For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Ahimsa and Mahatma Gandhi - II

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 - II

As for my offer you know that, in my letter to Maffey, I have said I should kill; neither friend nor foe. Regarding those who want to fight but will not, either out of cowardice or spite against the British, what is my duty? Must I not say, “If you can follow my path, so much the better, but if you cannot, you ought to give up cowardice or spite and fight. You cannot teach ahimsa to a man who cannot kill. You cannot make a dumb man appreciate the beauty and the merit of silence. Although I know that silence is most excellent, I do not hesitate to take means that would enable the dumb man to regain his speech. I do not believe in any Government, —but Parliamentary Government is perhaps better than capricious rule. I think it will be clear to you that I shall best spread the gospel of ahimsa, or Satyagraha by asking the himsak (militant) men to work out their himsa in the least offensive manner, and may succeed, in the very act, in making them realize the better worth of ahimsa. If I have not made the position clear, you should try if you can to come down. 1

For years we have been deprived of our fighting capacity. How are we to acquire the use of arms for which our ancestors practiced penances and took severe pledges? Some argue that we would be deprived of arms after the war. Now, there is no power on earth that could, against our will, deprive us of arms after we have once been trained. Government is not foolish or it could not govern. Our mightiest weapon, Satyagraha, is always with us. But he cannot be a satyagrahi who is afraid of death. The ability to use physical force is necessary for a true appreciation of Satyagraha. He alone can practice ahimsa who knows how to kill, i.e., know what himsa is. 2 Ahimsa is the eradication of the desire to injure or to kill. Ahimsa can be practiced only towards those that are inferior to you in every way. It follows therefore that to become full ahimsaists you have to attain absolute perfection. Must we all then first try to become Sandows before we can love perfectly? This seems to be unnecessary. It is enough if we can face the world without flinching. It is personal courage that is an absolute necessity. And some will acquire that courage only after they have been trained to fight. I know I have put the argument most clumsily. I am passing through new experiences. I am struggling to express myself. Some things are still obscure to me. And I am trying to find words for others which are plain to me. I am praying for light and guidance and am acting with the greatest deliberation. Do please write and fight every inch of the ground that to you may appear untenable. That will enable me to find the way. 3

Ahimsa was preached to man when he was in full vigour of life and able to look his adversaries straight in the face. It seems to me that full development of body-force is a sine qua non of full appreciation and assimilation of ahimsa. 4 It is my practice of ahimsa and failure to get our people even to understand the first principles of ahimsa that have led to the discovery that all killing is not himsa, that, sometimes, practice of ahimsa may even necessitate killing and that we as a nation have lost the true power of killing. It is clear that he who has lost the power to kill cannot practice non-killing. Ahimsa is a renunciation of the highest type. A weak and an effeminate nation cannot perform this grand act of renunciation, even as a mouse cannot be properly said to renounce the power of killing a cat. It may look terrible but it is true that we must, by a well-sustained, conscious effort, regain this power, and, then, if we can only do so, deliver the world from its travail of himsa by a continuous abdication of this power. I cannot describe to you in sufficiently telling language the grief I often used to feel as I watched my failure to carry conviction about ahimsa even to the members of the Ashram. Not that they were unwilling listeners, but I could perceive, as I now think plainly, that they had not the capacity for apprehending the truth. It was like singing the finest music to ears unturned to any music. But today practically everyone at the Ashram understands it, and is aglow with the expectation that ahimsa is a renunciation out of strength and not out of weakness. It is not possible to make any distinction between organized warfare and individual fighting.

There must be an organized opposition and, therefore, even organized bloodshed, say, in the case of bandits. The noblest warrior is he who stands fearless in the face of immense odds. He then feels not the power to kill, but he is supremely triumphant in the knowledge that he has the willingness to die when by taking to his heels he might easily have saved his life. I do believe that we shall have to teach our children the art of self-defence. I see more and more clearly that we shall be unfit for swaraj for generations to come if we do not regain the power of self-defence. This means for me a rearrangement of so many ideas about self-development and India’s development. I must not carry the point further than I have done today. You are an earnest seeker. I am most anxious that you should understand this new view of ahimsa. It is not a fall but it is a rise. The measure of love evoked by this discovery is infinitely greater than ever it was before. 5

