The Life of Mahatma Gandhi

January 30, 1948, Friday

"Bapu (father), your watch must be feeling very neglected. You would not look at it today," said Abha, the young wife of Kanu Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma's cousin.

"Why should I, since you are my timekeeper?" Gandhi retorted.

"But you don't look at the timekeepers," Manu noted. Manu is the granddaughter of another cousin.

Gandhi laughed.

By this time Gandhi was walking on the grass near the prayer ground. A congregation of about 500 had assembled for the regular evening devotions.

"I am late by ten minutes," Gandhi mused aloud. "I hate being late. I should be here at the stroke of five."

He quickly cleared the five steps up the level of the prayer ground. Most of the people rose; many edged forward; some helped to clear a lane for him; those who were nearest bowed to his feet.

Just then, a man elbowed his way out of the congregation into the lane. He looked as if he wished to prostrate himself in the customary obeisance of the devout. Manu tried to stop him and caught hold of his hand. He pushed her away so that she fell and, planting himself about two feet in front of Gandhi, fired three shots from a small automatic pistol.

The first bullet entered Gandhi's abdomen three and a half inches to the right down the middle of the body and two and a half inches above the navel and came out through the back.

The second bullet penetrated the seventh intercostal space one inch to the right of the midlde line and likewise came out at the back.

The third shot hit one inch above the right nipple and four inches to the right of the middle line and embedded itself in the lung.

One bullet, Dr Bhargava says, probably passed through the heart and another might have cut a big blood vessel.

Devadas, Gandhi's youngest son, touched his father's skin and gently pressed his arm. Gandhi's head lays in Abha's lap. His face wore a peaceful smile. He seemed asleep.

"So serene was the face and so mellow the halo of divine light that surrounded the body that it seemed almost sacrilegious to grieve ..." Devadas wrote later.

That was 30 January, 1948, the day Mahatma Gandhi at 78 died. Mahatma was what he had always been: a private citizen without wealth, property, official title, official post, academic distinction, scientific achievement, or artistic gift.

Mahatma was a moral man, and a civilization not richly endowed with morality felt still further impoverished when the assassin's bullets ended his life.

'I never saw Gandhi. I do not know his language. I never set foot in his country and yet I feel the same sorrow as if I had lost someone near and dear.' Leon Blum, the French Socialist wrote.

Professor Albert Einstein wrote: 'Gandhi had demonstrated that a powerful human following can be assembled not only through the cunning game of the usual political manoeuvres and trickeries but through the cogent example of a morally superior conduct of life. In our time of utter moral decadence he was the only statesman to stand for a higher human relationship in the political sphere.'

General Douglas MacArthur, supreme Allied military commander said: 'In the evolution of civilization, if it is to survive, all men cannot fail eventually to adopt Gandhi's belief that the process of mass application of force to resolve contentious issues is fundamentally not only wrong but contains within itself the germs of self-destruction.'

"I know no other man of any time or indeed in recent history who so forcefully and convincingly demonstrated the power of spirit over material things," Sir Stafford Cripps wrote.

In New York, a 12-year-old girl had gone into the kitchen for breakfast. The radio was on and it brought the news of the shooting of Gandhi. There, in the kitchen, the girl, the maid and the gardener held a prayer meeting and prayed and wept.

Just so, millions in all countries mourned Gandhi's death. The whole world has been plunged into mourning by the death of this extraordinary man. They did not quite know why; they did not quite know what he stood for. But he was a 'good man' and good men are rare.

Nathuram Vinayak Godse, age 35, was the editor and publisher of a Hindu Mahasabha weekly in Poona and he was a high-degree Chitpawan Brahman. Godse resented Mahatma's insistence that refugees be evacuated from the mosques and he was bitter because no demands were made on the Muslims. At the trial Godse said he was brooding intensely on the atrocities perpetrated on Hinduism and its dark and deadly future if left to face Islam outside and Gandhi inside. Gose testified, 'and ... I decided all of a sudden to take the extreme step against Gandhi.' Hindus like Madan Lal and Godse and their ideological sponsors were incensed by the presence of Muslims at Hindu services and the reading of selections from the Quran. Godse said at his trial, at which he was sentenced to be hanged: "Before I fired the shots I actually wished him well and bowed to him in reverence."

Gandhi had always insisted that those who differ with him are not necessarily evil. Instead, they should try to convert him to right thinking and right doing. "I deserve no praise; I would deserve praise only if I fell as a result of an explosion and yet retained a smile on my face and no malice against the doer. No one should look down on the misguided youth who had thrown the bomb," Gandhi told his devout followers.

In response to Godse's obeisance and the bows Gandhi touched his palm together, smiled and blessed him. At that moment Godse pulled the trigger. Gandhi fell, and died murmuring, :Oh, God!"

All around us, material things had power over spirit. The sudden flash of Gandhi's death revealed a vast darkness. No one who survived him had tried so hard - and with so much success - to live a life of truth, kindness, self-effacement, humility, service and non-violence throughout a long, difficult struggle against mighty adversaries. He fought passionately and unremittingly but he kept his hands clean in the midst of battle. He fought without malice or falsehood or hate.

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SOURCE:

The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer; Harper Collins Publishers 1997

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Barack Obama: Audacity of Hope (Part 2)

OBAMA: The Audacity of Hope

"One thing I've discovered as I get older is that you have to do what is satisfying to you. In fact that's one of the advantages of old age, that you've finally learned what matters to you. It is hard to know that at twenty-seven. And the problem is that nobody else can answer that question for you. You can only figure it out on your own."

