§ 6
I have said enough to show Gandhi’s great evangelical heart beating under his Hindu creed. Gandhi is a Tolstoi in a more gentle, appeased, and, if I dared, I would say, in a more Christian sense, for Tolstoi is not so much a Christian by nature as by force of will.
The resemblance between the two men is greatest, or perhaps Tolstoi’s influence has been strongest, in their condemnation of European and Occidental civilization.
Ever since Rousseau our Western civilization has been attacked by the freest and broadest minds of Europe. When Asia began to wake to a realization of her own power and revolt against Western oppression, she had only to peer into Europe’s own files to compile formidable records of the iniquity of her so-called civilized invaders. Gandhi did not fail to do so, and in his “Hind Swaraj” he cites a list of books, many of which were written by Englishmen, condemning European civilization. But the document to which there can be no rejoinder is that which Europe herself has traced in the lifeblood of races oppressed and despoiled in the name of lying principles and, above all, in the brazen revelation of Europe’s lies, greed, and ferocity as unfolded during the last war, called the “War for Civilization.” And in it Europe sank to such depths that in her insanity she even invited the peoples of Asia and Africa to contemplate her nudity. They saw her and judged her.
The last war has shown as nothing else has the Satanic40 nature of the civilization that dominates Europe to-day. Every canon of public morality has been broken by the victors in the name of virtue. No lie has been considered too foul to be uttered. The motive behind every crime is not religious or spiritual but grossly material... Europe to-day is only nominally Christian. In reality it is worshipping Mammon.41
You will find sentiments such as these expressed again and again, during the last five years, both in India and Japan. Leaders too prudent to voice them openly show by their attitude that such is their inmost conviction. This is not the least disastrous result of the Pyrrhic victory of 1918.
Gandhi, however, had seen the real face of Western civilization long before 1914. It had revealed itself to him unmasked during his twenty years’ campaign in South Africa, and in 1908, in his “Hind Swaraj,” he calls modern civilization the “great vice.”
Civilization, says Gandhi, is civilization in name only. In reality it corresponds to what ancient Hinduism called the dark ages. It has set material well-being up as the only goal of life. It scorns spiritual values. It maddens Europeans, leads them to worship money only, and prevents them from finding peace or cultivating the best within them. Civilization in the Western sense means hell for the weak and for the working classes. It saps the vitality of the race. But this Satanic civilization will destroy itself. Western civilization is India’s real enemy, much more than the English, who, individually, are not bad, hut simply suffer from their civilization. Gandhi criticizes those of his compatriots who would want to drive out the English, to develop India themselves, and civilize her according to European standards. This, he says, would be like having the nature of a tiger without the tiger. India’s aim should be to repudiate Western civilization.
In his arraignment of Western civilization Gandhi scores three categories of men particularly: magistrates, doctors, and teachers.
Gandhi’s objection to teachers is quite comprehensible, since they have brought the Hindus up to scorn or neglect their own language and to disown their real aspirations; in fact, the teachers in India have inflicted a sort of national degradation on the schoolchildren in their charge. Besides, Western teachers appeal to the mind only; they neglect the education of the heart and of the character. Finally, they depreciate bodily labor, and to spread a purely literary education in a country where eighty per cent of the population is agricultural and ten per cent industrial is positively criminal.
The profession of magistrate is immoral. In India the courts are an instrument of British domination; they encourage dissensions among Indians, and in a general way they foster and increase misunderstanding and animosity. They stand for a fattening, lucrative exploitation of the worst instincts.
As for the medical profession, Gandhi admits he was attracted to it at first, but he soon realized it was not honorable. For Western medical science is concerned with giving relief to suffering bodies only. It does not strive to do away with the cause of suffering and disease, which, as a rule, is nothing but vice. In fact, Western medical science may almost be said to encourage vice by making it possible for a man to satisfy his passions and appetites at the least possible risk. It contributes, therefore, to demoralize people; it weakens their will-power by helping them to cure themselves with “black magic” prescriptions instead of forcing them to strengthen their character by disciplinary rules for body and soul.42 In opposition to the false medical science of the West, which Gandhi has often criticized unfairly, he places preventive medical science. He has written a little pamphlet on the subject entitled “A Guide to Health,” which is the fruit of twenty years’ experience. It is a moral as well as a therapeutic treatise, for, according to Gandhi, “disease is the result of our thoughts as much as of our acts.” He considers it a relatively simple matter to establish certain rules that will prevent disease. For all disease springs from the same origin, i. e., from neglect of the natural laws of health. The body is God’s dwelling-place. It must be kept pure. There is truth in Gandhi’s point of view, but he refuses a little too obstinately to recognize the efficacy of remedies that have really proved to be useful. His moral precepts are also extremely rigid.43