Gandhi in The Handmaid’s Tale

Gandhi is as popular with some Pakis as Jinnah with Bangladeshis. The sad truth is that it is only the Paan chewing Mohajir people who are so anti-Gandhi, and this emerges from the fact that they want to be accepted in their adopted land by the natives and they feel that by dissing Gandhi Ji, somehow they will be accepted in Pakistan. Well they can certainly keep dreaming.

Native Pakistanis admire and consider Gandhi ji to be the leader who won us our independence.

Re: # 113

Erm...not really....many mohajirs seem to think Nehru had a lot more credibility whether they live in India, Pakistan, the UK or US...

I have never quite figured out what one gains from bringing down someone else, in an attempt to bolster one`s self. Or to bolster something or someone, one believes in. To me this is a sign of under-confidence. While I had always attributed this trait to many of our Indian colleauges on this site, it is sad to see that Pakistanis are a victim of this trait, as well........

Jinnah stands on his own. His legacy will be decided by the people he led, i.e. Pakistanis. In addition, his legacy will be decided by Indian Muslims, as well. The combined view of these two groups is all that counts. Because that is whom he claimed to be representing. What anyone else thinks is immaterial.........

Gandhi, similarly, has a legacy. It will be decided by the people who hail him, as the Mahatma. Let them decide it. If they think, he was good for them, what interest is it of Pakistanis to try to bring him down (unless he specifically did something to harm Pakistan)......His legacy lies in India, not in Pakistan........

If Martin Luther King wants to hail Gandhi as his hero, despite Gandhi`s quotes on Blacks, that is his choice. Much like if a Pakistani`s daughter wants to hail Jinnah as her hero, desipte his treatment of his own daughter, then that is her choice........One can look at different aspects of others` personalities..........

People need to be judged in line with the times, they lived in. Very very few people have the vision to be far ahead of their times, on social issues. I am against gay marriage, though not against gays as human beings. 100 years from now, gay marraige may be the norm, and people may place me in the same regressive category as those who opposed marriage between blacks and whites. But for my time, I think my views may be normal.....

Jinnah, no doubt, was way ahead of his times. He was a freak of nature, so to speak. Someone who appeared, out of nowhere, in a group, which had not matured to a point, to have produced such an individual, of international levels. It would be the equivalent of an Abdus Salam appearing in the field of Physics, in Jhang. Or Ashwariya Rai appearing in Bollywood. Or Imran Khan in cricket. Or some girl in Pakistan going on to win the Olympic medal in the 100 meter freestyle i.e individuals from third-world countries, who can comprehensively outclass those of the first-world, in all categories, in their own game.......

Jinnah`s ideas on women (not counting his own family life) and other social issues, were not the norm. Gandhi`s on women, were the norm. Hard to say if Gahdhi`s views on Blacks were the norm. Hence Jinnah was ahead of his time, in this category. He deserves credit. Gandhi was with his times. Such ideas are even today the norm in Pakistan. I am not sure how much blame can be put on Gandhi, in that regard.........

Gandhi was not the intellectual visionary sophisticated giant that Jinnah was. Gandhi`s strengths lay elsewhere. It is, obviously, important to study all these individuals in a factual manner. But the motivation should not be to rewrite history by elevating one and discarding the other, nor by playing one against the other. Too many people have too many problems accpeting either Jinnah`s and Gandhi`s faults (and achievements).

At an abstract sense, both are not known for how they treated (or mistreated) their family members, or their statements on social issues. They are known for their actions in creating two countries. And that is where a bulk of their actions need to be analyzed. That is their legacy. In my opinion, if Jinnah and Gandhi had been given more control of events, in 47, South Asia would have been a much better place today.............Niether is a role model for raising a family, but they can be role-models in other areas...........

Kulharee..

``Paan chewing Mohajir people``

How truly Gandhian of you to be racist.

Re: # 114

Are there Mohajirs in India too? Poor Indians.
Bibi Ji, Have you ever had a chance to read Shahab Nama? It is in your mother tongue.

Few more gems from Quran.

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The wives of Muhammad will be punished double for lewdness. (And that is easy for Allah.) 33:30

The wives of Muhammad are not like other women. They must not leave their houses. 33:32-33

When Allah or Muhammad decide that a man and a woman should marry, they must marry. 33:36

Allah gave Zeyd to Muhammad in marriage. This was so that all Muslims would know that it`s OK to marry your adopted son`s ex-wife. 33:37

Allah says it is lawful for Muhammad to marry any women he wants. 33:50-51

If men must speak to Muhammad`s wives they must speak from behind a curtain. And no one must ever marry one of his wives. 33:53

But it`s OK for Muhammad`s wives to talk with certain people. 33:55

Women must cover themselves when in public. 33:59

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Though this article is about Gandhi, just wanted to put things in perspective..

From the web-site of the Canadian Foundation for World Peace.

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Opening of the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Exhibit
Speech by Dr. Lawrence Edward Carter, PhD, D.D., D.H.
The Reverend Dean, Professor of Religion, College Archivist and Curator
Morehouse College

Official Opening of the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Exhibit
Grant MacEwan Community College, Edmonton
October 2, 2003

To the Mistress of Ceremony and the citizens of this great city, to the members of government present, the Academy, the Soka Gakkai International, the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation who made this event possible and to our Honouree.

I am thrilled and excited to be here in Edmonton, Alberta. I left the hustle and bustle of Atlanta and have come to clean, clear and tranquil Edmonton, Alberta, where the living is easy.

I will begin with a brief statement outlining my purpose for being here, and then I will proceed to recognizing one most honorable person among you.

It is my distinct honor to inform you, Lois Elsa Hole, that you have been selected to receive the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award. This award was created by Morehouse College to celebrate the lives and work of three men from three different cultures and countries whose common path of profound dedication to peace has been recognized internationally.

Mohandas Gandhi`s civil disobedience and nonviolent demonstrations won greater freedom and ultimately independence for 400 million citizens of India after three centuries of British rule. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr`s commitment to peace and justice inspired the American movement for civil and human rights, giving voice to the hopes and dreams of the dispossessed throughout the world. Dr. Daisaku Ikeda`s work as a leading Buddhist philosopher, author, educator, humanist, founder and social activist has led to the non-violent democratization of Japan`s feudalistic social structures and an international grass-roots initiatve of intercultural and interfaith dialogue and cooperation for global peace.

I`ve come today to speak about the new superpowers, peace and non-violence. We are standing at a crossroads of life on earth. We come from different backgrounds to help initiate a consciousness of active non-violence among youth and adults globally. The choices we make now will create the future with which not only we, but our children, will have to live and die. We intend to give our children a world that is better than the one we have received; a world not of weaponry, but of livingry. A place in which our children may learn compassionate living, compassionate listening, expecting respect, emphathetic communication, unconditional love, non-judgmental justice -- where you don`t participate in negativity. If we want to build a nonviolent society, Gandhi tells us we must begin with the children.

But you can`t have what you are not willing to be. If you want peace, you have to be peaceful. You can`t give away what you don`t possess. You must be the ideal itself to transform the national presidencies and political culture. Violence is like a disease, it affects everyone but it has a way of hitting the youngest among us the hardest.

One-hundred-million died in the 20th century in war and violence. At the beginning of the twentieth centuryk the deaths were predominantly among soldiers. By the end of the 20th century, 80% of the deaths were civilians; and tragically, the majority of these were women and children.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams from Northern Ireland spoke at Morehouse College last spring and informed us that half of the population of Iraq is under 15 years of age. Americans must seek to vaccinate ourselves with a non-violent consciousness, less we become known as child haters and youth killers. We must live according to what is possible in the outcome. We need a campaign equal to our capacity to love and to be creative. We must carry the consciousness of peace. Governments cannot give us peace. We must give peace to one another, and we must start with our children by not giving them away.

