Mahatma Gandhiji – Lessons for Personal and Professional Life

Mahatma Gandhiji

Some consider Mahatma Gandhiji to be one of the greatest Indians ever born, perhaps only a notch lower than Vishnu avatars like Rama and Krishna, or spiritual gurus like Buddha, Mahavira, Nanak or Vivekananda.

What was it about the man that he was considered the ‘Father of the Nation’? Were his qualities relevant only to the freedom movement? No, the lessons that we can learn from Gandhiji’s life go well beyond politics and they can give us valuable lessons to apply in our personal and professional lives.

An Important Lesson from Mahatma Gandhiji for your Professional Life

Ensure that the path of leadership that you choose involves the maximum consideration of your followers’ interests and well-being.

Often leaders, managers and supervisors push their teams into situations that can be quite hazardous for them. Mahatma Gandhiji believed that as a leader, one needs to be responsible for the safety of those who were in a relatively less-powerful position, i.e. the followers.

The insistence on nonviolence, while it had its roots in Mahatma Gandhiji’s religious beliefs of respecting all creatures of God equally, also stemmed from the pragmatic realization that the poor and starving masses had not yet developed the stamina to endure ruthless repression that was sure to follow any armed insurrection as had been demonstrated during the brutal reprisals carried out by the British on the hapless citizens of Delhi after the Revolt of 1857.

This calculation of Mahatma Gandhiji turned out to be very accurate after the leadership of the Congress Party was imprisoned when they gave the call to Quit India in 1942 in the midst of the Second World War.

Left leaderless, the masses turned violent in places and the British government resorted to the deployment of its armed forces against the revolting people, including the use of helicopter gunships in some of the large cities of India. The movement was stamped out very quickly.

Never give advice to people that you cannot follow yourself.

Once a mother brought her young son to Mahatma Gandhiji and requested him to tell the boy to eat less sugar since he ate so much of it every day that the mother feared for his health. Gandhiji asked her to come back with the boy after two days.

Two days later, Mahatma Gandhiji advised the boy about the need to restrict the intake of sugar in his diet. The mother thanked him and also asked him why he had asked them to come back after two days. Gandhiji replied with a smile on his face that he needed those two days to reduce the intake of sugar in his own diet first!

Conclusion

Many people say that the Nobel Peace Prize was itself devalued since Mahatma Gandhiji was not awarded the same despite leading the biggest non-violent and peaceful mass movement in the history of mankind.

It is truly India’s good fortune that such a man who has been considered by many as one of the greatest figures in human history was at hand to guide the destiny of a people who were struggling under the yoke of exploitative alien rule for two centuries.

The proof of the effectiveness of his strategies became evident to the world in 1947 when India finally won her long-cherished freedom. The lessons outlined above from Mahatma Gandhiji’s life remain as relevant in our personal and professional lives today as they were in the three decades from 1920 – 1950 A.D.

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About the Author

Supradeep Mukherjee is an author, trainer and broadcaster. Educated at Hindu College and the Delhi School of Economics, he has consulted with a number of corporate organisations, radio stations and academic institutions. His areas of interest include Personal Development, Parenting, Relationships and Lessons in Living from Mythology.

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