For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Ahimsa and Mahatma Gandhi- VII

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net;

dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com

Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

Ahimsa and Mahatma Gandhi- VII

one who is fairly on the road to renunciation will not need to be told that ahimsa (love), not himsa (hate), rules man, I was almost about to say, the world. Illustrations that the correspondent gives to prove my own himsa betrays his ignorance of my writings. The ignorance, of course, does not matter, because no one need read Young India. But ignorance of a man’s views is unpardonable when one ventures to criticize them. I have advocated boycott only foreign cloth and there is no violence done to the British workers who may be thrown out of employment because of the boycott of cloth manufactured by them, for the simple reason that purchase of foreign cloth is not an obligation undertaken by India. Violence is all the other way. It is done to India in the name and on behalf of British workers by imposing British cloth upon India. A drunkard does no violence to the owner of a drink-shop when he becomes a teetotaller. He serves both the publican and himself. And so will India serve both the foreigners and herself, when she ceases to buy foreign cloth. Foreign workmen will not starve, but will find better employment. And if they will voluntarily give up manufacturing cloth for India, they will have taken part in a great humanitarian movement. 1

You have asked me a question about food. I think that the physiological results of food are a consequence and not a cause for the avoidance of animal food. For, even if it could be proved that there is no physiological evil effect from taking animal food; it will still be banned on the principle of ahimsa. 2 I am certainly eager to go to China if I find the way clearly open, but not for the reasons you mention. I do not believe in imported credit and, therefore, I do not think that my way in India will be smoother if the Chinese accepted it; nor am I in any way hopeful of their acceptance. What attracts me to China is identity of status in that both are nations under foreign domination. I came in very intimate contact with the Chinese colony in the Transvaal. And, as a matter of fact, I believe that whilst I would have readily got in Finland intellectual assent to the doctrine of ahimsa, I shall find it terribly difficult to secure that assent from the Chinese, whether cultured or uncultured. But that does not worry me as it does not worry me here whether people accept ahimsa or not, what I am afraid of about Europe and America is patronage. I entertain no such fear about China. You will detect here in me a subtle pride and, if you do, you will not be far wrong. But there it is. By all means put into shape your economic arguments about khaddar before you write on ahimsa. Whenever you send me questions, I shall try to deal with them. 3

My own opinion is that softness and ahimsa go ill together. You have to be sometimes hard in order to be really and truly kind. But in Andhra, I have been watching with the greatest pain the indiscipline practised under the name of liberty and unprincipled men getting the upper hand and doing what they like with impunity. Not that these things have not happened elsewhere. But in Andhra, perhaps, the evil has been more accentuated. Khadi can succeed today if we can get disciplined men with boundless faith in it and with no other irons in the fire. If you think that you and Seetharama Shastri have that absolute faith in khadi and if you think that you can be hard enough when occasion requires hardness, by all means continue the agency. But let there be no further experimenting in dilatoriness and compromising and pleading [with] people. The agency may be conducted on a business-like footing. And if you think that it is worth while coming here to discuss the whole situation, by all means do come and bring Seetharama Shastri and anybody else you like. 4

There can be no two opinions on the fact that Hinduism regards killing a living being as sinful. I think all religions are agreed on the principle. There is generally no difficulty in determining a principle. The difficult comes in when one proceeds to put it into practice. A principle is the expression of a perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practise perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice; So Hinduism has laid down that killing for sacrifice is no ahimsa (violence). This is only a half-truth. Violence will be violence for all time, and all violence is sinful. But what is inevitable is not regarded as a sin, so much so that the science of daily practice has not only declared the inevitable violence involved in killing for sacrifice as permissible, but even regarded it as meritorious. 5

I believe myself to be saturated with ahimsa non-violence. Ahimsa and Truth are as my two lungs. I cannot live without them. But I see every moment, with more and more clearness, the immense power of ahimsa and the littleness of man. Even the forest-dweller cannot be entirely free from violence, in spite of his limitless compassion. With every breath he commits a certain amount of violence. The body itself is a house of slaughter, and therefore moksha and Eternal Bliss consist in perfect deliverance from the body and, therefore, all pleasure, save the joy of moksha, is evanescent, imperfect. That being the case, we have to drink, in daily life, many a bitter draught of violence. It is therefore a thousand pities that the question of stray dogs, etc., assumes such a monstrous proportion in this sacred land of ahimsa. It is my firm conviction that we are propagatinghimsa in the name of ahimsa owing to our deep ignorance of the great principle. It may be a sin to destroy rabid dogs and such others as are liable to catch rabies. But we are responsible; the Mahajan is responsible, for this state of things. The Mahajan may not allow the dogs to stray. It is a sin, it should be a sin, to feed stray dogs, and we should save numerous dogs if we had legislation making every stray dog liable to be shot. Even if those who feed stray dogs consented to pay a penalty for their misdirected compassion we should be free from the curse of stray dogs. Humanity is a noble attribute of the soul. It is not exhausted with saving a few fish or a few dogs. Such saving may even be sinful.

