chapter I, part III
Gandhi’s Understanding of Politics and Religion
Some students of Gandhi see him as a religious leader, as the Mahatma,
which means the “Great Soul”; others see him as a political leader who
freed India from the yoke of the British. The “Mahatma” appellation was
a burden for Gandhi. He always claimed to be an ordinary man and
believed that all people could do what he had done. For Gandhi, religion
and politics had everything to do with one another. Religion encompassed
what humans believed about themselves and their ultimate destiny.
Religion was an empty husk if it was not put into practice. Gandhi’s particular
religion, Hinduism, teaches the fundamental unity of human beings
and the necessity, therefore, for Gandhi, of working together to relieve
human suffering. Working to relieve human suffering necessarily means
involvement in politics, the arena in which humans make decisions about
their future together.
Most of Gandhi’s contemporaries did not share his conception of politics.
When he returned to India from South Africa, Britain was in the
midst of the Great War. His colleagues thought it was time to implement
constitutional schemes to take advantage of Britain’s vulnerability. Gandhi,
on the other hand, according to Judith Brown,
[spoke of] creating a new society from the roots upwards, and not
only spoke but acted with whatever material came to hand—in the
ashram, among farmers, and with factory hands. The terms for
growing indigo, land revenue assessment, or the wages of one
small group of factory workers, were as significant to him as imperial
policy and Congress schemes, indeed even more so, because
the solution of such problems was evidence that Indians were
making anew their nation, and not relying on concessions
their rulers which would only amount to a spurious home rule, not
real swaraj.22
Gandhi understood that power rises. He understood that no leader
could maintain power without the consent of the governed. That is why he
worked from the grassroots upward. He understood that if the people,
especially the millions upon millions who lived in India’s small villages, did
not throw off their fear, their ignorance, and their sense of hopelessness,
the country might end up with a narrow kind of political independence and
still not have real freedom. In 1920 Gandhi said:
It is as amazing as it is humiliating that less than one hundred
thousand white men should be able to rule three hundred and fifteen
million Indians. They do so somewhat undoubtedly by force
but more by securing our cooperation in a thousand ways . . . The
British cannot rule us by mere force. They want India’s billions
and they want India’s manpower for their imperialistic greed. If we
refuse to supply them with men and money, we achieve our goal,
namely, swaraj.23
His notion of freedom began with the individual. In that, the notion
was quintessentially Hindu. It had to be rooted in the Vedantic concept of
self-liberation: not just absence of restraint and self-aggrandizement but
cooperation for a secure and just community. As Madan Sinha wrote: “The
self in Hindu thought is a synonym for the universal.”24
The stress on the individual as the focus of society led Gandhi to put
forward a search for freedom that begins with self-knowledge and self freedom
and that liberates people from the desire to dominate or be dominated.
It led him to see that social reforms were necessary for India’s freedom.
Each individual had to take responsibility for overcoming the three
major social problems in India: the Hindu-Muslim conflict, untouchability,
and economic inequality.
Finally, his religious faith made him insist that the struggle for freedom
from the grassroots up could be accomplished only nonviolently. There
could be no divorce between the ends desired—a peaceful, just society—
and the means utilized. Gandhi wrote:
I do not believe in short-violent-cuts to success. Those Bolshevik
friends who are bestowing their attention on me should realize
that . . . I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods
even to serve the noblest of causes.25
He saw the choice between violence and nonviolence to be a stark
either-or for India.
There are two alternatives before us. The one is that of violence,
the other of non-violence . . . As they are incompatible with each
other, the fruit, the swaraj that would be secured by following the
one would necessarily be different from that which would be
secured by following the other. . .We reap as we sow.26
The religion that Gandhi thought needed to be mixed with politics was
not a state religion. He totally opposed any notion of a state religion and he
thereby contributed to India becoming a secular state. In 1920, he wrote:
Let me explain what I mean by religion. It is not the Hindu religion,
which I certainly prize above all other religions, but the religion
which transcends Hinduism, which changes one’s very
nature, which binds one indissolubly to the truth and which ever
purifies. It is the permanent element in human nature which leaves
the soul restless until it has found itself.27
Louis Fischer noted the irony that Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was
not religious, established Pakistan as a state based on religion, while
Gandhi, who was completely religious, worked to establish a secular
state.28 The way Gandhi lived out this concept of religion had immense
impact on the political scene.
How the Masses Were Galvanized
Upon his return from South Africa, Gandhi had already developed a reputation
among the leaders of the Indian National Congress. Often through
the previous years Gandhi had appealed to the Congress and the viceroy
for assistance in the struggle against the South African government.
