For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Love and Mahatma Gandhi- XII

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

Love and Mahatma Gandhi- XII

Those who had differences with him, those who bitterly criticized him did not hesitate to admit that no other man could take his place in Bengal. He was fearless. He was brave. His love for the young men of Bengal was boundless. There is not a young man but has told me that never had his request to Mr. Das for help gone in vain. He earned lakhs and gave away lakhs to the young men of Bengal. His sacrifice was matchless. And who am I to talk of his great intellect and his statesmanship? I regard myself as a loyal servant of India and a loyal brother and colleague of the late Mr. Das and as such I publicly declare that I shall, consistently with my principle, try to give hence-forward, if it is possible, even more help to the followers of Mr. Das than I have up to now done in their Council programme. I pray to God that He may ever keep me from doing or speaking aught calculated to injure his work. Our differences regarding the Council-entry remained, but our hearts were one. Differences in political methods will remain until the end of time, but they should never separate people or make of them mutual enemies. The same love of the motherland which prompted me to do one thing prompted him to do something else and such honest difference means no detriment to the cause of the country. 1

I do not know Harilal’s affairs. He meets me occasionally, but I never pry into his affairs. I do not know that he is a Director in his Company. I do not know how his affairs stand at present, except that they are in a bad way. If he is honest, limited or unlimited though his Stores were, he will not rest till he has paid all the creditors in full. That is my view of honest trade. But he may hold different views and seek shelter under the law of insolvency. Sufficient for me to assure the public that nothing crooked will have countenance from me. For me, the law of Satyagraha, the law of love, is an eternal principle. I co-operate with all that is good. I desire to non-co-operate with all that is evil, whether it is associated with my wife, son or me. I have no desire to shield any of the two. I would like the world to know the whole of the evil in us. And in so far as I can, with decency, I let the world into all the domestic secrets so-called. I never make the slightest attempt to hide them, for I know that concealment can only hurt us. There is much in Harilal’s life that I dislike. He knows that. But I love him in spite of his faults. The bosom of a father will take him in as soon as he seeks entrance. For the present, he has shut the door against himself. He must still wander in the wilderness. The protection of a human father has its decided limitations. That of the Divine Father is ever open to him. Let him seek it and he will find it. 2

At sight of the purifying flame in the path of love, people run away in fear. So sang Pritam. The path of love requires that we should not mind touching the so-called untouchable, that we should honour the despised. This path is strewn with difficulties. That alone is love which endures even when one is abandoned by one’s father, turned out of home by the mother, shunned by society and forbidden by the priest to enter the temple. After all, it is we ourselves who install the image in the temple. The image which comes to be associated with an evil practice will do more harm than good to us. The ultimate haveli is one’s own heart. The haveli walls are what crutches are to the lame. They are merely a support. When they cease to be a support and instead become a burden, we should throw them away. The gates of the physical haveli can be closed, but the doors of the heart-temple are open for all the twenty-four hours. The all-knowing God dwelling in it protects us all the time. 3

A man who wants to love the whole world including one who calls himself his enemy knows how impossible it is to do so in his own strength. He must be as mere dust before he can understand the elements of ahimsa. He is nothing if he does not daily grow in humility as he grows in love. A man who would have his eye single, who would regard every woman as his blood sister or mother, has to be less than dust. He stands on the brink of a precipice. The slightest turn of the head brings him down. He dare not whisper his virtue to his very own for he knows not what the next moment has in store for him. For him “pride goeth before destruction and haughtiness before a fall.” Well has the Gita said, “Passions subside in a fasting man, not the desire for them? The desire goes only when man sees God face to face.” And no one can see God face to face who has aught of me. He must become a cypher if he would see God. Who shall dare say in this storm-tossed universe, ‘I have won’? God triumphs in us, never we. 4

