The Social Philosophy Of Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhian Philosophy and thought on education had brought a new dimension and fundamental changes in all aspects of secondary education. He categorically emphasized on the development of social, cultural, economic, environmental and aesthetic values. He adopted the principles of ‘Learning by doing’ which will cause ‘all round drawing out of the best in child and man –body, mind and spirit’. Gandhi wanted to make our child more practical rather than depending upon the accumulation of bookish knowledge. So he emphasized on the development of 3Hs (Head, Heart and Hand) instead of 3Rs (Reading, writing and arithmetic). Gandhi rejected spoon feeding education and emphasized on the awakening of humanism and self-consciousness through self-activity and self-dependence. He advocated self-respect, self-discipline and self-honours and one’s duties and responsibilities to be achieved through education. Thus the introduction of Charkha or the spinning wheel in schools was considered the way of reviving the inner consciousness of humanity. A child receiving craft centric, purposeful, useful and meaningful education will be truly prepared for gaining self-efficiency for generating new ideas and entrepreneurial spirit concerned for quality, peace and prosperity of the humanity and for the total development of manhood. Mahatma Gandhi believed that education means, ‘all round drawing out of the best in child and man, body, mind and spirit’ The philosophical views of Gandhiji indicate that education is a means of self- supporting and self- sufficiency in life , based on truthfulness , firmness, patience and other virtues. True education makes a student an able citizen to serve the country self-less service. True education is a true knowledge of the self, soul and God. The nature of true education is defined as the formation of character.

Notwithstanding his contributions to religion, nonviolence, civil rights, and civil disobedience, among other areas, Gandhi's most significant contribution is that as a political philosopher. While he is not often treated as such, Gandhi was, as Anthony J. Parel argues, a political philosopher sui generis, both in his philosophical method of constant self-criticism and his framework of philosophical analysis. Gandhi wrote daily on politics, but he did so as an activist; political philosophy was to him not just a way of understanding truths of political phenomena but was directly related to understanding those truths in action. If realized in action these truths would give rise to new political institutions, which in turn would create a corresponding peaceful political and social order. Parel dubs this order Pax Gandhiana. The main contention of Pax Gandhiana is that peace cannot be achieved by politics alone. Peace requires the confluence of the canonical ends of life: politics and economics (artha), ethics (dharma), forms of pleasure (kama), and the pursuit of spiritual transcendence (moksha). Modern political philosophy isolates politics from the other three ends, but Gandhi's originality, according to Parel, lies in the way that he brings all four together. In fact Gandhi's political philosophy is relevant not only to India but also to the rest of the world: it is a new type of sovereignty that harmonizes the interest of individual states with the community of states. Arguing against scholars who dispute a theoretical unity in Gandhi's writings, Parel suggests that Gandhi is the preeminent non-western political philosopher, and in this book he seeks to identify the conceptual framework of Gandhi's political philosophy, the Pax Gandhiana.