Mahatma Gandhi?s concept of 7 Sins

Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of 7 Sins

Background:
• Mahatma Gandhi published a list of Seven Social Sins in his weekly newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925. The same list was given to his grandson, Arun Gandhi, written on a piece of paper on their final day together shortly before his assassination.

What are the 7 social sins?


1. Politics without Principles
• Engaging in politics without considering the principles that guide your actions. When politicians give up the pursuit of truth, they are sure to be doomed. For example, Partisan politics, lobbying, corruption and any other form of malpractice.

2. Wealth without work
• This idea originates from ancient Indian practice of tenant farmers (Zamindari)
• It refers to making wealth by unfair means, by taking shortcuts. For example, tax evasion, scams, insider trading, black money etc.
• Gandhi says as capitalism and materialism are spreading so rapidly, the grey area between an honest day’s hard work and sitting back and profiting from other people’s labor is increasing widely.

3. Pleasure without Conscience
• Gandhi believed that pleasure must come from within the soul and excitement from serving the needy, from caring for the family, children.
• Today, people resort to drugs to crave their inner satisfaction but that comes at a cost to your health and cost to the society in more ways than one. Thus, Gandhi refers to pleasure without conscience as a social sin.

4. Knowledge without character
• When education emphasizes on career-building and not character building it is incomplete. When one is not able to understand one’s own self, how will one understand the philosophy of life?
• Even Bruce Lee said, “Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.”

5. Commerce without morality
• Conducting business without considering the moral implications of your actions.
• Price gouging, selling off inferior products, making false claims are few ways in which we indulge in commerce without morality.

6. Science without humanity
• If science becomes all technique and technology, it quickly degenerates into man against humanity. Technologies come from the paradigms of science. And if there's very little understanding of the higher human purposes that the technology is striving to serve, we become victims of our own technocracy.

7. Religion without Sacrifice
• Without sacrifice we may become active in a church but remain inactive in its gospel. In other words, we go for the social facade of religion and the piety of religious practices. There is no real walking with people or going the second mile or trying to deal with our social problems that may eventually undo our economic system.
• It takes sacrifice to serve the needs of other people - the sacrifice of our own pride and prejudice, among other things.

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