The Essential Gandhi (42 page)

A spirit of reform, penance and self-purification swept the land. During the six fast days most Hindus refrained from going to cinemas, theaters or restaurants. Weddings were postponed.

As he lay on his cot in prison, Gandhi negotiated with representatives of Hindus and untouchables. Convinced that he had achieved at least some improvement in the lot of the Harijans, he bowed to the entreaties of his friends and agreed to break off the fast.

The fast could not kill the curse of untouchability, which was more than three thousand years old. Access to a temple is not access to a good job. The Harijans remained the dregs of Indian society. Nor did segregation end when Gandhi slowly drank his orange juice. But after the fast untouchability forfeited its public approval. The belief in it was destroyed. A practice full of mystic overtones and undercurrents, deeply imbedded in a complicated religion, was recognized as morally illegitimate. A taboo hallowed by custom, tradition and ritual lost its potency. It had been socially improper to consort with Harijans. In many circles now it became socially improper not to consort with them. To practice untouchability branded one a bigot, a reactionary. Before long, marriages were taking place between Harijans and Hindus; Gandhi made a point of attending some.

Five days after the end of the fast Gandhi’s weight had gone up
to ninety-nine and three-quarter pounds, and he was spinning and working for many hours.]

The fast was really nothing compared with the miseries that the outcasts have undergone for ages. And so I continue to hum “God is great and merciful.”
¹⁷
[He remained in prison.]

[In February, 1933, Gandhi, still in prison, had started the Harijan Sevak Sangh, a society to help Harijans, and
Harijan
, a new weekly which replaced
Young India
, suspended by the Government.]

 … The fight against Sanatanists [orthodox Hindus who believe the doctrine of untouchability] is becoming more and more interesting, if also increasingly difficult. The one good thing is that they have been awakened from a long lethargy. The abuses they are hurling at me are wonderfully refreshing. I am all that is bad and corrupt on this earth. But the storm will subside. For I apply the sovereign remedy of ahimsa, nonretaliation. The more I ignore the abuses, the fiercer they are becoming. But it is the death dance of the moth round a lamp.…
¹

 … 
Harijan
is a views-paper as distinguished from a newspaper. People buy and read it not for amusement but for instruction and [for] regulating their daily conduct. They literally take their weekly lessons in Non-violence.…
²

[On May 8, Gandhi undertook a three weeks’ fast for self-purification and to impress the ashram with the importance of service rather than indulgence—the presence of an attractive American woman visitor had caused some backsliding. The first day of the fast the Government released him. It seemed certain after the physical agony of the seven days of the “Epic Fast” against untouchability that twenty-one days without food would kill him. And Britain did not want a dead Gandhi within prison walls.

He completed the fast and survived.

Throughout his remaining years Gandhi continued to evolve ideas for a better material and spiritual life. These ideas were relevant then and remain relevant for India.]

 … Every man has an equal right to the necessaries of life even as birds and beasts have.…
³

I hate privilege and monopoly. Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo to me.
⁴

[Economic equality] is the master key to non-violent Independence. Working for economic equality means abolishing the eternal conflict between capital and labor. It means the levelling down of the few rich in whose hands is concentrated the bulk of the nation’s wealth … and the levelling up of the semi-starved millions.… A non-violent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists. The contrast between the palaces of New Delhi and the miserable hovels of the poor laboring class nearby cannot last one day in a free India, in which the poor will enjoy the same power as the richest in the land. A violent and bloody revolution is a certainty one day unless there is a voluntary abdication of riches and the power that riches give, and a sharing of them for the common good.
⁵

All have not the same capacity. It is in the nature of things, impossible.… I would allow a man of intellect to earn more, I would not cramp his talent.…
⁶

I want to bring about an equalization of status. The working classes have all these centuries been isolated and relegated to a lower status.… I want to allow no differentiation between the son of a weaver, of an agriculturist and of a school master.
⁷

Complete renunciation of one’s possessions is a thing which very few even among ordinary folk are capable of. All that can legitimately be expected of the wealthy class is that they should hold
their riches and talents in trust and use them for the service of the society. To insist on more would be to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
⁸

 … Regard human labor [as] more even than money and you have an untapped and inexhaustible source of income which ever increases with use.…
⁹

…
Swaraj as conceived of by me does not mean the end of … capital. Accumulated capital means ruling power. I am for the establishment of right relations between capital and labor … I do not wish for the supremacy of the one over the other. I do not think there is any natural antagonism between them. The rich and the poor will always be with us.…
¹⁰

I do not believe the capitalists and the landlords are all exploiters by an inherent necessity or there is a basic or irreconcilable antagonism between their interests and those of the masses. All exploitation is based on the coöperation, willing or forced, of the exploited.…
¹¹

[Destruction] of the capitalist must mean destruction in the end of the worker, and no human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption, no human being is so perfect as to warrant his destroying him whom he wrongly considers to be wholly evil.
¹²