Deshbandhu did not know Sanskrit and had not studied the scriptures. He merely followed the dharma of national service. He had made himself completely fearless. That is why even learned men bowed to him and, on that unforgettable day, they mingled their tears with the people. The dharma of national service means all-embracing love. It is not universal love, but it is an important facet of it. It is not the Dhavalgiri of love, but it’s Darjeeling. From Darjeeling, the visitor has a golden vision of Dhavalgiri and thinks to himself: ‘If the Darjeeling of love is so beautiful as this, how much more beautiful must be its Dhavalgiri, which shines in the distance before me.’ Love of one’s country is not opposed to love of mankind, but is a concrete instance of it. It ultimately lifts one to the highest peak of universal love. That is why people shower blessings on those who are filled with patriotic love. People know love of family, and are not, therefore, moved to admiration by it. To some extent they also understand love of the village. But love of the country only a Deshbandhu or a Lokamanya understands. People adore such men because they themselves want to be like them. 5

With the progressive awakening in the country, every time there is a calamity, people will have to part with some share of their earnings; they should be ready to do so willingly. That is not love which merely sheds tears and does no more. Profession without action is no love; it is but empty words. Love gives, and acts, without talking. One who loves his father does not go about, like a bard, praising the father’s virtues; he preserves his legacy, improves upon it and adds to it. A father’s best property consists in his virtues, which the son cultivates in himself and so brings credit both to the father and to himself. In the same way, we who are Deshbandhu’s heirs must contribute what we can to enhance what he has left behind. 6 The other piece of advice which the correspondent gives is that I should suggest something which will inspire fear in the hearts of the British. That thing is against my very nature and I can never bring myself to do it. I want to win over the British through love. It may be that this is beyond the capacity of the country to attempt. It can adopt the path of violence. But it will not, in that case, need my services, since I am not a worthy soldier in such an effort. Every weapon which I find it possible to employ has its roots in love or truth. My plan may be wrong; my intention is never unworthy. 7

I have hundreds of friends among the British people. I cannot love the Mussalmans and for that matter the Hindus if I hate the British. My love is not an exclusive affair. If I hate the British today, I would have to hate the Mohammedans tomorrow and the Hindus the day after. But what I do detest is the system of government that the British have set up in my country. It has almost brought about the economic and moral ruin of the people of India. But just as I love my wife and my children, in spite of their faults which are many, I love also the British in spite of the bad system for which they have unfortunately made themselves responsible. That love which is blind is no love, that love which shuts its eyes to the faults of loved ones is partial and even dangerous. You must write again if this letter does not satisfy you. 8 I have so often said that I would love to be in the minority of one, because this artificial majority, which is the result of the masses’ reverence for me, is a clog in my progress. But for the clog, I would hurl defiance today. I can neither be quickened into vanity by blind adoration, nor shall I sacrifice a title of my principle for mass adoration. The Englishmen are a microscopic minority. They do not fear that they would be engulfed. Of course, at the back of their security is the force of the bayonet. But it will someday ruin them if they are not warned betimes. You may rely either on your soul-force or sword-force. But in no case would you put up with the present degradation. 9

I don’t say love my persecutor and I must honestly but in all humility confess to you that I have not succeeded, I cannot recall a single occasion when I have felt constrained to hate a single human being. How I came to it I do not know. But I am simply giving to you a life-long practice and, therefore, it is really literally true that, if there is any person who has the right to speak on Brotherhood of Man, I at least have that right. Brotherhood does not mean loving or sympathizing with those, extending the hand of fellowship to those who will in return love you. That is a bargain. Brotherhood is not a mercantile affair. And my philosophy, my religion teaches me that brotherhood is not confined merely to the human species; that is, if we really have imbibed the spirit of brotherhood, it extends to the lower animals. In one of the magazines issued in England by those great philanthropic societies 30 or 35 years ago, I remember having read some beautiful verses. I think the title of those verses was My Brother Ox. In them the writer beautifully described how on a man who loved his fellow men it was obligatory to love his fellow-animals also, taking the word animals to mean the sub-human species. The thought struck me most forcibly. At that time, I had learnt very little of Hinduism. All I knew about it was what I had imbibed from my surroundings, from my parents and others. But I realized the force of that writing. However I do not intend today to dwell upon this broadest brotherhood. I shall confine myself to “Brotherhood of Man”.

