Mahatma Gandhi

by Dennis Dalton

  111. Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, p. 205.

  112. Humayun Kabir, “Muslim Politics, 1942–47,” The Partition of India, C. H. Philips and M.D. Wainwright eds. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970), p. 405. This point is also made in Richard Lambert ‘Hindu-Muslim Riots.” “Communal violence continued at a peak until the assassination of Gandhi in January 1948, and after that it tapered off and almost disappeared altogether.” (p. 227) Percival Spear, Modern India (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961) comments: “The manner and circumstances of his [Gandhi’s] death transformed the situation. The Mahatma was even more powerful in death than in life. The policy or revenge was abandoned. The Hindu extremists were discredited…The danger of bitterness boiling over into anti-Muslim pogroms was averted.” (p. 424).

  Chapter 6

  1. Gandhi’s cable to William Shirer, September, 1932, in CWMG 51: 129. Gandhi repeatedly condemned “exclusiveness” in a variety of contexts. See Gandhi, All Men Are Brothers, K. Kripalani, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 108–110. The concept of inclusiveness and the way that Gandhi understood and exemplified it has been explained especially by Erik Erikson, Gandhis Truth (New York: Norton, 1969), pp. 432–33; Identity Youth and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1968), pp. 314–316; and Dialogue With Erik Erikson by Richard I. Evans (New York: Dutton, 1969). In the last book, Erikson says: “the best leader is the one who realizes what potentials can be activated in those led, and most of all, what more inclusive identities can be realized…Gandhi’s nonviolent technique…was not only tied to the political realities of his day, but also revived the more inclusive identity promised in the world religions” (pp. 70–71). An essential difference that Gandhi found between an exclusive and inclusive attitude is that the former connoted a kind of separatist thinking which tended to dehumanize or demonize the “other,” turning one’s adversary into the enemy. He insisted that in satyagraha there could be no enemies.

  2. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (hereafter referred to as AMX) (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), p. 366.

  3. CWMG 39 (Autobiography), pp. 21–22;AMX, pp. 1–38.

  4. S. R. Mehrotra also quotes this passage from Nehru. He then concludes that among Gandhi’s major contributions to the nationalist movement was that “Gandhi broke the hypnotic spell of the British Raj in India. He tried to rid the Indian people of the pervasive, perpetual and paralysing fear with which they were seized. He taught them to say ‘no’ to their oppressors, both foreign and indigenous. He uplifted the spirit and exalted the dignity of a vast people by teaching them to straighten their backs, to raise their eyes, and to face circumstances with a steady gaze.” Towards India s Freedom and Partition (New Delhi: Vikas, 1979, p. 154. This sounds remarkably like the purpose of both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States.

  5. CWMG 39: 22. AMX, pp. 1–22. Beginning with the odd double message that Malcolm received from his father and his mother over the fact that he was lighter than his siblings (pp 4, 7–8), and traumatized by his father’s murder by whites, Malcolm’s fears of inadequacy because of his color were ruthlessly confirmed by his eighth-grade English teacher, as the subsequent account here indicates. Bruce Perry has analyzed Malcolm’s early intense fears about his own masculinity and how these were related to his later violent attitudes and behavior in “Opposition to Nonviolence: A Revealing Case Study,” Gandhi Marg, #59, February, 1984, pp. 751–758. The present author is grateful to Mr. Perry for his communications on this subject.

  6. AMX, pp. 36–37.

  7. Bruce Perry, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America. Station Hill Press, Barrytown (New York: 1991), p. 380.

  8. CWMG lbid., pp. 46–47.

  9. AMX, p. 54.

  10. CWMG. 5: 117.

  11. CWMG 10 (“Hind Swaraj”), p. 18. This sense of a lost identity among blacks who emulate whites is expressed well in Malcolm’s classic contrast between the “two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro.” The former, ancestor of “modern Uncle Toms,” “loved his master,” and identified with him so closely that rebellion for him was impossible. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, George Breitman, ed. (New York: Grove Press, 1966), pp. 10–12.

