In January 1928, a meeting of the International Fellowship of Religions was held in Sabarmati. In his address to the gathering, Gandhi succinctly expressed his own pluralist credo. ‘All religions were true and also all had some error in them,’ he remarked; therefore, ‘we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu, or if we are Mussalmans, not that a Hindu or a Christian should become a Mussalman, nor should we even secretly pray that anyone should be converted, but our inmost prayer should be that a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim and a Christian a better Christian. That is the fundamental truth of fellowship.’ He had, he told a mixed audience of padres, pandits and maulvis, ‘broaden[ed] my Hinduism by loving other religions as my own’.11
Among those attending this meeting was a young English priest named Verrier Elwin, ‘fresh from Oxford, come to India, as he said, to do some atonement for the sins of his countrymen in keeping India in chains’.12 Elwin was deeply impressed by Gandhi’s personality, less so by his ideas. Writing to a Christian friend, Elwin said that Gandhi had a ‘saint’s heroism, a saintly joy, and a saint’s love’; all the same, he was ‘intellectually singularly unsound’, his religious doctrine neither ‘genuinely Eastern’ nor ‘genuinely modern’, an ‘amalgam of Ruskin, Tolstoi, Emerson and that gang—a type which I have never understood or liked’. Elwin continued:
But when I think of Bapu, as we call him, the light of his life, his courtesy, his joy, his charm, his prayerfulness, his self-control, his peace, his sway over his noble splendid followers, I can only bow in reverence. Cut off his head, and I would mark him Xt. But his mind is far behind his life…13
To someone formally trained in theology (as Elwin was), Gandhi’s attitude to religion seemed puzzling. Gandhi believed that the sacred texts of all religions had contradictory trends and impulses; sometimes sanctioning one thing, at other times, its opposite. He himself wished to recover and reaffirm those trends that opposed violence and discrimination while promoting justice and non-violence. Orthodox Hindus claimed that untouchability was sanctioned by the Shastras; Gandhi answered that in that case the Shastras did not represent the true traditions (or real intentions) of Hinduism. Likewise, a Christian must place the pacifism of Jesus’s life above passages in the Bible calling for retribution against people of other faiths.
For Gandhi, all faiths were fallible, not least his own. As he wrote in Young India not long after the Sabarmati meeting, at the root of all missionary effort—whether by Christians, Muslims or Arya Samajists—was ‘the assumption that one’s own belief is true not only for oneself but for all the world; whereas the truth is that God reaches us through millions of ways not understood by us’. He himself had ‘no feeling that from a spiritual standpoint I am necessarily superior to the so-called savage. And spiritual superiority is a dangerous thing to feel.’14
III
Christians were a small minority in India. Thus, Gandhi’s encounters with priests like Andrews and Elwin, while interesting for what they revealed of his own faith, did not provoke wider discussion. On the other hand, what he said—or sometimes did not say—about Islam did. For instance, when in December 1926 Gandhi wrote a tribute to Swami Shraddhananda in Young India, some readers felt that he should have more directly criticized Islam’s cult of violence for the murder of the swami. An angry Hindu asked Gandhi why he had stopped short of ‘condemning…those who are responsible for this act (those who describe Hindu leaders as Kafirs—the hot Muslim propagandists and the mad Muslim priests)’. The critic continued:
I am sure if such a black act had been committed by a Hindu against a Muslim leader (which Heaven forbid!), you would have condemned the murderer and the community in unsparing terms. You would have asked Hindus to repent in sack-cloth and ashes, to offer fasts, hold [a] hartal, raise [a] memorial to the departed Muslim and many other things. Why do you accord preferential treatment to your ‘blood brothers’ the Muslims?