I have brought this thing in order to illustrate that our brotherhood is a mockery if we are not prepared to love even our enemies. In other words, one who has imbibed the spirit of brotherhood cannot possibly allow it to be said of him that he has any enemy at all. People may consider themselves to be our enemies, but we should reject any such claim. I have heard that claim made; that is the reason why I use the word ‘claim’. The question then arises: how is it possible to love those who consider themselves to be our enemies? Almost every week, I receive letters either from Hindus or from Mussalmans, sometimes from Christians, combating this fundamental position that I have taken up. If it is a Hindu who writes, then he asks me, “How is it possible for me to love a Mussalman who kills the cow”, which is dear to me as my life? Or if it is a Christian who writes to me, he asks, “How is it possible to love Hindus who so ill-treat those whom they call untouchables, Hindus who have suppressed a fifth of their own numbers?” And if it is a Mussalman who writes, he asks, “How is it possible to extend the hand of brotherhood or fellowship to Hindus who are worshippers of stock and stone?” I say to all these three:

Your brotherhood is of no value to me if you cannot love the respective parties that you have described. But what does the attitude signify after all? Does it not signify cowardly fear or intolerance? If all of us are God’s creation, why should we fear one another or hate those who do not hold the same belief that we do? A Hindu will ask me, is he to sit or look on, while a Mussalman is doing something which is most repugnant to him? My brotherhood replies, “Yes”. And I add “You must sacrifice yourself, or in the language you have just listened to, you must bear the cross. If you want to defend one who is dear to you, you must die without killing.” I have personal experience of such occurrences. If you have the courage to suffer lovingly, you melt the stoniest heart. You may raise your hand against one whom you regard as a ruffian, but how if he overpowers you? Will not the ruffian be more ferocious because of his victory over you? Does not history show that evil feeds on resistance? History also furnishes instances of men having tamed the fiercest men with their all-embracing love.

But I admit that such nonresistance requires far greater courage than that of a soldier who returns two blows against one. I also admit that if a man has anger instead of love in him for the evil-doer, it is better for him to fight clean rather than, in a cowardly manner, to sit still for fear of dying. Cowardice and brotherhood are contradictory terms. I know that the world does not accept the fundamental position that I have endeavoured to place before you. I know that in Christian Europe, this doctrine of non-retaliation is pooh-poohed. At the present moment, I am privileged to receive precious letters from friends all over Europe and America, some of them asking me to still further expound the doctrine of non-resistance. Some others are laughing at me and telling me: “It is all right for you to talk these things in India, but you dare not do so in Europe.” Yet others tell me: Our Christianity is a whitewash, we do not understand the message of Jesus, and it has got to be still delivered to us, so that we can understand it.

All these three positions are more or less right from the standpoint of the writers. But I venture to tell you that there is no peace for this world, and to take the name of brotherhood is a blasphemy, until we arrive at this fundamental position. Men there are who ask and so also women who ask: “Is it human to refrain from retaliation?” I say it is human. Up to now we have not realized our humanity, we have not realized our dignity; we are supposed to be, if Darwin is to be believed, the descendants of monkeys, and I am afraid that we have not yet shed our original state. President Wilson mentioned his beautiful 14 points, and do you know what he wound up with? He said:“After all, if this endeavour of ours to arrive at peace fails, we have got our armaments to fall back upon.” I want to reverse that position, and I say: “Our armaments have failed already. Let us now be in search of something new, and let us try the force of love and God which is Truth.” When we have got that, we shall want nothing else. There is the story of the devotee, Prahlad. It may be a fable, but no fable for me. He was a lad of hardly 12 years. His father asked him not to take the name of God. Prahlad said: “I can’t do without it, it is my life.” Then his father asked him: “Show me you’re God.” A red hot iron pillar was shown to Prahlad and he was asked to embrace it. Yes, there was God in that pillar. Prahlad embraced it in love and faith. He was unhurt. If we would realize brotherhood, we must have the love and the faith and the truth of Prahlad in us. 10

