The Essential Gandhi (26 page)

[The new Viceroy, Lord Reading, had arrived in India on April 2, 1921. Shortly after his installation at New Delhi, he indicated a desire to talk with Gandhi. They had six talks. What did Reading think of Gandhi? “He came … in a white dhoti [loin cloth] and cap woven on a spinning wheel, with bare feet and legs, and my first impression on seeing him ushered into the room was that there was nothing to arrest attention in his appearance, and that I should have passed him by in the street without a second look at him. When he talks, the impression is different. He is direct, and expresses himself well in excellent English with a fine appreciation of the value of the words he uses. There is no hesitation about him and there is a ring of sincerity in all that he utters, save when discussing some political questions. His religious views are, I believe, genuinely held, and he is convinced to a point almost bordering on fanaticism that non-violence and love will give India its independence and enable it to withstand the British government. His religious and moral views are admirable and indeed are on a remarkably high altitude, though I must confess that I find it difficult to understand his practice of them in politics.… Our conversations were of the frankest; he was supremely courteous with manners of distinction.… He held in every way to his word in the various discussions we had.”
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Reading had absolute power over the police and the army. The Congress Party had made Gandhi its dictator. One word from the
Mahatma would have started a conflagration compared with which the 1857 Mutiny would have seemed like a minor affair.]

 … For me patriotism is the same as humanity. I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive. I will not hurt England or Germany to serve India.… The law of a patriot is not different from that of the patriarch. And a patriot is so much the less a patriot if he is a lukewarm humanitarian. There is no conflict between private and political law. A Non-coöperator, for instance, would act exactly in the same manner toward his father or brother as he is today acting toward the [British] Government.
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 … He who injures others, is jealous of others, is not fit to live in the world. For the world is at war with him and he has to live in perpetual fear of the world.…
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 … If India makes violence her creed and I have survived I would not care to live in India. She will cease to evoke any pride in me.… I cling to India like a child to its mother’s breast, because I feel she gives me the spiritual nourishment I need. She has the environment that responds to my highest aspiration. When that faith is gone I shall feel like an orphan without hope of ever finding a guardian.
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 … If I can have nothing to do with the organized violence of the Government I can have less to do with the unorganized violence of the people. I would prefer to be crushed between the two.
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 … Civil Disobedience is not a state of lawlessness and license but presupposes a law-abiding spirit combined with self-restraint.
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 … Complete Civil Disobedience is rebellion without the element of violence in it. An out and out civil resister simply ignores the authority of the state. He becomes an outlaw claiming to disregard every unmoral state law. Thus, for instance, he may refuse to pay taxes.… In doing all this he never uses force and never resists force when it is used against him. In fact, he invites imprisonment
and other uses of force.… This he does because … he finds the bodily freedom he seemingly enjoys to be an intolerable burden. He argues to himself that a state allows personal freedom only in so far as the citizen submits to its regulations. Submission to the state law is the price a citizen pays for his personal liberty. Submission, therefore, to a state wholly or largely unjust is an immoral barter for liberty.… Thus considered, civil resistance is a most powerful expression of a soul’s anguish and an eloquent protest against the continuance of an evil state. Is this not the history of all reform? Have not reformers, much to the disgust of their fellows, discarded even innocent symbols associated with an evil practice?
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 … Our Non-coöperation is neither with the English nor with the West. Our Non-coöperation is with the system the English have established with the material civilization and its attendant greed and exploitation of the weak. Our Non-coöperation is a retirement within ourselves. Our Non-coöperation is a refusal to coöperate with the English administrators on their own terms. We say to them: “Come and coöperate and it will be well for us, for you and the world.” … 
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Whether you advertise the fact or not, a body not receiving the food it needs dies. Whether we advertise the fact or not the moment we cease to support the Government it dies a natural death. Personally I dislike even the resolution voting the money to be used at the discretion of the All-India Congress [Party] Committee in foreign propaganda. We want all the money we need in this country. I would far rather invest Rupees 45,000 [$9,000] in spinning wheels or establishing primary schools than in advertising our work. Every good deed is its own advertisement.…
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Civil Disobedience … becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or, which is the same thing, corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares its corruption or lawlessness.
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 … In my humble opinion, rejection is as much an ideal as the
acceptance of a thing. It is as necessary to reject untruth as it is to accept truth.…
¹¹

Non-coöperation is a protest against an unwitting and unwilling participation in evil.
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It is not so much British guns that are responsible for our subjection as our voluntary coöperation.
¹³

[A] program conceived in a religious spirit admits of no tactics or compromise with things that matter. Our present Non-coöperation refers not so much to the paralysis of a wicked government as to our being proof against wickedness. It aims therefore not at destruction but at construction. It deals with causes rather than symptoms.
¹⁴

