§ 5
It should be noted that when Gandhi stepped into the political field as leader of the opposition to the Rowlatt bills, he was moved only by a desire to spare the country from violence.25 The revolt was bound to come; he knew there was no possibility of avoiding it. The point, therefore, was to turn it into non-violent channels.
To understand Gandhi’s activity, it should be realized that his doctrine is like a huge edifice composed of two different floors or grades. Below is the solid groundwork, the basic foundation of religion. On this vast and unshakable foundation is based the political and social campaign. It is not the ideal continuation of the invisible foundation, but it is the best structure possible under present conditions. It is adapted to conditions.
In other words, Gandhi is religious by nature, and his doctrine is essentially religious. He is a political leader by necessity, because other leaders disappear, and the force of circumstances obliges him to pilot the ship through the storm and give practical political expression to his doctrine. These developments are interesting, but the essential part of the edifice is the crypt, which is deep and well built and meant to uphold a very different cathedral from the structure rapidly rising above it. The crypt alone is durable. The rest is temporary and only designed to serve during the transition years, until the plans for a cathedral worthy of the groundwork can be worked out. An understanding of the principles on which the vast subterranean crypt is based is essential, therefore, for here Gandhi’s thought finds its real expression. It is into the depths of this crypt that he descends every day to seek inspiration and strength to carry on the work above.
Gandhi believes in the religion of his people, in Hinduism. But he is not a scholar, attached to the punctilious interpretation of texts, nor is he a blind believer accepting unquestioningly all the traditions of his religion. His religion must satisfy his reason and correspond to the dictates of his conscience.
I would not make a fetish of religion and condone evil in its sacred name.26
My belief in the Hindu scripture does not require me to accept every word and every verse as divinely inspired. I decline to be bound by any interpretation however learned it may be if it is repugnant to reason or moral sense.27
Nor does he look upon Hinduism as the only religion, and this is a very important point.
I do not believe in the exclusive divinity of the Vedas. I believe the Bible, the Koran and the Zend-Avesta to be as divinely inspired as the Vedas.... Hinduism is not a missionary religion. In it there is room for the worship of all the prophets in the world... Hinduism tells every one to worship God according to his own faith or Dharma and so it lives in peace with all religions.28
He sees the errors and vices that have crept into religion through the centuries, and he brands them, but he adds:
I can no more describe my feeling for Hinduism than for my own wife. She moves me as no other woman in the world can. Not that she has no faults; I dare say, she has many more than I see myself. But the feeling of an indissoluble bond is there. Even so I feel about Hinduism with all its faults and limitations. Nothing elates me so much as the music of the Gitâ or the Ramayana by Tulasidas, the only two books in Hinduism I may be said to know. I know that vice is going on to-day in all the great Hindu shrines but I love them in spite of their failings. I am a reformer through and through. But my zeal never takes me to the rejection of any of the essential things of Hinduism.29
What are the essential things in which Gandhi believes? In an article written October 6,1921, Gandhi defines his conception of Hinduism:
1. He believes, he says, in the “Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas and all that goes by the name of Hindu scriptures.” He believes, therefore, in Avataras and rebirth.
2. He believes in the Varnashrama Dharma30 or the “Discipline of the Castes,” in a sense which he considers “strictly Vedic,” but which may not correspond to the present “popular and crude sense.”
3. He believes in the “protection of the cow in a much larger sense than the popular.”
4. He does not “disbelieve in idol worship.”
Every Occidental who reads Gandhi’s “Credo” and stops at these lines is apt to feel that they reveal a mentality so different from ours and so far removed in time and space as to make comparison with our ideals impossible, owing to the lack of a common measure. But if he will read on, he will find, a few lines below, the following words, which express a doctrine more familiar to us:
I believe implicitly in the Hindu aphorism that no one truly knows the Shastras who has not attained perfection in Innocence [Ahimsa], Truth [Satya], and Self-Control [Brahma-Charya] and who has not renounced all acquisition or possession of wealth.
Here the words of the Hindu join those of the Gospel. And Gandhi was aware of their similarity. To an English clergyman who asked him in 1920 which books had influenced him most, Gandhi replied, “The New Testament.”31
The last words of Gandhi’s “Ethical Religion” are a quotation from the New Testament,32 and he claims that the revelation of passive resistance came to him after reading the Sermon on the Mount in 1893.33 When the clergyman asked him, in surprise, if he had not found the same message in Hindu scriptures, Gandhi replied that while he has found inspiration and guidance in the Bhagavad Gitâ, which he reveres and admires, the secret of passive resistance was made clear to him through the New Testament. A great joy welled up in him, he says, when the revelation came to him, and again when the Gitâ confirmed this revelation.34 Gandhi also says that Tolstoi’s ideal, that the kingdom of God is within us, helped him mold his own faith into a real doctrine.35
It should not be forgotten that this Asiatic believer has translated Ruskin36 and Plato37 and quotes Thoreau, admires Mazzini, reads Edward Carpenter, and that he is, in short, familiar with the best that Europe and America have produced.
