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October
3, 2001
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What
Gandhi would have told the US: war won’t ensure safety
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Repeal
evil with good
ON
September 13, 1931, two days before Gandhi arrived in England, the
Columbia Broadcasting System arranged for him to deliver a radio
address to the American people. Gandhi approached the microphone
with curiosity and asked, ‘‘Do I have to speak into that thing?’’
He was already on the air and these were the first words his listeners
on the other side of the Atlantic heard. Three minutes before his
time was to be up, a note was passed to him saying that his voice
would be cut off in New York in three minutes. Unruffled, he began
to bring his impromptu speech to a conclusion. After the engineer
signalled him to stop, he commented, ‘‘Well, that’s over.’’ These
words, too, were carried across the Atlantic.
What
would the Mahatma have said or done had he been alive to witness
the attack on the WTC and its aftermath? For one, this apostle of
non-violence would have deplored the perpetrators of violence, as
he so often did in his own country. He expressed no sympathy for
the revolutionaries — ie, terrorists in colonial vocabulary. Instead,
he asked them to desist from the path of violence: ‘‘If you must
kill English officials, why not kill me instead?’’
For Gandhi, non-violence consisted in refraining from exercising
the power to hit back and was a virtue of the brave. Those lacking
in courage and bravery could be no more non-violent than a mouse
in its relation to the cat. He would have, therefore, appealed to
the American people to eschew the path of retribution. What good
does it serve to target people of Middle Eastern and South Asian
descent under pressure to track down suspects in the terrorist attack?
What good does it serve to direct the American ire against the Palestinians,
the Afghans, the Iranians and the Iraqis — all having suffered long
enough at the hands of the US and its allies. ‘‘Please don’t prolong
their agony. Please don’t punish them all for the mistakes of a
few. Enough is enough,’’ he would have said to George W. Bush.
Who
knows, Gandhi may have added in his low voice that the intention
of the otherwise dreaded terrorists in US was ‘‘to make the deaf
hear’’ (a statement attributed to Bhagat Singh and B.K. Datt). He
may have repeated his 1940 speech in which asked about the practice
of democracy in America, he replied: ‘‘My notion of democracy is
that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the
strongest. That can never happen except through non-violence. No
country in the world today shows any but patronising regard for
the weak. The weakest, you say, go to the wall. Take your own case.
Your land is owned by a few capitalist owners. These large holdings
cannot be sustained except by violence, veiled if not open. Your
wars will never ensure safetety. He did not believe, a point
detailed by the social philosopher Bhikhu Parekh, that non-violence
had taken deep root among the Indian people, as otherwise they would
have shown compassion in their treatment of the poor, the lower
castes and the untouchables. Major Hindu scriptures sanctioned violence;
so did some thinkers. Shankaracharya, for example, used unspeakable
cruelty in banishing Buddhism out of India.
Gandhi’s
method of dealing with individual and collective violence varied
from time to time. After violence broke out in Chauri Chaura (1922),
he cald off civil disobedience. In September 1947, he went on
a fast unto death in Calcutta to make the people ‘‘purge themselves
of the communal violence’’. In Noakhali, Bihar, he put to test his
Ahimsa by providing the healing touch to the victims of Hindu-Muslim
riots. On January 13, he began his fast in Delhi ‘‘to find peace
in the midst of turmoil, light in the midst of darkness, hope in
despair.’’ The inner peace was shattered as soon as the fast ended.
‘‘From calm, I have entered storm,’’ he told a friend after the
Delhi fast.
One
earnestly hopes that the American people, traumatised by the September
11 tragedy, will begin their quest for world-wide peace by choosing
a different path from the one they have chosen since the dropping
of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Americans have the
right to protect their way of life from external aggression, but
they must respect the Indian, Chinese and Mexican way of life as
well. The US administration has drawn up a list of ‘‘rogue states’’,
but does that include Israel? If not, why not? ‘‘Barq girti hai
to bechare Mussalmanon par’’, (Lightning strikes, always, the beleaguered
Muslims) said the Urdu poet Mohammad Iqbal long ago. The US government
backs the freedom struggle in Chechnya, but not in Palestine. Why?
The US champions freedom and democracy everywhere except in Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Gulf States. Why? Is it to ensure
the flow of oil or to protect the American way of life?
If
Gandhi were alive, he would have certainly raised such questions
not on the Columbia Broadcasting System but on our own TV network.
He may have performed on popular Indian TV programmes, airing the
anxieties of weak nations. At the same time he would have chided
their autocratic and feudal governments, expressed concern at the
spread of Islamist ideas, and warned against their imposition, such
as the enforcement of purdah in parts of Kashmir. Gandhi’s own respectful
responses to Islam were not a matter of political pragmatism, but
far beyond — to a philosophical understanding of the very essence
of Islam. He approvingly quoted the Koranic line — ‘‘Repeal evil
with that which is best’’ — to underline the value of personal and
political morality.
He
would have urged the regressive Taliban regime — guilty of many
excesses in the past — to pay heed to the Koranic values and eschew
the rhetoric of jehad. He would have asked the Pakistan-aided militants
in Kashmir’s mountainous passes to pack their bags and let India
and Pakistan resolve their disputes amicably. Hopefully, no Nathuram
Godse would have sprung from somewhere to silence his voice.
Gandhi
once told a correspondent why he had stopped talking of aspiring
to attain the age of 125: ‘‘I have lost the hope because of the
terrible happenings in the world. I don’t want to live in darkness.’’
One hopes that the war clouds will disperse and the sane voices
of restraint and moderation will be heard across the globe. Maybe
then, we, Indians, Afghans, Arabs, Pakistanis and Americans, can
aspire to live for another 125 years.
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