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對甘地的反思
和許可複製 。
聖徒們應該一直被判有罪，直到他們被證明無罪，但對他們的檢驗當然不是在所有情況下都是一樣的。就 而言，人們傾向於提出這樣的問題：甘地在多大程度上受到虛榮心的驅使——他意識到自己是一個謙卑、赤裸的老人，坐在祈禱墊上，僅憑純粹的精神力量就能撼動帝國——他在多大程度上因為進入政治而放棄了自己的原則，而政治的本質與脅迫和欺詐密不可分？要給出一個明確的答案，就必須詳細研究甘地的行為和著作，因為他的一生就像一場朝聖之旅，其中的每一個行為都意義重大。但這本在二十世紀二十年代結束的部分自傳，卻為他提供了強有力的證據，更重要的是，它涵蓋了他所謂的生命中未曾重生的部分，並提醒人們，在這位聖人或近乎聖人的內心深處，有一個非常精明、能幹的人，如果他願意，他可以成為一名輝煌的律師、行政人員，甚至商人。
我記得大約在自傳[1]首次出版的時候， 我在某份印度報紙的印刷不良的頁面上讀到了它的開篇章節。他們給我留下了良好的印象，而當時的甘地本人卻沒有給我留下好印象。人們與他聯繫在一起的事物——家紡布、「靈魂力量」和素食主義——都沒有吸引力，而他的中世紀主義計劃在一個落後、飢餓、人口過剩的國家顯然是不可行的。顯然，英國人正在利用他，或認為他們在利用他。嚴格來說，作為民族主義者，他是一名敵人，但由於在每次危機中他都會盡力阻止暴力——從英國人的角度來看，這意味著阻止任何有效的行動——他可以被視為「我們的人」。私下里，人們有時會憤世嫉俗地承認這一點。印度百萬富翁的態度也類似。甘地呼籲他們悔改，自然，他們更喜歡甘地，而不是社會主義者和共產黨人，因為如果有機會，後者實際上會把他們的錢拿走。從長遠來看，這種計算的可靠性令人懷疑；正如甘地自己所說，「到最後，騙子只能欺騙自己」；但無論如何，人們幾乎總是溫柔地對待他，部分原因是人們覺得他很有用。直到 1942 年，當他實際上將自己的非暴力立場轉向另一個征服者時，英國保守黨才真正對他感到憤怒。
但即使在那時，我也可以看出，那些帶著好笑和不滿談論他的英國官員在某種程度上也真心喜歡和欽佩他。從來沒有人說過他腐敗，或有任何粗俗的野心，或他所做的一切都是出於恐懼或惡意。在評判像甘地這樣的人時，人們似乎本能地採用高標準，因此他的一些美德幾乎沒有被注意到。例如，即使從自傳中也可以清楚地看出，他天生具有非凡的勇氣：他的死法後來證明了這一點，因為對於一個重視自己性命的公眾人物來說，他會受到更充分的保護。再者，他似乎完全擺脫了那種瘋狂的多疑，正如 中正確指出的那樣，多疑是印度人的惡習，就像虛偽是英國人的惡習一樣。儘管毫無疑問他在察覺不誠實方面足夠敏銳，但他似乎盡可能地相信其他人是真誠行事，並且具有可以通過其接近的更好的本性。儘管他出身於一個貧窮的中產階級家庭，生活起步並不順利，而且長相也不出眾，但他並沒有感到嫉妒或自卑。當他在南非第一次見到這種顏色時，其顏色狀態最差，讓他相當驚訝。即使在他進行實際上是一場膚色戰爭時，他也沒有從種族或地位的角度來考慮人們。一個省的省長、一個棉花百萬富翁、一個半飢餓的達羅毗荼苦力、一個英國士兵，都是同樣的人，應該用同樣的方式對待。值得注意的是，即使在最糟糕的情況下，例如在南非，當他作為印度社區的捍衛者而不受人歡迎時，他並不缺少歐洲朋友。
這本自傳篇幅較短，適合在報紙上連載，不算是文學傑作，但由於其大部分內容都很平常，因此更令人印象深刻。值得記住的是，甘地最初是一個有著正常印度學生抱負的年輕學生，他只是逐漸地、在某些情況下是相當不情願地接受了他的極端主義觀點。有趣的是，曾經有一段時間，他戴著高頂禮帽，上舞蹈課，學習法語和拉丁語，登上艾菲爾鐵塔，甚至嘗試學習小提琴——所有這一切都是為了盡可能徹底地吸收歐洲文明。他不是那種從小就表現出非凡虔誠的聖人，也不是那種在經歷了轟動一時的放蕩之後就拋棄塵世的聖人。他坦白了自己年輕時所犯下的罪行，但實際上並沒有太多可坦白的。這本書的扉頁上有一張甘地去世時遺物的照片。整套服裝的售價約為 5 英鎊，如果把甘地的罪孽（至少是他肉體的罪孽）堆放在一起，就會呈現出同樣的效果。