in the Quit India movement, a non-violent protest of the British occupation of India.

Gandhi's concept of non-violence stems from the Bhagavad Gita's idea of ahimsa, the doctrine of not harming another sentient being. The Gita is a complicated story in that the protagonist, Arjuna, is in the middle of a civil war in which he sees friends, brothers, and cousins on both sides, poised for battle, ready to kill each other.

Arjuna sits down dejectedly in the middle of the battlefield, throws down his bow and arrows, and refuses to fight. He asks his charioteer, who is no less than the embodiment of Krishna, what he should do. How can he fight his friends and relatives?

Krishna gives him a difficult answer. Arjuna must fight because he is a kshatriya, a warrior. It is his dharma, or duty, to do so. Krishna tells him that he must not weep for those who will or have died. It is all temporal in the grand scheme of things. Our mortal sufferings are inconsequential to the universe as a whole. Time is greater than us all. Time is the destroyer, creator, and preserver:  Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu all in one.

However, the Gita is also the greatest pre-Buddhist source of ahimsa, non-violence. It is an acknowledgment on the one hand that there is violence in the world, but it is not ours to add to it. A paradox to be sure. Arjuna is troubled, but does agree to fulfill his dharma and fight.

Gandhi is said to have read the Gita daily and produced a 1929 translation of it into his native Gujarati. From his philosophical guidance, India became independent from Britain, without a war of independence. An unprecedented event in world history.

Unfortunately, as with the Gita's acknowledgment, there is violence in the world. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu-radical who blamed Gandhi for concessions to Pakistan. Pakistan and India have in the meanwhile become nuclear-armed enemies and the bombings in Mumbai three years ago were attributed to Pakistani militants.

No group has either claimed, nor denied involvement in yesterday's fatal bombings in Mumbai. It is a visceral reminder of Gandhi's plea for non-violence, but a stark reminder that this world does indeed have violence and we cannot shut our eyes to it. Dharma does not allow that.