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એ ભલે ધડો ન લે, આપણે લઈએ

મેહુલ મંગુબહેન|Samantar Gujarat - Samantar|13 August 2014

પાકિસ્તાન શબ્દ સાથે જ ક્યાંક કાન સરવા તો ક્યાંક રૂવાડાં ખડાં થઈ જતાં હોય છે. એમ થવું સાહજિક છે, કેમ કે એક તો તે બ્રિટિશ ભારતમાંથી આપણી સાથે જ સર્જાયેલો પડોશી દેશ છે અને વિભાજનની કાળી યાદોમાં ઉમેરાયેલાં યુદ્ધો થકી દુશ્મની કાયમ રહી છે. ૧૯૪૭માં બે દેશોનો જન્મ થયો. ભાગલાની દુઃખદ યાદો, તે સમયના ભારતમાં હાજર કટ્ટરવાદી સંગઠનો, મુસ્લિમ લીગ અને અંગ્રેજોનાં કરતૂતોને એક પળ માટે બાજુ પર મૂકીએ તો ભારત અને પાકિસ્તાન બેઉ દેશોનું સર્જન એક જ દિશા પર હતું. આ દિશા હતી સ્વતંત્રતા અને સાર્વભૌમત્વની. એક દેશ યાને કે પાકિસ્તાનની દિશા અથવા કહો તો વિઝન પળે પળે સાંકડંુ થતું ગયું અને આપણાં સદ્દનસીબે રાષ્ટ્રપિતા મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધીથી લઈને જવાહરલાલ નહેરુ, સરદાર વલ્લભભાઈ પટેલ અને ડો.આંબેડકરે એવો વારસો આપ્યો કે કટોકટીની કાળી ટીલી બાદ કરતાં આ લખાય છે ત્યાં સુધી તો સ્વતંત્રતા અને સાર્વભૌમત્વ જાળવી રાખ્યું છે. ભારત અને પાકિસ્તાનના આઝાદીદિને એવી અનેક બાબતો છે કે જેમાં સહિયારી શીખ મળી રહે. પાકિસ્તાને ભારતમાંથી પ્રેરણા લેવી જોઈએ તેવી તો એકસો બાબત ગણાવી શકાય પણ આપણે તો વાત કરવી છે આપણે પાકિસ્તાનમાંથી શું પ્રેરણા લેવી તેની. કેટલાક લોકોને આ વાત જ હાસ્યાસ્પદ લાગી શકે છે. જે દેશનાં કાંઈ ઠેકાણાં નથી એમાંથી વળી પ્રેરણા કે ધડો શેનો લેવાનો? પણ ધડો એ જ તો લેવાનો છે, કેમ કે પાકિસ્તાનને શત્રુ દેશ ગણીએ તો પણ માણસે સૌથી વધારે શીખવાનું શત્રુમાંથી જ હોય છે.