幾支香菸、幾口肉、童年時從女僕那裡偷來的幾個安那、兩次去妓院（每次他都沒有「做任何事」）、一次在普利茅斯與女房東的驚險失控、一次脾氣暴躁——這就是全部內容。幾乎從童年開始，他就具有一種深深的熱情，一種道德而非宗教的態度，但是，直到三十歲左右，他都沒有非常明確的方向感。他第一次進入公眾生活是透過素食主義。在他不那麼平凡的品質之下，人們總能感覺到他的祖先是堅實的中產階級商人。人們覺得，即使在他放棄個人野心之後，他仍然必定是一位足智多謀、精力充沛的律師和一位頭腦冷靜的政治組織者，謹慎地控制開支，熟練地處理委員會事務，並不知疲倦地追逐訂閱。他的性格極其複雜，但幾乎沒有什麼可以指出是壞的，我相信，即使是甘地最大的敵人也會承認他是一個有趣而又不尋常的人，他僅僅因為活著就豐富了世界。我一直都不確定他是否也是個可愛的人，他的教義是否能對那些不接受其宗教信仰的人產生很大影響。
近年來，談論甘地已成為一種時尚，彷彿他不僅同情西方左翼運動，而且是其中不可或缺的一部分。無政府主義者和和平主義者特別將他視為自己的信徒，他們只注意到他反對中央集權和國家暴力，而忽視了他的學說中超凡脫俗、反人文主義的傾向。但我認為，人們應該認識到，甘地的教義與「人是萬物的尺度」這一信念是不相符的，我們的任務是讓生命在這個地球上，也就是我們唯一的地球，變得有價值。只有假設上帝存在，而固體物體的世界是一個需要逃避的幻覺，它們才有意義。值得考慮的是甘地對自己施加的紀律，儘管他可能不會堅持要求他的每個追隨者遵守每一個細節，但他認為如果一個人想服務上帝或人類，這些紀律是必不可少的。首先，不吃肉，如果可能的話，不吃任何形式的動物性食品。 （甘地本人為了健康，不得不在牛奶上妥協，但似乎覺得這是一種倒退。）不喝酒、不抽煙，也不吃香料或調味品，即使是植物性的，因為吃東西不是為了吃東西本身，而僅僅是為了保存體力。其次，如果可能的話，不要進行性交。如果必須發生性交，那麼其唯一目的應該是為了生育孩子，並且應該間隔很長。甘地本人在三十多歲時就立下了 的誓言，這不僅意味著完全的貞潔，也意味著消除性慾。看來，如果沒有特殊的飲食和頻繁的禁食，就很難達到這種狀態。喝牛奶的危害之一，就是容易引起性慾。最後──這是最重要的一點──對於追求善良的人來說，一定不能有親密的友誼，也不能有專一的愛。
甘地認為，親密的友誼是危險的，因為“朋友之間會互相影響”，對朋友的忠誠可能會讓人做出錯誤的事情。這無疑是事實。此外，如果一個人要愛上帝，或愛整個人類，他就不能把自己的偏好給任何個人。這又是事實，它標誌著人文主義和宗教態度不再可調和的點。對一般人來說，如果愛不代表更愛某些人，那麼愛就毫無意義。自傳並未明確甘地是否對妻子和孩子不體諒，但無論如何，它明確表示，有三次他寧願讓自己的妻子或孩子死去，也不願給他吃醫生開的動物性食物。確實，死亡威脅從未真正發生過，而且甘地——人們認為，在相反方向上有很大的道德壓力——總是給病人選擇的機會，以犯下罪行為代價活下去：但是，如果這個決定完全是他自己的，他會禁止吃動物性食物，不管風險有多大。他說，為了生存，我們所做的一切都必須有個限度，而這個限度就在雞湯這邊。這種態度也許是高尚的，但我認為，從大多數人賦予這個詞的意義上來說，它是不人道的。人的本質是不追求完美， 而是 有時為了忠誠而願意犯下罪行，不會將禁慾主義推向無法進行友好交往的地步，最終做好被生活打敗和擊垮的準備，這是將自己的愛寄託在其他人身上的必然代價。毫無疑問，酒精、菸草等是聖人必須避免的事情，但聖人身分也是人類必須避免的事情。對此有一個明顯的反駁，但人們應該謹慎地做出反駁。在這個瑜珈盛行的時代，人們很容易就認為「不執著」不僅比完全接受塵世生活更好，而且普通人之所以拒絕它只是因為它太難了：換句話說，普通人是失敗的聖人。這是否屬實值得懷疑。許多人真的不想成為聖人，而且很可能有些成為聖人或渴望成為聖人的人從未感受到成為人類的誘惑。如果人們能夠追溯其心理根源，那麼我相信，人們就會發現，「不執著」的主要動機是想逃避生活的痛苦，尤其是逃避愛情，而愛情，無論是性愛還是非性愛，都是艱苦的努力。但這裡沒有必要爭論超凡脫俗的理想和人文主義的理想哪一個比較「高尚」。關鍵是它們不相容。人們必須在上帝和人類之間做出選擇，而所有的“激進分子”和“進步分子”，從最溫和的自由主義者到最極端的無政府主義者，實際上都選擇了人類。
