The Essential Gandhi (33 page)

 … That religion and that nation will be blotted out of the face of the earth which pins its faith to injustice, untruth or violence. God is Light, not darkness. God is Love, not hate. God is Truth, not untruth.…
³²

[There] is not a single offense which does not, directly or indirectly, affect many others besides the actual offender. Hence, whether an individual is good or bad is not merely his own concern but really the concern of the whole community, nay, of the whole world.
³³

Our desires and motives may be divided into two classes—selfish and unselfish. All selfish desires are immoral, while the desire to improve ourselves for the sake of doing good to others is truly moral. The highest moral law is that we should unremittingly work for the good of mankind.
³⁴

I see there is an instinctive horror of killing living beings under any circumstances whatever. For instance, an alternative has been suggested in the shape of confining even rabid dogs in a certain place and allowing them to die a slow death. Now my idea of compassion makes this thing impossible for me. I cannot for a moment bear to see a dog, or for that matter any other living being, helplessly suffering the torture of a slow death. I do not kill a human being thus circumstanced because I have more hopeful remedies. I should kill a dog similarly situated because in its case I am without a remedy. Should my child be attacked with rabies and there was no helpful remedy to relieve his agony, I should consider it my duty to take his life. Fatalism has its limits. We leave things to fate after
exhausting all the remedies. One of the remedies and the final one to relieve the agony of a tortured child is to take his life.
³⁵

Some days back a calf having been maimed lay in agony in the ashram. Whatever treatment and nursing was possible was given to it. The surgeon whose advice was sought … declared the case to be past help and past hope.…

 … I felt that humanity demanded the agony should be ended by ending life itself.… With the clearest of convictions I got … a doctor kindly to administer the calf a quietus by means of a poison injection. The whole thing was over in less than two minutes.

I knew that public opinion [of the Hindus believing cattle to be sacred] would not approve of my action and that it would read nothing but himsa [violence] in it. But I know too that performance of one’s duty should be independent of public opinion. I have all along held that one is bound to act according to what to one appears to be right though it may appear wrong to others. And experience has shown that that is the only correct course. That is why the poet has sung: “The pathway of love is the ordeal of fire, the shrinkers turn away from it.” The pathway of ahimsa, that is, of love, one has often to tread all alone.
³⁶

I do not want to live at the cost of the life even of a snake. I should let him bite me to death rather than kill him. But it is likely that if God puts me to that cruel test … I may not have the courage to die but the beast in me may assert itself and I may seek to kill the snake in defending this perishable body. I admit that my belief has not become so incarnate in me as to warrant my stating emphatically that I have shed all fear of snakes so as to befriend them as I would like to be able to do.
³⁷

[Gandhi’s friends argued that his retirement from politics would split the Congress Party between those who followed his work with the masses—his “Constructive Program”—and those who advocated political work in the legislative and municipal councils set up by the British Government. Gandhi was persuaded to take the presidency of the Congress Party for 1925.]

For me, politics bereft of religion are absolute dirt, ever to be shunned. Politics concern nations and that which concerns the welfare of others must be one of the concerns of a man who is religiously inclined, in other words, a seeker after God and Truth.… God and Truth are convertible terms and if anyone told me that God was a God of untruth or a God of torture I would decline to worship Him. Therefore in politics also we have to establish the Kingdom of Heaven.
³⁸

 … I am unable to subscribe to the methods of bribery and deceit even for gaining entrance into heaven, much less for gaining India’s freedom. For heaven will not be heaven and freedom will not be freedom if either is gained through such methods.
³⁹

 … I remain loyal to an institution so long as that institution conduces to my growth, to the growth of the nation. Immediately I find that the institution, instead of conducing to [this] growth, impedes it, I hold it my bounden duty to be disloyal to it.…

 … What the ultimate destiny of India will be, we do not know, or we know only that … it will be what every one of us whose lot is cast in India wants it to be.… But everyone should become an optimist and then there is nothing but the brightest future for this land.… I want you, therefore, to approach the question in a spirit of service.… “Loyalty” or “disloyalty” does not matter much when a person really wants to serve.
⁴⁰

 … There is but one God and one means. There is unity in disease, therefore there is unity in remedy. [There] is only one sovereign remedy, namely, nonviolent non-coöperation. My “followers” will therefore do well to set up their own organization of work and no talk. They must cut their way to the nation’s heart through service.… [No one] who wants to spin or … promote Hindu-Moslem unity, or … remove untouchability requires any organization.…
⁴¹

 … Everyone who either may not see eye to eye with the Congress in all its program, or because of weakness or circumstances … can still work as effectively as if he were in the executive. There is
nothing, for instance, to prevent [one] from enlisting members, spinning, carrying on khaddar [hand-spinning] propaganda … etc. Indeed, a sincere worker prefers work to the responsibility of office, and by not being on the executive [side] escapes the terrible wrangling that takes place therein.

 … It is necessary … to bring into being workers who would want no office and yet would render as effective service as the strongest official. Such men and women are the pride of a nation. They are its reserve force.
⁴²

 … My [Congress Party] presidential address must be a thesis on hand-spinning, complete surrender by Hindus of their material ambition to the Moslems and other minorities, and … asking Hindus to regard untouchability as a sin. If these things cannot enthuse the nation, I should be a useless President. How would it do for the Congress [Party] to have as President a man who sketched a program of putting the whole nation in pantaloons?… We would not have him because he would not suit us. So may the case be with me.