પાકિસ્તાનનું ખરું નામ

૧૯૪૭માં પાકિસ્તાન નામના દેશનો જન્મ થયો ત્યારે તેના ત્રણ દિવસ અગાઉ ૧૧ ઓગસ્ટના રોજ મોહંમદ અલી ઝીણાએ ઐતિહાસિક ભાષણ કરેલું. તેમણે કહેલું, ‘તમે મુક્ત છો, તમે તમારા મંદિરે જવા માટે મુક્ત છો. તમે તમારી મસ્જિદે કે પછી તમારા અન્ય કોઈ પણ ધર્મસ્થળે જવા માટે પાકિસ્તાનમાં મુક્ત છો. તમારો ધર્મ, જાતિ-જ્ઞાાતિ કે સંપ્રદાય કોઈ પણ હોય એને પાકિસ્તાન રાજ્ય સાથે કોઈ જ લેવાદેવા નથી.’ ટૂંકમાં, ઝીણાની એ સ્પીચમાં દેશની જે પરિકલ્પના હતી, જે આદર્શ હતો તે તમામ વાડાઓથી મુક્ત એવા બિનસાંપ્રદાયિક લોકશાહિક રાજ્યનો હતો. પાકિસ્તાનમાં વસેલા લોકોનાં કમનસીબ કે એ સાકાર ન થયો અને આપણે એટલા નસીબદાર કે આપણે રાજ્ય તરીકે એ મૂલ્ય હજી સુધી જાળવી શક્યા છીએ. આપણે પાકિસ્તાન પાકિસ્તાન એમ જ બોલીએ છીએ પણ એનું સત્તાવાર નામ ખબર છે? સત્તાવાર નામ છે 'ઈસ્લામિક રિપબ્લિકન ઓફ પાકિસ્તાન'. આપણે એક નાગરિક તરીકે અને દુનિયાની સૌથી મોટા લોકશાહી દેશ તરીકે આ નામમાંથી ધડો લેવો જોઈએ અને પ્રત્યેક પળે તેને યાદ રાખવો જોઈએ. ઝીણાની ઐતિહાસિક સ્પીચનાં ફક્ત ૯ વર્ષમાં જ એ દેશ 'પાકિસ્તાન' યાને કે પવિત્ર પ્રદેશ જેવા અર્થમાંથી એક ધર્મકેન્દ્રિત થઈ ગયો. આપણે અહીં ઘણાં સંગઠનો વર્ષોથી એક જ કોમના રાષ્ટ્રનો ઝંડો લઈને ફરે છે અને સરકારની કામગીરીમાં ધાર્મિક દખલ વધી રહી છે ત્યારે આપણે ધડો લેવો જોઈએ. પાકિસ્તાનમાં ઉદારમતવાદીઓ-લોકશાહિક લોકોની આશા પર જે રીતે ૧૯૫૬માં પાણી ફરી વળ્યું એવું આપણે ત્યાં કદી ન થાય એના પર ચાંપતી નજર રાખવી એ આઝાદીને જાળવી રાખવાની માસ્ટર કી છે. પાકિસ્તાનને આજે ઘણાં લોકો ઝીણાના લોસ્ટ ડ્રીમ યાને કે ખોવાઈ ગયેલાં સપનાં તરીકે ઓળખાવે છે. આપણું સપનું હજી હયાત છે. સાબૂત છે.