然而，甘地的和平主義在某種程度上與他的其他教義是不同的。其動機是宗教性的，但他也聲稱，這是一種能夠產生預期政治結果的明確技術、方法。甘地的態度與大多數西方和平主義者不同。 最初起源於南非，是一種非暴力戰爭，是一種在不傷害敵人、不引起或激起敵人仇恨的情況下擊敗敵人的方式。它包括公民抗命、罷工、躺在火車前、忍受警察的指控而不逃跑、不反擊等等。甘地反對將「非暴力不合作運動」翻譯為「消極抵抗」 ：在古吉拉特語中，這個字的意思似乎是「堅定真理」。甘地早年曾在布爾戰爭中擔任英國方面的擔架員，他準備在 1914 年至 1918 年的戰爭中再次擔任同樣的職位。即使在他完全放棄暴力之後，他仍然誠實地認識到，在戰爭中通常需要選邊站。他沒有——事實上，由於他的整個政治生涯都圍繞著爭取民族獨立的鬥爭，他不能——採取毫無意義和不誠實的路線，假裝每場戰爭中的雙方都完全相同，誰贏誰輸都沒有區別。他也不像大多數西方和平主義者那樣擅長迴避棘手的問題。關於最近的戰爭，每個和平主義者都有義務明確回答的一個問題是：「猶太人怎麼辦？你準備好看到他們被消滅了嗎？如果不是，你打算如何在不訴諸戰爭的情況下拯救他們？’我必須說，我從未聽過任何西方和平主義者對這個問題的誠實回答，儘管我聽到很多迴避，通常是「你是另一個甘地」類型。但事實上，在 1938 類型。年也被問過一個類似的問題，他的回答記錄在 中。辯解說：猶太人無論如何都已經被殺了，而且最好死得有意義。 1942年，當他呼籲以非暴力方式抵抗日本入侵時，他承認這可能會導致數百萬人死亡。
同時，我們有理由認為，甘地畢竟出生於1869年，他並不了解極權主義的本質，而是從自己與英國政府的鬥爭的角度來看一切。這裡的重點並不在於英國人對他寬容，而是他總是能夠引起大眾的注意。從上面引用的這句話可以看出，他相信“喚醒世界”，而這只有當世界有機會聽到你所做的事情時才有可能。很難想像甘地的策略能在一個政權反對者半夜消失、杳無音訊的國家得到應用。如果沒有新聞自由和集會權利，就不僅不可能吸引外在輿論，也不可能發起群眾運動，甚至不可能讓你的對手知道你的意圖。此刻的俄羅斯有甘地嗎？如果有的話，他取得了什麼成就？俄羅斯民眾只有在所有人都同時產生同樣的想法時才會採取公民抗命，但即使這樣，從烏克蘭飢荒的歷史來看，也沒有什麼區別。但是，假設非暴力抵抗可以有效地對抗自己的政府或佔領國：即便如此，如何在國際上付諸實踐？甘地對最近這場戰爭的各種相互矛盾的言論似乎表明他感受到了這一點的困難。應用於外交政治，和平主義要不是不再是和平主義，就是變成綏靖主義。此外，甘地在與個人打交道時非常有效的假設是，所有人都或多或少都是平易近人的，都會對慷慨的舉動做出回應，這種假設需要受到嚴肅的質疑。例如，當你與瘋子打交道時，這並不一定是真的。那麼問題變成了：誰是理智的？希特勒精神正常嗎？那麼，以另一種文化的標準來看，一種文化不可能是瘋狂的嗎？而且，就我們所能衡量的整個國家的感情而言，慷慨的行為和友好的回應之間是否存在明顯的聯繫？感恩是國際政治的因素嗎？
在有人按下按鈕、火箭開始飛行之前的幾年裡，這些問題和相關問題都需要討論，而且迫切需要討論。文明是否能夠承受另一場大戰似乎令人懷疑，至少可以想到，出路在於非暴力。甘地的美德在於他願意誠實地考慮我上面提出的那種問題；事實上，他很可能確實在其無數的報紙文章中討論過其中的大部分問題。人們覺得他有很多事情不明白，但不害怕說或想任何事。我從來就不太喜歡甘地，但我並不確信作為一名政治思想家他總體上是錯誤的，也不相信他的一生是失敗的。奇怪的是，當他被暗殺時，他的許多最熱情的崇拜者都悲傷地喊道，他只活了足夠長的時間看到他的一生被毀掉，因為印度正處於一場內戰之中，而這一直被認為是權力交接的副產品之一。但甘地的一生並沒有致力於緩和印度教和穆斯林之間的對抗。他的主要政治目標——和平結束英國的統治——終究已經實現。像往常一樣，相關事實相互矛盾。