SAINTS should always be judged guilty until they are proved
innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course,
the same in all cases. In Gandhi's case the questions on feels inclined
to ask are: to what extent was Gandhi moved by vanity - by the consciousness
of himself as a humble, naked old man, sitting on a praying mat and shaking
empires by sheer spiritual power - and to what extent did he compromise
his own principles by entering politics, which of their nature are inseparable
from coercion and fraud? To give a definite answer one would have to study
Gandhi's acts and writings in immense detail, for his whole life was a
sort of pilgrimage in which every act was significant. But this partial
autobiography, which ends in the nineteen-twenties, is strong evidence
in his favor, all the more because it covers what he would have called
the unregenerate part of his life and reminds one that inside the saint,
or near-saint, there was a very shrewd, able person who could, if he had
chosen, have been a brilliant success as a lawyer, an administrator or
perhaps even a businessman.
At about the time when the autobiography first appeared I remember reading
its opening chapters in the ill-printed pages of some Indian newspaper.
They made a good impression on me, which Gandhi himself at that time did
not. The things that one associated with him - home-spun cloth, "soul forces"
and vegetarianism - were unappealing, and his medievalist program was obviously
not viable in a backward, starving, over-populated country. It was also
apparent that the British were making use of him, or thought they were
making use of him. Strictly speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an enemy,
but since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence -
which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action
whatever - he could be regarded as "our man." In private this was sometimes
cynically admitted. The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar.
Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to
the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have
taken their money away. How reliable such calculations are in the long
run is doubtful; as Gandhi himself says, "in the end deceivers deceive
only themselves"; but at any rate the gentleness with which he was nearly
always handled was due partly to the feeling that he was useful. The British
Conservatives only became really angry with him when, as in 1942, he was
in effect turning his non-violence against a different conqueror.
But I could see even then that the British officials who spoke of him
with a mixture of amusement and disapproval also genuinely liked and admired
him, after a fashion. Nobody ever suggested that he was corrupt, or ambitious
in any vulgar way, or that anything he did was actuated by fear or malice.
In judging a man like Gandhi one seems instinctively to apply high standards,
so that some of his virtues have passed almost unnoticed. For instance,
it is clear even from the autobiography that his natural physical courage
was quite outstanding: the manner of his death was a later illustration
of this, for a public man who attached any value to his own skin would
have been more adequately guarded. Again, he seems to have been quite free
from that maniacal suspiciousness which, as E.M. Forster rightly says in
A Passage to India, is the besetting Indian vice, as hypocrisy is the British
vice. Although no doubt he was shrewd enough in detecting dishonesty, he
seems
wherever possible to have believed that other people were acting in good
faith and had a better nature through which they could be approached. And
though he came of a poor middle-class family, started life rather unfavorably,
and was probably of unimpressive physical appearance, he was not afflicted
by envy or by the feeling of inferiority. Color feeling when he first met
it in its worst form in South Africa, seems rather to have astonished him.
Even when he was fighting what was in effect a color war, he did not think
of people in terms of race or status. The governor of a province, a cotton
millionaire, a half-starved Dravidian coolie, a British private soldier
were all equally human beings, to be approached in much the same way. It
is noticeable that even in the worst possible circumstances, as in South
Africa when he was making himself unpopular as the champion of the Indian
community, he did not lack European friends.
