by Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, D.Min., Ph.D.
(This public lecture was delievered at St. Mary’s Seminary and
University, Baltimore, Maryland on February 10, 2012)
Mohandas K. Gandhi was one of the few pesons in modern history to lead inthe struggle for human progress simultaneously on moral, religious, political and cultural fronts. His life and praxis of non-violence impacted many persons in india and across the world in the promotion of peace and love with jsutice, and continues to impact persons and institutions today. With the ongoing
proliferation of violence, war, local and global conflict, and geopolitical
discord, Gandhi’s philosophy and praxis could be helpful in the discovery of non-violent
approaches to conflict resolution and transformation in the 21st
century.
Huston Smith, in The World’s Religions offers that “the
face of Hinduism for the West is Mohandas Gandhi.” According to Smith, “Most responsible for
awakening the West to (the realities of the East and the beauty of Hinduism)
was a little man who weighed not much more than a hundred pounds and whose
possessions when he died totaled two dollars.[1] If his picture were to appear on this page it
would be recognized immediately. How
many other portraits would be recognized universally? Someone ventured a few years ago that there
were only three: those of Charlie Chaplin, Mickey Mouse, and Mahatma Gandhi –
“whose essence of being is great” as the title “mahatma” would be literally
translated.
The achievement
for which the world credited Gandhi was the British withdrawal from India in
peace. What is not as well-known is that
among his own people, he lowered a barrier much more formidable than that of British
colonialism in India, racism in the United States or Apartheid in South Africa,
renaming and redefining “untouchables” in India as “harijan”, God’s Children,
and raising them to human status.
Mohoandas Gandhi was born in India in 1869 into the Vaishya caste (merchants, famers and craftspeople. His father, however was involved in law and politics. His mother was a very religious person. A devout Hindu, she engaged in self-discipline, purification and other religious observances. Gandhi's India was dominated by British colonialism. In his hometown of Rajkot, he experienced early segregation. The British reserved for themselves the best part of town; Indians were restricted to the slums. At school, he was taughtin english, under the assumption that everything indian was inferrior. Gandhi disliked this arrangement. He felt that Indians needed the pride of language, custom and dhistory. With his pride of self and people, Gandhi studied both Sanskrit and Persian.
When he decied to go to England to study law, Gandhi confronted the stark reality of the caste
system. This led him to declare war on the strictures and harshness of the caste system, and this
conviction remainded with him for the rest of his life.
In England
The Development of
Satyagraha
Faith was the
center of life for Gandhi. He believed
in God, and in truth. “What I want to
achieve, what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years,”
he wrote in his autobiography, “is self-realization, to see God face to
face. I live and move and have my being
in pursuit of this goal. All that I do
by way of speaking and writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are
directed to the same end.” Gandhi saw
the face of God in the poorest peasant and in the struggle of nonviolent
resistance and love in the public realm.
He sought to uncover truth at every turn and found that justice and
nonviolence sprang from the journey in truth.
“You may be sent to the gallows, or put to torture, but if you have
truth in you, you will experience an inner joy.” Truth, for Gandhi, was the essence of life.[4]
As someone whose
entire adult life was consumed with fighting against such injustices as racial
discrimination in South Africa, British rule in India, and ugly social
practices in his own society, Gandhi sought to develop an approach of how moral
persons could and should act in such struggles.
He found both the methods of rational discussion and violence – the
traditional methods which appealed to people in addressing injustice – as
unsatisfactory to various degrees, and thus sought to discover an alternative
and more powerful method.
Gandhi was
particularly disturbed by the ease with which violence had been rationalized
and used throughout history. He
appreciated that violence was born out of frustration, and many who used it
resorted to it only because they saw no other way to fight entrenched
injustices, and that much of the blame for its use had to be laid at the doorsteps
of a morally blind and narrow-minded dominant group.
Gandhi opposed
violence on both ontological and moral grounds.
