The Essential Gandhi (37 page)

 … I am prepared to recognize the limitations of human nature for the very simple reason that I recognize my own.… But … I do not deceive myself by refusing to distinguish between what I ought to do and what I fail to do.… Many things are impossible and yet are the only things right. A reformer’s business is to make the impossible possible by giving an ocular demonstration of the possibility in his own conduct.…
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A man or woman completely practicing Brahmacharya [Chastity] is absolutely free from passion. Such a one therefore lives nigh unto God, is Godlike.

 … I have gained control over the body. I can be master of myself during my waking hours. I have fairly succeeded in learning to control my tongue. But I have yet to cover many stages in the control of my thoughts.…

[In] the hours of sleep, control over the thoughts is much less. When asleep the mind would be swayed by all sorts of thoughts, by unexpected dreams, and by desire for things done and enjoyed by the flesh before.…

[He] who has not mastered his palate cannot master the carnal desire. It is very difficult, I know, to master the palate. But mastery of the palate means automatic mastery of the other senses. One of the rules … is to abjure completely or, as much as possible, all condiments. A more difficult rule to cultivate is the feeling that the food we eat is to sustain the body, never to satisfy the palate. We take air not for the pleasure of it but to breathe.…
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If I were sexually attracted towards women, I have courage enough, even at this time of life, to become a polygamist. I do not believe in free love—secret or open. Free open love I have looked upon as a dog’s love. Secret love is besides cowardly.
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[In] non-violent conduct, whether individual or universal, there is an indissoluble connection between private personal life and public. You may be as generous and charitable as you like in judging men but you cannot overlook private deflections from the right conduct.
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 … Why should one
know
the taste of what one does not need or wish to take? Do you know this is the reasoning that has been applied to justify every form of vice? It is the million times told story of the forbidden apple.…
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 … I do not subscribe to the superstition that everything is good because it is ancient. I do not believe either that anything is good because it is Indian.… [Opium] and such other intoxicants and narcotics stupefy a man’s soul and reduce him to a level lower than that of beasts. Trade in them is demonstrably sinful. Indian States should close all liquor shops … I trust the day is not distant when there will be not a single liquor shop in our peninsula.
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[It] betrays want of imagination and lack of sympathy with the people if [a] minister believes that as a prohibitionist he has nothing more to do but to declare prohibition and prosecute those who will break his laws. [There] is a larger and more constructive side to prohibition. People drink because of the conditions to which they
are reduced. It is the factory laborers and others that drink. They are forlorn, uncared for, and they take to drink. They are no more vicious by nature than teetotallers are saints by nature. The majority of people are controlled by their environment. Any minister who is sincerely anxious to make prohibition a success will have to develop the zeal and qualities of a reformer.… He will have to convert every drink shop into a refreshment shop and concert room combined. Poor laborers will want some place where they can congregate and get wholesome, cheap, refreshing, non-intoxicating drinks, and if they can have some good music at the same time, it would prove as a tonic to them and draw them.… Whereas total prohibition in the West is most difficult of accomplishment, I hold it is the easiest of accomplishment in this country. When an evil like drink in the West attains the status of respectability, it is the most difficult to deal with. With us drink is still, thank God, sufficiently disrespectable and confined not to the general body of the people but to a minority of the poorer classes.
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[Millions] of Indians are teetotallers by religion and by habit. Millions therefore cannot possibly be interested in keeping up the nefarious liquor traffic.…
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[Times without number, Gandhi attacked the institution of child marriage as “a fruitful source of life, adding to the population.”]

 … Any tradition, however ancient, if inconsistent with morality is fit to be banished from the land.… [The] institution of child widowhood and child marriage may be considered to be an ancient tradition, and even so, many an ancient horrible belief and superstitious practice. I would sweep them out of existence if I had the power.
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It is irreligion, not religion, to give religious sanction to a brutal custom.…

This custom of child marriage is both a moral as well as a physical evil.… Fight for Swaraj means not mere political awakening
but an all round awakening—social, educational, moral, economic and political.

Legislation is being promoted to raise the age of consent. It may be good for bringing a minority to book. But it is not legislation that will cure a popular evil, it is enlightened public opinion that can do it.…
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 … I would … postpone marriage till a boy or girl is well advanced [over sixteen and nearer twenty], and is capable of shouldering the burden.… The way to do it is for those who feel the necessity of reform to initiate it themselves and advocate it among their neighbors.…
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[Just as Moslems, Christians and even untouchables borrowed the institution of caste from the Hindus, so the Hindus in places succumbed to Islam’s purdah or segregation of women. Gandhi questioned this “institution” also.]

[Why] is there all this morbid anxiety about female purity? Have women any say in the matter of male purity? We hear nothing of women’s anxiety about men’s chastity. Why should men arrogate to themselves the right to regulate female purity? It cannot be superimposed from without. It is a matter of evolution from within and therefore of individual self-effort.
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Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity—to me, the female sex, not the weaker sex. It is the nobler of the two for it is even today the embodiment of sacrifice, silent suffering, humility, faith and knowledge.
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 … I [have] met a large number of these unfortunate sisters [prostitutes].… It is a matter of bitter shame and sorrow, of deep humiliation that a number of women have to sell their chastity for man’s lust. Man the law-giver will have to pay a dreadful penalty for the degradation he has imposed upon the so-called weaker sex. When
woman, freed from man’s snares, rises to the full height and rebels against man’s legislation and institutions designed by him, her rebellion, no doubt nonviolent, will be none the less effective.… The pity of it is that the vast majority of the men who visit these pestilential haunts are married men and therefore commit a double sin. They sin against their wives to whom they have sworn allegiance, and they sin against the sisters whose purity they are bound to guard with as much jealousy as that of their own blood sisters. It is an evil which cannot last for a single day, if we men of India realize our own dignity.
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[Man] cannot be made good by law.… I would certainly stop women of ill-fame from acting as actresses, I would prevent people from drinking and smoking, I would certainly prevent all the degrading advertisements that disfigure even reputable journals and newspapers.… But to regulate these things by law … would be a remedy probably worse than the disease.… There is no law against using kitchens as closets or drawing rooms as stables. But public opinion, that is, public taste will not tolerate such a combination. The evolution of public opinion is at times a tardy process but it is the only effective one.
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[Gandhi emerged from the year of silence with views unchanged. His program was still Hindu-Moslem unity, the removal of untouchability and the promotion of homespun. Indeed, Gandhi’s program in its simplest terms remained the same for decades. The nation needed to be strengthened from within, Gandhi felt; otherwise, resolutions in favor of independence were empty words and vain gestures.]

