The Essential Gandhi (16 page)

 … On return from the [Boer] War … I shuddered as I read the sections of the [Transvaal Government Ordinance] one after another. I saw nothing in it except hatred of Indians. It seemed to me that if the Ordinance was passed and the Indians meekly accepted it, that would spell absolute ruin for the Indians in South Africa. I clearly saw that this was a question of life and death for them. I further saw that even in the case of memorials [detailed written protests] and representations proving fruitless, the community must not sit with folded hands. Better die than submit to such a law. But how were we to die? What should we dare and do so there would be nothing before us except a choice of victory or death?…
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 … Once a law is enacted, many difficulties must be encountered before it can be reversed. It is only when public opinion is highly educated that the laws in force in a country can be repealed. A constitution under which laws are modified or repealed every now and then cannot be said to be stable or well organized.
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[Whether] there is or there is not any law in force, the Government cannot exercise control over us without our coöperation. The existence of a law means that if we refused to accept [it], we are liable to punishment, and generally it so happens that the fear of punishment leads men to submit to the restriction. But a Satyagrahi differs from the generality of men in … that, if he submits to a restriction, he submits voluntarily, not because he is afraid of punishment, but because he thinks such submission is essential to the common weal.…
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[Only] he who has mastered the art of obedience to law knows the art of disobedience to law.…
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The statement that I had derived my idea of Civil Disobedience from the writings of Thoreau is wrong. The resistance to authority in South Africa was well advanced before I got the essay.… When I saw the title of Thoreau’s great essay, I began to use his phrase to explain our struggle to the English readers. But I found that even “Civil Disobedience” failed to convey the full meaning of the struggle. I therefore adopted the phrase “Civil Resistance.”
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[The Ordinance demanded that] every Indian, man, woman or child … must register … with the Registrar of Asiatics and take out a certificate of registration.

 … Failure to apply would be … an offence … for which the defaulter could be fined, sent to prison, or even deported.… The certificate must be produced before any police officer.… Failure … to produce the certificate would be … an offence for which the defaulter could be fined or sent to prison. Even a person walking on public thoroughfares could be required to produce his certificate. Police officers could enter private houses in order to inspect certificates.…
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[Indians stigmatized it as the “Black Act”—morally black, aimed at black, brown and yellow men. Gandhi, who was light brown, often referred to himself as “black.”]

One important question before us was what agency we could use for carrying on the struggle [against the Asiatic Registration Act, passed July 31, 1907]. The Transvaal British Indian Association had a large membership.… The Association had resisted in the past not one obnoxious law, but quite a host of them.… At the same time, we must take account of external risks to which the Association would be exposed in the event of its being identified with the … struggle. What if the Transvaal Government declared the struggle … seditious and all institutions carrying it on as illegal bodies? What would, in such a case, be the position of members
who were not [participating]? And what about the funds which were contributed at [an earlier] time …?

For all these reasons the community came to the conclusion that the Satyagraha struggle should not be carried on through any of the existing organizations. They might render all help in their power and resist the Black Act in every way open to them except that of Satyagraha, for which a new body, named the “Passive Resistance Association” was started by the Satyagrahis.… Time fully justified the wisdom of constituting a fresh body for the work, and the … movement might perhaps have suffered a setback if any of the existing organizations had been mixed up with it.…
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 … I then used the term “passive resistance” in describing it.… As the struggle advanced, the phrase … gave rise to confusion, and it appeared shameful to permit this great struggle to be known only by an English name.… A small prize was therefore announced in
Indian Opinion
to be awarded to the reader who invented the best designation for our struggle.… Shri Maganlal Gandhi [Gandhi’s second cousin] suggested … “Sadagrah” meaning “firmness in a good cause.” I liked the word but it did not fully represent the whole idea I wished it to connote. I therefore corrected it to “Satyagraha.” Truth (Satya) implies Love, and Firmness (Agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force … that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or Non-violence.…
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[There] is a great and fundamental difference between passive resistance and Satyagraha. If, without understanding this, those who call themselves either passive resisters or Satyagrahis believe both to be one and the same thing, there would be injustice to both.… The result of our using the phrase “passive resistance” in South Africa was not that people admired us by ascribing to us the bravery and the self-sacrifice of the [women] suffragists [who called themselves “passive resisters”], but we were mistaken to be a danger to person and property, which the suffragists were, and even a generous friend … imagined us to be weak. The power of suggestion is such that a man at last becomes what he believes himself
to be. If we continue to believe ourselves and let others believe that we are weak and helpless, and therefore offer passive resistance, our resistance would never make us strong, and at the earliest opportunity we would give up passive resistance as a weapon of the weak. On the other hand, if we are Satyagrahis and offer Satyagraha, believing ourselves to be strong … we grow stronger and stronger every day. With the increase in our strength, our Satyagraha too becomes more effective, and we would never be casting about for an opportunity to give it up. Again, while there is no scope for love in passive resistance, on the other hand, not only has hatred no place in Satyagraha, but is a positive breach of its ruling principle. While in passive resistance there is a scope for the use of arms when a suitable occasion arrives, in Satyagraha, physical force is forbidden, even in the most favorable circumstances. Passive resistance is often looked upon as a preparation for the use of force, while Satyagraha can never be utilized as such. Passive resistance may be offered side by side with the use of arms. Satyagraha and brute force, being each a negation of the other, can never go together. Satyagraha may be offered to one’s nearest and dearest, passive resistance can never be offered to them, unless, of course, they have ceased to be dear and become an object of hatred to us. In passive resistance there is always present an idea of harassing the other party, and there is a simultaneous readiness to undergo any hardships entailed upon us by such activity, while in Satyagraha there is not the remotest idea of injuring the opponent. Satyagraha postulates the conquest of the adversary by suffering in one’s own person.
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[Nevertheless, Gandhi sometimes used the term “Passive Resistance” when he was discussing Civil Disobedience or Satyagraha.]