Mine is not an exclusive love. I cannot love Mussalmans or Hindus and hate Englishmen. For, if I merely love Hindus and Mussalmans because their ways are on the whole pleasing to me, I shall soon begin to hate them when their ways displease me, as they may well do any moment. A love that is based on the goodness of those whom you love is a mercenary affair, whereas true love is self effacing and demands no consideration. It is like that of a model Hindu wife, Sita, for instance, who loved her Rama even whilst he bid her pass through a raging fire. It was well with Sita, for she knew what she was doing. She sacrificed herself out of her strength, not out of her weakness. Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable. The unfortunate position is that educated Indians take to teaching not for the love of it, but because they have nothing better and nothing else for giving them a livelihood. Many of them even enter the teaching profession with a view to preparing for what they regard as a better thing. The wonder is that in spite of this self-imposed initial handicap so many teachers are not worse than they are. By well-ordered agitation, no doubt, they may better their pecuniary prospects, but I see no chance even under a swaraj government of the scale of salary being raised much higher than it is today. I believe in the ancient idea of teachers teaching for the love of it and receiving the barest maintenance. The Roman Catholics have retained that idea and they are responsible for some of the best educational institutions in the world. The rishis of old did even better. They made their pupils members of their families, but in those days that class of teaching which they imparted was not intended for the masses. They simply brought up a race of real teachers of mankind in India. The masses got their training in their homes and in their hereditary occupations. It was a good enough ideal for those times. Circumstances have now changed.

There is a general insistent demand for literary training. The masses claim the same attention as the classes. How far it is possible and beneficial to mankind generally cannot be discussed here. There is nothing inherently wrong in the desire for learning. If it is directed in a healthy channel it can only do well. Without, therefore, stopping to devise means for avoiding the inevitable, we must make the best use possible of it. Thousands of teachers cannot be had for the asking, nor will they live by begging. They must have a salary guaranteed, and as we shall require quite an army of teachers their remuneration cannot be in proportion to the intrinsic worth of their calling but it will have to be in proportion to the capacity of the nation for payment. We may expect a steady rise as we realize the relative merits of the different callings. The rise must be painfully slow. There must, therefore, arise a class of men and women in India who will from patriotic motives choose teaching as a profession, irrespective of the material gain that it may bring them. Then the nation will not underrate the calling of the teacher. On the contrary, it will give the first place in its affection to these self-sacrificing men and women. And so we come to this that, as our swaraj is possible largely by our own efforts, so is the teachers’ rise possible mainly by their own effort. They must bravely and patiently cut their way through to success. 11

My religion teaches me to love even an evil-doer, and my non-cooperation is but part of that religion. I am saying these things not to soothe the ears of any one I have in my life never been guilty of saying things I did not mean my nature is to go straight to the heart, and if often I fail in doing so for the time being, I know that truth will ultimately make itself heard and felt, as it has often done in my experience. The wish, therefore, that the relations between you should be of the friendliest character is a desire from the bottom of my heart. And it is my deep prayer that you may help in delivering India from evil and bondage and help her to give the message of peace to the outside world. For this meeting of Indians and Europeans in India must have or can be made to have a special meaning, and what can be better than that we two may live together so as to spread peace and goodwill on earth? May God grant that, in serving the Tatas, you will also serve India and will always realize that you are here for a much higher mission than merely working for an industrial enterprise? 12

