by Robert Payne
Tolstoy replied that the present situation of the Indians was their own fault, because they had accepted enslavement with good grace and connived with their enslavers. They were like villagers who complain they are being enslaved by drink when the wineseller comes to them with jars of wine. If they truly wanted to free themselves from the British, they had a weapon more powerful than any guns or any acts of terrorism. It was noncooperation. If they simply refused to cooperate with the administrators, the magistrates, the tax-collectors and the soldiers, they could free themselves from their slavery. “Love,” Tolstoy wrote, “is the only means of saving people from all those disasters which they undergo.”
He went on to declare that India should proceed to free herself from all the other useless encumbrances of modern civilization. Banks, submarines, schools, gramophones, the cinema, all the arts and sciences were useless, because they did not further the progress of love. Religion, too, was useless, and in a memorable passage Tolstoy consigned all the Indian gods to oblivion. “Put aside all religious beliefs,” Tolstoy wrote to the Indian revolutionary. “Paradise, hell, the angels, the demons, reincarnation, resurrection, and the concept of God interfering in the life of the universe” —all these must be abandoned, just as the sciences and the absurd study of the atoms and of economic laws must be abandoned. Gandhi wrote that he would like when publishing the letter to omit the word “reincarnation” in the catalogue of religious ideas denounced by Tolstoy. “Reincarnation or transmigration is a cherished belief with millions in India, indeed, in China also,” he wrote. “With many, one might almost say, it is a matter of experience, no longer a matter of academic acceptance. It explains reasonably the many mysteries of life.” This was the only fault he found in Letter to a Hindu.
Gandhi’s letter to Tolstoy reached Yasnaya Polyana a week later, and Tolstoy noted in his diary: “Received a pleasant letter from a Hindu in the Transvaal.” Two more weeks passed, and then Tolstoy sat down to compose a friendly reply. “I have just received your most interesting letter, which has given me great pleasure,” he wrote. “God help our dear brothers and co-workers in the Transvaal.” He had no objection to Gandhi publishing the Letter to a Hindu with the omission of the word “reincarnation.” He would prefer to retain the word, but he was prepared to abide by Gandhi’s desire.
In the middle of October, before receiving a reply from Tolstoy, Gandhi was asked to deliver a talk on “East and West” at a meeting held under the auspices of the Hampstead Peace and Arbitration Society at the Friends’ Meeting House. With the Letter to a Hindu much in his mind, he delivered a fighting speech on the evils wrought by the British occupation of India, described the suffering of the Indians in South Africa, and drew up in the form of a confession of faith a program which, in his view, would solve all the outstanding problems between the East and the West.
It was a stormy meeting, and sometimes he denounced the British with so much invective that his listeners protested. “A dear old lady got up and said that I had uttered disloyal sentiments,” he reported in a letter to Henry Polak. Some men argued that the Indian traders in South Africa deserved all they got. The discussion grew so heated that Gandhi forgot the main purpose of his lecture, which was to show that Kipling’s line about “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” was based on a formidable misapprehension of the real nature of the relations between East and West. Gandhi’s argument was a simple one. Modem civilization had brought no good to India. Railroads, telephones, the telegraph, had done nothing to improve the moral elevation of the nation. Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, Benares—all these cities were symbols of slavery. The British glorified the body; they had not glorified the soul. The West must abandon its civilization if it wants to come to terms with the East.
These conclusions satisfied him, and he distributed them to his friends:
Confession of Faith, 1909
1. There is no impassable barrier between East and West.
2. There is no such thing as Western or European Civilization; but there is a modem form of Civilization which is purely material.
3. The people of Europe, before they were touched with modern civilization, had much in common with the people of the East.
4. It is not the British people who rule India, but modem civilization rules India through its railways, telegraph, telephone, etc.
5. Bombay, Calcutta, and other chief cities are the real plague-spots of Modem India.
6. If British rule were re-placed tomorrow by Indian rule based on modem methods, India would be none the better, except that she would be able then to retain some of the money which is drained away to England.
7. East and West can only really meet when the West has thrown overboard modem civilization almost in its entirety. They can also seemingly meet when the East has also adopted modem civilization. But that meeting would be an armed truce; even as it is between Germany and England, both of which nations are living in the “Hall of Death,” in order to avoid being devoured the one by the other.
8. It is simply impertinent for any man, or any body of men, to begin, or to contemplate, reform of the whole world. To attempt to do so by means of highly artificial and speedy locomotion, is to attempt the impossible.
9. Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.
10. Medical science is the concentrated essence of black magic. Quackery is infinitely preferable to what passes for high medical skill.
11. Hospitals are the instruments that the Devil has been using for his own purpose, in order to keep his hold on his kingdom. They perpetuate vice, misery, degradation, and real slavery. I was entirely off the track when I considered that I should receive a medical training. It would be sinful for me in any way whatsoever to take part in the abominations that go on in hospitals. If there were no hospitals for venereal diseases, or even for consumptives, we should have less consumption and less sexual vice amongst us.
12. India’s salvation consists in unlearning what she has learnt during the past fifty years. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors and such like have all to go, and the so-called upper classes have to live consciously, religiously, and deliberately the simple peasant life, knowing it to be a life giving true happiness.
