DANGEROUS ILLUSIONS: A LETTER TO MR. GANDHI
By RANJEE G. SHAHANI DEAR GANDHIJI,-
Your politics are not only derived from religion, but are, in essence, at one with it. No doubt about this. Religious preoccupations dominate all your activity and envelop it in a cloud of incense born of your very prayers. You see the hand of Providence in the tiniest grain of sand, as in the flaming ramparts of the world. Your motto obviously is "All things as for God."
But if your politics are inseparable from your religion, they are, unfortunately, not entirely determined by the distinction that most of us humble folk make between primary and secondary causes. They guard their sacred character, but they do not consider the happenings of human history on the plane on which they actually take place, which is that of nature. What I mean to say is that there is a gulf, a scission, in your mind between the Ought and the Is. You never attain the human- divine level where the ideal and the real meet and melt and broaden out into a co-related, whole existence.
God, no doubt, is the motor force of the universe ; but—and this is important—each creature is moved according to its nature. You yourself, for example, if you wish to utilise a horse which you see in a field, what will you do? You will mount it or lead it by the bridle, and the animal will obey you according to its nature, even if it has all the necessary force to resist you or knock you down. Now, if you wish to make friends with that little boy in the garden, you will either call him or, if you don't know him, show him a chocolate, and the child will come to you, according to its nature. Finally, if you are desirous of tasting a mango, and see just the one you fancy in a tree, you will pluck it, and the mango will fall, according to its nature. In all this you see a natural manifestation of the action of God on His creatures. He moves the sun, and the stars, everything that exists, but each according to its nature; and man having been endowed with a free will, is moved freely. This is an eternal law, and we all must believe it.
It is, then, according to their earthly nature that we must evaluate, command and foresee the things of the earth. Man, too, must be aided, combated, vanquished according to the nature of man. In other words, politics should be guided by Empiricism. A real statesman should be perpetually sensible to the variety and mobility of world events. To remain locked up in a certain idea or ideology, as in a coffin, is to court disaster. All generalised ideas are false. Meaning and value, as Patanjali said, can only attach to the concrete and the particular.
These reflections, neither very original nor very profound, have been provoked by meditation over your persistent attach- ment to some vague and vast doctrines. You are certain that passive resistance, non-co-operation and civil disobedience—to mention but a few of your cherished ideas—will achieve the independence of India. Here, permit me to tell you, you make a huge mistake. Why? Because you completely ignore the particular nature of Indians as well as of the British. This double error is at the bottom of all your deboires.
You have read Tolstoy, but not Cicero. There's the rub. If you had, you would understand the British better. Take, for example, De Officiis. If you will take the trouble to open that little book, you will find in black and white some of the duties of the man of culture, of the man with social responsi- bilities, of the soldier, the statesman, and ruler. This view you practically ignore. The British live by it. In a word, while you talk only of pity, they think in terms of justice. They admire not weakness, but the strong and unselfish administrator, the governor who faces unpopularity to prevent corruption, the judge who does strict justice sans peur et sans reproche. You do not understand this point of view. No wonder your theories are so ineffectual! You can't blame the British for this failure. The fault, dear Gandhiji, is yours.
It would look as though you would have all men end up as saints. Is this possible or even desirable? The Bhagavad-Gita makes no such mistake. You will recall that it has a double ethic: one for the saint, another for the man of ,the world. This is as it should be; for life is not a uniform scheme. "One law for the ox and the lion," as Blake said, "is oppression." Be- cause you are, temperamentally, a mild man, does this mean that all people are like you? No, neither in India nor in Britain. The fact is, no organism, however rudimentary, likes to be trampled upon. The ego has a certain inborn pride. To reduce it to zero, as you would have us do, is an unlikely sub- limation of the process of living. Anyway, your past experi- ence has shown you that soul-force, when practised on a large scale, quickly degenerates into violence and bloodshed. Your former campaign, which was to culminate in mass civil dis- obedience, was, as you yourself admitted with a penitent heart, a fearful fiasco. This reminds me that passive resistance is a disreputable verbal quibble: resistance is resistance, call it by any fine name you will. That it is impracticable is certain. It will not move the British, and it will not work with Indians. Why, then, think of it again? Has past experience no lessons for you? Or have we Indians suddenly become a race of saints, and the British confirmed Tolstoyans? I cannot believe it.
You nourish, I fear, dangerous illusions ; and the worst of these is civil disobedience as an instrument for achieving inde- pendence. Now what is civil disobedience? A new form of barbarism. All professions suspended. All activities reduced to disorder. All efforts directed to one end—the destruction of all normal life. The family divided. The future blank. Studies interrupted. A sterilisation-of the intelligence except in one direction—the pursuit of chaos. In the village everything upset. The peasant child infected with subversive ideas. He can never again have a peaceful existence, for the wine of mad- ness has entered into his blood. The crops will depend on the hazards of political bargaining. Men, women and children, disturbed in their beneficent or simply useful occupations, will know henceforth nothing but hatred, punishment, deception and bitterness. In brief, pain and sorrow for all. You do not wish India to participate in this war, but you are working ft - a revolution. This is to prefer a calamity to a catastrophe !
Reflect, please, before you act. It is a fearful responsibility to let loose Caliban on the Indian soil. You will not harm the British, but you may ruin India for good.—Yours most
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