The Essential Gandhi (50 page)

It is folly to suppose that aggressors can ever be benefactors. The Japanese may free India from the British yoke, but only to put in their own instead. I have always maintained that we should not seek any other Power’s help to free India from the British.…
⁶

[Our] attitude is that of complete non-coöperation with the Japanese army; therefore, we may not help them in any way, nor may we profit by any dealings with them. [We] cannot sell anything to them. If people are not able to face the Japanese army, they will do as armed soldiers do—retire when they are overwhelmed.… If, however, the people have not the courage to resist the Japanese unto death, and not the courage and capacity to evacuate the portion invaded by the Japanese, they will do the best they can in the light of instructions. One thing they should never do—to yield willing submission to the Japanese. That will be a cowardly act, and unworthy of freedom-loving people.…
⁷

[What] may have been enough to affect the old occupant would be wholly different from what would be required to keep off the invader. Thus we can disown the authority of the British rulers by refusing taxes, and in a variety of [other] ways. These would be inapplicable to withstand the Japanese onslaught. Therefore, whilst we may be ready to face the Japanese, we may not ask the Britishers to give up their position of vantage merely on the unwarranted supposition that we would succeed by mere non-violent effort in keeping off the Japanese.

Lastly, whilst we must guard ourselves in our own way, our nonviolence must preclude us from imposing on the British a strain which must break them. That would be a denial of our whole history for the past twenty-two years.
⁸

Non-violence cannot be taught to a person who fears to die and has no power of resistance. A helpless mouse is not non-violent because he is always eaten by pussy. He would gladly eat the murderess if he could but he ever tries to flee.… We do not call him a coward because he is made by nature to behave no better than he does. But a man who when faced by danger behaves like a mouse is rightly called a coward. He harbors violence and hatred in his heart and would kill his enemy if he could without hurting himself.… Bravery is foreign to his nature. Before he can understand non-violence he has to be taught to stand his ground and even suffer death in the attempt to defend himself.… Whilst I may not actually help anyone to retaliate I must not let a coward seek shelter behind nonviolence so-called. Not knowing the stuff of which non-violence is made, many have honestly believed that running away from danger every time was a virtue compared to offering resistance, especially when it was fraught with danger to one’s life. As a teacher of non-violence I must … guard against such an unmanly belief.
⁹

Fearlessness connotes freedom from all external fear—fear of disease, bodily injury and death, of dispossession, of losing one’s nearest and dearest, of losing reputation or giving offence, and so on.…
¹⁰

In truth we fear death most, and hence we ultimately submit to superior brute force.… Some will resort to bribery, some will crawl on their bellies or submit to other forms of humiliation, and some women will even give their bodies rather than die. Whether we crawl on our bellies or whether a woman yields to the lust of man is symbolic of the same love of life which makes us stoop to anything. Therefore, only he who loses his life shall save it.… To enjoy life one should give up the lure of life.…
¹¹

The art of dying follows as a corollary from the art of living.
¹²

 … How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the master’s bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms, and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor … for he has failed in getting me to do what he wanted done.
¹³

 … The nation as a whole has never been and never been claimed to be, non-violent.… And what is decisive is that India has not yet demonstrated the non-violence of the strong, such as would be required to withstand a powerful army of invasion. If we had developed that strength, we would have acquired our freedom long ago.…
¹⁴

 … My love of the British is equal to that of my own people. I claim no merit for it, for I have equal love for all mankind without exception. It demands no reciprocity. I own no enemy on earth. That is my creed.
¹⁵

 … The news about the destruction in England is heart-rending. The Houses of Parliament, the Abbey, the Cathedral seemed to be immortal.…
¹⁶

[Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of Great Britain and stirring England to gallant resistance. He had, through the years, made numerous statements against Indian independence. On
November 10, 1942, he issued his famous dictum: “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside at the liquidation of the British Empire.” Gandhi wrote him a letter.]

You are reported to have the desire to crush the “naked fakir,” as you are said to have described me. I have been long trying to be a fakir and that, naked—a more difficult task. I therefore regard the expression as a compliment, though unintended. I approach you then as such, and ask you to trust and use me for the sake of your people and mine and through them those of the world. Your sincere friend.…
¹⁷

…
Perhaps the chief difficulty [in gaining the confidence of the British officials in India] is the opinion reported to have been held by Mr. Churchill.… He is said to want to “crush” me, “the naked fakir.” The body can be crushed, never the spirit.…

[Nothing] dismays or disappoints me. If I represent the truth … I know that the wall of distortion and suspicion will topple.…
¹⁸

[The American public was disturbed by the low war morale of the Indian people; having been a colony of Britain the United States understood India’s aspirations. In London, U.S. Ambassador John G. Winant tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Prime Minister Churchill from stating publicly that the Atlantic Charter’s self-government clause did not apply to India. Face to face at the White House and in transatlantic telephone conversations, Roosevelt had discussed India with Churchill and urged him to make an acceptable offer to the Indian people.

Robert E. Sherwood, in his book
Roosevelt and Hopkins
, stated that “Hopkins said a long time later that he did not think that any suggestions from the President to the Prime Minister in the entire war were so wrathfully received as those relating to the solution of the Indian problem.…”

Gandhi felt that unless England purged herself by freeing India the war could not be won and the peace could not be won.]

