Truth and non-violence – Lessons from Gandhiji-Part I |27 September 2008
It is based on the principles of Mohandas Karmachand Gandhi, who was born on October 2
The moral influence of his personality and of his gospel and technique of non-violence cannot be weighed in any material scale. Nor is their value limited to any particular country or generation. It is his imperishable gift to humanity.
Gandhi met his death on January 30 1948 at the hands of an assassin, to the eternal shame of those who failed to understand his message.
Death never worried him. Forty years earlier, when his life was threatened in South Africa, he had said: “Death is the appointed end of all life. To die by the hand of a brother cannot be for me a matter of sorrow. And if, even in such a case, I am free from the thought of anger or hatred against my assailant, I know that it will rebound to my eternal welfare.”
These sublime words proved to be prophetic. Such men, however, cannot die for they live in their achievements. His were many, each one of which – judged by the greatness of its execution or in its results for human welfare – would have made his name immortal anywhere in the world.
To be the prime mover of politics is not a greater achievement than to influence so profoundly the inner lives of people. On his death, Albert Einstein said: “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”
“My life is my message.” These are the words of our beloved Mohandas Karmachand Gandhi, affectionately called the Mahatma or Bapu, and his greatest message to today’s war-torn world is to adhere always to truth and non-violence.
Truth and non-violence are related to each other as two sides of one coin. Ahimsa, or non-violence, is inextricably bound up with the philosophy of love and the pursuit of truth.
Mahatma Gandhi did not invent the principles of truth and non-violence. They have existed for centuries as a religious tenet, but Gandhi reaffirmed them and rose to his tremendous moral power as a leader of his people through this reaffirmation.
On the death of Gandhiji, General George C. Marshall, US Secretary of State, said Mahatma Gandhi had become the spokesman for the conscience of all mankind. He was a man who made humility and simple truth more powerful than empires.
The world, according to Gandhi, rests on the bedrock of satya or truth, which means “that which exists” as opposed to untruth “which does not exist” – and nothing exists in reality except truth.
And the fundamental reality is “that which exists”, which cannot be destroyed, and God is that reality. Truth is the reflection or expression of reality in the mirror of the human mind.
Truth is not a matter of expedience but the living truth that pervades everything and will survive all destruction and all transformation. Truth is within every one of us but only partially unfolded, for it is covered over by error and ignorance.
Man is higher than the brute and has a divine mission to fulfill. We know the earth, but we are strangers to the heaven (truth) within us. The higher mission of man is to find truth by right knowledge. To find truth completely is to realise oneself and one’s destiny – to become perfect.
In order to find truth one has to be first of all conscious of one’s imperfections. Gandhi said: “I am principally conscious of my imperfections and therein lies all the strength I possess. It is the conquest of these imperfections that makes life a perpetual triumph over the grave.”
He adhered to the truth to its very absolute limits. When the collector of Champaran wrote him a stiff letter – which the collector later decided to withdraw, asking for its return – the young followers of Gandhi began to copy it.
Gandhi admonished them and said that if they kept a copy, the letter could not be said to have been withdrawn. To keep a copy of a letter that is withdrawn, according to Gandhi, is to harbour it, in your files as well as in your breast, and that is untruth as well as anti-non-violence.
In Gandhi we have the rarest kind of man who would say that he would sacrifice even India to the truth, if he had to. For according to him, God wishes us to be truthful and loving regardless of the consequences.
A truly religious man takes the trouble to discover what is right and does it even if it means the surrender of his dearest interests, individual, racial and national.
In the search for truth all men err, but how many have the powers to discern their errors? And how many have the courage of will to acknowledge them? One of the greatest qualities of Gandhi is his habit of candid acknowledgment of his mistakes and his fearless exposure of the foibles of his followers.
“Ahimsa, or non-violence, is the highest duty” is a well-known saying of the Mahabaratha and the greatest commandment of all great religions. Gandhi revealed to the masses a power not of atom bombs or machine-guns, but the power innate in each individual, a power which this war-haunted world has yet to realise.
To give back violence for violence is to sink to the level of the tyrant, who understands power only in terms of death and destruction. Nationalist India in 1930 effectively demonstrated the power of non-violence as a practical political weapon. The fact that thousands were flung into jails and subjected to all manner of brutalities could not stem the tide of this great moral renaissance surging through the Indian masses.
Gandhi against apartheid
In the fight against the unjust laws of South Africa, which required all Indians to be fingerprinted and decreed that no marriage other than a Christian marriage was valid, Gandhi said:
“Whatever they do to us we will attack no one, kill no one. They will imprison us, they will fine us, they will seize our possessions but they cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.
“I am asking you to fight against their anger, not to provoke it. We will not strike a blow but we will receive them, and through our pain we will make them see their injustice and it will hurt as all fighting hurts.
“But we cannot lose. They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me and then they will have my dead body but not my obedience.”
You cannot enslave a man who has mastered his own soul. If you destroy his body, you give greater power to his spirit. Christ upon the cross was infinitely more powerful than the Christ who rode in triumph with palms spread on his path and Alleluias sounding in his ears.
The path of Ahimsa, Gandhi stated, may entail continuous suffering and the cultivation of endless patience, but he went on to point out that its reward is an increasing peace of mind and greater courage. Its practical application in life is Satyagraha or soul force as opposed to physical force.
The culture of our modern age is not, and cannot be, sympathetic to non-violence or Satyagraha. But the failure of modern civilisation is writ large, and thoughtful reformers acknowledge that if our civilisation is to be salvaged many of its old ways of doing things, its modes and its methods of life must be abandoned.
What shall we do?
We should begin to study the science of Satyagraha and, having obtained a clear mental perception, begin to discipline ourselves. There are three main forces of evil, not in the world only but in the individual primarily – kama (lust), krodha (anger) and lobha (greed). These flourish in the world because they thrive among the nations, dividing the world.
In each nation they create havoc of class and cast warfare, but their real root is in the individual. A man cannot be at peace with the world when within himself these forces are active, destroying his own peace, throwing his mind into confusion, hardening his heart against the members of the human family.
The main conduct of every true satyagrahi is courage, not only to face one’s own lower nature, but also to fight the temptations that come from the world.
That is why Gandhi said: “The only devils in the world are those running around in our hearts and that is where all our battles ought to be fought. We must be the change we wish to see.”
Satyagraha, or non-violence, is rooted in the power of reality, in the inward strength of the soul. It is not merely the negative virtue of abstaining from violence but the positive one of doing good.
Non-violent resistance is also an internal matter. It not only avoids external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. And so at the centre of Gandhi’s movement stood the philosophy of love, the attitude that the only way to ultimately change humanity and create the society that we all long for is to keep love at the centre of our lives.
Love is an understanding, creative and redemptive goodwill for all mankind.
Biblical theologians say it is love of God working in the minds of men; it is an overflowing love that seeks nothing in return. Thus you love men not because they are likeable, not because they do things that attract us, but because God loves them. Love is the law of human life, its natural necessity.
We have wars because we are not sufficiently selfless for a life that does not need wars. The battle for peace must be fought in the heart of the individual. The spirit in him must break the power of pride and selfishness, lust and fear.
A new way of life must become the foundation of national life as well as of world order, a way of life that will conserve and foster the true interests of all classes, races and nations.
By Anthony Francis T. Fernando