He didn’t care if you were a Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jew or a Muslim. He neither cared if you were White, Black, Red, Brown or Yellow, he envisioned a kind of society that lived in peace with one another and the environment around them. He believed in living in harmony with nature and a simple life – The crux of it being to “generate more, from less, for more people”

The Principle of Gandhian Education is to develop the individual soul & mind, build courage & self-reliance, and cultivate the most intellectual, scientific, moral & ethical thought-driven-actions.

1)Free and Compulsory Education: Gandhiji regarding basic education or bunyaditalim, said elementary education should be free of charge, to enable all Indians to lead an independant life.

2)Mother tongue as a medium of education: Gandhiji emphasized the mother tongue to be the medium of instruction. Mother tongue would enable the children to express themselves effectively and clearly, learn ethical and moral values and importance of national heritage.

3)Crafts centeredness: Students should get exposure to learn skills and craft like stitching, knitting, weaving, agricultural activities & cooking which teach children self-reliance and also develop three domains: Physical Domain, Psycho-motor Domain and Cognitive Domain

He simply states: “In the journey searching for Truth I find ahimsa. I have only retrieved it, never discovered a new.” Actually truth and ahimsa are closely integrated with his philosophy of life. He used to believe that ahimsa lies within the truth and similarly truth is in ahimsa. Once he thought that God is truth but later he observed that truth is God. He studied Bhagwad Gita, the Holy Quran and the bible. ‘I see the same God in Gita whom I see in the Bible or whom I want to see in the Quran’. According to him, the best religion of the world is one which contains the best elements of all the creeds of the world.

For Gandhi, truth is the relative truth of truthfulness in word & deed, and the absolute truth – the Ultimate Reality. This ultimate truth is God (as God is also Truth) and morality – the moral laws and code – its basis. Ahimsa, far from meaning mere peacefulness or the absence of overt violence, is understood by Gandhi to denote active love – the pole opposite of violence, or “Himsa”, in every sense. The ultimate station Gandhi assigns nonviolence stems from two main points.

First, if according to the Divine Reality all life is one, then all violence committed towards another is violence towards oneself, towards the collective, whole self, and thus “self”-destructive and counter to the universal law of life, which is love.

Second, Gandhi believed that ahimsa is the most powerful force in existence. Had himsa been superior to ahimsa, humankind would long ago have succeeded in destroying itself. The human race certainly could not have progressed as far as it has, even if universal justice remains far off the horizon.

From both viewpoints, nonviolence or love is regarded as the highest law of humankind.

On the day of his farewell party, Gandhi became aware of an “Indian Franchise Bill” that was before the Natal legislature–a bill that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. He was amazed to learn that no organized opposition to the bill existed, and when he asked his friends about it, they begged him to remain and assist them in the struggle. He agreed to stay, but for only a month–a month that became a year, then two; by the time Gandhi finally left South Africa for good, he had lived and worked there for the better part of twenty years. Gandhi has always been associated with India, and rightly so, but it is important to note that it was in this long, twilight struggle against the encroaching racism of South African politics that he first earned the title of “Mahatma,” or “Great Soul.”

He thought that politics offers great opportunities to serve others and such service is an essential attribute of religion. He considered that ends and mans are integral to each other. He applied this belief to the Pursuit of Truth as well, which he considered as God himself. Truth as end and non-violence as means are inseparable. Politics as considered by Gandhiji is thoroughly connected with ethics and religion. Gandhiji’s very entry in to politics is to spiritualize it.

Voter’s qualification:
In the Gandhian democracy, voters will play an important role. Their members are being directly elected. Voters are to have the qualification of manual work. Their importance was always emphasized by Gandhiji. Village democracy would be decentralized political order.

Trusteeship:
The theory of trusteeship is major and new contribution of Gandhiji’s in the arena of political philosophy. The main drive is on treating resources as a public trust with man being the trustee, so that the riches of nature and society are fairly used. The theory was proposed to combine the advantages of both capitalism and communism, and to socialise property without nationalizing it.

Decentralization:
Gandhiji had proposed for independent India a policy that would be based on the belief of democratic self-government or self-rule. Democracy can function efficiently and according to the concept of Swaraj only if it is decentralized. He opined that, “centralization as a system is inconsistent with non- violent structure of society.” He wanted the centre of power to move from cities to villages.

Gandhiji was a moral revolutionary. He believed that violence disturbed the real revolution of the social structure. He believed that violence would spell the fate of mankind. He believed that a non-violent solution of problems of people was not only possible but was the only way to have a real solution. He considered the villages as the centre of Indian economic organization.

His economic radicalism is brought out in his contest of the concept of equality of wages for the lawyer, the doctor and the scavengers. His notion of Panchayat Raj remained a distant dream, but his arguments for people’s participation in governance motivated and also consolidated movements for extending of egalitarianism in India.