The Essential Gandhi (31 page)

I am yet ignorant of what exactly Bolshevism is. I have not been able to study it. I do not know whether it is for the good of Russia in the long run. But I do know that in so far as it is based on violence and denial of God, it repels me. I do not believe in short-violent-cuts to success. Those Bolshevik friends who are bestowing their attention on me should realize that however much I may sympathize with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.… [Experience] convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence. Even if my belief is a fond delusion, it will be admitted that it is a fascinating delusion.
¹⁴

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good. I swear by non-violence because I know that it alone conduces to the highest good of mankind, not merely in the next world, but in this also. I object to violence because, when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.…
¹⁵

 … Terrorism set up by reformers may be just as bad as Government terrorism, and it is often worse because it draws a certain amount of false sympathy.…
¹⁶

 … I invite the revolutionaries not to commit suicide and drag with them unwilling victims. India’s way is not Europe’s. India is not Calcutta and Bombay. India lives in her seven hundred thousand villages. If the revolutionaries are as many let them spread out into these villages and try to bring sunshine into the dark dungeons of the millions of their countrymen. That would be worthier of their ambition and love of the land than the exciting and unquenchable thirst for the blood of English officials and those who are assisting them. It is nobler to try to change their spirit than to take their lives.
¹⁷

[A friend] says that non-violence cannot be attained by the mass of people. And yet, we find the general work of mankind is being
carried on from day to day by the mass of people acting in harmony as if by instinct. If they were instinctively violent, the world would end in no time. They remain peaceful.… It is when the mass mind is unnaturally influenced by wicked men that the mass of mankind commit violence. But they forget it as quickly as they commit it because they return to their peaceful nature immediately the evil influence of the directing mind has been removed.
¹⁸

 … I hope to demonstrate that real Swaraj [Self-Rule] will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when abused. In other words, Swaraj is to be attained by educating the masses to a sense of their capacity to regulate and control authority.
¹⁹

 … If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek. If leaving duties unperformed, we run after rights, they will escape us like a will o’ the wisp.… The same teaching has been embodied by Krishna in the immortal words: “Action alone is thine. Leave thou the fruit severely alone.” Action is duty, fruit is the right.

 … He who understands the doctrine of self-help blames himself for failure. It is on this ground that I object to violence. If we blame others where we should blame ourselves, and wish for or bring about their destruction, [it] does not remove the root cause of the disease, which, on the contrary sinks all the deeper for … ignorance.…
²⁰

[It] is necessary for workers to become self-reliant and dare to prosecute their plans if they so desire, without hankering after the backing of … persons supposed to be great and influential. Let them rely upon the strength of their own conviction and the cause they seek to espouse. Mistakes there will be. Suffering, even avoidable, there must be. But nations are not easily made.…
²¹

 … The way of peace insures internal growth and stability. We reject it because we fancy that it involves submission to the will of the ruler who has imposed himself upon us.… The suffering to be undergone … will be nothing compared to the physical suffering and the moral loss we must incur in trying the way of war. And the
suffering in following the way of peace must benefit both. It will be like the pleasurable travail of a new birth.
²²

[He] alone is truly non-violent who remains nonviolent even though he has the ability to strike.… I have had in my life many an opportunity of shooting my opponents and earning the crown of martyrdom but I had not the heart to shoot any of them. For I did not want them to shoot me, however much they disliked my methods. I wanted them to convince me of my error as I was trying to convince them of theirs. “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.”
²³

Most people do not understand the complicated machinery of the government. They do not realize every citizen silently but none the less certainly sustains the government of the day in ways of which he has no knowledge. Every citizen therefore renders himself responsible for every act of his government. And it is quite proper to support it so long as the actions of the government are bearable. But when they hurt him and his nation it becomes his duty to withdraw his support.
²⁴

 … I cannot satisfy myself with false coöperation—anything inferior to twenty-four carats gold.… [My non-coöperation] harms no one, it is non-coöperation with evil, with an evil system, and not with the evildoer. My religion teaches me to love even an evildoer.…
²⁵

What are … our countrymen in South Africa to do [in the way of preventing further oppressive legislation]? There is nothing in the world like self-help.… Self-help in this case, as perhaps in every other, means self-suffering, self-suffering means Satyagraha. When their honor is at stake, when their rights are being taken away, when their livelihood is threatened, they have the right and it becomes their duty to offer Satyagraha.…

 … We may be justly entitled to many things but Satyagraha is offered for things without which self-respect, or which is the same thing, honorable existence, is impossible.