There is a great shift going on and we are about to move in mass from hom-o-sapien-sapien which simply means being conscious that you`re conscious, to the next stage. It is said by many that over 50 million people in the United States and an even larger number on the planet (and Ithink that includes many in Edmonton, Alberta) have already crossed over from hom-o-sapien-sapien to hom-o-universalis, to being universal humans, being able to embrace the world, and not just the parts. That`s what these three men -- Gandhi, King and Ikeda -- and many other architects of peace like your Lois Hole are able to do. Can you love the whole planet and not just the regions, or, are you only capable of loving parts of our world?

Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King and Dr. Ikeda believed that violence does matter. Some of you have heard the statement: ``You must be the change you wish to see.`` Be the change, don`t just preach it, practice it. Don`t just dream it, live it. Be the thing itself. Don`t give lip service, give life service. Don`t politic over nonviolence; download it into your biodata. This quotation ``be the change`` gives us some idea of the ground upholding the principles of non-violence. It originated with Mahatma Gandhi in 1906 when the campaign for Indian rights began to take root among people in South Africa. The year was 1906, but are you aware of the date? September 11, 1906 Gandhi conducted his first non-violent campaign. So now you have an alternative to how to view 9-11-01. The occasion when the World Trade Center towers collapsed triggered the opening of the hearts of the people of the world so that for the first time in modern history, the hearts of the largest number of people in the world opened up and could embrace the suffering on the whole planet. The tragedy is that our hearts did not stay open long.

Will it take this kind of trigger always to get us to realize that we are not separate on this planet, and that Martin Luther King Jr.`s words were indeed prophetic, ``that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.``

Dr. Daisaku Ikeda has founded two universities built on a pedagogy of peace. The first such university in the United States is in Orange County, California. Dr. Ikeda has institutionalized the philosophies of non-violent communication of Mahatma Gandhi and of Dr. King in the university curriculum.

Gandhi, King, Ikeda: an Indian Hindu, an African-American Christian, and a Japanese Buddhist. Each acknowledged an American white man, Henry David Thoreau, an 1837 graduate of Harvard Uniersity. They all acknowledged him as the one who taught them civil disobedience and non-violence, a method for dealing with unjust governments.

The best solutions and methods to our current planetary crisis have come to us through a cross-fertilization that literally belts the world. But you will never find these solutions and methods if you don`t get out of the box: the age box, the race box, the gender box, the faith box, the nation box and the ideology box. There is an African proverb that says: ``He who never visits thinks his mother is the best cook.`` 9-11-01 and 9-11-06 are calls from the universe that we are not separate: in the case of Henry David Thoreau, his inspiration to be a transcendatalist was acquired from a French woman -- Mme. Germaine de Staël. She was influenced by German philosophies.

Likewise, Gandhi was taught non-violence by his wife, Kasturbai. Gandhi began his career with a violent temperment. The fact that his wife was a good unassuming Hindu woman is probably the reason most of you were not aware of her nonviolent effect on the Mahatma. But during the 10 years that he was in jail, his wife made his speeches, ate his diet, and aroused the women of India to get involved. It was the way she responded to his violence that changed the course of history.

Gandhi indicated that women have a natural predisposition for providing non-violent leadership. Men give orders, but women bring order. Gandhi announced to the world in print that in order for him to free India, he had to become a woman. ``Personal power results from a balance of masculine and feminine forces. The spiritualization process--in men as well as women -- is a feminization process, a quieting of the mind.``

Gandhi, King, Ikeda, and Thoreau defined their faith not by its boundaries, but by its roots. There is not a scientific truth and a spiritual truth. Truth is truth. There is only one truth! This is why we have this exhibit. Our ignorance will become increasingly costly if we don`t get out of our boxes. Pluralism requires the encounter of differences and coherent self-criticism.

In Washington, there is a War Room in the White House that tracks clandestine activities, the threat of nationalized evil, and blueprints for war scattered around the world. In the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College, which is the world`s most prominent religious memorial to Dr. King, there we have a Peace Room, which tracks peace and non-violent successes, heroes and heroines of inclusivity, champions of justice, unconditional love, literacy and sustainability education, environmental education, peace education and human rights education. With your help, we have spotlighted one person in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada who worked, working under the radar in full view, for peace and non-violence.

Re: # 101

i meant his views on women.

what does that statement means BTW, spent by whom, gandhi? how long did he leave after the independence. There are many who still spend millions on gandih statue/memrorials, is it gandhis doing?

Gandhi`s true views about women for the nth time... which no amount of glossing can hide:


This civilization is irreligion, and it has taken such a hold on the people in Europe who are in it appear to be half mad. They lack real physical strength or courage. They keep up their energy by intoxication. They can hardly be happy in solitude. Women, who should be the queens of households, wander in the streets or they slave away in factories. For the sake of a pittance, half a million women in England alone are labouring under in factories or similar institutions. This awful fact is one of the causes of the daily growing suffragette movement

``Also, it is interesting that these Qadianis like Aisha Sarwari are pissed of at the
Mahatma. When they are getting the treatment in Pakiland.

``

Dear Sambhar Vada: Did Aisha Sarwai come and tell you that she is Qadiani? I know for fact she is not. Why would you create a lie? Why not a solid counter argument?

``Gandhi was not the intellectual visionary sophisticated giant that Jinnah was.``

One can credit Jinnah with many things (including greatness, since he was no doubt a great man), but being an ``intellectual visionary sophisticated giant`` wasn`t his strength.

His strength lay in taking a case and running with it, and doing everything in his power to realize his charge, even at the risk of incurring and imposing tremendous social costs.

Among visionaris one would count Sir Syed Ahmed, Rahamat Ali, and Iqbal. Jinnah was essentially implementing Iqbal`s dream, without developing the same understanding of the desired end and its justifying theory, IMO, as Iqbal did.

There is a great irony. Iqbal is celebrated in India, and Jinnah is hated.

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It is out of place to compare Gandhi and Jinnah in their `modernity.` Gandhi was not a `modern` man in the sense the word is mostly used.

On the other hand, Nehru was a modern man.

Re: # 121

Manto, That’s excellent, it sounds like something that Mushy will say. Happy Devipashka to you and I am afraid that you might drown in the pile of hatred that you have surrounded yourself in.

Re: #122

She is Qadyani (as in the follower of Qade-Azam Mohammad Ali Zina).

From the web site of Sarvodaya International Trust.

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The Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi
(Synopsis of lecture by Ambassador (Retd) P. Alan Nazareth, Managing Trustee, Sarvodaya International Trust, at University of Hawaii, Honolulu on July 27, 2001)

Winston Churchill contemptuously described him as a ``half naked fakir`` and ``an old humbug`` adding that it was ``alarming and nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, striding half naked up the steps of the Vice Regal Palace, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King Emperor``. However, the eminent historian Will Durant, in his `Story of Civilization` commenting on historic developments in China and India in the first half of the twentieth century wrote ``China followed Sun Yat Sen, took up the sword and fell into the arms of Japan. India, weaponless, accepted as her leader one of the strangest figures in history, and gave to the world the unprecedented phenomenon of a revolution led by a saint, and waged without a gun.......He did not mouth the name of Christ, but acted as if he accepted every word on the Sermon on the Mount. Not since St. Francis of Assissi has any life known to history been so marked by gentleness, disinterestedness, simplicity and forgiveness of enemies.``

That Gandhi, who came to be widely revered in India as the Mahatma (Great Soul), successfully used Truth and Non Violence as his principal tools to secure Independence for India from the British, is now well known. What is not so well known are the principles embodied in these unusual tools, and the fact there was a well established revolutionary movement in the Indian provinces of Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab when Gandhi first introduced them in India`s struggle for independence.

Gandhi ardently believed that Truth was an objective moral reality as real and mighty as God himself. Truth was what constituted the `Right Path`. Therefore it was not `Might which was Right` but `Right which was Might`. For him there was no greater strength than the strength of the Human Spirit when it is imbued with Truth and is unafraid to die, unarmed, upholding it. Two well known affirmations of his were ``Strength does not come from physical capacity, it comes from an indomitable will`` and ``A small body of determined spirits, fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission, can alter the course of history``. He felt that since Humans have been created ``in the image of God`` and have the ``Divine Spark`` in them they have to be motivated and governed by Reason and Love rather than by fear and violence. When one is steadfastly rooted in Truth, reason will always lead him along the path of Love and Righteousness. One has to live, and be ready to die, for Truth, Love and Righteousness, but never to kill. ``Given a just cause, capacity for endless suffering, and avoidance of violence, victory is a certainty``, ``The objective of all non violent activity is always a mutually acceptable agreement, never the defeat, much less the humiliation of the enemy`` and ``Peace will come when Truth is pursued, and Truth implies Justice`` are the three cardinal principles of Gandhi`s concept and strategy of Truth and Non Violence.

