Mohandas K. Gandhi was born on October 2,1869.
Not only was he only the leader of the nonviolent movement for the independence of India from Great Britain. His campaign for Swaraj – self-rule – included the call for manual work as a way to live well in community, independent of the great powers. Thus he knew and affirmed the value of work. As he said:
“Whether you wet your hands in the water-basin, fan the fire with the bamboo bellows, set down endless columns of figures at a desk, labour in the rice-field with your head in the burning sun and your feet in the mud, or stand at work before the smelting furnace, so long as you do not do all this with just the same religiousness as if you were monks praying in a monastery, the world will never be saved.”
