The Essential Gandhi (25 page)

 … I know it is only my reputation as a worker and fighter which has saved me from an open charge of lunacy for having given the advice about boycott of courts and schools.

 … It does not require much reflection to see that it is through courts that a government establishes its authority and it is through schools that it manufactures clerks and other employees. They are both healthy institutions when the government in charge of them is on the whole just. They are death-traps when the government is unjust.

 … The lawyers are not to suspend practice and enjoy rest. They will be expected to induce their clients to boycott courts. They will improvise arbitration boards in order to settle disputes. A nation that is bent on forcing justice from an unwilling government has little time for engaging in mutual quarrels.…

 … We must be specially unfit for Non-Coöperation if we are so helpless as to be unable to manage our own education to total independence
of the Government. Every village should manage the education of its own children.… If there is a real awakening the schooling need not be interrupted for a single day. The very schoolmasters who are now conducting Government schools, if they are good enough to resign their office, could take charge of national schools and teach our children the things they need and not make of the majority of them indifferent clerks.…
¹⁰

 … The best and the quickest way of getting rid of [the] corroding and degrading Secret Service is for us to make a final effort to think everything aloud, have no privileged conversation with any soul on earth and cease to fear the spy. We must ignore his presence and treat everyone as a friend entitled to know all our thoughts and plans. I know I have achieved most satisfactory results from evolving the boldest of my plans in broad daylight. I have never lost a minute’s peace for having detectives by my side. The public may not know I have been shadowed throughout my stay in India. That has not only not worried me but I have even taken friendly services from these gentlemen, many have apologized for having to shadow me. As a rule what I have spoken in their presence has already been published to the world. The result is that now I do not even notice the presence of these men and I do not know that the Government is much the wiser for having watched my movements through its secret agency.… Removal of secrecy brings about the full disappearance of the Secret Service without further effort.…
¹¹

 … A man suffering from an injustice is exposed to the temptations of having his worst passions roused on the slightest pretext. By asking him to boycott British goods you inculcate the idea of punishing the wrongdoer. And punishment necessarily evokes anger.

Boycott of British goods to be effective must be taken up by the whole country at once or not at all. It is like a siege. You can carry out a siege only when you have the requisite men and instruments of destruction. One man scratching a wall with his fingernails may hurt his fingers but he will produce no effect upon the walls. [But]
one title-holder giving up his title has the supreme satisfaction of having washed his hands clean of the guilt of the donor and is unaffected by the refusal of his fellows to give up theirs. The motive of boycott being punitive lacks the inherent practicability of Non-Coöperation. The spirit of punishment is a sign of weakness.…
¹²

I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908 [by an Indian extremist opposed to Gandhi’s agreement with Smuts], whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defend me, I told him it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. Hence it was that I took part in the Boer War, the so-called Zulu Rebellion and [World War I]. Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.

But I believe non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.… But … forgiveness only when there is the power to punish.… A mouse hardly forgives a cat when it allows itself to be torn to pieces by her. I therefore appreciate the sentiment of those who cry out for the condign punishment of General Dyer and his ilk. They would tear him to pieces if they could. But I do not believe India to be a helpless creature. Only, I want to use India’s and my strength for a better purpose.

 … Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.… We in India may in a moment realize that one hundred thousand Englishmen need not frighten three hundred million human beings. A definite forgiveness would, therefore, mean a definite recognition of our strength.… It matters little to me that for the moment I do not drive my point home. We feel too downtrodden not to be angry and revengeful. But I must not refrain from saying that India can gain more by waiving
the right of punishment We have better work to do, a better mission to deliver to the world.
¹³

 … The Afghans have a bad Government but it is self-Government. I envy them. The Japanese learnt the art through a sea of blood. And if we today had the power to drive out the English by superior brute force we would be counted their superiors and in spite of our inexperience in debating at the Council table or in holding executive offices we would be held fit to govern ourselves. For brute force is the only test the west has hitherto recognized. The Germans were defeated not because they were necessarily in the wrong but because the allied Powers were found to possess the greater brute strength. In the end, therefore, India must either learn the art of war, which the British will not teach her, or she must follow her own way of discipline and self-sacrifice through Non-Coöperation. It is as amazing as it is humiliating that less than one hundred thousand white men would be able to rule three hundred and fifteen million Indians. They do so somewhat undoubtedly by force but more by securing our coöperation in a thousand ways and making us more and more helpless and dependent on them as time goes forward. Let us not mistake reformed councils, more law courts and even governorships for real freedom or power. They are but subtler methods of emasculation. The British cannot rule us by mere force. And so they resort to all means, honorable and dishonorable, in order to retain their hold on India. They want India’s billions and they want India’s manpower for their imperialistic greed. If we refuse to supply them with men and money, we achieve our goal, Swaraj [Self-Rule], equality, manliness.

