India was granted independence by the British electorates! Please note; had Winston Churchill won the elections in 1945, there would not have been any question of independence to India- during his reign. Agreed, the idea of granting independence was in the air, for quite some time then, and Indian National Congress had already started celebrating its independence day on 26 January since 1930; yet even for that the credit accrues to Gandhi!
Churchill a war Hero, and still a hero today for the whites anywhere in the globe, was defeated at the heights of his fame- just after winning the world war-II!
And who was the alternative? Atlee! What was the issue? A just dispensation for India!
Do you think if we grant dominion status to Kashmir, at this point, it would be due to our fear of Kasab or any of those bastards, who created mayhem in Mumbai? Saying yes would be like saying the victorious Britons were afraid of Bhagat Singh or Subhash Bose!
The moral substratum of the British colonialism, who claimed to be the most civilized race, was to bring civilization to the barbarians. Have you not heard of the claim “The white mans burden”? Now that claim no longer appealed to an average Briton and who was responsible for this paradigm shift? GANDHI- spelt in capital intentionally.
Let’s not forget the milieu and the peculiarity of Indian independence struggle. Far more than the Britons, the Indian Kings, upper castes and the landed gentry were a real terror for the poor Indians, who clearly constituted the vast majority. Gandhi held out an honorable and practical alternative in the form of ‘Satyagraha’ before the educated mass, who mostly came from the above privileged classes. Many dived into the national renaissance brought about by Gandhi and choose education, social justice, sanitation work, charkha and a very moral life instead of a life of ease and comfort.
As the social reforms undertaken were monumental and Gandhi has no desperation like an extremist the British were really at a loss. Their predicament was compounded when many of their ilk started admiring Gandhi and white followers like Mira Behn, Andrews and Kallenbach made a big difference. The Gandhi magic made the mighty British weak from inside and like any moral struggle it happened over four decades, which includes their engagement in South Africa also.
The Mahatma did not hate the British and became a mahatma for an average Briton also. The capitulation of Britons was inevitable in these back drops and that unfolded the most significant event ever to have happened in human history- Indian independence!
M. A. Jinnha- who was an atheist and hence a secular had misgivings regarding the Mahatma due to his proclivities and wanted to pursue his ambitions and that tinged the above extraordinary event with blood. Even here the Gandhi magic saved many lives in the eastern frontier and that gave rise to the famous cliché of Lord Mountbatten – “My one man army”- and it goes without saying that this one man army proved to be much more successful than the entire might of the British army in India.
People who are obsessed with Brahmanism and hence have a strong dislike for a humanist Nehru blame him and his entire family for all ills of India, they are quite innocent of a humanitarian concept like ‘secularism’ notwithstanding.
People who think the British left being afraid of extremists grossly ignore the following facts:
Nirad C Chaudhury dedicated his famous 'Autobiography of an unknown Indian' to The British Raj even after they had gone! He had a very good grasp of the then prevailing situation and in retrospect though we may call him to be an anglophile, he represented a good number of Indians who looked upon the British as their emancipators.
Listening about the imminent grant of independence to India a good number of Indian Judges sought British citizenship- for they expected anarchy afterwards- and on being granted the same gleefully immigrated abroad.
Most of the titled gentry - Rai bahadur etc- flaunted their titles and they did not hesitate even to betray their sons to show their loyalty to the Raj.
Most Indians coveted and still covet a British degree
Most British servants were very loyal to the Raj
Where as 30,000 ppl actively participated for quit India Movement more than 87,000 Indian soldiers died in world war- II
Compared to the loyalty of the Indian civil servants and the poor Indian subjects the opposition of extremist elements pales into oblivion.
In fact the British dispensation gave human dignity to the Dalits and women and abolished many abominable traditions like ‘Sati’ etc. Thomas Babington Macaulay laid the foundation stone for mass education, which till then was mainly limited to the upper caste Hindus except for some fortunate Moslems, who had their own avenues.
Ambedkar wanted a Dalitstan:
Ambedkar wanted a Dalitstan and its no secret that he wholeheartedly supported Pakistan. The rationale of Ambedkar behind Dalitstan was the same which created Pakistan. from the view point of a dalit they were far better off under the British than under upper class Hindus and hence the Dalits actually supported the British and the number of dalits and minorities was/is far bigger than the privileged Hindus.
But then there was one GANDHI and he just fired every ones imagination, that included the British also alas Jinnah like Savarkar wanted to play with the sword of religion, being atheists they did not believe in religion though!
if we saw such a large number of ppl participating in Salt Satyagraha and Quit India Movement the credit goes to Gandhi and also the British, who unlike barbaric Indian kings respected democracy and peoples voice and did not try foul means to eliminate Gandhi.
Britons were grief stricken when they heard about the assassination of Gandhi and that goes in to prove the reach of the Mahatma and the actual underpinnings behind the story of our independence, in the mid night of 15 august 1947.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Concept paper: Gandhi temple
Gandhi temple
It need not be like other religious structures.
We can think of a multi storied building limited to three floors, for being energy conscious these should not be fitted with lifts and hence preach the first principle: concern for the environment. Ar Rachit Seth- a committed g
Gandhian- has some aesthetic Gandhian designs and we can take help of such advanced designs to preach the message of harmony and peaceful co-existence.
The basement should be completely left for parking.
The first floor should have a pure vegetarian restaurant,
Pure veg would not mean things without onion and garlic but stuffing generous quantity of milk products. Unlike the religious interpretation of vegetarianism it would follow the ethical line, hence onion and garlic would be used for their therapeutic values and animal products like eggs and milk would be eschewed on ethical ground.
As it is practiced by Bahais and the ashramites of Aurobindo ashram at Pondichery, here also, we can strive for a high degree of silence and serenity so that those who so desire can even use the canteen as a reading room.
Very low cost and at times free foods should be provided to elderly, poor and needy people from the canteen and all the genuine humanists/ Gandhians should make it a point to physically serve in the canteen; be as a dish washers, a floor cleaner, a food distributor etc; as is the practice in Gurudwaras and there by uphold the dignity of manual labor in the true Gandhian tradition.
The second floor would house an office and a library.
The library would stock books and journals from all walks of life, especially those which have been peer reviewed, on all recognized sciences. The library would not pander to such pseudo sciences like astrology and Vastu and such superstitious literatures, like on blind beliefs like jagyans and animal sacrifice. Effort should be made to make it a 24 hour library to facilitate the academic sadhana- pursuit- of needy poor students.
The third and final floor should be a decent auditorium cum prayer hall:
The hall should be fitted with appropriate acoustic fittings to facilitate meetings and discourses. As per the coherent architectural plan it can have a high arching sealing and provision for appropriate ventilation to let nature douse the assemblage with its cool breeze, whenever it is appropriate and also provisions to completely stop the out side noise and disturbances in case of a stormy night, by closing all the large windows and sky lights. Well not being an expert I need not explore the design part any further. We’d leave that to Ar. Rachit [:)]
As for dedicating it to Gandhi, we can have his life sized oil paintings instead of idols and that can be put in the fore or back ground. The walls of the chapel / auditorium can adorn replicas of such classics like the painting by Leonardo da vinci – The last supper, and that of the mediating or sermonizing Buddha or the likes. Ugly practices like burning Ghee and such sticky things which destroy the walls and create black shoot should be a strict no no.
Besides daily sermons on tolerance and ahimsha, diploma and degree courses can be offered on humanism and such allied subjects and this would require an academic department and alliance with some quality university (some universities in USA have a humanity chaplaincy). Acharyas like Prof Richard Dawkins can be invited to visit the temple/ chapel regularly and shed the latest light of knowledge so as to take humanity to new heights.
The complex should have a landscaped garden and all the floors should have appropriate approach ways and wide entrances to facilitate easy navigation of differently abled people, as is done in hospitals and old age homes.
There should be a few quarters for the staff of the temple/ chapel and also a few rooms and a dormitory for visiting guests and poor students.
Unlike the regular practice of temple administrations of newly built temples/ churches etc the complex should be built on duly acquired land and at no time any kind of unlawful encroachment be made on government lands. Probity and integrity in maintaining the finances should be the first priority and all the transactions should be made at arms length and the administration should be run democratically by regularly effecting peaceful transfer of power from one CEO/ president to another at a fixed interval of time – say every 6 years or so.
A library of secular and humanitarian sermons and prayers would be developed, on audio and video, and without being a nuisance to the surroundings, these would be played/ aired for internal consumption. Being techno-savvy an FM station could be run from the premises of the Gandhi temple/ chapel, which would air the values and practices of Gandhi for public consumption, so has to be designed on popular lines. I am sure we’d get adequate number of Munna Bhais and Janhvis [:)] to call the faithful to action at the crack of the dawn with Gooooooood Moooooooorning India (not Maharashtra, Odissa or Tamilnadu) or better still Good morning Humanity…
As is the practice in a church, no body would be asked to remove their shoes at any place of the temple/ chapel and the cleanliness would be maintained, as is done in a church, by frequent cleaning, vacuuming and scrubbing.
Wishful thinking [:)] well we Gandhians are incorrigible dreamers; are we?
It need not be like other religious structures.
We can think of a multi storied building limited to three floors, for being energy conscious these should not be fitted with lifts and hence preach the first principle: concern for the environment. Ar Rachit Seth- a committed g
Gandhian- has some aesthetic Gandhian designs and we can take help of such advanced designs to preach the message of harmony and peaceful co-existence.
The basement should be completely left for parking.
The first floor should have a pure vegetarian restaurant,
Pure veg would not mean things without onion and garlic but stuffing generous quantity of milk products. Unlike the religious interpretation of vegetarianism it would follow the ethical line, hence onion and garlic would be used for their therapeutic values and animal products like eggs and milk would be eschewed on ethical ground.
As it is practiced by Bahais and the ashramites of Aurobindo ashram at Pondichery, here also, we can strive for a high degree of silence and serenity so that those who so desire can even use the canteen as a reading room.
Very low cost and at times free foods should be provided to elderly, poor and needy people from the canteen and all the genuine humanists/ Gandhians should make it a point to physically serve in the canteen; be as a dish washers, a floor cleaner, a food distributor etc; as is the practice in Gurudwaras and there by uphold the dignity of manual labor in the true Gandhian tradition.
The second floor would house an office and a library.
The library would stock books and journals from all walks of life, especially those which have been peer reviewed, on all recognized sciences. The library would not pander to such pseudo sciences like astrology and Vastu and such superstitious literatures, like on blind beliefs like jagyans and animal sacrifice. Effort should be made to make it a 24 hour library to facilitate the academic sadhana- pursuit- of needy poor students.
The third and final floor should be a decent auditorium cum prayer hall:
The hall should be fitted with appropriate acoustic fittings to facilitate meetings and discourses. As per the coherent architectural plan it can have a high arching sealing and provision for appropriate ventilation to let nature douse the assemblage with its cool breeze, whenever it is appropriate and also provisions to completely stop the out side noise and disturbances in case of a stormy night, by closing all the large windows and sky lights. Well not being an expert I need not explore the design part any further. We’d leave that to Ar. Rachit [:)]
As for dedicating it to Gandhi, we can have his life sized oil paintings instead of idols and that can be put in the fore or back ground. The walls of the chapel / auditorium can adorn replicas of such classics like the painting by Leonardo da vinci – The last supper, and that of the mediating or sermonizing Buddha or the likes. Ugly practices like burning Ghee and such sticky things which destroy the walls and create black shoot should be a strict no no.
Besides daily sermons on tolerance and ahimsha, diploma and degree courses can be offered on humanism and such allied subjects and this would require an academic department and alliance with some quality university (some universities in USA have a humanity chaplaincy). Acharyas like Prof Richard Dawkins can be invited to visit the temple/ chapel regularly and shed the latest light of knowledge so as to take humanity to new heights.
The complex should have a landscaped garden and all the floors should have appropriate approach ways and wide entrances to facilitate easy navigation of differently abled people, as is done in hospitals and old age homes.
There should be a few quarters for the staff of the temple/ chapel and also a few rooms and a dormitory for visiting guests and poor students.
Unlike the regular practice of temple administrations of newly built temples/ churches etc the complex should be built on duly acquired land and at no time any kind of unlawful encroachment be made on government lands. Probity and integrity in maintaining the finances should be the first priority and all the transactions should be made at arms length and the administration should be run democratically by regularly effecting peaceful transfer of power from one CEO/ president to another at a fixed interval of time – say every 6 years or so.
A library of secular and humanitarian sermons and prayers would be developed, on audio and video, and without being a nuisance to the surroundings, these would be played/ aired for internal consumption. Being techno-savvy an FM station could be run from the premises of the Gandhi temple/ chapel, which would air the values and practices of Gandhi for public consumption, so has to be designed on popular lines. I am sure we’d get adequate number of Munna Bhais and Janhvis [:)] to call the faithful to action at the crack of the dawn with Gooooooood Moooooooorning India (not Maharashtra, Odissa or Tamilnadu) or better still Good morning Humanity…
As is the practice in a church, no body would be asked to remove their shoes at any place of the temple/ chapel and the cleanliness would be maintained, as is done in a church, by frequent cleaning, vacuuming and scrubbing.
Wishful thinking [:)] well we Gandhians are incorrigible dreamers; are we?
Friday, October 31, 2008
Gandhi as a Journalist
By V.N. Narayanan
Mahatma Gandhi, in a journalistic career spanning nearly four decades, edited six journals. None, including Harijan and Navajivan, could boast a circulation of more than a few thousand copies. But such was Gandhi's grasp of the basics of mass communication that he ensured that his daily "outpourings of heart and soul" reached all.