Written in short lengths for newspaper serialization, the autobiography
is not a literary masterpiece, but it is the more impressive because of
the commonplaceness of much of its material. It is well to be reminded
that Gandhi started out with the normal ambitions of a young Indian student
and only adopted his extremist opinions by degrees and, in some cases,
rather unwillingly. There was a time, it is interesting to learn, when
he wore a top hat, took dancing lessons, studied French and Latin, went
up the Eiffel Tower and even tried to learn the violin - all this was the
idea of assimilating European civilization as throughly as possible. He
was not one of those saints who are marked out by their phenomenal piety
from childhood onwards, nor one of the other kind who forsake the world
after sensational debaucheries. He makes full confession of the misdeeds
of his youth, but in fact there is not much to confess. As a frontispiece
to the book there is a photograph of Gandhi's possessions at the time of
his death. The whole outfit could be purchased for about 5 pounds***, and
Gandhi's sins, at least his fleshly sins, would make the same sort of appearance
if placed all in one heap. A few cigarettes, a few mouthfuls of meat, a
few annas pilfered in childhood from the maidservant, two visits to a brothel
(on each occasion he got away without "doing anything"), one narrowly escaped
lapse with his landlady in Plymouth, one outburst of temper - that is about
the whole collection. Almost from childhood onwards he had a deep earnestness,
an attitude ethical rather than religious, but, until he was about thirty,
no very definite sense of direction. His first entry into anything describable
as public life was made by way of vegetarianism. Underneath his less ordinary
qualities one feels all the time the solid middle-class businessmen who
were his ancestors. One feels that even after he had abandoned personal
ambition he must have been a resourceful, energetic lawyer and a hard-headed
political organizer, careful in keeping down expenses, an adroit handler
of committees and an indefatigable chaser of subscriptions. His character
was an extraordinarily mixed one, but there was almost nothing in it that
you can put your finger on and call bad, and I believe that even Gandhi's
worst enemies would admit that he was an interesting and unusual man who
enriched the world simply by being alive . Whether he was also a lovable
man, and whether his teachings can have much for those who do not accept
the religious beliefs on which they are founded, I have never felt fully
certain.
Of late years it has been the fashion to talk about Gandhi as though
he were not only sympathetic to the Western Left-wing movement, but were
integrally part of it. Anarchists and pacifists, in particular, have claimed
him for their own, noticing only that he was opposed to centralism and
State violence and ignoring the other-worldly, anti-humanist tendency of
his doctrines. But one should, I think, realize that Gandhi's teachings
cannot be squared with the belief that Man is the measure of all things
and that our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the
only earth we have. They make sense only on the assumption that God exists
and that the world of solid objects is an illusion to be escaped from.
It is worth considering the disciplines which Gandhi imposed on himself
and which - though he might not insist on every one of his followers observing
every detail - he considered indispensable if one wanted to serve either
God or humanity. First of all, no meat-eating, and if possible no animal
food in any form. (Gandhi himself, for the sake of his health, had to compromise
on milk, but seems to have felt this to be a backsliding.) No alcohol or
tobacco, and no spices or condiments even of a vegetable kind, since food
should be taken not for its own sake but solely in order to preserve one's
strength. Secondly, if possible, no sexual intercourse. If sexual intercourse
must happen, then it should be for the sole purpose of begetting children
and presumably at long intervals. Gandhi himself, in his middle thirties,
took the vow of brahmacharya, which means not only complete chastity but
the elimination of sexual desire. This condition, it seems, is difficult
to attain without a special diet and frequent fasting. One of the dangers
of milk-drinking is that it is apt to arouse sexual desire. And finally
- this is the cardinal point - for the seeker after goodness there must
be no close friendships and no exclusive loves whatever.
Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because "friends react
on one another" and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrong-doing.
This is unquestionably true. Moreover, if one is to love God, or to love
humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to any individual
person. This again is true, and it marks the point at which the humanistic
and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable. To an ordinary human
being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than
others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in
an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes
clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife or a child
die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It
is true that the threatened death never actually occurred, and also that
Gandhi - with, one gathers, a good deal of moral pressure in the opposite
direction - always gave the patient the choice of staying alive at the
price of committing a sin: still, if the decision had been solely his own,
he would have forbidden the animal food, whatever the risks might be. There
must, he says, be some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive,
and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth. This attitude is perhaps
a noble one, but, in the sense which - I think - most people would give
to the word, it is inhuman. The essence of being human is that one does
not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the
sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it
makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the
end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price
of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol,
tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood
is also a thing that human beings must avoid. There is an obvious retort
to this, but one should be wary about making it. In this yogi-ridden age,
it is too readily assumed that "non-attachment" is not only better than
a full acceptance of earthly life, but that the ordinary man only rejects
it because it is too difficult: in other words, that the average human
being is a failed saint. It is doubtful whether this is true. Many people
genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve
or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.
If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe,
find that the main motive for "non-attachment" is a desire to escape from
the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual,
is hard work. But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly
or the humanistic ideal is "higher". The point is that they are incompatible.
One must choose between God and Man, and all "radicals" and "progressives,"
from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect
chosen Man.
