Epilogue: Summing Up the Legacy of the Mahatma

Abstract

Nature gives very few the great honor of becoming legends in their own lifetime. Gandhi was one such rare person. As early as 1921, a Unitarian minister, John Hayner Holmes, declared in a sermon in New York City that Gandhi was “unquestionably the greatest man living in the world today.”¹ In the words of General George C. Marshall, the American Secretary of State at the time of Gandhi’s death, “Mahatma Gandhi was the spokesman for the conscience of all mankind.”² Several world leaders since then have acknowledged Gandhi’s leadership acumen in inspiring them in their own quest for strategies for large-scale social change. In 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recorded his debt to Gandhi:

Gandhi was probably the frst person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale. Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and non-violence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking … I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.³