બંધારણીય સંસ્થાઓનો આદર

ભારત અને પાકિસ્તાન બેઉ દેશોનું આયુષ્ય તો સરખું છે પણ લોકશાહિક વયમાં ઘણો ફરક છે. ભારતે ફક્ત એક જ વાર ઈંદિરા ગાંધીના સમયમાં કટોકટી યાને કે સરમુખત્યારશાહી જોઈ છે એની સામે પાકિસ્તાનમાં અત્યાર સુધી જનરલ અયુબ ખાનથી જનરલ પરવેઝ મુશર્રફ સુધી ૩૨ વર્ષ સુધી સરમુખત્યારશાહી શાસન જોયું છે. ટૂંકમાં, કટ્ટરવાદી તત્ત્વોની ધાક ત્યાં કાયમ રહી છે. એક દેશ તરીકે પાકિસ્તાનની સૌથી મોટી નિષ્ફળતા એ આ છે. બંધારણીય સંસ્થાઓ ન વિકસવી અને તેનો આદર ન થવો એ કેટલી ભયંકર બાબત બની શકે છે એનો ખ્યાલ આપણને આપણા પડોશીની હાલની હાલત પરથી આવી શકે છે. હવે જરા આપણાં દેશમાં જોર પકડી રહેલાં બેઉ કોમનાં કટ્ટરવાદી તત્ત્વો તરફ નજર કરો. આપણા દેશમાં નેતાઓ દ્વારા બંધારણીય સંસ્થાઓ સામે કરાતાં બેફામ વાણીવિલાસ પર નજર કરો. ચૂંટણીપંચ હોય કે સર્વોચ્ચ અદાલત આપણે કાંઈક અંશે બંધારણીય સંસ્થાઓને ગૌરવભેર સાચવી શક્યા છે એમાં જ આપણી ખરી સફળતા છે. દેશમાં સૌપ્રથમ વાર જમણેરી ઝોક ધરાવતી સરકાર બહુમતીમાં છે ત્યારે કેટલાંક એવાં પણ તત્ત્વો છે કે જેઓ આ સ્થિતિને એક મોટી તક તરીકે જુએ છે. આવાં તત્ત્વોથી દેશને સાબૂત રાખવા માટે પાકિસ્તાન આપણા માટે એક કેસસ્ટડી છે. વિશાળ સ્વતંત્રતા જ્યાં સાંકડી શેરી બનીને રહી ગઈ હોય એવા દેશમાંથી આપણે ધડો નહીં લઈએ તો આપણે જાળવેલી અને દુનિયાના સૌથી સારા બંધારણ થકી સંર્વિધત કરેલી લોકશાહી એક ઘડીક વારમાં જ પડી ભાંગશે. આજકાલ વાતે વાતે બિનસાંપ્રદાયિતાને અથવા તો તેમાં માનતા લોકોને ગાળ દેવાની ફેશન છે પણ કોઈ દેશ બિનસાંપ્રદાયિક ન હોય તો શું થાય એ જોવા માટે ઉત્તમ ઉદાહરણ પાકિસ્તાન છે. સવાલ શિયા-સુન્નીનો હોય કે લઘુમતી હિંદુઓના રક્ષણની રાજ્ય વ્યવસ્થાનો, જ્યારે કોઈ કોમતરફી બને છે ત્યારે તેનો કદીયે વિકાસ થઈ શકતો નથી. એક અરાજકતા ફેલાય છે જેમાં બળિયાના બે ભાગ જેવો ઘાટ ઊભો થાય છે. જે રીતે આપણો દેશ એકતા અને અખંડિતતા ટકાવી શક્યો છે એ રીતે પડોશી દેશમાં બન્યું નથી. વજિરિસ્તાન-બલુચિસ્તાન જેવા પ્રદેશોમાં તો સરકારની હાજરી છે કે નહીં તે કળવું મુશ્કેલ બની જાય છે. લોકશાહીમાં લશ્કર રાજ્યના તાબામાં રહેવું જોઈએ પણ પાકિસ્તાનમાં લશ્કરનો દબદબો એટલો છે કે તે ગમે ત્યારે રાજ્યને ગળી શકે છે.

આપણી નવી સરકારની રચના વખતે પાકિસ્તાનના વડાપ્રધાન નવાઝ શરીફ પણ હાજર રહ્યા હતા. છાશવારે સીમા ઉલ્લંઘન અને બીજા અનેક પ્રશ્નો બેઉ દેશો વચ્ચે છે. આશા રાખીએ કે એ સવાલો ક્રમશઃ ઉકલતા જાય. આપણી લોકશાહી આવનારા દિવસોમાં મજબૂત થતી જાય અને પાકિસ્તાનમાં લોકશાહી કાયમ ટકી રહે. આગામી લોકશાહીક પ્રજાસત્તાક દિનના ઈંતજાર સાથે મહામૂલા આઝાદી દિવસની શુભકામનાઓ

જશ્ન-એ-આઝાદી

"મનની આઝાદી એ જ ખરી આઝાદી છે. ભલે સાંકળથી બંધાયેલો ન હોય પણ મન મુક્ત નહીં હોય તો એ માણસ ગુલામ જ ગણાશે, મુક્ત નહીં. ભલેને તે કેદમાં ન હોય તો પણ એ કેદી જ ગણાશે, મુક્ત નહીં. જેનું મન આઝાદ નથી તે માણસ મડદા સમાન છે. મનની આઝાદી એ આપણા અસ્તિત્વની સાબિતી છે."