From an ontological perspective, violence denied the fact that all human
beings had souls, and that they were capable of appreciating and pursuing
good. Furthermore, in order to be
justified in taking the extreme step of harming or killing someone, one had to
assume that one was absolutely right, and the opponent totally wrong, and that
violence would definitely achieve the desired result.
On moral grounds,
every successful act of violence encouraged the belief that it was the only
effective way to achieve the desired goal, and developed the habit of turning
to violence every time one ran into opposition.
Society thus turned to violence, and it never felt compelled to explore
an alternative. Violence also tended to
generate an inflationary spiral. Every
successful use of violence blunted the community’s moral sensibility and raised
its threshold of violence, so that over time, an increasingly larger amount of
violence became necessary to achieve the same results. In Gandhi’s view the facts that almost every
revolution in history has led to terror, devoured its children, and failed to
create a better society were proof that the traditional theory of revolution
was fatally flawed.
Gandhi concluded
that since the two methods (rational discussion and violence) of fighting
against injustice were inadequate and deeply flawed, a third method was necessary. It should activate the soul, mobilize
individuals’ latent moral energies, appeal to both the head and heart, and
create a climate conducive to peaceful resolution of conflict conducted in a
spirit of mutual good will.
The formative ideas
of Gandhi’s philosophy began to take shape in the years he worked to better the
social and economic conditions of Indians in South Africa. Gandhi spent 20 years of his life in South Africa
The barrister trained in London South Africa Johannesburg Pretoria Johannesburg Pretoria India
Mohandas
Gandhi explained his anxiety. The
African American said, “I have an American friend, Mr. Johnston, who has a
hotel in Pretoria
Rajmohan Gandhi
points out that it remains an interesting fact of history that the man who
enabled Gandhi to have a roof and a bed in Pretoria
In 1907, Mohandas Gandhi, who was still in
South Africa, again read Henry David Thoreau.
In seeking to conceptualize his philosophy, Gandhi borrowed the
anglicized term “civil disobedience” from Thoreau, which was more often
referred to as “passive resistance.” But
Gandhi was not satisfied with either.
Both were too narrowly conceived; they appeared to be negative, passive,
and weak. They could easily denigrate
into hatred and would likely opt, finally, for violence. Thus, civil disobedience and passive
resistance became obsolete for Gandhi.
In a magazine
called Indian Opinion, which he
edited for a time in South
Africa
“I thus began,”
Gandhi says, “to call the Indian movement Satyagraha,
that is to say the Force that is born in truth and love, or non-violence,”
and gave up the use of the phrase “passive resistance.” On other occasions, Gandhi called it
"Soul Force,” or “Love Force,” or “Truth Force.” Sat in
Satyagraha means “being,” “that which
is,” “truth.” For Gandhi, Sat was “the only correct and fully
significant name for God.[11]
The conception of
Satyagraha became fundamental to
Gandhi’s life and activity.[12] It is “truth-taking” or “the taking of vows
of truthfulness.” Its root and meaning
is “holding on to truth” and, by extension, resistance to evil by nonviolent
means. This “truth force” is possible
because it excludes the use of violence, because humans are capable of grasping
the truth (but not in an absolute sense) and are not competent to punish. Theologically, truth in an absolute sense is
God or Ultimate Being.
A concept that was
closely related to Satyagraha and
used by Gandhi in the discussion of the meaning of nonviolent action was the
principle of ahimsa
(non-injury). This term is borrowed from
the Jains. Jainism, founded by Mahavira,
is one of the oldest personally founded religions in India
For
Gandhi, ahimsa was the basic law of
being. It can be used as the most
effective principle for social action since it is ingrained deeply in human
nature and corresponds to humanity’s innate desire for peace, justice, freedom
and personal dignity. Himas (violence or injury) is just the
opposite – it degrades, corrupts and destroys.
