Mahatma Gandhi’s Interview to L. W. Jardine

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

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

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Mahatma Gandhi’s Interview to L. W. Jardine

 

GANDHIJI: That is the only correct position, and no other is possible. If you have followed my writings, you know that I have declared that no one is competent to offer Satyagraha unless he has a living faith in God. I had formerly not the courage to say so bluntly to my co-workers. I knew it was difficult to get a heart-response to this thing. For there are many who say they have living faith and yet are not god-fearing, and others who scoff at the idea of believing in God and yet are at heart god-fearing. But I said it did not matter how difficult it was, I must put it forward as I know it.

JARDINE:  You came only recently to the conclusion that you must insist on the condition?

G. Yes. I felt I must make it an indispensable condition. I knew it; I practiced it, but had not declared it for acceptance by all. I knew some resented this and even imputed to me motives of excluding them from the chosen circle. But I said I must take even the risk of being misunderstood, but must declare the truth at all cost. How to reduce the whole thing to practice I do not know.

J. That is simply terrific. To hear you say that it is difficult is tremendous, for it is an encouragement to me. There is a kind of hero-worship that attributes to you superhuman powers. It is something to hear that you have difficulties and are human, and thus to feel kinship with you. Then there is another thing that has come home to me. You must not think of taking but always of giving something.

G. That is right in a sense, but you can’t give without taking, and to go on saying that you will always give would be humbug. Honesty, purity, unselfishness and love are their fourfold principle, and the friend said that whilst the first two would come under the heading ‘truth’, the other two would come under the heading ‘non-violence or bravery’. . . . Gandhiji asked: How is a civilian who is trained not to establish any human contact with the ruled to fare under this rule? Perhaps you will not admit that they are so trained?

 J. No

G. Well, you will by and by. I do not make a charge of it. It was worldly wisdom that dictated the course to those who organized the Service. How could they allow them to live on terms of familiarity with those over whom they had to rule, especially when the rulers were only a handful? And yet if you accept the creed of the Oxford Group, you have to establish human contact with me. And if you do it with me, you must do it with others. You will have to contact the whole of India through me, and I with all Englishmen through you. That at any rate is what the Oxford Group must stand for; otherwise it would be like many other similar movements.

J. You are right, and that is why I kept out of freemasonry. We have to meet under God, and we shall not make demands from another which are inconsistent with the guidance of God.

G. Anyway, I have expressed my difficulty.

J. A programme of moral rearmament for the world cannot fail to lessen the dangers of armed conflict. Such moral rearmament must receive support on a worldwide basis. Gandhiji was invited to put his signature to a “response” to President Roosevelt’s message. With all deference to those in India who had signed this “response” Gandhiji said he could not in all conscience sign this. He could not endorse a falsehood. How can India accept responsibility for the past? All this has no application to me. The whole paragraph applies to exploiting nations, whereas India is an exploited nation. The second paragraph too applies to nations of the West and not to us. The whole appeal is so unreal. I can think of moral rearmament, but that would be in a different setting. I can think of communal unity through moral rearmament. As a member of an exploited nation I can have a different moral rearmament programme, and I may invite China to it, but how can I invite the West or Japan? And just as it would be unreal for me to invite the West, it would to that extent be unreal for the West to invite India. Let them shed their exploitation policy and their immoral gains first.

 

Reference:

Harijan, 12-8-1939.