The Essential Gandhi (48 page)

A pacifism which can see the cruelties only of occasional military warfare and is blind to the continuous cruelties of our social system is worthless. Unless our pacifism finds expression in the broad human movement which is seeking not merely the end of war but our equally non-pacifist civilization as a whole, it will be of little account in the onward march of mankind. The spirit of life will sweep on, quite uninfluenced by it.
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Immediately the spirit of exploitation is gone armaments will be felt as a positively unbearable burden. Real disarmament cannot come unless the nations of the world cease to exploit one another.
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A society which anticipates and provides for meeting violence with violence will either lead a precarious life or create big cities and magazines for defence purposes. It is not unreasonable to presume from the state of Europe that its cities, its monster factories and huge armaments are so intimately interrelated that the one cannot exist without the other.
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Even if Hitler was so minded, he could not devastate seven hundred thousand non-violent villages. He would himself become non-violent in the process.
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[As Gandhi watched the darkness advance during the 1930’s across China, Abyssinia, Spain, Czechoslovakia and above all, Germany, his zeal for pure pacifism grew. He saw the Second World War approaching.]

 … I have the unquenchable faith that, of all the countries in the world, India is the one country which can learn the art of nonviolence, that if the test were applied even now, there would be found, perhaps, thousands of men and women who would be willing to die without harboring malice against their persecutors. I have harangued crowds and told them repeatedly that they might
have to suffer much, including death by shooting. Did not thousands of men and women brave hardships during the salt campaign equal to any that soldiers are called upon to bear? No different capacity is required from what has been already evinced, if India has to contend against an invader. Only it will have to be on vaster scale.

One thing ought not to be forgotten. India unarmed would not require to be destroyed through poison gas or bombardment.… Free India can have no enemy. And if her people have learnt the art of saying resolutely “No” and acting up to it, I daresay no one would want to invade her. Our economy would be modelled as to prove no temptation for the exploiter.

 … The world is looking for something new and unique from India.…

 … For India to enter into the race for armaments is to court suicide. With the loss of India to non-violence the last hope of the world will be gone.…
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 … I believe that Independent India can discharge her duty towards a groaning world only by adopting a simple but ennobled life by developing her thousands of cottages and living at peace with the world.

Whether such plain living is possible for an isolated nation, however large geographically and numerically in the face of a world armed to the teeth, and in the midst of pomp and circumstance, is a question open to the doubt of a skeptic. The answer is straight and simple. If plain life is worth living, then the attempt is worth making, even though only an individual or a group makes the effort.
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Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew question in Palestine and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question.

My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became lifelong companions.
Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them.…

But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for a national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me.… Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?

The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled?…

But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history.…

Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.

Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is.… If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow-Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can.…

 … I am convinced that, if someone with courage and vision can
arise among them to lead them in non-violent action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer of hope. And what has today become a degrading manhunt can be turned into a calm and determined stand offered by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given to them by Jehovah. It will be then a truly religious resistance offered against the Godless fury of dehumanized man. The German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity. They will have rendered service to fellow-Germans and proved their title to be the real Germans as against those who are today dragging, however unknowingly, the German name into the mire.

And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about things in the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart. They can offer Satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in their favor in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.

 … Every country is their home, including Palestine, not by aggression but by loving service.…
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 … If [the Jewish people] were to adopt the matchless weapon of non-violence, whose use their best prophets have taught and which Jesus the Jew who gladly wore the crown of thorns bequeathed to a groaning world, their case would be the world’s, and I have no doubt that among the many things the Jews have given to the world, this would be the best and the brightest. It is twice blessed.
It will make them happy and rich in the true sense of the word, and it will be a soothing balm to the aching world.
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 … I happen to have a Jewish friend [Herman Kallenbach, who purchased the farm for Gandhi’s first ashram in South Africa] living with me. He has an intellectual belief in non-violence. But he says he cannot pray for Hitler. He is so full of anger over the German atrocities that he cannot speak of them with restraint. I do not quarrel with him over his anger. He wants to be non-violent, but the sufferings of his fellow-Jews are too much for him to bear. What is true of him is true of thousands of Jews who have no thought even of “loving the enemy.” With them, as with millions, “revenge is sweet, to forgive is divine.”
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It is no non-violence if we love merely those that love us. It is non-violence only when we love those that hate us. I know how difficult it is to follow this grand law of love. But are not all great and good things difficult to do?…
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…
Human nature will find itself only when it fully realizes that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal.…
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A violent man’s activity is most visible, while it lasts. But it is always transitory.… Hitler … Mussolini … and Stalin … are able to show the immediate effectiveness of violence.… But the effects of Buddha’s non-violent action persist and are likely to grow with age. And the more it is practiced, the more effective and inexhaustible it becomes, and ultimately the whole world stands agape and exclaims, “A miracle has happened.” All miracles are due to the silent and effective working of invisible force. Non-violence is the most invisible and the most effective.
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Belief in non-violence is based on the assumption that human nature in the essence is one and therefore unfailingly responds to the advances of love.…

