European Civilization and Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

European Civilization and Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

 Europe boasts of her civilization, her Christian civilization. The triumphant career of the white race throughout the earth is the watchword of the time. A triumphant career of the race that is true. But of civilization, humanity, Christianity? Justice turns her face away and weeps. Will you find a hell of racial hatred and inhumanity? Then go to Europe. Look at the collective policy of the Christian Powers in China. First act: shameless extortion, exercised for ages by European profiteers. Second act: the enraged natives react by killing a German ambassador. Third act: Europe undertakes her “Hunnish crusade” under German lead and in the spirit of that watchword, which was ironically pronounced by the satirical paper Simplicissimus in an imagined speech of a German officer: ‘Now I propose a toast to a vigorous propagation of the Gospel and a victorious walk over the Chinese swine-dogs (schweinehunde)!’ Too justly the Chinese have called us ‘the red-haired barbarians’ or ‘red-haired devils’. Let us now look at some species of the European Homo sapiens. The Italians may deserve honourable mention, because Christianity caused them to give up their bestial baiting of wild beasts about 400 A.D. How unwillingly the ancient Romans gave up their circuses appears from a curious anecdote.

A clergyman found it difficult to keep the converted away from the circus. Then he said; ‘Dear Christians! You must avoid these bloody heathen plays. Then, in reward, you may hope that in heaven there may be a peep-hole through which you may regard the condemned sinners in the eternal fire of hell!’ Indeed, a fine and noble ‘Christian’ idea! To characterize the standard of the ‘most Christian’ nation of Spaniards, it is sufficient to mention the fact that the favourite play of the nation is till this day the bullfight. The national hero is the grand toreador—a cruel tormentor of animals. France has created the hunting perforce. England adheres to the same noble sport. Look at the illustrated papers published in honour of the Christmas, the Christian feast of peace and charity! During a dinner in Denmark, Danish gentlemen by the way told an English lady that he had shot a fox. ‘Good gracious! You don’t say so! Shot a fox?’ cried she immediately, seizing him by his arm. Then she turned him her back with contempt for it was unworthy of a gentleman not to torment the poor animal to death! A Danish clergyman sailing on the Red Sea once witnessed the natives diving from the steamer for coins. But the English ladies were not content to see them jump out from the deck; they ordered them to jump out from the tops of the masts, to make it more exciting! The opium war and the treatment of Ireland in past centuries are other proofs of English morals. Owing to the resistance of the English nation to conscription, England fortunately has avoided the use of forced cannon-food. But what was the munificently promised reward of the Indian volunteers in the Great War? It is sufficient to name Amritsar. Germany has created the most brutal ‘moral of masters’ before the Bolshevism and the most systematic oppression of the nations ‘of minor value’ (minderwertig). The Pan-German programme of 1895 privileges the ‘full Germans’ to vote, to be elected for parliaments and offices, and to buy ground property. ‘They willingly tolerate the foreigners in the country as exercisers of the inferior bodily labour.’ A Danish surgeon as visitor in a German hospital once witnessed the transfer of living tissue from one body into another. As he wondered how it would be possible to obtain sufficient mass of tissue, the German professor answered: “Wir haben ja Polen genug (we have enough of Poles).”

The Delbruck Law of 1912 enabled German emigrants to remain secretly citizens of the German Empire after they had officially obtained the citizenship of the unsuspecting foreign states fine and noble means of creating thousands of underground agents of Pan-Germanium. Conscription procured the Germans millions of sons of the minderwertig nations to serve as cannon-food in their wars, while the relations of the victims were oppressed at home in the most brutal manner. 6,000 Danes from North Schleswig were thus slaughtered in the Great War for a foreign and hated cause. Through the ‘civil conscription’, the Germans carried away thousands of Belgians into slavery; sometimes, these wretches were even forced to work within the line of fire. Bolshevism is indebted to the great German Staff for the fortunate foundation of its rule. Pan-German methods of brutality and lie are unfortunately practiced and even surpassed. We observe an element of Jewish fanaticism, which results in mere madness. We may here refer to the contents of a Bolshevist poem from the collection Tsheks ulibajet, published in 1922 by A. Saprudni: “You prefer to sing of love. I will teach you other songs, of blood, execution, and death. Enough of the gentle fragrance of lilacs! I prefer the flowers of murder. It is the highest delight to crucify the man who loves his neighbour. What a fun to cut a man to pieces. Look, how he quivers for fear, look at his convulsions while he is slowly strangled by the hangman.

What a pleasure to inflict wounds. Listen to our sentence of death: a rope, a shot! A wall! Give fire! And the grave is your fate.” Three points of European morals are emphasized, viz, the moral of masters, the policy of lie, and the policy of murder. In order to illustrate the European standard, I quote an address delivered by Professor Theol. Baumgarten in Kiel, 1915 (printed in Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 15th May, 1915). The pious professor states that the Sermon on the Mount simply excludes war. But this rule is only meant for single persons. “The ethical system of the Sermon on the Mount represents another compartment of our moral life than our national standard. Its rules for the single soul are not broken, because we realize that it is not at the same time a law for our national and social life.” The State, says Prof. B., is created by God and must be defended with the utmost energy. “It is a characteristic of the great nation that it uses the most extreme means, and even the war of aggression, in order to carry out its great aims.” “We Germans feel obliged, not only to agree with the war, but also to lead it with the most absolute recklessness. He who has not in these days made up his mind to salute the destruction of Lusitania with jubilant applause and to rejoice at the formidable power of German arms is no right German.”