Yesterday's Words - Today Letter from Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s “Experiments in Truth” and life have guided me since 1983 to always “stay on spiritual truth” i.e. Satyagraha and to speak and act non-violently, i.e. Ahimsa.

“After I am gone no single person will be able completely to represent me.
But a little bit of me will live in many of you.
As you have given me the privilege of speaking to you I am laying my heart bare.
If you find me speaking without reserve, and if you think that I seem to transgress the limits that courtesy imposes upon me, pardon me for the Liberty I may be taking.
If nonviolence is to be evolved in individuals, societies or nations truth has to be told, how ever harsh or unpopular it may appear to be for the moment.
One thing is certain if the mad race for armaments continues;
it is bound to result in the slaughter such has never occurred in history.
If there is a Victor left, the very victory will be living death for the nation that emerges victorious.
There is no escape from the impending doom save through a bold and unconditional
acceptance of a nonviolent method with all its glorious implications.
Democracy can only be saved through nonviolence, i.e. ahimsa.
My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest.
This can never happen except through nonviolence.
In nonviolence, the masses have a weapon, which enables a child, a woman or even a decrepit old man to resist the mightiest government successfully.
If your spirit is strong, mere lack of physical strength ceases to be a handicap.
A nonviolent revolution is not a program of seizure of power.
The first condition of nonviolence is justice all-around in every department of life.
If one does not practice nonviolence in one’s personal relationships with others
and hopes to use it in bigger affairs, one is vastly mistaken.
Nonviolence to be a creed has to be all-pervasive.
I cannot be nonviolent about one activity of mine and violent about others.
That would be a policy, not a life force.
Nonviolence cannot be a mere policy. It must be a creed or a passion.
My soul refuses to be satisfied so long as it is a helpless witness
of a single wrong or a single misery.
But it is not possible for me to mend every wrong or hold myself free
of blame for all the wrong I see. An unjust law its self is a species of violence.
There may be far more violence in the slow torture of men and animals, the starvation and exploitation to which they are subjected out of shellfish greed,
the wanton humiliation and oppression of the weak and the killing of their self respect that we witness all-around us today, than in the mere taking of life.
A man or a woman with a passion expresses it in every little act.
Therefore, he or she who is possessed by nonviolence
will express it in the family circle, in their dealings with neighbors, in business and in their dealings with opponents.
During my experience, I have not yet come across a situation when I had to say I was helpless, that I had no remedy in terms of nonviolence.
As the means so is the end. The means may be like unto a seed, the end to a tree;
there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the ends as there
is between a seed and a tree. We reap exactly as we sow.
What you do may seem insignificant,
but it is very important that you do it.” - M.K Gandhi