– ડો.બી.આર. આંબેડકર

e.mail : mmehul.sandesh@gmail.com

સૌજન્ય : ‘વિગતવાર’ નામક લેખકની કટાર, “સંદેશ”, 13 અૉગસ્ટ 2014

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Is ‘Hindu’ our National Identity?

Ram Puniyani|English Bazaar Patrika - OPED|13 August 2014

From the decade of 1980 the identity based politics has come to the fore in our Country. The Shah Bano issue, the Ram Temple imbroglio and the Rath yatras, brought to fore the issues related identity, the first major casualty of this politics was the demolition of Babri Masjid. Around that the notion that we are a Hindu nation propped up in a serious way and also that ‘we are all Hindus’ came to the fore. Lately with Modi-BJP getting simple majority in the parliament, this formulation is being asserted more powerfully. Around 1990 Murli Manohar Joshi, the then BJP President, said that we are all Hindus, Muslims are Ahmadiya Hindus, Christians are Christi Hindus and Jains-Sikhs-Buddhists are also Hindus as such. Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists are regarded as sects of Hindu pantheon by RSS. It is another matter that when the earlier RSS Sarsanghchalka, K. Sudarshan, said that Sikhism is not a religion as such but is a mere sect of Hinduism, there were massive protests in Punjab.

With Modi at helm, the RSS combine is going hammer and tongs in asserting that all Indians have to call themselves as Hindus. Keeping this in mind, in tune with ‘when asked to bend you crawl’ the Goa Deputy Chief Minister Francis Desouza, a member of BJP, said that Christians are Christian Hindus. The RSS Supremo Mohan Bhagwat went on the reiterate that "The entire world recognizes Indians as Hindus therefore India is a Hindu state. This is a very simple thing, if inhabitants of England are English, those of Germany are Germans and USA is Americans, all those who live in Hindustan are known as Hindus." Mixing up Hindu with Hindutva, an altogether different category; he stated that "The cultural identity of all Indians is Hindutva and the present inhabitants of the country are descendants of this great culture," To articulate the political agenda behind all these assertions, Goa’s Co-operatives Minister Deepak Dhavalikar (BJP) told the assembly that India could well be on the way of becoming a "Hindu nation", with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the helm.

The whole rigmarole of Hindu, Hindutva, Hindu Rashtra is very deliberate and a part of political agenda. These three terms have to be seen in a historical context. The claims about Hinduism have to be seen in today’s context. The evolution of the term Hindu has a long journey. Over a period of time its usage has changed. Its use for political goals; political adaptation is Hindutva and Hindutva’s political goal is Hindu Rashtra (Nation). These terminologies have been neatly packaged by the Sangh combine, as part of Nationalism, which they believe in.

It is interesting to note that till 8th century the scriptures called as Hindu scriptures do not have the word Hindu in them. This word Hindu as such came into being with the Arabs and Middle East Muslims coming to this side of the continent. They called the land on east side of Sindhu as Hindu. Thus the word Hindu began as a geographical category. So even today in some parts of the World, especially in West Asia, India is referred to as Hindustan. Mr. Bhagwat is wrong to say that we are referred to as Hindustan all over. It is only in Saudi Arabia and West Asia, that the word Hindustan is prevalent. In Saudi even today the Muslims going for Hajj are referred to as Hindi and In Saudi Arabia the discipline of arithmetic in their language is called Hindsa (Coming from Hind).

It was later that religious traditions prevailing in this part started being called as Hindu religion. The notion that there was a prevalence of a Hindu culture here is a pure ideological construct. The Indus valley civilization had its own features distinct from the other parts. The Aryans were initially a pastoral society, and then they went for settled agriculture and formation of Kingdoms. The native Adivasis had their own culture. The Brahimanical and Buddhist traditions were again very distinct, the litmus test here is the belief in caste system, Brahmanism holding to birth based graded hierarchy and Buddhism opposing the same. The assertion that a homogenous culture prevailed is a total myth. We know that culture is always evolving through interaction which is due to migrations and mobility.

