Gandhi and Beyond

Nonviolence for a New Political Age

David Cortright

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781594517693
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317264866
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Is there room for nonviolence in a time of conflict and mass violence exacerbated by economic crisis? Drawing on the legend and lessons of Gandhi, Cortright traces the history of nonviolent social activism through the twentieth century to the civil rights movement, the Vietnam era, and up to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gaza. Gandhi and Beyond offers a critical evaluation and refinement of Gandhi's message, laying the foundation for a renewed and deepened dedication to nonviolence as the universal path to social progress. In the second edition of this popular book, a new prologue and concluding chapter situate the message of nonviolence in recent events and document the effectiveness of nonviolent methods of political change. Cortright's poignant "Letter to a Palestinian Student" points toward a radical new strategy for achieving justice and peace in the Middle East. This book offers pathways of hope not only for a new American presidential administration but for the world.

Chapter 1

Grasping Gandhi

Despite a lifelong commitment to peace and nonviolence, I did not study Gandhi until late in life. My attempts to comprehend his message were impeded by the man himself. Every time I tried to approach Gandhi, I found myself intimidated and overwhelmed—not only by the enormity of his accomplishments but also by the austerity and eccentricities of his personality. Gandhi seemed almost inconceivable. How could one so spiritual and detached from the material world achieve so much in altering the course of history? He commanded no army and held no government position, yet he and the movement he led shook the foundations of the British empire, entirely through the power of disciplined nonviolence. He was revered in his homeland and around the world, and was once called the greatest man in history. All this from a fraillooking, toothless man dressed in a loincloth—a “half-naked fakir,” as Winston Churchill derisively labeled him. A religious ascetic who renounced physical needs and material wants, whose earthly possessions at the time of death—glasses, writing utensils, sandals, hand-woven garment—fit easily into a small box.

I found Gandhi’s asceticism too extreme, his views on sexuality and women bizarre and offensive. When I attempted to read his autobiography, My Experiments in Truth, I recoiled at his puritanical preachments and guilt-ridden battles against sexual “temptation.” His prudish beliefs reminded me too much of the Catholic indoctrination I had rebelled against as a young man. Gandhi practiced celibacy, I knew, but he seemed to want everyone else to do the same. I wanted to know more about Gandhi’s theories of nonviolence and social change, but I couldn’t get past his views on women and sexuality.

Only when I read Gandhi’s Truth by psychologist Erik Erikson did I finally come to grips with these issues. Erikson’s moving “Personal Word,” written as a letter to Gandhi and placed unexpectedly at the center of his narrative on Gandhi’s emergence as a national leader, gently but firmly challenged the contradictory and even violent elements in his beliefs and practices. By separating Gandhi’s views on sexuality from his larger and more valuable contributions to nonviolence, Erikson made Gandhi more human and accessible. The Gandhian method, he wrote, “must not remain restricted to ascetic men and women who believe that they can overcome violence only by sexual self-disarmament.”¹ Erikson showed that accepting Gandhi’s truth has nothing to do with sexual abstinence or misguided views about women. These and other Gandhian beliefs and practices can be dismissed as the peculiar products of his particular time and life experience.

Erikson’s analysis removed the impediments to understanding and set me on a path of exploration to better understand Gandhi’s enormous contributions to the struggle for truth and justice. The results of that search are presented in this chapter and those that follow. In the present chapter I draw from the writings of Stanley Wolpert, Judith Brown, Joan Bondurant, Louis Fischer, and others to examine the religious roots and core concepts of Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence and the central role of sacrifice in his method of social action. I explore the tension between nonviolence and coercion—between pressure and persuasion—and review Gandhi’s sometimes-confused thinking on these matters. I assess his strengths and limitations as a political leader, while attempting to show the enduring relevance and necessity of his political method. By offering a critical evaluation and refinement of Gandhi’s message, I hope to lay the foundation for a renewed and deepened dedication to nonviolence as a path to social progress.