When Gandhi arrived on the Indian political scene in 1919, there was strong revolutionary fervour among Indian nationalists. Their father figure was Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838 -94), the Bengali novelist, whose popular novel `Anandamath` had become the bible for secret societies, and its hero Satyanand, the model for ``revolutionaries``. It contained the rousing hymn `Bande Mataram` dedicated to Mother India. The other influential figure was Aurobindo Ghosh, who had studied in Cambridge, and was selected for the coveted Indian Civil Service but gave it up to join the revolutionary movement along with his brother, who has also studied abroad. They both, like other Indian students who had studied abroad including Jawaharlal Nehru were much impressed with the achievements of Mazzini and Garibaldi in unifying Italy, and of Japan in defeating Russia in 1905. At the same time there was much outrage in India over the British decision to divide Bengal on religious lines in 1904. In this scenario Aurobindo wrote `Bhabhani Mandir`, urging that the humiliation and exploitation of Mother India could be ended only by invoking Kali, Goddess of Energy, and making great sacrifices in her name to liberate the motherland. Yugantar a new weekly launched in 1906 by a friend of Aurobindo ``breathed bombs in very line``. `Bartaman Rananiti, (`Modern Art of War`) published in 1907 propagated Bakunin`s idea that destruction was another form of creation and that funds for revolutionary activities might be raised by any means including dacoities. There was a spate of assassinations of British officials not only in India but also in London during the 1905 - 1915 period. Among those attacked but escaped death were Vicerorys Lord Minto (in April 1909) and Lord Hardinge (in December 1912). At the Amritsar Congress in 1919 when Gandhi spoke about Truth and Non Violence, B. G. Tilak a senior nationalist leader who sympathized with the revolutionaries, contemptuously retorted ``My friend, Truth has no place in politics``. Two decades later another important nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose openly disagreed with Gandhi`s non violent strategy and secretly left India for Germany and Japan. With the latter`s collaboration he set up the `Indian National Army` with British Indian troops taken as prisoners of war by them. Gandhi`s task in promoting Truth and Non Violence was therefore not an easy one. He succeeded only because of his great moral strength and determination, his total identification with the poverty stricken Indian people and the impressive results his non violent campaigns based on mass participation, began to produce 1920 onwards. Besides Tilak died in 1920, and left a more open arena for him.

Not only did Gandhi succeed in inducing the mainstream national movement and the Indian people to accept his strategy of Satyagraha (confront with Truth) and Ahimsa (non violence), he even succeeded in getting the violence tribal Pathans on India`s north west frontier, led by their outstanding(6`6`` tall) and charismatic leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to adopt non violence. Ghaffar Kkan came to be called ``Frontier Gandhi`` and latterly has even been extolled as a ``Moslem St. Francis`` Deeply impressed by these incredible achievements Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote ``At Gandhi`s call India blossomed forth to new greatness, just as once before in earlier times when Buddha proclaimed the Truth of compassion and fellow feeling, among all living creatures `` The erudite psychologist Eric Ericson minutely examined one of Gandhi`s early non violent ``events`` (the 1919 Ahemdabad mill workers strike``) and in his book `Gandhi`s Truth` wrote `` When I began this book, I did not expect to rediscover psychoanalysis in terms of truth, self suffering and non violence; but now that I have done so I see better what I hope the reader has come to see with me, namely that I felt attracted to the Ahmedabad event, because I sensed an affinity between Gandhi`s truth and the insights of modern psychology``. Ericson went on to construct an extended parallel between the Freudian technique for renewing growth in neurotic individuals and that developed by Gandhi to restore hope to a downtrodden and dejected people. Whether or not Gandhi consciously employed a Freudian technique, the fact remains that his achievement in inducing a whole nation of over 300 million people to accept his gospel of non violence, notwithstanding strong opposition from an influential minority within the national movement is a stupendous one.

Gandhi`s steadfast pursuit of Truth made him perceive clearly not only the inequities of British Colonial rule in India, but also the dark side of Indian society, particularly the indignity and oppression of the caste system for those at its lowest level. These unfortunate people, then called ``untouchables``, Gandhi renamed as ``Harijans`` (children of God). He made the point forcefully, and repeatedly, that Indians could not justifiably complain about indignity and oppression at the hands of the British, if they themselves imposed similar cruelties on their Harijan compatriots. In Young India (May 25th,1921) he wrote ``Swaraj or independence is meaningless if we continue to keep a fifth of India under perpetual subjection. Inhuman ourselves, we may not plead before the throne for deliverance from the inhumanity of others``. Subsequently he also wrote ``If it was proved to me that untouchability is an essential part of Hinduism, I would declare myself an open rebel against it.`` He regarded untouchability ``an excrescence``, a perversion of Hinduism and worked strenuously to eradicate it by fearlessly speaking, writing and standing up against it. When he set up his first Ashram in India just outside Ahmedabad, he named it Harijan Ashram and admitted a Harijan family, whose daughter Lakshmi he adopted as his own daughter. This resulted in the loss of financial support from high caste Hindus, but he remained firm and unconcerned. Subsequently, he launched a campaign for Harijan entry into Hindu temples (forbidden then). When India`s constitution was being framed he insisted that Dr B. R. Ambedkar, the US trained constitutional expert and untouchable leader, who was his strong opponent, should be named Chairperson of the Constitution Drafting Committee. Dr Ambedkar thus had an almost free hand in including various safeguards in the Constitution for disadvantaged groups like his own. In the five decades since Independence, the Harijans have emerged as an important and well organized group, with a political party of their own since the early 1980s. One of them rose from an extremely deprived background to acquire a Masters Degree from the London School of Economics, to subsequently become India`s Ambassador to Turkey, China and USA, Vice President, and then President of India from 1997 - 2002.

India has traditionally been a man`s country par excellence. The woman`s role had been strictly confined to the family and home. Besides, until 1829 when `Sati` was banned, she was widely expected to immolate herself on her husband`s funeral pyre. The only Women`s organizations such as Women`s Indian Association and National Council for Women in India which were founded at the turn of the century, were composed of aristocratic women like the Maharanis of Baroda and Bhopal, who maintained close connections with the British and focused their activities mainly on ``charities``. It was Gandhi who first brought middle class and rural Indian women out of their homes and into the public domain. Quite early in his public life he had declared ``As long as women do not come to public life and purify it, we are not likely to attain Swaraj. Even if we did, I would have no use for that Swaraj in which women have not made their full contribution`` Subsequently he had affirmed ``Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacities. She has the right to participate in the minutest detail in the activities of man``. Indian women responded to his call in large numbers and played an important role the national movement. They showed that temperamentally they were well attuned to non-violence. In the initial phase they came mainly as volunteers at Indian National Congress sessions and took no part in the proceedings, but by the time of Gandhi`s anti foreign cloth and salt satyagrahas, thousands of them were active participants, and Sarojini Naidu had emerged as one of his deputies At his gentle urging many women donated their jewellery to the national cause, marched in processions, picketed liquor and foreign cloth shops, sold khadi (handspun cloth) at street corners and provided sanctuary in their homes to `satyagrahis`. In 1930 the Congress Working Committee adopted a resolution paying ``grateful tribute to the women of India for the noble part they were progressively playing in the present struggle for national freedom, and the readiness they have increasingly shown to brave assaults, abuses, lathi charges and imprisonment.`` When the 1942 Quit India Movement was launched and Gandhi and other important leaders were suddenly arrested and taken away from the Gowalia public meeting in Bombay, a brave young woman named Aruna Asaf Ali unfurled the Indian flag. Another such woman Usha Mehta, along with three others set up and operated a secret ``Congress Radio from somewhere in India`` All these activities boosted the morale of the ordinary `satyagrahis` and in the process also enabled Indian women to liberate themselves from age old taboos. Through Gandhi`s non violent movement, Indian women could for the first time combine their roles as wives and mothers with their new roles as ``non violent warriors`` When Independence came they were unanimously accorded full legal equality with men as also some high public offices. In Independent India`s first Union Cabinet there was a woman health minister. In 1949 Mrs Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (sister of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru) was elected President of the UN General Assembly. Within twenty years thereafter, Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister of India and continued in that position for 16 years, with only a two year break. Since then, numerous other Indian women have risen to high positions in politics, diplomacy, business, banking, newsmedia and other professions including aviation. The present Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, India`s largest state, is a harijan woman. All these significant developments are another direct outcome of Gandhi`s non violent movement.

