India League of America

“ Gandhi stood for a gospel which tried to achieve the same end of leveling human dignity by teaching that if we want to make all human beings feel equal in human dignity, much more has to be done by those who have been born to a life of plenty and riches, much more has to be done by them by way of sacrifice, and try to lead a life which sacrifices all the luxuries and comforts that their riches and plenty give them, and try to live down to the life of the man who has been born to poverty and yet who can rise to the highest human dignity by spiritual evolution. ”

“ Gandhi’s triumph did not end when India was free. On the day of its independence, he won anew perhaps a greater triumph. The first government of free India endorsed his principles and declared that the policy of hundreds of millions of human beings would be based upon his faith.
“They said, on that fateful day, ‘We have proclaimed that we, as a nation and people, stand for world peace and cooperation amongst nations. We stand for democracy. The method of democracy is to find peaceful solutions for all problems.’ That is the way of a free people. By violence and hatred, no problem is solved. ”

“ It is indeed an irony that one who devoted his life to the promotion of peace, and was the apostle of non-violence, should have met his end by violence. His loss is not only a loss to India, but also to Pakistan and to the rest of the world.
“We of Pakistan share our grief with India, and mourn his death.
“Mr. Gandhi devoted almost four decades of his life to the struggle for freedom and to the uplift of the poor. Today, ladies and gentlemen, India stands on the edge of a precipice. One false step by the Hindus or the Moslems will send them crashing headlong to their doom. ”

“ We say, ‘Let India now seek the way of peace. Let Gandhi triumph in death in India.’ Yes, but in varying degrees, under different historical circumstances, the struggle goes on everywhere, and neither on this platform nor in this audience are any exempt from it, nor is any nation exempt from it.
“The hope of mankind is bound up in the drama. Who knows the next act? There is not one of us here so free that we can say no to those who seek to triumph by the ways of force and hate. It is we who are the battleground. We are the warriors, and in us the struggle goes on. ”

“ It is for us to be profoundly grateful that once in a great while, in many centuries of history, some Mahatma Gandhi is given to us, and it is for us to be thankful that in our weakness and in our uncertainty, in the fury of our passion, it is yet given us to admire goodness and perhaps in admiring it, to learn more and more to copy it. ”

“ BE IT RESOLVED, THEREFORE, in honor of Mahatma Gandhi’s immortal memory, that we gathered together here today, men and women of many races and creeds, do solemnly declare that we will support by every means we have, by strength of hand and mind, those forces which today in India work for democracy and a progressive way of life. We approve of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership. We put our faith in his integrity. We announce ourselves fellow-workers with those who work with him, believing that he is one of the outstanding leaders of India who can so ably fulfill the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. ”

“ Everyone concerned in a better future of mankind must be deeply moved by the tragic death of Gandhi. He died as a victim of his own principle, the principle of non-violence. He died because in a time of disorder and general irritation in his country, he refused armed protection for himself. It was his unshakable belief that the use of force is an evil in itself and that therefore it must be avoided by those who are striving for supreme justice. ”

“ But if they uphold non-violence, at all costs, if they demand peace first, in order to settle their differences without bloodshed, India achieves the greatness and the unique spiritual strength necessary today for world leadership.
“Never was such a challenge given in such difficult times. It will take miracles of self-control on the part of leaders and people alike. But let them be strengthened by this one fact: Gandhi was right. Only by determined non-violence can the world be saved today. Reason, arbitration, conferences, nothing is enough. Non-violence must come first. ”

“ Non-violence which is deep enough and strong enough to become a faith, absolute in its application to every human situation. Gandhi was right. That for which he lived and for which he died stands today more inexorably true than ever. Oh India, dare to follow Gandhi, that there may be left one voice in the world to speak against the violence of foolish men and foolish nations! ”

“ We are celebrating today the fact that the greatest thing in the world is a great man, but what is a great man? I speak for those who are humble, very humble, in the presence of Gandhi. A great man is a man who dares to be himself against the world, one man against the world; and the greatness of many prophets is the fact that eventually the world goes to them and acknowledges them. ”

“ If any man would understand what we are trying to do in that council in the economic and social and cultural fields throughout the world, it certainly would be the great soul who has passed from amongst us, and to my mind the deepest thing that I learned from the life of this great man is his stand on truth and spirit; for to Gandhi there was such a thing as truth and there was such a thing as spirit and the two are made for one another. ”

“ We are met together today to honor one of the greatest men of human history. The world has been aware of Mahatma Gandhi for scores of years. While he was living, people did not always understand him, nor appreciate him, but they always knew that he was a force in our times, indomitable in his high purpose, unshakable in his integrity, persistently undefeated. ”

“ One is the way that the world has followed through these many centuries, and it has brought us to the atomic bomb. The other is the way marked out by the few great souls of humankind, and it has led us to Mahatma Gandhi. ”

“ It was that power, expressing itself through it — call it what you will, call it spiritual power, call it obedience to great moral laws, call it what you like — underneath all the seeming tangible material things there is a force, a law, power, that if a man dips deeply enough into himself and into the universe, he can find something that makes him greater than all the weapons that men can learn to employ. ”

“ Perhaps Pakistan and India will learn the lesson that in disharmony and violence, there is the way to death; that in peace and non-violence, there is the way to lasting life for all human beings.
“I have listened to these distinguished representatives of the United Nations who struggled in the face of what seemed to be at times almost insuperable odds to find the kind of peace which Gandhi advocated. ”