They must count the cost. Satyagraha cannot be offered in bravado or as a mere trial. It is therefore offered because it becomes irresistible. No price is too dear to pay for it—truth.…
²⁶

Bravery and self-sacrifice need not kill.…
²⁷

…
Civil Disobedience means capacity for unlimited suffering without the intoxicating excitement of killing.…
²⁸

The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice.
²⁹

 … A slave is a slave because he consents to slavery. If training in physical resistance is possible, why should that in spiritual resistance be impossible?…
³⁰

The acquisition of the spirit of non-resistance is a matter of long training in self-denial and appreciation of the hidden forces within ourselves. It changes one’s outlook upon life. It puts different values upon things and upsets previous calculations. And when once it is set in motion its effect … can overtake the whole universe. It is the greatest force because it is the highest expression of the soul. All need not possess the same measure of conscious non-resistance for its full operation. It is enough for one person only to possess it, even as one general is enough to regulate and dispose of the energy of millions of soldiers who enlist under his banner, even though they know not the why and wherefor of his dispositions.…
³¹

Those who can suffer for one to three years will find themselves inured to suffering for thirty years.
³²

 … Man is superior to the brute in as much as he is capable of self-restraint and sacrifice, of which the brute is incapable.
³³

 … If every young man found himself in plenty and never knew what it was to go without … he may be found wanting when the trial comes. Sacrifice is joy.

 … No sacrifice is worth the name unless it is a joy. Sacrifice and a long face go ill together.…
³⁴

Do you think anything on earth can be done without trouble?
³⁵

[With] me, the safety of the cause has not lain in numbers.… A general with a large army cannot march as swiftly as he would like to. He has to take note of all the different units in his army. My position is not unlike such a general’s.… If it often means strength, it sometimes means a positive hindrance.… I am not without hope that I shall not be found wanting if I am left with but two human comrades or without any.…
³⁶

Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid. The valiant of spirit glory in fighting alone.…
³⁷

 … I suggest the following prescription of Civil Disobedience, which even one man can offer.… Let a batch, or only one person … march on foot to the Government House … and walk on to the point where he or she is stopped. There let him or her stop and demand the release of detenues or his or her own arrest. To preserve intact the civil nature of this disobedience, the Satyagrahi must be wholly unarmed, and in spite of insults, kicks or worse, must meekly stand the ground and be arrested without the slightest opposition. He may carry his own food in his pocket, a bottle full of water, take his Gita, the Koran, the Bible … as the case may be, and his [spinning device]. If there are many such real Satyagrahis they will certainly transform the atmosphere in an immensely short time, even as one gentle shower transforms the plains of India into a beautiful green carpet in one single day.
³⁸

Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.
³⁹

 … Who has not seen strong-bodied bullies surrendering helplessly to their mothers? Love conquers the brute in the son.…

[We] think it impossible to evoke the hidden powers of the soul. Well, I am engaged in trying to show, if I have any of these powers,
that I am as frail a mortal as any of us and I never had anything extraordinary about me nor have any now. I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps. I own that I have an immovable faith in God and His goodness and unconsumable passion for truth and love. But is that not what every person has latent in him? If we are to make progress, we must not repeat history but make new history.… If we may make new discoveries and inventions in the phenomenal world, must we declare our bankruptcy in the spiritual domain? Is it impossible to multiply the exceptions so as to make them the rule? Must man always be brute first and man after, if at all?
⁴⁰

[When] I was passing through a severe crisis of scepticism and doubt … I came across Tolstoy’s book
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
, and was deeply impressed by it. I was at that time a believer in violence. Its reading cured me of my scepticism and made me a firm believer in [non-violence]. What has appealed to me most in Tolstoy’s life is that he practised what he preached and reckoned no cost too great in his pursuit of truth.…

He was the greatest apostle of non-violence the present age has produced. No one in the West before him or since has written and spoken on non-violence so fully or insistently and with such penetration and insight.… [His] remarkable development of this doctrine puts to shame the present-day narrow and lop-sided interpretation put upon it by the votaries of Ahimsa in this land of ours.… True Ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all. For inculcating this true and higher type of Ahimsa amongst us, Tolstoy’s life with its oceanlike love should serve as a beacon light and a never-failing source of inspiration.…
⁴¹

Life is governed by a multitude of forces. It would be smooth sailing if one could determine the course of one’s actions only by one general principle.… But I cannot recall a single act which could be so easily determined.

Let me take an illustration. I am a member of an institution which holds a few acres of land whose crops are in imminent perils from monkeys. I believe in the sacredness of all life and hence I regard it as a breach of non-violence to inflict any injury on the monkeys. But I do not hesitate to instigate and direct an attack on the monkeys in order to save the crops.…

Even so did I participate in three acts of War [the Boer War, the Zulu Rebellion, World War I]. I could not—it would be madness for me—to sever my connection with the society to which I belong. And on those occasions I had no thought of non-coöperating with the British Government. My position regarding that Government is totally different today and hence I should not participate voluntarily in its wars and I should risk imprisonment and even the gallows if I was forced to take up arms or otherwise take part in its military operations.

 … I can conceive occasions when it would be my duty to vote for the military training of those who wish to take it. For I know [everyone] does not believe in non-violence to the extent I do. It is not possible to make a person or a society non-violent by compulsion.