Gandhi argued that India`s poverty was partly the result of its own making, since it willingly produced the cotton for Britain`s textile mills and then purchased the imported, high priced cloth made by these mills; the difference between the low price paid for the Indian cotton and the high price charged for the imported cloth was what produced the profit which financed and motivated Britain`s colonial presence in India. It also created the mass unemployment among Indian weavers. If Indians would spin and weave their own cotton and refuse to buy British cloth, they could undermine colonial rule and bring new hope to India`s unemployed. With this simple argument he persuaded India`s nationalists, many of whom had studied abroad and had never before touched a spinning wheel, to make the daily spinning of cotton and wearing only handspun and handwoven clothes an essential element in the national struggle. This was the initial stimulus for the revival of India`s traditional spinning and weaving industries. Today, this industry, predominantly located in rural areas, is providing employment to over 30 million spinners and weavers, and annually earning India over ten billion dollars in exports. Gandhi`s maxims that ``The cure for unemployment is not an unemployment dole but the provision of employment`` and ``production by the masses rather than mass production`` have been been amply validated.

Because of his insistence on hand spun hand woven cloth and on ``production by the masses`` some critics have alleged that Gandhi was anti - machinery, anti-science and anti progress. This criticism is unfair and unjustified. In 1924 when specifically asked why he was anti-machinery, he replied : ``How I can be anti-machinery when I know that even this body is a delicate piece of machinery? The spinning wheel is a machine, a little toothpick is a machine. The machine should not atrophy the limbs of man.... What I object to is the craze for machinery, not machinery as such. Today machinery helps a few to ride on the back of the millions``. Subsequently he also declared `` I would welcome every invention of science made for the benefit of all``
Before Independence, India was a land of Maharajas, rajas and paupers. The former (about 565 in all) lived in incredible splendour while for most other Indians abject poverty, malnutrition, disease and premature death was their lot. The national awakening, which Gandhi`s focus on the poor, unemployed and oppressed brought about, created widespread antipathy for these regal life styles. Speaking at the inauguration of the Benares Hindu University in 1916, at which Viceroy Hardinge and many Indian Rulers were present, he spoke thus : ``His Highness the Maharaja of Benares spoke about the poverty of India. Other speakers too laid great stress upon it. But what did we witness in this great pandal. An exhibition of jewellery which made a splendid feast for the eyes of even the greatest jeweller from Paris. I compare these richly bedecked noblemen with the millions of the poor and say to them, there is no salvation for India unless you strip yourselves of this jewellery and hold it in trust for your countrymen in India`` Though several of the rulers resented this speech, some were moved by it and subsequently became sympathetic to the national struggle. Even those rulers who remained opposed soon discovered that the strong nationalist fervour Gandhi`s satyagraha movement had engendered in the country as a whole had also effected their subjects. This left them little option but to fall in line with the national upsurge. Hence soon after Independence, the Indian Govt was able to peacefully integrate all except three (one of which is Kashmir) of these royal kingdoms into the Indian Union.. The rulers were compensated with privy purses. Some of them finding these privy purses insufficient to maintain their former life styles, converted their palaces into Hotels, and gave India about a dozen exceptionally luxurious hotels. This smooth and bloodless abolition of India`s royal kingdoms and feudal life styles is another significant outcome of Gandhi`s non-violent national movement.

It is instructive to recall the considerable bloodshed in the American, French, Russian, Chinese and Ethiopian Revolutions before Independence was achieved, and feudalism and slavery abolished. In most European countries, as also in the US, women secured the right to vote only in this century, and after many years of arduous struggle. Gandhi`s Non Violent movement achieved all this much more painlessly. Prof. Alan Brinkley of Columbia University, writing in the New York Times Magazine in an article titled `The Peace Maker` wrote: ``Most revolutions create enormous aspirations and never really fulfill them; some betray them utterly. The American Revolution quickly drew boundaries around notions of freedom that were its inspiration, excluding African Americans, native Americans, and to a considerable degree women. The French Revolution produced a frenzy of murderous rage, followed by nearly another century of monarchies. The Russian and Chinese Revolutions created tyranny, oppression and stagnations…..Gandhi has been so mythologized since his assassination in 1948, the real man has almost disappeared. But he deserves his position as a resonant symbol of one of the most important phenomena of modern history: the simultaneous assault on colonialism and the oppression of individuals, which has transformed much of the 20th century world``.

Gandhi`s views on rights are notable and significant. He linked rights directly to duties and held that all the individual`s rights have been provided by society. Therefore for the continued provision of these rights they had to be in the interest not only of the individual but of society as a whole. ``The man who neglects his duty and cares only to safeguard his rights does not know that rights that do not spring from duties done, cannot be safeguarded.`` Thus, for instance, the right to free speech would survive only if individuals did their duty of not using speech in a way that is anti-social. Similarly the right to a free market would be best protected if individuals did their duty of ensuring that markets did not destroy society. In other words, every time a duty is not properly performed it erodes the ability and will of society to protect the corresponding right. By society, Gandhi meant not the state but society as the collective entity of individuals. He was skeptical about how much the state can achieve on its own in this respect.

Though India`s national struggle for independence ended sadly, much against Mahatma Gandhi`s will, in the partition of the subcontinent on religious lines he had always striven for national unity, inter religious harmony, and universal brotherhood. He always commenced his public meetings with readings from various sacred texts and often declared he was as much a Moslem, a Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Parsee as he was a Hindu. Writing about this aspect of him, his eminent American biographer Louis Fischer wrote `` Mahatma Gandhi, a supremely devout Hindu was incapable of discriminating against anyone on account of religion, race, caste, color or anything. His contribution to the equality of untouchables and to the education of a new generation which was Indian instead of Hindu or Moslem or Parsee or Christian has world significance``.

Gandhi`s strategy of Truth and non-violence has had notable success outside India. Using this strategy, Martin Luther King managed to bring about more beneficial change for his fellow blacks in the US in the single decade of the 1960s, than a bloody civil war, the assassination of a great president, and one hundred years of constitutional and legal struggle thereafter, had achieved. It also brought about a fundamental transformation among the blacks. King described the transformation thus :``When legal contests were the sole form of activity, the ordinary Negro was involved as a passive spectator. His interest was stirred, but his energies were unemployed. Mass marches transformed the common man into the star performer he became. The Negro was no longer a subject of change; he was the active organ of change. The dignity his job denied him, he obtained in political and social action``.