I must not therefore allow myself to be elected.…
⁴³

 … I would guide the Congress next year only if all parties [factions] wish me to.… I fight out of love.… But I must, I see, first prove my love. I thought I had proved it.… I am therefore retracing my steps. I ask everyone to help me.…
⁴⁴

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment, and the other by arts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.…

 … I am fascinated by the law of love. It is the philosopher’s stone for me.…
⁴⁵

After much prayer, after much heart-searching and not without fear and trembling, I have decided to [preside] at the forthcoming Congress.…

I have abundant faith in my cause and humanity.…

There is a heavy duty resting on the shoulders of Congressmen.… They have to show their program on their persons and in their daily conduct. They will attend the Congress as servants and not as masters demanding service.… They will show their faith in unity between different religious sects.… Hindus will show their faith in the removal of untouchability by going out of their way to be attentive to those of [the untouchables] who may attend the Congress.

 … I have no patent remedy [for attaining self-rule]. The remedy is to be found with the delegates and visitors themselves.…
⁴⁶

[The masses] are as yet untouched by politics.… Their politics are confined to bread and salt—I dare not say butter, for millions do not know the taste of ghee or even oil.… It is right, however, to say that we, the politicians do represent the masses in opposition to the Government. But if we begin to use them before they are ready, we shall cease to represent them.… We must share their sorrows, understand their difficulties and anticipate their wants. With the pariahs [untouchables] we must be pariahs and see how we feel to clean the closets of the upper classes and have the remains of their table thrown at us. We must see how we like being in the boxes, miscalled houses, of the laborers of Bombay. We must identify ourselves with the villagers who toil under the hot sun beating down on their bent backs and see how we would like to drink water from the pool in which the villagers bathe, wash their clothes and pots and in which their cattle drink and roll. Then and not till then shall we truly represent the masses, and they will … respond to every call.
⁴⁷

 … My faith in non-coöperation is as bright as ever.… But I cannot impose my personal faith on others … I can but try to convince the nation of its beauty and usefulness.… I may misread the mind of the Congress. When that happens, I shall cease to be any force in the Congress.…
⁴⁸

[When] a respectable minority objects to any rule of conduct, it would be dignified for the majority … to yield.… Numerical strength savors of violence when it acts in total disregard of any
strongly felt opinion of a minority.… No organization can run smoothly when it is divided into camps, each growling at the other and each determined to have its own way by hook or by crook.…
⁴⁹

[When] Swaraj comes different parties will work in the same Swaraj Parliament. The Congress is intended to be a forerunner … of such a Parliament.
⁵⁰

 … What is applicable to Hindu-Moslem unity is … applicable to the unity among different political groups. We must tolerate each other, and trust to time to convert the one or the other to the opposite belief.…
⁵¹

 … No special legislation without a change of heart can possibly bring about organic unity. And when there is a change of heart, no such legislation can possibly be necessary.…
⁵²

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of the heart.… The spirit of democracy requires the inculcation of the spirit of brotherhood.…
⁵³

…
Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep. Under democracy individual liberty of opinion and action is jealousy guarded.…
⁵⁴

[In 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1927, the popularizing of khadi—the material woven from homespun cotton thread—possessed Gandhi’s mind. His price for accepting the Congress Party Presidency was the wearing of khadi as a strict condition of membership in the party. Where possible, Gandhi believed, Congress members should spin each day.]

I would like the Congress to become … popular. I would therefore man it with mercantile, artisan and agricultural classes.… It should be the privilege of educated classes to be behind and push into public life those who have … kept aloof.
⁵⁵

[It] is impossible for us to establish a living vital connection with
the masses unless we will work for them, through them and in their midst, not as their patrons but as their servants.
⁵⁶

A starving man thinks first of satisfying his hunger before anything else. He will sell his liberty and all for the sake of getting a morsel of food. Such is the position of millions of the people of India. For them liberty, God and all such words are merely letters put together without the slightest meaning.… If we want to give these people a sense of freedom we shall have to provide them with work which they can easily do in their desolate homes and which would give them at least the barest living. This can only be done by the spinning wheel. And when they have become self-reliant and are able to support themselves we are in a position to talk to them about freedom, about [the] Congress [Party], etc. Those, therefore, who bring them work and means of getting a crust of bread will be their deliverers and will be also the people who will make them hunger for liberty.
⁵⁷

 … I would like … to keep the Congress a mass organization.… The masses do not yet actively participate in or understand our method of work. Only workers in their midst can gain influence over them.…
⁵⁸

[To prepare for home-rule] individuals must cultivate the spirit of service, renunciation, truth, nonviolence, self-restraint, patience.… They must engage in constructive work [the term Gandhi gave for his three-point program: removal of untouchability, Hindu-Moslem unity and universal spinning] in order to develop these qualities. Many reforms would be effected automatically if we put in a good deal of silent work among the people.
⁵⁹

I do not believe the spiritual law works on a field of its own. On the contrary, it expresses itself only through the ordinary activities of life. It thus affects the economic, the social and the political fields.
⁶⁰

[Experience] shows we cannot be truthful and peaceful on some occasions and for some people only, if we are not so on all occasions.
And if we will not be considerate toward one another, we shall not be considerate to the world outside. All the prestige acquired by the Congress will be gone if we are not scrupulously clean in our dealings within or without in every detail. Pounds will take care of themselves if we could but take care of the pennies.

A true Congressman is a true servant. He ever gives, ever wants service. He is easily satisfied so long as his own comfort is concerned. He is always content to take a back seat. He is never communal or provincial. His country is his paramount consideration. He is brave to a fault because he has shed all earthly ambition, fear of Death himself. And he is generous because he is brave, forgiving because he is humble and conscious of his own failings and limitations.
⁶¹