It feeds on the tendency to meet force with force, hatred with
hatred. This plan of action leads to
progressive denigration. Nonviolence, on
the other hand, heals and restores humanity’s best nature, while providing the
best means of restoring a social order of justice and freedom. Ahimsa is
not preoccupied with the seizure of power as an end in itself; it is a way of
transforming relationships in order to bring about a peaceful transfer of
power.[14]
Gandhi’s
conception of non-violence - Satyagraha -
began with the spiritual disciplines of prayer, solitude, and fasting. By avoiding power in all its forms of
violence and control, and by renouncing the desire for immediate results,
Gandhi discovered that one could be reduced to zero. From this ground zero of emptiness, the
compassionate love of God - nonviolence – could grow. At this point, Gandhi wrote, the individual
becomes “irresistible” and one’s nonviolence becomes “all-pervasive.” [15] Nonviolence, the power of the powerless,
Gandhi believed, is the power of God, the power of truth and love that goes
beyond the physical world into the realm of the spiritual. This power can overcome death, as God
revealed through the nonviolence of Jesus, his crucifixion, and subsequent
resurrection in the resisting community.[16]
Gandhi’s
experiments in Truth revealed that the mandate of the Sermon on the Mount – to
love one’s enemies – is of critical importance.
In all of Gandhi’s public uses of nonviolence, he always manifested a
desire for reconciliation, friendship with his opponent.
Gandhi was not
only interested in ousting the British from control of the Indian continent; he
wanted to end the ancient and oppressive caste system among his own people. He
always tried to stand with the outcasts of society and to speak up for the
rights of the marginalized. In India
The ancient Hindu Laws of Manu required devotees to live
according to a stratified caste system, one that persists in India today,
despite efforts by Gandhi and his followers to reform it. “For the sake of the preservation of this
entire creation,” we are told, Brahman,
the Supreme Being, “assigned separate duties to the classes which had sprung
from his mouth, arms, thighs, and feet.”[18] Humans who are born as brahmans have the duty of “teaching, studying, performing
sacrificial rites,” making others perform such rites, “and giving away and
receiving gifts.” The code lists the
other three castes: The kshatriya who are warriors, political
leaders and vassals; the vaishya who
are farmers and merchants, and the shudra,
who are servants of the other three classes.
Mary Pat Fisher explains that the lowly outcasts (a fifth group not
mentioned in the excerpt of the Law of
Manu) were “untouchables.” Despite
their low status, the code required charitable giving which “provided a safety
net for those at the bottom of this hierarchical system.”[19] This is the group that Gandhi preferred to
call the “harijan” or ‘children of
God.”
For Gandhi, Satygraha essentially aimed to penetrate
the barriers of prejudice, ill-will, dogmatism, self-righteousness, and
selfishness, and to reach out to and activate the soul of the opponent. However degenerate, dogmatic or violent an
individual might be, according to the Satyagrahi, he had a soul, and hence the
capacity to feel for other human beings and, on some level, acknowledge their
common humanity. Satyagraha was in
essence, “surgery of the soul,” a way of activating “soul force” for Gandhi,
“suffering love” was the best way to accomplish this. As he put it:
I have come to
this fundamental conclusion that if you want something really important to be
done, you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart
also. The appeal of reason is more to
the head, but the penetration of the heart comes from suffering. It opens up the inner understanding in
man. Suffering is the badge of the human
race, not the sword.
Gandhi explained
the effectiveness of Satyagraha in terms of the spiritual impact of suffering
love. The Satyagrahi’s love of his
opponent served to disarm the opponent, defused his feelings of anger and
hatred, and mobilized his higher nature.
And his uncomplaining suffering denied his opponent the pleasure of
victory.
Gandhi’s
philosophy was inevitably a philosophy for action. It was more than a philosophy for social
engagement; it was a philosophy for social transformation. He stated that “A nonviolent revolution is
not a program of seizure of power. It is
a program of transformation of relationships, ending in peaceful transfer of
power.”
He came to believe
that every person was of equal value, and that oppressed people should struggle
for their equality. According to Gandhi,
they must fight peacefully and they must not hurt others while doing so. He strongly believed that unjust laws should
not be obeyed, but that people should not be violent in their attempt to change
the law.