If one were to ask the question as to who came first-Gandhi-the-freedom-fighter or Gandhi-the-media-crusader-the truth would be that Gandhi-the-journalist pre-dated Gandhi the freedom fighter by at least 20 years.
In less than a few months' stay in South Africa, Gandhi realized the need to become a journalist to fight for the rights of the Indian community. And he brought the highest qualities the profession could boast of-courage in the face of adversity, unswerving adherence to truth, pursuit of public causes, and objectivity in presentation.
His letters to the editors of South African dailies are a lesson to all journalists on how to fight injustice in a country where the laws are loaded against one section of the people, without giving offence to the rulers themselves.
A telling example of this trait was his letter dated October 25, 1894 to the Times of Natal, which carried a contemptuously worded editorial titled, 'Rammysammy'.
Gandhi wrote: "You would not allow the Indian or the native the precious privilege (of voting) under any circumstances, because they have a dark skin. You would look the exterior only. So long as the skin is white it would not matter to you whether it conceals beneath it poison or nectar. To you the lip-prayer of the Pharisee, because he is one, is more acceptable than the sincere repentance of the publican, and this, I presume, you would call Christanity"
As a journalist, Gandhi could have taught a few lessons in mass communication. An effective communicator, fearless and eloquent with his words, he reached out to millions of people and convinced them of his cause
Mahatma Gandhi was the most effective mass medium of the 20th century. His journalism belonged to an era when there was neither radio nor television. Such was the power of his 'soul communication' that whatever he said and wrote reached the farthest corners of this country within days and to the entire world thereon.
Mahatma Gandhi, in a journalistic career spanning nearly four decades, edited six journals. None, including Harijan and Navajivan, could boast a circulation of more than a few thousand copies. But such was Gandhi's grasp of the basics of mass communication that he ensured that his daily "outpourings of heart and soul" reached all.
If one were to ask the question as to who came first-Gandhi-the-freedom-fighter or Gandhi-the-media-crusader-the truth would be that Gandhi-the-journalist pre-dated Gandhi the freedom fighter by at least 20 years.
In less than a few months' stay in South Africa, Gandhi realized the need to become a journalist to fight for the rights of the Indian community. And he brought the highest qualities the profession could boast of-courage in the face of adversity, unswerving adherence to truth, pursuit of public causes, and objectivity in presentation.
His letters to the editors of South African dailies are a lesson to all journalists on how to fight injustice in a country where the laws are loaded against one section of the people, without giving offence to the rulers themselves.
A telling example of this trait was his letter dated October 25, 1894 to the Times of Natal, which carried a contemptuously worded editorial titled, 'Rammysammy'.
Gandhi wrote: "You would not allow the Indian or the native the precious privilege (of voting) under any circumstances, because they have a dark skin. You would look the exterior only. So long as the skin is white it would not matter to you whether it conceals beneath it poison or nectar. To you the lip-prayer of the Pharisee, because he is one, is more acceptable than the sincere repentance of the publican, and this, I presume, you would call Christanity"
Gandhi adds: "You may; it is not Christ's. Sir, may I venture to offer a suggestion? Will you re-read your New Testament? Will you ponder over your attitude towards the coloured population of the Colony? Will you then say you can reconcile it with the Bible teachings or the best British traditions? If you have washed your hands clean of both Christ and the British tradition, I can have nothing to say; I gladly withdraw what I have written. Only, it will then be a sad day for British and for India if you have many followers." |
After 10 years of relentless crusade, Gandhi realised that the twin tasks of mobilizing public opinion and influencing official decisions required a regular newspaper. Thus was born Indian Opinion in June 1903. He was clear about the nature and content of his newspaper. It would not carry any advertisements nor try to make money. Instead, he sought subscribers who would give donations. It was while writing in Indian Opinion that Gandhi stumbled on the concept of satyagraha. Writing on satyagraha in South Africa, he said: "Indian Opinion was certainly a most useful and potent weapon in our struggle." The journal was to Gandhi "a mirror of his own life". In My Experiments with Truth, he wrote: "Week after week I poured out my soul in its columns and expounded the principles and practice of satyagraha as I understood it. I cannot recall a word in these articles set down without thought or deliberation or a word of conscious exaggeration, or anything merely to please. Indeed, the journal became for me a training in self-restraint and for friends a medium through which to keep in touch with my thoughts." Indian Opinion lasted for 11 years. It more or less forced the South African provincial regimes to modify their repressive laws against Indians. One day Gandhi got a call from Bihar where the Indigo farmers of Champaran were subjected to the same kind of indignity and exploitation as the indentured labourers in South Africa. He promptly went there and investigated the issues, and produced a report that would be the envy of the greatest investigative journalist anywhere in the world. After Champaran it was only a matter of time before the Mahatma took to journalism as his most potent weapon of satyagraha. As coincidence would have it, Gandhi was persuaded to take over the editorship of Young India. Simultaneously, he started to edit and write in Navajivan, then a Gujarati monthly. Gandhi's writings in it were translated and published in all the Indian language newspapers. Later Navajivan was published in Hindi, as Gandhi was convinced that Hindi would be the national language of free India. The Mahatma's crusade for the repeal of the Press Act of 1910 was a unique piece of journalism. He was telling the rulers that it was in the best interests of the government to repeal the law. |
Issue after issue of Young India and Navajivan carried samples of the Mahatma's journalistic genius which blended seemingly earnest appeals to the government to do what was "just and righteous". |
Monday, October 13, 2008
Gandhi's foresight in nature conservation and model of development
Gandhi was ahead of rest of the world by nearly half a century in realizing that the extreme consumerist development models of west can destroy nature as well as ourselves. Scientists today acknowledge that view after decades of research. Following article from BBC is an example of relevance of Gandhi's thoughts in today's world on how the models of development should respect nature.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7621507.stm
This article begins by: "In 1928, Mahatma Gandhi observed: "God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the West.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7621507.stm
This article begins by: "In 1928, Mahatma Gandhi observed: "God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the West.
"The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (the UK) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts."
More than half a century before anyone had even considered the term "sustainable development", Mahatma Gandhi warned of the dangers facing a rapidly developing world.
Almost 80 years later, the population of India has quadrupled, and the US - the world's greatest over-consumer - has a population of 300 million.
The risks prophesised by Gandhi have started to come true."
To these I would like to add another apt quote of Gandhi. "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed."
Thursday, October 2, 2008
And then Gandhi came
Excerpts from Jawaharlal Nehru's "The Discovery of India".
------------------------------------------------------------
....World War I ended at last, and the peace, instead of bringing us relief and progress,
brought us repressive legislation and martial law in the Punjab. A bitter sense of humiliation and a pssionate anger filled our people. All the unending talk of constitutional reform and Indianization of the services was a mockery and an insult when the manhood of our country was being crushed and the inexorable and continuous process of exploitation was deepening our poverty and sapping our vitality. We had become a derelict nation.
Yet what could we do,how change this vicious process?We seemed to be helpless in thegrip of some all-powerful monster;our limbs were paralysed,our minds deadened. The peasantry were servile and fear-ridden; the industrial workers were no better. The middle classes,the intelligentsia,who might have been beacon-lights in the enveloping darkness,were themselves submerged in this all-pervading gloom. In some ways their condition was even more pitiful than that of the peasantry. Large numbers of them,diclassi intellectuals,cut off from the land and incapable of any kind of manual or technical work,joined the swelling army of the unemployed,and helpless,hopeless,sank ever deeper into the morass. A few successful lawyers or doctors or engineers or clerks made little difference to the mass. The peasant starved, yet centuries of an unequal struggle against,his environment had taught him to endure,and even in poverty and starvation he had a certain calm dignity,a feeling of submission to an all-powerful fate. Not so the middle classes, more especially the new petty bourgeoisie, who had no such background. Incompletely developed and frustrated, they did not know where to look,for neither the old nor the new offered them any hope. There was no adjustment to social purpose,no satisfaction of doing something worthwhile,even though suffering came in its train. Custom-ridden,they were born old,yet they were without the old culture. Modern thought attracted them, but they lacked its inner content, the modern social and scientific consciousness. Some tried to cling tenaciously to the dead forms of the past,seeking relief from present misery in them. But there could be no relief there,for,as Tagore has said,we must not nourish in our being what is dead, for the dead is deathdealing. Others made themselves pale and ineffectual copies of the west. So,like derelicts,frantically seeking some foothold of security for body and mind and finding none,they floated aimlessly in the murky waters of Indian life.
What could we do? How could we pull India out of this quagmire of poverty and defeatism which sucked her in? Not for a few years of excitement and agony and
suspense, but for long generations our people had offered their ‘blood and toil, tears and sweat.’ And this process had eaten its way deep into the body and soul of India, poisoning every aspect of our corporate life, like that fell disease which consumes the tissues of the lungs and kill slowly but inevitably. Sometimes we thought that some
swifter and more obvious process, resembling cholera or the bubonic plague, would have been better; but that was a passing thought, for adventurism leads nowhere, and the quack treatment of deep-seated diseases does not yield results.
And then Gandhi came. He was like a powerful current of fresh air that made us stretch ourselves and take deep breaths; like a beam of light that pierced the darkness and removed the scales from our eyes; like a whirlwind that upset many things, but most of all the working of people’s minds. He did not descend from the top; he seemed to emerge from the millions of India, speaking their language and incessantly drawing attention to them and their appalling condition. Get off the backs of these peasants and workers, he told us, all you who live by their exploitation; get rid of the system that produces this poverty and misery. Political freedom took new shape then and adquired a new content. Much that he said we only partially accepted or sometimes did not accept at all. But all this was secondary. The essence of his teaching was fearlessness and truth, and action allied to these, always keeping the welfare of the masses in view. The greatest gift for an individual or a nation, so we had been told in our ancient books, was abhaya (fearlessness), not merely bodily courage but the absence of fear from the mind. Janaka and Yajnavalka had said, at the dawn of our history, that it was the function of the leaders of a people to make them fearless. But the dominant impulse in India under British rule was that of fear- pervasive, oppressing, strangling fear; fear of the army, the police, the widespread secret service; fear of the official class; fear of laws meant to suppress and of prison; fear of the landlord’s agent; fear of the moneylender; fear of unemployment and starvation, which were always on the threshold. It was against this all-pervading fear that Gandhi’s quiet and determined voice was raised: But not afraid. Was it so simple as all that? Not quite. And yet fear builds its phantoms which are more fearsome that reality itself, and reality, when calmly analysed and its consequences willingly accepted, loses much of its terror.
So, suddenly, as it were, that black pall of fear was lifted from the people’s shoulders, not wholly of course, but to an amazing degree. As fear is close companion to falsehood, so truth follows fearlessness. The Indian people did not become such more truthful than they were, nor did they change their essential nature overnight; nevertheless a seachange was visible as the need for falsehood and furtive behaviour lessened. It was a psychological change, almost as if some expert in psycho-analytical methods had probed deep into the patient’s past, found out the origins of his complexes, exposed them to his view, and thus rid him of that burden.
There was the psychological reaction also, a feeling of shame at our long submission to
an alien rule that had degraded and humiliated us, and a desire to submit no longer whatever the consequences might be.
We did not grow much more truthful perhaps than we had been previously, but Gandhi
was always there as a symbol of uncompromising truth to pull us up and shame us into
truth. What is truth? I do not know for certain, and perhaps our truths are relative and
absolute truth is beyond us. Different persons may and do take different views of truth, and each individual is powerfully influenced by his own background, training, and
impulses. So also Gandhi. But truth is at least for an individual what he himself feels and knows to be true. According to this definition I do not know of any person who holds to the truth as Gandhi does. That is a dangerous quality in a politician, for the speaks out his mind and even lets the public see its changing phases.
Gandhi influenced millions of people in India in varying degrees. Some changed the whole texture of their lives, others were only partly affected, or the effect wore off; and yet not quite, for some part of it could not be wholly shaken off. Different people reacted differently and each will give his own answer to this question.
....Gandhi for the first time entered the Congress organization and immediately brought about a complete change in its constitution. He made it democratic and a mass
organization. Democratic it had been previously also but it had so far been limited in
franchise and restricted to the upper classes. Now the peasants rolled in and, in its new garb, it began to assume the look of a vast agrarian organization with a strong sprinkling of the middle classes. This agrarian character was to grow. Industrial workers also came in but as individuals and not in their separate organized capacity.
Action was to be the basis and, objective of this organization, action based on peaceful methods. Thus far the alternative had been just talking and passing resolutions, or terroristic activity. Both of these were set aside and terrorism was especially condemned as opposed to the basic policy of the Congress. A new technique of action was evolved which, though perfectly peaceful, yet implied non-submission to what was considered wrong and, as a consequence, a willing acceptance of the pain and suffering involved in this. Gandhi was an odd kind of pacifist, for he was an activist full of dynamic energy. There was no submission in his to fate or anything that he considered evil; he was full of resistance, though this was peaceful and courteous.
The call of action was two-fold. There was, of course, the action involved in challenging
and resisting foreign rule; There was also the action which led us to fight our own social evils. Apart from the fundamental objective of the Congress- the freedom of India - and the method of peaceful action, the principal planks of the Congress were national unity, which involved the solution of the minority problems, and the raising of the depressed classes and the ending of the curse of untouchability.
