A Saint at Work
A View of Gandhi's Work and Message
Viewing a world threatened by war, with
darkening horizons of fears and mistrust, we pause before the
single question: Is the nature of reality evil? We ask
ourselves whether it is not rather goodness which is the ground of
our being and the fabric of the Universe. Whether we
should believe in peace or war would depend upon our answer
to the basic evaluation of life.
If evil is fundamental, then there is nothing we
can really do about it except claim temporary periods of
respite. What hope is there for us in a world where man is born
in sinfulness, and must live in a world which is created
for fratricide and unending cycles of evil?
Obviously, intellectual man has failed to assess
truth; in the words of Wells, mind is at the end of its tether.
This also spells the failure of the typical modern
civilizations whose driving force has been intellectual energy.
But Western humanity, not to speak of Western spiritual
truth, would neither be proved nor disproved by any present
failure of its material or mental structure. When the
intellect supports peace, without any deeper consent, we have
the phenomenon of a Bertrand Russell who is content to
call intellectualism the free man's worship and repudiates
the structure of peace. In that he represents the
modern intellect which I have called Western, but which is to
be found all the world over in varying degrees. When,
therefore, Russell advocated peace it meant very much the same
as the advocacy of violent fratricide which his
intellect demanded later for one nation, and now for another, of
course, as exceptions. Neither Russell, nor Wells, nor
the great humanitarian, George Bernard Shaw, believed in
the spiritual goodness of being, nor in any inherent
wrongness of evil save as an inconvenience or as necessary,
but regrettable, evil. In a recent article the great George
Bernard Shaw can repeat the word "kill" five times in one
sentence, in his eugenic and world-wide advocacy of large
scale fratricide. Most of the H-bomb and other scientists
today belong to this category.
Much depends, therefore, on our fundamental
answer. Statistics would hardly help us because no perfect
catalog could be drawn up revealing the total balance of evil
and good; nor would the grouping of good and evil, under
exclusive categories or separate leadership, convince us. The
nature of reality is to us that which we are in a state of
deep perception, its definition is our definition of ourselves
in what we believe are our most comprehensive moments.
No matter what the physical or mental barriers, or the
barriers classed as contextual, we admit their challenge, and yet
do not accept them in the same order of reality on which
the creation is based. In such moments, we do not
admit necessary evil nor do we allow war in the name of
peace. Why this should be so we cannot prove. But experience
cannot be substituted by logic, it demands the experience
itself. That is the position that Mahatma Gandhi took in
basing pacifism on the structure of reality.
Obvious as this might sound, the implications are
far reaching. We do not create peace, peace is there: we
can create right conditions for its expression. We can
correct the deviation by purity of means. Evil, whatever the
nature of its origin, can be removed: we must study evil, as we
study disease, knowing that health is the norm, goodness
the return to reality. Curiously, in taking this view, we are
better able to understand war and wrong and sickness, and find
in their very incidence the affirmation of a transcendent
truth to which they can be made to contribute if they are negated
by spiritual action and not tolerated. Gandhiji accepted
the deeper criterion of experience and saw that life persists
in the face of death, that goodness is the root and center of
our being, that love was stronger than hatred. And on
that assumption he proceeded to work for peace. There, he
had his own metaphysics from Patanjali of ancient India,
who posited that the degree of light would decide the degree
of darkness, and spoke of Ahimsa, or non-violence,
cancelling himsa, or violence, according to the quality of
its manifestation. Such axioms would demand not
mathematics but spiritual law and stretch through all
correlations. Supremely Gandhiji found this message in the
spiritual works doctrine of the Bhagavat-Gita, a religious text
the core and reality of which rejects its own
contradictory beginning as it develops its many-branched ethic
and spiritual technic of peace. But Gandhiji himself grew
from a contradictory beginning into a perfect pacifism. At no
point, however, was his judgment merely intellectual, it was
based on an awareness which, in his case, was heightened by
the experience of violence as he watched it in Africa and in
a widening arena of wars.
Gandhiji's faith, and what is just as marvelous, the
faith of India's millions which found itself reflected in
him, confirmed the reality of pacifism. In India a
continuous testimony of peace had been offered, and a
basic identification made between the nature of divine reality
and the ahimsa technic. Santam, peace, and
satyam, reality, are one; godness is goodness, both of them
Shivam. This is in accord with the Sermon on the Mount, where "Thou
Shalt Not Kill" is an indivisible part of life in God and life in
the world: not only on intellectual but on spiritual
premises. According to Indian spiritual tradition also, to violate
ahimsa was to violate the spirit; spiritual man cannot be a
violent person. Nor can humanity accept violence
without destruction of humanity itself.
Gandhiji drank deep in the clear springs of
traditional faith, and he arrived later at the spiritual source of
Christian ethics. All religions, for him, carried the core of reality
based on love. For him, throughout the awakened period of
his life, his ministry of over thirty years of spiritual
pacifism, evil was incompatible with man's nature. So
completely interpenetrative was his pacifism that one could not
touch any part of his life or habit without contacting his
ahimsa, his absolute non-violence. Mental violence was for him
a barrier between oneself and reality, and his thoughts,
like his actions, reflected love. He was puzzled when
people admired some specific results of his campaign, just as
he was surprised when failure would lessen their faith: did
they not see the unvarying truth which one served? A
hundred Gandhis might fail or succeed, but that did not prove
or disprove truth which used human instruments: was he
not trying to reveal the divine law? This aspect of
Gandhiji's pacifism with its basis on the law of being, and
the interconnections that confront us, whether we study
him as a politician, social worker or educator, or as a fighter
for freedom of humanity, needs greater examination.
1. Interconnections
When the prelude of World War II began in
Abyssinia, some Indians residing abroad who did not know
Gandhiji well were pained by his great silence. Did he fail to feel
the agony of assaulted women and men, these people
asked, because it happened in a remote land and in the context
of incalculable politics?
Gandhiji's answer to this query, which I sent him
from Oxford, was that if his whole life and work had not told
us what his attitude must be, no words from him would
help. As one read him, stricken fields and huts came to our
vision, the scientific quenching of human lives, the conspiracy
of old imperialisms helping the recent one to overreach itself
while themselves enjoying the dividends of death; the
sight of fleeing refugees pursued by aerial fury stood exposed,
as it were, under the vast sky of Gandhiji's mind. His
sorrow overarched the terrible betrayal. Whatever he was doing
was linked up with this, and formed a part of his entire
human context. It seemed strange that a distracted world had to
be fed on denunciations in order that a proven friend of man,
a saint, might not be misjudged. Protests, however
necessary they might be, and we have to raise them against evil,
depend on the validity of the entire context of our lives and
not merely on intellectual reaction.
But the issue raised a point which still holds
have even those of us who profess to understand Gandhiji,
and agree with this or another aspect of his work, an
essential grasp of his message? To interpret a single event
in connection with Gandhiji, his whole life must be seen
behind him; he is all there; you must know his basic approach
or miss the significance This is particularly true of
Gandhiji because his life and work were one: ideals and
technique, silence, service and penance, principles and objectives
were never separated in what he did in the social or
political sphere, or in the profound application of experience
to thought.
The pivotal point in his life being spiritual, no
attempt to correlate Gandhiji's activities except on the level of
his inclusiveness would be effective. Some, even today,
think that his politics was complicated by his saintliness
because for them politics is power, while goodness is interference
if it does not repose on a non-material plane. High morals
are blamed for having augmented his political work,
thus securing for it an unfair advantage over ruthless
aims. Communal frenzy, ideological hatred, or cunningly
pursued expediency stood confronted by his methods
which represented a new force in politics. Gandhiji applied a
simple and complete test in which goodwill was not separated
from relevant action, thus baffling "practical" experts.
