Conversing with hatred

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/2760/

Date: 27-Feb-2017

Republished. Originally published on 26-May-2009

 

Dear Jeyamohan Sir,

How do you do? I too am a firm believer in non-violence and gandhism like you. I may have inherited it from my family. My grandfather participated in Indian independence movement. He had participated in toddy shop picketing, Quit India Movement and had been imprisoned. We have been devoted nationalists as long as I know. 

You would be knowing about the news articles published in the online version of Dinamani about the recent happenings in Sri Lanka. Comments from readers were also published and I had also written my comments. In reply, I was scolded and advised by many. India as a nation state was questioned and criticized in those online comments. Several people stated that non-violence cannot lead to independence. Many insisted that Gandhi was an impostor. Participants of that discussion praised Nethaji and announced that Prabhakaran was of the same lineage as Nethaji. I do not look down upon Nethaji, but I have no doubt that his ideology did not work out in Indian independence. 

I have read some of your articles on Gandhism. Its well known that you believe in Gandhian principles. I believe that no one but you could allay my confusions. How did Gandhian methods win our freedom? Why couldn't armed struggles by others succeed? Could Nethaji have won our freedom provided he had sufficient strength in arms, ammunition and sufficient wealth? In that case, is Gandhian methods meant for the weak? Didn't we succeed due to non violent methods of crores of people? Is the strength of weapon greater than people's internal strength?

Its quite intimidating to note the hatred for India being portrayed by some of the online sites. Given the propensity of younger generation for using internet, it seems that such wrongful directions can shake up the core idea of Indian nation. Is the intelligentsia that voices and spreads the eminence of India, strong?

Believing that your explanations can clear my doubts.

Gurumurthy Palanivel

Nigeria

 

Dear Palanivel,

The hatred poured on you is quite natural. Gandhian principles are always against hatred. Therefore, it is always faced with hatred. Even in his times, Gandhi lived amidst the greatest hatred and calumny. He was conversing with those only again and again.

The minds smouldering with such hatred do not really have any creed, guideline nor even any aim. They spew hatred out of their own volition. Those minds find some political or social alibi for the sake of spewing that hatred and they present that notion as the highest ideal or as the legitimate anger towards society. They justify their hatred and their lust for power through that intention, but the underlying force is singularly the hatred.

The sole proof can be found in the fact that they would not hesitate to stamp on the very aim for which they purport to be showcasing their hatred. The hands that purport to lift weapons for people's sake would murder the same people. For eg: the fact that Mao performed it in China has been acknowledged now after having been dismissed as lie for four decades. The Maoists have been doing this in Andhra previously and now in the villages of Northern India.

The thrill provided by armed uprisings isn't present in other social movements. Those who lecture about these movements initially will be those intellectuals who are incapable of facing any violence in their personal lives. These become their idea to chase away the fatigue of their daily lives. It helps them to portray themselves as highly intense and uncompromising souls. For this facade and for the sake of egotistic satisfaction this creates, they treat the lives of thousands as a game by taking those.

Since the feelings and thoughts pertaining to violence are quite easy to trigger, lower rung intellectuals and selfish politicians employ those. It is quite easy to create strife among humans in any society. Hitler explains about this in his autobiography quite splendidly. If a person becomes emotional truly on a stage, it would be enough to spread that emotion to the crowd surrounding him. It is a normal human tendency that they wouldn't think about whether the emotion is true or whether it can bear any real fruits. 

How to attain such 'truthful' negative emotion? It should suffice if the speaker develops hatred within himself gradually. That hatred would present itself as an energy. That is the potential of Fascism. Modern politics has learnt that hatred is the greatest weapon and it understood that identities like religion, race and tribe can be used to create that hatred. The blood spill of today was created by that understanding. Gandhism is the humanity's just voice against such hatred politics

**

There are three foundational rules of Gandhian movement that make it this century's essential method.

First, a movement must lead to some learning for the people and must uplift them. Any society will be made up of myriad units, with fierce internal conflicts among them. When they come together for a common cause, it must lead to discussions and conversations among them. It must create an equilibrium among their conflicts.

The trait of Gandhian movement is to gather people together constantly. It would only bring out their conflicts, but would create reconciliation between their conflicts and through that reconciliation would enable them to agree to a common dream and a common programme. This would also be the stronghold of that movement, but this would happen only on a long term basis. That is why Gandhism advocates a gradual and incremental movement.

If one looks at the half-century history of Indian independence movement, he/she can see that all the internal conflicts of Indian society were brought together to a common platform and were gradually lead to reconciliation. Gandhi had spent his entire spiritual strength on these reconciliation. He had lead compromises time and time again. He had lead the movement, which until his arrival was only at the higher echelons, to even the lower strata of the society. He had brought into the movement, all sides of the society.

