His weekly paper Harijan, 28 March 1936
As Old as the Hills
In March 1936 Mahatma Gandhi travelled to Savli, a small village in central India. He had stepped away from party politics and was preparing to move to Sevagram to work on sanitation and village industries. At Savli, his co-workers in the Gandhi Seva Sangh held their annual meeting. Leaders like Kishorelal Mashruwala and Jamnalal Bajaj wanted to turn his ideas into an official doctrine called Gandhism. They proposed a formal committee to write down the system and spread it. Gandhiji stopped them immediately. He told the gathering that there was no such thing as Gandhism, and he refused to leave a sect behind him.
He rejected the whole idea of an official doctrine. He told them, "I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills." People often look for a brand-new formula because analyzing a system is easier than doing difficult work. Gandhiji said his opinions were not fixed rules, and he might change his mind tomorrow. His only claim was that he tested two ancient principles in daily life on as large a scale as he could. When an experiment failed, he admitted the error and learned from it.
Therefore
Do not wait for a clever theory before you act on what is fair. Take the simple rules you already know and test them on today's problems.
Harijan, 28 March 1936
His secretary, Mahadev Desai, recorded the talk at Savli and published it on 28 March 1936 in his weekly paper, Harijan. Gandhiji had started the newspaper three years earlier while imprisoned in Yeravda jail, using it to campaign against untouchability and support village crafts. The report from Savli ended the plan for an organized creed. The workers dropped the committee and returned to practical tasks like spinning yarn and building latrines. The speech clarified how Gandhiji worked. He was not a theorist handing down a doctrine. He was an experimenter who used old tools on the hard tasks around him.
A small reminder, on the notebook or the workbench, that you do not need a new theory to start doing what is right.
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