13. India should wear no machine-made clothing, whether it comes out of European mills or Indian mills.
14. England can help India to do this, and then she will have justified her hold on India. There seem to be many in England today who think likewise.
15. There was true wisdom in the sages of old having so regulated society as to limit the material conditions of the people: the rude plough of perhaps five thousand years ago is the plough of the husbandman of today. Therein lies salvation. People live long under such conditions, in comparative peace, much greater than Europe has enjoyed after having taken up modem activity; and I feel that every enlightened man, certainly every Englishman, may, if he chooses, learn this truth and act according to it.
It is the true spirit of passive resistance that has brought me to the above almost definite conclusions. As a passive resister I am unconcerned whether such a gigantic reformation (shall I call it?) can be brought about among people who find their satisfaction from the present mad rush. If I realize the truth of it I should rejoice in following it, and therefore I could not wait until the whole body of people had commenced.
All of us who think likewise have to take the necessary step; and the rest, if we are in the right, must follow. The theory is there; our practice will have to approach it as much as possible. Living in the midst of the rush, we may not be able to shake ourselves free from all taint. Every time I get into a railway car, or use a motor-bus, I know that I am doing violence to my sense of what is right.
I do not fear the logical result on that basis. When there was no rapid locomotion, teachers and preachers went on foot, braving all dangers, not for recruiting their health, but for the sake o
f humanity. Then were Benares and other places of pilgrimage holy cities; whereas to-day they are an abomination.
There is no doubt that Gandhi meant exactly what he said, and that he was in no mood to make qualifying exceptions to the general theory. He was saying quite simply that modern civilization was damned and the only salvation lay in a return to the idyllic past. He was dreaming of the age of the Ramayana, when the godlike heroes still roamed the earth. Modern civilization must be unlearned, the factories must be tom down, the hospitals must be abandoned, the railroad tracks must be tom up, the great cities must be swept away, and men should live in close proximity to the soil, with simple plows and wearing hand-spun garments, laboring to earn their daily bread. He was not in the least interested in how all this should come about, and he never suggests what revolutionary methods would be used to destroy modem civilization, but he knew that it must be destroyed. The slate must be swept clean and men must begin again.
No doubt this vision of a primitive utopia derived partly from his reading of Thoreau and Tolstoy, but its principle source could be found in India, in the great epics and the simple feudal life of the Indian villages. When Gandhi spoke of the need to throw overboard modem civilization almost in its entirety, he was projecting his own needs on the map of industrialized Europe. He regarded the peasant’s life as the most wholesome occupation for mankind, while the industrial worker’s life was the least wholesome. In one of the greatest crises of his career, when he was facing trial for having launched his non-cooperation movement, he affirmed that his own trade and occupation was that of “a farmer and a weaver,” but this was to beg the issue, for farming and weaving were only a small part of his life.
On November 10, 1909, when all hope of successful negotiations had faded and he had already booked passage to South Africa, he wrote a second letter to Tolstoy in which he made vast claims for the movement in the Transvaal. The Indians there were engaged “in the greatest struggle of modern times.” “If it succeeds, it is highly likely to serve as an example to millions in India and to people in other parts of the world who may be downtrodden.” Tired, defeated, and worn out by months of fruitless negotiations with the men who commanded the destinies of an empire, he held fast to the idea that the non-violent movement he led would one day destroy empires.
With the letter he enclosed a copy of Joseph Doke’s short book M. K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot in South Africa, which had just been published in London. He hoped Tolstoy would read the book, and once more he asked for a blessing. Tolstoy was ill, and many months passed before he had the time or the inclination to read the book. When he finally read it during the following April, he was enchanted by it.
Before leaving England, Gandhi wrote a long farewell letter to Lord Ampthill, summing up his impressions. He had seen, he said, Indians of all shades of opinion, including the extremists who belonged to “the party of violence.” He disagreed with their views, but found them to be determined, zealous, possessing a high degree of morality, intellectual ability and a spirit of self-sacrifice. They had been unsparing in their efforts to convert Gandhi to their creed, but he had resisted their blandishments. Nevertheless they represented a real threat to British rule. “I have practically met no one who believes that India can ever become free without resort to violence.”
There was, however, a simple solution to the problem. Let Great Britain discard the entire structure of modem civilization, abandon commercial selfishness, and begin afresh. He wrote:
The true remedy lies, in my humble opinion, in England discarding modem civilization which is ensouled by this spirit of selfishness and materialism, is vain and purposeless and is a negation of the spirit of Christianity. But this is a large order. It may then be just possible that the British rulers in India may at least do as the Indians do and not impose on them the modem civilization. Railways, machinery and corresponding increase of indulgent habits are the true badges of slavery of the Indian people as they are of Europeans. I, therefore, have no quarrel with the rulers. I have every quarrel with their methods.
Lord Ampthill was always prepared to listen to Gandhi’s arguments, but he confessed himself unable to follow an argument which seemed to lead to an Indian empire where the British remained as rulers after tearing down all the railroads and all the machines. Lord Ampthill replied the same day: “I am in doubt as to the conclusions at which you have arrived. I should like to talk the matter over with you.” Unfortunately, the discussion never took place, and we shall never know what a former Viceroy of India said to Gandhi when he proposed a machineless India still ruled by a Viceroy.