Satyagraha and the Christian Love-ethic
Mohandas Gandhi
provided a deep reservoir of ideas from which many peacemakers of the twentieth
century drew and from which those of the 21st century might draw, as
well. For instance, Howard Thurman,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others may have been better equipped with the
most rigorous understanding of nonviolent principles due to their exposure to
the thought and praxis of Gandhi. Their
respective exposure served to codify their thinking with regard to nonviolence,
while also serving as an impetus for their ongoing search of peaceful
community.
Many
African-American leaders had gone to India beginning in the 1930s to seek
Gandhi’s advice and to study his non-violent method. Gandhi was so impressed with their commitment
that he remarked that “it may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated
message of non-violence will be delivered to the world,” The American
civil rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s confirmed Gandhi’s hope. Embarking on “a serious intellectual quest
for a method to eliminate social evil,” Martin Luther King, Jr. had turned to a
number of writers including Karl Marx, and found them unhelpful. An address by Mordecai Johnson, then the
President of Howard University, alerted King to the importance of Gandhi’s
teachings and the potential value of Satyagraha.
In the Montgomery
protests King saw the connection with Gandhi’s nonviolence. “I had come to see early that the Christian
doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence was one
of the most potent weapons available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom.”[20] King said that a white woman who sympathized
with the protest movement wrote a letter to the editor that was published in
the Montgomery Advertiser comparing
the bus protest with Gandhi’s movement in India India
Gandhi’s concept
of Satyagraha, or truth-force, was
understood almost immediately as “love-force” by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the
apex of the American Civil Rights movement.
King saw a direct connection between Truth and Love, and like Gandhi,
essentially equated the two. He saw in
Gandhi the means by which the love-ethic in the teachings of Jesus – especially
in the Sermon on the Mount - could become effective for social transformation. King also saw that it was not necessary to
limit the Christian love-ethic to individual relationships; the love-ethic
could be applied to conflicts between races, cultures, tribes and nations.
It was in Gandhi’s
philosophy that King found a morally and practically sound method open to
oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. In a very clear way, King stated his
discovery: “Gandhi gave me the Method and Jesus gave me the Message.”
As I read I became fascinated by
(Gandhi’s) campaigns of nonviolent resistance…. The whole concept of
Satyagraha...was profoundly significant to me.
As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism
concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the
first time its potency in the area of social reform. Prior to reading Gandhi, I had about
concluded that the ethics of Jesus were only effective in individual
relationships…. But after reading Gandhi, I saw how utterly mistaken I
was.
Gandhi was probably the first
person in history to lift the love-ethic of Jesus above a mere interaction
between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a larger
scale. Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument
for social and collective transformation.
It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I
discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many
months. The intellectual and moral
satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill,
the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contracts theory of
Hobbes, the “back to nature” optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy
of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally
and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for
freedom. [22]
In his reflections
on the significance of Gandhi within the context of Christianity, King wrote:
It is ironic, yet inescapably true
that the greatest Christian of the modern world was a man who never embraced
Christianity… I believe that in some marvelous way, God worked through Gandhi,
and the spirit of Jesus Christ saturated his life. [23]
King felt that
Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love-ethic of Jesus
Christ to a place where it could become an effective instrument for collective
transformation. Thus, the method of
social reform, which had eluded King and others in the quest for racial justice
in America
Howard Thurman was
another leading American Christian religious figure who was attracted to the
thinking and praxis of Mohandas Gandhi.
Thurman was extremely impressed with Gandhi’s ideas on the power of
nonviolence as a method which positively responds to the spiritual needs of
humanity, while at the same time accomplishing the necessary political
transformation of the social order.[24] Certainly, Gandhi’s success in India
In 1936, Howard
Thurman and his wife, Sue Bailey Thurman, along with Rev. and Ms. Edward Carroll
journeyed to India to visit with Gandhi.
