Physical culture and Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

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

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Physical culture and Mahatma Gandhi 

 

The way however does not lie through akhadas not that I mind them. On the contrary, I want them for physical culture. Then they should be for all. But, if they are meant as a preparation for self-defence in the Hindu-Mussalman conflicts, they are fore-doomed to failure. Mussalmans can play the same game and such preparations secret or open do but cause suspicion and irritation. They can provide no present remedy. It is for the thoughtful few to make quarrels impossible by making arbitration popular and obligatory. The remedy against cowardice is not physical culture but the braving of dangers. So long as parents of the middle-class Hindus, themselves timid, continue to transmit their timidity by keeping their grown-up children in cotton wool, so long will there be the desire to shun danger and run no risks. They will have to dare to leave their children alone, let them run risks and even, at times, get killed in so doing. The puniest individual may have a stout heart. The most muscular Zulus cower before English lads. Each village has to find out its stout hearts. 1   

I prize them for physical culture but, for self-defence, I would restore the spiritual culture. The-best and most lasting self-defence is self-purification. I refuse to be lifted off my feet because of the scares that haunt us today. If Hindus would but believe in themselves and work in accordance with their traditions, they will have no reason to fear bullying. The moment they recommence the real spiritual training the Mussalman will respond. He cannot help it. If I can get together a band of young Hindus with faith in them and, therefore, faith in the Mussalmans, the band will become a shield for the weaker ones. They (the young Hindus) will teach how to die without killing. I know no other way. When our ancestors saw affliction surrounding them, they went in for tapasya purification. They realized the helplessness of the flesh and in their helplessness they prayed till they compelled the Maker to obey their call. ‘Oh yes,’ says my Hindu friend, ‘but then God sent someone to wield arms.’ I am not concerned with denying the truth of the retort. All I say to the friend is that as a Hindu he may not ignore the cause and secure the result. It will be time to fight when we have done enough tapasya. Are we purified enough, I ask? Have we even done willing penance for the sin of untouchability, let alone the personal purity of individuals? Are our religious preceptors all that they should be? We are beating the air whilst we simply concentrate our attention upon picking holes in the Mussalman conduct, as with the Englishmen, so with the Mussalman. If our professions are true, we should find it infinitely less difficult to conquer the Mussalman than the English. But Hindus whisper to me that they have hope of the Englishman but none of the Mussalman. I say to them, ‘If you have no hope of the Mussalman, your hope of the Englishman is foredoomed to failure. 2 

The Congress is strongly of opinion that the hope of the future of the country lies in its youth and therefore trusts that the Provincial Committees will strive more vigorously than they have done to keep alive all national educational institutions. But whilst the Congress is of opinion that existing national educational institutions should be maintained and new ones opened, the Congress does not regard any such institution to be national which does not employ some Indian language as the medium of instruction, and which does not actively encourage Hindu-Muslim unity, education among untouchables and removal of untouchability; which does not make hand-spinning, carding and training in physical culture and self-defence obligatory; and in which teachers and students over the age of 12 years do not spin for at least half an hour per working day and in which students and teachers do not habitually wear khaddar. 3 

Now let us examine our body. Are we supposed to cultivate the body by playing tennis, football or cricket for an hour every day? It does, certainly, build up the body. Like a wild horse, however, the body will be strong but not trained. A trained body is healthy, vigorous and sinewy. The hands and feet can do any desired work. A pickaxe, a shovel, a hammer, etc., are like ornaments to a trained hand and it can wield them. That hand can ply the spinning-wheel well as also the ring and the comb while the feet work a loom. A well trained body does not get tired in trudging 30 miles. It can scale mountains without getting breathless. Does the student acquire such physical culture? We can assert that modern curricula do not impart physical education in this sense. 4 Thus I like institutions like these for physical training. But let me utter a word of warning. No institution that has as its object the subjection of a community, whether Hindu, Mussalman, Parsi, or Christian, can have my blessings. Only that institution can have my blessings which aim as the growth of the physical culture of all communities, of all the youths of the nation, to whatever creed or community they belong. I should not have come here, did I not know that the gymnasium I have opened belonged to the latter type, and whilst once more congratulating you I wish and pray that you may all be true and pure, and your lives may be consecrated to the service of our nation and of our religions. 5