Gandhi’s Confession of Faith, 1909, written in a state of extraordinary excitement under the influence of G. K. Chesterton’s article and Tolstoy’s Letter to a Hindu, represented an important stage in the development of his ideas. Here he proclaimed his belief that civilization was utterly destructive of all that is good in life. He would never depart from that belief. For the rest of his life he would insist that civilization doomed men to misery and servitude.
In the ship taking him to South Africa he would attempt to work out these ideas and study their political implications.
Hind Swaraj
WHENEVER GANDHI traveled by ship, he liked to work. The thought of living like the other passengers in extreme idleness, with servants waiting on them at every moment, their pleasures organized and their meals so frequent that they were in danger of bursting, appalled him. His occupations during a voyage largely consisted of elevated conversations with his companions, reading, writing and contemplating the scriptures. Haji Habib had little small-talk, and like Gandhi, he preferred silence. He looked a little like Gandhi, and when they were sailing to England, people wondered whether they were brothers. But on the journey back to Cape Town, he kept very much to himself, and Gandhi was able to get on with his work.
“There is no end to the work I have put in on the steamer,” Gandhi wrote to a correspondent; and it was true. Because he expected to be arrested a few days after returning to South Africa, he spent his time putting his affairs in order, catching up with his correspondence, writing a book and translating Tolstoy’s Letter to a Hindu into Gujarati. In addition he wrote two prefaces, one in English and one in Gujarati, to Tolstoy’s letter, for he expected to print it in the two languages on his own press.
The most important fruit of the journey was Hind Swaraj, or “Indian Home Rule,” which he wrote in nine days. It was written in large, bold handwriting on 271 pages of ship’s notepaper, but fits comfortably into about sixty pages of print. He wrote at fever-pitch, the pen racing across the page so quickly that the right hand grew tired, and about fifty pages were written with the left hand. Of all his books Hind Swaraj was the one he liked best, and nearly forty years later he would solemnly present it to Nehru, saying that it contained the blueprint for the Indian Republic. Nehru dismissed the book as being hopelessly out of date. Much of the book is concerned with the enduring problems of government, industrialism, and village life, and it was considerably less out of date than Nehru thought.
Hind Swaraj consists of twenty dialogues between the Editor, Gandhi, and the Reader, who is evidently modeled on Savarkar, for he is clearly described as a terrorist dedicated to violent action. Thirty years later Gandhi would write that these dialogues were a faithful record of conversations he had with workers in London, “one of whom was an avowed anarchist.” But these dialogues are clearly imaginative reconstructions of conversations rather than verbatim records. Terror on a gigantic scale was discussed; all the Englishmen in India would have to be killed before India acquires its independence:
READER: At first we shall assassinate a few Englishmen and strike terror; then, a few men who have been armed will fight openly. We may have to lose 2,000,000 or 2,500,000 men, more or less but we shall regain our land. We shall undertake guerrilla warfare, and defeat the English.
EDITOR: That is to say, you want to make the holy land of India unholy. Do you not tremble to think of freeing
India by assassination? What we need to do is to sacrifice ourselves. It is a cowardly thought, that of killing others. Whom do you suppose to free by assassination? The millions of India do not desire it. Those who are intoxicated by the wretched modem civilisation think these things. Those who will rise to power by murder will certainly not make the nation happy. Those who believe that India has gained by Dhingra’s act and other similar acts in India make a serious mistake. Dhingra was a patriot, but his love was blind. He gave his body in a wrong way; its ultimate result can only be mischievous.
Just as the violent anarchist Reader objected to half-measures, so Gandhi too stated the case for sweeping changes which could only be brought about by a tremendous upheaval. In Confession of Faith, 1909, and in his letter to Lord Ampthill he had outlined his objections to Western civilization. Now he returned to the charge, delivering a blanket indictment of the West and all its works. They had produced a “satanic civilization,” where everything was wrong from the Mother of Parliaments to the last and most obscure doctor or lawyer. Railroads are works of the devil, for they help the spread of bubonic plague by providing speedy transportation, and the spread of famine, because grain-owners use the railroads to sell their products to the dearest markets. With the same vehemence Gandhi attacked the pilgrims who use the Indian railroads in order to travel from one holy place to another. What do they gain by traveling more quickly? Why can’t they walk?
The vision of the idyllic India of the past haunted him, and he seems never to have inquired whether it ever existed. He asked: “What is true civilization?” and answered that it was one where there was no corroding spirit of competition, where men worshiped their priests rather than their kings, and lived peacefully in villages, employing their hands and feet in productive work, using the same kind of plow that existed thousands of years ago, inhabiting the same kind of huts, following the same religious observances. He wanted an India dedicated to enlightened anarchy, where everyone was his own ruler. But this anarchy was anchored in the ancient Vedic past, when the gods walked upon the earth. In Gandhi’s eyes the individual was the supreme consideration, and everything that impeded or enslaved him was anathema.