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-- "Unto this last" means the poorest one -- we should consider the poorest one first. And that became his whole philosophy of life: the poorest should be considered first.
In South Africa, while Gandhi was traveling in a first-class compartment, one Englishman entered and said, "You get out, because no Indian can travel in first class."
Gandhi said, "But I have a first-class ticket. The question is not whether I am Indian or European; the question is whether I have a first-class ticket or not. Nowhere is it written who can travel; whoever has a first-class ticket can travel."
But that Englishman was not going to listen. He pulled the emergency chain and threw Gandhi's things out. And Gandhi was a thin and weak man; the Englishman threw him out also on the platform and told him, "now you travel first class."
The whole night Gandhi remained on that small station's platform. The stationmaster told him, "You unnecessarily got into trouble; you should have got down. You seem to be new here. Indians cannot travel first-class. It is not a law but this is how things are." But the whole night Gandhi spent in a turmoil. It became the very seed of his revolt against the British Empire. That night he decided that this empire has to end.
Gandhi lived many years in Africa and there he learned the whole art of fighting non-violently. And when he came to India in the 1920's he was a perfectly trained leader of non-violent revolution, and he immediately took over the whole country, for the simple reason that he was conventional, traditional, religious. Nobody could say that he was not a sage, because he was following rules of five thousand years before, laid down five thousand years before.
In fact he was preaching that we should turn the clock backwards and we should move to the days of Manu -- five thousand years back. To him the greatest and the latest invention was the spinning wheel. After that, no science ... science's work finished with the spinning wheel. Of course he became the leader of those people who are not contemporary.
You are asking me how to save humanity. From whom? I will say from Mahatma Gandhi and people like
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