Realizing that the main props of British rule were fear, prestige, the co-operation, willing or unwilling, of the people, and certain classes whose vested interests were centred in British rule, Gandhi attacked these foundations. Titles were to be given up and though the title-holders responded to this only in small measure, the popular espect for these British-given titles disappeared and they became symbols of degradation. New standards and values were set up and the pomp and splendour of the viceregal court and the princes, which used to impress so much, suddenly appeared supremely ridiculous and vulgar and rather shameful, surrounded as they were by the poverty and misery of the people. Rich men were not so anxious to flaunt their riches; outwardly at least many of them adopted simpler ways, and in their dress, became almost indistinguishable from humbler folk.
The older leaders of the Congress., bred in a different and more quiescent tradition, did not take easily to these new ways and were disturbed by the upsurge of the masses. Yet so powerful was the wave of feeling and sentiment that swept through the country, that some of this intoxication filled them also. A very few fell away and among them was Mr. M. A. Jinnah. He left the Congress not because of any difference of opinion on the Hindu-Moslem question but because he could not adapt himself to the new and more advanced ideology, and even more so because he disliked the crowds of ill-dressed people, talking in Hindustani, who filled the Congress. His idea of politics was of a superior variety, more suited to the legislative chamber or to a committee-room. For some years he felt completely out of the picture and even decided to leave India for good. He settled down in England and spent several years there.
It is said, and I think with truth, that the Indian habit of mind is essentially one of quietism. Perhaps old races develop that attitude to life; a long tradition of philosophy
also leads to it and yet Gandhi, a typical product of India, represents the very antithesis of quietism. He has been a demon of energy and action, a hustler, and a man who not only drives himself but drives other. He has done more than anyone I know to fight and change the quietism of the Indian people.
He sent us to the villages, and the countryside hummed with the activity of innumerable messengers of the new gospel of action. The peasant was shaken up and he began to emerge from his quiescent shell. The effect on us was different but equally far-reaching, for we saw, for the first time as it were, the villager in the intimacy of his mud-hut, and with the stark shadow of hunger always pursuing him. We learnt our Indian economics more from these visits than from books and learned discourses. The emotional experience we had already undergone was emphasized and confirmed and henceforward there could be no going back for us to our old life or our old standards, howsoever much our views might change subsequently.
Gandhi held strong views on economic, social, and other matters. He did not try to impose all of these on the Congress, though he continued to develop his ideas, and
sometimes in the process varied them, through his writings. But some he tried to push
into the Congress. He proceeded cautiously for he wanted to carry the people with him. Sometimes he went too far for the Congress and had to retrace his steps. Not many accepted his views in their entirety; some disagreed with that fundamental outlook. But many accepted them in the modified form in which they came to the Congress as being suited to the circumstances then existing. In two respects the background of his thought had a vague but considerable influence; the fundamental test of everything was how far it benefited the masses, and the means were always important and could not be ignored even though the end in view was right, for the means governed the end and varied it.
Gandhi was essentially a man of religion, a Hindu to the inner-most depths of his being, and yet his conception of religion had nothing to do with any dogma or custom or ritual. It was basically concerned with his firm belief in the moral law, which he calls the law of truth or love. Truth and non-violence appear to him to be the same thing or different aspects of one and the same thing, and he uses these words almost interchangeably. Claiming to understand the spirit of Hinduism, he rejects every text or practice which does not fit in with his idealist interpretation of what it should be, calling it an interpolation or a subsequent accretion. ‘I decline to be a salve’, he has said, ‘to precedents or practice I cannot understand or defend on a moral basis.’ And so in practice he is singularly free to take the path of his choice, to change and adapt himself, to develop his philosophy of life and action, subject only to the over-riding consideration of the moral law as he conceives this to be. Whether that philosophy is right or wrong, may be argued, but he insists on applying the same fundamental yard-stick to everything, and himself especially. In politics, as in other aspects of life, this creates difficulties for the average person, and often misunderstanding. But no difficulty makes him swerve from the straight line of his choosing, though within limits he is continually adapting himself to a changing situation. Every reform that he suggests, every advice that he gives to others, he straightway applies to himself. He is always beginning with himself and his words and actions fit into each other like a glove on the hand. And so, whatever happens, he never loses his integrity and there is always an organic completeness about his life and work. Even in his apparent failures he has seemed to grow in stature.
What was his idea of India which he was setting out to mould according to his own wishes and ideals? ‘I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country, in whose making they have an effective voice, and India in which there shall be no high class and low class of people, an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony.... There can be no room in such an India for the curse of untouchability or the curse of intoxicating drinks and drugs...... Women will enjoy the same right as men.... This is the India of my dreams.’ Proud of his Hindu inheritance as he was, he tried to give to Hinduism a kind of universal attire and included all religions within the fold of truth. He refused to narrow his cultural inheritance.
‘Indian culture,’ he wrote, ‘is neither Hindu, Islamic, nor any other, wholly. It is a fusion
of all.’ Again he said: ‘I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other peoples’ houses as an interloper, a beggar, or a slave.’ Influenced by modern thought currents, he never let go of his roots and clung to them tenaciously.
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....World War I ended at last, and the peace, instead of bringing us relief and progress,
brought us repressive legislation and martial law in the Punjab. A bitter sense of humiliation and a pssionate anger filled our people. All the unending talk of constitutional reform and Indianization of the services was a mockery and an insult when the manhood of our country was being crushed and the inexorable and continuous process of exploitation was deepening our poverty and sapping our vitality. We had become a derelict nation.
Yet what could we do,how change this vicious process?We seemed to be helpless in thegrip of some all-powerful monster;our limbs were paralysed,our minds deadened. The peasantry were servile and fear-ridden; the industrial workers were no better. The middle classes,the intelligentsia,who might have been beacon-lights in the enveloping darkness,were themselves submerged in this all-pervading gloom. In some ways their condition was even more pitiful than that of the peasantry. Large numbers of them,diclassi intellectuals,cut off from the land and incapable of any kind of manual or technical work,joined the swelling army of the unemployed,and helpless,hopeless,sank ever deeper into the morass. A few successful lawyers or doctors or engineers or clerks made little difference to the mass. The peasant starved, yet centuries of an unequal struggle against,his environment had taught him to endure,and even in poverty and starvation he had a certain calm dignity,a feeling of submission to an all-powerful fate. Not so the middle classes, more especially the new petty bourgeoisie, who had no such background. Incompletely developed and frustrated, they did not know where to look,for neither the old nor the new offered them any hope. There was no adjustment to social purpose,no satisfaction of doing something worthwhile,even though suffering came in its train. Custom-ridden,they were born old,yet they were without the old culture. Modern thought attracted them, but they lacked its inner content, the modern social and scientific consciousness. Some tried to cling tenaciously to the dead forms of the past,seeking relief from present misery in them. But there could be no relief there,for,as Tagore has said,we must not nourish in our being what is dead, for the dead is deathdealing. Others made themselves pale and ineffectual copies of the west. So,like derelicts,frantically seeking some foothold of security for body and mind and finding none,they floated aimlessly in the murky waters of Indian life.
What could we do? How could we pull India out of this quagmire of poverty and defeatism which sucked her in? Not for a few years of excitement and agony and
suspense, but for long generations our people had offered their ‘blood and toil, tears and sweat.’ And this process had eaten its way deep into the body and soul of India, poisoning every aspect of our corporate life, like that fell disease which consumes the tissues of the lungs and kill slowly but inevitably. Sometimes we thought that some
swifter and more obvious process, resembling cholera or the bubonic plague, would have been better; but that was a passing thought, for adventurism leads nowhere, and the quack treatment of deep-seated diseases does not yield results.
And then Gandhi came. He was like a powerful current of fresh air that made us stretch ourselves and take deep breaths; like a beam of light that pierced the darkness and removed the scales from our eyes; like a whirlwind that upset many things, but most of all the working of people’s minds. He did not descend from the top; he seemed to emerge from the millions of India, speaking their language and incessantly drawing attention to them and their appalling condition. Get off the backs of these peasants and workers, he told us, all you who live by their exploitation; get rid of the system that produces this poverty and misery. Political freedom took new shape then and adquired a new content. Much that he said we only partially accepted or sometimes did not accept at all. But all this was secondary. The essence of his teaching was fearlessness and truth, and action allied to these, always keeping the welfare of the masses in view. The greatest gift for an individual or a nation, so we had been told in our ancient books, was abhaya (fearlessness), not merely bodily courage but the absence of fear from the mind. Janaka and Yajnavalka had said, at the dawn of our history, that it was the function of the leaders of a people to make them fearless. But the dominant impulse in India under British rule was that of fear- pervasive, oppressing, strangling fear; fear of the army, the police, the widespread secret service; fear of the official class; fear of laws meant to suppress and of prison; fear of the landlord’s agent; fear of the moneylender; fear of unemployment and starvation, which were always on the threshold. It was against this all-pervading fear that Gandhi’s quiet and determined voice was raised: But not afraid. Was it so simple as all that? Not quite. And yet fear builds its phantoms which are more fearsome that reality itself, and reality, when calmly analysed and its consequences willingly accepted, loses much of its terror.
So, suddenly, as it were, that black pall of fear was lifted from the people’s shoulders, not wholly of course, but to an amazing degree. As fear is close companion to falsehood, so truth follows fearlessness. The Indian people did not become such more truthful than they were, nor did they change their essential nature overnight; nevertheless a seachange was visible as the need for falsehood and furtive behaviour lessened. It was a psychological change, almost as if some expert in psycho-analytical methods had probed deep into the patient’s past, found out the origins of his complexes, exposed them to his view, and thus rid him of that burden.
There was the psychological reaction also, a feeling of shame at our long submission to
an alien rule that had degraded and humiliated us, and a desire to submit no longer whatever the consequences might be.
We did not grow much more truthful perhaps than we had been previously, but Gandhi
was always there as a symbol of uncompromising truth to pull us up and shame us into
truth. What is truth? I do not know for certain, and perhaps our truths are relative and
absolute truth is beyond us. Different persons may and do take different views of truth, and each individual is powerfully influenced by his own background, training, and
impulses. So also Gandhi. But truth is at least for an individual what he himself feels and knows to be true. According to this definition I do not know of any person who holds to the truth as Gandhi does. That is a dangerous quality in a politician, for the speaks out his mind and even lets the public see its changing phases.
Gandhi influenced millions of people in India in varying degrees. Some changed the whole texture of their lives, others were only partly affected, or the effect wore off; and yet not quite, for some part of it could not be wholly shaken off. Different people reacted differently and each will give his own answer to this question.
....Gandhi for the first time entered the Congress organization and immediately brought about a complete change in its constitution. He made it democratic and a mass
organization. Democratic it had been previously also but it had so far been limited in
franchise and restricted to the upper classes. Now the peasants rolled in and, in its new garb, it began to assume the look of a vast agrarian organization with a strong sprinkling of the middle classes. This agrarian character was to grow. Industrial workers also came in but as individuals and not in their separate organized capacity.
Action was to be the basis and, objective of this organization, action based on peaceful methods. Thus far the alternative had been just talking and passing resolutions, or terroristic activity. Both of these were set aside and terrorism was especially condemned as opposed to the basic policy of the Congress. A new technique of action was evolved which, though perfectly peaceful, yet implied non-submission to what was considered wrong and, as a consequence, a willing acceptance of the pain and suffering involved in this. Gandhi was an odd kind of pacifist, for he was an activist full of dynamic energy. There was no submission in his to fate or anything that he considered evil; he was full of resistance, though this was peaceful and courteous.
The call of action was two-fold. There was, of course, the action involved in challenging
and resisting foreign rule; There was also the action which led us to fight our own social evils. Apart from the fundamental objective of the Congress- the freedom of India - and the method of peaceful action, the principal planks of the Congress were national unity, which involved the solution of the minority problems, and the raising of the depressed classes and the ending of the curse of untouchability.
Realizing that the main props of British rule were fear, prestige, the co-operation, willing or unwilling, of the people, and certain classes whose vested interests were centred in British rule, Gandhi attacked these foundations. Titles were to be given up and though the title-holders responded to this only in small measure, the popular espect for these British-given titles disappeared and they became symbols of degradation. New standards and values were set up and the pomp and splendour of the viceregal court and the princes, which used to impress so much, suddenly appeared supremely ridiculous and vulgar and rather shameful, surrounded as they were by the poverty and misery of the people. Rich men were not so anxious to flaunt their riches; outwardly at least many of them adopted simpler ways, and in their dress, became almost indistinguishable from humbler folk.
The older leaders of the Congress., bred in a different and more quiescent tradition, did not take easily to these new ways and were disturbed by the upsurge of the masses. Yet so powerful was the wave of feeling and sentiment that swept through the country, that some of this intoxication filled them also. A very few fell away and among them was Mr. M. A. Jinnah. He left the Congress not because of any difference of opinion on the Hindu-Moslem question but because he could not adapt himself to the new and more advanced ideology, and even more so because he disliked the crowds of ill-dressed people, talking in Hindustani, who filled the Congress. His idea of politics was of a superior variety, more suited to the legislative chamber or to a committee-room. For some years he felt completely out of the picture and even decided to leave India for good. He settled down in England and spent several years there.
It is said, and I think with truth, that the Indian habit of mind is essentially one of quietism. Perhaps old races develop that attitude to life; a long tradition of philosophy
also leads to it and yet Gandhi, a typical product of India, represents the very antithesis of quietism. He has been a demon of energy and action, a hustler, and a man who not only drives himself but drives other. He has done more than anyone I know to fight and change the quietism of the Indian people.