Again, there were reclusive Indian leaders
who considered his political activities to have been
derogatory because a saint should not bother about drains, food
reform, or riots. Even such mundane things as national
freedom are to be gained by the help of unacknowledged
ordinary millions who must toil at their material tasks while
the spiritual ones cleave to super-mundane privileges and
claim results based on auspicious coincidences. But
Gandhiji pursued the whole Truth as one, where truths
converge; and whatever the immediate concern, his
overwhelming consideration was for a spiritual inter-relatedness
which cannot be violated. That is why his prayers alternated
with peace brigade instructions. He fasted in the midst of
feastful rejoicings of freedom in order to offer remembrance to
myriad martyrs without claiming a personal or party triumph.
His linked hours were filled with the hum of his spinning
wheel and his devotion to intricate details. His work program
had the force of profoundest religious appeal.
In Noakhali during the communal riots in 1947,
I remember, the earliest stars of dawn would see him
already engaged, after meditation, in scrutinizing statistics
of harvest, disease and the social usages; his hurricane
lantern grew dimmer as the morning broke upon rows of
slender areca-nut palms, stacks of burnt tins and shattered,
silent homes. Along dew-drenched muddy lanes he would
rapidly walk, bare-footed, observing each village, field, tank,
weed-locked canal, his face lighting up as he met an
early passer-by of either community. He would ask
questions, negotiate precarious bamboo-bridges, and the whole
journey would soon become a complete adventure. All the time,
the still morning air could be felt in his expression. One
could also sense a supreme urgency in the utter calm of his
words. His comprehensive vitality, if that is the phrase for
full spiritual activity, touched many levels of material
and emotional fact, and related them to the crucial events, and
to the actions that must follow, without breaking the
peace of the golden moment.
For most of us, used to one-dimensional habits
of thought and work, this apparent contradiction in
Gandhiji's activities must remain mysterious. In moving from
one village to another, whether in East Bengal or in
grievously afflicted Bihar, he followed a simple track. And yet it
was the track of convergent paths, not the one-track
simplicity enjoined by shirkers or extreme practitioners. You
could call it the road of humanity.
It would be useless, in interpreting this type
of greatness, to apply any logic but the logic of life itself
which is not syllogistic and horizontal; it is the logic of
deeper relationships that Gandhiji practiced. Many admirers
have called Gandhiji "singleminded" in the wrong sense, and
even professed to extol what they believed to be his narrow
but determined outlook; he has been held up as the apostle
of rigidity.
That would be a denial of the entire significance
of Gandhiji's concentration. For the most characteristic
feature of his mind was the power to improvise, to let sunlight
and air play upon his ideas before he had made his
decision, and though he held his decision with an iron will,
his imagination was open to fresh situations and
adjustments. It was the warm responsiveness of his personality, his
eager goodwill and generous understanding which struck us
even while we realised his immense and precise applications
of power. If this be a paradox, let us accept it as such.
Rabindranath Tagore, I remember, used to tell us
about the subtle appeal of Gandhiji's most spontaneous,
and apparently sudden, words and decisions. Each fresh
analysis would bring out some new and rare meaning in
them, Gandhiji himself possibly not knowing the full
implications. With a single phrase he would link up a constellation
of thoughts. Once, in welcoming Gandhiji to a newly
built cottage in Santiniketan, Rabindranath remarked that it was
designed by a poet, and made of clay. "So are we,"
said Gandhiji, his eyes filled with joy. Later, when
Rabindranath pointed out that here at least Gandhiji would have
temporary rest from the limelight, Gandhiji demanded an
explanation of Rabindranath's own name, "Lord of the Sun," and
wondered what safety lay in sunlight. "But then I should be used to
it," he added, "I mean, the sunlight." This is the kind of
subtlety, not verbal, but of an inner nature to which
Rabindranath had referred. Indeed, when these two friends met and
joked, one saw that truth was simple because it was diverse;
they represented this by their own divergence which was
based on unity in the great and enduring things of life.
In Calcutta, less than a year before Gandhiji's death,
a well-known thinker from America who was present
during Gandhiji's experimental stay in Baliaghata during the
tragic events, asked with affectionate wonder how Gandhiji
could have come to this utterly new and unexpected decision
even while he was working against time, and attending to a
heavy and scheduled program. The companionship he chose,
the exact locality of communal high explosiveness where
he established his residence, the timing and the
background of mass movement that he had in his mind must
have demanded a great leisure for thought which surely
Gandhiji did not have among his crowded hours. But so it was;
busy with people, and papers, and urgent messages from
Delhi, Gandhiji had yet found time for the higher volitions;
his emotional currents, stirred by the anguish of Calcutta,
had moved without interruption along with his thoughts
focused on the intellectual level.
What is called "Abhyasa Yoga"
in our scriptures indicates the nature of the resilience and freedom
that saints enjoy who voluntarily accept "abhyasa," or habits
of will, while being united in yoga (in yoke) with the All.
The lightness and charm that Gandhiji carried with him,
his utter candor and the originality of his mind revealed the
true yogic power which knew how to be gay, and how to
use the higher freedom of action.
In traveling with Gandhiji some years ago, we
found the usual seashore of faces as the train stopped at a
tiny station near Bolpur. Through that immense concourse
a village woman, desperately eager, approached the third
class compartment where Gandhiji sat near the window.
Wistfully she looked, and said a few words, almost inaudible, as
she put an anna piece in Gandhiji's hands. At that time
Gandhiji did not know Bengali, so we interpreted; this woman
had come from a distant village to the market, and hearing
that Gandhiji was here she could not help offering him all
the money that she had with her. She wanted to help him
in his work. But would he return half the money, that is,
two pice, so that she could take something back home from
the market? She stood irresolute with tears, and Gandhiji
after thanking her and returning half the money, turned his
face. He sat still, too deeply moved for words. The village
woman had given more by taking something back for her
people; she was serving their need as well as Gandhiji's, which
was for other sufferers. The deeper interrelatedness of good
was there, both at the level of thought and in human behavior.
The greatness of our simple folk can be witnessed
all over the land. Unversed in doctrines, threatened by
all-knowing religious priests with cycles of rebirth before
the "ordinary souls" could get anywhere near to the state
of "deserving" a technical term used by some
spiritual culturists to indicate the rights of true life these
unknown many have yet reached the highest harmony, and bear
daily benediction to our lives. This is the ideal which
Gandhiji's own life represented.
We can dimly understand his manifold goodness in
the revelations of his dedicated life. A remark of
Gandhiji remains in my mind. Referring to the woman's gift, he
said, "One more thread added to the million threads with
which India's strength will be woven." We thought of Gandhiji as a
master weaver, and it occurred to me that the complex
weave of Gandhiji's life and thought was possible because
each thread was true and in its place. The pattern of his
mind does not appear as a paradox if we understand the parable
of multiple threads.
II. The Satyagrahi The Basic Worker
Quite recently, as I joined the world pacifist
conference at Sevagram, my mind dwelt upon the reality, not only
of the multiple threads that contributed to Gandhiji's
pacifism, but on the character of a Satyagrahi,
a truth-worker, which gave unity to his life. Here, if I may, I shall draw upon
notes that I had made on a previous occasion when I
visited Sevagram, and when he was still with us.
A modern pilgrimage along the road from Wardha
Station to Sevagram comes back to my mind. There was a
squall then, and drenching rain; it was heavy going for even
a trained trekker. A long walk through mud lanes and
fields of green corn brought you to a cottage where the world
seemed to stand still. You knew that Mahatma Gandhi lived
there. This end-of-the-world feeling, this infinitude of living
peace seemed to contradict the knowledge that here also was
the center of power, and of world-moving events. Entering
the mud hut you would find Mahatma Gandhi at work.
Sitting quietly on the floor, he was in his usual state of
intense activity, writing, reading, dictating, and directing a
thousand things ranging from local problems to great
movements which had all of India, and beyond, for their stage.