There is in English a very potent word, and you have it in French also, all the languages of the world have it—it is “No,” and the secret we have hit upon is that when Capital wants Labor to say “Yes,” Labor roars out “No,” if it means “No.” And immediately Labor comes to recognize that it has got its choice of saying “Yes” when it wants to … and “No” when it wants to.… Labor is free of Capital and Capital has to woo Labor. And it would not matter in the slightest degree that Capital has guns and even poison gas at its disposal. Capital would still be perfectly helpless if Labor would assert its dignity by making good its “No.” Labor does not need to
retaliate but … stand defiant, receiving the bullets and poison gas, and still insist upon its “No.” … [A] laborer who courts death and has the courage to die without even carrying arms, with no weapon of self-defence, shows a courage of a much higher degree than a man who is armed from top to toe.
¹³

 … Prophets and supermen are born only once in an age. But if even a single individual realizes the ideal of [Non-violence] in its fullness, he covers and redeems the whole society. Once Jesus had blazed the trail, his twelve disciples could carry on his mission without his presence. It needed the perseverance and genius of so many generations of scientists to discover the laws of electricity but today everybody, even children, use electric power in their daily life. Similarly, it will not always need a perfect being to administer an ideal State, once it has come into being. What is needed is a thorough social awakening to begin with. The rest will follow.…
¹⁴

Industrialism is, I am afraid, going to be a curse for mankind. Exploitation of one nation by another cannot go on for all time. Industrialism depends entirely on your capacity to exploit, on foreign markets’ being open to you and on the absence of competition.… And why should I think of industrializing India to exploit other nations? Don’t you see the tragedy of the situation—that we can find work for our three hundred millions unemployed but England can find none for its three millions and is faced with a problem that baffles the greatest intellects of England. The future of industrialism is dark.… And if the future of industrialism is dark for the West, would it not be darker still for India?
¹⁵

 … I have no quarrel with steamships or telegraphs. They may stay, if they can, without the support of industrialism and all it connotes. They are not an end. [But] we must not suffer exploitation for the sake of steamships and telegraphs.…

 … To change to industrialism is to court disaster. The present
distress is undoubtedly insufferable. Pauperism must go. But industrialism is no remedy. The evil does not lie in the use of bullock carts. It lies in our selfishness and want of consideration for our neighbors. If we have no love for our neighbors, no change, however revolutionary, can do us any good. And if we love our neighbors, the paupers of India, for their sakes, we shall use what they make for us [homespun cloth], for their sakes we who should know shall not engage in an immoral traffic with the West in the shape of buying the foreign fineries and taking them to the villages.

[The] one great change to make is to discard foreign cloth and reinstate the ancient cottage industry of handspinning. We must thus restore our ancient and healthgiving industry if we would resist industrialism.

I do not fight shy of capital. I fight capitalism. The West teaches one to avoid concentration of capital, to avoid a racial war in another and deadlier form. Capital and Labor need not be antagonistic to each other. I cannot picture to myself a time when no man shall be richer than another. But I do picture to myself a time when the rich will spurn to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor and the poor will cease to envy the rich. Even in a most perfect world, we shall fail to avoid inequalities, but we can and must avoid strife and bitterness.…
¹⁶

India’s destiny lies not along the bloody way of the West, of which she shows signs of tiredness but along the bloodless way of peace that comes from a simple and godly life.
India is in danger of losing her soul
. She cannot lose it and live. She must not, therefore, lazily and helplessly say, “I cannot escape the onrush from the West.” She must be strong enough to resist it for her own sake and that of the world.
¹⁷

 … I make bold to say that the Europeans themselves will have to remodel their outlook if they are not to perish under the weight of the comforts to which they are becoming slaves.

It may be that my reading is wrong, but I know that for India to run after the Golden Fleece is to court certain death. Let us engrave on our hearts the motto of a Western philosopher, “plain
living and high thinking.” Today it is certain that the millions cannot have high living and we the few who profess to do the thinking for the masses run the risk, in a vain search after high living, of missing high thinking.
¹⁸

[Those] from the West should not consciously or unconsciously lay violent hands upon the manners, customs and habits of the [East] insofar as they are not repugnant to fundamental ethics and morality.… Tolerate what is good in them and do not hastily, with your preconceived notions, judge them.… In spite of your belief in the greatness of Western civilization and in spite of your pride in all your achievements, I plead with you for humility and ask you to leave some little room for doubt.… Let us each one live our life and if ours is the right life, where is the cause for hurry [to change it]?…
¹⁹

There is a growing body of enlightened opinion which distrusts [Western] civilization, which has insatiable material ambition at one end, and consequent war at the other. But whether good or bad, why must India become industrial in the Western sense?

The Western civilization is urban. Small countries like England or Italy may afford to urbanize their systems. A big country like America with a very sparse population, perhaps cannot do otherwise. But one would think that a big country, with a teeming population [of] an ancient rural tradition which has hitherto answered its purpose, need not, must not, copy the Western model. What is good for one nation situated in one condition is not necessarily good enough for another, differently situated. One man’s food is often another man’s poison. Physical geography of a country has a predominant share in determining its culture. A fur coat may be a necessity for the dweller in the polar regions, it will smother those living in the equatorial regions.
²⁰