He sent us to the villages, and the countryside hummed with the activity of innumerable messengers of the new gospel of action. The peasant was shaken up and he began to emerge from his quiescent shell. The effect on us was different but equally far-reaching, for we saw, for the first time as it were, the villager in the intimacy of his mud-hut, and with the stark shadow of hunger always pursuing him. We learnt our Indian economics more from these visits than from books and learned discourses. The emotional experience we had already undergone was emphasized and confirmed and henceforward there could be no going back for us to our old life or our old standards, howsoever much our views might change subsequently.
Gandhi held strong views on economic, social, and other matters. He did not try to impose all of these on the Congress, though he continued to develop his ideas, and
sometimes in the process varied them, through his writings. But some he tried to push
into the Congress. He proceeded cautiously for he wanted to carry the people with him. Sometimes he went too far for the Congress and had to retrace his steps. Not many accepted his views in their entirety; some disagreed with that fundamental outlook. But many accepted them in the modified form in which they came to the Congress as being suited to the circumstances then existing. In two respects the background of his thought had a vague but considerable influence; the fundamental test of everything was how far it benefited the masses, and the means were always important and could not be ignored even though the end in view was right, for the means governed the end and varied it.
Gandhi was essentially a man of religion, a Hindu to the inner-most depths of his being, and yet his conception of religion had nothing to do with any dogma or custom or ritual. It was basically concerned with his firm belief in the moral law, which he calls the law of truth or love. Truth and non-violence appear to him to be the same thing or different aspects of one and the same thing, and he uses these words almost interchangeably. Claiming to understand the spirit of Hinduism, he rejects every text or practice which does not fit in with his idealist interpretation of what it should be, calling it an interpolation or a subsequent accretion. ‘I decline to be a salve’, he has said, ‘to precedents or practice I cannot understand or defend on a moral basis.’ And so in practice he is singularly free to take the path of his choice, to change and adapt himself, to develop his philosophy of life and action, subject only to the over-riding consideration of the moral law as he conceives this to be. Whether that philosophy is right or wrong, may be argued, but he insists on applying the same fundamental yard-stick to everything, and himself especially. In politics, as in other aspects of life, this creates difficulties for the average person, and often misunderstanding. But no difficulty makes him swerve from the straight line of his choosing, though within limits he is continually adapting himself to a changing situation. Every reform that he suggests, every advice that he gives to others, he straightway applies to himself. He is always beginning with himself and his words and actions fit into each other like a glove on the hand. And so, whatever happens, he never loses his integrity and there is always an organic completeness about his life and work. Even in his apparent failures he has seemed to grow in stature.
What was his idea of India which he was setting out to mould according to his own wishes and ideals? ‘I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country, in whose making they have an effective voice, and India in which there shall be no high class and low class of people, an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony.... There can be no room in such an India for the curse of untouchability or the curse of intoxicating drinks and drugs...... Women will enjoy the same right as men.... This is the India of my dreams.’ Proud of his Hindu inheritance as he was, he tried to give to Hinduism a kind of universal attire and included all religions within the fold of truth. He refused to narrow his cultural inheritance.
‘Indian culture,’ he wrote, ‘is neither Hindu, Islamic, nor any other, wholly. It is a fusion
of all.’ Again he said: ‘I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other peoples’ houses as an interloper, a beggar, or a slave.’ Influenced by modern thought currents, he never let go of his roots and clung to them tenaciously.
And so he set about to restore the spiritual unity of the people and to break the barrierbetween the small westernized group at the top and the masses, to discover the living elements in the old roots and to build upon them, to waken these masses out of their stupor and static condition and make them dynamic. In his single-track and yet manysided nature the dominating impression that one gathered was his identification with the masses, a community of spirit with them, an amazing sense of unity with the dispossessed and poverty-stricken not only of India but of the world. Even religion, as everything else, took second place to his passion to raise these submerged people. ‘A semi-starved nation can have neither religion, nor art nor organization.’ Whatever can be useful to starving millions is beautiful to my mind. Let us give to-day first the vital things of life, and all the graces and ornaments of life will follow...... I want art and literature that can speak to millions.’ These unhappy dispossessed millions haunted him and everything seemed to revolve round them. ‘For millions it is an eternal vigil or an eternal trance.’ His ambition, he said, was ‘to wipe every tear from every eye.’
It is not surprising that this astonishingly vital man, full of self-confidence and an unusual kind of power, standing for equality and freedom for each individual, but measuring all this in terms of the poorest, fascinated the masses of India and attracted them like a magnet. He seemed to them to link up the past with the future and to make the dismal present appear just as a stepping-stone to that future of life and hope. And not the masses only but intellectuals and others also, though their minds were often troubled and confused and the change-over for them from the habits of a lifetime was more difficult. Thus he effected a vast psychological revolution not only among those who followed his lead but also among his opponents and those many neutrals who could not make up their minds what to think and what to do.
It is not surprising that this astonishingly vital man, full of self-confidence and an unusual kind of power, standing for equality and freedom for each individual, but measuring all this in terms of the poorest, fascinated the masses of India and attracted them like a magnet. He seemed to them to link up the past with the future and to make the dismal present appear just as a stepping-stone to that future of life and hope. And not the masses only but intellectuals and others also, though their minds were often troubled and confused and the change-over for them from the habits of a lifetime was more difficult. Thus he effected a vast psychological revolution not only among those who followed his lead but also among his opponents and those many neutrals who could not make up their minds what to think and what to do.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Gandhi Vs terrorism
By Daedalus Wntr , 2007
Immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the idea of taking a nonviolent stance in response to terrorism would have been dismissed out of hand. But now, after the invasion and occupation of two Muslim countries by the U.S. military, the loss of thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Afghanis and Iraqis, and the start of a global jihadi war that seems unending, virtually any alternative seems worth considering. It is in this context that various forms of less militant response, including the methods of conflict resolution adopted by India's nationalist leader, Mohandas Gandhi, deserve a second look.
Like us, Gandhi had to deal with terrorism, and his responses show that he was a tough-minded realist. I say this knowing that this image of Gandhi is quite different from what most Westerners have in mind when they think of him. The popular view in Europe and the United States is the one a circle of Western pacifists writing in the 1920s promoted--the image of Gandhi as a saint.
In a 1921 lecture on "Who is the Greatest Man in the World Today?" John Haynes Holmes, the pastor of New York City's largest liberal congregation, extolled not Lenin or Woodrow Wilson or Sun Yat-sen but someone whom most of the crowd thronging the hall that day had never heard of--Mohandas Gandhi. (1) Holmes, who was later credited with being the West's discoverer of Gandhi, described him as his "seer and saint." (2)
In fact, the term 'Mahatma,' or 'great soul,' which is often appended to Gandhi's name, probably came not from admirers in India but from the West. Before the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore used the term in his letter welcoming Gandhi to India in 1914, members of an American and European mystical movement, the Theosophists, had applied this name to Gandhi. Most likely, they were the ones who conveyed it to Tagore, and since then the term has persisted, even though it was Westerners rather than Indians who first regarded Gandhi in such a saintly mien.
In India, Gandhi was seen as a nationalist leader who, though greatly revered, was very much a politician. Though Gandhi was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize on several occasions, the selection committee hesitated, thinking that the choice of an activist rather than an idealist would stoke political controversies. Gandhi was indeed in the midst of political battle, and in the process he had to address the violence of both his side and the opponents, acts that looked very much like the terrorism of today.
India was on the verge of a violent confrontation with Britain when, in 1915, Gandhi was brought into India's independence movement from South Africa, where as a lawyer he had been a leader in the struggle for social equality for immigrant Indians. In India, as in South Africa, the British had overwhelming military superiority and were not afraid to use it. In 1919, in the North Indian city of Amritsar, an irate British brigadier-general slaughtered almost four hundred Indians who had come to the plaza of Jallianwala Bagh to protest peacefully.
But the nationalist side was countering with violence of its own. In Bengal, Sub-has Chandra Bose organized an Indian National Army, and, in Punjab, leaders of the Ghadar movement--supported by immigrant Punjabis in California--plotted a violent revolution that anticipated boatloads of weapons and revolutionaries transported to India from the United States. These Indian anarchists and militant Hindi nationalists saw violence as the only solution to break the power of the British over India.
Gandhi's views about violent struggle were sharpened in response to Indian activists who had defended a terrorist attack on a British official. The incident occurred in London in 1909, shortly before Gandhi arrived there to lobby the British Parliament on behalf of South African Indian immigrants. An Indian student in London, Madan Lal Dhingra, had attacked an official in Britain's India office, Sir William H. Curzon-Wylie, in protest against Britain's colonial control over India. At a formal function, Dhingra pulled out a gun and, at close range, fired five shots in his face. The British official died on the spot. Dhingra was immediately apprehended by the police; when people in the crowd called him a murderer, he said that he was only fighting for India's freedom.
Several weeks after Gandhi arrived in London, he was asked to debate this issue of violence with several of London's expatriate Indian nationalists. His chief opponent was Vinayak Savarkar, a militant Hindu who would later found the political movement known as the Hindu Mahasabha, a precursor to the present-day Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. At the time of the 1909 assassination Savarkar was reputed to have supplied the weapons and ammunition for the act, and to have instructed the ardent Hindu assassin in what to say in his final statement as he was led to the gallows. The young killer said that he was "prepared to die, glorying in martyrdom." (3)
Shortly before the debate, Gandhi wrote to a friend that in London he had met practically no Indian who believed "India can ever become free without resorting to violence." (4) He described the position of the militant activists as one in which terrorism would precede a general revolution: Their plans were first to "assassinate a few Englishmen and strike terror," after which "a few men who will have been armed will fight openly." Then, they calculated, eventually they might have to lose "a quarter of a million men, more or less," but the militant Indian nationalists thought this effort at guerilla warfare would "defeat the English" and "regain our land." (5)
During the debate, Gandhi challenged the logic of the militants on the grounds of political realism. They could hardly expect to defeat the might of the British military through sporadic acts of terrorism and guerilla warfare. More important, however, was the effect that violent tactics would have on the emerging Indian nationalist movement. He feared that the methods they used to combat the British would become part of India's national character.
Several weeks later Gandhi was still thinking about these things as he boarded a steamship to return to South Africa. He penned his response to the Indian activists in London in the form of a book. In a preliminary way, this essay, which Gandhi wrote hurriedly on the boat to Durban in 1909 (writing first with one hand and then the other to avoid getting cramps), set forth an approach to conflict resolution that he would pursue the rest of his life. The book, Hind Swaraj, or, Indian Home Rule, went to some lengths to describe both the goals of India's emerging independence movement and the appropriate methods to achieve it. He agreed with the Indian radicals in London that Britain should have no place in ruling India and exploiting its economy. Moreover, he thought that India should not try to emulate the materialism of Western civilization, which he described as a kind of "sickness."
The thrust of the book, however, was to counter terrorism. Gandhi sketched out a nonviolent approach, beginning with an examination of the nature of conflict. He insisted on looking beyond a specific clash between individuals to the larger issues for which they were fighting. Every conflict, Gandhi reasoned, was a contestation on two levels--between persons and between principles. Behind every fighter was the issue for which the fighter was fighting. Every fight, Gandhi explained in a later essay, was on some level an encounter between differing "angles of vision" illuminating the same truth. (6)
It was this difference in positions--sometimes even in worldviews--that needed to be resolved in order for a fight to be finished and the fighters reconciled. In that sense Gandhi's methods were more than a way of confronting an enemy; they were a way of dealing with conflict itself. For this reason he grew unhappy with the label, 'passive resistance,' that had been attached to the methods used by his protest movement in South Africa. There was nothing passive about it--in fact, Gandhi had led the movement into stormy confrontations with government authorities--and it was more than just resistance. It was also a way of searching for what was right and standing up for it, of speaking truth to power.
In 1906 Gandhi decided to find a new term for his method of engaging in conflict. He invited readers of his journal, Indian Opinion, to offer suggestions, and he offered a book prize for the winning entry. The one that most intrigued him came from his own cousin, Maganlal, which Gandhi refined into the term, satyagraha. The neologism is a conjunct of two Sanskrit words, satya, 'truth,' and agraha, 'to grasp firmly.' Hence it could be translated as 'grasping onto truth,' or as Gandhi liked to call it, "truth force."
What Gandhi found appealing about the winning phrase was its focus on truth. Gandhi reasoned that no one possesses a complete view of it. The very existence of a conflict indicates a deep difference over what is right. The first task of a conflict, then, is to try to see the conflict from both sides of an issue. This requires an effort to understand an opponent's position as well as one's own--or, as former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara advised in the documentary film The Fog of War, "Empathize with the enemy."
The ability to cast an empathetic eye was central to Gandhi's view of conflict. It made it possible to imagine a solution that both sides could accept, at least in part--though Gandhi also recognized that sometimes the other side had very little worth respecting. In his campaign for the British to 'quit India,' for instance, he regarded the only righteous place for the British to be was Britain. Yet at the same time he openly appreciated the many positive things that British rule had brought to the Indian subcontinent, from roads to administrative offices.