[Katherine Mayo’s book
Mother India
] is the report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported upon.… If Miss Mayo had confessed that she had gone to India merely to open out and examine the drains of India, there would perhaps be little to complain about her compilation. But she says, in effect, with a certain amount of triumph “the drains are India.” …

 … Her case is to perpetuate white domination in India on the plea of India’s unfitness to rule herself.

The irony of it all is that she has inscribed this book “To the peoples of India.” She has certainly not written it as a reformer, and out of love. If I am mistaken in my estimate, let her come back to India. Let her subject herself to cross-examination, and if her statements escape unhurt through the fire of cross-examination, let her live in our midst and reform our lives.…

 … Whilst I consider the book to be unfit to be placed before Americans and Englishmen (for it can do no good to them), it is a book that every Indian can read with some degree of profit. We may repudiate the charge as it has been framed by her, but we may not repudiate the substance underlying the many allegations she has made. It is a good thing to see ourselves as others see us.…

 … Overdrawn her pictures of our insanitation, child-marriages, etc. undoubtedly are. But let them serve as a spur to much greater effort than we have hitherto put forth in order to rid society of all cause of reproach. Whilst we may be thankful for anything good that foreign visitors may be able honestly to say of us, if we curb our anger, we shall learn, as I have certainly learnt, more from our critics than from our patrons.…
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 … It is we ourselves with our inertia, apathy and social abuse that more than England or anybody else block our way to freedom. And if we cleanse ourselves of our shortcomings and faults no power on earth can even for a moment withhold Swaraj from us.…
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 … I do not believe that the killing of even every Englishman can do the slightest good to India. The millions will be just as badly off as they are today.… The responsibility is more ours than that of the English for the present state of things. The English will be powerless to do evil if we will but be good. Hence my incessant emphasis on reform from within.
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 … The one thing which we can and must learn from the West is
the science of municipal sanitation.… Our narrow and tortuous lanes, our congested, ill-ventilated houses, our criminal neglect of sources of drinking water require remedying.… It is a superstition to consider that vast sums of money are required for … sanitary reform. We must modify Western methods of sanitation to suit our requirements. And as my patriotism is inclusive and admits of no enmity or ill-will, I do not hesitate, in spite of my horror of Western materialism, to take from the West what is beneficial for me. And as I know Englishmen to be resourceful, I gratefully seek their assistance in such matter.… Dirt, as the English say, is “matter misplaced.”
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 … I [once] shared my dreams and visions [of an ideal city of Ahmedabad] with Dr. Hariprasad whom I often met. I used to tell him of the citizen service I had done in South Africa—service which I am thankful was true service inasmuch as it was silent and of which most of you know nothing—and I concerted measures for improving the sanitation and health of the city. We had intended to form a committee of servants who would visit every nook and corner of the city in order to give the citizens object lessons in cleaning closets and streets, and in general conservancy by doing the work ourselves. We had also intended to plan and suggest measures for the expansion of the city by opening suburbs and inviting citizens to go and settle there rather than live in congested areas. Such things we knew could not be done satisfactorily by fresh taxation. We therefore thought of going with the beggar’s bowl to the rich citizens and asking them to donate land in the heart of the city for opening little gardens for the children to play in. We had intended too to think out schemes … to afford the fullest facility for the education of every child.… It was also our intention to ensure a supply of pure and cheap milk by municipalizing all the city dairies.… But … a huge hurricane blew over the country in the shape of the Rowlatt Bills … I may only say that my heart weeps to see the misery, the squalor and the dirt in the streets of Ahmedabad as I pass through them. How can starvation and dirt be allowed to exist in a city of such riches and rich traditions?
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[The] highest form of Municipal life … has yet to be evolved by us in India.… It will not be till we have men whose ambition will be more than fully satisfied if they can keep the gutters and closets of their cities scrupulously clean and supply the purest milk at the cheapest rates and rid them of drunkenness and prostitution.
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[If] the people had really developed a sense of civic responsibility three-fourths of the municipal work could be done without the Government’s assistance or patronage.… [In] a small place like Ahmedabad [they need] no elaborate machinery to light their streets, to clean their latrines and their roads, and to manage their schools, and there could be no question of police if the citizens were all good and pure, or if they had a citizen guard for guarding peaceful citizens against thieves, loafers or hooligans. Those men who are real servants of the people would become municipal councillors for the sake of service and not for the sake of gaining fame or engaging in intrigues and finding employment for their needy friends or relatives. What is wanted, therefore, is zealous education of the people on the part of workers, not merely by means of speeches, but through silent social service rendered without the slightest expectation of reward, even in the shape of thanks, but, on the contrary, with every expectation of receiving the execration and worse of a public enraged over every attempt to make it give up its superstitious or insanitary habits.…
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