  12. Erik Erikson, Gandhis Truth, p. 194.

  13. CWMG 39: 380. On April 13, 1919 in the city of Amritsar, an event occurred that contributed substantially to Gandhi’s determination to resist British rule in India. Approximately 10,000 Indians gathered in the town square were fired upon by troops under the command of Gen. Reginald Dyer, about 400 were killed and 1500 wounded. Charles Andrews wrote: “No one can understand Mahatma Gandhi’s attitude towards Great Britain and the British empire unless he has come to realize that ‘Amritsar’ was the critical event which changed Mahatma Gandhi from a wholehearted supporter into a pronounced opponent” C. F. Andrews, Mahatma Gandhis Ideas (London: Allen and Unwin, 1930), p. 230.

  14. CWMG 10: 36–38.

  15. Ibid., pp. 21,35, 39.

  16. Ibid., pp. 57, 61.

  17. J.D. Sethi remarks on this transformation in his thought: “Gandhi’s concepts of Swaraj and Swadeshi began as expressions of fierce nationalism. But even in his lifetime he had already transformed his national concepts into universal concepts.” Gandhi Today (Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 1978) p. 195.

  18. AMX, p. 150.

  19. AMX, p. 173.

  20. Elijah Muhamad in When The Word Is Given by Louis E. Lomax (New York: Signet Books, 1963), p. 56. The historical context of the Black Muslim movement, its ideology of vehement separatism and its organizational structure is examined in Louis E. Lomax, The Negro Revolt (New York: Harper, 1962), ch. 13, pp. 164–177; E.U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: The Rise of the Black Muslims in the U.S.A. (New York: Penguin, 1966), Ch. 10, pp. 206–238; Theodore Draper, The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism (New York: Viking, 1970), pp. 69–96; Harold Cruise, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: Morrow, 1971), pp. 420–448; and C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon, 1961). The term “Black Muslim” was coined by C. Efic Lincoln in his doctoral dissertation; members of the movement call themselves Muslims.

  21. AMX, pp. 251–255.

  22. Whereas in 1916 Gandhi said, “My patriotism is both exclusive and inclusive,” (CWMG 13: 224), his later uses of the term “exclusive” are all negative, as noted above, and he becomes after 1919, when he assumes leadership of the Indian Congress, an inclusive figure in his ideology and organization of the national movement. In 1924, he said, “As my patriotism is inclusive and admits of no enmity or ill will, I do not hesitate … to take from the West what is beneficial for me.” CWMG 25:461. See my analysis of “the inclusive style of Gandhi” in “Gandhi’s Styles of Leadership,” in Leadership in South Asia, pp. 598–623.

  23. Gandhi not only developed close personal friendships with whites from early in his South African experience, he also placed them in positions of considerable responsibility after having converted them to his cause. In his autobiography, he discusses key white Europeans who joined his movement: Henry and Millie Polak, Hermann Kallenbach, A. H. West, Sonja Schlesin, L. W. Ritch, and the Rev. Joseph Doke, who wrote the first biography of Gandhi in South Africa. Martin Luther King, Jr. also managed to establish such relationships.

  24. This phrase is from Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph, Gandhi, pp. 38–62. The Rudolphs write about Gandhi’s renunciations: “to control his outer environment he must control the inner” (p. 58).

  25. Malcolm relates how, when he was in prison but before he had been converted fully to the Nation of Islam, the initial instructions that he abstain from pork and stop smoking cigarettes affected him. When he first turned down pork on the food line, he discovered that “It was mentioned all over the cell block …. It made me very proud, in some odd way. One of the universal images of the Negro, in prison and out, was that he couldn’t do without pork. It made me feel good to see that my not eating it had especially sta
rtled the white convicts” (AMX, p. 156). Adherence to strict codes of moral discipline became singularly important to Malcolm. As noted below, when he discovered that his leader, Elijah Muhammad had transgressed the code of sexual discipline he was sufficiently shocked to leave the Nation of Islam. Elijah’s authority and power had disintegrated in his eyes because of this personal indiscipline and immorality. This suggests again close parallels with Gandhi’s morality.