After a solution was imagined, the second stage of a struggle was to achieve it. This meant fighting--but in a way that was consistent with the solution itself. Gandhi adamantly rejected the notion that the goal justifies the means. Gandhi argued that the ends and the means were ultimately the same. If you fought violently you would establish a pattern of violence that would be part of any solution to the conflict, no matter how noble it was supposed to be. Even if terrorists were successful in ousting the British from India, Gandhi asked, "Who will then rule in their place?" His answer was that it would be the ones who had killed in order to liberate India, adding, "India can gain nothing from the rule of murderers." (7)
A struggle could be forceful--often it would begin with a demonstration and "a refusal to cooperate with anything humiliating." But it could not be violent, Gandhi reasoned, for these destructive means would negate any positive benefits of a struggle's victory. If a fight is waged in the right way it could enlarge one's vision of the truth and enhance one's character in the process. What Gandhi disdained was the notion that one had to stoop to the lowest levels of human demeanor in fighting for something worthwhile.
This brings us to the way that Gandhi would respond to terrorism. To begin with, Gandhi insisted on some kind of response. He never recommended doing nothing at all. "Inaction at a time of conflagration is inexcusable," he once wrote. (8) He regarded cowardice as beneath contempt. Fighting--if it is nonviolent--is "never demoralizing," Gandhi said, while "cowardice always is." (9) And perhaps Gandhi's most memorable statement against a tepid response: "Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." (10)
Occasionally violence does indeed seem to be the only response available. Gandhi provided some examples. One was the mad dog. On confronting a dog with rabies, one must stop it by any means possible, including maiming or killing it. (11) Another case that Gandhi offered was a brutal rapist caught in the act. To do nothing in that situation, Gandhi said, makes the observer "a partner in violence." Hence violence could be used to counter it. Gandhi thus concluded, "Heroic violence is less sinful than cowardly nonviolence." (12)
By extension, one could imagine Gandhi justifying an act of violence to halt an act of terrorism in progress. If Gandhi had been sitting next to the suicide bomber in the London subway during the 2005 attack, for instance, he would have been justified in wrestling the man to the floor and subduing him. If no other means were available than a physical assault--even one that led to the man's death--it would have been preferable to the awful event that transpired when the bomb exploded.
Responding to terrorism after the fact, however, is quite a different matter. What Gandhi argued in Hind Swaraj was that violence never works as a response to violence. It usually generates more violence as a result, and precipitates a seemingly endless litany of tit-for-tat militant engagements.
Gandhi was adamantly opposed to the political positions that justified terrorism, but he was remarkably lenient toward the terrorists themselves. In the case of the assassination that occurred when Gandhi was in London in 1909, he did not blame Dhingra, the assassin of Curzon-Wyllie. He said that Dhingra as a person was not the main problem. Rather, Gandhi said, he was like a drunkard, in the grip of "a mad idea." (13)
The difficulty was the "mad idea," not the terrorists. Though he might have justified killing them if he had caught them in the act, after their tragic mission was over, Gandhi's attitude toward those who carried out terrorist acts was more of pity than of revenge. He would not let them go free, of course, but he treated them as misguided soldiers rather than as monsters.
Moreover, Gandhi thought it quite possible that the ideas for which the violent activists were fighting could be worthy ones. In the case of Dhingra and the Indian militants in 1909, for instance, they were championing a cause that Gandhi himself affirmed. Hence it would be an enormous mistake--foolish, from a Gandhian point of view--to fixate on terrorist acts solely as deviant behavior without taking seriously the causes for which these passionate soldiers were laboring.
A Gandhian strategy for confronting terrorism, therefore, would consist of the following:
Stop an act of violence in its tracks. The effort to do so should be nonviolent but forceful. Gandhi made a distinction between detentive force--the use of physical control in order to halt violence in progress--and coercive force. The latter is meant to intimidate and destroy, and hinders a Gandhian fight aimed at a resolution of principles at stake.
Address the issues behind the terrorism. To focus solely on acts of terrorism, Gandhi argued, would be like being concerned with weapons in an effort to stop the spread of racial hatred. Gandhi thought the sensible approach would be to confront the ideas and alleviate the conditions that motivated people to undertake such desperate operations in the first place.
Maintain the moral high ground. A bellicose stance, Gandhi thought, debased those who adopted it. A violent posture adopted by public authorities could lead to a civil order based on coercion. For this reason Gandhi insisted on means consistent with the moral goals of those engaged in the conflict.
These are worthy principles, but do they work? This question is often raised about nonviolent methods as a response to terrorism--as if the violent ones have been so effective. In Israel, a harsh response to Palestinian violence has often led to a surge of support for Hamas and an increase in terrorist violence. The U.S. responses to jihadi movements after the September 11 attacks have not diminished support for the movements nor reduced the number of terrorist incidents worldwide. Militant responses to terrorism do not possess a particularly good record of success.
Yet there is a recent example of a successful end to terrorism that was forged through nonviolent means. This is the case of Northern Ireland, a region plagued by violence for decades.
The troubles of Northern Ireland could be traced back to the British establishment of the Ulster Plantation in 1610, though the most recent round of violence began after a free Irish state was established in 1921. Catholics in the Northern Ireland counties felt marginalized in what they claimed to be Irish territory. Protestants feared they would become overwhelmed and banished from what they regarded as a part of Britain.
Violence erupted in the summer of 1969 in the Bogside area of the city of Londonderry. Following the clash, Protestants revived an old militia, the Ulster Volunteer Force, and militant Catholics created a 'provisional' version of the Irish Republican Army that would be more militant than the old IRA.
In 1971, Northern Ireland officials adopted a preemptive stance and began rounding up Catholic activists whom they regarded as potential terrorists. The activists were detained without charges. Within hours, rioting and shooting broke out in the Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast and adjacent towns. The government, rather than retreating from its hard line, pressed on, declaring a war against terrorism. The suspects were beaten and tortured in an attempt to elicit information. They were forced to lie spread-eagle on the floor with hoods over their heads, and subjected to disorienting electronic sounds.
The government's attempt to end the violence by harshly treating those it suspected of perpetrating violence backfired. The Catholic community united solidly behind the insurgency, and the violence mounted. Later the Home Minister who sanctioned the crackdown admitted that the hard-line approach was "by almost universal consent an unmitigated disaster."
The violence of the early 1970s came to a head on what came to be called 'Bloody Sunday,' when a peaceful protest march against the internment of Catholic activists turned ugly. British troops fired on the crowd, killing thirteen.
For over twenty years the violence continued. Tit-for-tat acts of terrorism became a routine affair. The British embassy in Dublin was burned, British soldiers were attacked, police stations were bombed, and individual Catholics and Protestants were captured by opposing sides and sometimes hideously tortured and killed.
In 1988 an internal dialogue began to take place within the Catholic side between a moderate leader, John Hume, and the activist leader, Gerry Adams. In 1995, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell was invited to Northern Ireland to help broker the peace talks. Initially they were unsuccessful, but then Mitchell returned for eight months of intensive negotiations. The talks involved members of Irish and British governments and eight political parties on both Catholic and Protestant sides of the Northern Irish divide. They reached an agreement on April 10, 1998--a day that happened to be Good Friday, the Christian holiday that precedes Easter.
The Good Friday Agreement is a remarkable document. It attempted to provide structural resolutions to several different problems at the same time. To respond to the public mistrust and insecurity brought on by years of violence, the Agreement set up Human Rights and Equality Commissions. It called for an early release of political prisoners, required the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, prescribed reforms of the criminal justice system and the policies of police, and supplied funds to help the victims of violence. It also addressed the problem of balanced governance by setting up a parliament with proportional representation, an executive branch that guaranteed representation from both communities, and a consultative Civic Forum that allowed for community concerns to be expressed directly from the people. The Agreement also dealt with relations among the three key states involved--Ireland, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland--by establishing several councils and mediating bodies.
Prior to the Agreement, the British government and the paramilitary forces on both the Unionist and IRA sides had found themselves in a situation similar to many violent confrontations. Their positions had been staked out in extreme and uncompromising terms, and the methods used by all sides were so harsh as to be virtually unforgivable. Ultimately they were able to break through this impasse by employing several basic nonviolent techniques:
Seeing the other side's point of view. When the British began to open lines of communication to the radical leaders on both sides, they began to break through the 'we-they' attitude that vexes most hostile confrontations.
Not responding to violence in kind. A series of ceasefires--including unilateral ceasefires by the IRA--were critical in helping to break the spiral of violence. Even as severe an incident as the Omagh terrorist bombing on August 15, 1998, did not elicit retaliatory attacks.
Letting moderate voices surface. Once the spiral of violence had been broken, and both sides no longer felt under siege, there was room for moderate voices to surface within the warring camps.
Isolating radical voices. The peace negotiators did not try to change what could not be changed. Hence they did not waste time in trying to reason with the militant Protestant leader, Reverend Ian Paisley, who had opted out of the process.
Setting up channels of communication. They involved an outsider--Senator Mitchell--to play a mediating role, and set up impartial frameworks of communication for the two sides, which had been deeply mistrustful of one another.
Peace in Northern Ireland was not inevitable, and there is no assurance that the agreement will last forever. Violence may again return to that troubled area of Ireland. Yet for a time the bombs have been silenced. At least in one case in recent political history terrorism has come to an end--through nonviolent means.
It is reasonable to ask whether the approach taken in Northern Ireland could work in other situations. Could it work in Kashmir, for instance, a region that is also claimed by two religious communities backed by powerful governments? It would not take a huge stretch of imagination to think that India and Pakistan could join in a settlement surprisingly similar to the Good Friday Agreement. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more complex, but like Northern Ireland it is essentially a conflict over territory in which both sides have a moral and political claim. Since the Oslo Agreement in 1993 a negotiated settlement in the region has seemed a realistic though still elusive possibility.
But what about the global jihadi war? This is the global conflict that President George W. Bush designated "the war on terror" shortly after September 11, 2001, and relabeled "the struggle against radical Islam" in July 2005. Osama bin Laden enunciated his own proclamation of this war in a fatwa against the United States in 1996. Bin Laden called on Muslims to join him in "correcting what had happened to the Islamic world in general" since the end of the Ottoman Empire. The aim, according to bin Laden, was "to return to the people their own rights, particularly after the large damages and the great aggression on the life and the religion of the people." (14)
Groups sharing an Al Qaeda perspective have attacked the very centers of Western power in New York, Madrid, and London, but their struggle is not in any simple sense about territory. It is a war without a frontline and without clear geographic lines of control. On the jihadi side it is a war without a conventional army and without the apparatus of a political state. For that matter, the jihadi movement seems to be without much centralized control at all.
With no one clearly in charge, negotiation is a difficult affair. It is unlikely that U.S. officials would hike into the mountains of Pakistan to chat with bin Laden, if indeed he could be found. And even if there were such conversations, what would be the point? He has no real control over the policies of the Middle East and is in no position to negotiate a settlement of the underlying issues of Western influence that his fatwa describes. To acknowledge bin Laden as a representative of the Muslim people would be to magnify his importance and reward his terrorism with political legitimacy. The United States has already exaggerated his importance--and unwittingly enlarged his support within the Muslim world--by singling him out as the global enemy of the United States. Negotiations with renegade extremists like bin Laden would not achieve any changes in underlying policy positions that would lessen tensions in the Middle East.
Behind the jihadi war is a conflict between ideas and worldviews. In saying this I do not mean to belittle the importance of the struggle, for ideas can have enormous power. But because the contest is between differing ways of perceiving the world and the relationship between political and moral order, the struggle has had a remarkably moralistic tone. The enemies are not really individuals as much as they are ways of thinking.
Both sides define their goal as freedom. On one side it is the liberty to choose a nation's own officials through democratic elections. On the other side it is liberation from outside influence and control. On both sides these positions have been magnified into a moral contest of such proportions that it has become a sacred struggle. The enemies have become cosmic foes. Large numbers of innocent people have been killed with moral indifference--or worse, with the self-righteous thinking that God is on one's side.
Is a nonviolent approach to conflict resolution relevant to the global jihadi war? Consider the guidelines that Gandhi enunciated in response to the terrorism of the Indian activists in London in 1909. They might be applied to the current situation in the following way:
Stop a situation of violence in its tracks. The first rule of nonviolence is to stop an act of violence as it occurs--or better, to prevent it before it happens. Gandhi would have approved of efforts to capture those involved in acts of terrorism and bring them to justice, and he would have applauded attempts to ward off future terrorist assaults through the legal forms of surveillance and detection that have been adopted after September 11. Even those measures that seem to be aimed only at giving the appearance of security have a certain utility, since they diminish the prime effects of terrorism--fear and intimidation. But even though Gandhi occasionally supported military action, including the British defense against Hitler in World War II, it is doubtful that he would have accepted large-scale military operations as a response to terrorist acts, especially if they left large numbers of casualties in their wake. Nor would he have approved of changes in the legal system that would deprive the public of its rights.
Address the issues behind the violence. The crucial part of nonviolent resolution is to look behind the violence at the issues that are at stake. Gandhi's goal was to form a resolution with the best features of both sides of a dispute. In the case of the global jihadi war, this would mean affirming the positive principles of both sides--though the 'sides' in this case are not only state and non-state organizations but also the concerned publics that stand behind them. Gandhi might have approved of the principles of both sides: the desire of many traditional Muslims in the Middle East to be free from American and European domination, and the expectation of those who hold modern social values that all societies should respect peoples of diverse cultures and be democratically governed. Since these goals are not necessarily incompatible, a resolution that accepts them both is conceivable.
Ultimately, tensions might not be fully resolved until there are significant changes in the political culture of Middle Eastern countries and dramatic reversals of the West's military and economic role in the Middle East. But in the meantime small steps can make a large difference. Any indication that either or both sides accept both sets of principles would be a positive shift toward reconciling the underlying differences and diminishing the support for extremists' positions.