Gandhi realized, with the political astuteness frequently attributed to one
of his bania (grocer) caste, the importance of public opinion. He labored
mightily to make known the oppression of the Indians in South Africa out
to the general public in India and England as well. He continually placed
articles in the leading papers in England and India to publicize the situation
and succeeded in generating widespread sympathy for the cause. In
addition, he returned to India periodically to spread the word personally
through speeches in various locations throughout the country and thus was
beginning to be known by the general public.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, one of the leaders of the Indian National
Congress, visited Gandhi in South Africa and succeeded in getting an initial
agreement from General Jan Smuts that was to end the oppression of
Indians and therefore the need for the Indian Civil Resistance movement.
When Gokhale returned to India, however, Smuts went back on his word,
necessitating one last major campaign by Gandhi and his fellow satyagrahis.
Recognizing in Gandhi one of the outstanding leaders of the coming generation,
Gokhale took him under his wing when he returned from South
Africa. He advised Gandhi to say nothing publicly until he had spent a year
or more in India; he advised Gandhi to go on a tour of the subcontinent to
become familiar with the situation in India. Gandhi did—the first of his
many wanderings across India—paying special attention to the innumerable
small villages across the country.
The common people took notice of Gandhi for three main reasons: his
lifestyle, which embodied basic Hindu ideals; his use of the common words
and symbols of the Hindu religion; and the fact that his politics insisted on
action, not just endless talk.
Gandhi’s dress, his travel by foot up to twenty miles a day, his personality,
and his lifestyle of simplicity and self-sacrifice began to attract attention.
In an article entitled “Why India Follows Gandhi,” H. N. Brailsford
refers to the “ancient Hindu tactic,” saying that in India the saint who can
control himself is considered capable of commanding the universe.29
Gandhi’s asceticism was rigorous and constant. His fasting, vegetarianism,
celibacy, and vigorous life of prayer and silence folded into his search
for truth and provision of service. His religion was not a sometime thing
but informed every moment of his life. The common people saw in him
the embodiment of what their religion held sacred.
The first verse of the Isopanishad that Gandhi loved to quote continues,
“Renounce the world and receive it back again as the gift of God,” which
accurately expresses the belief of the Hindu belief that the search for God
begins with the renunciation of the world. As Vincent Sheehan wrote:
No man could hope to get a hearing in religious matters in India,
unless he has first renounced the world.30
The spirit of darshan, that one can receive a blessing from that which
is holy, runs deep in the Hindu consciousness, whether it involves seeing
the Ganges or the Himalayas or being in the presence of a holy person.
Over time, thousands would flock from the countryside to catch a glimpse
of Gandhi, if it was rumored that he would be in the area or passing
through on a train. Just being in his presence, it was believed, gave them
darshan. At his burial, four million people, one of the largest crowds at one
place in history, if not the largest, gathered to see his ashes placed into the
Ganges. As Sheehan noted:
It is nothing less than the recognition of a community of spirit in
which the poorest and humblest of Hindus . . . can recognize in a
Gandhi or a Nehru that which his own karma has not permitted
him to achieve, but which in some other life he may achieve . . .
The Mahatma or the Great Soul is one which has arisen above the
mass but is still of it . . . a visible sign of the perfectibility in nature,
thus rejoicing the hearts of the poor earthbound toilers.31
The second appeal that Gandhi had to the masses was the use he made
of common Hindu symbols and ideals and the stories used to convey them.
Every villager knew the story of Prahlad, for example, a young boy who suffered
his father’s wrath because of his clinging to the truth, satya. They
heard Gandhi talk about this same ideal of truth as central to his search.
They recognized it as central to the Vedanta (the system of Hindu philosophy
based on the Vedas). “Ahimsa” appears in the Hindu scriptures as early
as the Chandogya Upanishad, and the Mahabharata makes ahimsa the greatest
religious duty; that too is known in every village in India. Tapasya, or the
value of self-suffering and renunciation of self, is another fundamental value
that the people witnessed in Gandhi. He altered the significance and content
of all these traditional words, but he drew on the well of the people’s
traditions. He recognized that the masses in India would be awakened to
reform only through religion. He went to the traditional words to uncover
the ideas that would work for modern India.