  26. CWMG 40: 297.

  27. Erik Erikson mentions this with comment on its significance in “Identity, Psychosocial,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Volume 7 (New York: Macmillan, 1968), p. 65.

  28. AMX, p. 252.

  29. Ibid., p. 294.

  30. Ibid., pp. 292, 304.

  31. Malcolm, quoted in Archie Epps ed., The Speeches of Malcolm X At Harvard (New York: Morrow, 1968), pp. 40–41. Epps offers perceptive analysis of Malcolm’s ideas throughout this volume. He observes that “The third, and final, Harvard Speech [pp. 161–182] was an intensely personal speech … it conveyed an intense search by Malcolm X for a humane view toward whites.” (p. 95)

  32. Maya Angelou in Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (New York: Harper, 1973), p. 136.

  33. AMX, pp. 333–334

  34. Malcolm X quoted in Goldman, Death and Life of Malcolm X, p. 210.

  35. AMX, p. 371. Malcolm explains immediately after this account in his autobiography how he returned to the United States with this “new insight,” but that in trying to communicate it, “my earlier public image, my so-called ‘Black Muslim’ image, kept blocking me. I was trying to turn a corner, into a new regard by the public, especially Negroes; I was no less angry than I had been, but at the same time the true brotherhood I had seen in the Holy World had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision” (375). Malcolm said that although he welcomed the help of “sincere white people,” he did not trust white liberals (376–77); and white liberals in turn often distrusted Malcolm, refusing to believe that he had changed. This abiding suspicion was eloquently expressed by the radical American songwriter Phil Ochs in his song, “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” written in 1965, shortly after Malcolm’s assassination:

  “I cried when they shot Medgar Evers,

  Tears ran down my spine

  I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy

  As though I’d lost a father of mine

  But Malcolm X got what was coming

  He got what he asked for this time

  So love me, love me, love me, I’m a Liberal”

  “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” Lyrics and music

  by Phil Ochs. Copyright 1965. Barricade Music

  Inc. All rights administered by Almo Music Corp.

  (ASCAP). All rights reserved-international

  copyright secured. Song interpreted

  by Leslie J. Caiman.

  36. Gandhi argued that “It is quite proper to resist and attack a system,” that is, what Malcolm called the “political, economic and social atmosphere,” but wrong to condemn any individual solely because of the color of his/her skin, or the individual’s sex, nationality, race or religion. It was in this context that Gandhi said that “Man and his deed are two distinct things …. Hate the sin and not the sinner” (CWMG 39: 220).

  37. Malcolm X Speaks, p. 51.

  38. Malcolm X. The Last Speeches, edited by Bruce Perry (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1989), pp. 158–159; and Malcolm X: The Final Speeches, February 1965 (New York: Pathfinder, 1992), pp. 149–150.

  39. Malcolm X Speaks, p. 217. Malcolm’s change of attitude toward whites after March 1964, was expressed in his praise of white civil rights workers who were killed that summer in Mississippi and in his support of interracial marriage. This change is discussed in George Breitman, The Last Year of ‘Malcolm X (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), pp. 23–24. Also this change is noted AMX, p. 424 and Malcolm X Speaks, pp. 212–214. In his Epilogue to AMX Alex Haley wrote: “Recalling the incident of the young white college girl who had come to the Black Muslim restaurant and asked ‘What can I do?’ and he told her ‘Nothing,’ and she left in tears, Malcolm X told Gordon Parks, “Well, I’ve lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent I saw white students helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as a Muslim that I’m sorry for now. I was a zombie then—like all Muslims—I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man’s entitled to make a fool of himself if he’s ready to pay the cost. It cost me twelve years” (p. 429). This is also reported in Malcolm X: The Final Speeches, p. 231. This volume is remarkable because it contains the speeches of only the last three weeks of his life. This change in Malcolm’s attitude toward whites should be placed in the context of his overall quest for truth. Spike Lee, director of the film of Malcolm X’s life, commented that “Malcolm was always in search of truth. He was in that one percent able to repudiate their past life because of what was no longer true” (Quoted in New York Magazine, September 14,1992, p. 50). Malcolm X and Gandhi have both been subjects of three and a half hour films of their lives, the latter directed by Sir Richard Attenborough. Each film depicts their meaning in terms of their life journeys—or struggles for swaraj.