[The] whole of India is a vast prison. The Viceroy is the irresponsible superintendent of the prison with numerous jailers and warders under him. The four hundred millions of India are not the only prisoners. There are others similarly situated in the other parts of the earth under other superintendents.

A jailer is as much a prisoner as his prisoner. There is no doubt a difference. From my point of view he is worse.…
¹⁹

 … A country under alien subjection can have only one political goal, namely, its freedom from that subjection.…

 … The cry of “Quit India” has arisen from a realization of the fact that if India is to shoulder the burden of representing or fighting for the cause of mankind, she must have the glow of freedom now. Has a freezing man ever been warmed by the promise of the warmth of the sunshine coming at some future date?
²⁰

 … If the British wish to document their right to win the war and make the world better, they must purify themselves by surrendering power in India. Your President talks about the Four Freedoms. Do they include the freedom to be free? We are asked to fight for democracy in Germany, Italy and Japan. How can we when we haven’t got it ourselves?
²¹

 … I cannot work for Allied victory without trust. If they trust us, a settlement will be easy to achieve. Freedom for India will bring hope to Asiatic and other exploited nations. Today there is no hope for the Negroes. But Indian freedom will fill them with hope.
²²

 … The moment we are free we are transformed into a nation prizing its liberty and defending it with all its might, and therefore helping the Allied cause.
²³

 … British rule in India in any shape or form must end. Hitherto the rulers have said, “We would gladly retire if we knew to whom
we should hand over the reins.” My answer now is, “Leave India to God. If that is too much, then leave her to anarchy.” …
²⁴

[Hatred] injures the hater, never the hated.… If we are strong the British become powerless. I am therefore trying to wean the people from their hatred by asking them to develop the strength of mind to invite the British to withdraw.… With the British withdrawal the incentive to welcome the Japanese goes. [The] millions of India can resist the Japanese, even without the possession of arms, modern and ancient, if they are properly organized.… The British presence invites the Japanese, it promotes communal disunion and other discords, and what is perhaps the worst of all, deepens the hatred born of impotence. Orderly British withdrawal will turn the hatred into affection.…
²⁵

…
Do the British get from India all they want? What they get today is from an India which they hold in bondage. Think what a difference it would make if India were to participate in the war as a free ally. That freedom, if it is to come, must come today.…

 … How is this mass of humanity to be set aflame in the cause of world deliverance unless and until it has touched and felt freedom? Today there is no life left in them. It has been crushed out of them. If luster has to be restored to their eyes, freedom has to come not tomorrow but today.…
²⁶

 … America and Britain are very great nations but their greatness will count as dust before the bar of dumb humanity, whether African or Asiatic. They and they alone have the power to undo the wrong. They have no right to talk of human liberty and all else unless they have washed their hands clean of the pollution. The necessary wash will be their surest insurance of success for they will have the good wishes—unexpressed but no less certain—of millions of dumb Asiatics and Africans. Then but not till then, will they be fighting for a new order. This is the reality.…
²⁷

…
Whether Britain wins or loses, imperialism has to die. It is
certainly of no use now to the British people, whatever it may have been in the past.…
²⁸

 … The freedom of India means everything for us, but it means also much for the world. For freedom won through non-violence will mean the inauguration of a new order in the world.

There is no hope for mankind in any other way.
²⁹

[Several hundred Congress Party leaders assembled August 7, 1942. Shortly after midnight of August 8, Gandhi addressed the delegates.]

 … Every one of you should, from this very moment, consider yourself a free man or woman and even act as if you are free and no longer under the heel of this Imperialism. This is no make-believe. You have to cultivate the spirit of freedom before it comes physically. The chains of a slave are broken the moment he considers himself a free man. He will then tell his master: “I have been your slave all these days but I am no longer that now. You may kill me, but if you do not and if you release me from the bondage, I will ask for nothing more from you. For henceforth, instead of depending upon you, I shall depend upon God for food and clothing. God has given me the urge for freedom and therefore I deem myself to be a free man.” …
³⁰

[The delegates went home to sleep. Gandhi, Nehru and scores of others were awakened by the police a few hours later—before sunrise—and carried off to prison. Gandhi was sent into a palace of the Aga Khan at Yeravda. The next day, Kasturbai got herself arrested by announcing that she would address a meeting in Bombay at which Gandhi had been scheduled to speak.

Gandhi spent much time in prison teaching his wife Indian geography and other subjects. He had little success in his persistent efforts to improve her reading and writing of Gujarati. She was seventy-four.

Kasturbai had been ailing, and in December, 1943, she became seriously ill with chronic bronchitis. The Government gave permission for her sons and grandsons to visit her. Ba especially asked for her first-born, Harilal, who had been estranged from his parents.

On February 22, her head resting in Gandhi’s lap, she died. At the funeral Gandhi offered a prayer borrowed from Hindu, Parsi, Moslem and Christian scriptures. Devadas lit the pyre. The ashes were buried beside those of Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s secretary, adviser and chronicler for twenty-four years, who had died in prison beside Gandhi a short time before.

When Gandhi returned from the cremation, he sat on his bed in silence and then, from time to time, as the thoughts came, he spoke.]