The mutual love of husband and wife is not something gross. Through it one gets a glimpse of the love of the soul for God. Such love can never be sensual. Only animals yield to their senses. We call it animal behaviour. Force has no place where there is pure love. Where there is pure love each respect the beliefs of the other and both go forward on the path of dharma. 13 But in India, at the present moment, the young generation is undoubtedly face to face with this very problem. Is it possible to love one’s country and not to hate those who rule over one’s country, whose domination we do not want, whose domination we dislike from the bottom of our hearts? The answer has been in the hearts of many young men that it is impossible to love one’s country and not to hate those who rule over one's country. Some of them expressed their opinion in board daylight; a few of them translate that opinion into action. Many, however, harbour this opinion in secret and feed upon that opinion. I have been a student of this question, not since my return to India in 1915, but ever since I entered into public life and public service. That was in 1894. But I have come deliberately to the conclusion that love of one’s country, namely nationalism, is perfectly consistent with the love of those whose rule, whose domination whose methods we do not like. I was face to face with that problem in my dealings with the South African Government or, more accurately speaking, the then Natal Government; later on with the Transvaal Government and later still with the Union Government. Most of you are aware of the disabilities the glaring disabilities under which our countrymen labour in that sub-continent South Africa. It is enough; those disabilities are really enough to make one hate one’s fellow beings, if one did not preserve one’s sanity. You find there injustice rampant for no cause save that you do not have the same colour of skin.

There shall be no equality between the white and the coloured races so runs the constitution of the Union Government. It was at one time an article of the Transvaal Government constitution, but the constitution has today been adopted by the Union Government. When you come to India you find, though not the same thing, much the same thing and very often one finds it most difficult to reconcile the two things, love of one’s country and love also of one whom you may consider to be the tiger. It is beside the point whether you are just and correct in your estimate or whether you are incorrect, but the impression left upon your mind is that you are labouring under the grossest form of tyranny, grossest form of injustice. How shall you then love the tiger? Let me put it in another way not necessarily that you should love the tiger, but love is an active force and the subject of this evening is it necessary to hate the tiger? Is hatred essential for nationalism? You may not love, but must you also hate? The answer, as I have said before, in the minds of many people is undoubtedly that you must hate. Some, I know, consider it their duty to hate the tiger and they cite instances from modern constitutions, they cite the late disastrous War in Europe, they cite wars of which they have learnt in history; they cite also the law, and they say society hangs on the gallows those who are guilty of murder. Is not that a sign of hatred? There certainly is no love would not one love one’s father, would not one love one’s dearest ones, even if they might err, would one wish them] to be hanged on the gallows?

One would pray for their reformation but not for their punishment, and yet, it is said, perhaps with a great deal of justification, that society will break into pieces if under the law of sanction punishment was withdrawn, abolished or suspended. With those illustrations before them, the young men rush to the conclusion that those who consider that hatred is not essential for nationalism are in the wrong. I do not blame them. They have to be pitied; they command my sympathy, but I have not a shadow of doubt in my mind that they are labouring under the grossest delusion; and so long as they retain that attitude, so long as a large body of men and women retain that attitude the progress of this country, the progress of the world is retarded. It does not matter to me that all those illustrations that I have placed before you can be cited in order to justify their conduct. Your non-co-operation is intended not to encourage evil. That is the meaning. One of the greatest writers has said that if the world ceases to encourage evil, evil will die of inanition. If we simply find out for ourselves to what extent we are responsible for the evil that exists in society today, we will soon see that evil will soon be gone from society. But we tolerate it under a false sense of love. I am not talking of the blind love that dotes on an earring son and pats him on the back while he errs, nor am I speaking of the son who, under a false sense of loyalty to his father, tolerates evil in his father. I am not talking of that. I am talking of the love that discriminates, that is intelligent, that is not blind to a single fault .That is the love of reform, and the moment we have seized the secret, that very moment the evil goes out of sight. 14

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