If I have a swarm of ants in my house, the man who proceeds to feed them will be guilty of a sin For God has provided their grain for the ants, but the man who feeds them might destroy me and my family. The Mahajan may feel itself safe and believe that it has saved their lives by dumping dogs near my field, but it will have committed the greater sin of putting my life in danger. Humaneness is impossible without thought, discrimination, charity, fearlessness, humility and clear vision. It is no easy thing to walk on the sharp sword-edge of ahimsa in this world which is so full of himsa. Wealth does not help; anger is the enemy of ahimsa; and pride is a monster that swallows it up. In this strait and narrow observance of this religion of ahimsa one has often to know so-called himsa as the truest form of ahimsa. Things in this world are not what they see and do not seem as they really are. Or if they are seen as they are, they so appear only to a few who have perfected themselves after ages of penance. But none has yet been able to describe the reality, and no one, can. 6

I call myself a sanatani Hindu, because I believe in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas and the writings left by the holy reformers. This belief does not require me to accept as authentic everything that passes as Shastras. I reject everything that contradicts the fundamental principles of morality. I am not required to accept the ipse dixit or the interpretations of pundits. Above all I call myself a sanatani Hindu, so long as Hindu society in general accepts me as such. In a concrete manner he is a Hindu who believes in God, immortality of the soul, transmigration, the law of Karma and moksha, and who tries to practise truth and ahimsa in daily life, and therefore practises cow-protection in its widest sense and understands and tries to act according to the law of varnashrama. 7

Angry letters are now pouring in. At an hour when after a hard day’s work I was about to retire to bed, three friends invaded me, infringed the religion of ahimsa in the name of humanity, and engaged me in a discussion on it. They had come in the name of humanity. How could I refuse to see them? So I met them. One of them, I saw, betrayed anger, bitterness and arrogance. He did not seem to me to have come with a view to getting his doubts solved. He had come rather to correct me. Everyone has a right to do so, but whoever undertakes such a mission must know my position. This friend had taken no trouble to understand my position. But he was not to blame for it. This impatience which is but a symptom of violence is to be found everywhere. The violence in this case was painful to me as it was betrayed by an advocate of non-violence. He claimed to be a Jain. I have made a fair study of Jainism. This visitor’s ahimsa was a distortion of the reality as I have known it in Jainism. But the Jains have no monopoly of ahimsa. It is not the exclusive peculiarity of any religion. Every religion is based on ahimsa; its application is different in different religions. I do not think that the Jains of today practise ahimsa in any better way than others. I can say this because of my acquaintance with Jains, which is so old that many take me to be a Jain. Mahavir was an incarnation of compassion, of ahimsa.

How I wish his votaries were votaries also of his ahimsa! Protection of little creatures is indeed an essential part of ahimsa, but it does not exhaust itself with it. Ahimsa begins with it besides protection may not always mean mere refraining from killing. Torture or participation, direct or indirect, in the unnecessary multiplication of those that must die is himsa the multiplication of dogs is unnecessary. A roving dog without an owner is a danger to society and a swarm of them is a menace to its very existence. If we want to keep dogs in towns or villages in a decent manner, no dog should be suffered to wander. There should be no stray dogs even as we have no stray cattle. Humanitarian societies should find a religious solution of such questions. But can we take individual charge of these roving dogs? And if we cannot, can we have a pinjarapoles for them? If both these things are impossible, there seems to me to be no alternative except to kill them. Connivance or putting up with the status quo is no ahimsa; there is no thought or discrimination in it. Dogs will be killed whenever they are a menace to society. I regard this as unavoidable in the life of a householder. To wait until they get rabid is not to be merciful to them. We can imagine what the dogs wish if a meeting would could be called of them, from what we would wish under the same circumstances. We will not choose to live anyhow. That many of us do so is no credit to us.

