The Opponent Glory, Essay Example

“Let the opponent glory in our humiliation or so-called defeat. It is better to be charged with cowardice and weakness than to be guilty of denial of our oath and sin against God. It is a million times better to appear untrue before the world  than to be untrue to ourselves.” (Gandhi, p. 33)

This passage should be broken into three sections. In the first section the very first sentence will be analyzed. For the second section the second part and for the third section the final sentence.

“Let the opponent glory in our humiliation or so-called defeat.” In the first sentence Gandhi is speaking about the physical defeat against which their enemy (British) prevailed. It is obvious that Gandhi believed in something more than simply materialistic. He was in fact one of the most radical idealists in the world which makes him be extremely negligent towards physical materials. One can actually link this intriguing concept to Socrates’ idea about physical hurt and hurting the soul. Socrates said that no matter how bad they hurt him physically they will never touch his soul. In my opinion, Gandhi was talking about the similar issue of disregarding the physical pain. The second sentence is the continuation of the first sentence’s concept  where Gandhi says, “It is better to be charged with cowardice and weakness than to be guilty of denial of our oath and sin against God.” Here again he applies the same meaning but with a different issue: the issue of denying oath and denying the sins against God. For Gandhi, God was the Truth, or Satyagraha which is known from one of his most famous quotes, “God is Truth.” One can conclude that what Gandhi actually meant was that it is better to be called a coward and weak but still cling to Truth which is a more crucial factor in life. In the autumn sentence of the passage Gandhi says, “It is a million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue to ourselves.” This is also linked to the concepts that were in the first and second sentences except this brings closure to the overall idea. Here Gandhi says that no matter what person does, it is important to first be true to himself first, because that is the core of the human as outside world belongs to others.