Since India`s independence in 1947, over 130 European colonies in Asia and Africa have achieved independence. This has happened partly because most of them used the same efficacious tool of non violent struggle, and partly because the national movements led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King effectively changed the global mindset on the acceptability of colonialism and racialism. In the 80s and 90s non violent movements have successfully brought down oppressive regimes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Philippines, South Africa and the Soviet Union. Using the same technique, one lone, frail woman, Aung San Su Syi has bravely stood up against oppressive military might in Burma and effectively swung world public opinion in support of her democratic cause. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has done likewise for the tragic Tibetan cause. In accepting his Nobel Prize in December 1989 he spoke thus : `` I accept the prize with profound gratitude on behalf of the oppressed everywhere, and all those who struggle for freedom and work for world peace. I accept it as a tribute to the man who founded the modern tradition of non violent action for change - Mahatma Gandhi - whose life taught and inspired me. And of course, I accept it on behalf of the six million Tibetan people, my brave countrymen and women inside Tibet, who have suffered and continue to suffer so much….``

Gandhi`s non violent strategies have aroused much interest in the US, Europe and other parts of the world not only among national liberation, civil rights, peace and peoples` resistance movements - the Hungarians used them after the Soviet Invasion of 1956 - but also among military strategists. Paul Wehr in his article on `Non Violence and National Defence` in the Book `Gandhi in the Post Modern Age` writes ``Gandhi`s ideas on non violent national defence made their way to a western world on the brink of war. Pacifists there were looking desperately for a viable alternative. Kenneth Boulding`s essay `Paths of Glory: A new way with War` (1937) proposed non violent resistance as a functional substitute for war. He observed that the technological revolution has made war dysfunctional. This point he made so many years ago continues to provide the basis for contemporary social defence research as does his concept of transarmament. Boulding appears to have been the first to suggest that a nation, in this case Great Britain, adopt a non violent defence policy, though others like Lindberg in Denmark, and Vrind in Holland were thinking along the same lines. In Norway, Johan Galtung and Arne Naess extolled Gandhi`s thinking about non violent national defence as a representation of James`s moral equivalent of war. Their work was a direct link between Gandhi and modern social defence policy. By the late 1950s, the real threat of nuclear war further confirmed Bouldings prognosis that weapons of mass destruction rendered war dysfunctional in the extreme. In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, social defence seemed more credible as an option for national defence.`` The 1964 Oxford Conference on Civilian Defence brought together peace researchers, military strategists and people having direct experience with non violent resistance. By 1980 `Social Defence` or `Non military resistance` had in one form or the other become an integral element of national defence policy in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Mahatma Gandhi`s advocacy of non violence extended also to the environment. He urged simple living, avoidance of profligacy and waste, economy of every resource and respect for all life. His aphorism ``The world has enough for everyone`s need but not for everyone`s greed`` is now the prime slogan of the United Nations` Environmental programme.

Martin Luther King eulogised him thus :`` Mahatma Gandhi was the first person in human history to lift the ethic of Love of Jesus Christ, above mere interaction between individuals and make it into a powerful and effective social force on a large scale``.
Albert Einstein, renowned scientist and contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, paid him an even greater tribute as ``A leader of his people, unsupported by any outward authority, a victorious fighter who always scorned the use of force, a man of wisdom and humility who has confronted the brutality of Europe with the dignity of the simple human being and has at all times risen superior .......Generations to come will scarce believe that such a man as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth``.

In the newly dawned millennium, with the world constantly ravaged with terrorist violence from determined, well financed terrorist outfits and ominously threatened with weapons of mass destruction, Gandhi`s gospel of Truth, love, justice and non violent action might well be a more rational and effective way of handling the many difficult problems that confront most nations. Prof. Ralph Bultjens, Toynbee History Prize Laureate, concurs. In his foreword to the book `Gandhi in the Post Modern Age` he writes `` The fragility of modern civilization is exposed by the frighteningly ineffective way in which our world approaches conflict resolution. In international relationships, neither conventional diplomacy nor various uses of military deterrence have improved the thin margin on which the world exists. This somewhat pessimistic reading of history is challenged by one major exception, Mahatma Gandhi`s application of policies and techniques of non violence in India. Gandhi`s success both redeems human nature from the inevitability of its historical experience and also suggests the viability of non violence in modern situations``.

GANDHI ON RIGHTS

Gandhi`s views on rights are notable and significant. He linked rights directly to duties and held that all the individual`s rights have been provided by society. Therefore for the continued provision of these rights they had to be in the interest not only of the individual but of society as a whole. ``The man who neglects his duty and cares only to safeguard his rights does not know that rights that do not spring from duties done, cannot be safeguarded.`` Thus, for instance, the right to free speech would survive only if individuals did their duty of not using speech in a way that is anti-social. Similarly the right to a free market would be best protected if individuals did their duty of ensuring that markets did not destroy society. In other words, every time a duty is not properly performed it erodes the ability and will of society to protect the corresponding right. By society, Gandhi meant not the state but society as the collective entity of individuals. He was skeptical about how much the state can achieve on its own in this respect.

Copyright © 2003 Sarvodaya International Trust, All rights reserved

Saminashah #various: Interesting questions.......

I think people`s views have to be judged, based on the times they lived in. If they were ahead of their times, on social issues, and were vindicated later on, they should be considered visionaries. However, if they were with their times, even in a regressive manner, then they can be considered misguided, but not regressive.

For example, in all my studies of historical leaders, I have yet to read about any, who was more ahead of his times than Muhammad. He carried out a massive social revolution, within his own life. If we take the non-Muslim point of view and suggest that he wrote the Quran, himself, then his views become even more extra-ordinary.

I would say his views were over 1300 years, ahead of his times. It is only in the 20th century that even the enlightened educated Western societies have caught up with those views. While some of his views, taken literally, may seem backwards today, they were certainly far ahead of anything appearing in even the 19th century. Was he a visionary or regressive?

Girls, who were being killed at childbirth went onto to inherit property and lead an army. He married a widowed businesswomen, who was his employer, and who proposed to him. It would be the equivalent of a 26 year old sales engineer, marrying his CEO of a multi-national computer company, today. He remained married to her, and loyal to her, for his whole youth. All his other marriages only come in the last days of his life. Many of which were to set and erase precendeces, and some to look after old women.

Bilal, a black slave, gained a lot of prominence in those days. About 1400 years before Blacks would gain similar prominence in the USA........

Muhammad was, thus, a huge visionary by 7th century standards. A visionary, even by 19th century standards. But somewhat regressive by late 20th century standards.......I would judge him by 7th century standards........

There are many issues on which people still discriminatet today, without thinking twice about it. For example, it seems to be acceptable behavior to discriminate on looks, when it comes to marriage etc. Why should a good-looking girl (or guy) be a better candidate for marriage proposals than an average looking one. Isn`t that blatant discrimination? Maybe society will advance, one day, to a point, where looks will not matter. And people will look back at today`s time, and consider everyone regressive for prefering good looking individuals for marraiges and dating etc........Would that make all of us, regressive, according to our current times?

Transcript of the 1970 Andre Brink Gandhi Memorial lecture.

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MAHATMA GANDHI TODAY
Andre Brink
Gandhi Memorial Lecture in 1970

I feel very proud and very humble to have the privilege of delivering this Memorial Lecture just one year after the centenary of The Great Soul`s birthday on 2 October 1869. It is now almost twenty-three years after that tragic day in January 1948 when the Mahatma was killed by the bullet of a fanatic, so soon after one of his noblest achievements through fasting: reconciling the two great rival religious groups in India. This was, as is so well known, one of the forms of expression by his justly famous peaceful weapon, satyagraha, ``Soul Force``, which, many years before, he had also applied in South Africa to ease the oppression suffered by his compatriots in this country.

In recent years there have been many disturbing reports of new unrest and new strife, of the revival of old antagonisms in India. And as far as this country is concerned: the South African Indian Congress, founded by Gandhi and based on the very principle of satyagraha, has long been paralysed. What is more, those principles of love and cooperation of people of different races on a basis of equality, are insulted and denied daily by the unmitigated evil of the apartheid system which has got its deadly grip on our society like a boa constrictor on its prey. Millions of people are insulted and humiliated and oppressed and denied their simplest human dignity simply because their skin colour is less etiolated than that of an oppressor who has lived under a moral wheelbarrow for too long. And many thousands of people who sympathise with Gandhi`s belief in racial equality, in the common dignity of all men, are languishing in jail, in various forms of banishment, or in exile. In our beautiful and unhappy country a small minority is determining absolutely the lives of all and causing the deaths of many. And so it may seem as if the Mahatma is, in fact, dead; and as if his spirit of greatness and compassion has really departed from us.

But appearances are deceptive; and that is the theme of my lecture today. The Mahatma is dead. Yet the Mahatma will never be dead. And in mourning Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi today we also celebrate his undying legacy to the world.