Immersed in exacting details, and in the shaping of great ideas,
he would yet look at you with profound peace, a merry
twinkle in his eyes betraying a heart filled with love.
This has been the experience of countless pilgrims
from far and near. The baffled visitor, Western or Eastern,
would notice the setting of the remote village where
nothing seemed to happen; he would look at the great sky and the
fields and the small farms, or at the friendly trees,
and wonder how a few unhurried words emanating from the
hut could instantly become a moral command, widening its
ring of repercussions in a myriad lives and events.
Powerful nations would be rocked by the impact of those words,
and peoples all over the globe would come to feel their
benedictory and irresistible strength. The background of a
dark cataclysmic age would make them shine with
unique splendor. What was the force that lay behind those words?
It was Mahatma Gandhi himself. He stood behind each
idea, each word, and each implied deed. His stupendous
character gave a sanction to what he said and did that cannot
be measured by any national or international rod devised
for assessing power. A sentence scribbled in pencil on the
back of a used envelope would encircle the world with
the authentic force of realised human truth.
We have to pause and think of world-power
and internationalism in the context of these
considerations. Mahatma Gandhi was, and continues to be, the source of
a new dynamism in world affairs. Even now he is
changing our thoughts, guiding our actions, raising problems,
and altering the basis of our individual and collective lives.
But there was no official or military power behind him, nor
any of the usual methods of wielding authority. He could
use the resources of human power because of his
humanity. There lies the secret, open to all except those who
would secure internationalism by diplomacy, and adjust
human relationships by the force of arms. His power came
from Satyagraha, the power of integral truth which overflows
into correlated action; but you had to see him in order to
know how simple the human personality must remain in
the practice of great human virtues.
Mahatma Gandhi's primary contribution
to international thought was the gift of himself to all
peoples. He was there, always and utterly, in his words, actions
and thoughts. For any fundamental social development, for any
real change in world-government, there must be, at
the center, this inspiration of self-dedication for the good of
all peoples. Not merely intellectual nor emotional
personalities, but men who represent our complete humanhood have
to take the lead in different spheres of work. Contact
between such persons and the people would inevitably develop into
a mutual and strengthening power, laying the foundation
of equity and justice in a new social and political order.
This is a revolutionary change, which does not depend on
gun-powder, and such changes have taken place in
history because of the unshakable strength of great characters
who have imparted their faith and courage to their fellow
beings and awakened their profoundest human instincts. To
expect human progress while ignoring the simple and
basic character of humanity itself, and by deliberately
repressing our natural urge for welfare, is to perpetuate a cycle of
narrow power-cults which are often hidden under tall
names. Societies dependent on wars, or on "violent peace,"
use doctrines of "self-preservation" and indulge in
all-round mutual destruction. And that is so, because the nature
of "self" is never analysed, or analysed merely in terms
of biology or social doctrines which do not cover the real
nature of the self, or the inner truth of man. Here we have to
come back again to the individual unit, the human being, who
is so often forgotten in politics and in war-making
schemes but who possesses a natural reserve of spiritual power
which lies buried in the individual and the collective society
of men. This reserve is seldom drawn upon by our
political systems. Our scientific sense of fact should not exclude
the fact that the desire for goodness, for neighborliness, is
a common trait in man, and that it can be
developed. Internationalism depends on this fact and not on
abstract theories of power-politics which result in profound injury
to the human race. But Gandhiji has given to us in India
the right perspective and a new sense of proportion in this
field
of power. He has made us aware of the true basis
of internationalism.
The primary truth of human power, in its
inwardness and in the social context was reaffirmed by Mahatma
Gandhi, and he also evolved methods whereby this truth-force
could be realized in social and political organizations. The
process of attaining self-knowledge, of gaining experience
regarding the motive power of humanity, of applying
concentrated human will in organized movements in the direction
of human good, is what Gandhi referred to as
Satyagraha.
All great religions, and great institutions of
human welfare have been based on the ideals represented
by Satyagraha, which enjoin the service of truth through
both purity of thought and purity of methods of work. But,
with rare exceptions, the ideal of
Satyagraha had not been tested and applied in previous times on a wide field of action,
either in peace or in war. Gandhiji had drawn the world's
attention to the power of Satyagraha by his sustained, united,
and many-sided use of this moral weapon. His own system
of training and use had been shaped on a wide basis
of individual and corporate living, and on more precise
and searching levels than ever before. To this sphere of
action belong the various imperatives defined as
non-violence, passive resistance, and non-cooperation (with evil);
while the inner process would include self-purification, the
spirit of dedicated service, and the sense of our divine
humanity. But these terms often belong to both action and
thought, and are misleading if the whole background of
Satyagraha is not grasped.
Western thought has been profoundly moved by
the challenge of Gandhiji's Satyagraha. His method
has confirmed the indivisible unity of our spiritual life and
our material existence. They cannot be kept apart in any
domain of our life without grievous injury. The implications
of Gandhiji's challenge, even if they have not been clearly
understood, have already shaken the complacency of
those in the modern age, whether in the wider world or in
the land of his birth, who would use means which must
violate every moral instinct, who plead for dual life in which
so-called religion and the pursuit of anti-social ends would
go together. Gandhiji's Satyagraha was uncompromising;
either it involves our whole life, or it is not
Satyagraha at all. He had no place for "necessary evil," not even for a
"transition period." Satyagraha cannot be practised on any basis but
that of our common good, of our "total" humanity. In every
country we still follow a confused system of uncomfortable
loyalties which contradict each other, we imagine that the ideal
and the system by which the ideal is to be attained can
be separated without complete disaster. In the modern age
this confusion has been given a pseudo-scientific
justification and buttressed by mighty guns. Nationalists, educated
on such lines, find it more difficult perhaps to see through
the smoke screen of moral compromise and of the polite,
expert creed of selfishness which is ruthlessly pursued in the
name of politics. And then, at one of the most critical periods
of modern history, Gandhiji's figure loomed large on
the horizon. The world had to reckon with a new force in
affairs. We stood exposed in the light of a great leader who
demanded from us the same purity in thought and in action.
And we saw that the person who demanded this was
a great and simple man; that he lived what he believed,
and knew all men as his own.
No scholarly effort could possibly disclose the extent
to which Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha has
influenced modern thought. We live in a segment of time in which
his life continues to move and inspire millions of men; and
we realise that this inspiration is a pervasive force in
the modern world which will yet result in unforeseen
actions. Mahatma Gandhi was at work with us for nearly half
a century, he was growing and developing in his
technique, intellect and moral stature all the time, as the greatest of
men do; his undiminished vitality daily revealed itself
in words more charged with light and power than ever
before. But the world has been and is still warring; one feels
also that really great events impend. It is possible that we
shall have an opportunity of watching in the West the
large-scale results of Gandhiji's teachings sooner than we
realise. Proceeding from independent traditions and
testimonies, and yet strengthened by the great affirmative power
of Gandhiji's teaching delivered both in his life and
through his martyrdom, increasing numbers of peoples of the
West have already responded to Satyagraha by initiating
new methods in their protest against war and evil.
These methods, whether used by groups opposing social wrongs
or by communities fighting iniquitous legislature,
have produced better results through disciplined
non-violent action, even on the level of immediate changes than
the less aware, and imperfect, applications of moral
protest which lacked a carefully adjusted technique. It has
become abundantly clear that the principles and methods
of Satyagraha can be fitted into any sphere of action in
which organized evil is to be met by organized good.