The term Hindutva emerges in late 19th century with the rise of communal politics in opposition to the nascent Indian National Movement. When Indian National Congress was form in 1885, the Muslim Feudal classes and Hindu Feudal classes opposed it and both articulated their own communal ideology. The one coming from Hindu communal stream was vaguely called Hindutva. This was brought to the fore prominently by Savarkar in 1924. Savarkar also defined Hindu as one who regards this land as Holy land and father land, keeping Christians and Muslims out of the definition of Hindus. Hindutva as per him is a total Hinduness, common race (Aryan) Culture (Brahminic) and the land spread from Sindhu to sea. He also conceptualized Hindu Rashtra, as the goal of Hindutva ideology. This goal of Hindu Rashtra was picked up by RSS from 1925. The goal of Hindu Rashtra was opposed to the goal of Indian National Movement, which aimed at secular democratic India.

There are also assertions that we all should call ourselves as Hindus, since it is a ‘way of life’ common to all the people living here. This is a clever trick to deceive. Many a Muslim communalists similarly say that ‘Islam is a way of life’. Religion alone is not the ‘way of life’; way of life is much broader and includes language, local-regional cultural nuances, which cannot be uniform. Religion, again is not monolithic, and is a part of way of life, not the other way around. The matter as to what are we as a political entity had been a subject of extensive debate in the Constituent Assembly and the conclusion was to call this country as “India that is Bharat’, a religion neutral term. Today Hindu is not a regional-‘national’ identity; it is primarily a religious identity. The subtle trick in calling everybody Hindu is to first talk of geographical identity, common ancestor and then to say that since we are all Hindus, the Hindu scriptures, Gita, Manusmriti are all our national books, cow is our National animal; we all have to worship Ram etc.

This is not an innocuous step. In the beginning ‘we are all Hindus, then so we are a Hindu nation and then follow the dictates coming from Hindu holy seers or self proclaimed custodians of Hinduism. The position of Constitution is very clear that Hindu is a religious identity and India is a national identity. Surely RSS never had anything to do with either the freedom movement or belief in the Indian Constitution so in pursuance of its agenda, in contrast to Indian Constitution, which gives us the Indian identity, RSS wants to impose Hindu identity.

What will happen in the next step become clear from the following discussion which transpired in the RSS training camp, which gives us the inkling of the agenda of RSS in the long term. Let’s see the statement of RSS worker Joshi, couple of decades ago,  “During a question-and-answer session, a volunteer asked Yadavrao Joshi, then the head of Sangh workers across all of south India, “We say RSS is a Hindu organization. We say we are a Hindu nation, India belongs to Hindus. We also say in the same breath that Muslims and Christians are welcome to follow their faith and that they are welcome to remain as they are so long as they love this country. Why do we have to give this concession? Why don’t we be very clear that they have no place if we are a Hindu country?” Joshi replied “As of now, RSS and Hindu society are not strong enough to say clearly to Muslims and Christians that if you want to live in India, convert to Hinduism. Either convert or perish. But when the Hindu society and RSS will become strong enough we will tell them that if you want to live in India and if you love this country, you accept that some generations earlier you were Hindus and come back to the Hindu fold.”  (http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/rss-30#sthash.GmBGCZLQ.dpuf )

So what Sangh Combine had been aspiring from last nine decades is being asserted with bigger authority with Modi Sarkar at center. What Bhagwat of RSS is saying and followers are speaking on the TV debates is a clear violation of the values of Indian Constitution. So where are we heading is a question which all the citizens have to become aware and stick to what we have gained through freedom movement epitomized in our Constitution. That needs to be saved and protected from the sectarian motivated agenda.