I realised this very acutely in the past fortnight, a propos of another great man, in his way a disciple of Gandhi. In a letter in a Cape Town newspaper ex-judge Blackwell made an appeal for clemency for Bram Fischer who is at present, old and in poor health, serving a life sentence in jail. Given the authorities we have I doubt whether this plea will be heeded, although I most sincerely endorse it. But it was something else about the judge`s newspaper letter which struck me even more. Bram Fischer, he said, was in danger of becoming a forgotten man. And in that, I think, he was wrong. I, for one, and there are many like me - and several Afrikaners among them - can never forget the impression made by Bram Fischer`s profoundly moving statement from the dock before he was sentenced. It was, fortunately, widely reported at the time, and in the evolution of my own ethical and political thinking his statement marked a turning point, a decisive moment. I am not allowed to quote publicly from his speech, because even that is forbidden in this free country which the Prime Minister constantly assures us is not a police state. The important thing is that his ideals of racial harmony and cooperation did not go to jail with him. Nor did the memory of his compassion with those suffering on account of their race, his adherence to the principle that everybody should be allowed to help determine the form of government which shapes his life.

The government - any government - can effectively silence or incapacitate an individual or even large numbers of individuals, but all the battalions of fear and all the organisations of hate, all the formidable, destructive power of armies and police, of Saracens and jails, of BOSS-laws and banishments cannot kill an idea in which the light of truth is burning.
And it occurred to me, as I read Judge Blackwell`s letter, that even when Fischer dies those words he spoke in the dock would live by virtue of the simple fact that I, and many others, can never forget them. And when we, too, die one day, a new generation will be at hand to keep those ideals alive. I am reminded of an essay by the great Afrikaans poet Van Wyk Louw, ``Heerser en Humanis`` (``Tyrant and Humanist``), in which, on the eve of his execution, a condemned writer is visited in jail by the Head of State. The tyrant promises him a reprieve on the condition that he recant. If not, he will die and every word he has ever written will be destroyed. With quiet assurance the humanist elects to die, bolstered by the conviction that he will win in the end. ``How can that be?`` the tyrant asks. ``I have two reasons``, replies the condemned man. ``One is that your executioner will see me die. The other is that you have found it necessary to visit me tonight.``

It may be helpful to dwell a bit more on the history of Bram Fischer, for the sake of those who have already begun to forget about him; and also for his illumination of the spirit of Gandhi.

The many who have come to think of Fischer as a bogeyman, as a symbol of darkness and evil which threaten to destroy South Africa, should be reminded that he belongs to one of the most prominent families of Orange Free State history. His father, a respected lawyer, was a mediator between the Transvaal and Britain before the Anglo-Boer War and later became Prime Minister of the Orange River Colony. He played a leading role in the drafting of the constitution of the Union of South Africa. His son became one of the most brilliant advocates in South African legal history.

Yet this remarkable man grew up as an ordinary Afrikaans farm boy. At an early age he embraced the doctrine of racial segregation as a solution for the problems of his country; and at one stage, in his own admission, he found it almost impossible to shake hands with a black man.

It was only during a period of soul-searching and mental agony that he discovered, in Hitler`s terrible ascent, what the logical outcome of a theory of racial superiority was. Still he found it difficult to shed his convictions. One night, in a discussion with an elderly African, he put forward the hackneyed theory that segregation diminishes points of friction. The old man countered by pointing out that if one separates the races into different camps, the inhabitants of either camp soon forget that the others laugh and suffer and live in the same way and for the same reasons; and so they soon become suspicious - until they learn to fear one another, which is where all racism starts.

From these elementary beginnings Fischer`s uncompromising intellect soon set him on the way towards Marxism. However, it was not primarily the theory of Marxism which attracted him, but, quite simply, the practical realities of the land he lived in. These realities were twofold: in the first place, there was the pattern of oppression which characterises and dominates South African society. What would happen, he wondered, if, suddenly, all Afrikaners were herded into the Orange Free State as their ``homeland`` and forced to carry passes when they left it; if all the gold and coal mines of the Free State were kept in black hands, and if Afrikaners working elsewhere in the country were forced to live in locations and compounds, allowed to do unskilled work only, and if their very presence outside the Free State were only on sufferance of another race...? In the second place he discovered that the only people prepared to suffer for convictions similar to his - people who could have all the luxury they wanted if they chose, but who identified themselves to such an extent with the deprived majority that they were prepared to forgo all that and risk imprisonment, banishment, or even death -were members of the Communist Party. At that time, of course, the Party was completely legal on the South African political scene, so that for a law-abiding legal man like Fischer it was the natural platform for his convictions.

When the Party was outlawed in the 1950s, Fischer realised that the measure had very little to do with anti-communism as such, but that it was essentially a measure to silence opposition to the accelerating process of safeguarding white interests at the cost of black liberties. And so, with much agonising soul-searching, Fischer remained a member of the banned Party, with only one firm intention, that of helping to create a truly democratic society in the country, in which white and black would be able to decide together on their communal future.

Fischer often expressed his belief in the inevitability of the historical process: in these terms history is not an accumulation of chaotic facts and figures, but a logical development from one form of society to another. At an early stage he became convinced that the only true form compatible with the demands of the present century was Socialism. But he also believed that South Africa was not ready for it, and so he refused to impose it on the country. He knew that we had reached a stage of breakdown in the history of capitalism and imperialism, since these two great forces, which had dominated the nineteenth century, were unable to fulfil the needs of twentieth-century people. At the same time he saw that, at the very moment when imperialism was breaking down all over Africa, leading to the emergence of new states and systems, a small and desperate band of whites were trying to preserve it in South Africa, leading to more and more suffering, and to more and more oppression.
During all his free life Fischer wanted to work for the restoration of human dignity. And he accepted that it could be done only through non-violent measures. Time and time again he insisted that bloodshed would create intolerable chaos. At the same time he saw that South Africa was moving constantly closer to a state of terrorism and civil war: and, drawing on the experience of Algeria (with today`s perspective he might have added Vietnam) he realised that in such a war there could be only one outcome. This prospect was against his belief, which was also Nelson Mandela`s, in the creation of a just and tolerant multi-racial society with white and black working together for the future of the country they all shared.
And it was to warn South Africa against the destructive end of its own present course that he finally went beyond Gandhi`s strategies and embarked, with others, on a programme of controlled sabotage. Controlled, because every target was selected so carefully that there would never be any possibility of danger to life or limb. It was done as an act of despair, to warn the authorities against their own folly, and to help create a climate in which the need for togetherness would supersede the urge towards separateness which was tearing his country apart.

One may quarrel with his means, but not with his aims. Today, after the crisis in Mozambique, more and more white South Africans are beginning to see the wisdom of moving towards a realisation of Fischer`s ideals. Only, he saw it much sooner, and much more clearly and without self-interest or personal ambition.

Knowing that he was risking his life, he came back to South Africa in 1964 after being allowed to go to England to plead a case before the Privy Council. He could have stayed out, a free man. Yet he came back to certain imprisonment and a possible death sentence. When he estreated bail after being arrested, it was not to save his skin, but for the sake of continuing to work for the cause he believed in - the cause for which so many of his friends were by then languishing in jail. He knew that many of those victims had placed all responsibility for their condition on the shoulders of the Afrikaner rulers. And so he wanted to prove that an Afrikaner could also be different.

His free life was devoted to a broadening of the image of the Afrikaner; and if Afrikaans is eventually to survive as a language, much of it will be due to the fact that men like Bram Fischer have been prepared to prove, risking their all for it, that it is more than the language of one oppressive minority and of one frightening ideology - that it is indeed what many exiles call it today: menstaal, ``the language of human beings``.