Senior communist leader C. Achutha Menon told me several years back 'Gandhi had brought the Indian society to politics through the Indian independence movement. He led the crores of downtrodden Indian citizens to understand that they had the right to political participation and it is atop that understanding that the communist parties were created'. Indian Dalit movement too was built on that foundation. Ambedkar too understood it.

That means, Gandhi's independence movement was just a natural next step to the political awareness that he created. Majority of Indians had been doomed to their narrow spheres sans any relevance to politics. Gandhi provided them politics and now they cannot live without rights. After that, they cannot be trampled upon and ruled over by landlords, provincial rulers or Britishers. 

Therefore, it is a movement to fight against their oppressors by uplifting themselves, a movement where by reforming their errors, they weed out their slavery. That is the primary foundation of a movement following Gandhian ways.

Secondly, Gandhian movement has the quality of keeping open the ways to weed out the mistakes. There is always a possibility of the movement's standpoint being wrong - human error, philosophical fallacies, mistakes in historical understanding. The losses from a movement that cannot be backtracked aren't minimal. 

Because social movements involve crores of people. Numerous subtle aspects like the history and culture of those people are embedded in that movement. To understand such vast aspects entirely and devise a movement is next to impossible. So, there will be nothing like a perfectly right path.

Gandhi has rolled back his movements multiple times. The moment he thought that the intentions of his movement had been wrongly understood or that his understanding of the historical context was wrong, he had retreated and reconsidered. He had restarted in a different method. It is only the Gandhian method of movement that has this quality.

Thirdly, the understanding that there is nothing like a final solution either in history or in social activities is the basic vision of Gandhian methods. Taking a stance claiming to have found out the ultimate solution and wouldn't budge for anything else is but an absurd egoism and not an understanding of society or history. Gandhi had a deep understanding of dialectics. Every force has an equal but opposing force. A movement is a one that comprises reconciliation with that opposing force. Any movement must always be ready for a dialogue with its counterpart.

It is amazing to realize today that Gandhi's independence movement didn't aim to uproot and destroy the British Government, rather it was a constant dialogue with the British supremacy. He was always ready for a dialogue with Britishers. He was constantly expounding his perspectives. He gained and retained his gains. He never said that Britishers were his enemy. He never portrayed them as monsters. He mentioned that he was fighting for them too. 

That's why though he was able to get rid of Britishers from Indian administration, he could still retain British's democracy, financial administration and english journalism, which prevail as the the jewels of Indian civilization to this day. He was a leader even for those against whom he fought.

Fourth: Gandhian movement didn't have a singular focus. It was also a gigantic social creation. When fighting against servitude, he identified all the myriad reasons for that and alleviated every one of them and directed the movements towards those ends. Gandhi, who fought against the British, also toured village after village canvassing for people to defecate in toilets, toiled hard to redeem rural economy, fought for religious reforms.

A strong democracy, absent in any of its neighbors, prevails in India. Even with its deficiencies and faults, this democracy cannot be nominally compared with any other. These democratic ideals were created only through the independence movement that too because it was a Gandhian movement.

The naysayers must spell out the list of armed movements that succeeded in history. People with even a smidgen of historical conscience would see that in the past hundred years whichever country faced armed conflicts, such movements brought nothing but utmost ruin - yes ruin - to its populace.

If we peruse the reasons for its destructive force, we can conclude that it is due to the lack of the principal qualities characteristic of Gandhian movements. Having evolved to monumental proportions and being discussed for half a century by various ideologists time and again - the Russian and Chinese revolutions. What did they provide to its masses? Wasn't it merely catastrophe and slavery? History has today laid this fact bare. Still, those who were singing its praises come up readily, sans any shame or hesitance, for faulting Gandhi.

What is the common aspect that we see in Russian, Chinese revolutions to the inter tribal warfare in Africa? The sole fact being that they used weapons to deal with even their internal conflicts. They got annihilated by shooting among themselves. Suspicion, treachery, discrimination and the consequential killings. Any armed organization has killed its own people more - be it Russian or Chinese revolution or any armed movements anywhere in the world. There isn't a single exception till today.

Because violence excludes the avenues for reconciliation of the conflicts and progressing forward. It precludes dialogue. An armed society becomes rigid purely out of this non-dialogue nature. It gets welled up with fear and distrust, resulting in a gradual increase in its internal conflicts ultimately leading to destruction.

Today, in discussions pertaining to Russian and Chinese revolutions, its easy to see people commenting 'they were minor setbacks and errors in the implementation of Communism'. They do not consider the fact that crores and crores of people were killed like insects. Armed movements progress by burning the bridges as they march forward. Its only belief is in annihilation. The cost of its mistakes are quite high. Its only the poor people that pay the price. Through their lives. Stalinists and Maoists can say that obliterating Kulaks and cultural revolution were mistakes. But what would they answer for the murdered civilians?