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Reflections on Gandhi

George Orwell|Gandhiana|12 August 2014

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases. In Gandhi's case the questions on feels inclined to ask are: to what extent was Gandhi moved by vanity — by the consciousness of himself as a humble, naked old man, sitting on a praying mat and shaking empires by sheer spiritual power — and to what extent did he compromise his own principles by entering politics, which of their nature are inseparable from coercion and fraud? To give a definite answer one would have to study Gandhi's acts and writings in immense detail, for his whole life was a sort of pilgrimage in which every act was significant. But this partial autobiography, which ends in the nineteen-twenties, is strong evidence in his favor, all the more because it covers what he would have called the unregenerate part of his life and reminds one that inside the saint, or near-saint, there was a very shrewd, able person who could, if he had chosen, have been a brilliant success as a lawyer, an administrator or perhaps even a businessman.

At about the time when the autobiography first appeared I remember reading its opening chapters in the ill-printed pages of some Indian newspaper. They made a good impression on me, which Gandhi himself at that time did not. The things that one associated with him — home-spun cloth, “soul forces” and vegetarianism — were unappealing, and his medievalist program was obviously not viable in a backward, starving, over-populated country. It was also apparent that the British were making use of him, or thought they were making use of him. Strictly speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an enemy, but since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence — which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever — he could be regarded as “our man”. In private this was sometimes cynically admitted. The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away. How reliable such calculations are in the long run is doubtful; as Gandhi himself says, “in the end deceivers deceive only themselves”; but at any rate the gentleness with which he was nearly always handled was due partly to the feeling that he was useful. The British Conservatives only became really angry with him when, as in 1942, he was in effect turning his non-violence against a different conqueror.

But I could see even then that the British officials who spoke of him with a mixture of amusement and disapproval also genuinely liked and admired him, after a fashion. Nobody ever suggested that he was corrupt, or ambitious in any vulgar way, or that anything he did was actuated by fear or malice. In judging a man like Gandhi one seems instinctively to apply high standards, so that some of his virtues have passed almost unnoticed. For instance, it is clear even from the autobiography that his natural physical courage was quite outstanding: the manner of his death was a later illustration of this, for a public man who attached any value to his own skin would have been more adequately guarded. Again, he seems to have been quite free from that maniacal suspiciousness which, as E. M. Forster rightly says in A Passage to India, is the besetting Indian vice, as hypocrisy is the British vice. Although no doubt he was shrewd enough in detecting dishonesty, he seems wherever possible to have believed that other people were acting in good faith and had a better nature through which they could be approached. And though he came of a poor middle-class family, started life rather unfavorably, and was probably of unimpressive physical appearance, he was not afflicted by envy or by the feeling of inferiority. Color feeling when he first met it in its worst form in South Africa, seems rather to have astonished him. Even when he was fighting what was in effect a color war, he did not think of people in terms of race or status. The governor of a province, a cotton millionaire, a half-starved Dravidian coolie, a British private soldier were all equally human beings, to be approached in much the same way. It is noticeable that even in the worst possible circumstances, as in South Africa when he was making himself unpopular as the champion of the Indian community, he did not lack European friends.

Written in short lengths for newspaper serialization, the autobiography is not a literary masterpiece, but it is the more impressive because of the commonplaceness of much of its material. It is well to be reminded that Gandhi started out with the normal ambitions of a young Indian student and only adopted his extremist opinions by degrees and, in some cases, rather unwillingly. There was a time, it is interesting to learn, when he wore a top hat, took dancing lessons, studied French and Latin, went up the Eiffel Tower and even tried to learn the violin — all this was the idea of assimilating European civilization as throughly as possible. He was not one of those saints who are marked out by their phenomenal piety from childhood onwards, nor one of the other kind who forsake the world after sensational debaucheries. He makes full confession of the misdeeds of his youth, but in fact there is not much to confess. As a frontispiece to the book there is a photograph of Gandhi's possessions at the time of his death. The whole outfit could be purchased for about 5 pounds***, and Gandhi's sins, at least his fleshly sins, would make the same sort of appearance if placed all in one heap. A few cigarettes, a few mouthfuls of meat, a few annas pilfered in childhood from the maidservant, two visits to a brothel (on each occasion he got away without “doing anything”), one narrowly escaped lapse with his landlady in Plymouth, one outburst of temper — that is about the whole collection. Almost from childhood onwards he had a deep earnestness, an attitude ethical rather than religious, but, until he was about thirty, no very definite sense of direction. His first entry into anything describable as public life was made by way of vegetarianism. Underneath his less ordinary qualities one feels all the time the solid middle-class businessmen who were his ancestors. One feels that even after he had abandoned personal ambition he must have been a resourceful, energetic lawyer and a hard-headed political organizer, careful in keeping down expenses, an adroit handler of committees and an indefatigable chaser of subscriptions. His character was an extraordinarily mixed one, but there was almost nothing in it that you can put your finger on and call bad, and I believe that even Gandhi's worst enemies would admit that he was an interesting and unusual man who enriched the world simply by being alive . Whether he was also a lovable man, and whether his teachings can have much for those who do not accept the religious beliefs on which they are founded, I have never felt fully certain.