另一方面，英國人確實未經戰鬥就撤出了印度，直到事件發生前一年左右，很少有觀察家能夠預測到這一事件。另一方面，這是工黨政府的做法，如果是保守黨政府，特別是邱吉爾領導的政府，肯定會採取不同的行動。但是，如果到 1945 年，英國已經出現大量同情印度獨立的輿論，那麼這在多大程度上歸因於甘地的個人影響？如果印度和英國最終建立起良好友好的關係（這種情況有可能發生），這是否部分是因為甘地透過堅持不懈、毫無仇恨的鬥爭淨化了政治氛圍？一個人甚至會想到問這樣的問題，這表明了他的地位。人們可能像我一樣，對甘地感到某種審美上的厭惡，人們可能拒絕接受人們為他宣稱的聖人身份（順便說一句，他自己從來沒有這樣宣稱過），人們也可能拒絕將聖人身份作為一種理想，因此認為甘地的基本目標是反人類和反動的：但僅僅作為一名政治家，與我們這個時代的其他主要政治人物相比，他留下的氣息是多麼大！
《黨派評論》1949年1月
筆記
Reflections on Gandhi
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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 case the questions one 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 favour, 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 [1] 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 programme was obviously not viable in a backward, starving, overpopulated 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 rightly says in , 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 unfavourably, and was probably of unimpressive physical appearance, he was not afflicted by envy or by the feeling of inferiority. Colour 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 colour 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 thoroughly 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, 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 , 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. , 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 . 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 practice 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 by-products 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, an 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!
Partisan Review, January 1949
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