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Today is Mahamata Ghandi’s birthday so I felt it appropriate to write a short article. Born 2 October 1869  – 30 January 1948), he is often remember as a  pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian independence movement. What makes him stand out as a political activist is perhaps his philosophy of “Change through non-violence”. He was the pioneer of Satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon Ahimsa or total non-violence—which led India to independence and has inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is commonly known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi (Sanskrit: mahātmā or ‘Great Soul’. He is officially honoured in India as the Father of the Nation; his birthday, 2 October, is commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday and worldwide as the International Day of Non-Violence.

His early life and connection to South Africa is often overlooked. He first employed non-violent civil disobedience while working as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa during the resident Indian community’s struggle for civil rights.

As a practitioner of Ahimsa, he swore to speak the truth and advocated that others do the same. Gandhi lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had spun by hand on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food and also undertook long fasts as a means of both self-purification and social protest. Again we see one of the world’s great leaders advocating the natural laws of the Universe and the Law of Attraction. “What you put out, will be returned to you, multiplied.” Ghandi may be the prime example of how to bring about real world change in turbulent times my using the Laws of Attraction. Rather than using violence and focusing on the negative energies of the day, he got the masses to focus on positive non-violent pursuance and a belief in change. The results were astounding – he unified a divided nation of two main groups opposed to each other both politically and spiritually thus helping bring colonial rule in India to an end.

Perhaps he can point our world banks to a valuable lesson and the secret to financial success. I am reminded of a story: When Ghandi was practicing as a lawyer in what was then Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) in South Africa, his clerk came to him wishing to issue a court summons to a debtor for non-payment of Ghandi’s legal fees. He quickly admonished the clerk and replied “…Why should the man be punished for not being able to pay me? It is I who chose to give him credit and therefore have been the one who has brought this misfortune upon myself…”

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