There is no god higher than truth
MARTYR’S DAY’ EVENT AT ST.JOSEPH UNIVERSITY, BANGALORE ON JANUARY 30, 2025
Esteemed Pro Chancellor Fr. Swebert D’Silva, Vice Chancellor Dr. Victor Lobo & faculty members & students of St. Joseph’s University, distinguished invitees, ladies & gents.
I am greatly honoured to be invited to deliver the keynote address at the ‘Martyr’s Day’ event of this renowned university’s Gandhi Centre which former President Mr. Ram Nath Kovind inaugurated in October 2023. I have titled It ‘Gandhiji’s vital contribution to Women’s Emancipation & Empowerment’
For many centuries the traditional role of Indian women was strictly confined to the family and home, even though India has had heroic warrior queens like Razia Sultan of the Delhi Sultanate, Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi & Rani Chennama of Kittur
During the colonial period organizations like the Women’s Indian Association and National Council for Indian Women, founded in the early 1900s, did exist but consisted only of aristocratic women like the Maharanis of Baroda and Bhopal. They maintained close connections with the British and focused mainly on “charities”. Ordinary Indian women were totally absent from the public domain.
Quite early in the national freedom struggle Gandhi had declared “As long as women do not come into public life and purify it, we are not likely to attain Swaraj. Even if we did, I would have no use for that Swaraj in which women have not made their full contribution”. He called on them to join the freedom struggle. They initially came as volunteers at Congress sessions but later, in thousands, as active participants in his non cooperation, anti foreign cloth & salt satyagrahas, The renowned poetess Sarojini Naidu became one of his deputies.
At his gentle urging women donated their jewellery, marched in processions, sold khadi at street corners and provided sanctuary in their homes to “satyagrahis”.
About his jewellery collections Louis Fischer has written “Gandhi was an incurable and irresistible fund raiser. He found special relish in stripping women of their jewellery”. He quoted Gandhi : “I want to create in them a distaste for much ornamentation, and a desire to part with their jewellery for the sake of the poor”.
When the 1942 ‘Quit India ’ Movement was launched and Gandhi and other leaders were arrested and taken away from the Gowalia public meeting in Bombay, a brave young woman named Aruna Asaf Ali unfurled the Indian flag at that venue. Another brave woman Usha Mehta, along with three other such women, set up and operated a secret “Congress Radio from somewhere in India”. Through Gandhi’s non-violent national movement, Indian women for the first time combined their roles as wives and mothers with their new roles of “non-violent warriors”.
When Independence came women were accorded full legal equality with men. In the first Union Cabinet the health minister was Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, a princess of Kapurthala, who in 1915 had given up royal comforts to become Gandhi’s disciple. Mrs Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was India’s first Ambassador to the Soviet Union and subsequently to the US & Mexico. In 1953 she was elected President of the UN General Assembly. Within fifteen years thereafter, Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister of India and continued in that high office for 16 years with only an intervening two year break. Since then, numerous Indian women have risen to high positions in politics, diplomacy, business, banking, industry, biotechnology, newsmedia and other professions including aviation. Since independence India has had two women Presidents, 17 women Chief Ministers & 24 Governors.
Prime Minister India Gandhi has lauded Gandhi in the following glowing & insightful words “Mahatma Gandhi brought a new dimension in our lives. When he spoke of non violence he meant not only the avoidance of violent action but cleansing our minds and hearts of hatred & bitterness. He unveiled the spiritual potential & political power of illiterate & humble have-nots & pointed out that the only programmes worth promoting were those which could be translating into action. He said that every decision & programme should be judged from the viewpoint of the poorest & weakest”
As importantly, women’s empowerment and self help groups have sprouted in various parts of India, including the rural areas. The most notable of these is SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association), based in Ahmedabad. It was established in April, 1972 by Mrs. Ela Bhat, a lawyer and Gandhi inspired social activist, who was deeply concerned by the ruthless exploitation of rural women who came to the cities in search of work. SEWA strives to obtain for these women, initially “headloaders” and cart-pullars in Ahmedabad’s cloth market, (who were mostly illiterate harijan women) fair wages, satisfactory working conditions, legal protection and welfare measures. In 1989 it had 25,917 members, all of whom were in Gujarat. In 2024, its members were all over India and numbered 3.2 million. They were now not only manual urban workers but also included rural vendors & diverse home based workers.
Vivek Pinto, in his ‘ Ganhi’s Vision and Values’ has written “What is particularly Gandhian about the heroic struggle of these women is that they have resorted to ‘direct action’ – engaging with and writing to employers and the police – and formed themselves into cooperatives, emphasizing non-violence, self reliance and development of financial and managerial self sufficiency.”