But can we "organize" good? And if so, is it possible
for us to do this without once more laying stress on
Gandhiji's primary demand for recognition of divinity and
sacredness of individual man? Humanity for him was dependent on
the human personality, and not on any machinery or
system. But he would also organize, after making sure so far as it
is possible, that the individual unit, that is to say, each
worker, was true. Truth, here, would mean for him the
inwardness of men linked up, through spiritual discipline in action
and thought with social behavior. Satyagraha,
here, reaches a point which can be clarified only by practice, and by the
force of tranquil, vigilant thought. The apparent
contradiction between the technique of action involving the use of
social and political instruments, and the world of
spiritual realization which seems to have no relation with success
or failure on transient levels and is an end in itself,
could be reconciled not by an attempt to enforce logistic
monism, whether externalised or mental, but by the
simple acceptance and use of life as it appears to us in a state
of spiritual awareness. Such acceptance of life would lead
us through interrelatedness, through experiment
and knowledge, to a wider adjusted living. The greater
difficulty comes in when large numbers are involved in
movements and organizations which invariably tend to level down
instead of levelling upward.
Here I would, if I may, share parts of a letter
from Mahatma Gandhi around which these very
inadequate reflections have been built. He touched the core of
the problem which thinkers in the West and also in India
have been trying to solve the problem of harmonising the
active with the meditative aspects of truthful living without
any deviation from purity, whether in the field of politics or
in any other realm of social behavior. The ultimate solution
of this problem would show us a way out of wars and of
the jungle of national and international violence which
emanate from the cultivation of dual principles, enabling us to
use one set of morals or another according to the dictates
of expediency. Democracy at home and imperialism
abroad; individual kindness and collective cruelty; the use of
prayers for avenging greed such instances could be
multiplied indefinitely. Gandhiji replied to me, in his
characteristic manner, that he did not know the answer, but was
still experimenting. But he seemed to cast new light on the
need of organizing for good, even while he insisted that
the individual must he pure so that he can act as "the
leaven raising the whole mass."
He wrote: "Of course there must be organized
resistance to organized evil. The difficulty arises when the
organizers of Satyagraha try to imitate the organizers of evil. I tried
and failed hopelessly. The way of organizing forces of good must
be opposite to the evil way. What it exactly is I do not
yet know fully. I feel that it lies, as far as may be,
through perfection of individuals. It then acts as the leaven
raising the whole mass. But I am still groping."
III. The Process of Pacifism
Where do we stand now, in India as well as in
the greater world, with regard to the three principles for
which Gandhiji lived and offered his martyrdom? I refer to
his concept of peace as a law of life, interlinking all aspects
of action and thought: his concept of
Satyagraha or the pursuit of truth by centering our life on character and truth,
and then following the actional law of the individuated as
well as the organized good; and lastly, as we shall now
discuss, his idea of processive or trained, and controlled use
of pacifism as differentiated from impulsive or merely
emotive pacifism.
The third category, I believe, is of special moment
to us and involves methods some of which were obviously
more suited to him than to others but all of which reveal the
same principles and challenge our understanding.
Involvement
Training in pacifist action, it seems, began with
him in the sense of involvement. Nothing that happens,
happens totally outside of us, that is to say, outside of the sphere
of our direct or indirect participation. When we see evil
outside we cannot brush it aside as not belonging to
our responsibility; we are responsible for all that
affects humanity. Much less can we dismiss the suffering of
fellow-beings, as not involving our own suffering and
service. Involvement, conscious and spiritual, would lead to
training in pacifism.
But let us first take the negative condition, when
we fail to be involved; how to restore the nerve of feeling,
of moral sharing, when the circulation of sensitivity has
so far failed as to make one part of humanity not respond
to the pain of another. In a body, such lack of feeling
between limb and limb would be treated as a dangerous symptom
of paralysis and not as organic independence of a
withering foot or injured toe revealed by callousness of vital
response. If the dying look of a woman stabbed in a city riot, or
the betrayed innocence of children bombed in their homes
or schools have meant nothing to us by way of
direct involvement, how do we restore humanity to men?
As we know, self-suffering was one of the methods
that Gandhiji practised both to demonstrate and to restore
human relationship. He would not undertake such
vicarious atonement without due preparation; he would enter into
it with prayer and make the significance as clear as
possible to all around him.
To most Indians, as to people outside, Gandhi's
decision to fast as a means of changing an acute situation of
social or political impasse, seemed remote, irrelevant and
based on individual habit and unreason. And yet the
challenge was clear; right at the heart of a brutal communal
upheaval in Calcutta, resting in a broken house exposed to
streets where fighting was going on, Gandhiji had chosen to
impose self-suffering and penance upon his aged body, as well as
on his mind, which he had put to the test of fire. Everyone
knew that within a day or two the sheer physical agony
mounted to an hourly and momently torture which nothing
could relieve; the toxic processes and tissue destruction
would begin, not only bringing death nearer but setting up
an intolerable psychophysical sequence. His face and
eyes, made luminous by suffering and controlled suffering,
would show little trace of the agony that his will had mastered,
but the nature of his ordeal was unmistakable to the millions.
Even while repudiating his method and its efficacy,
the one question in people's mind would be, "How is
Gandhiji?" People would begin to feel uncomfortable; the grocer's
boy, the rickshaw-puller, the office clerk, the school and
college students would scan the news columns early in the
morning and listen to the radio throughout the day and feel
more and more personally involved in the situation. I
remember how University students would come up to us and ask to
be excused from attending their classes because they
felt disturbed and did not know what to do. But why feel
disturbed? They would say that though they did not believe in
such methods and in the philosophy behind it all, one thing
struck them as curious; after all, if anybody had to suffer for
the continued killing and betrayal in the city, it was not
Gandhi. He had taken no part in it. So, while others were
engaged in crime, it was he who had to suffer like this. They
felt awkward and some wanted to stop his suffering, and
even gathered together weapons from streets and homes at
great personal risk; they wanted to return them to Gandhi.
As we know, Gandhiji would look at groups who
came with sten guns and knives and now offered these in
return for his promise to break the fast and ask them, "why?"
Why should it matter to them whether one more man, a man
of seventy-eight, suffered or died when they had easily
allowed hundreds of innocents to suffer and die? If all the agony
and shame had not mattered, why should one more
individual signify at all in a situation of retaliation, vengeance
and crime that they had accepted as being moral,
and courageous? So it was to save him, Gandhi, that they
had come, but the saving of Gandhi, or not saving him, was
not the point at all.
So the fast would continue. Men would come back
home from their offices in the evening and find food prepared
by their family, ready for them; but soon it would be
revealed that the women of the home had not eaten during the
whole day. They had not felt hungry. Pressed further, the wife or
mother would admit that they could not understand how
they could go on when Gandhi was dying for their own
crimes. Restaurants and amusement centers did little
business; some of them were voluntarily closed by their
proprietors. Why this total and pervasive suffering for a whole city?
why did they begin to remember faces, sights of last
appeal that they had seen? why did it all begin to matter?
The nerve of feeling had been restored, the pain began to be
felt; the pain of the whole society, because of the pain of
its members, whether Hindu, Muslim, or others. Gandhiji
knew when to start the redemptive process. Involvement did
not merely mean pain: it was fundamentally the joy of
union, and the acceptance of new responsibility which such
glad assurance of united strength makes possible. An
immense release filled the atmosphere when Gandhiji declared
that now we had all suffered and shared; his fast would be
broken. Release turned into rejoicing, the fast actually led up
to feasts in which the warring communities joined
heartily, while Gandhiji sipped his small glass of orange juice.
One would like to carry the story further: but
the meaning of his fast was clear. Suffering happening in a
social and moral vacuum, with no response from peoples
whose minds had lost all human sensitiveness. It could only
be reciprocated and then redeemed by the process of
suffering. Then, out of sharing and involvement would arise a
new situation; it would not be merely change but a transformation.
Gandhiji would not stop at the uprise of goodwill.
He would immediately proceed to implement the link
between will and goodness; otherwise involvement might not lead
up to action. "Who among the crowd knew how to
bandage wounds?" hands would rise up on all sides, irrespective
of country and community; the task was of mutual service.