Maintain the moral high ground. As Gandhi remarked to the Indian activists in London who proposed a violent overthrow of British control of India, violence begets violence. Proclaiming a 'war on terrorism,' from Gandhi's point of view, is tantamount to sinking to the terrorists' level. The very idea of war suggests an absolutism of conflict, where reason and negotiation have no place and where opponents are enemies. Though violent extremists are indeed difficult opponents, and Gandhi would not expect one to negotiate with them, he would be mindful that the more important struggle is the one for public support. This support could shift either way, and it would be a tragic error--and perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy--to regard potential supporters as enemies.
Mistreatment of those suspected of being involved in terrorist acts can also lead to a loss of public support. Gandhi urged that the assassin, Dhingra, be treated with caution but also with respect, as any suspect in a crime would be treated. Torture, from Gandhi's point of view, is ineffective not just because it rarely produces useful information but also because it corrupts the moral character of a society that allows it to be used. This was the point he made in Hind Swaraj when he stressed that the means of freeing India from British control should be consistent with the goals a free Indian society would want to achieve.
Many of these guidelines have been part of the public debate in the United States in the years following the September 11 attacks. Thus a nonviolent response to terrorism is already an element of political discourse. It is not a new idea, but rather a strand of public thinking that deserves attention and, Gandhi might argue, respect. As a pragmatic idealist, Gandhi would be pleased to know that nonviolent approaches to terrorism were taken seriously, not only because they invariably were the right thing to do, but also because on more than one occasion they have worked.
Mark Juergensmeyer is professor of sociology and global studies and director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of numerous publications, including "The New Cold War?" (1993), "Terror in the Mind of God" (revised edition, 2003), and "Gandhi's Way" (revised edition, 2005).
1 John Haynes Holmes, "Who is the Greatest Man in the World Today?" a pamphlet published in 1921 and reprinted in Charles Chat-field, ed., The Americanization of Gandhi: Images of the Mahatma (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1976), 98.
2 John Haynes Holmes, My Gandhi (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), 9.
3 Indian Sociologist, September 1909, quoted in James D. Hunt, Gandhi in London (New Delhi: Promilla and Co., Publishers, 1973), 134. My thanks to Lloyd Rudolph for reminding me of this incident.
4 Gandhi's letter to Ampthill, October 30, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 9 (Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1958), 509.
5 Mohandas Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, or, Indian Home Rule, 2nd ed. (Ahmedabad, India: Navajivan Publishing House, 1938; originally published in 1910), 69.
6 Gandhi, writing in Young India, September 23, 1926. I explore Gandhi's ideas further in my book, Gandhi's Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
7 Indian Sociologist, September 1909, quoted in Hunt, Gandhi in London, 134.
8 Harijan, April 7, 1946.
9 Young India, October 31, 1929.
10 Young India, August 11, 1920.
11 Gandhi, Collected Works, vol. 14, 505.
12 Gandhi, Collected Works, vol. 51, 17.
13 Indian Sociologist, September 1909, quoted in Hunt, Gandhi in London, 134.
14 Osama bin Laden, "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," first published in Arabic in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper, August 1996.
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Immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the idea of taking a nonviolent stance in response to terrorism would have been dismissed out of hand. But now, after the invasion and occupation of two Muslim countries by the U.S. military, the loss of thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Afghanis and Iraqis, and the start of a global jihadi war that seems unending, virtually any alternative seems worth considering. It is in this context that various forms of less militant response, including the methods of conflict resolution adopted by India's nationalist leader, Mohandas Gandhi, deserve a second look.
Like us, Gandhi had to deal with terrorism, and his responses show that he was a tough-minded realist. I say this knowing that this image of Gandhi is quite different from what most Westerners have in mind when they think of him. The popular view in Europe and the United States is the one a circle of Western pacifists writing in the 1920s promoted--the image of Gandhi as a saint.
In a 1921 lecture on "Who is the Greatest Man in the World Today?" John Haynes Holmes, the pastor of New York City's largest liberal congregation, extolled not Lenin or Woodrow Wilson or Sun Yat-sen but someone whom most of the crowd thronging the hall that day had never heard of--Mohandas Gandhi. (1) Holmes, who was later credited with being the West's discoverer of Gandhi, described him as his "seer and saint." (2)
In fact, the term 'Mahatma,' or 'great soul,' which is often appended to Gandhi's name, probably came not from admirers in India but from the West. Before the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore used the term in his letter welcoming Gandhi to India in 1914, members of an American and European mystical movement, the Theosophists, had applied this name to Gandhi. Most likely, they were the ones who conveyed it to Tagore, and since then the term has persisted, even though it was Westerners rather than Indians who first regarded Gandhi in such a saintly mien.
In India, Gandhi was seen as a nationalist leader who, though greatly revered, was very much a politician. Though Gandhi was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize on several occasions, the selection committee hesitated, thinking that the choice of an activist rather than an idealist would stoke political controversies. Gandhi was indeed in the midst of political battle, and in the process he had to address the violence of both his side and the opponents, acts that looked very much like the terrorism of today.
India was on the verge of a violent confrontation with Britain when, in 1915, Gandhi was brought into India's independence movement from South Africa, where as a lawyer he had been a leader in the struggle for social equality for immigrant Indians. In India, as in South Africa, the British had overwhelming military superiority and were not afraid to use it. In 1919, in the North Indian city of Amritsar, an irate British brigadier-general slaughtered almost four hundred Indians who had come to the plaza of Jallianwala Bagh to protest peacefully.
But the nationalist side was countering with violence of its own. In Bengal, Sub-has Chandra Bose organized an Indian National Army, and, in Punjab, leaders of the Ghadar movement--supported by immigrant Punjabis in California--plotted a violent revolution that anticipated boatloads of weapons and revolutionaries transported to India from the United States. These Indian anarchists and militant Hindi nationalists saw violence as the only solution to break the power of the British over India.
Gandhi's views about violent struggle were sharpened in response to Indian activists who had defended a terrorist attack on a British official. The incident occurred in London in 1909, shortly before Gandhi arrived there to lobby the British Parliament on behalf of South African Indian immigrants. An Indian student in London, Madan Lal Dhingra, had attacked an official in Britain's India office, Sir William H. Curzon-Wylie, in protest against Britain's colonial control over India. At a formal function, Dhingra pulled out a gun and, at close range, fired five shots in his face. The British official died on the spot. Dhingra was immediately apprehended by the police; when people in the crowd called him a murderer, he said that he was only fighting for India's freedom.
Several weeks after Gandhi arrived in London, he was asked to debate this issue of violence with several of London's expatriate Indian nationalists. His chief opponent was Vinayak Savarkar, a militant Hindu who would later found the political movement known as the Hindu Mahasabha, a precursor to the present-day Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. At the time of the 1909 assassination Savarkar was reputed to have supplied the weapons and ammunition for the act, and to have instructed the ardent Hindu assassin in what to say in his final statement as he was led to the gallows. The young killer said that he was "prepared to die, glorying in martyrdom." (3)
Shortly before the debate, Gandhi wrote to a friend that in London he had met practically no Indian who believed "India can ever become free without resorting to violence." (4) He described the position of the militant activists as one in which terrorism would precede a general revolution: Their plans were first to "assassinate a few Englishmen and strike terror," after which "a few men who will have been armed will fight openly." Then, they calculated, eventually they might have to lose "a quarter of a million men, more or less," but the militant Indian nationalists thought this effort at guerilla warfare would "defeat the English" and "regain our land." (5)
During the debate, Gandhi challenged the logic of the militants on the grounds of political realism. They could hardly expect to defeat the might of the British military through sporadic acts of terrorism and guerilla warfare. More important, however, was the effect that violent tactics would have on the emerging Indian nationalist movement. He feared that the methods they used to combat the British would become part of India's national character.
Several weeks later Gandhi was still thinking about these things as he boarded a steamship to return to South Africa. He penned his response to the Indian activists in London in the form of a book. In a preliminary way, this essay, which Gandhi wrote hurriedly on the boat to Durban in 1909 (writing first with one hand and then the other to avoid getting cramps), set forth an approach to conflict resolution that he would pursue the rest of his life. The book, Hind Swaraj, or, Indian Home Rule, went to some lengths to describe both the goals of India's emerging independence movement and the appropriate methods to achieve it. He agreed with the Indian radicals in London that Britain should have no place in ruling India and exploiting its economy. Moreover, he thought that India should not try to emulate the materialism of Western civilization, which he described as a kind of "sickness."
The thrust of the book, however, was to counter terrorism. Gandhi sketched out a nonviolent approach, beginning with an examination of the nature of conflict. He insisted on looking beyond a specific clash between individuals to the larger issues for which they were fighting. Every conflict, Gandhi reasoned, was a contestation on two levels--between persons and between principles. Behind every fighter was the issue for which the fighter was fighting. Every fight, Gandhi explained in a later essay, was on some level an encounter between differing "angles of vision" illuminating the same truth. (6)
It was this difference in positions--sometimes even in worldviews--that needed to be resolved in order for a fight to be finished and the fighters reconciled. In that sense Gandhi's methods were more than a way of confronting an enemy; they were a way of dealing with conflict itself. For this reason he grew unhappy with the label, 'passive resistance,' that had been attached to the methods used by his protest movement in South Africa. There was nothing passive about it--in fact, Gandhi had led the movement into stormy confrontations with government authorities--and it was more than just resistance. It was also a way of searching for what was right and standing up for it, of speaking truth to power.
In 1906 Gandhi decided to find a new term for his method of engaging in conflict. He invited readers of his journal, Indian Opinion, to offer suggestions, and he offered a book prize for the winning entry. The one that most intrigued him came from his own cousin, Maganlal, which Gandhi refined into the term, satyagraha. The neologism is a conjunct of two Sanskrit words, satya, 'truth,' and agraha, 'to grasp firmly.' Hence it could be translated as 'grasping onto truth,' or as Gandhi liked to call it, "truth force."
What Gandhi found appealing about the winning phrase was its focus on truth. Gandhi reasoned that no one possesses a complete view of it. The very existence of a conflict indicates a deep difference over what is right. The first task of a conflict, then, is to try to see the conflict from both sides of an issue. This requires an effort to understand an opponent's position as well as one's own--or, as former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara advised in the documentary film The Fog of War, "Empathize with the enemy."
The ability to cast an empathetic eye was central to Gandhi's view of conflict. It made it possible to imagine a solution that both sides could accept, at least in part--though Gandhi also recognized that sometimes the other side had very little worth respecting. In his campaign for the British to 'quit India,' for instance, he regarded the only righteous place for the British to be was Britain. Yet at the same time he openly appreciated the many positive things that British rule had brought to the Indian subcontinent, from roads to administrative offices.
After a solution was imagined, the second stage of a struggle was to achieve it. This meant fighting--but in a way that was consistent with the solution itself. Gandhi adamantly rejected the notion that the goal justifies the means. Gandhi argued that the ends and the means were ultimately the same. If you fought violently you would establish a pattern of violence that would be part of any solution to the conflict, no matter how noble it was supposed to be. Even if terrorists were successful in ousting the British from India, Gandhi asked, "Who will then rule in their place?" His answer was that it would be the ones who had killed in order to liberate India, adding, "India can gain nothing from the rule of murderers." (7)
A struggle could be forceful--often it would begin with a demonstration and "a refusal to cooperate with anything humiliating." But it could not be violent, Gandhi reasoned, for these destructive means would negate any positive benefits of a struggle's victory. If a fight is waged in the right way it could enlarge one's vision of the truth and enhance one's character in the process. What Gandhi disdained was the notion that one had to stoop to the lowest levels of human demeanor in fighting for something worthwhile.
This brings us to the way that Gandhi would respond to terrorism. To begin with, Gandhi insisted on some kind of response. He never recommended doing nothing at all. "Inaction at a time of conflagration is inexcusable," he once wrote. (8) He regarded cowardice as beneath contempt. Fighting--if it is nonviolent--is "never demoralizing," Gandhi said, while "cowardice always is." (9) And perhaps Gandhi's most memorable statement against a tepid response: "Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." (10)
Occasionally violence does indeed seem to be the only response available. Gandhi provided some examples. One was the mad dog. On confronting a dog with rabies, one must stop it by any means possible, including maiming or killing it. (11) Another case that Gandhi offered was a brutal rapist caught in the act. To do nothing in that situation, Gandhi said, makes the observer "a partner in violence." Hence violence could be used to counter it. Gandhi thus concluded, "Heroic violence is less sinful than cowardly nonviolence." (12)
By extension, one could imagine Gandhi justifying an act of violence to halt an act of terrorism in progress. If Gandhi had been sitting next to the suicide bomber in the London subway during the 2005 attack, for instance, he would have been justified in wrestling the man to the floor and subduing him. If no other means were available than a physical assault--even one that led to the man's death--it would have been preferable to the awful event that transpired when the bomb exploded.
Responding to terrorism after the fact, however, is quite a different matter. What Gandhi argued in Hind Swaraj was that violence never works as a response to violence. It usually generates more violence as a result, and precipitates a seemingly endless litany of tit-for-tat militant engagements.