However, Gandhi's pacifism can be separated to some extent from his
other teachings. Its motive was religious, but he claimed also for it that
it was a definitive technique, a method, capable of producing desired political
results. Gandhi's attitude was not that of most Western pacifists. Satyagraha,
first evolved in South Africa, was a sort of non-violent warfare, a way
of defeating the enemy without hurting him and without feeling or arousing
hatred. It entailed such things as civil disobedience, strikes, lying down
in front of railway trains, enduring police charges without running away
and without hitting back, and the like. Gandhi objected to "passive resistance"
as a translation of Satyagraha: in Gujarati, it seems, the word means "firmness
in the truth." In his early days Gandhi served as a stretcher-bearer on
the British side in the Boer War, and he was prepared to do the same again
in the war of 1914-18. Even after he had completely abjured violence he
was honest enough to see that in war it is usually necessary to take sides.
He did not - indeed, since his whole political life centred round a struggle
for national independence, he could not - take the sterile and dishonest
line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and
it makes no difference who wins. Nor did he, like most Western pacifists,
specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late war,
one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was:
"What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not,
how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?" I must say that
I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this
question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the "you're
another" type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar
question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer's
Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi's view was that the
German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which "would have aroused
the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence." After the war
he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well
have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered
even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest.
If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives
to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance
against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several
million deaths.
At the same time there is reason to think that Gandhi, who after all
was born in 1869, did not understand the nature of totalitarianism and
saw everything in terms of his own struggle against the British government.
The important point here is not so much that the British treated him forbearingly
as that he was always able to command publicity. As can be seen from the
phrase quoted above, he believed in "arousing the world," which is only
possible if the world gets a chance to hear what you are doing. It is difficult
to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents
of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard
of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible
not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into
being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there
a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing?
The Russian masses could only practise civil disobedience if the same idea
happened to occur to all of them simultaneously, and even then, to judge
by the history of the Ukraine famine, it would make no difference. But
let it be granted that non-violent resistance can be effective against
one's own government, or against an occupying power: even so, how does
one put it into practise internationally? Gandhi's various conflicting
statements on the late war seem to show that he felt the difficulty of
this. Applied to foreign politics, pacifism either stops being pacifist
or becomes appeasement. Moreover the assumption, which served Gandhi so
well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings are more or less
approachable and will respond to a generous gesture, needs to be seriously
questioned. It is not necessarily true, for example, when you are dealing
with lunatics. Then the question becomes: Who is sane? Was Hitler sane?
And is it not possible for one whole culture to be insane by the standards
of another? And, so far as one can gauge the feelings of whole nations,
is there any apparent connection between a generous deed and a friendly
response? Is gratitude a factor in international politics?
These and kindred questions need discussion, and need it urgently, in
the few years left to us before somebody presses the button and the rockets
begin to fly. It seems doubtful whether civilization can stand another
major war, and it is at least thinkable that the way out lies through non-violence.
It is Gandhi's virtue that he would have been ready to give honest consideration
to the kind of question that I have raised above; and, indeed, he probably
did discuss most of these questions somewhere or other in his innumerable
newspaper articles. One feels of him that there was much he did not understand,
but not that there was anything that he was frightened of saying or thinking.
I have never been able to feel much liking for Gandhi, but I do not feel
sure that as a political thinker he was wrong in the main, nor do I believe
that his life was a failure. It is curious that when he was assassinated,
many of his warmest admirers exclaimed sorrowfully that he had lived just
long enough to see his life work in ruins, because India was engaged in
a civil war which had always been foreseen as one of the byproducts of
the transfer of power. But it was not in trying to smooth down Hindu-Moslem
rivalry that Gandhi had spent his life. His main political objective, the
peaceful ending of British rule, had after all been attained. As usual
the relevant facts cut across one another. On the other hand, the British
did get out of India without fighting, and event which very few observers
indeed would have predicted until about a year before it happened. On the
other hand, this was done by a Labour government, and it is certain that
a Conservative government, especially a government headed by Churchill,
would have acted differently. But if, by 1945, there had grown up in Britain
a large body of opinion sympathetic to Indian independence, how far was
this due to Gandhi's personal influence? And if, as may happen, India and
Britain finally settle down into a decent and friendly relationship, will
this be partly because Gandhi, by keeping up his struggle obstinately and
without hatred, disinfected the political air? That one even thinks of
asking such questions indicates his stature. One may feel, as I do, a sort
of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood
made on his behalf (he never made any such claim himself, by the way),
one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi's
basic aims were anti-human and reactionary: but regarded simply as a politician,
and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how
clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!
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