As was his wont, Gandhi printed the criticism and then patiently set out to refute it. He thought the swami’s murderer was ‘himself a victim of foul irreligious propaganda in the name of religion’—this conducted both by newspapers and by maulvis. But that Islam itself had to be painted in the darkest colours he would not accept. He continued:
What is the meaning of the treatment of untouchables by us Hindus? Let not the pot call the kettle black. The fact is that we are all growing. I have given my opinion that the followers of Islam are too free with the sword. But that is not due to the teachings of the Koran. That is due in my opinion to the environment in which Islam was born. Christianity has a bloody record against it, not because Jesus was found wanting, but because the environment in which it spread was not responsive to his lofty teaching.
These two, Christianity and Islam, are after all religions of but yesterday. They are yet in the course of being interpreted. I reject the claim of maulvis to give a final interpretation to the message of Mahomed as I reject that of the Christian clergy to give a final interpretation of the message of Jesus. Both are being interpreted in the lives of those who are living these messages in silence and in perfect self-dedication.15
Here, directly and crisply stated, is the essence of Gandhi’s philosophy of religion. This consisted of five, interconnected, propositions. First, the claim that no religion is perfect, with all religions being a mixture of truth and error. Second, the assumption that all religions are in a process of evolving, of ridding themselves of error and groping towards the truth. Third, the argument that it was through interfaith dialogue, by seeing one’s faith in the mirror of another, that one could rid it of imperfections. Fourth, the conviction that a person of faith must not always trust priests or the so-called ‘authorized’ interpreters to give the correct interpretation. Fifth, the belief that when interpreting or judging a religion, one must trust its best practitioners rather than its most powerful.
Just as Gandhi rejected the Christian priest’s or the Muslim imam’s claim to certitude and absolute religious authority, so too he would reject the claim of the Sankaracharyas to give a ‘final interpretation’ of Hinduism.
IV
Pluralism of faith was for Gandhi a political choice as well as a moral obligation. Hindus and Muslims had to collaborate and cooperate if they were to effectively challenge the British Raj. At the same time, as a Hindu himself, Gandhi saw his faith as fallible and flawed. He would not abandon it, but he would seek to deepen and enrich it by sympathetically studying the faiths of others, and by befriending Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jews and Parsis.
Likewise, the practice of non-violence was for Gandhi both a political as well as ethical choice. It was the best way to win freedom from colonial rule, as well as the most honourable way to deal with one’s fellow human beings.
When it came to non-violence in politics, Gandhi would brook no compromise. He had called off the non-cooperation movement in April 1922 after the killing of policemen in Chauri Chaura. Although the intensity and scale of the protests had severely shaken the Raj, Gandhi had no hesitation in aborting the movement, since that single act of violence had, in his mind, sullied the cause.
Gandhi knew that many Indian nationalists did not share his doctrinal commitment to non-violence. In fact, his book Hind Swaraj, published in 1910 while he was still in South Africa, explicitly set out to refute those Indians who had adopted forms of armed struggle against the Raj. These armed revolutionaries were sidelined by Gandhi after he returned to India, but they did not entirely disappear. Attacks on British officials and colonial targets took place occasionally, and when they did, their perpetrators were invariably chastised by Gandhi.
When it came to politics, Gandhi was uncompromising in his adherence to non-violence. However, when it came to everyday life, he was not so rigid. There were no circumstances in which a human being could kill another human being, but there might be circumstances when human
s were permitted to kill animals.
In 1926, the compound of a textile mill in Ahmedabad was overrun by rabid dogs. The mill owner (Gandhi’s friend Ambalal Sarabhai) got the dogs killed, leading to outraged protests by the Ahmedabad Humanitarian League and by many Jains. When the magnate asked Gandhi to intervene, he approved of the decision to kill the dogs, even though it appeared contrary to his professed belief in ahimsa.
In a series of articles published both in Gujarati and English, Gandhi defended his support of the apparently heartless actions of the mill owner. He pointed out that ‘a principle is the expression of a perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practice perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice’. Thus, ‘a recluse, who is living in a forest and is compassion incarnate, may not destroy a rabid dog. For in his compassion he has the virtue of making it whole. But a city dweller who is responsible for the protection of lives under his care and who does not possess the virtues of the recluse, but is capable of destroying a rabid dog, is faced with a conflict of duties. If he kills the dog, he commits a sin. If he does not kill it, he commits a graver sin.’