On that visit, Thurman asked Gandhi to define nonviolence. Gandhi said he hoped it would be love in the
Pauline sense, love as spelled out in the letter to the Corinthians, plus the
struggle for justice. Gandhi asked his
American visitors if they would sing a Negro spiritual for him. Gandhi was greatly moved as Mrs. Thurman sang
two Negro spirituals: “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord” and “We Are
Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” [25]
After he had heard
the spirituals, Gandhi said to the four: “Well if it comes true it may be
through the Negroes (in America
The end result of the
conversation was that Thurman felt assured that nonviolence, as expressed in
Gandhian principles, could transform whatever difficulties it confronted. The techniques might have to be refined,
individuals would need to go through radical preparation to be faithful
disciples of the method, large numbers of people might suffer and die, but the
moral and spiritual imperatives for nonviolence would prevail over experiences
of violence.[27]
In formulating his response to Gandhi’s
critique of Christianity, Thurman began to integrate Gandhian principles of unity
and nonviolent social change into his own Christian pacifism and mysticism.[28] Thurman returned to the United States with
“an enhanced interpretation of the meaning of nonviolence.”[29] From Gandhi, “a man who (was) rooted in the
basic mysticism of the [Hindu] Brahma,” he learned the life-affirming concepts
of ahimsa and Satyagraha. Thurman found in
Gandhi a kindred mind and spirit who refused to think in terms of a
disconnected Truth, God, or Ultimate reality but focused his attention on that
which was pre-eminently practical and spiritual.[30]
The Power of Love: Towards a Framework of Non-violence in the 21st
Century
In the final
analysis, Mohandas Gandhi’s thought and praxis offers insight for the
contemporary society with regard to appropriating a love-ethic and practicing
non-violence - in at least three principle areas: Imperative, Inspiration, and Integration.
Imperative
Mohandas Gandhi
spoke to the divine and moral imperative – the calling - that persons share in
seeking to eradicate racial hatred and social disintegration, and advanced the
appropriation of the love-ethic as foundational for constructively moving
toward the realization of authentic community.
Gandhi asserted that the divine intent is for the human family to live
in community as interrelated members. .
As an Indian and
Hindu who was conversant in various religious traditions – including
Christianity - Gandhi possessed a perspective on the imperative of nonviolence
that had been forged on the anvil of societal oppression in various contexts. In light of this, he consistently affirmed
that all humankind was bound together through a common creative Force (Truth,
Love, Soul)). Hence, the fundamental
tenets of love, forgiveness, and Satyagraha would become the spiritual means of
addressing extant forms of oppression.
In a world that is still plagued with brokenness, separation, suspicion,
and deadly conflicts along racial, tribal, and ethnic lines, it remains the
urgent calling of all persons to affirm that God has created all persons, and
that we are called to exist in peaceable and just community.
Given his affinity
with the Sermon on the Mount, it is clear that the Gandhi would affirm to some
degree, that the imitation of the unconditional love revealed in the life and
teachings of Jesus can be helpful in the quest for community. Moving toward a deeper sense of who we are as
individuals and community will enable us to live more shalom-filled lives,
modeled on the life of Christ. There is
the obligation to treat every person as Christ Himself, respecting her/his life
as if it were the life of Christ.
Inspiration
Throughout his life, Gandhi seemed
to sense, like Jesus and persons like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, that his teachings regarding justice, love, forgiveness, equality
and peace would require significant sacrifice and ultimately get him into
trouble. Yet, he remained faithful to
his mission, and sought to perpetually live the God-inspired message that he
had been given. Like Christ, Gandhi as a
“God intoxicated man” offered a paradigm of God-centered and God-inspired servant-leadership
to society. The effectiveness of Gandhi’s
witness is to be viewed in light of this constant striving for and connectedness
to Truth (God) and the practice of Satyagraha.
As has been shared, faith was the center of life for Gandhi. “What I want to achieve, what I have been
striving and pining to achieve these thirty years,” he wrote in his
autobiography, “is self-realization, to see God face to face. I live and move and have my being in pursuit
of this goal. All that I do by way of
speaking and writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are directed
to the same end.” Gandhi saw the face of
God in the poorest peasant and in the struggle of nonviolent resistance and
love in the public realm.
The development of authentic
community thus requires God-connectedness.
