"In Gentleway You can Change the World"

“In spite of despair staring me in the face on the political horizon, I have never lost my peace. I have found people why envy my peace. That peace, I tell you, comes from prayer. I am not a man of learning, but I humbly claim to be a man of prayer,”


Prayer meetings formed an essential and a significant part of Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba’s life. All religious and faiths were given equal importance in the daily recitation of prayers in these meetings. The prayers always culminated by proclaiming. “Although we call you by different names you are one, give us the wisdom to understand this, O Lord”.

Mahatma Gandhi believed that Peace comes from prayer. He believed that prayer brought orderliness and peace in our daily acts. He compared prayer to a kind of spiritual discipline that formed the very core of man’s life. According to him, a real prayer is an absolute shield and protection against the horde of evils that the world is plagued with. He gave praying immense credit for enabling him, in maintaining inner peace.


“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

The Mahatma considered praying as an impossible act without a living faith in the presence of god within. He insisted that it was only after the acceptance of the existence of god that the necessity for prayer became inescapable. He preached that a heartfelt prayer is not a recitation with the lips. It is a yearning from within which expresses itself in every word, every act and every thought of man and that is why he insisted that prayer should be said in one’s mother tongue. Only then can it affect the soul best. He considered a sincere prayer for one minute as enough and sufficient to promise. God not to sin, he says, “God, of course, never insists on the oath, but we must renew our pledge every day, and I assume you we shall then be free from every imaginable misery in life.”


Begin therefore, you day with prayer, and make it so soulful that it may remain with you throughout what ever be the form, let not you spirit wander, while the words of prayer run out of your mouth.

“Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.”