Gandhi told his readers about a group of Jains who came to the ashram at night, when he was about to go to sleep, and berated him in tones of ‘anger, bitterness and arrogance’ for his defence of the killing of rabid dogs. Gandhi stood his ground, saying that ideally, each dog would have an owner, and those without an owner could be kept together in a shelter for them. But if neither alternative was available, there was no option but to get rid of the rabid dogs. For, ‘a dog without an owner is a danger to society and a swarm of them is a menace to its very existence’.
The complaints continued to pour in. So Gandhi defended his position with fresh examples and arguments. He noted that Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital had recorded 1117 cases of hydrophobia in 1925 and 995 in the first nine months of 1926. From this he concluded that ‘stray dogs do not drop from heaven. They are a sign of the idleness, indifference and ignorance of society.’ He recalled that when he was living in England as a student in the 1890s, and an epidemic of rabies broke out, orders were passed asking all owners to put collars with their names and addresses on their dogs, with dogs without collars being killed. ‘The measure was taken purely in the public interest,’ commented Gandhi. The conclusion he reached was that ‘the ideal of humanity is perhaps lower [in England than in India], but the practice of it is very much [more] thorough than ours’.16
Two years later, the debate about whether one could ever kill animals broke out afresh in Ahmedabad. The object this time was not dogs, about whom Hindus were (so to say) neutral, but cows, whom Hindus worshipped. A badly injured calf was put to death in the Sabarmati Ashram; provoking outrage among Jain and Vaishnava circles in the city.
Gandhi defended the killing, comparing it to a surgical operation that removed a diseased part of the body. In both cases, he wrote, the object was ‘to relieve the suffering soul within from pain. In the one case you do it by severing the diseased portion from the body, in the other you do it by severing from the soul the body that has become an instrument of torture to it.’ Then, in a sharp attack on his critics, he remarked that
the trouble with our votaries of ahimsa is that they have made of ahimsa blind fetish and put the greatest obstacle in the way of the spread of true ahimsa in our midst. The current (and in my opinion, mistaken) view of ahimsa has drugged our conscience and rendered us insensible to a host of other and more insidious forms of himsa [violence] like harsh words, harsh judgements, ill-will, anger and spite and lust of cruelty; it has made us forget that there may be far more himsa in the slow torture of men and animals, the starvation and exploitation to which they are subjected out of selfish greed, the wanton humiliation and oppression of the weak and the killing of their self-respect that we witness all around today than in mere benevolent taking of life.17
Gandhi’s defence of the killing of the maimed cow brought upon him a further torrent of criticism. He received so many hostile letters that, in a rare resort to sarcasm, he said his critics ‘seem bent upon improving the finances of the Postal Department’. Most letters were ‘full of abuse’; they were ‘practising himsa in the name of ahimsa’. But one letter deserved a reply; this had suggested that Gandhi’s position might lend itself to an argument in favour of the selective assassination of tyrants and dictators. For, if ‘a man begins to oppress a whole people and there is no other way to stop his oppression’, then it would be ‘an act of ahimsa to rid society of his presence by putting him to death’. The correspondent added: ‘You say that there is no himsa in killing off animal pests that destroy a farmer’s crops; then why should it not be ahimsa to kill human pests that threaten society with destruction and worse?’
In response, Gandhi clarified that his definition of ahimsa did not in any way endorse manslaughter. The killing of the calf was undertaken for the sake of the animal itself. Recalling his earlier defence of killing monkeys that destroy crops, Gandhi noted that ‘society as yet knows of no means by which to effect a change of heart in the monkeys and their killing may therefore be pardonable, but there is no evil-doer or tyrant who can be considered beyond reform. That is why the killing of a human being out of self-interest can never find a place in the scheme of ahimsa.’18
Writing to Rajagopalachari, Gandhi hoped that ‘the calf controversy [in Young India] provides some amusement for you, if it provides no instruction. If I took seriously all the correspondence that comes to me I should have to drown myself in the Sabarmati.’19
V
Pluralism and non-violence were two core aspects of Gandhi’s faith. Celibacy, or brahmacharya, was a third. Gandhi had struggled hard but unavailingly to practise celibacy as a young man, finally taking a firm vow to give up sex in 1906.
