Rethinking Gandhi

Gandhi

I have made reference to Gandhi in scattered posts on this blog. Now comes another article from the redoubtable Sanjeev Nayyar on Gandhi, Christianity, and Ahimsa. In this article, Sanjeev cites Sri Aurobindo, who was critical of Gandhi throughout his life:
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“Some prominent national workers in India seem to me to be incarnations of some European force here. They may not be incarnations, but they may be strongly influenced by European thought. For instance Gandhi is a European-truly, a Russian Christian in an Indian body. And there are some Indians in European bodies!

Yes. When the Europeans say that he is more Christian than many Christians (some even say that he is “Christ of the modern times”) they are perfectly right. All his preaching is derived from Christianity, and though the garb is Indian the essential spirit is Christian. He may not be Christ, but at any rate he comes in continuation of the same impulsion. He is largely influenced by Tolstoy, the Bible, and has a strong Jain tinge in his teachings; at any rate more than by the Indian scriptures-the Upanishads or the Gita, which he interprets in the light of his own ideas.”
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Indeed, Gandhi's interpretation of the Gita is fanciful: he does not accept the need to take up arms against the forces of adharma.

Neo-Neocon is a blogger whose worldview changed after 9/11: she formerly was a liberal; after 9/11, she became, well, a "neo-neocon." In her article The varieties of pacifism: (Part I)–Gandhi’s absolutism, Neo-Neocon looks at Gandhi's extreme form of pacifism, in which he advocated collective suicide on the part of Jews in Nazi Germany and on the part of Sikhs and Hindus about to face massacres in Pakistan.

After hearing yet another hagiographic portrayal of Gandhi by a minister in a New Thought church, I told the minister that I disagreed with the portrayal as she greeted me in the receiving line following the service. She was nonplussed. I then forwarded Neo-Neocon's essay, with an apology for using that time and place to state my disagreement, to her by email. I never received a reply.

But then I'm a bit of a sh**-stirrer: certainly, I PO'ed Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekharan with my criticism about his reporting about Godhra.

On ahimsa

Hinduism is often believed to be synonymous with ahimsa (अहिंसा); in fact, this article on Ahimsa from Wikipedia says it's at the core of Hinduism and cites the influence of the Bhagavad-Gita (भागवद् गीता) on Gandhi.

Michael Danino notes in his article The Gita in Today's World that:

To the West, there is either brute force or pacifism, either violence or non-violence ; to the Gita the truth is neither one nor the other, but the conscious use of force to protect dharma.

I would argue, however, that this duality is not (or perhaps no longer) exclusive to the West.

Danino concludes with this statement from Sri Aurobindo:

We will use only soul-force and never destroy by war or any even defensive employment of physical violence? Good, though until soul-force is effective, the Asuric force [from Asura असुर, or power-hungry being] in men and nations tramples down, breaks, slaughters, burns, pollutes, as we see it doing today, but then at its ease and unhindered, and you have perhaps caused as much destruction of life by your abstinence as others by resort to violence.