That is why I feel so confident that Fischer can never be forgotten in this country. And I referred to him at some length because in his awareness of and concern for others, in his compassion, in his crusade against social and political evil, he revealed himself as a man true to the spirit of the Great Soul we mourn and celebrate today: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

A mere three weeks before his death, as he commenced his final fast, Gandhi proclaimed his willingness to die in the process: ``No man, if he is pure, has anything more precious to give than his life. I hope and pray that I have that purity in me to justify the step`` - this was an act, above all a readiness, an inner preparedness, comparable to the immolation of Buddhist monks protesting against the senseless violence of American aggression in Vietnam or the self-sacrifice of a young Czech student to protest against the Russian occupation of his country in 1968. More than anything else the Mahatma reminds me of the words of Christ: ``There is no greater love than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends.`` And I make this link deliberately, because Gandhi himself often acknowledged that the first great influence on the evolution of his own credo was the Sermon on the Mount: that immortal expression of the power of meekness, the force of humility, the inevitable victory of compassion. Gandhi knew that meekness was not weakness. And by making the supreme sacrifice, he also proved that he knew what protest really meant.

It was Jean-Paul Sartre who drew the most relevant distinction I knew between a gesture and an act. A gesture, he said, is something performed by an actor, intended for an audience: we can evaluate the gesture as good or bad, as successful or unsuccessful, but it really exists in a void: it has no practical or even moral significance. A gesture takes place without reference to cause and effect, without consequence. An act, on the other hand, in Sartre`s definition, implies involvement in the whole chain of cause and effect: it leads to something, it has a direct moral or practical bearing on the situation in which it is performed; and thereby it commits the man who performs it. It is in this commitment that the basic difference between a Sartrean gesture and an act is to be found. We are living in a world where various forms of protest, violent and non-violent, have become almost a way of living. But so much of it - in this country too - is mere gesture, without full commitment. Gandhi knew the deepest implications of commitment; because it is only in the willingness to sacrifice that commitment is tested. That is the difference between the demo and the true rebel - in the sense in which Buddha and Christ and Mohammed and Gandhi and Paul Kruger and Bram Fischer were rebels.

I believe in rebellion as a dimension of existence; in fact, as a prerequisite for life. Not blind rebellion. But rebellion in the sense of breaking constantly more fetters limiting true human liberty. The slave who rebels against his master, said Camus, does not do so merely to be free: he does it in order to affirm the necessity of freedom as the human condition.
In other words, it is a rebellion not simply directed against something, but aimed towards something. It is not negative, but positive. When Antigone - the first rebel of Western tradition - revolted against the State, it was not because she wanted to destroy order, but because she wanted to affirm a higher Order than that maintained by the State. Antigone`s key word is: No! But it is a paradoxical thing, for she really means: Yes. No to all the forces which try to deny the human; yes to all the attributes of dignified human life. Gandhi added a specific religious dimension when he said: ``I know that I shall never know God if I do not wrestle with and against evil, even at the cost of life itself.``

This essentially human, metaphysical revolt - which works through on all levels of one`s existence - takes place in a world where there is, of necessity, a conflict between freedom and justice. Gandhi realised this implicitly as Camus did explicitly. In absolute form, justice and freedom are mutually exclusive: absolute freedom gives me the freedom also to limit another man`s freedom, even to deny him life, to kill him; absolute justice denies the merits of the individual situation and works only with common denominators. Absolute freedom makes the individual all-powerful; absolute justice makes society an absolute power. So we can always have more justice. In the balance between these two forces the individual and society meet each other. And this is precisely the territory on which Gandhi conducted his campaign of love, his war of peace.

It is this campaign which we can reassess today in the light of the conditions and needs prevalent in present-day South Africa. It is a campaign based on a series of clearly formulated precepts, all of them pervaded by the intense religiousness of Gandhi`s philosophy and the humility and basic humanity of his personality.

Gandhi`s vow of swadeshi seems strange to many people, particularly to Westerners. He himself defined it as ``that spirit within us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote.`` To him it had a definite religious, political and economic significance, related to the very old concept of patriotism, of loyalty to one`s own. In this respect one is reminded, again, of Van Wyk Louw`s concept of ``loyal resistance``.

In the hands and minds of lesser men this notion of loyalty can very easily become a mere instrument of chauvinism; in the hands of the political leaders of this country today it is used as a slogan to keep people together in a small and stifling laager dominated by worn-out traditions; it is a negative approach, using fear to prevent people from dissenting, even from questioning, and it uses censorship and indoctrination to condition the writing, the reading and eventually the thinking of an entire generation.

To act against this, I should suggest a wider interpretation of swadeshi for this country at this time. I should suggest that we see it as loyalty, not to a party, or a church, or an economic system, or a language group, or a race, but loyalty to South Africa, to this country which is much more than the sum of her people, and much more permanent than any regime. I should like to see it as an unflinching and uncompromising demand for only the best and highest of human values for this country: which means an equally uncompromising resistance to everything which degrades humanity and denies dignity, everything which favours small in-groups, everything which is secondhand and inferior, and shopsoiled by irreverent politicians. Above all, let our form of swadeshi be a demand for truth and justice in this country. There is very little truth and very little justice in the world. But lies and injustice in any corner of this world should never allow us to condone it here. In this way swadeshi becomes a force to destroy evil and hypocrisy and inhumanity and to preserve the most sacred values of a multi-racial society intact. It implies Gandhi`s direct statement that ``politics, divorced from religion, has absolutely no meaning.`` And it denies the form of politics perpetrated in this country today, where religion is used as a serf of politics and a pretext for the most blatant exploitation of the majority of South Africans by a minority. ``Indian nationalism,`` said Gandhi, ``is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive.`` What we have in South Africa today, is a Nationalism which is exclusive, aggressive and destructive, and which inevitably evokes forms of resistance that may become equally exclusive, aggressive and destructive. It should be part of our interpretation of swadeshi to substitute the original for the vicious fake, and not to rest before the fake has been eliminated - in the name of the real South Africa.

Gandhi`s ethics of khaddar (Homespun cloth, i.e., work in the widest sense of the word) is closely linked with swadeshi. To him it meant a specific form of home-industry to counter the exploitation inherent in the more imperialistic forms of capitalism. Today industrialisation is an irreversible fact. But in our context khaddar may certainly be interpreted to mean the intimate relation between a man and his work: the demand that a man should bear responsibility for his work in order to lend it dignity; and that he should share in the fruits of his labour. In other words: no man should be exploited in his work or alienated through his work. The whole of the South African economy is based on the exploitation of men, women and children with a black skin, and the policy of ``homelands`` is an impossible and inhuman dream. It accepts that people can be used for the labour they can provide, without acknowledging even in the most basic sense of the word, that they are people.

Insisting on the essential dignity of work means revolting against the entire system which promotes economic and spiritual exploitation of one man by another. The supreme consideration, says Gandhi, is man.

This concept is intimately associated with Gandhi`s religious background as a conservative Hindu, living within the framework of a Hindu caste society. He accepts the inevitability, in many ways even the necessity of caste, but -in his own words - ``not to restrict or regulate social intercourse``. For his views on caste are based on his fundamental assumption that, even as a devout Hindu, he cannot accept Hinduism as an exclusive religion. In other words: accepting, as premise, the existence of different religions and different castes, he nevertheless accepted them in a completely ``open`` sense: ``Let us not deny God,`` he writes in one essay, ``by denying to a fifth of our race the right of association on an equal footing.`` Transposed into South African terms it would read: ``Let us not deny to 80 per cent of our people the right of association on an equal footing.``

Given the existence of different groups, Gandhi insists that all men and women are essentially brothers and sisters. Some pious advocates of apartheid proclaim - and some of them actually believe - thatthis system eliminates the possibility of friction and creates an atmosphere for happier and more complete self-realisation. But this denies the essential fact that separation and the barriers it constructs between people can only lead to suspicion and fear and hate. In a world already overpopulated, in which mass media and international communication systems are rapidly eliminating all artificial barriers and increasing contact, South Africa alone tries to reverse the process by erecting more and more barriers between people - aimed at the final utopia of apartheid, with separate heavens, separate hells, and separate lavatories for all.