All these impressive gains in the status and empowerment of Indian women are a direct outcome of Gandhi’s non-violent national movement and his insistence on women’s participation in it. In most European countries, as also in the US, women secured the right to vote only after many years of arduous struggle, and only after 1918. However, much ground still remains to be covered as Indian women have not even achieved 50% equality with men in political and other fields.
In 1941 Gandhi had written “Though Satyagraha has brought India’s women out from their darkness as nothing else could have in such an incredibly short space of time, Congressmen have not yet felt the need to see that women become equal partners in the fight for Swaraj. They have not realized that woman must be the true helpmate of man in the mission of service”. Sadly, this mindset not only persists among many male politicians but in many parts of India, verbal & physical attacks on women,have greatly increased.
As this renowned university is a Christian Institution I would also like to mention Gandhi’s great reverence for Christ.
Gandhi’s great respect for Christ and the extent to which he drew inspiration from him are revealed in his following statements:
“What does Jesus mean to me? To me, he was one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had.”
“Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love”
“Jesus, a man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act”
“Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. His was non-violence par excellence”
“Jesus expressed as no other could, the spirit and will of God. It is in this sense that I see him and recognize as the Son of God. And because the life of Jesus has the significance and the transcendence to which I have alluded, I believe that he belongs not solely to Christianity but to the entire world, to all races and people. It matters little under what flag, name or doctrine they may work, profess a faith or worship a God inherited from their ancestors”
On seeing a painting of the crucified Christ in Rome, Gandhi remarked “I saw there at once that nations like individuals could only be made through the agony of the cross and in no other way. Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself.”
“Jesus never uttered a loftier or a grander Truth than when he said that wisdom cometh out of the mouth of babes. I believe it. …..If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are are to carry on real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”
Gandhi’s “closest friend” Rev. C. F. Andrews, in his book 'Mahatma Gandhi : His Life and Ideas', has described “Satyagraha” as ‘Corporate moral resistance” and added “since the days of the early Christian Church, no such effective acts of passive resistance have been organized as those which Mahatma Gandhi inspired.”
On one occasion when British critics flayed him for coercing the govt, with his fast Gandhi smilingly replied “the same kind of coercion which Jesus exercised from the cross”
Of all his disciples, S. K. George was the most emphatic about the gratitude Christianity and the West owed to Gandhi. In his book Gandhi’s Challenge to Christianity’ he has written “Gandhi today is giving a practical demonstration of the applicability of the teachings of Jesus the Master, to modern problems. That was a sorely needed demonstration. The Christian Church despite all its adoration of Jesus, its exaltation of him to the throne of Divinity, has all along relegated his teachings as impracticable idealism. His great enunciation of the law of love as the only rule of life for man as a child of God, though repeated ad nauseam by professing Christians, has continuously been given the go-by in practice, corporate and individual. Modern politics and economics, with their dread alternatives of a unified world order or internecine conflict and threatened with extinction by science, may yet compel the West to turn to the teachings of Jesus as offering the only way out”
Writing from the Abbey of Gethsemani, Thomas Merton concludes his introduction to ‘Gandhi on Non Violence’ as follows “Gandhi’s principles are extremely pertinent today, more pertinent even than when they were conceived and worked out in practice in the ashrams and villages of India. Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism and intolerance. There can be no peace on earth without the inner change that brings man to his “right mind”. Gandhi’s observations on the prerequisites and disciplines involved in Satyagraha, the vow of Truth, are required reading for anyone seriously interested in man’s fate in the nuclear age”
In volume 1 of his ten volume ‘The Story of Civilization’ eminent historian Will Durant has lauded Gandhi thus “He did not mouth the name of Christ, but acted as if he accepted every word on the Sermon on the Mount. Not since St. Francis of Assisi has any life known to history been so marked by gentleness, disinterestedness, simplicity and forgiveness of enemies.”
I heartily commend St. Joseph’s University for establishing its Gandhi Centre and urge all those involved in doing so & managing it to ensure that Gandhiji’s vital contribution of Satyagraha, Sarvodaya & Sarva Dharma Samabhava and Women’s Emancipation & Empowerment to India & the world are always kept brightly burnished.
MRS MARGARET ALVA IS FORMER UNION MINISTER FOR WOMEN, CHILD DEVELOPMENT & SPORTS & GOVERNOR OF UTTARAKHAND & RAJASTHAN