For me the only training in Swaraj we need is the ability to defend ourselves against the whole world and to live our life in perfect freedom, even though it may be full of defects. Good government is no substitution for self-government.…
¹⁴

 … We must have the liberty to do evil before we learn to do good.
¹⁵

[Gandhi toured the country incessantly, indefatigably, in torrid, humid weather, addressing mammoth mass meetings of a hundred thousand and more persons, who in those pre-microphone days, could hope to be reached only by his spirit. Gandhi would ask the people to take off their foreign clothing and put it on a heap. When all the hats, coats, shirts, trousers, underwear, socks and shoes had been heaped high, Gandhi set a match to them.]

 … I know many will find it difficult to replace their foreign cloth all at once. Millions are too poor to buy enough khadi [homespun cloth, higher-priced because of popularity and scarcity] to replace the discarded cloth.… Let them be satisfied with a mere loin cloth. In our climate we hardly need more to protect our bodies during the warm months of the year. Let there be no prudery about dress. India has never insisted on full covering of the body for the males as a test of culture.

I [give this] advice under a full sense of my responsibility. In order, therefore, to set the example, I propose … to content myself with only a loin cloth and a chaddar [shawl] whenever found necessary for the protection of the body. I adopt the change because I have always hesitated to advise anything I may not myself be prepared to follow, also because I am anxious by leading the way to make it easy for those who cannot afford a change on discarding their foreign garments. I consider the renunciation to be also necessary for me as a sign of mourning and a bare head and a bare body is such a sign in my part of the country.…
¹⁶

If I was a perfect man I own I should not feel the miseries of neighbors as I do. As a perfect man I should take note of them, prescribe a remedy and compel adoption by the force of unchallengeable truth in me. But as yet I only see as through a glass darkly and therefore have to carry conviction by slow and laborious processes, and then too not always with success.… I would be less human if, with all my knowledge of avoidable misery pervading the land … I did not feel with and for all the suffering but dumb millions of India. The hope of a steady decline in that misery sustains me.…
¹⁷

 … The millions [of peasants in India] must have a simple industry
to supplement agriculture. Spinning was the cottage industry years ago and if the millions are to be saved from starvation they must be enabled to reintroduce spinning in their homes and every village must repossess its own weaver.
¹⁸

 … Over eighty-five per cent of [India’s] population have more than a quarter of their time lying idle. And therefore … she has steadily grown poorer because of this enforced idleness.… I am writing this in Puri in front of the murmuring waves. The picture of the crowd of men, women and children with their fleshless ribs … haunts me. If I had the power I would suspend every other activity in schools and colleges and everywhere else and popularize spinning … inspire every carpenter to prepare spinning wheels and ask the teachers to take these life-giving machines to every home and teach them spinning. If I had the power I would stop an ounce of cotton from being exported and would have it turned into yarn in these homes. I would dot India with depots for receiving this yarn and distributing it among weavers. Given sufficient steady and trained workers I would undertake to drive pauperism out of India during this year.… I am able to restrain myself from committing suicide by starvation only because I have faith in India’s awakening and her ability to put herself on the way to freedom from this desolating pauperism. Without faith in such a possibility I should cease to take interest in living.…
¹⁹

To a people famishing and idle the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages. God created man to work for his food and said that those who ate without work were thieves. Eighty per cent of India are compulsorily thieves half the year. Is it any wonder if India has become one vast prison?… “Why should I who have no need to work for food, spin?” may be the question asked. Because I am eating what does not belong to me. I am living on the spoliation of my countrymen. Trace the course of every pice [penny] that finds its way into your pocket and you will realize the truth of what I write.…
²⁰

 … Even as each home cooks its own food without difficulty so may each home weave its own yarn. And just as, in spite of every
home having its own kitchen, restaurants continue to flourish, so will mills continue to supply our additional wants.…
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 … I would favor the use of the most elaborate machinery if thereby India’s pauperism and resulting idleness be avoided.…
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We should be ashamed of resting or having a square meal so long as there is one able-bodied man or woman without work or food.
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In India it must be held to be a crime to spend money on dinner and marriage parties … and other luxuries so long as millions of people are starving. We would not have a feast in a family if a member was about to die of starvation. If India is one family, we should have the same feeling as we would have in a private family.
²⁴

 … Whatever may be true of other countries, in India … where more than eighty per cent of the population is agricultural and another ten per cent industrial, it is a crime to make education merely literary and to unfit boys and girls for manual work in after-life. Indeed … as the larger part of our time is devoted to labor for earning our bread, our children must from their infancy be taught the dignity of such labor. Our children should not be so taught as to despise labor.… It is a sad thing that our schoolboys look upon manual labor with disfavor, if not contempt.…
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…
The hunt after position and status has ruined many a family and has made many depart from the path of rectitude. Who does not know what questionable things fathers of families in need of money for their children’s education have considered it their duty to do.…
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