Sarvodaya
The Genesis of Gandhi's rise to 'Mahatmaship'

Mohandas K. Gandhi was born an ordinary child, in an average family, in the western part of India. He was an average student and displayed no sign of greatness. At the age of 18 he went to England to undertake a three years' study of law. There he matured as a man but still failed to establish a law practice in India. Mahatma Gandhi Keynote Topics
Luckily he found a one-year assignment to serve as a lawyer's assistant in South Africa. Soon after his arrival in South Africa he discovered what he called, 'my true calling in life'. His one-year assignment to South Africa slowly extended to twenty-one years of 'personal training and transformation'. When he returned to India, at the age of 45, Gandhi became commonly known as 'Mahatma', which means 'a great soul'.

The genesis of Gandhi's transformation lies in his discovery and reading of the book entitled, 'Unto This Last' by John Ruskin. In his autobiography Gandhi wrote:

Other Topics:
Mahatma Gandhi Keynote Topics Conflict Resolution Using Gandhi's Satyagraha Technique;
Mahatma Gandhi on Character Education;
The Secret of Gandhi's Rise to Extraordinary Leadership;
Mahatma Gandhi, the Journalist;
Mahatma Gandhi, a Teacher par Excellence;
Mahatma Gandhi, a Crusader of Women's Equality;
Mahatma Gandhi, the Manager;.
Mahatma Gandhi, a Role Model of Service;
Mahatma Gandhi, a Social & Political Reformer;
Gandhi's Satyagrha and Rotary's 4-Way Test: A Remarkable Similarity;
Conflict Resolution: the Gandhi Way
<Mahatma Gandhi the Satyagrahi “The book was impossible to lay aside, once I had begun it. It gripped me. Johannesburg to Durban was a twenty-four hours' journey. The train reached there in the evening. I could not get any sleep that night. I determined to change my life in accordance with the ideals of the book.
I believe that I discovered some of my deepest convictions reflected in this great book of Ruskin, and that is why it so captured me and made me transform my life.
More on Gandhi's Observations of Unto This Last The teachings of Unto This Last I understood to be:
  1. That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all.
  2. That a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work.
  3. That a life of labor, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living.
The first of these I knew. The second I had dimly realized. The third had never occurred to me. 'Unto This Last' made it as clear as daylight for me that the second and the third were contained in the first. I arose with the dawn, ready to reduce these principles to practice".

– Mahatma Gandhi

Slowly Gandhi evolved an entirely novel technique which he called 'Satyagraha'. Literally it means remaining firm on the Truth and resisting the Untruth actively but using only Non-violent means. Gandhi devoted all his life to perfecting the Satyagraha technique, teaching it to his followers and applying it in every kind of conflict that he encountered. With his phenomenal success he proved that Satyagraha is the most pragmatic and potent technique of conflict resolution, and it is also the morally correct way of life.

Gandhi later wrote and published a gist of Unto This Last, first into Gujarati and then into English with the title, 'Sarvodaya' and implemented its principles in everything that he did. The Sanskrit word 'Sarvodaya' means 'the welfare of all'.

   Shall Gandhi Sinha as Mahatma Gandhi
Shall Sinha as Mahatma Gandhi A presentation by Shall Sinha

Although Mahatma Gandhi is no longer with us, it is possible to bring his characterization back.
Shall Sinha is a leading scholar on the Life and Works of Mahatma Gandhi, and he also does an Extraordinary Impersonation of Gandhi. He appears dressed exactly like Mahatma Gandhi - with bald-head, steel-frame glasses, home-spun loin clothes, tire-sandals and a bamboo walking staff. Throughout the presentation he stays in Gandhi's character and describes events specifically relevant to the audience and the occasion.

Using his personal library that contains over 50,000 pages of collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, Shall Sinha draws all his supporting materials from Gandhi's actual life and leaves his audience inspired - feeling good about themselves and their work and also with a zest for new challenges. How to Book Mahamta Gandhi Keynote

Shall Sinha is the author of "Words of Wisdom from Mahatma Gandhi".
See a nutshell biography of Mahatma Gandhi

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