Passive Resistance … is the reverse of resistance by arms … [for] instance, the government of the day has passed a law which is applicable to me. I do not like it. If by using violence, I force the government to repeal the law, I am employing what may be termed Body-Force. If I do not obey the law, and accept the penalty for the breach, I use Soul-Force. It involves sacrifice of self.

[If] this kind of force is used in a cause that is unjust, only the
person using it suffers. He does not make others suffer for his mistakes.…
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 … Real suffering bravely born melts even a heart of stone. Such is the potency of suffering … 
there
lies the key to Satyagraha.
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[The] greatest and most unimpeachable evidence of this force [of Truth or Love] is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the wars of the world, it still lives on.

Thousands, indeed tens of thousands, depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. Little quarrels of millions of families in their daily lives disappear before the exercise of this force. Hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not and cannot take note of this fact. History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul. Two brothers quarrel, one of them repents and reawakens the love … lying dormant in him, the two again begin to live in peace.… But if the two brothers … take up arms or go to law—which is another form of the exhibition of brute force—their doings would be immediately noticed in the press, they would be the talk of their neighbors and would probably go down in history. And what is true of families and communities is true of nations. There is no reason to believe there is one law for families and another for nations. History, then, is a record of an interruption of the course of nature. Soul-Force, being natural, is not noted in history.
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“The law of the survival of the fittest is the law for the evolution of the brute, but the law of self-sacrifice is the law of evolution for the man.”

A kind friend has sent the above quotation from Huxley.… Jesus laid down the same law in much more forcible and graphic language. He said that if a man took away one’s coat, one was to give up one’s cloak also, or that if a man smote one on the right cheek, the left was also to be turned to him.… Tested, then, by this law, it seems clear that modern civilization … is based not
upon the human law of self-sacrifice, but upon the brutal law of the survival of the fittest (the fittest here evidently meaning physically the strongest), and that, therefore, it is inherently defective.

The basis of self-sacrifice is love. A mother loves her child and sacrifices herself for it. Jesus bade us love our enemies—a hard task! But there is no escape from it. A mother’s love for her child may be selfish. The Asian prophet did not flinch from the logical consequences of the truth he gave us. To him, Love embraced the whole of humanity. Family affection and patriotism were not enough.… It does not require much thinking to know that, under the operation of the brute law of force, the modern world is pressed down with the weight of misery and affliction, in spite of the vast system of organized Government and mechanical contrivances to make man happy. There seems to be no relief, unless we revert to the law of Love.…
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 … Brute force will avail against brute force only when it is proved that darkness can dispel darkness.
¹⁴

 … Brute force has been the ruling factor in the world for thousands of years, and mankind has been reaping its bitter harvest all along.… There is little hope of anything good coming out of it in the future. If light can come out of darkness, then alone can love emerge from hatred.
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Passive resistance is an all-sided sword.… It never rusts and cannot be stolen.
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 … Physical force is wrongly considered to be used to protect the weak. As a matter of fact, it still further weakens the weak, it makes them dependent upon their so-called defenders or protectors.…
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[No] matter how badly they suffered, the Satyagrahis never used physical force … although there were occasions when they were in a position to use it effectively. [Although] the Indians had no franchise and were weak, these considerations had nothing to do with the organization of Satyagraha. This is not to say that the Indians would have taken to Satyagraha even if they had possessed arms or
the franchise. Probably there would not have been any scope for Satyagraha if they had the franchise. If they had arms, the opposite party would have thought twice before antagonizing them. My point is that I can definitely assert that in planning the Indian movement, there never was the slightest thought given to the possibility or otherwise of offering armed resistance. Satyagraha is Soul-Force, pure and simple, and whenever and to whatever extent there is room for the use of arms or physical force or brute force, there and to that extent is there so much less possibility for Soul-Force.…
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 … A Satyagrahi bids goodbye to fear. He is therefore never afraid of trusting the opponent. Even if the opponent plays him false twenty times, the Satyagrahi is ready to trust him for the twenty-first time, for an implicit trust in human nature is the very essence of his creed.…
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 … Satyagraha is based on self-help, self-sacrifice and faith in God.…
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[We] are the makers of our own state and … individuals who realize the fact need not, ought not, to wait for collective action—even as a hungry man does not wait for others to commence a meal before he falls to it. The one necessary condition for action is that, like the hungry man, we must hunger after our deliverance.…

[We] need the same advice that was given to Martha. If we but do “the one thing needful,” there is no occasion for us to be “anxious and troubled” about the many things in the shape of wanting to know what our Governors will do, or who the next Prime Minister is likely to be, or what laws affecting us are likely to be passed.
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 … I believe that I have an unflinching faith in God. For many years, I have accorded intellectual assent to the proposition that death is only a big change in life and nothing more, and should be welcome whenever it arrives. I have deliberately made a supreme attempt to cast out from my heart all fear whatsoever, including the fear of death. Still, I remember occasions in my life when I have not rejoiced at the thought of approaching death as one might rejoice at the prospect of meeting a long-lost friend. Thus man often
remains weak, notwithstanding all his efforts to be strong, and knowledge which stops at the head and does not penetrate into the heart is of but little use in the critical times of living experience. Then again, the strength of the spirit within mostly evaporates when a person gets and accepts support from outside. A Satyagrahi must be always on his guard against such temptations.
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