How can you understand ahimsa fully at this tender age? It is possible that some extraordinary young man may acquire the knowledge early and become an ocean of compassion. But generally a young man must know how to defend himself. Ahimsa is the extreme limit of human strength. It is not a quality of weak or cowardly persons. What do they know of ahimsa? Devdas is impatient to get himself recruited for the War, but he is doing such good work in Madras that he cannot be spared from there. I gave the same advice to Harilal. But of course how can he undertake such labours? I shall try for you. But it will be wholly your choice. You may gladly come if you are tired there and if you want to become a soldier. You alone must consider the matter. I would have enticed Manilal too. Only his case is similar to that of Devdas. So he should not be enticed away. 6

War will be always with us. There seems to be no possibility of the whole human nature becoming transformed. Moksha and ahimsa [are] for individuals to attain. Full practice of ahimsa is inconsistent with possession of wealth, land or rearing of children. There is real ahimsa in defending my wife and children even at the risk of striking down the wrongdoer. It is perfect ahimsa not to strike him but intervene to receive his blows. India did neither on the field of Plassey. We were a cowardly mob warring against one another, hungering for the Company’s silver and selling our souls for a mess of pottage. And so have we remained more or less more rather than less—up to today. There was no ahimsa in their miserable performance, not withstanding examples of personal bravery and later corrections of the exaggerated accounts of those days. 7

While you approve of my recruiting campaign, Charlie is fighting it out with me. He thinks it is just likely that I am deluding myself. He thinks that this activity of mine may injure my service to the cause of ahimsa. I have taken it up to serve that very cause. I know that my responsibility is great. It was equally great when I was supine; feeling that recruiting was not my line. There was a danger of those who put faith in my word becoming or remaining utterly unmanly, falsely believing that it was ahimsa. We must have the ability in the fullest measure to strike and then perceive the inability of brute force and renounce the power. Jesus had the power to consume his enemies to ashes but he refrained and permitted himself to be killed for him so loved, etc. 8

Thakur has just arrived. He tells me you were again down with illness. You need a cruel doctor who would mercilessly order a complete fast and water treatment. But you can expect nothing but licensed murders from that most empirical of professions. Whenever I hear of your illness, I feel like shooting some doctor or other but my ahimsa comes in the way. Happily for you and India I have no parliamentary ambition. Otherwise I should introduce a Bill disqualifying people getting continuously ill from membership. 9 What do you say to my recruiting campaign? It is for me religious activity undertaken for the sacred doctrine of ahimsa. I have made the discovery that India has lost the power of fight - not the inclination. She must regain the power and then if she will deliver to a groaning world the doctrine of ahimsa. She must give abundantly out of her strength, not out of her weakness. She may never do it. That to me would mean her effacement. She would lose her individuality and would be like the other nations » a worshipper of brute force. This recruiting work is perhaps the hardest task undertaken by me. I may fail to gain recruits. I shall still have given the best political education to the people. 10

The third part of the Pledge declares that the satyagrahi will during the struggle, fearlessly adhere to truth and ahimsa for instance he must not misrepresent anything or hurt anybody’s feelings. Volunteers must urge upon people necessity of fully realizing the grave responsibility of adhering to truth and ahimsa before signing the Pledge. Volunteers must not speak of things they do not understand and must not hold out false hopes to anybody. If they find themselves unable to explain anything, they must consult the Committee or refer the would-be signatory to it. Ahimsa includes advesha. Volunteers therefore must never resort to unfair criticism of the movement. If in performing their duties they are obstructed by the police or others, they must not lose their temper but must courteously explain to those opposing them, their (volunteers’) duty and their determination under any circumstances to perform the same. 11

Civil disobedience is one such branch, satya (truth) and ahimsa (non-violence) together makes the parent trunk from which all innumerable branches shoot out. We have found by bitter experience that whilst in an atmosphere of lawlessness, civil disobedience found ready acceptance. Satya and ahimsa, from which alone civil disobedience can worthily spring, have commanded little or no respect. Ours then is a Herculean task, but we may not shirk it. We must fearlessly spread the doctrine of satya and ahimsa and then, and not till then, shall we be able to undertake mass Satyagraha. 12 I would content myself with saying that when once the forces of truth and ahimsa are set in motion, the speed as they move becomes so accelerated that they take no time in permeating millions. For what is needful is to produce an impression of truth and non-violence upon their hearts and to infect them with faith in the efficacy of these two forces. [If] the satyagrahis are true, it need not take longer than a month or two to bring about this result. 13