Of late years it has been the fashion to talk about Gandhi as though he were not only sympathetic to the Western Left-wing movement, but were integrally part of it. Anarchists and pacifists, in particular, have claimed him for their own, noticing only that he was opposed to centralism and State violence and ignoring the other-worldly, anti-humanist tendency of his doctrines. But one should, I think, realize that Gandhi's teachings cannot be squared with the belief that Man is the measure of all things and that our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have. They make sense only on the assumption that God exists and that the world of solid objects is an illusion to be escaped from. It is worth considering the disciplines which Gandhi imposed on himself and which — though he might not insist on every one of his followers observing every detail — he considered indispensable if one wanted to serve either God or humanity. First of all, no meat-eating, and if possible no animal food in any form. (Gandhi himself, for the sake of his health, had to compromise on milk, but seems to have felt this to be a backsliding.) No alcohol or tobacco, and no spices or condiments even of a vegetable kind, since food should be taken not for its own sake but solely in order to preserve one's strength. Secondly, if possible, no sexual intercourse. If sexual intercourse must happen, then it should be for the sole purpose of begetting children and presumably at long intervals. Gandhi himself, in his middle thirties, took the vow of brahmacharya, which means not only complete chastity but the elimination of sexual desire. This condition, it seems, is difficult to attain without a special diet and frequent fasting. One of the dangers of milk-drinking is that it is apt to arouse sexual desire. And finally — this is the cardinal point — for the seeker after goodness there must be no close friendships and no exclusive loves whatever.

Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because “friends react on one another” and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrong-doing. This is unquestionably true. Moreover, if one is to love God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to any individual person. This again is true, and it marks the point at which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable. To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife or a child die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It is true that the threatened death never actually occurred, and also that Gandhi — with, one gathers, a good deal of moral pressure in the opposite direction — always gave the patient the choice of staying alive at the price of committing a sin: still, if the decision had been solely his own, he would have forbidden the animal food, whatever the risks might be. There must, he says, be some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth. This attitude is perhaps a noble one, but, in the sense which — I think — most people would give to the word, it is inhuman. The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid. There is an obvious retort to this, but one should be wary about making it. In this yogi-ridden age, it is too readily assumed that “non-attachment” is not only better than a full acceptance of earthly life, but that the ordinary man only rejects it because it is too difficult: in other words, that the average human being is a failed saint. It is doubtful whether this is true. Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for “non-attachment” is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work. But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is “higher”. The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all “radicals” and “progressives”, from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.

However, Gandhi's pacifism can be separated to some extent from his other teachings. Its motive was religious, but he claimed also for it that it was a definitive technique, a method, capable of producing desired political results. Gandhi's attitude was not that of most Western pacifists. Satyagraha, first evolved in South Africa, was a sort of non-violent warfare, a way of defeating the enemy without hurting him and without feeling or arousing hatred. It entailed such things as civil disobedience, strikes, lying down in front of railway trains, enduring police charges without running away and without hitting back, and the like. Gandhi objected to “passive resistance” as a translation of Satyagraha: in Gujarati, it seems, the word means “firmness in the truth”. In his early days Gandhi served as a stretcher-bearer on the British side in the Boer War, and he was prepared to do the same again in the war of 1914-18. Even after he had completely abjured violence he was honest enough to see that in war it is usually necessary to take sides. He did not — indeed, since his whole political life centred round a struggle for national independence, he could not — take the sterile and dishonest line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins. Nor did he, like most Western pacifists, specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: “What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?” I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the “you're another” type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer's Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence.” After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.

