The Essential Gandhi (21 page)

[Two days before Gandhi and Mrs. Gandhi reached England on their way to India from South Africa, the First World War broke out. Gandhi felt that Indians ought to do their bit for Britain. He accordingly volunteered to raise an ambulance corps headed by himself. Eighty Indians, most of them students in the United Kingdom, volunteered.]

 … I felt that if I demanded rights as a British citizen, it was also my duty as such to participate in the defence of the British Empire.…
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Partnership in the Empire is our definite goal. We should suffer to the utmost of our ability and even lay down our lives to defend the Empire. If the Empire perishes, with it perish our cherished aspirations.

 … To bring about [partnership in the Empire] we should have the ability to defend ourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use them.… If we want to learn the use of arms with the greatest possible dispatch, it is our duty to enlist ourselves in the Army.
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 … A votary of Ahimsa [Non-violence] remains true to his faith if the spring of all his actions is compassion.…

 … When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of Ahimsa is to stop the war. He who is not equal to that duty, he who has no power of resisting war, he who is not qualified to resist war may take part in war and yet whole-heartedly try to free himself, his nation and the world from war.

I make no distinction … between combatants and non-combatants. [Those] who confine themselves to attending to the wounded in battle cannot be absolved from the guilt of war.
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In the First World War, I had just returned from South Africa. I hadn’t yet found my feet.… This did not imply any lack of faith in non-violence. But it had to develop according to circumstances, and I was not sufficiently sure of my ground.
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[As the best place in India for a temporary sojourn, Gandhi chose Shantiniketan, a school in Bengal maintained by Rabindranath Tagore, India’s great novelist and poet laureate, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore and Gandhi revered one another. It was Tagore, apparently, who conferred on Gandhi the title of Mahatma—”The Great Soul in beggar’s garb,” Tagore said.
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Gandhi called Tagore “The Great Sentinel” and “the poet.”]

True to his poetical instinct, the poet lives for the morrow and would have us do likewise. He presents to our admiring gaze the beautiful picture of the birds early in the morning singing hymns of praise as they soar into the sky. These birds have had their day’s food and soared with rested wings in whose veins new blood had flowed during the previous night. I have had the pain of watching birds who for want of strength could not be coaxed even into a flutter of their wings. The human bird under the Indian sky gets up weaker than when he pretended to retire. For millions it is an eternal vigil or an eternal trance. It is an indescribably painful state which has got to be experienced to be realized. I have found it impossible to soothe suffering patients with a song.… The hungry
millions ask for one poem—invigorating food. They cannot be given it. They must earn it. And they can earn only by the sweat of their brow.
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[Gandhi sought his own hermitage or “ashram,” and founded it May 25, 1915 at Sabarmati, across the Sabarmati River from the city of Ahmedabad. Gandhi’s life now had no room for private law practice or private relations with wife and sons. Ahmedabad’s textile magnates and Bombay’s shipping barons supported the ashram financially. Gandhi’s room was about the size of a cell, its one window had iron bars. The room opened onto a small terrace, where Gandhi slept even on the coldest nights and worked during the day.]

 … We were in all about twenty-five men and women.

 … Our creed was devotion to truth and our business was the search for and insistence on truth. I wanted to acquaint India with the method I had tried in South Africa and I desired to test in India the extent to which its application might be possible. So my companions and I selected the name “Satyagraha Ashram” as conveying both our goal and our method of service.
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[An illustrious gathering of notables attended the three-day opening ceremonies of the Hindu University Central College in Benares in February, 1916. The viceroy was there and so were numerous bejeweled maharajas, maharanis—Indian princes and princesses—and high officials, all in their dazzling panoply.

Gandhi addressed the meeting on February 4th. It broke up before he could finish.]

[If] you, the student world, to which my remarks are supposed to be addressed this evening, consider for one moment that the spiritual life for which this country is noted, and for which this country has no rival, can be transmitted through the lip, pray believe me, you are wrong. You will never be able merely through the lip to give the message that India, I hope, will one day deliver to the world.… [We] have now reached almost the end of our resources in speech-making, and it is not enough that our ears are
feasted, that our eyes are feasted, but it is necessary that our hearts have got to be touched and … our hands and feet have got to be moved.…

[It] is a matter of deep humiliation and shame for us that I am compelled this evening, under the shadow of this great college in this sacred city, to address my countrymen in a language that is foreign to me.… The charge against us is that we have no initiative. How can we have any if we are to devote the precious years of our lives to the mastery of a foreign tongue?… I have heard it said that, after all, it is English-educated India which is leading and which is doing all the things for the nation.… The only education we receive is English education. Surely, we must show something for it. But suppose that we have been receiving, during the past fifty years, education through our vernaculars, what should we have today? We should have today a free India, we should have our educated men, not as if they were foreigners in their own land but speaking to the heart of the nation, they would be working among the poorest of the poor, and whatever they would have gained during the past fifty years would be a heritage for the nation.…

