As the nation pays tributes to Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, on the occasion of his 150th birth anniversary, what the country has also realized is that the teachings and basic tenets of his philosophy are only increasingly relevant in the present times. Gandhiji is one leader whose greatness cuts across all kinds of barriers – be it of time, of nationality, of faith, and of culture. Any list of ten greatest leaders of the world, irrespective of which age or civilization one is referring to, will invariably have the name of Mahatma Gandhi. No wonder he is the only person who features in postage stamps of more than one hundred countries of the world. Gandhiji is also one great soul the number of whose statues, if counted, would easily surpass all others in India. Greatness is something which is known around the world in many forms. There are those who have won celebrate military victories. There are those who have made such amazing contributions which have deepened our knowledge of the physical universe. There are those who have helped us understand the workings of the most complex human mind. And then there are those who, by virtue of their various significant inventions, have transformed the way we live. But then, Gandhiji stands in a category of his own. Gandhiji too was an inventor, but definitely of a different kind. He invented a unique way of protest, of struggle, of emancipation and also of empowerment of the masses. As some biographer had pointed out, Gandhiji’s generalship lay not in waging war, but in making peace. His weaponry consisted not of arms and ammunition but of ‘truth force’ or ‘satyagraha’ as he called it. The moral universe was his field of action and warfare. He explored a whole new dimension of the human psyche, its capacity to willingly accept suffering, even unto death, not to attain the kingdom of the heavens, but a better world on this earth itself, here and now, by way of bringing about change – both social as well as political. He was a person who had a many-sided personality to an unusual degree. He was a man of peace who never hesitated to fight for what he believed to be right. He was such a different kind of political strategist who shunned conventional politics and held no office. He was an extraordinary thinker and a philosopher who was, first and foremost, a man of action. He was pragmatic beyond compare who could easily adapt himself to changing situations without compromising or abandoning his basic values. Mahatma Gandhi respected tradition. But then, he was also an iconoclast. He was deeply religious, yet his was a religion that drew from every faith, a religion that was all-inclusive. He embodied spirituality. But his was a spirituality rooted in an abiding concern for the poor and the deprived, of service to and empowerment of the disadvantaged and underprivileged. He was impatient for cataclysmic change. Yet, he shunned violence in any form as an instrument to force the pace of change. In his own words “non-violence is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction, devised by the ingenuity of man”. What however is most interesting about the personality of Gandhiji is that his popular picture is that of a highly solemn and earnest person, but then his mission was indeed a lofty one but his personality was full of lightness and humour. At the end of the day, however, the essence of Mahatma Gandhi’s political philosophy was the empowerment of every individual, irrespective of class, caste, colour, creed or community. To him, extreme poverty was itself a form of violence.