Hindu Roots

The basic concepts of nonviolence were instilled in Gandhi at an early age. His beliefs were shaped by Jainism, a pacifist branch of Hinduism influential in the Gujarat region of western India where he was raised. The Jain belief system is similar to Buddhism in embracing selflessness and ascetism.² Jainists believe in noninjury to all other living beings and practice strict vegetarianism and pacifism. They tend to be traders since this allows them to avoid harming animals and other life forms. Indeed, the Gandhi family name means grocer. Jainist monks go to extreme lengths in their nonviolent zeal. They wear white masks to avoid inhaling microbes or insects and even sweep the ground where they walk so as not to stomp ants, worms, or other living creatures.

Gandhi did not go to these lengths and was never a formal practitioner of Jainism—or of any other religion, for that matter, since he embraced all faiths. He was most strongly influenced by Hinduism, of course, but he was strongly attracted to other faiths as well. In the movie Gandhi, director Richard Attenborough has the Mahatma saying, “I am a Muslim, and a Hindu, and a Christian.”³ Gandhi considered the separate religions of the world “different roads converging to the same point.”⁴ His belief in the essential unity of all life reflected the deepest currents in Eastern religious thought and provided the foundation for his commitment to nonviolence and respect for others. He did not believe that all people are alike, but rather that different cultures and faiths could find common understanding and work together harmoniously.

One of the most sacred Hindu texts is the Bhagavad Gita, written several centuries before Christ and described by Fischer as the “brightest gem” of Hindu scripture.⁵ The Gita has had a powerful influence on many Western thinkers, among them J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the World War II Manhattan Project, whose apocalyptic comment upon the first atomic explosion, “I have become death the destroyer of worlds,” came from the sacred Indian verse. Gandhi loved the Gita. He referred to its teachings constantly and, according to his disciple and secretary, Mahadev Desai, tried to live its message every moment of his life.⁶ Gandhi translated the Gita from Sanskrit to his native Gujarati with commentary. He believed the central teaching of the Gita to be selflessness and detachment. Love and sacrifice should be offered unconditionally without thought of reward. In the Gita, Krishna, the divine incarnation, teaches to “be not moved by the fruits of works.” The one who “casts off all desires… comes unto peace.”⁷ The highest form of spirituality comes with nonattachment to the fruits of labor. The truly spiritual person does not “brood over results,” said Gandhi, but is detached from the fruits of action. Equanimity in the face of pleasure or pain, success or failure, is the surest path to wisdom and spiritual attainment. Complete selflessness means “freedom from pride and pretentiousness; nonviolence, forgiveness, uprightness, service.” These sacred ideals guided Gandhi’s life.

One of the important influences of the Jain and Buddhist faiths on Hinduism is the principle of ahimsa, or nonharm.⁸ One must strive at all times to avoid hurting other living creatures. It is better to suffer than to cause suffering to another. Ahimsa is not just a passive concept, though. It implies a positive recognition of the right of every living being to strive for fulfillment and an obligation to uphold and protect that right. Ahimsa must go beyond mere noninjury, believed Gandhi, to include “action based on the refusal to do harm.”⁹ Ahimsa is positive love, the commitment to resist evil and do good to all unconditionally, even to the wrongdoer. “Hate the sin and not the sinner,” Gandhi often said. Active nonviolence commands us to resist injustice even as we refuse to harm those who perpetrate it.¹⁰

Christian Influences

Although of Hindu origin, Gandhi was once described as “one of the most Christlike men in history.”¹¹ This observation reflects not only his extraordinary service to others but his genuine interest in the teachings of Christ, especially the Sermon on the Mount, which he considered of sublime beauty and importance. He kept a picture of Christ in his office in South Africa and on the wall of his ashram in India, and he often read passages from the Gospels before encounters with his Christian adversaries.¹² He considered Christ the “sower of the seed” of nonviolent philosophy.