  40. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (New York: Harper, 1958), p. 92.

  41. AMX, pp. 366–367.

  42. Malcolm X Speaks, pp. 164–165. Speech of February 14, 1965.

  43. Malcolm says, in By Any Means Necessary, edited by George Breitman (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970): “I don’t go along with anyone who wants to teach our people nonviolence until someone at the same time is teaching our enemy to be nonviolent. I believe that we should protect ourselves by any means necessary when we are attacked by racists.” January 18, 1965, p. 160.

  44. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper, 1958), p. 85.

  45. The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard, p. 160.

  46. Judith Brown, Gandhi (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 17; Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 41–43; Stephen Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound (New York: Harper, 1982), p. 7; and David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross, New York: Morrow, 1986), p. 33.

  47. Branch, pp. 116–118; Brown, pp. 204–205. Comparative analysis of Gandhi and King may be made from several angles. A study of their respective movements, examining each “leader’s style and personality as revealed through language,” is presented by Mittie Jo Ann Nimocks in her Ph.D. dissertation, “The Indian Independence Movement Under the Leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and the U.S.A. Civil Rights Movement Under the Leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Comparison of Two Social Movements to Assess the Utility of Nonviolence as a Rhetorical Strategy,” University of Florida, 1986. The contrasts of speaking styles, rhetoric, and interaction of speaker with audience are analyzed with a view to the efficacy of nonviolence in chapters 3 and 4, pp. 117–227.

  48. Lamont H. Yeakey, “The Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1979, pp. 663–664. Yeakey argues that “it was the black bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama that spawned the ideas, tactics, leadership, and most of all the spirit that constituted so much of what came later what has been termed the recent civil rights movement.”

  49. Alex Haley reports this as a representative criticism from Harlem in 1964 in his “Epilogue” to AMX, p. 420. For a brilliant study of the activities of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), see Clayborne Carson, In Struggle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).

  50. See Yeakey, “Bus Boycott,” pp. 249–255; Louis E. Lomax The Negro Revolt (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 3–4, 81–93; Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound, pp. 64–65; Martin Luther King Jr., edited by C. Eric Lincoln (New York: Hill and Wang, 1970), pp. 7–39; and Rosa Parks herself in My Soul is Rested, Howell Raines, ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 40–41. “The Montgomery Story” that fol
lows has been told so often and eloquently that, beginning with Martin Luther King’s authoritative account in Stride Toward Freedom, it has become the stuff of American folklore. In the 1980s several studies have appeared that relate the story again with uncommon style and mastery of detail: David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross, pp. 11–82; Taylor Branch, Parang the Waters pp. 120–205; Stephen Oates, Let The Trumpet Sound, pp. 46–112; and Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality 1954–1980 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), pp. 41–68. Sitkoff’s analysis is particularly incisive in its comparisons between King and Gandhi.

  51. Yeakey, “Bus Boycott,” p. 656. For a powerful and incisive statement on the role of black women in the American civil rights movement, their achievements as well as the tensions and difficulties emerging from their interaction with black and white male counterparts see the documentary film, “FUNDI: The Story of Ella Baker,” produced and directed by Joanne Grant, 1983, distributed by New Day Films. For a compelling narrative of the remarkable leadership of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, see her memoir, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, edited by David J. Garrow (The University of Tennessee Press, 1987).

  52. Josephine Carson, quoted in Yeakey, “Bus Boycott,” p. 248A.

  53. King, Stride Toward Freedom, p. 40.

  54. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound, p. 11.

  55. E. D. Nixon, one of the key leaders of the Montgomery boycott, as quoted in Raines, p. 49.

  56. Yeakey, “Bus Boycott,” p. 338.

  57. King, Stride Toward Freedom, p. 45. Yeakey comments on the speech: “To be sure, whatever else King would say in the future, not only in Montgomery but over the short duration of his magnificent career, all other speeches would be but a variation of the theme presented the night of December 5, 1955” (p. 339).