So on, with the restoring of thatched cottages and
buildings, cleansing the streets, opening of markets, etc. The
process of involvement had begun and was continued in Calcutta.
Never believing in a seven-day miracle, Gandhiji
so organized the situation immediately before people's
minds slackened and evils returned, that next time it became
far easier to behave with courage and as human beings.
During Gandhiji's peace-marches in Bengal, Bihar
and Delhi, we saw another aspect of involvement which it
is necessary to emphasize. Before starting for a
riot-stricken village, Gandhiji would make sure that the village
expected him. Many of the villagers would be hostile, doubtful
and divided with regard to his visit. He would at the same
time be accused of appeasement, a secret desire to aggress,
and perhaps to pronounce judgment. But in most cases,
the village would allow him to come. He would not visit the
people without their consent, the consent itself would mean
a certain degree of involvement. Moreover, he would ask
the village to be his host and provide him, one visitor, with
food; the others with him would not be a burden on the
small community but bring their own provisions. Of course,
the villagers agreed that they would take charge of his food;
this meant that he would not merely be a visitor, but a guest
of the village.
Before undertaking crucial responsibility of
mediation and service of any sort, Gandhiji would insist on
preparing the ground by announcing his intention, by giving
friendly notice and by waiting for at least some participation
and commitment. But, of course, the commitment soon
became incalculable and transcendent; what he would bring to
the situation was no less than spiritual affirmation for
all. Opposite sides in all cases, belonged to a single
tragic situation. Before entering the village, he would, for
instance, stop at the entrance, gather people together under a
large shady tree, and announce his desire that there would be
a prayer meeting. Was there anyone who did not want to
hear the name of God chanted and sung in another tongue
or from different scriptures? The lighted faces of the
young workers whom he had taken with him, the unknown
brothers and sisters from many provinces and lands
who had come to serve them, would make it difficult for people
to resist. They would feel curious, they would be
interested, and soon they would forget, for a while, their worries
and sorrows and resentments in an atmosphere of
returning faith.
After this, it would be easier for Gandhiji to call
people of both communities together some of the
representatives they had selected and ask them how he could help
them. In the meanwhile, trained girl workers would visit
homes and nurse wounded children or give them milk powder
or medicines, and no mothers would object. On the
contrary, the villagers would crowd round small newly started
clinics, and ask for help from the workers, many of whom would
be from distant countries, perhaps from the Friends
Service Committee, or they would be recent visitors who
had undergone training and identified themselves with
the cause. The communal frenzy from which all the
villagers had suffered together would make no difference to
their hunger for food, desire for shelter, and expectation of
some kindly word. Roads and tanks would have to be
cleaned, bamboo and straw brought in to rebuild burnt-out huts.
The prayer meeting had somehow prepared them by
making them participate in a common experience which they
could not analyse or explain.
On such a basis, however momentary it might
seem, Gandhiji would simply ask why they could not live
together when they had lived for centuries in the same villages,
spoke the same language or accepted different languages
and habits. What had happened? People who drank from
the same streams, worked in halves of a nearby field or
fields, bought and sold in a market, have had their destinies
tied together even as the destiny of all men and women are
tied together. They would start arguments, prove that
somebody else had begun it, very often a carrier of communal
virus from the town would be indicated; but nobody would question
the assumptions on which Gandhiji had started
his discussions. The vital thing then was to begin the
most urgent work of reconstruction which could not be
done without each others' help, otherwise their suffering
would be worse.
The principle to be noticed here is that the
involvement situation in a village where all peoples had suffered
together, and where there could hardly have been distant
onlookers as in a big city, demanded no extension of
suffering. Vicarious atonement, by fasting or otherwise, was
not indicated. Here Gandhiji would turn directly to
recreative effort, after having asked them to participate in his
coming and after they had met each other in prayer and
communion. The prayer meeting of course, was for him a regular
approach in cities and villages wherever he was, and continued
till the last day when he was stopped from participation.
The Right Issue
It will have been seen that involvement does not
stop at its own frontier, because it has no frontiers:
involvement leads to action. But the selection of a specific issue for
action, on the individual or the collective level as a group
or movement, is not always easy.
Gandhiji would apply the remedial as well as
the palliative methods together; the near and long range
plans would be simultaneously launched, but there
were circumstances when a definite focal point had to be
selected. One could belong to different loyalty areas without a
sense of compromise. If any sets of loyalties have
been contradictory, in crucial situations the cleavage
became critical. When a fundamental loyalty was endangered,
the lesser loyalty had to be challenged and broken. In the
choice of such a campaign Gandhiji weighed the factors in
balance, or rather held them together while in a state
of prayerfulness, waiting for the light to break through. Then
with complete singleness of purpose he would take up
the issue, and allow others to be with him if they had
themselves felt the same call of dedication.
Stopping of opium production in the fields
when villagers hungered for corn would be such an issue;
Gandhiji would then lead them to break, if need be, their loyalty to
a Government which was forcing them to grow poison for
export so that neighbors across the sea could be drugged at a
high profit to the usurping power. When repeated acts of
a government betrayed moral inertia and vindictiveness,
the direct method had to be taken up, after repeated appeal
and warning, and pursued with voluntary suffering,
and unrelenting goodwill. Gandhiji broke the law in
asking people to make symbolic salt at the seashore, with
water given by God, as a protest against an iniquitous salt tax.
He took up the issue, again, in defying a military order
which sells and destroys the soul of the citizen in making
him party to mass fratricide or to a surrender of his right to
reason why. But the whole question of selecting an issue
would greatly depend upon convergence.
Convergence
When we feel involved, when we grope toward an
issue, we often find that one particular track leads to a traffic
corner of many paths; that in following one obvious remedial
line we have hit upon a symptom which symbolises, demonstrates and challenges a root situation.
When Gandhiji spoke about one step but in the right direction,
he meant that the step was from one total situation to
another, and not merely episodic. By selecting an issue which is
not convergent but appears to be important from one
viewpoint while being tangled up and even doubtful from others,
one risked taking a wrong step.
For instance, while deciding to fight segregation
one would make an error in selecting segregation in alcoholic
booths and opium parlors as the issue; the issue is not
clean and clear enough, and raises and even accepts
some premises which injure the issue itself. The right to
pray together, disregarding segregated churches, or white
and black doors, would be an issue of overwhelming
convergence. If the right technique of prayerful, non-violent mass
action is practised in taking up the issue of segregation at
this point, punishment would enhance it, suppression
would make the cause spread, a totally unmoral so-called law
or custom thus challenged would make martyrs of those
who challenged it in the name of a higher law which may not
be broken.
Again and again, Gandhiji showed an instinct,
a spiritual instinct, for the right issue, for the
converging issues which supported each other at a point. He could
use his discernment but it was given to him through a
process of prayer and purity, and through utter humility in
the offering of service. Having chosen an issue, however,
he would stake his life on it, and what is more, his entire
and integral devotion. A lesser law must give way to a
spiritual law when the critical point has arrived: no suffering,
or apparent failure can deviate us from our decision.
The Means
As indicated above, Gandhiji, the saint and worker,
not only chose the issue but made sure that he operated
with aseptic instruments. This is negatively put, but makes
the case surgically clear. A partisan heart, or a communal
brain would be septic instruments defeating and making
worse the causes that we have taken up on deliberate choice.
The whole group of workers must be vigilantly tested and
selected for a major campaign. Whether we fight segregation in
caste or color groups, the contamination of prejudice in a
worker's mind, or the heat of his anger which has not been
turned into healing light, would wreck the whole effort. That is why
Gandhiji believed in training centers for
Satyagrahis, where spiritual discipline and practical training had to
be synchronised so that any crucial campaign could be
well led.
Fighting for truth with weapons of war, wishing
injury while professing to heal, or any such dichotomy
allowed between spiritual action and spiritual thought would
be cancelled by a process of Satyagraha training. The
means and the end, as Gandhi put it, are mutually convertible.