Gandhi was adamantly opposed to the political positions that justified terrorism, but he was remarkably lenient toward the terrorists themselves. In the case of the assassination that occurred when Gandhi was in London in 1909, he did not blame Dhingra, the assassin of Curzon-Wyllie. He said that Dhingra as a person was not the main problem. Rather, Gandhi said, he was like a drunkard, in the grip of "a mad idea." (13)
The difficulty was the "mad idea," not the terrorists. Though he might have justified killing them if he had caught them in the act, after their tragic mission was over, Gandhi's attitude toward those who carried out terrorist acts was more of pity than of revenge. He would not let them go free, of course, but he treated them as misguided soldiers rather than as monsters.
Moreover, Gandhi thought it quite possible that the ideas for which the violent activists were fighting could be worthy ones. In the case of Dhingra and the Indian militants in 1909, for instance, they were championing a cause that Gandhi himself affirmed. Hence it would be an enormous mistake--foolish, from a Gandhian point of view--to fixate on terrorist acts solely as deviant behavior without taking seriously the causes for which these passionate soldiers were laboring.
A Gandhian strategy for confronting terrorism, therefore, would consist of the following:
Stop an act of violence in its tracks. The effort to do so should be nonviolent but forceful. Gandhi made a distinction between detentive force--the use of physical control in order to halt violence in progress--and coercive force. The latter is meant to intimidate and destroy, and hinders a Gandhian fight aimed at a resolution of principles at stake.
Address the issues behind the terrorism. To focus solely on acts of terrorism, Gandhi argued, would be like being concerned with weapons in an effort to stop the spread of racial hatred. Gandhi thought the sensible approach would be to confront the ideas and alleviate the conditions that motivated people to undertake such desperate operations in the first place.
Maintain the moral high ground. A bellicose stance, Gandhi thought, debased those who adopted it. A violent posture adopted by public authorities could lead to a civil order based on coercion. For this reason Gandhi insisted on means consistent with the moral goals of those engaged in the conflict.
These are worthy principles, but do they work? This question is often raised about nonviolent methods as a response to terrorism--as if the violent ones have been so effective. In Israel, a harsh response to Palestinian violence has often led to a surge of support for Hamas and an increase in terrorist violence. The U.S. responses to jihadi movements after the September 11 attacks have not diminished support for the movements nor reduced the number of terrorist incidents worldwide. Militant responses to terrorism do not possess a particularly good record of success.
Yet there is a recent example of a successful end to terrorism that was forged through nonviolent means. This is the case of Northern Ireland, a region plagued by violence for decades.
The troubles of Northern Ireland could be traced back to the British establishment of the Ulster Plantation in 1610, though the most recent round of violence began after a free Irish state was established in 1921. Catholics in the Northern Ireland counties felt marginalized in what they claimed to be Irish territory. Protestants feared they would become overwhelmed and banished from what they regarded as a part of Britain.
Violence erupted in the summer of 1969 in the Bogside area of the city of Londonderry. Following the clash, Protestants revived an old militia, the Ulster Volunteer Force, and militant Catholics created a 'provisional' version of the Irish Republican Army that would be more militant than the old IRA.
In 1971, Northern Ireland officials adopted a preemptive stance and began rounding up Catholic activists whom they regarded as potential terrorists. The activists were detained without charges. Within hours, rioting and shooting broke out in the Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast and adjacent towns. The government, rather than retreating from its hard line, pressed on, declaring a war against terrorism. The suspects were beaten and tortured in an attempt to elicit information. They were forced to lie spread-eagle on the floor with hoods over their heads, and subjected to disorienting electronic sounds.
The government's attempt to end the violence by harshly treating those it suspected of perpetrating violence backfired. The Catholic community united solidly behind the insurgency, and the violence mounted. Later the Home Minister who sanctioned the crackdown admitted that the hard-line approach was "by almost universal consent an unmitigated disaster."
The violence of the early 1970s came to a head on what came to be called 'Bloody Sunday,' when a peaceful protest march against the internment of Catholic activists turned ugly. British troops fired on the crowd, killing thirteen.
For over twenty years the violence continued. Tit-for-tat acts of terrorism became a routine affair. The British embassy in Dublin was burned, British soldiers were attacked, police stations were bombed, and individual Catholics and Protestants were captured by opposing sides and sometimes hideously tortured and killed.
In 1988 an internal dialogue began to take place within the Catholic side between a moderate leader, John Hume, and the activist leader, Gerry Adams. In 1995, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell was invited to Northern Ireland to help broker the peace talks. Initially they were unsuccessful, but then Mitchell returned for eight months of intensive negotiations. The talks involved members of Irish and British governments and eight political parties on both Catholic and Protestant sides of the Northern Irish divide. They reached an agreement on April 10, 1998--a day that happened to be Good Friday, the Christian holiday that precedes Easter.
The Good Friday Agreement is a remarkable document. It attempted to provide structural resolutions to several different problems at the same time. To respond to the public mistrust and insecurity brought on by years of violence, the Agreement set up Human Rights and Equality Commissions. It called for an early release of political prisoners, required the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, prescribed reforms of the criminal justice system and the policies of police, and supplied funds to help the victims of violence. It also addressed the problem of balanced governance by setting up a parliament with proportional representation, an executive branch that guaranteed representation from both communities, and a consultative Civic Forum that allowed for community concerns to be expressed directly from the people. The Agreement also dealt with relations among the three key states involved--Ireland, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland--by establishing several councils and mediating bodies.
Prior to the Agreement, the British government and the paramilitary forces on both the Unionist and IRA sides had found themselves in a situation similar to many violent confrontations. Their positions had been staked out in extreme and uncompromising terms, and the methods used by all sides were so harsh as to be virtually unforgivable. Ultimately they were able to break through this impasse by employing several basic nonviolent techniques:
Seeing the other side's point of view. When the British began to open lines of communication to the radical leaders on both sides, they began to break through the 'we-they' attitude that vexes most hostile confrontations.
Not responding to violence in kind. A series of ceasefires--including unilateral ceasefires by the IRA--were critical in helping to break the spiral of violence. Even as severe an incident as the Omagh terrorist bombing on August 15, 1998, did not elicit retaliatory attacks.
Letting moderate voices surface. Once the spiral of violence had been broken, and both sides no longer felt under siege, there was room for moderate voices to surface within the warring camps.
Isolating radical voices. The peace negotiators did not try to change what could not be changed. Hence they did not waste time in trying to reason with the militant Protestant leader, Reverend Ian Paisley, who had opted out of the process.
Setting up channels of communication. They involved an outsider--Senator Mitchell--to play a mediating role, and set up impartial frameworks of communication for the two sides, which had been deeply mistrustful of one another.
Peace in Northern Ireland was not inevitable, and there is no assurance that the agreement will last forever. Violence may again return to that troubled area of Ireland. Yet for a time the bombs have been silenced. At least in one case in recent political history terrorism has come to an end--through nonviolent means.
It is reasonable to ask whether the approach taken in Northern Ireland could work in other situations. Could it work in Kashmir, for instance, a region that is also claimed by two religious communities backed by powerful governments? It would not take a huge stretch of imagination to think that India and Pakistan could join in a settlement surprisingly similar to the Good Friday Agreement. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more complex, but like Northern Ireland it is essentially a conflict over territory in which both sides have a moral and political claim. Since the Oslo Agreement in 1993 a negotiated settlement in the region has seemed a realistic though still elusive possibility.
But what about the global jihadi war? This is the global conflict that President George W. Bush designated "the war on terror" shortly after September 11, 2001, and relabeled "the struggle against radical Islam" in July 2005. Osama bin Laden enunciated his own proclamation of this war in a fatwa against the United States in 1996. Bin Laden called on Muslims to join him in "correcting what had happened to the Islamic world in general" since the end of the Ottoman Empire. The aim, according to bin Laden, was "to return to the people their own rights, particularly after the large damages and the great aggression on the life and the religion of the people." (14)
Groups sharing an Al Qaeda perspective have attacked the very centers of Western power in New York, Madrid, and London, but their struggle is not in any simple sense about territory. It is a war without a frontline and without clear geographic lines of control. On the jihadi side it is a war without a conventional army and without the apparatus of a political state. For that matter, the jihadi movement seems to be without much centralized control at all.
With no one clearly in charge, negotiation is a difficult affair. It is unlikely that U.S. officials would hike into the mountains of Pakistan to chat with bin Laden, if indeed he could be found. And even if there were such conversations, what would be the point? He has no real control over the policies of the Middle East and is in no position to negotiate a settlement of the underlying issues of Western influence that his fatwa describes. To acknowledge bin Laden as a representative of the Muslim people would be to magnify his importance and reward his terrorism with political legitimacy. The United States has already exaggerated his importance--and unwittingly enlarged his support within the Muslim world--by singling him out as the global enemy of the United States. Negotiations with renegade extremists like bin Laden would not achieve any changes in underlying policy positions that would lessen tensions in the Middle East.
Behind the jihadi war is a conflict between ideas and worldviews. In saying this I do not mean to belittle the importance of the struggle, for ideas can have enormous power. But because the contest is between differing ways of perceiving the world and the relationship between political and moral order, the struggle has had a remarkably moralistic tone. The enemies are not really individuals as much as they are ways of thinking.
Both sides define their goal as freedom. On one side it is the liberty to choose a nation's own officials through democratic elections. On the other side it is liberation from outside influence and control. On both sides these positions have been magnified into a moral contest of such proportions that it has become a sacred struggle. The enemies have become cosmic foes. Large numbers of innocent people have been killed with moral indifference--or worse, with the self-righteous thinking that God is on one's side.
Is a nonviolent approach to conflict resolution relevant to the global jihadi war? Consider the guidelines that Gandhi enunciated in response to the terrorism of the Indian activists in London in 1909. They might be applied to the current situation in the following way:
Stop a situation of violence in its tracks. The first rule of nonviolence is to stop an act of violence as it occurs--or better, to prevent it before it happens. Gandhi would have approved of efforts to capture those involved in acts of terrorism and bring them to justice, and he would have applauded attempts to ward off future terrorist assaults through the legal forms of surveillance and detection that have been adopted after September 11. Even those measures that seem to be aimed only at giving the appearance of security have a certain utility, since they diminish the prime effects of terrorism--fear and intimidation. But even though Gandhi occasionally supported military action, including the British defense against Hitler in World War II, it is doubtful that he would have accepted large-scale military operations as a response to terrorist acts, especially if they left large numbers of casualties in their wake. Nor would he have approved of changes in the legal system that would deprive the public of its rights.
Address the issues behind the violence. The crucial part of nonviolent resolution is to look behind the violence at the issues that are at stake. Gandhi's goal was to form a resolution with the best features of both sides of a dispute. In the case of the global jihadi war, this would mean affirming the positive principles of both sides--though the 'sides' in this case are not only state and non-state organizations but also the concerned publics that stand behind them. Gandhi might have approved of the principles of both sides: the desire of many traditional Muslims in the Middle East to be free from American and European domination, and the expectation of those who hold modern social values that all societies should respect peoples of diverse cultures and be democratically governed. Since these goals are not necessarily incompatible, a resolution that accepts them both is conceivable.
Ultimately, tensions might not be fully resolved until there are significant changes in the political culture of Middle Eastern countries and dramatic reversals of the West's military and economic role in the Middle East. But in the meantime small steps can make a large difference. Any indication that either or both sides accept both sets of principles would be a positive shift toward reconciling the underlying differences and diminishing the support for extremists' positions.
Maintain the moral high ground. As Gandhi remarked to the Indian activists in London who proposed a violent overthrow of British control of India, violence begets violence. Proclaiming a 'war on terrorism,' from Gandhi's point of view, is tantamount to sinking to the terrorists' level. The very idea of war suggests an absolutism of conflict, where reason and negotiation have no place and where opponents are enemies. Though violent extremists are indeed difficult opponents, and Gandhi would not expect one to negotiate with them, he would be mindful that the more important struggle is the one for public support. This support could shift either way, and it would be a tragic error--and perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy--to regard potential supporters as enemies.
Mistreatment of those suspected of being involved in terrorist acts can also lead to a loss of public support. Gandhi urged that the assassin, Dhingra, be treated with caution but also with respect, as any suspect in a crime would be treated. Torture, from Gandhi's point of view, is ineffective not just because it rarely produces useful information but also because it corrupts the moral character of a society that allows it to be used. This was the point he made in Hind Swaraj when he stressed that the means of freeing India from British control should be consistent with the goals a free Indian society would want to achieve.
Many of these guidelines have been part of the public debate in the United States in the years following the September 11 attacks. Thus a nonviolent response to terrorism is already an element of political discourse. It is not a new idea, but rather a strand of public thinking that deserves attention and, Gandhi might argue, respect. As a pragmatic idealist, Gandhi would be pleased to know that nonviolent approaches to terrorism were taken seriously, not only because they invariably were the right thing to do, but also because on more than one occasion they have worked.
Mark Juergensmeyer is professor of sociology and global studies and director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of numerous publications, including "The New Cold War?" (1993), "Terror in the Mind of God" (revised edition, 2003), and "Gandhi's Way" (revised edition, 2005).
1 John Haynes Holmes, "Who is the Greatest Man in the World Today?" a pamphlet published in 1921 and reprinted in Charles Chat-field, ed., The Americanization of Gandhi: Images of the Mahatma (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1976), 98.
2 John Haynes Holmes, My Gandhi (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), 9.
3 Indian Sociologist, September 1909, quoted in James D. Hunt, Gandhi in London (New Delhi: Promilla and Co., Publishers, 1973), 134. My thanks to Lloyd Rudolph for reminding me of this incident.
4 Gandhi's letter to Ampthill, October 30, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 9 (Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1958), 509.