A meeting of wise men will never resolve that men may treat one another as they treat rabid or stray dogs. What shall we expect of them if there were to be some beings loasing it over us as we do over dogs? Would we not rather prefer to be killed than to be treated as dogs? We offend against dogs as a class by suffering them to stray and live on crumbs or savings from our plates that we throw at them and we injure our neighbours also by doing so. I admit that there is the duty of suffering dogs to live even at the cost of one’s life. But that religion is not for the householder who desires to live, who procreates, and who would protect society. The householder can but practise the middle path of taking care of a few dogs. Our domestics of today are the wild animals of yesterday. The buffalo is a domestic only in India. It is a sin to domesticate wild animals inasmuch as man does so for his selfish purposes. That he has domesticated the cow and the buffalo is not out of mercy for them, it is for his own use. He, therefore, does not allow a cow or a buffalo to stray. The same duty is incumbent regarding dogs. I am, therefore, strongly of opinion that, if we would practise the religion of humanity, we should have a law making it obligatory on those who would have dogs to keep them under guard, and not allow them to stray, and making all the stray dogs liable to be destroyed after a certain date. If the Mahajan has really any mercy for the dogs, it should take possession of all the stray dogs and distribute them to those who want to keep them. It seems to me to be impossible to protect dogs as we can protect the cows. But there is a regular science of dog-keeping which the people in the West have formulated and perfected. We should learn it from them and devise measures for the solution of our own problem. The work cannot be done without patience, wisdom and perseverance So much about dogs. But with ahimsa in its comprehensive aspect I propose to deal on another occasion. 8

The destruction of certain dogs by a mill owner, when some of them were suffering from hydrophobia and when there was danger of the employees being bitten any moment has angered members of the very influential Jain community of Ahmadabad. Having many friends among them and being regarded by many as an authority in matters of ahimsa (non-violence), I have been helplessly and reluctantly drawn into the controversy. As the matter has gone beyond the mere Gujarati-speaking public of Ahmadabad, I am presenting the readers of Young India with a translation of the series of articles I am devoting to the subject covering as far as possible the whole wide field of ahimsa. I have no doubt that many readers of Young India who are interested in the theory and evolution of non-violence will welcome the translation of the series. 9

This is one of those instances in which two apparently contradictory positions are right at the same time. For the brave missionaries there was no other attitude possible, though, nowadays, very few adopt it. Was it not about China that a missionary deputation some thirty years ago waited on the late Lord Salisbury and asked the protection of the British gunboats for carrying their message to the unwilling Chinese? Then the late noble Marquess had to tell the missionaries that, if they sought the protection of the British arms, they must submit to international obligations and curb their missionary ardour. He reminded them that the Christians of old, if they penetrated the remotest regions of the earth, expected no protection save from God and put their lives in constant danger. In the case quoted by the New York Nation, the missionaries according to the report have reverted to the ancient practice. The American Government, however, so long as it retains its present character, can only give the answer they are reported to have given. That the answer betrays the evil of the modern system is another matter. The American prestige depends not upon its moral strength but upon force. But why should the whole armed force of America is mobilized for the so-called vindication of its honour or name?

What harm can accrue to the honour of America if twenty-five missionaries choose to go to China uninvited for the sake of delivering their message and get killed in the act? Probably, it would be the best thing for their mission. The American Government by its interference could only interrupt the full working of the law of suffering. But self-restraint of America would mean a complete change of outlook. Today, defence of citizenship is a defence of national commerce, i.e., exploitation. That exploitation presupposes the use of force for imposing commerce upon an unwilling people. Nations have in a sense, therefore, almost become gangs of robbers, whereas they should be a peaceful combination of men and women united for the common good of mankind. In the latter case, their strength will lie not in their skill in the use of gunpowder, but in the possession of superior moral fiber. The action of the twenty-five missionaries is a dim shadow of reconstructed society or even reconstructed nations.

I do not know whether they carried out their principle into practice in every department of life. I need hardly point out that in spite of the threat of the American Government to protect them against themselves, they could neutralize, indeed even frustrate, any effort at retaliation. But that means complete self-effacement. And if one is to combat the fetish of force, it will only be by means totally different from those in vogue among the pure worshippers of brute force. It must not be forgotten that, after all, there is a philosophy behind the modern worship of brute force with a history to back it. The microscopic non-militant minority has, indeed, nothing to fear from it, if only it has immovable faith behind it. But faith in the possibility of holding together society without brute force seems somehow to be lacking. Yet, if one person can pit himself against the whole world, why cannot two or more do likewise together? I know the answer that has been given. Time alone can show the possibilities of the revolution that is silently creeping upon us. Speculation is waste of effort where action is already afoot. Those who have faith will join the initial effort in which demonstrable results cannot be shown. 10

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