Bharatiya Chintan ki Parampara me Navin Sambhavanae Part 2

Author(s): Radheshyamdhar Dvivedi
Publisher: Sampurnanand Sanskrut Vishvavidyalaya Varanasi

Page 146

GANDHI : FROM "GOD IS TRUTH'
S.
822
said, 'Truth is God' some must have exclaimed, Gandhi is bringing back 'God' through the back-door. Nothing of the kind was intended nor planned. Truth of ones own total experience, by employing all the tools of knowledge, cannot be denied. To deny it would be to deny oneself, to deny something to which one was witness with total awarness. Gandhi has named such Truth, arrived at in this way a? God; that is 'God' immanent, 'God' operating as Law, the process of nature, of cosmos or of cosmic law, the Ķitam of the Vadic Rishis, the moral order of the universe; one may not call such Truth as 'God' but one cannot object to Gandhi's calling it God. One may simply say such Truth is scientific truth, but it is Truth alright, and is the highest value, as every thing exists, lives, moves and has its being in the cosmos as per that Truth, that law, that regulatory orderliness which is its own, it is inherent, it is built-in and not imposed from outside.
For Gandhi to say that “Truth is God' was easy, and he gained immensely by putting himself right with those who denied God, and with the scientists who are after experimental truth. But that has made a world of difference to all others if one examines the implications. When one is in search of God, one naturally turns to all the sources of knowledge of God, the religious scriptures, the Saints, the philosophers, the god-men and so on. But when Gandhi raises the status of Truth-both transcendental and immanent-and instals Truth on the pedestal of God, every individual seeker of Truth is called upon to fall back on his own resources and be an ardent scientific seeker of the truth of things. As regards *Truth Transcendental' there need not be much controversy as all will have to agree that it is, in the very nature of things'
परिसंवाद-३