There is no reason why a Westerner should not understand Gandhi’s doctrine as well as Gandhi understands those of our great men, provided the Westerner will take the trouble to study Gandhi a little deeply. It is true that the mere words of Gandhi’s creed may surprise him, and that two paragraphs, in fact, if read superficially, may seem so different from our mentality as to form an almost insurmountable barrier between the religious ideals of Asia and Europe. One of these paragraphs refers to cow-protection and the other to the caste system. As for Gandhi’s reference to idol-worship, it requires no special study. Gandhi explains his attitude when he says that he has no veneration for idols but believes idol-worship to be part of human nature. He considers it inherent to the frailty of the human mind, because we all “hanker after symbolism” and must needs materialize our faith in order really to understand it. When Gandhi says he does not disbelieve in idol-worship, he means no more than what we countenance in all our ritualistic churches of the West.
“Cow-protection,” says Gandhi, is the central fact of Hinduism. He looks upon it as one of the “most wonderful phenomena of human evolution.” Why? Because the cow, to him, is taken as the symbol of the entire “sub-human world.” Cow-protection means that man concludes a pact of alliance with his dumb brethren; it signifies fraternity between man and beast. According to Gandhi’s beautiful expression, by learning to respect, revere, an animal, man is “taken beyond his species and is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives.”
If the cow was selected in preference to other creatures it was because in India the cow was the best companion, the giver of plenty. Not only did she give the milk but she made agriculture possible. And Gandhi sees in “this gentle animal” a “poem of pity.”
But there is nothing idolatrous about Gandhi’s cow-worship, and no one condemns more harshly than he the fetishism of many so-called believers, who observe the letter of “cow-worship” without exercising a spirit of compassion “for the dumb creatures of God.” Whoever understands the spirit of compassion and fellow-feeling that Gandhi would have men feel for their dumb brethren,—and who would have understood this better than the poverello Assisi?—is not surprised that Gandhi lays such stress on cow-protection in his creed. From this point of view he is quite justified in saying that cow-protection is the “gift of Hinduism to the world.” To the precept of the gospel, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Gandhi adds, “And every living being is thy neighbor.”38
Gandhi’s belief in the caste system is almost more difficult for a European or Western mind to understand—it seems more foreign, almost, than the idea of the fellowship of all living beings. I should perhaps say “European or Western mind of to-day,” for while we still believe in a certain equality, Heaven knows how we will feel in the future, when we become thoroughly imbued with the consequences of the evolution, democratic in name only, which we are undergoing! I do not imagine that at our present stage of development my explanation of Gandhi’s views will make them seem acceptable as regards the caste system; nor am I anxious to have them seem so. But I would like to make it clear that Gandhi’s conception of the caste system is different from what we usually mean by that term, since he does not base it on pride or vain notions of social superiority, but on duties.
I am inclined to think [he says] that the law of heredity is an eternal law, and that any attempt to alter it must lead to utter confusion... Varnashrama or the caste system, is inherent in human nature. Hinduism has simply reduced it to a science.
Gandhi believes in four classes or castes. The Brahmans, the intellectual and spiritual class; the the military and governmental class; the Vaishyas, the commercial, industrial class; and the Shudras, manual workers and laborers. This classification does not imply any superiority or inferiority. It simply stands for different vocations. “These classes define duties, they confer no privileges.”39
It is against the genius of Hinduism to arrogate to oneself a higher status or assign others to a lower. All are born to serve God’s creation, the Brahman with his knowledge, the Kshatriya with his power of protection, the Vaishya with his commercial ability, the Shudra with his bodily labor.
This does not mean that a Brahman is absolved from bodily labor but it does mean that he is predominantly a man of knowledge and fittest by training and heredity to impart it to others. There is nothing again to prevent a Shudra from acquiring all the knowledge he wishes. Only he will best serve with his body and need not envy others their special qualities for service. A Brahman who claims superiority by right of knowledge falls and has no knowledge. Varnashrama is self-restraint and conservation of economy and energy....
Gandhi’s caste system is based, therefore, on “abnegation and not on privileges.” It should not be forgotten, moreover, that according to Hinduism reincarnation reestablishes a general equilibrium, as in the course of successive existences a Brahman becomes a Shudra, and vice versa.
The caste system, which deals with different classes of equal rank, bears no relation whatsoever to the attitude of Hindus to the “untouchables,” or pariahs. We will study later on Gandhi’s passionate appeals for the pariahs. His campaign in favor of the “suppressed classes” is one of the most appealing phases of his apostleship. Gandhi regards the pariah system as a blot on Hinduism; it is a vile deformation of the real doctrine, and he suffers intolerably by it.
I would rather be torn to pieces than disown my brothers of the suppressed classes.... I do not want to be reborn, but if I have to be reborn, I should be “untouchable” so that I may share their sorrows, sufferings and the affronts leveled at them in order that I may endeavor to free them from their miserable condition.
And he adopts a little “untouchable” girl and speaks with emotion of this charming little imp of seven who rules the household with her gay prattle.