Few Christians understand or appreciate fully the depth of Christ’s message of love and nonviolence. Pastors and religious teachers tend to rush past the Gospel passages where Jesus consoles the poor and challenges the rich, or commands us to love everyone, even our enemies: “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you and pray for those who treat you badly. To the one who strikes you on the cheek, turn the other cheek; to the one who takes your coat, give also your shirt” (Matthew 5:39). As Bible professor Walter Wink has written, nonviolence is “the essence of the Gospel.”¹³ Nonviolence is not a peripheral concern but the very heart of Christ’s message. Love and nonviolence are core commitments in all the great religious traditions—Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The problem, as Gandhi said, is that civilization largely ignores this religious message of nonviolence. The Sermon on the Mount is a great teaching, Gandhi said; too bad so few Christians follow it.

Part of the problem for Christians is interpreting what Christ meant when he said to turn the other cheek. Are we merely to accept oppression and evil, to turn our backs when someone we love is attacked, to go meekly like lambs to the slaughter? Wink argues that Christ’s teachings are not orders to submit but illustrations of how the oppressed can defy and resist the powerful while maintaining human dignity and the spirit of love.¹⁴ Christ did not say that we should accept blows without response. His meaning was more subtle and creative. His instructions to turn the other cheek, give the other garment, or walk the extra mile are not meant to be taken literally, according to Wink, but are “examples to spark an infinite variety of creative responses.” Turning the other cheek is a way of denying the oppressor the power to humiliate.¹⁵ “Try again,” it says, “your first blow didn’t work. You have not demeaned me.” Such a response morally disarms the one who strikes the blow. If the victim refuses to be humiliated, the blow has served no purpose. The tables have turned. Christ taught his followers to challenge injustice without breaking the covenant of God’s love.¹⁶ Gandhi found the same meaning in the Gospel, without the benefit of theological exegesis. He instinctively understood the transformative power of returning love for hatred, good for evil, and he set out in his public life to harness this force for social change.

Gandhi’s attraction to Christian nonviolence was reinforced by the teachings of Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist. Late in life Tolstoy renounced material possessions and embraced absolute pacifism. He urged resistance to state authority and became an advocate of civil disobedience. This former czarist military officer advised soldiers to reject military service. He called on recruits to renounce “the shameful and ungodly calling of a soldier.” To be truly Christian, he wrote, a soldier should fight “not with external foes… but with his own commanders who deceive him… not with fists or teeth, but with humble reasonableness and readiness to bear all suffering.”¹⁷ That excerpt from Tolstoy’s “Notes for Soldiers” caught the attention of some of us who served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. It was very popular among those who opposed the war and participated in the GI movement. Many Vietnam-era GIs did indeed give up the military calling by either deserting or filing for conscientious objector status.¹⁸ I stayed in the army to “fight my commanders” by pursuing a federal court case and organizing antiwar protests.

Gandhi interpreted Tolstoy’s call to resistance as an invitation to collective action. He was particularly impressed by Tolstoy’s 1909 “Letter to a Hindoo,” originally published in Free Hindustan and later reprinted with commentary in Gandhi’s own journal, Indian Opinion. In the letter Tolstoy wrote that the Hindu people were responsible for their own oppression because they allowed colonial domination to continue. Gandhi wrote, “The English have not taken India; we have given it to them.”¹⁹ He summarized Tolstoy’s message as “slavery consists in submitting.”²⁰ Freedom requires disobedience and the rejection of colonial authority. Through collective resistance the people of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Photographs
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1. Grasping Gandhi
• 2. Gandhi USA
• 3. Martin Luther King Jr.: An American Gandhi
• 4. Gandhi in the Fields
• 5. Dorothy Day: A Mission of Love
• 6. The Power of Nonviolence
• 7. Learning Lessons
• 8. Gender Matters
• 9. Principles of Action
• 10. A Higher Power
• Notes
• About the Author
• Index