How can non-violence combat aerial warfare, seeing that there are no personal contacts? The reply to this is that behind the death-dealing
bomb there is the human hand that releases it, and behind that still is the human heart that sets the hand in motion. And at the back of the policy of terrorism is the assumption that terrorism if applied in a sufficient measure will produce the desired result, namely, bend the adversary to the tyrant’s will. But supposing a people make up their mind that they will never do the tyrant’s will, nor retaliate with the tyrant’s own methods, the tyrant will not find it worth his while to go on with his terrorism.…
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 … If some other country resorts to methods which I consider to be inhuman, I may not follow them.… The caliphs [heads of Islam] issued definite instructions to the armies of Islam that they should not destroy the utility services, they should not harass the aged and women and children, and I do not know that the arms of Islam suffered any disaster because the armies obeyed these instructions.
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 … I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property for offence or defence. I would far rather leave, if I must, my crops and homestead for the enemy to use than destroy them for the sake of preventing their use by him. There is reason, sacrifice and even bravery in so leaving my homestead and crops if I do so not out of fear, but because I refuse to regard anyone as my enemy.…
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[One who believes in violence will wish God “to save the King, scatter his enemies, frustrate their knavish tricks”—as in the British national anthem.] If God is the Incarnation of Mercy, He is not likely to listen to such prayer but it cannot but affect the minds of those who sing it, and in times of war it simply kindles their hatred and anger to white heat. [But the soldier of non-violence] may give the supposed enemy a sense of right, and bless him. His prayer for himself will always be that the spring of compassion in him may ever be flowing, and that he may ever grow in moral strength so that he may face death fearlessly.
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 … We have to live and move and have our being in [nonviolence], even as Hitler does in [violence].… Hitler is awake all
the twenty-four hours of the day in perfecting his [practices]. He wins because he pays the price.
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[Dictators] have up to now always found ready response to the violence they have used. Within their experience, they have not come across organized non-violent resistance on an appreciable scale, if at all. Therefore, it is not only highly likely, but … inevitable, that they would recognize the superiority of non-violent resistance over any display of violence that they may be capable of putting forth.

 … Supposing a people make up their mind they will never do the tyrant’s will, nor retaliate with the tyrant’s own methods, the tyrant will not find it worth his while to go on with his terrorism. If sufficient food is given to the tyrant, a time will come when he will have more than his surfeit. If all the mice in the world held conference together and resolved that they would no more fear the cat but all run into her mouth, the mice would live.
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[While their country was being invaded, non-violent resisters] would offer themselves unarmed as fodder for the aggressor’s cannon.… The unexpected spectacle of endless rows upon rows of men and women simply dying rather than surrender to the will of an aggressor must ultimately melt him and his soldiery.
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Who enjoys the freedom [afterward] when whole divisions of armed soldiers rush into a hailstorm of bullets to be mown down? But in the case of non-violence, everybody seems to start with the assumption that the non-violent method must be set down as a failure unless he himself at least lives to enjoy the success thereof. This is both illogical and invidious. In Satyagraha [Soul-Force] more than in armed warfare, it may be said that we find life by losing it.
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 … We are discussing a final substitute for armed conflict called war, in naked terms, mass murder.
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The science of war leads one to dictatorship pure and simple. The science of non-violence alone can lead on to pure democracy.
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