Mr. Gandhi expressly states that his opinion in this case is in no way due to any feeling of delicacy in the sense that he was directly or indirectly responsible for the fury of the mob. It is due to a general principle, the corollary of the doctrine of ahimsa. His desire is that the guilty should be punished but that they should undergo their punishment voluntarily. 14 But disturbances in the Punjab at Lahore, Amritsar and other places and at Ahmadabad, near which the Ashram is situated, have been of very grave character, involving the proclamation of martial law. Loss to life and property has been enormous. But the disturbances in the Punjab are not due to the Satyagraha movement but the outbreaks in Bombay and Ahmadabad were sufficient to show to me that real Satyagraha would consist in suspending the civil disobedience programme and in preaching the principle of ahimsa. 15

The preaching of the cardinal principles of the doctrine of satyagraha, namely, the necessity of strictest adherence to truth and ahimsa and the duty of civil disobedience as the natural corollary and the equally paramount duty of refraining from criminal disobedience and, with this end in view, literature such as Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, Hind Swaraj, Defence of Socrates by me, Tolstoy’s Letter to Russian Liberals and Ruskin’s Unto this Last should be widely distributed. It is true that we sold some of this literature as part of the plan of actual civil disobedience. But now we have the knowledge that the Government has been advised that reprints and the sale of prohibited literature is not an offence except in so far as such or any literature may be covered by Section 124A. We should therefore now sell this literature as part of our propaganda but not as an act rendering us liable to penalty for breach of any law. 16 Those who love me will show their true affection only by becoming satyagrahis, i.e., believers in Truth and ahimsa (nonviolence) and self-suffering as the only means for securing redress of grievances. 17

Satyagraha is like a banian-tree with innumerable branches. Civil disobedience is one such branch. Satya (truth) and ahimsa (nonviolence) together make the parent trunk from which all the innumerable branches shoot out. We have found by bitter experience that, whilst in an atmosphere of lawlessness, civil disobedience found ready acceptance. Satya (truth) and ahimsa (non-violence), from which alone civil disobedience can worthily spring, have commanded little or no respect. Ours then is a Herculean task, but we may not shirk it. We must fearlessly spread the doctrine of satya and ahimsa, and then and not till then shall we be able to undertake masssatyagraha. My attitude towards the Rowlatt legislation remains unchanged. Indeed, I do feel that the Rowlatt legislation is one of the many causes of the present unrest. But in a surcharged atmosphere, I must refrain from examining these causes. The main and only purpose of this letter is to advise all satyagrahis to temporarily suspend civil disobedience, to give the Government effective cooperation in restoring order, and by preaching and practice to gain adherence to the fundamental principles mentioned above.” We must fearlessly spread the doctrine of satya and ahimsa, and then and not till then shall we be able to undertake masssatyagraha. My attitude towards the Rowlatt legislation remains unchanged. Indeed, I do feel that the Rowlatt legislation is one of the many causes of the present unrest. But in a surcharged atmosphere, I must refrain from examining these causes. The main and only purpose of this letter is to advise all satyagrahis to temporarily suspend civil disobedience, to give the Government effective cooperation in restoring order, and by preaching and practice to gain adherence to the fundamental principles mentioned above. 18

I do not wish, during this week, to emphasize the civil resistance part of Satyagraha. I would like us to contemplate truth and nonviolence, and to appreciate their invincibility. Indeed, if all of us regulate our lives by this eternal law of satya and ahimsa, there will be no occasion for civil or other resistance. Civil resistance comes into play when only a small body of men endeavours to follow truth in the face of opposition. It is difficult to know what is truth, when to defend it to the point of civil resistance and how to avoid error in the shape of violence in one's pursuit after truth. There may well be differences of opinion as to the advisability of preaching civil resistance as a creed during a week devoted to national uplift, in which one seeks the cooperation of all without distinction of party, class or creed. 19

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