An armed movement marches forward only after it decides on a fixed conclusion without any room for dialogue. But no genius can ever take such a conclusion on historical or social aspects under any circumstances. Even if one peers through history of past fifty years, he can see myriad turn of events, enormously spectacular possibilities and multitudinous new forces... A movement considering such limit will always account for its counter force and it would always remain a conversation.

The mere fact that Gandhian methods allows for dialogue has led to all different kinds of perspectives on it to be presented. There is no vivid description about Subash Chandra Bose's movement. Subash didn't opt for armed movement, rather he was exploited by the contemporary forces then. There was a  fierce North-South strife within his movement. Moreover, his armed movement finally ended up being a joke. His army remained as Japanese's servants. By official account, how many war fronts did the INA fight directly? On only one!

The most important of all these - Subhash walked over the blood of the very same people for the sake of whom he took up arms. He was witness to the death of several lakhs of Tamils and Indians during the construction of the 'railway of death' in Siam. His conscience went quite regarding that human tragedy. If Gandhi had know such news, would he have kept that silence?

What we are witnessing in this century's world politics is the destruction wrought by meaningless uprisings. These are commenced mostly by some intellectuals initially, nurtured further by power centers and are later extended out of egos, lust for power, the hatred kindled for its sake and the ensuing violence.

At this moment, at a minimum, fifteen countries in Africa have been completely obliterated due to civil wars. Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda - we can list such countries where rivers of human blood flowed. What is the reason for these civil wars? One would get a simple response - Distrust among the tribes. How did that distrust arise? Weapons. And we clamor for justice with those countries that produce and supply the weapons to both parties.

We burn with rage asking what the world did when our race was being destroyed in Eelam. We do not realize that one-fourth of the world is being annihilated in such civil wars. We do not speak about what we did about those civil wars. Some intellectuals try to find ways to fan the same emotions and power-lust, that were the reason for such wars and destruction, in our people as well. And they are the ones known as to be speaking for humanity here.

Should Africa be destroyed in civil war? Ought the tribes be fighting for separate countries and get killed by thousands? Is there no means to remove this distrust? Could we not find out a way? What about the Irish and Spanish civil wars? If those can be reconciled and remain as a single country, why should we have civil wars in Asia and Africa and get ruined?

There is a colossal example before us and that example is not only for Africa but for the entire world. If someone had every justification to advocate and take up a massive armed uprising, it was certainly only for Nelson Mandela. Oppressive racism, unparalleled exploitation - he was pushed towards an armed uprising time and again. Supporters of violent methods kept walking away from his own party. 

But he had learnt from Gandhi. What he offered to his people was a movement for uplifting themselves. He had imprisoned himself for that sake. I would say that his incarceration of 27 years was the greatest Gandhian Satyagraha of this century. It brought his own people towards political movement. It created a dialogue among them.

More than that, it opened up a soulful conversation with his adversaries. We know that at one point, all the Caucasian countries participated in Mandela's movement quite vociferously. South Africa's freedom was a gradual consequence of that dialogue. It isn't a freedom only for Africans, rather for everyone including the whites. A freedom sans violence and a history that happened right in front us.

Looking back at Mandela's life, we see that he had made reconciliations constantly. He was in dialogue time and time again - with different groups of African National Congress, different sub-national organizations, with Zulus, with whites. His biographers call him 'a champion of reconciliation'.

When there was bloodshed in Eelam, when Congo was getting devastated, we witnessed in television a peaceful change in government inside Africa. The lessons that we are loathe to learn were getting staged there.

What if Nelson Mandela had taken up arms? Another Rwanda. Another Congo. But just four times bigger. Humanity's largest bloodshed would've occurred. I am reminded of the day when Nelson Mandela took oath after the culmination of the first multi-racial election in Africa. Zulu people took to streets with arms fearful of becoming second-class citizens. We know very well as to why and by whom the fear was created. I was shaken for the whole night after witnessing their ferocious clamour in television. Considering African history, I feared a gruesome battle to be starting. 

But Nelson Mandela won over that trouble through his Gandhian weapons. With an open-mind, he agreed for power-sharing with Zulu leaders. Through his sacrifice and his unparalleled patience, he turned that historic opportunity to gold. Due to this, South Africa is an island of democracy, within the darkness shed by wars in African continent.

This is the perfect example of the eternal victory and contemporary significance of Gandhian methods. We can cite all armed movements as the examples of those methods' certain defeat and their consequential devastation. Still, we keep encountering the hatred of the hatefuls. It is their hatred that seeks weapons. Let us keep conversing constantly with that hatred and keep our hands outstretched to be ready shaking hands.

 

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinamani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eelam_War_IV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhas_Chandra_Bose

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velupillai_Prabhakaran

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Achutha_Menon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Army

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/20990099

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Railway

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eelam

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Civil_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_National_Congress