The baneful effects of absence of proper co-ordination and harmony among the various faculties of body, mind and soul respectively are obvious. They are all around us; only we have lost perception of them owing to our present perverse associations. Take the case of our village folk. From their childhood upward they toil and labour in their fields from morning till night like their cattle in the midst of whom they live. Their existence is a weary, endless round of mechanical drudgery unrelieved by a spark of intelligence or higher graces of life. Deprived of all scope for developing their mind and soul, they have sunk to the level of the beast. Life to them is a sorry bungle which they muddle through anyhow. On the other hand what goes by the name of education in our schools and colleges in the cities today is in reality only intellectual dissipation. Intellectual training is there looked upon as something altogether unrelated to manual or physical work. But since the body must have some sort of physical exercise to keep it in health, they vainly try to attain that end by means of an artificial and otherwise barren system of physical culture which would be ridiculous beyond words if the result was not so tragic. The young man who emerges from this system can in no way compete in physical endurance with an ordinary labourer. The slightest physical exertion gives him headache; a mild exposure to the sun is enough to cause him giddiness. And what is more, all this is looked upon as quite natural. As for the faculties of the heart, they are simply allowed to run to seed or to grow anyhow in a wild undisciplined manner. The result is moral and spiritual anarchy. And it is regarded as something laudable! 6

I have been given to understand that he will be treated as a Class prisoner. I had asked Sardar Prithvi Singh to write an account of his career. It is a thrilling romance. So far as I can see, he has not been guilty of anything of which he need be ashamed. He developed revolutionary ideas in Canada where he had migrated in his youth. He was witness to the illegal and shameful turning away of the Coma Gata Maru from the Canadian shore, and he and a band of Indian settlers in Canada decided to return to India and lead a revolution. After absconding he has evidently made himself useful to the nation in various ways. He is very powerfully built Rajputs. Five months of hunger-strike in the Andamans and injuries received, whether in scuffles with the police or in escaping from custody, have left no visible trace of weakness on his body. He became a first-class gymnastics teacher and studied the science of physical culture and the art of massage, and gave training in physical culture in many schools. 7

Sardar Prithvi Singh has eschewed violence and taken to ahimsa; but he says it is a new experience for him. He is making efforts like Bhagirath to pass the test. The future alone can reveal what the outcome will be. A field for his experiments had to be chosen. During his underground days he worked to spread physical culture activities. Exercise may be either for violence or for non-violence. Ahimsa cannot grow to its full stature in an emaciated body. A vigorous body is essential for the expression of pure ahimsa. Up to a point the same kind of exercise can be useful for both types of body but finally a distinction has to be made. It is Sardar Prithvi Singh’s job to explain how to do it. He proposes to start with Gujarat. I wish him success in his efforts. 8 Dinshaw himself is physical culture personified but he does instruct others. He is possessed by nature cure, by his desire to establish university for it, and he entertains a hope that it will come to be through his association with me. If this department should wholly belong to the poor, we may bid on it some hope of establishing a university. Under the circumstances, I don’t think we can give satisfaction to Dhirubhai. I have a feeling that something like Ashram life might come to be here, as though I could do nothing else! Or, maybe, I was not interested in anything else! Thus I am proceeding willingly as well as unwillingly. I am sending away from what may be called the menial staff; it remains to be seen how far I succeed. Therefore, if Dhirubhai and such others came, they will have through experience of sanitation and other work and will have to be content with my own knowledge of nature cure, such as it is. If, in the mean while, Dinshaw opens up and acquires the ability of transferring his knowledge to others, we can make some progress. 9

 

References:

 

1. Young India, 29-5-1924
2. Young India, 19-6-1924
3. Report of the Thirty-ninth Indian National Congress, 1924, pp. 115
4. Navajivan, Education Supplement, 28-2-1926
5. Young India, 30-12-1926 
6. Harijan, 8-5-1937
7. Harijan, 28-5-1938
8. Harijanbandhu, 28-1-1940 
9. Letter to Kishorelal G. Mashruwala, February 28, 1946