At the same time there is reason to think that Gandhi, who after all was born in 1869, did not understand the nature of totalitarianism and saw everything in terms of his own struggle against the British government. The important point here is not so much that the British treated him forbearingly as that he was always able to command publicity. As can be seen from the phrase quoted above, he believed in “arousing the world”, which is only possible if the world gets a chance to hear what you are doing. It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? The Russian masses could only practise civil disobedience if the same idea happened to occur to all of them simultaneously, and even then, to judge by the history of the Ukraine famine, it would make no difference. But let it be granted that non-violent resistance can be effective against one's own government, or against an occupying power: even so, how does one put it into practise internationally? Gandhi's various conflicting statements on the late war seem to show that he felt the difficulty of this. Applied to foreign politics, pacifism either stops being pacifist or becomes appeasement. Moreover the assumption, which served Gandhi so well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings are more or less approachable and will respond to a generous gesture, needs to be seriously questioned. It is not necessarily true, for example, when you are dealing with lunatics. Then the question becomes: Who is sane? Was Hitler sane? And is it not possible for one whole culture to be insane by the standards of another? And, so far as one can gauge the feelings of whole nations, is there any apparent connection between a generous deed and a friendly response? Is gratitude a factor in international politics?

These and kindred questions need discussion, and need it urgently, in the few years left to us before somebody presses the button and the rockets begin to fly. It seems doubtful whether civilization can stand another major war, and it is at least thinkable that the way out lies through non-violence. It is Gandhi's virtue that he would have been ready to give honest consideration to the kind of question that I have raised above; and, indeed, he probably did discuss most of these questions somewhere or other in his innumerable newspaper articles. One feels of him that there was much he did not understand, but not that there was anything that he was frightened of saying or thinking. I have never been able to feel much liking for Gandhi, but I do not feel sure that as a political thinker he was wrong in the main, nor do I believe that his life was a failure. It is curious that when he was assassinated, many of his warmest admirers exclaimed sorrowfully that he had lived just long enough to see his life work in ruins, because India was engaged in a civil war which had always been foreseen as one of the byproducts of the transfer of power. But it was not in trying to smooth down Hindu-Moslem rivalry that Gandhi had spent his life. His main political objective, the peaceful ending of British rule, had after all been attained. As usual the relevant facts cut across one another. On the other hand, the British did get out of India without fighting, and event which very few observers indeed would have predicted until about a year before it happened. On the other hand, this was done by a Labour government, and it is certain that a Conservative government, especially a government headed by Churchill, would have acted differently. But if, by 1945, there had grown up in Britain a large body of opinion sympathetic to Indian independence, how far was this due to Gandhi's personal influence? And if, as may happen, India and Britain finally settle down into a decent and friendly relationship, will this be partly because Gandhi, by keeping up his struggle obstinately and without hatred, disinfected the political air? That one even thinks of asking such questions indicates his stature. One may feel, as I do, a sort of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood made on his behalf (he never made any such claim himself, by the way), one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi's basic aims were anti-human and reactionary: but regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!

1949

THE END

____BD____

George Orwell: ‘Reflections on Gandhi’

First published: Partisan Review. — GB, London. — January 1949.

Reprinted:

— ‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’. — 1950.

— ‘The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage’ — 1956.

— ‘Collected Essays’. — 1961.

— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.
____

Machine-readable version: O. Dag

Last modified on: 2013-08-30

George Orwell

‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’

© 1950 Secker and Warburg. London.

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