But the rock basis of such belief and practice cannot be laid
on impulse or untrained good will. Too often we ignore
this paramount need of trained spiritual initiative;
both leadership and group discipline are dissipated in
an atmosphere where there is a lot of good will but little
initial preparing of the instruments of service which are ourselves.
But of course, the soul is tempered by the fire of
the spirit; the steel of the instrument is our purity made
strong by inward will and correlative action pursued together.
The single-standard morality is the hallmark; there can be
no dual or multiple standards in the service of spiritual
truth. Colonialism in Morocco or Congo and home morality
in metropolitan areas, caste at home and preaching
abroad, segregation and democracy upheld together, would not
be possible for trained Satyagrahis.
Peace Training Centers
In our recent world gathering for the exploration
of peace, the Gandhi training centers, the Indian and
Western asramas and work-camps run by different religious
groups were discussed. Whether these centers
maintain organizational links or not is not so important, we
agreed, so long as they worked in the same spirit. It is to be
hoped that they will know about each other and will draw, as
it were, from the same fund of trained servers in
emergency and in other situations in a wide fellowship across the earth.
This will be a new democracy of peoples who, above
all, are freed from fear. To walk erect in the liberty of
spirit which admits no national or nation-state barriers is to
follow a democratic path. Humanity, in that emerging
context, demands faith in its roots. In the training camp
of Satyagrahis, the great secret Gandhiji taught was that
of feeling secure.
Security, we learnt from Gandhiji in his training
camp, lies in faith, not in guns. When distracted villagers,
both the betrayers and the betrayed, remonstrated that now
even women should be trained in the use of arms, he
paused. "But what can restore faith if faith is not there?" was
his answer, in the form of a query. Not a situation bristling
with pointed steel, and charged with hidden explosives, but
a return to sanity can save us. When faith goes dry, we
have to explore the hidden springs, remove the rocks, and
not add to impediments and worsen the load. But this work
and waiting is hard training for workers. The severe test lies
in not seeking to do when the right doing is to hold on,
and endure, and not to rush into improper action. The secret
of spiritual democracy, for Gandhiji, was organized training
of citizens in a spirit of higher neutrality where every
weapon is a weapon of help and none are injurious.
And I shall turn to Gandhiji's sense of humor.
IV. Spiritual Gaiety
"If I had no sense of humor," said Mahatma Gandhi,
"I should long ago have committed suicide." And we can
believe him. Consider his life: a day of it would fill a thousand
and one nights of tales, events, interviews, clash and
concord in discussions on multifarious themes, contacts with
men of all walks of life and of diverse nationalities,
interminable correspondence from fool to fanatic, from selfless
workers and associates to charlatans. The wheels of such
daily machinery would hardly move were it not oiled with
generous good humor. A certain invincible chivalry,
a soothing phrase, a witty word, a merry twinkle not to
speak of his disarming laughter would come at the right
moment, and put friend and opponent at ease. The real business
would then begin, and it would go on without interruption.
I have seen Mahatma Gandhi in his asrams, both
at Sabarmati, and at Wardha and in other centers.
The situation was the same, yet always different, for he
never knew what unexpected events would occur, what
problems he would have to face, whom he would meet, what
advice would be demanded of him by members of his vast
family ("his growing family" as he called it) embracing all of
India and many other lands beside. Serenely self-possessed,
poised in readiness, he looked as free as a child, and yet you
would sense the inner self-control. And just because he was
vigilant within, he gave you ease and a feeling of tension at
the same time reality was very much there, and you could
not escape its presence. And then came his unerring word,
based on the particular fact or detailed observation. This, with
his almost uncanny memory, made him give instant point to
a remark in a manner that was irresistible.
But the quality of his humor is lost in the telling
or the retelling because it was bound up, as this kind of
humor must be, with the occasion and the atmosphere. It was
almost as hard to define as his merry twinkle, though both
were unmistakable and unforgetable. The intense
atmosphere around him made his sudden sallies so refreshing,
so genuinely mirth-provoking. "I see my friend there is
plotting something," he says to a friend who has taken a moment
to whisper to a companion and the trick is done. Then
he adds, "Is it for a cup of tea?" The delight is entire, for
the audience now knows that the visitor in question is given
to such an awful vice as tea-imbibing, and that it is past
four o'clock. They also know that nothing could have been
farther from the visitor's mind than to ask of his host,
Mahatma Gandhi, during these few minutes of a long-sought
interview, that he supply him at once with the
desired beverage. The host then adds knowingly that he is
not completely unprepared, for, if worst comes to the worst,
help might be had from one of the erring members of the
Asram who could not do without her daily "cup of poison." And
this member was none other than his wife Kasturba, his
life companion. Here I speak of an occasion when the
sainted lady was still with him, and I had gone on a visit to both.
I have spoken of the atmosphere that contributed
to heighten Gandhiji's humor this was especially
strong when the situation was critical, when he was, for
instance, going to jail, or was actually in jail, or was fasting unto
death for another's crime. As Rene Fulop-Miller says of one
such occasion: "When the news of his imminent arrest
became known ... he cheered (his friends) by his sprightliness
and abundant joy. For each of his friends he had a loving word
or a joke (he) spread the contagion of his lightness
and happiness all around...." The following is
especially characteristic. On one occasion Gandhiji made Lala
Lajpat Rai's grief at his suffering seem almost childish by
saying that were it not for all of his stitches and bandages (this
was after an operation in jail), he would break out into
hearty laughter!
As for going to jail, Mahatma Gandhi in his
felicitous phrase, described himself as a "seasoned jail-bird."
Even though we might conjecture what inner events he was
all the while experiencing, he seemed to look, when he
was getting ready with his papers and knapsack, as if he
were going out on a picnic! In Sabarmati prison he chatted
with his visitors, as one of them put it, with the "untroubled
joy of a school-boy at the beginning of his holidays."
So much of Mahatmaji's life was passed in prison
and in walking in and out of it, that many of his
humorous remarks were connected with that mysterious
world. Everyone knows that he was a model prisoner. He
studied the jail rules carefully as a routine measure and observed
them meticulously. But he was also a difficult prisoner
to deal with. Firstly, because he disarmed all the
authorities, high and low, by his graciousness and charm, making
it difficult for them to feel superior or to impress
restrictions upon him; secondly, because he got hold of flaws in
the regulations which he would turn to the benefit of
the imprisoned. In numerous African prisons, he had won
his case for the legitimate rights of prisoners by virtue of
his tenacity and his all-conquering smile. He had his
own peculiar difficulties however. For instance, he related in
a letter written to his great Muslim friend Hakim Ajmal
Khan from the Yervada Jail:
This suggestion, however, was not quite acceptable
to the prison authorities. Mahatma Gandhi then told
the superintendent that "he might as well destroy his right
arm as these books." But, by his unrelenting banter, joined
with moral pressure, Gandhiji managed to win his point
and retained use of the innocent books.
About the same time another such incident
occurred. He wanted to keep his pocket knife for cutting his
bread and lemons. But, according to jail regulations, his knife
was a lethal weapon. Then, as he wrote naively to Hakim
Aljmal Khan: "I gave (the superintendent) the choice of
either depriving me of bread and lemons or allowing me a
knife." But as usual he was reasonable, and good-humored. So
he struck a bargain. He gained permission to use the knife
if it were kept in custody of the prison-warder; he could
have it twice it day during his meal-time! As he observed later on
in the same letter, such things are ticklish matters for
the authorities who "need time for deep reflection."