 … Non-coöperation is the most potent instrument for creating world opinion in our favor. So long as we protested and coöperated, the world did not understand us.… The … question the world has undoubtedly been asking is: If things are really so bad, why do we coöperate with the Government in so pauperizing and humiliating us? Now the world understands our attitude, no matter how weakly we may enforce it in practice. The world is now curious to know what ails us.…
¹⁵

 … The dynamic force behind this great movement [of nonviolence] is not vocal propaganda but the silent propaganda carried on by the sufferings of the innocent victims of a mad Government.
¹⁶

 … The case of non-coöperators depends for success on cultivation of public opinion and public support. They have no other force to back them. If they forfeit public opinion they have lost the voice of God for the time being.
¹⁷

Non-coöperation is not a movement of brag, bluster or bluff. It is a test of our sincerity. It requires solid and silent self-sacrifice. It challenges our honesty and our capacity for national work. It is a movement that aims at translating ideas into action. And the more
we do the more we find that much more must be
done
than we had expected.…
¹⁸

As larger and larger numbers of innocent men come out to welcome death their sacrifice will become the potent instrument for the salvation of all others, and there will be a minimum of suffering. Suffering cheerfully endured ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy. The man who flies from suffering is the victim of endless tribulation before it has come to him and is half dead when it does come. But one who is cheerfully ready for anything and everything that comes escapes all pain, his cheerfulness acts as an anaesthetic.
¹⁹

 … The December [1920] Congress [the term also used for the Congress Party’s annual meetings] declared its intention to acquire Swaraj within one year.

We cannot, then, do better than consecrate ourselves for greater national effort in this direction.… But there are … things in which we certainly need to make a very special effort.

Firstly, we must acquire greater mastery over ourselves and secure an atmosphere of perfect calm, peace and good will. We must ask forgiveness for every unkind word thoughtlessly uttered or unkind deed done to anyone.

Secondly, we must still further cleanse our hearts, and we Hindus and Moslems must cease to suspect one another’s motives, and we should believe ourselves to be incapable of wronging one another.

Thirdly, we Hindus must call no one unclean or mean or inferior to ourselves, and must therefore cease to regard the “Pariah” class to be untouchable. We must consider it sinful to regard a fellow-being as untouchable.

These three things are matters of inward transformation and the result will be seen in our daily dealings.

The fourth is the curse of drink.… A supreme effort should be made … to induce, by respectful entreaty, the liquor-sellers to give up their licenses, and the habitual visitors to these shops to give up the habit.… In any case, no physical force should be used to attain
the end. A determined, peaceful campaign of persuasion must succeed.

The fifth thing is the introduction of the spinning wheel in every home, larger production and use of khadi [homespun cloth] and complete giving up of foreign cloth.

 … As soon as we have rendered ourselves fit, no person on earth can prevent our establishing Swaraj.…
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Let us not waste our resources in thinking of too many national problems and their solutions. A patient who tries many nostrums at a time dies. A physician who experiments on his patient with a combination of remedies loses his reputation and passes for a quack. Chastity in work is as essential as chastity in life.…
²¹

 … Let people only work programs in which they believe implicitly. Loyalty to human institutions has its well defined limits. To be loyal to an organization must not mean subordination of one’s settled convictions. Parties may fall and parties may rise; if we are to attain freedom our deep convictions must remain unaffected by such passing changes.
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 … We must not resort to social boycott of our opponents. It amounts to coercion. Claiming the right of free opinion and free action as we do, we must extend the same to others. The rule of majority, when it becomes coercive is as intolerable as that of a bureaucratic minority. We must patiently try to bring round the minority to our view by gentle persuasion and argument.…
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We must … refrain from crying “shame, shame” to anybody, we must not use any coercion to persuade our people to adopt our way. We must guarantee to them the same freedom we claim for ourselves.…
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 … It is our exclusiveness and the easy self-satisfaction that have certainly kept many a waverer away from us. Our motto must ever be conversion by gentle persuasion and a constant appeal to the head and heart. We must therefore be ever courteous and patient
with those who do not see eye to eye with us. We must resolutely refuse to consider our opponents as enemies of the country.
²⁵

[Whilst] we may attack measures and systems we may not, must not, attack men. Imperfect ourselves, we must be tender toward others and be slow to impute motives.
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[Gandhi preferred to try mass civil disobedience in one area, and he chose the county of Bardoli, population eighty-seven thousand, living in one hundred twenty-seven tiny villages. On February 1, 1922, he informed Lord Reading, the Viceroy, of this plan. But on February 5, eight hundred miles from Bardoli in Chauri Chaura, in the United Provinces, an Indian mob committed murder. There had been a legal procession.]

But when the procession had passed, the stragglers were interfered with and abused by the constables. [The stragglers] cried out for help. The mob returned. The constables opened fire. The little ammunition they had was exhausted and they retired to the Thana [city hall] for safety. The mob, my informant tells me, therefore set fire to the Thana. The self-imprisoned constables had to come out for dear life, and as they did so, they were hacked to pieces and the mangled remains were thrown into the raging flames.