Without denying one iota of the inherent differences distinguishing individuals and groups, we have a need today, more urgent than ever before, of Gandhi`s vision of the common dignity of all men. ``The only thing that is really worth while``, said one writer, ``is being together.`` He said it of man and woman, of lovers. We should say it, as Gandhi did, of people - of all the people in this country. All it requires is the acknowledgement of the fact that we are all here together, sharing this country, and that we are all equal in our love of it.
And now we come to what, for a Westerner, is an extremely difficult aspect of Gandhi`s credo as a Hindu: that is, his tenacious belief in the Hindu custom of Cow Protection as a religious obligation. To many this may seem parochial or outdated. To the Mahatma it was an essential part of his philosophy. But the important thing is that he also said: ``I believe in Cow Protection in a much larger sense than the popular belief.`` As I interpret it, it is not so much the cow as cow that matters to him - for then cow-worship can easily degenerate into a fossilised symbol which can prevent the true and full development of a community. It is rather that he saw the cow as - in his own magnificent phrase - ``a poem of pity``. The cow, cherished beyond all treasures in early Hindu society, is gentleness and plenty incarnate. The life of the community depends on her milk: she should be protected and loved. And she is never aggressive: she bears patiently whatever misfortunes befall her - and that is why she eventually survives. In this I find, for our situation, the humble but necessary demand for a reverence for life.

We live in what is essentially a violent society. Alcohol - suicide -murder - assault - insanity - road accidents - all of these are symptoms of our violent society. Even South Africa`s national sport, rugby, is popular because of its violence. I should not like to sound pedantic; but could not one reason for the incredible proliferation of violence in South Africa be a basic disrespect for life, a disrespect for others? And why? Once again I find the roots in apartheid. A system which uproots whole communities, which callously shrugs at deaths in prisons and prison vans, which forbids families to live together, and which is based on discriminating laws and humiliating measures like reference books, ``immorality``, which restricts a man`s advancement in his work and limits his income, which forces the majority of citizens to use third and fourth rate beaches and places of entertainment and which prohibits their attending theatre performances or symphony concerts... Such a system has as its premise the conviction that man`s life is not worth two sparrows. It turns man into an object, and once he is dehumanised, anything can be done to him without any qualms. Gandhi revered cows. We do not even revere people. It is time for such a system to be eradicated in order to create a new scope of life for people; in order to create a society in which human beings can be acknowledged simply for what they are: human beings.
And with this we have reached the two final, and basic, forces in Gandhi`s life and work: the vow of truth and the vow of non-violence.

Gandhi`s injunction to be faithful to truth contains the intrinsic and explicit demand that one shall never be afraid of speaking the truth or of bringing it to light. ``I found through my wanderings in India``, he said, ``that my country is seized with a paralysing fear. We may not open our lips in public: we may only talk about our opinions secretly.... I suggest to you that there is only one whom we have to fear, that is God. When we fear God, then we shall fear no man, however high placed he may be; and if you want to follow the vow of truth, then fearlessness is absolutely necessary.``

His description of India as a State of Fear strikes one as singularly familiar. Ours is indeed a Society of Fear. The authorities use fear to strengthen their hold on the people. Individuals fear lest by speaking the truth they will be prosecuted. Let us shake off the bond of fear and proclaim the truth wherever we find it, and however dangerous it appears. Truth is always dangerous: that is why authorities prefer to keep it hidden from view. And one basic truth hidden very securely in South Africa is the fact that society is not a fate which must be endured as if it had been handed down by God: it is a practical organisation of men, by men, for men - and it can and must be changed when it no longer expressesadequately the wishes and needs of the individuals within it.

After twenty-two years of Nationalist domination a whole generation of people in South Africa know no other rule and seem to resign themselves to its inevitability. But it need not be suffered as a fate. It can be changed. It must be changed, for it has long ceased to be - it never was - the expression of the needs and wishes of the majority of people in the country. There is one force that can kill the fear which often threatens to paralyse us when we wish to bring the truth to light. ``That force is the love which drives out fear``.
For love is in the centre of Gandhi`s teaching of ahimsa which is, in Milton`s words, ``the irresistible might of meekness``. Literally ahimsa means ``non-killing``. Hence its usual translation as ``non-violence`` or ``passive resistance``, both of which terms were severely disliked by Gandhi. For it is not a negative but a positive force. And the power within it is love: ``To one who follows this doctrine there is no room for an enemy.... But I go further. If we resent a friend`s action, or a so-called enemy`s action, we still fall short of this doctrine.``
Then follows the very important qualification. ``When I say, we should not resent, I do not say that we should acquiesce.`` In fact, Gandhi states that it means the opposite of acquiescence: he illustrates how a surgeon can wield his knife on the patient`s body for the latter`s benefit, cutting out disease in order to heal, practising, in the process, ``the purest ahimsa``. Likewise, ahimsa demands of us to rebel actively against all evil and not to rest before it has been destroyed: ``Ahimsa is a positive state of love, of doing good even to the evil-doer. It does not mean helping the evil-doer to continue the wrong or tolerating it by passive acquiescence. On the contrary, love requires you to resist the wrong-doer by dissociating yourself from him even though it may offend him or injure him physically.``

This is the supreme message of Gandhi, as exemplified by his whole life and very specifically by his satyagraha in South Africa: there was nothing ``passive`` about his resistance - and certainly no consideration for personal comfort or safety. His imprisonment and constant persecution prove this form of resistance, insisting that ``Soul-Force is infinitely superior to body-force. If people, in order to secure redress of wrongs, resorted to Soul-Force, much of the present suffering would be avoided. There is no such thing as failure in the use of this kind of force. `Resist not evil` means that evil is not to be repelled by evil but by good.``
Something achieved through violence, Gandhi rightly maintains, can be held only through violence. Something achieved through the highest activity of a mind bent on love and on doing good, on opposing evil by good, can be retained simply by remaining worthy of it.
It can be argued that Gandhi`s adversaries, the British, with at least a token tradition of ``doing the gentlemanly thing`` might have been more susceptible to moral persuasion than the South African Government would be in similar circumstances; that Gandhi`s satyagraha would have availed nothing against Hitler. It may also be argued that some situations become so inextricably bound up with violence that only violence can break the deadlock. What Gandhi indicated was that violence, in its gross oversimplifications, is always an insult to humanity - to the man who has recourse to it as much as to the victim. And what he does make eminently clear is that, whatever road South Africa may choose in the future, whether that of violent revolution or of relatively peaceful change, there can be no victory over evil unless there is Soul-Force in the struggle, unless those of us committed to the fight against oppression and injustice are also morally superior to our adversaries.
If we evaluate, in the light of everything Gandhi represented, the situation in South Africa today and agree on the need for urgent and radical change, we should be reminded by his example that change involves more than the destruction of what exists, more than the replacement of one system by another; it is a process directed inward as much as outward, to the self as much as to the other. It involves, in the words of a poem dear to the Mahatma, a movement from the unreal to the Real, from darkness to Light, from death to Deathlessness. What we need is to change the country into a better place to live in, and ourselves into people more worthy of living in it.

From: Andre Brink, Writing in a State of Siege,
New York,
Summit Books, 1983.

Re: # 19

vertex,

{{Bottom line, she was a-okay with it...so what`s up your arse? LOL...}}

She was a-okay with it...so were the idiotic women who agreed with it....i wonder if mrs ylh would?

but the POINT is that Mr & Mrs ylh have this slow burn in the knots of their stomach that Jinnah`s statute is not there, instead of Gandhi`s....yaar everybody has quirks...even Jesus Christ...

Gandhi became an anachronism as soon as India gained independance...thank shankar bhagwan!...otherwise we would all be eating mooli, renouncing non-vegeterian food & drinking goats milk... yeah...anybody who wants India to be like that needs to get their bloody heads examined...

the greatest ``patriotic pride`` Mrs & Mrs ylh have about Pakistan is Jinnah`s ideals.

Hellllooooo mr & mrs ylh....since WHEN has your great nation lived up to Jinnah`s ideals..... or Prophet Mohammed ``s (pbuh)?!!!!....when you puff your chests with patriotic pride...please remember Pakistan`s history suggests whatever ideals they had were smashed to smithereens by milt-ry, feudals, politicians, beaurocrats....& dont fogget the mullahs...

Seems to me...the more ISLAM many of these Pakis trumpet..... the more they insult the Koran....BUT its India, Israel & America`s fault...not Gandhi`s

Get over it!!