Once out of prison, he was imprisoned by
besieging crowds and events but here, too, he managed to remain
free. He never gave in where his principles were concerned,
but he kept his gentleness, and he was full of the fun of it
all in a fundamental sense. I mean to say, he had that
quality which Rebecca West, in describing Winifred Holtby after
her sudden death, described as "spiritual gaiety." Those
who knew the brave, gallant, intrepid soul of Winifred
Holtby smiling even in suffering knew how true this phrase
was in connection with her life in Africa and England and
with her brilliant writings. Mahatmaji had this "spiritual
gaiety." Doctors, too, were acquainted with it, for, when
between phases of his work, he suddenly started fasting inside
or outside prison, and while he was suffering from the fast
or from an attack of sickness, he flung his barbed jests at
the physicians who hurried to him from all quarters of India.
No love was lost between Mahatma Gandhi and
modern medicine, yet Mahatma Gandhi compromised and
yielded with good grace to the importunities of his advisers. But
he insisted on having it out with the doctors, and his
tongue was active even while he lay on his back, a victim of
medical inquisition. Looking enigmatically at Dr. B. C. Roy, this
frail but indomitable patient resisted the stethoscope and
other such evil-looking instruments that kept emerging from
the doctor's pockets. At last, yielding like a vanquished
warrior, he sighed out: "Lead the
attack!" a graceful concession to the victorious enemy. The whole
scene a dying saint, silent friends, the evening light and sounds of chanting in
the distance the unpleasant need for the doctors to worry
the patient and then in the middle of it all, this
invincible gaiety of India's martyr. It is difficult to explain the effect
of his words without this entire background.
I referred to his imprisonment by the vast
crowds outside the jail. Such imprisonment was unremitting, and
was especially trying when journalists surrounded
him, especially those of the ultra modern type. Then his
answers became more witty than humorous their laconic style
and brevity gave his words a peculiarly "reaching" quality.
But needless to say, there was nothing of rancor in his
wit, although it was pointed and was meant to penetrate.
"Are you really a Mahatma?" one such clever
journalist queried. "I do not feel like one," was Mahatmaji's
answer. Query: "If so, will you define the word Mahatma?"
Answer: "Not being acquainted with one, I cannot give any
definition." Query: "Is it a fact that formerly you traveled third class
in railway trains and now you travel in special trains and
first class carriages?" Answer: "Alas! You are correctly
informed. The Mahatmaship is responsible for the special trains
and the earthly ease (Gandhiji had been speaking of his
weak moral body) for the degradation to second class."
But we must point out that his degradation from
third to second class was not a permanent one even then
he often promoted himself from higher to lower classes
of railway accommodations.
This Mahatmaship business often exasperated him
and lent an added acerbity to his wit. Asked once why he
loved to dwell on an eminence as a leader and Mahatma,
he answered promptly, "You think I am on an eminence;
I assure you that I am unaware of that. I am, however, on
the top of a volcano which I am trying to turn into
hard incombustible rock. It may erupt any moment before I
have succeeded. That unfortunately has always been a
possible fate for a reformer."
Or, take the following selected questions put
to Mahatma Gandhi, and his answers. Query: "When do
you want to establish Swaraj (self-rule)?" Answer: "I am
trying to establish Swaraj over myself as rapidly as possible."
Query: "Do you think time will increase or decrease the
divergence of views between you and Lord Reading?" (This was in
1921.) Answer: "The divergence is as likely to decrease as it is to
increase." How courteous is his reference to the
possibility of decrease coming first, and yet how delightfully
sincere his suggestion of "increase"!
But one liked Mahatmaji's answer to the
correspondent mentioned earlier. The question was as personal as
any journalist could wish it to be: "What will be your own
position when Swaraj is obtained?" Here was a chance for
Mahatma Gandhi to expound his views on future humanity or
to outline some further political scheme. But listen to
what he said:
So the Mahatma or a man of saintliness could
be human. We certainly would have granted him a
well-deserved holiday, only his holiday haunt might easily
have become a fair of darshan-seekers. Unfortunately we in
India do not wish our great men to be human, nor do we
allow them the necessary rest. And Mahatma Gandhi
certainly got no rest nor respite in the days when freedom was
dawning and had dawned on India. And soon it became too late for
a holiday.
To insistent fools, however, he could deliver
humorous words of curative shock-value. He was not afraid of
startling busy do-nothings into awareness of their own
peculiar position by putting his answer in the form of a
pointed epigram. Thus in attacking "untouchability" in the midst
of orthodox mobs he once spoke of the inhuman nature of
this practice as "a home-made vice worse than any
foreigner could devise" and suddenly added "Untouchability (is
the) white ant which has to be touched." There is a world
of thought compressed in that whimsical phrase. Again,
about untouchability he said, "I live and untouchability goes:
or, untouchability lives and I go. We are the two competitors
in the field."
On another occasion when somebody referred to
Indians as "Pariahs of the Empire," Gandhiji answered immediately,
"In my own opinion we have become `Pariahs of the
Empire' because we have created Pariahs in our midst. Our
slavery is complete when we begin to cherish it.... We may not
cling to putrid customs and claim the pure boon of Swaraj."
Here is courage but expressed in a way that
amuses and outwits. Courage was, of course, never absent from
his humor. A writer had advocated secrecy in Congress
affairs, and the need of secret societies; he had also tried
to strengthen the request by making the "Holy God and
the freedom of Motherland" his ally and objective.
Gandhiji's humor cut at the root when he flashed out: "The writer
takes the name of God in vain, when he advocates in the
same breath the secret ways of Satan." One could almost
hear him suffer and laugh as he uttered these words.
Subtle arguments were disposed of with a word or
a phrase which fitted the occasion and created good
humor all round. Somebody had taunted him for not
recognizing that, after all, certain plantation owners in Africa and
India were human beings. "Once admit," answered Gandhiji,
"that men may be treated like cattle, many a manager would
earn a certificate from the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals." Imagine planters going about with medals
and certificates for having given "coolies" some
cattle-comfort! Mahatmaji exposed the basic principle when he
continued: "He (the "coolie") would be a freer man for being paid
full wages and charges for housing and medicine not
favours, but the power to raise their own standards should be
given to the poor workers." Otherwise keeping laborers like
cattle and giving them "free grazing ground" and other
such amenities, said Gandhiji, would be "a mere trick of
the trade." These words, as we realize, have a topical
message not only for the benumbed, crucified humanity of large
areas of Africa held by modern guns, but for men and women
who are given concessions so that the machine might
function better. Amelioration of wrong, without any desire to find
the remedy, presents us with a formidable problem; while
supporting concessions, we must denounce them as
ends in themselves. Gandhiji faced such situations often as
a social and political fighter.
To self-important followers, Gandhiji administered
the necessary process of gentle leg-pulling. Thus to one
who gave him advice in non-cooperation methods he wrote:
"I would love to feel that I was an M. A. of the University
of Non-Cooperation. But my examiners show me that whilst
I have matriculated ... I have yet to till many a term in
the college course. ..."
The examination papers sent by a gentleman
from Sindh had questions such as: "Did he (Gandhiji) think
that his movement would lead to violence?" To which
the examinee answered, "If I did, I would not have advised it."
Other questions visualized the possibility of
massacres and asked Gandhiji if he would retire to the Himalayas
if these came to pass. His answer was as follows:
Obviously scuttling to the Himalayas was
incompatible with the Gandhian acceptance of responsibility.
The real test of humor lies in one's capacity to
joke about oneself and about one's cherished convictions.
A solemn fanatic or doctrinaire advocater of
tyrannically imposed systems, could not do that. Gandhiji's
greatness lay in his detachment, in his gift of looking at himself
and his beliefs with a critical and ironical eye. His jokes
about the eternal Charkha "that skeleton in the cupboard,"
as he called it are well known. Once he beguiled the
present visitor by warning him during a conversation that
this skeleton might "pop out at any moment."
