Gandhiji had said, 'Ahimsa is the means, Truth is the end.' Non-violence to him meant not only a negative state of harmlessness but a positive state of love, of being good even to the evildoer of resisting the wrong-doer through truthfulness, humility, tolerance, compassion, and kindness. It is not a method of coercion but that of conversion, of faith in human goodness, of right means for the just ends.

His concept and practice of non-violence are best exemplified in the suffering that he went through during his last days in Noakhali, Kolkata, Bihar, and Delhi dousing the flames of communal hatred and bringing peace and harmony wherever he went. His end at the hands of an assassin on January 30, 1948, with HEY RAM on his lips, proved his eternal faith in non-violence as the ultimate mission of human civilization.

Mahatma Program Notes by Y.P.Anand

Devised and Designed by Kamalini Dutt

Project Director L.D. Mandloi

Associates: Ved M. Rao and Irfan

From Doordarshan Archives

On October 11, 1906, Mahatma Gandhi had first propounded his philosophy and technique of Satyagraha ('holding on to Truth') in his address to the 3,000 Indians assembled at Johannesburg in South Africa to protest against the 'Black' Ordinance, which sought to severely curtail their rights as citizens. The year 2006-07 marks the centenary of the birth of Gandhiji's Satyagraha.