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| IV |
So far I have talked in general terms --- the arguments that I have considered could apply to any country that possesses or is contemplating the possession of atomic weapons. Now I would like to consider aspects that are peculiar to India.
What we now call the Independence Struggle was not only an attempt to throw off the British yoke. It was also a struggle to define what India is and what she should seek to be. There was more to non-violent struggle than adopting the spiritual high ground. It was a way of involving all the people of India in a common effort to win freedom, not just from the British, but also from the indigenous chains that bound them. The promise of the Congress was a better life for all, and not the replacement of the white ruler by the brown. This promise was made explicit in the Karachi resolution of 1931 which put forward a socialistic manifesto drafted by Nehru.
In The Doctrine of the Sword, 1920, Gandhi gave an exposition of his philosophy of non-violent struggle and why he felt it to be a better tool than violent struggle. Violence begets violence, and the only way out is to break the cycle. This does not mean, however, that one meekly lives with oppression.
"Forgiveness adorns a soldier. But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature. A mouse hardly forgives a cat when it allows itself to be torn to pieces by her."These lines are often used by advocates of violence to say that that is necessary too - or at least the capacity for violence is, as a deterrent. This is a willful misreading, for Gandhi goes on to say:
"But I do not believe India to be helpless, I do not hold myself to be a helpless creature. . . Let me not be misunderstood. Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. . ."If India takes up the doctrine of the sword, she may gain momentary victory. Then India will cease to be the pride of my heart. I am wedded to India because I owe my all to her. I believe absolutely she has a mission for the world."
It is not fashionable now to agree with Gandhi or to take him seriously. For
too many of today's "wise men" he is an embarrassment. They pay lip service
to his achievements without accepting any of his precepts. This is a
remarkably superficial attitude to maintain towards a man who connected with
the Indian masses in a way none else ever has, and came to embody their most
heart-felt dreams. Anyone who claims to act in the interest of the Indian
people must deal honestly with the Gandhian legacy.This means that those of us, who find his religious or spiritual explanations of his actions and philosophy hard to swallow, must yet face the fact that the action and philosophy appealed to something embedded deeply and strongly in our collective psyche. Even Nehru, always ill at ease with Gandhi's explanations, had inevitably to succumb to his belief that Gandhi alone had his hand on the Indian pulse.
But if Gandhi was somehow an indicator of the Indians' dreams, we too were influenced strongly by his vision of the world to be. And thus we also came to believe in a country where religion would not divide, caste would not oppress, and violence would be banished. And if Gandhi did not have an economic programme that his followers could endorse, they did nevertheless all envision an India where the poor would not suffer at the hands of the rich. All this, then, is the Indian dream.
If we had this dream for India, how could we not have it for the world? If the problems of India were to be settled by non-violent means, how could we propose other tactics for problems among nations? Most of all, if we advocate love for each other, how could we ever sanction enforcing peace through fear? Yet the last is the "logic" of deterrence, and Gandhi denied it in no uncertain terms (Harijan, 7-7-46; Collected Works, v84, 393-4):
"The moral to be legitimately drawn from the supreme tragedy of the bomb is that it will not be destroyed by counter-bombs even as violence cannot be by counter-violence. Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred increases the surface as well as the depth of the hatred."Not all Indians shared the dream, and how could they? All positioning is relative, and to raise the mass who are below is to lower the few who are above. Those few could not be expected to join the party, though many did. A group of malcontents adopted the only method they knew and deprived Gandhi of his life. So we do not quite know what he would have made of subsequent events - of the Cold War, of a world living in daily fear of not seeing the next day. We can only surmise that he would not have been surprised and that he would not have surrendered.
If one light was extinguished, others still shone and showed the way in that dark age. We did not join the mad race for these "ultimate" weapons. As the world started to divide into two armed camps, we held aloof, and tried to inspire others to sanity and humanity.
And now that the terror is fading, now that there is some hope that humanity will pull through and see off the terrible danger we have lived with for fifty years, now we throw our resolve to the winds and start off the whole thing all over again!
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