Gandhi imposed his vow of celibacy on all who lived with him in the ashram. This was for him a mark of sacrifice, and also of moral purity. Among the worldly pleasures that social workers had to abandon when choosing to serve society were fine food, alcohol, tobacco, jewellery and sex.
Gandhi’s relationship with Saraladevi Chaudhurani was not free of passion. But he managed to keep his vow of celibacy. Meanwhile, the ashram school had boys and girls studying together, in what Gandhi called a ‘delicate’ and ‘novel’ experiment. Gandhi knew Gujarati society to be deeply conservative; so, in an address to the students, he explained ‘certain rules of conduct’ they must follow. Thus, boys and girls must sit in separate rows in the class, and outside the classroom must not mix with one another. Boys could converse and joke with other boys, girls with other girls, but ‘they should neither converse nor joke with one another’. Or touch one another, or carry on private correspondence with one another. For, as he emphatically noted, ‘physical contact disturbs brahmacharya’.
In 1920, after the ashram school had been established, Gandhi outlined a long defence and explanation of brahmacharya, addressed, one supposes, chiefly to the boys. This took the form of a series of exhortations:
As days pass I realize with increasing clearness that preservation of the vital fluid is imperative if one is to serve the country;
All of you must conserve this fluid and build up your bodies;
If I display so much vigour at this age of 51 it is only because I have conserved it. If I had done so from the beginning, I cannot imagine to what heights I should have soared by now;
A hot-tempered person can acquire knowledge, and so can a dishonest person, but one who does not observe brahmacharya can never acquire knowledge;
I appeal to all parents and guardians present here to help their boys in every way to conserve the vital fluid;
Whoever feels that it is not possible for him to restrain himself any longer, that his physical urge has grown so strong that it is impossible for him to curb it, should immediately quit this place rather than bring shame to the Ashram and break up this holy experime
nt.20
In both Jain and Hindu traditions, celibacy—or to use Gandhi’s expression, ‘the preservation of the vital fluid’—was crucial to acquiring spiritual power. Self-control and the suppression of the desires brought one closer to the Divine. Gandhi’s innovation was to make celibacy central to social service.
Notably, Gandhi did not ask his political colleagues in the Congress Party to be celibate. Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, Rajendra Prasad and Vallabhbhai Patel, as well as lesser-known Congressmen across India, were free if they so chose to have sex and raise a family. But those who were inmates of the ashram, who were his spiritual rather than his political disciples, had to take the pledge of brahmacharya.
In the last week of November 1925, Gandhi was dismayed to hear of ‘irregularities on the part of many boys’ in the ashram. Having discovered transgressions ‘among the boys and somewhat among the girls’, he decided to go on a week-long fast. It was the least he owed to the ashram’s patrons, who had given him money ‘in the hope that I am building up character’. Hence, the fast, undertaken ‘to bring the youngsters to a sense of their error’, and to make ‘the Ashram free from errors which are sapping the manhood of the nation and undermining the character of the nation’.21
It was not just to his disciples in the ashram that Gandhi gave lessons on personal behaviour. Two letters written on the same day—19 August 1927—give a flavour of Gandhi’s non-political concerns—or obsessions. Both were to young men who had written about the personal (including sexual) problems they faced. To T.W. Kalani of Sukkur in Sindh, Gandhi wrote instructing him to ‘omit all novel-reading, and [to] repeat Ramanama [the name of Ram]. Learn Bhagavad Gita if possible in the original. Take a cold bath every day. Sleep out in the open air….Do not brood over discharges when they occur. Find out each time the reason, and avoid the reason next time. Tell your father of the disease and tell him that it is perfectly useless to go to London [to study] till you have conquered these discharges and your thoughts.’
Gandhi Page 32