“ The four hundred million people of that subcontinent know that he gave them freedom without drawing a sword or shedding a drop of blood, and by his way of resistance — by his noble way — he let one of the greatest powers of the world relinquish that empire and give it liberty. ”

“ He tried to set out to achieve the freedom of India. It would be very natural for any one of us, if we were living in a country, to try and fight for freedom. It would be very natural for us, for it is a logical emotion to put our faith in the unanswerability of bullets, because when a bullet goes into a man he is dead, but Gandhi, in carrying out the political mission of India, expressed and forced upon the people a disbelief in bullets. ”

“ I believe there are very few of us who would not take freedom if it were offered to us, but for Gandhi I am quite sure that if he had to achieve India’s freedom by foul or immoral principles, by sacrifice of principles, he would not have had the freedom of India. ”

“ The death of Mahatma Gandhi is a catastrophe, not only for India, but for people of good will everywhere, and I know that countless numbers are sharing our deep regret at his passing and of the loss of wide influence which he has exercised for good and for peace. ”

“ Today we of the Republic of Indonesia join the citizens of India and residents of New York in mourning the death of Mahatma Gandhi. The tragedy has cast a shadow over the whole world. Humanity has lost one of its greatest men. Indonesia has lost a guide, a mentor whose courage and example have long been of strength to us. We are proud to know that Gandhi supported our struggle for independence. We are proud to know that he recognized independence as a prerequisite for Justice.
“Gandhi, the teacher of non-violence, lost his life by violence. ”

“ Why, out of two billion people in the world, are we met here this afternoon and feel above us the influence, the brooding, of a great spirit? What is the power in this silence?
“Sometimes I think that we get so busy trying to master nature that we don’t take time to listen to nature, to learn the lessons that the universe has to tell us in the innermost places of our spirits. Gandhi took time for that. ”

“ The body of man is mortal, but not the spirit. A bullet cannot kill a gospel.
“To the United States, the magic name of Gandhi had a very special significance. It has become more than a bit tiresome to hear the word ‘materialist’ thrown at us and the American way of life. We have had a good deal of difficulty in clarifying that concept to many foreign dignitaries. Because democracy is based on the dignity of the individual, the practical application of the democratic form has resulted in the widest distribution of goods and services any country has ever known. ”

“ The charter of the United Nations, in principle and purpose, was based on the principles and teachings of Gandhi — non violence, peace-loving, never afraid, giving love and peace to the world and never resorting to violence in self defense. ”

“ There is a third attitude. The third approach to our problem is the approach of Gandhi. We should work for the enlargement of human freedom in every sphere, but we must achieve our ends through non-violence. ”

“ WARREN R. AUSTIN, Representative of the United States of America to the Security Council of the United Nations:
“Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, the tragic death of Mahatama Gandhi on January 30th evoked instantaneous expressions of regret and high tribute throughout the world. These expressions confirmed — if indeed confirmation were necessary -- the greatness of his role. Mahatma Gandhi not only was a national leader; he was also a symbol of the aspirations towards which men everywhere strive. ”

“ A fanatic took a weapon and shot him and said, ‘Gandhi is dead,’ but the triumph of the insight that Gandhi had is that Gandhi is not dead, that there is no weapon that can destroy him, that in a real sense he has become a part of us in a new and more vital way. ”

“ The first is that I believe that there is a significance for the peoples and the nations of the world who have gone mad during recent generations over theories of racial superiority, that it was a slender brown man in far-off India who has become the greatest moral and spiritual leader of the world since the days of Jesus Christ, and he did not worship force and materialism — not the mass murder of war, but a spirit of love and the gentleness of non-violence and peace. ”

“ The admiration for Gandhi in all countries of the world rests on the recognition — mostly a subconscious recognition, of the fact that in our time of utter moral decadence, he was the only statesman to stand for a higher level of human relationship in the political sphere. ”

“ Ladies and gentlemen, it is superfluous for me or any other speaker to introduce the greatness of Mahatma Gandhi to any audience over the whole world. The 20th century has produced so many big names who have achieved great things in the world — statesmen, invaders, defenders, scientists, discoverers, inventors of all sorts — hut none of them occupies the place which Mahatma Gandhi occupies in the hearts of the world, and none of them got the fame, the undying fame and the noble name which Mahatma Gandhi obtained. ”

“ And the drama is that that struggle goes on and on. It is the drama that brings men and women out of the busy scenes of life, in crowded cities, men and women who have sought the gods of society, men and women of the breed who have produced the atomic bomb. ”

“ While the people who were mastering nature were making an atomic bomb, he was discovering something else — that there are forces deep down under the surface that man can tap if he obeys the universe’s laws, that give him a power that even an atomic bomb can’t touch. ”

“ I would stress particularly the fact that his was a life of sacrifice; in the leveling of human dignity amongst all classes of the human race, the philosophy that finds most favor in the West is the philosophy of what I might call plenty. That is to say that the highest aim of human endeavor should be to lift human beings from material poverty to material plenty. ”

“ Perhaps we of the world, white and black, Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, believer and non-believer, may become as wise as the man who died but a few days ago, and learn that unless we can find that kind of peace that there is going to be only destruction for all of civilization. ”

“ But new they honored him for all he was and did and they knew in their hearts that true religion is a tie that binds fellow men, and that they too, were bound to him. And this discovery, which must have been shared by great numbers of people in all lands, gives hope that his ideals will live and help to bring the world at last to wisdom and gentleness and peace. ”

“ He is no more, but he is there in spirit, and I have no doubt that his spirit will grow in ever-widening circles as time passes on, and his voice will be heard among the voices of all the great religious and moral teachers of the past from pulpits of the world. ”