5 Mohandas Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, or, Indian Home Rule, 2nd ed. (Ahmedabad, India: Navajivan Publishing House, 1938; originally published in 1910), 69.
6 Gandhi, writing in Young India, September 23, 1926. I explore Gandhi's ideas further in my book, Gandhi's Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
7 Indian Sociologist, September 1909, quoted in Hunt, Gandhi in London, 134.
8 Harijan, April 7, 1946.
9 Young India, October 31, 1929.
10 Young India, August 11, 1920.
11 Gandhi, Collected Works, vol. 14, 505.
12 Gandhi, Collected Works, vol. 51, 17.
13 Indian Sociologist, September 1909, quoted in Hunt, Gandhi in London, 134.
14 Osama bin Laden, "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," first published in Arabic in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper, August 1996.
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Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Introducing the new 'E-Charkha'
Developed by Bangalore based Hiremath,' e-charkha' not only produces yarn but also functions as an inverter. 2 hours of spinning will give the backup power for over 6 hours, sufficient enough to light up a small "LED" and even to power a small transistor. The Khadi and Village Industries commission formally launched 'e-charkha' last November. KVIC plans to introduce it in Khadi weaving centres across India. Mr Hiremath says that the 'e-charkha' would provide a means of economic independence to spinners in remote places – both in terms of utility and entertainment, solving the monotony of spinning. For more information on the product, call 9845113109.
'E-Charkha -- A Reality'
http://pib.nic.in/archieve/others/2007/oct07/r2007102901.pdf
http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/16/stories/2007111650380200.htm
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Trusteeship -- Corporate Social Responsibility
Gandhian economics is essentially the collection of Gandhi's thoughts on various economic systems. Gandhi was not an economist and he didn’t propound any new economic theory. In his time any discussion on economics was centered around two accepted economic systems - Capitalism and Socialism. Both were rigid in their own terms and even today there is no universally accepted economic system that can be uniformly applied over space and time. Every region can have its characteristic economic system which varies with time. One has to take in to account the prevalent conditions; Socio-political, economic and educational status of the people; comparative advantages and disadvantages of the regional economy etc.
Gandhi’s thoughts on economic systems evolved over time and they incorporated the good of both Capitalism and Socialism. A conservative may identify his views when he reads that Gandhi was against the confiscation of private property. Similarly a liberal socialist identifies his views when he reads about non-recognition of private property, social responsibility of those possessing property etc., Every thought of Gandhi may not be relevant today but Gandhian economics is very comprehensive to deal with many present day issues. One such issue is “Corporate Social Responsibility”, which can be traced to Gandhi’s concept of “Trusteeship”.
Corporate Social Responsibility links Corporate Sector to Social Sector.It is becoming more relevant in our society plagued by increasing inequalities between haves and havenots. Corporate Social Responsibility means that the corporate sector, which earns profit through the sale of its goods and services in the society also has some responsibility towards it. This is essential to promote growth with equity and to achieve an inclusive society. Increasing number of industrial houses are taking active interest in the welfare of the employees, their families and society at large. Starting from the provision of basic necessities like drinking water,primary education, health facilities to the development of environment friendly technologies on regional/national or even international scale, they are working in various spheres. In taking up few initiatives, some of them also have enlightened self-interest in mind. They are not only able to advertise their products but are also selling them to the beneficiaries of their activities. Some of them are involved in the charity work like provision of mid day meals to school children. Many of them have their own NGOs operating at ground level,and in other cases they are involving the civil society in their activities.Reading Gandhi's concept of trusteeship, we understand that he wanted capitalists to act as trustees (not owners) of their property and conduct themselves in a socially responsible way.
Quoting Jayant Pandya from his "Gandhi and his Disciples"
The philosophy of Trusteeship believes in inherent goodness of human beings. It involves the capitalists and landlords in the service of society without any element of coercion. It doesn’t want the destruction of capitalists. Gandhi himself believed that their destruction would result in the end of the workers.
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Mahtma Gandhi's "Gospel Of Trusteeship"
http://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap53.htm
Some Excerpts:
I am inviting those people who consider themselves as owners today to act as trustees, i.e., owners, not in their own right, but owners in the right of those whom they have exploited.
Supposing I have come by a fair amount of wealth—either by way of legacy, or by means of trade and industry—I must know that all that wealth does not belong to me; what belongs to me is the right to an honourable livelihood, no better than that enjoyed by millions of others. The rest of my wealth belongs to the community and must be used for the welfare of the community.
The question how many can be real trustees according to this definition is beside the point. If the theory is true, it is immaterial whether many live up to it or only one man lives up to it. The question is of conviction.
It is my conviction that it is possible to acquire riches without consciously doing wrong. For example I may light on a gold mine in my one acre of land. But I accept the proposition that it is better not to desire wealth than to acquire it, and become its trustee. I gave up my own long ago, which should be proof enough of what I would like others to do. But what am I to advise those who are already wealthy or who would not shed the desire for wealth? I can only say to them that they should use their wealth for service.
As for the present owners of wealth, they will have to make their choice between class war and voluntarily converting themselves into trustees of their wealth. They will be allowed to retain the stewardship of their possessions and to use their talent, to increase the wealth, not for their own sakes, but for the sake of the nation and, therefore, without exploitation.
When the people understand the implications of trusteeship and the atmosphere is ripe for it, the people themselves, beginning with gram panchayats, will begin to introduce such statutes. Such a thing coming from below is easy to swallow. Coming from above it is liable to prove a dead weight.
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After independence, Vinobha Bhave in one way demonstrated the "Trusteeship" Concept through the "Bhoodan Movement".
Brief History of the Bhoodan Movement
http://www.gandhimuseum.org/sarvodaya/vinoba/bhoodan.htm
By adopting Gandhi’s ideas to the solution of the basic economic problem of land collection & equitable redistribution among the landless, the Movement kept Gandhi’s ideas of socioeconomic reconstruction alive at a period when the tendency of the educated elite was to overlook, if not to reject Gandhi’s ideas as irrelevant.
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An excellent article by Dr T Karunakaran, former Vice Chancellor of Gandhigram Rural University on the emergence of Corporate Social Responsibility in last few years, CSR in action, illustration of Mahatma Gandhi's concept of Trusteeship and the United Nations endorsed "Global Compact" concept.
http://tafva.org/pdf_word/Corporate%20S
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Gandhi- Premodernist, Modernist or Postmodernist ?
The major relevance of Gandhi's philosophy is his relation with Postmodern thoughts. Gandhi is usually seen as a forceful critic of modernism and exhorts us to pre-modern forms of existence. This might have been a reasonable hypothesis to his contemporaries and most commentators since his death; it is now time for us to re-evaluate Gandhi's philosophy in light of post-modern modes of thought. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan's first impression of Gandhi was that he possessed a "medieval attitude of mind," but he later saw that he was mistaken.
Gandhi’s mind-body dualism (which in some places is Manichean)) is the greatest obstacle to his post-modern interpretation but nevertheless Gandhi may, if we discount his dualism, offer significant contributions to a post-modern view of the self, ethics, religion, and political philosophy. Hence, Gandhi’s philosophy is much more compatible with "constructive" postmodernism. In the following article the author has tried to take into account the Pre-modern, Modern and Post-modern characters of Gandhi’s philosophy.
Following was Gandhiji’s statement in Harijan, 29-4-1933 p.2 which seems appropriate in this context-
“I would like to say to the diligent reader of my writings and to others who are interested in them that I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my search after Truth, I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things. Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dissolution of the flesh. What I am concerned with is my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from moment to moment, and, therefore when anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he still has faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the latter of the two on the same subject.”
GANDHI- A PREMODERNIST
The crisis of the modern world has led many to believe that the only answer is to return to the traditional forms of self and community that existed before the Modern Age. Such a move would involve the rejection of science, technology, and a mechanistic cosmology. Ontologically the modern world-view is basically atomistic, both at the physical and the social level. The cosmos is simply the sum total of its many inert and externally related parts, just as modern society is simply the sum total of social atoms contingently related to other social atoms. The modernist view of time is also linear, with one event happening one after the other, with no other purpose than simply to keep on continuing that way. The modernist view of the sacred has been to reject it altogether, or to place God in a transcendent realm far removed from the material world.
By contrast the Pre-modern vision of the world is one of totality, unity, and, above all, purpose. These values were celebrated in ritual and myth, the effect of which was to sacralise the cycles of seasons and the generations of animal and human procreation. The human self, then, is an integral part of the sacred whole, which is greater than and more valuable than its parts. Myth and ritual facilitated the painful passage through personal and social crises, rationalized death and violence, and controlled the power of sexuality. One could say that contemporary humankind is left to cope with their crises with far less successful therapies or helpful institutions.
When Gandhi says that "in order to restore
Gandhi’s Manicheanism is pervasive and it may have come from Christian influences as well as his own Indian tradition: "In God there is no duality. But as soon as we descend to the empirical level, we get two forces–God and Satan, as Christians call them." Gandhi claims that we are necessarily violent because of life in a body, so that is why we should aim to be rid of it or at least train ourselves to become imperious to its needs. Interestingly enough, a mind-body dualism characterizes much of modern thought, but it is formulated in a much more subtle and sophisticated form. So Gandhi's dualism is definitely more pre-modern than modern and it stands as the greatest obstacle to a post-modern interpretation of his thought.
As we now look beyond Gandhi as a pre-modernist, it is important to note that, although he admired the achievements of the ancient
GANDHI- A MODERNIST
Modernism has been described as a replacement of Myth by Logic. The Greek Sophists stood for ethical individualism and relativism; they gave law its adversarial system and the now accepted practice that attorneys may "make the weaker argument the stronger"; they inspired Renaissance humanists to extend education to the masses as well as to the aristocracy; and they gave us a preview of a fully secular modern society.
One of Gandhi's most basic assumptions was his firm belief in the integrity of the individual. "The individual is the one supreme consideration"; and "if the individual ceases to count, what is left of society?" Gandhi said that he feared the power of the state, because "it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress." For Gandhi each individual must act on her own truth regardless of the consequences and regardless of whether others think she is in error. If individuation is ultimately illusory, the very foundations of Gandhi's political ethics are dissolved.
Gandhi’s experiments with truth are distinctively modernist with their firm assumption that the individual is the final arbiter of action. To assert a source of authority outside of the laws of any God is a sure sign of the modernist mind. Gandhi also rejects a premodern cyclical view of history in favor of a modernist view of linear moral progression. A very modernist Gandhi states: "The force of spirit is ever progressive and endless. . . . The remedy [from self-destruction] lies in every individual training himself for self-expression in every walk of life, irrespective of response of the neighbours." This is not only progressive and individualistic, it also appears to undermine his pre-modern view that one should train in the profession of one’s father. Because of our finitude and fallibility, Gandhi firmly asserted that we can only attain relative truths. Gandhi's position on truth is more compatible with constructive postmodernism.
Gandhi's conception of religion could be called modernist as well. He believed that all religions are equal; and all are to be tolerated. Gandhi was a fervent believer in prayer and he also chanted Rama's name, but even these practices are sometimes given a modernist rendering. Gandhi said that for him Rama was not the king of the Ramayana or an incarnation of Vishnu, but the name simply means "purity of conduct" and the "search for truth". For Gandhi religion is a purely personal matter, and "there are as many religions as there are individuals." One could also say that he is committed to the modernist reduction of religion to ethics. He has his own special version of this: religion is the search for truth, an endeavour even inclusive of atheists. Also modernist is his position that the state should not support religious organizations. But this did not prevent his holding that religion should be integrated into political action as its ethical ground and justification. Gandhi's famous warning that "
Gandhi's commitment to civil disobedience is intimately related to the issue of Gandhi's professed anarchism. Gandhi called his village republicanism a form of "enlightened anarchy" in which "everyone is [her] own ruler." He said that "government is best that governs least" and he believed that government is a necessary evil. Gandhi spoke fervently of his village communities as ideal states, but he was keenly aware of human fallibility and the limits of reason, especially the calculative reason of modern mass political organization. Gandhi's practice of nonviolence and self-suffering discourages self-interest and reintroduces constraint and coercion in a way unlike any other previous political theory.
GANDHI- A POSTMODERNIST
Postmodernism may be defined as "the adoption or adaptation of Western developmental models to indigenous systems"; or alternatively a "synthesis of old and new which is qualitatively new from the old and the new".
Gandhi wanted to protect the individual from dissolution either in a premodern totality or the modern bureaucratic state.
Gandhi also qualifies his individualism with other-constitution, and he definitely joins in this postmodern reconstruction of the self. As he once reminded a correspondent: "I value individual freedom, but you must not forget that man is essentially a social being".
Gandhi’s reasons for rejecting other Indian nationalists’ programs can best be interpreted as constructive postmodern. Both the liberal constitutionalist Shri Gokhale and radicals such as Shri Tilak and B. B. Pal, who recommended violent means to the end of Indian independence, were thoroughly modernist in their worldviews. Both separated the inner from the outer, both proposed a rationalist methodology, and both ridiculed Gandhi’s belief that legitimate political action must have a spiritual foundation. Answering questions at the 1930 Round Table Conference in
Gandhi’s fusion of means and ends, the inner and the outer, of religion and politics is neither premodern nor modern, but distinctively postmodern in the constructive sense (Constructive postmodernism can be seen as the result of a dialectical triad in which modernism negates premodernism, and then the constructive postmodernist, in a third stage of reintegration, gleans value from both).
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I have tried to present the summary of this wonderful piece of work. Original, full length article may be found at the following link-
http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/gpm.htm
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