india

Updated: Jul 06, 2020 02:30 IST

Mahatma Gandhi had the unique ability to become a bridge between some of the greatest contradictions in human society, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said in an opinion piece in The New York Times to mark Gandhi Jayanti.

PM Modi also underscored the Mahatma’s emphasis on being nationalist and his message back from 1925 that “internationalism is possible only when nationalism becomes a fact”. But he stressed that Gandhi envisioned Indian nationalism “as one that was never narrow or exclusive but one that worked for the service of humanity”.

In the piece that outlined the power of the Mahatma’s thoughts and his impact in India and beyond, PM Modi also threw up what he described as “a special Einstein challenge” in the article titled “Why India and the World Need Gandhi”.

The prime minister, quoted Albert Einstein, who had famously said of the Mahatma: “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

“How do we ensure the ideals of Gandhi are remembered by future generations?” PM Modi asked and invited thinkers, entrepreneurs and tech leaders to take the lead to spread Gandhi’s ideas through innovation.

The op-ed piece began with a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. who, speaking of his 1959 visit to India, said he was coming as a pilgrim. “India is the land where the techniques of nonviolent social change were developed,” Martin Luther King Jr., the most visible leader of the civil rights movement in the United States, had said.

PM Modi said what sets apart the Gandhian struggle and those inspired by him is the wide-scale public participation. “He never held administrative or elected office. He was never tempted by power,” PM Modi wrote of the Mahatma who had been described by Nelson Mandela as “the Sacred Warrior”.

PM Modi said Mahatma Gandhi epitomized trust among all sections of society and recalled how mill workers and owners had reached out to resolve the huge textile strike in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad in 1917.

“Who else could have used a charkha, a spinning wheel, and khadi, Indian homespun cloth, as symbols of economic self-reliance and empowerment for a nation? Who else could have created a mass agitation through a pinch of salt!” wrote PM Modi about the historic civil disobedience movement that he said, had started with Gandhi “picking up a small lump of natural salt from the Arabian Sea shore”.