The Congress [Party] has passed a resolution about self-government.… But I, for one, must frankly confess that I am not so much interested in what they will be able to produce as I am interested in anything that the student world is going to produce or the masses are going to produce. No paper contribution will ever make us fit for self-government. It is only our conduct that will fit us for it. And, how are we trying to govern ourselves? I want to think audibly this evening. I do not want to make a speech, and if you find me this evening speaking without reserve, pray consider that you are only sharing the thoughts of a man who allows himself to think audibly, and if you think that I seem to transgress the limits that courtesy imposes upon me, pardon me for the liberty I may be taking. I visited the Viswanath Temple last evening and as I was walking through those lanes, these were the thoughts that touched me. If a stranger dropped from above onto this great Temple and he had to consider what we as Hindus were, would he not be justified in condemning us? Is not this great temple a reflection of our own character? I speak feelingly as a Hindu. Is it right that the lanes of our sacred Temple should be as dirty as they are?… If
even our temples are not models of roominess and cleanliness, what can our self-government be?…

 … It is not comforting to think that people walk about the streets of Indian Bombay under the perpetual fear of dwellers in the storied buildings spitting upon them. I do a great deal of railway traveling. I observe the difficulty of third-class passengers. But the Railway Administration is by no means to blame for all their hard lot. We do not know the elementary laws of cleanliness. We spit anywhere on the carriage floor, irrespective of the thought that it is often used as sleeping space. We do not trouble ourselves as to how we use it; the result is indescribable filth in the compartment. The so-called better-class passengers over-awe their less fortunate brethren. Among them I have seen the student world also. Sometimes they behave no better. They can speak English and they have worn Norfolk jackets and, therefore, claim the right to force their way in and command seating accommodation. I have turned the searchlight all over, and as you have given me the privilege of speaking to you, I am laying my heart bare. Surely, we must set these things right in our progress towards self-government.…

 … His Highness the Maharajah, who presided yesterday over our deliberations, spoke about the poverty of India. Other speakers laid great stress upon it. But what did we witness … in … the foundation ceremony … performed by the Viceroy? Certainly a most gorgeous show, an exhibition of jewellery which made a splendid feast for the eyes of the greatest jeweller who chose to come from Paris. I compare with the richly bedecked noblemen the millions of the poor. And I feel like saying to those noblemen: “There is no salvation for India unless you strip yourselves of this jewellery and hold it in trust for your countrymen in India.” [Whenever] I hear of a great palace rising in any great city of India … I become jealous at once and I say: “Oh, it is the money that has come from the agriculturists.” Over seventy-five per cent of the population are agriculturists.… But there cannot be much spirit of self-government about us if we take away or allow others to take away from them almost the whole of the results of their labor. Our salvation can come only through the farmer. Neither the lawyers, nor the doctors, nor the rich landlords are going to secure it.

 … We may foam, we may fret, we may resent, but let us not forget that India of today in her impatience has produced an army of anarchists. I myself am an anarchist, but of another type. But … their anarchism has no room in India if India is to conquer the conqueror. It is a sign of fear. If we trust and fear God, we shall have to fear no one, not Maharajahs, not Viceroys … not even King George.… [Mrs. Annie Besant, a remarkable Englishwoman and Indian nationalist leader who founded the institution which grew into the Hindu University Central College: “Please stop it.”] If you consider that by my speaking as I am, I am not serving the country and the Empire, I shall certainly stop. [Cries of “Go on.”] … My friends, please do not resent this interruption. If Mrs. Besant this evening suggests that I should stop, she does so because she loves India so well and she considers that I am erring in thinking audibly before you, young men. But even so, I simply say this, that I want to purge India of the atmosphere of suspicion on either side; if we are to reach our goal, we should have an Empire which is to be based upon mutual love and mutual trust. [There] is nothing that the students are not discussing. There is nothing that the students do not know. I am, therefore, turning the searchlight towards ourselves. I hold the name of my country so dear to me that I exchange these thoughts with you, and submit to you that there is no reason for anarchism in India. Let us frankly and openly say whatever we want to say to our rulers and face the consequences, if what we have to say does not please them.… [Many of the British] members of the Indian Civil Service are most decidedly overbearing, they are tyrannical, at times thoughtless.… I grant also that, after having lived in India for a certain number of years, some of them become somewhat degraded. But what does that signify? They were gentlemen before they came here, and if they have lost some of the moral fiber, it is a reflection upon ourselves. [Cries of “No.”] Just think out for yourselves, if a man who was good yesterday has become bad after having come in contact with me, is he responsible that he has deteriorated or am I? The atmosphere of sycophancy and falsity that surrounds them on their coming to India demoralizes them, as it would many of us. It is well to take the blame sometimes. If we are to receive self-government we shall have to take it. We shall never be granted self-government. Look at the history of the British Empire and the British nation; freedom-loving as it is, it
will not be a party to give freedom to a people who will not take it themselves. Learn your lessons, if you wish to, from the Boer War. Those who were enemies of that Empire only a few years ago, have now become friends.
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[At this moment many dignitaries left the platform, the commotion mounted and Gandhi had to stop. Mrs. Besant adjourned the meeting.]

 … Ours will only then be a truly spiritual nation when we shall show more truth than gold, greater fearlessness than pomp of power and wealth, greater charity than love of self. If we will but clean our houses, our palaces and temples of the attributes of wealth, and show in them the attributes of morality, one can offer battle to any combination of hostile forces without having to carry the burden of a heavy militia.…
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