"I am getting to an age where I have a sense of what satisfies me, and although I am perhaps more tolerant of compromise, I know that my satisfaction is not to be found in the glare of television cameras or the applause of the crowd. Instead, it seems to come more often now from knowing that in some demonstrable way I've been able to help people live their lives with some measure of dignity.

"Benjamin Franklin once wrote to his mother explaining why he had devoted so much of his time to public service: 'I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich.'

That's what satisfies me now - being useful to my family and the people who put me where I am, leaving behind a legacy that will make our children's lives more hopeful than our own."

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When I read those passages from Obama's book, I thought I was the man myself. Ya, I now feel that way too. Age had caught up with me and youth had passed me by. I now need to do what really satisfies me, not just doing things just to earn some money. There are two fundamental things that is far more important to life - values and ideals.

In Obama's words: "If I am wiser, it is mainly because I have traveled a little further down the path I have chosen for myself, and have gotten a glimpse of where it may lead, for good and for ill."

Ya, I think I am far wiser than I was before. The journey of my life had been rough and painstaking. I had toiled for decades, achieving nothing, except for the last few years where I was greatly blessed. Today, I had some success to savour and feel good. God willing I hope to continue with what I am doing for another few years where I can contribute back to the society - to do thing that are useful to my family and the people who helps to put me where I am now, and most of all, to those who needs my help and assistance. I hope to be able to leave behind some kind of legacy that will make my children's lives more hopeful than my own.

Life, afterall, is about achieving something satisfying.

This too is my Audacity of Hope!

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Barack Obama: Audacity of Hope

BARACK OBAMA

The Audacity of Hope

"We have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done."

_______________________________________________________

When I decided to run for the United States Senate, I wasn't so sure of myself. I had preserved my independence, my good name, and my marriage, all of which, statistically speaking, had been placed at risk the moment I set foot in the state capital.

But the years had also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my getting older; each successive year will make you more intimately acquainted with all of your flaws - the blind spots, the recurring habits of thought that will almost certainly worsen with time, as surely as the hitch in your walk turns to pain in your hip. In me, one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me. It's a flaw that is endemic to modern life and one that is nowhere more evident than in the field of politics. Whether politics actually encourages the trait or simply attracts those who possess it is unclear.

Someone once said that: "Every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectation or make up for his father's mistakes."

I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else.

In any event, it was a consequence of that relentlessness that I decided to challenge a sitting Democratic incumbent for his congressional seat in the 2000 election cycle. It was an ill-considered race, and I lost badly - the sort of drubbing that awakens you to the fact that:

"Life is not Obliged to Work Out as you'd Planned."

A year and a half later, the scars of that loss sufficiently healed, I had lunch with a media consultant who had been encouraging me for some time to run for statewide office. As it happened, the lunch was scheduled for late September 2001.

"You realize, don't you, that the political dynamics have changed," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

We both looked down at the newspaper. There, on the front page, was Osama bin Laden.

"Hell of a thing, isn't it?" he said, shaking his head.

"Really bad luck. You can't change your name of course. Voters are suspicious of that kind of thing. Maybe if you were at the start of your career, you know, you could use a nickname or something. But now ..." His voice trailed off and he shrugged apologetically before signaling the waiter to bring us the check.

I suspected he was right, and that realization ate away at me. For the first time in my career, I began to experience the envy of seeing younger politicians succeed where I had failed.

The pleasure of politics began to pale against the meaner tasks of the jobs: the begging for money, the long drives home and clipped phone conversation with a wife who had stuck by me so far but was pretty fed up with raising our children alone and was beginning to question my priorities.

I began to harbor doubts about the path I had chosen. I began to feel, after years of commitment to a particular dream, after years of waiting, to realize that it's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take me. The dream will not happen, and I now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grown-up and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Despair - I'm not sure I went through all the stages prescribed by the experts. At some point, though, I arrived at acceptance - of my limits, and, in a way, my mortality. I refocused on my work in the state senate and took satisfaction from the reforms and initiatives that my position afforded. I spent more time at home, and watched my daughters grow, and properly cherished my wife, and thought about my long-term financial obligations. I exercised, and read novels, and came to appreciate how the earth rotated around the sun and the seasons came and went without any particular exertions on my part.

And it was this acceptance that allowed me to come up with the thoroughly cockeyed idea of running for the Illinois Senate seat in 2004.

An up-or-out strategy was how I described it to my wife, one last shot to test out my ideas before I settled into a calmer, more stable, and better-paying existence. And she - perhaps more out of pity than conviction - agreed to this one last race, though she also suggested that given the orderly life she preferred for our family, I shouldn't necessarily count on her vote.

I let her take comfort in the long odds against me.

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In 2000, Barack Obama was unsuccessful in his bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

On March 2004, Barack Obama won the Democratic primary election to become the States Senator of Illinois.

On February 2007, Barack Obama began his run for the US Presidency. He beats Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential primaries and become the Democratic party nominee.

In the 2008 United States General Election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain.

On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States.

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Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current president of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii.

Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory in the March 2004 Democratic primary election for the United States Senator from Illinois brought him to national attention. His prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. He comfortably won election to the U.S. Senate in November 2004.

He began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. On October 9, 2009, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.[4]