The Essential Gandhi (32 page)

[War] is wrong, is an unmitigated evil. I know, too, that it has got to go. I firmly believe that freedom won through bloodshed or fraud is no freedom.…
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[On September 18, 1924, Gandhi started a twenty-one day fast for Hindu-Moslem friendship.

Gandhi had been ill for months in jail. Then came the urgent appendectomy. He was fifty-five. He knew a twenty-one day fast might be fatal. He did not want to die. There were too many unfinished tasks. It gave him no pleasure to suffer.

The fast was dictated by duty to the highest cause—the universal brotherhood of man.]

 … My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray.…
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Fasting cannot be undertaken against an opponent. Fasting can be resorted to only against one’s nearest and dearest, and that solely for his or her good.
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 … Fasting can be resorted to only against a lover, not to extort rights but to reform him, as when a son fasts for a father who drinks.… I fasted to reform those who loved me. But I will not fast to reform General Dyer, who not only does not love me but who regards himself as my enemy.…
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[Be] most careful about accusing the opponent of wickedness.… Those whom we regard as wicked as a rule return the compliment.… Mind is its own place, it can make hell of heaven.…
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 … Let us … honor our opponents for the same honesty of purpose and patriotic motive that we claim for ourselves.… I believe in trusting. Trust begets trust. Suspicion is foetid and only stinks.
He who trusts has never yet lost in the world. A suspicious man is lost to himself and the world.… Suspicion is of the brood of violence. Non-violence cannot but trust.…
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Lying is the mother of violence. A truthful man cannot long remain violent. He will perceive in the course of his search that he has no need to be violent and he will further discover that so long as there is the slightest trace of violence in him, he will fail to find the truth for which he is searching.
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[If] I listen to … Mr. Worldly-Wise, I am lost already. I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.… It is true that I have often been let down. Many have deceived me and many have been found wanting. But I do not repent of my association with them.… The most practical, the most dignified way of going on in the world is to take people at their word, when you have no positive reason to the contrary.
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 … A man who is truthful will not believe charges even against his foes. He will, however, try to understand the viewpoints of his opponents and will always keep an open mind and seek every opportunity of serving his opponents. I have endeavored to apply this law in my relations with Englishmen and Europeans in general in South Africa as well as here and not without some success. How much more then should we apply this law in our homes, in our relations, in our domestic affairs, in connection with our own kith and kin?
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 … Madness answered with madness simply deepens, it never dispels it. Hinduism will be sorry stuff if it has to exist on cowardly vengeance that pursues those who can offer no effective resistance.
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 … Few men are wantonly wicked. The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under cover of religion or equally other noble motive. But … we are no better off for the destruction that has gone on even under
the highest sanction … religion.… We have no right to destroy life that we cannot create.…

 … Perhaps it is as well that we are beset with danger at every point in our life, for, in spite of our knowledge of the danger and our precarious existence, our indifference to the Source of all life is excelled only by our amazing arrogance.
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 … Both reason and heart refuse to reconcile themselves to torture for any crime no matter how vile the crime may be.
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 … The sword is the emblem of Islam. But Islam was born in an environment where the sword was and still remains the supreme law. The message of Jesus has proved ineffective because the environment was unready to receive it. So with the message of the Prophet. The sword is too much in evidence among Mussalmans. It must be sheathed if Islam is to be what it means—peace.…
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 … If we have no charity, and no tolerance, we shall never settle our differences amicably and must therefore always submit to the arbitrament of a third party—foreign domination.…
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 … I came to the conclusion long ago, after prayerful search and study and discussion with as many people as I could meet, that all religions were true, and also that all had some error in them, and whilst I hold my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism.… So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, that not a Christian should become a Hindu, or if we are Moslems that not a Hindu or a Christian should become a Moslem, nor should we even secretly pray that anyone should be converted, but our inmost prayer should be that a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Moslem a better Moslem and a Christian a better Christian.… I broaden my Hinduism by loving other religions as my own.…
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I disbelieve in the conversion of one person by another. My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith. This implies the belief in the truth of all religions and respect for them.…
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Let no one even for a moment entertain the fear that a reverent study of other religions is likely to weaken or shake one’s faith in one’s own. The Hindu system of philosophy regards all religions as containing the elements of truth in them and enjoins an attitude of respect and reverence towards them all.… Study and appreciation of other religions need not cause a weakening of [regard for one’s own religion], it should mean extension of that regard to other religions.
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 … Hinduism leaves the individual absolutely free to do what he or she likes for the sake of self-realization for which and which alone he or she is born.
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 … I do not believe in the exclusive divinity of the Vedas [Hindu scriptures]. I believe the Bible [and the] Koran to be as much divinely inspired as the Vedas.…
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Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.
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Mankind is one.… There are, of course, differences of race and status and the like, but the higher the status of a man, the greater is his responsibility.
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I believe that we can all become messengers of God if we cease to fear man and seek only God’s Truth. I do believe I am seeking only God’s Truth and have lost all fear of man.
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[All] religions are more or less true. All proceed from the same God but all are imperfect because they come down to us through imperfect human instrumentality.… [No] propaganda can be allowed which reviles other religions.… The best way of dealing with such propaganda is to publicly condemn it.…
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The golden rule of conduct … is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and that we shall always see
Truth
in fragment and from different angles of vision. Conscience is not the
same thing for all. Whilst, therefore, it is a good guide for individual conduct, imposition of that conduct upon all will be an insufferable interference with everybody else’s freedom of conscience.… [Mutual toleration] can be inculcated among and practiced by all, irrespective of their status and training.
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 … We must measure people with their own measure and see how far they come up to it.…
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 … No doubt religion has to answer for some of the most terrible crimes in history. But that is the fault not of religion but of the ungovernable brute in man.…
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…
True religion being the greatest thing in life and in the world, it has been exploited the most. And those who have seen the exploiters and the exploitation and missed the reality naturally get disgusted with the thing itself. But religion is after all a matter for each individual, and then too a matter of the heart, call it then by whatever name you like, that which gives one the greatest solace in the midst of the severest fire is God.…
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Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone, believing it to be God.
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True morality consists not in following the beaten track but in finding out the true path for ourselves and fearlessly following it.
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 … Unfortunately or fortunately, we have to pass through many an ebb and flow before we settle down to real peace.
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 … There is no such thing as religion overriding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel and incontinent and claim to have God on his side.
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Churches, mosques and temples which cover so much hypocrisy and humbug and shut the poorest out of them seem but a mockery of God and His worship, when one sees the eternally renewed temple of worship under the vast blue canopy inviting every one of us to real worship, instead of abusing His name by quarreling in the name of religion.
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