When the leaders of Congress proposed, for example, for purposes of
greater clarity, substituting the word “independence” for swaraj, Gandhi
responded:
I defy any one to give for independence a common Indian word
intelligible to the masses . . . an indigenous word understood by the
three hundred millions. And we have such a word in swaraj . . . It is
infinitely greater than and includes independence . . . It is a word
which, if it has not penetrated the remotest corner of India, has at
least got the largest currency of any similar word. It is a sacrilege
to displace that word by a foreign importation of doubtful value.32
The final reason for Gandhi’s appeal to the masses was his insistence on
action. This was especially important to the young. Nehru, for example,
first started following Gandhi because he represented something new, a distinct
departure from the politics of the past, which had consisted of representations
and appeals and disputations. Gandhi stood for action, not talk.
Gandhi’s first nonviolent campaigns in India, the Champaran and
Ahmedabad campaigns, were successes, using the principles of nonviolent
action or satyagraha. They captured the attention and imagination of
many in India. They were the springboards for Gandhi’s elevation to the
political leadership of the National Congress. Between 1919 and 1922
Gandhi succeeded in forging a mass movement unprecedented in India.
He transformed the Indian National Congress into a political organization
with a mass following. It had previously consisted of upper-class, educated
elites, but Gandhi sought to change that. He wrote:
I do not rely merely on the lawyerly class, or highly educated men
to carry out all the stages of non-cooperation. My hope is more
with the masses . . . Let not the leaders distrust them.33
Gandhi inspired the masses through his faith in them. He believed in
achieving great things and maintaining heroic ideals. He had read Carlyle’s
Heroes and Hero-worship early in his life and was impressed by what Carlyle
wrote about Muhammad and other heroes who drew to themselves bands
of like-minded heroes. To quote Raghavan Iyer:
In reaffirming the heroic ideal Gandhi was vindicating the oldest
tradition in India embodied in the two great epics that are
still . . . told in the countryside. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata
. . . the epics exalted a conception of manhood in which personal
worth held pride of place . . . the pursuit of honor through action.
The hero, in Indian legend, uses the potentialities that lie dormant
in all . . . and wins the warm approbation of his fellows because he
spares no effort and shirks no risk . . . to make the most of his powers
in the service of a supreme ideal.34
With Gandhi, as with the tradition, fearlessness is the first quality of
the hero. Hero worship is ruled out; heroism is ruled in—because all are
to be heroes. Gandhi’s faith in the masses was felt by them. As Naryan
Desai pointed out:
It was Gandhi’s faith that created faith-worthiness among the people.
The masses do not see how successful you are, nor how vocal you
are. They see with their sixth sense how truthful you are.35
Gandhi’s leadership has been described as a “hyphen connecting the
middle classes and the people which transferred energy from each to the
other.”36
Gandhi’s appropriation of his Hinduism was later used against him by
the advocates for a separate Muslim state. He did use a Hindu term, Hind
Swaraj, to describe the future state of India’s freedom. He advocated a
Hindu hymn for the national anthem. On some scores he could have been
more sensitive to the feelings of those of other faiths, especially the
Muslims, as he focused so intently on giving hope to the Hindu masses.
On the other hand, all his life he read and reverenced the scriptures of
the other major faiths of India. He read the Koran, the scriptures of
Zoroastrianism, and the Bible. Prayers from all these religions were used
in his daily prayer services in successive ashrams. On no one did he rely
more for counsel than the imam who followed him from South Africa and
lived in the ashram. Gandhi was totally dedicated to building harmonious
relations between Muslims and Hindus from the South African period
onward. He made support of Khilafat an important plank of his politics.37
He shared meals with Muslims and Christians and spoke against the prohibitions
on inter-dining—much to the horror of the Hindu shastris and
pandits (looked-up-to leaders). As a result he was constantly accused by
these Hindu “experts” of not being sanatani.
The Hindu common people recognized him as one of them and
acclaimed him a “Mahatma.” The more learned found him to be more of
a puzzle. As early as 1909, his very good friend, Reverend J. J. Doke, who
befriended him and took him in when he was under attack by the whites in
South Africa, and whose family Gandhi cherished, wrote:
A few days ago I was told that “he is a Buddhist.” Not long since, a
Christian newspaper described him as a “Christian Mohammedan,”
an extraordinary mixture indeed . . . I question whether any system
of religion can absolutely hold him. 38
Gandhi was indeed open to all glimmers of truth wherever he could
find them. There is no doubt that he considered himself a Hindu. As he
said, Hinduism was as close to him as his mother, as his wife. Nonetheless,
he constantly folded new insights into his understanding of the basic truths
of his Hinduism.
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