In light of this, Gandhi’s encouragement and ongoing legacy is that
given each person’s god-giftedness, each person would be inspired to “be change
that we want to see in the world.”
Integration
For Mohandas Gandhi, the promise
of authentic community through overcoming injustice and oppression was at the
heart of the human quest for a peaceful society. All human beings are daughters and sons of
God, and sisters and brothers to one another.
Society is to be an embodiment of unity within history. For this reason, society is to model and
strive toward unity, and peace with justice, with the knowledge that unity
among human beings is possible –and community is fully evident - only if there
is real justice for all.
Community - by its very nature -
is integrative. Authentic community includes persons of different races, sexes,
ages, religions, cultures, viewpoints, lifestyles, and stages of development -
and for Gandhi, class and caste - and serves to integrate them into a whole
that is greater – more actualized and dynamic – than the sum of its parts. Forms of disintegration and disunity are,
therefore, to be understood as antithetical to community, and to the will of
God.
Conclusion
In Mohandas
Gandhi’s writings, teachings and actions, Satyagraha,
and the related concept, ahimsa,
became manifest as techniques for action toward nonviolence, peacemaking and a
love-ethic that could lead toward social transformation. These constructs were not dogmatic; neither
were they static. They were rather,
dynamic and spiritual concepts, techniques and processes for action. Amidst violence, wars, terror and various
other forms of social disintegration that continue to afflict society today, Satyagraha and ahimsa can serve as means of helping humanity move toward higher
goals of the common good, nonviolence, and authentic community that beckon all
to become involved in the quest for human betterment and fulfillment.
[2] See
Thomas Merton, Gandhi on Nonviolence (New
York: New Directions, 1964). Merton offers details on the life of Mohandas
Gandhi.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
John Dear, “The Experiments of Gandhi: Nonviolence in the Nuclear Age,” Fellowship (New York: Fellowship of
Reconciliation, January/February, 1988).
[5] J. Deotis Roberts, “Gandhi and King: On Conflict Resolution,” in
Shalom Papers: A Journal of Theology and
Public Policy, ed. Victoria J. Barnett
(Washington, DC: Church’s Center for Theology and Public Policy, Vol. 11, No. 2, Spring 2000), 36.
[6]
Rajmohan Gandhi, “Gandhi’s Unfulfilled Legacy: Prospects for Reconciliation in
Racial/Ethnic Conflict,” (1995 Cynthia Wedel Lecture, Church’s Center for
Theology and Public Policy, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC, April
27, 1995). In this lecture, Rajmohan
Gandhi offers a view of Mohandas Gandhi’s life and unfinished legacy from the
perspective of a contemporary Indian scholar.
[7]
Ibid.
[8]
Ibid.
[9]
Ibid.
[10]
William H. Shannon, Seeds of Peace:
Contemplation and Nonviolence (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1996), 154.
[11]
Ibid., 153.
[12] See
Merton, Gandhi on Nonviolence, for
details on Gandhi’s development of the conceptualization of Satyagraha.
[13]
Roberts, 37.
[14]
Ibid.
[15] See
Dear, “The Experiments of Gandhi.”
[16]
Ibid.
[17]
Ibid.
[18] All
quotations from the Laws of Manu are from Mary Pat Fisher and Lee W. Bailey, An Anthology of Living Religions (Upper
Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000), 70.
[19]
Ibid, 97.
[20]
Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward
Freedom: The Montgomery Story (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010) 71.
[21]
Ibid.
[22] King, “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” see James
Melvin Washington, ed. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings
and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Harper Collins, 1986),
35.
[23] See Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York:
Harper & Row, 1958), 85-97.
[25] Roberts,
32.
[26]
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace
and War, Vol. 1 (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1942), 124.
[27]
Ibid, 105-106.
[28]
Walter E. Fluker and Catherine Tumber, eds., A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman (Boston Beacon Books,
1998), 7.
[29]
Alton B. Pollard, III., Mysticism and
Social Change: The Social Witness of Howard Thurman (New York: Lang, 1992), 37.
[30]
Ibid.
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