Many stories could be told about his merry
reflections on his own food-habits, dress, beliefs. It is not always easy
to be good-humored when defending oneself
against communalists who wished to perpetuate their stupid
strife and refused to open their eyes to sense. And all in the
name of pure religion. How neatly he could reduce their
arguments to air by a process of "reductio ad absurdum." Hear this,
for instance:
The human side of his greatness gave a living
quality to his message. He could use droll words and invest
them with spiritual wisdom; the quality of surprise was never
a trick with him but carne as an inevitable part of
his argument. He did not impose himself upon you as a
spiritual tyrant delivering oracles, but as a friend who dared
not withhold the message of his faith that must be delivered.
And no one was more ready than Mahatma Gandhi
to confess his mistakes when he had discovered
them. Charged with inconsistency, Gandhiji gave the answer
"My eyes, I fancy, are opened." That "I fancy" is an expression
which covered both conviction and humility in
equal measure. It cut both ways. Compare the delicate use of
"I fancy" with an equally felicitous expression which he
used when discussing the real nature of robbery, in the sense
of appropriating more of earthly goods than we needed.
"I suggest that we are all thieves," he said and that "I
suggest" was grim indeed but humorous! He continued to explain
how the acquisition of things without genuine need for
them amounted to thievery.
Someone should gather his humorous observations
and anecdotes of his travels, talks with friends, and
witty sentences scattered in his writings. I give a few
examples. "A patriot is so much less a patriot if he is a
lukewarm humanitarian." And: "Abstinence (from force) is
forgiveness only when there is the power to punish A mouse
hardly forgives a cat when it allows itself to be torn to pieces
by her. ..."
Or he might be commenting on the addiction
to European habits in this case, the habits referred to
clothes which many Indians have formed: "My esteemed
friend still retains the provincial cap and never walks
bare-footed and `kicks up' a terrible noise even in the house we
are living in by wearing wooden sandals. He still has not
the courage, in spite of most admirable contact with me,
to discard his semi-anglicised dress, and whenever he goes
to see officials he puts his legs into the bifurcated
garment and on his own admission tortures himself by cramping
his feet in elastic shoes." Elastic shoes, we are told, are
rare nowadays among the most proper gentlemen.
Each might make his own selection of the
felicitous words and phrases written or spoken by Mahatma
Gandhi. These revealed his gifts as a skillful writer and
speaker and a master of the humorous nuance. The secret of
his style lay in the crystal clarity of his thought. But along
with that there was the merry twinkle of his eye and
the irresistible innocence of his good humor, which invest his
words with an additional sparkle. What was the secret
of his inexhaustible graciousness?
I have used few of his often-quoted sallies
and provocative remarks: nor have I disclosed reminiscences
of a more personal nature. But before concluding I would
leave one more saying of his which is well worth pondering.
It does not refer merely to food-faddists but to all seekers
of short-cuts in moral affairs. Muriel Lester, his hostess
in London, and the great peace-worker, tell us this story.
An English lady, admiring the fruits which had been sent
to Mahatma Gandhi, exclaimed that she was prepared
to become a saint if she could enjoy such delicious fare.
His helpful suggestion was: "You need not go so far to
change your diet."
Now we can follow our fruitarian fare, when we have
it, with an easy conscience. Or, can we?
The picture that I would leave with you is that of a
saint who was also a worker, a man who was warm hearted
and never coldly ascetical, who occasionally made mistakes
and was also glad to acknowledge them because he sought
to serve truth.
A myth of negativism has grown round
Mahatma Gandhi, both in India and abroad, which makes him a
rigid authoritarian, infallible and oracular in his
intellectual ideas, and divinely led even in his habits and diet.
Apart from the divinity in which we move, and whose laws
serve and bind us all, there was no supernatural claim that
this man of God made or tolerated. He was a great-hearted
and very human personality: affectionate, interested in a
wide variety of men, so natural in his goodness that he
passed from one sphere to another without any sense of strain.
He chose his food with care and enjoyed his dates and milk
and oranges, unlike ascetics who are indifferent to food and
drink, indeed, he was zestfully interested in the
preparation of meals which looked, tasted and felt good in the eating.
In his dress he was equally fastidious, which is the opposite
of asceticism, and felt happy in immaculately white
Khadi or home-spun which had to combine simplicity with daily
soap and water. He needed and enjoyed his massage, his
morning walks in dew fresh air. His rooms had to be in fine
order even though the equipment was not lavish. We have
tried to look into his way of humor and wit, his great
gentle-manliness in all circumstances, and concluded that
our definition of him as a saint is that of a man who prayed
and worked, as a man amongst men, in a world held by a
spiritual order with which he identified himself and humanity.
The retreatist saint who left the world in order to
see and serve God outside humanity, or the severe saint
who worked among men but with a sense of compromise
and martyrdom, or the unfailing saint who claimed an
inherited authority was not Mahatma Gandhi. Visibly, he lived
and learnt, outgrew his intellectual mistakes, became truer
by his own standards even during his last days and years,
and never ceased to experiment with Truth. That was his
great adventure. A worker till the last, he died in a supreme
epoch of crisis and hope. That epoch continues. We felt that
we could ill spare him in a world where he had so much to give.
But suddenly in an agony of pain, in our sense of
terrible shame and betrayal, we realized that Gandhiji, indeed,
had not been touched by death. The bullet that went
through his heart has recocheted in a million hearts and inflicted
a wound on the entire mankind. He himself has risen in
his immortality, and lives in all that is true and good. We
cannot think otherwise. Never did he seem more real,
more imperishable than now. Beyond the mounting tide
of violence and crime, even in this world which we have
turned into anguished living, Gandhiji's stainless goodness
extends before the world. And somehow that goodness, his whole
live of service for us, the supreme courage of his love has become
a challenge a challenge which we cannot ignore.
The full truth of the situation in India and
abroad confronts its. This truth has to be faced. Gandhiji's
sacrifice through a life of saintly service allows us no
compromise. Shall the world go on maiming and injuring humanity,
create walls and blocs of suspicion? Shall we persist in
communal and national and racial crime and still hope that man
will live? Shall we not desist, and yet save human society
from scientific savagery and untruth?
The assassin who dared attack the sacred body of
man, the body of the greatest among us, is the assassin who
has brought death and ruin to multitudes in Bengal, in
the Punjab, in Bihar, in Kashmir, in one area after another
in India, and who typifies crime in a far-flung world of
men. Even now the millions of stricken refugees, the
weeping women and the tortured children fill the camps and
deserted homes in East and West. Shall we not save them?
It is the tragic inevitability of our age that, at last,
the assassin's hand should have struck the mortal blow
to Gandhiji himself, the symbol of goodness and greatness,
the pure, and the innocent servant of men. A shiver ran
through the world; men in a thousand cities and villages reeled
under the shock. The assassin's hand had reached Gandhiji.
And then the assassin killed himself with the instrument of
laws which were retaliatory and not redemptive, and
therefore failed to touch the source of evil.
But a new tenderness of spirit has been born.
Gandhiji's love, and his joyous faith in man somehow seem truer to
us than a number of dark strewn facts that move in a
whirl and threaten large areas of mankind. If the wrong-doer
could have seen what power of truth he has raised! Not
only statesmen and politicians, worldly men of renown,
and representatives of nations have been shocked to the
depth of their hearts, and repudiated violence when at last
it assumed this unmistakable form, but people in streets
and homes, villages and towns all over the earth have reacted
as to a common bereavement. If this spirit remains
with us, then indeed Gandhiji's suffering will not have been
in vain; like the death and suffering of other innocent
men, his testimony will be a part of our future. Gandhiji
will perhaps succeed with us in his death though we failed
him in his life.
In a last gesture of farewell, a friend of man folded
his hands, and greeted us. And then when his body was
carried away to the room where many of us had seen him at
work, in happy conversation and full of affectionate joy, he
was quiet and still. Perfect peace lay on him, as the
candlelight played on his face and hymns were sung in God's name,
the hymns that he had loved. That is the picture of a
heroic saint who conquered.