GANDHI: TO THE 21ST CENTURY

Dr. Ramjee Singh

1. An overview:-

While addressing the Philosophy Club of Cambridge University (U.K.) in 1952, Toynbee had chosen to speak on the topic “2002”. Taking a long look into the shape of things in future, he proclaimed that the world would get increasingly unified, physically economically and militarily. The human spirit would rebel against this global unification and this rebellion will start in India. In another characteristic and prophetic statement Toynbee says: “It is becoming clear that a chapter which had a western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the human race.” A hard-headed rationalist. Bertrand Russell also writes to Einstein almost in the same view: “A great war with nuclear weapons means....not improbably extinction of all life on this planet....A great war must therefore be prevented. For this reason, India has the opportunity to do a supreme services to mankind for which no other nation is equally fitted.”¹ (pp. 628-629). Here we have an attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family and, in the Atomic Age, this is the only alternative to destroying ourselves.

2. Beyond Violence:-

The Nuclear winter and Gandhi: - The possible consequences of a nuclear war, as developed through computers, is the scenario of a long nuclear winter. The 10,000 M.T. blast can plunge the surface temperature in mild-latitude areas to minus 50°C for a year or longer. Even a nuclear 100 M.T. could produce sufficient smoke to blacken the skies and chill the continental countries to below minus 20°C with recovery taking over three months. A nuclear war-toxic smog generated out of massive burning of synthetic materials in urban industrial centre is another chemical hazard. Temperature will drop from 15° to 40°C. over most of the world including India. Plants will be the first casuality because photosynthesis will not be possible. Acquatic eco-systems will be affected and marine alagae will perish. The Fate of the Earth will be as “the republic of insects and grass.” Hence, “Either we abolish war, or war will abolish us.” In fact, war has lost its dynamics and arms race is bound to stop. That is why, the Communists have rightly given up the doctrine of inevitability of war and Gorbachev behaved like a spokesman of nonviolence proposing a blanket ban on nuclear weapons. As a matter of fact, we have to choose between non-existence and non-violence, between total, catastrophe and Gandhi. Bluntly put, this is infact the choice being forced upon mankind today. Faced with a threat of survival, there can be no choice between nuclear disarmament and nuclear winter. Total nuclear disarmament has thus become a far more feasible proposition today when we have been fully assured of total destruction of mankind and its civilization. There used to be the so-called laws of war which made it tolerable. Now we know the naked truth. The nuclear warfare knows no law of war. It can bring an empty victory but more correctly total annihilation.

Here we may ask, will the nuclear threat be averted by simply knowing its destructive nature? In our daily life, we know what is right but we feel no inclination to follow it. On the other hand, we know what is wrong and yet we cannot desist from doing it. This is human nature. But there is a qualitative difference in the destructive power of the atomic arsenal. It is not partially destructive but omni-destructive weapon. This is therefore called MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction. Then the monopoly of the nuclear powers has also been broken and there is a “balance of terror”. The nuclear powers labour under the illusion that since one side knows that the other can destroy it, it would not start the nuclear war. This is the policy of deterrence. Hence disarmament is a necessity for survival. Einstein was right when he said: “America goes on stockpiling atom bombs. They do this in the name of security. This is stupid...The more atom bombs you have, the more you become a target for atomic attack.” However, the mutual distrust is so great that unilateral nuclear disarmament is becoming delayed. But when mankind discovers its true nature and its true implications, distrust will give place to determination for total annihilation of the nuclear war heads. They will “beat their swords into plough-shares” and “turn their swords into pruning hooks.” This is because man has a very strong and intense desire to live. Life is a rule, suicide is an exception. Hence, whether it is human instinct or reason, whether it is fear of total destruction or even balance of terror, nuclear war is a human impossibility. A peace phenomenon has been born in the U.S.A and we are blessed for it. A nation that has a war culture and a war economy, that dared to drop the first atomic bomb and has been known to threaten to drop a hydrogen bomb has produced a lot of peace-activists. In short, military victory is a concept which has become obsolete with the coming of the nuclear age. Hence, whether they are generals like Omar Bradley,² Macaithur³ or Eisenhower⁴ or heads of the state like John F. Kennedy⁵ or L. B. Johnson⁶ or Religious Heads like Pope John XXIII⁷ or Pop John Paul II⁸ or a vicious war-monger like Herman Goering⁹ all of them condemned war completely.

In March 1951, Einstein stated “Revolution without the use of violence was the method by which Gandhi brought liberation of India. It is my firm belief that the problem of bringing peace to the world on a supernational basis will be solved only by employing Gandhi’s method on a large scale.” ¹⁰ Robert Oppenheimer speaking at a UNESCO conference said that if he had to think of a single word for Einstein’s attitude towards human problems, he would pick the Sanskrit word Ahimsa. ¹¹ In fact, Ahimsa is not a part of science. Ahimsa goes beyond science. And beyond science, beyond reason, is not anti-science or anti-reason. Neils Bohr’s open letter to the U. N. Secretary General in 1950 also reminds us of Kant’s prophetic Essay (1975) on Perpetual Peace. An open world is based increasingly on Science and Ahimsa. Any other course can lead only to mankind’s total annihilation. The 25th Pugwash Anniversary Conference in Warsaw in August 1982 signed by amongst others, nearly a hundred Nobel Laureates reaffirmed the joint declaration of Bertrand Russel, Einstein, Yukawa and others in 1955 with new urgency: “Shall we, instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels?” Therefore, Gandhi had warned the West: “It is dispairing of the multiplication of the atom bombs, because atom bombs mean utter destruction net merely of the west but of the whole world, as if the prophecy of the Bible is going to be fulfilled and there is to be a perfect deluge.”

3. Beyond Technology: The Third Wave

Nuclear weapons are not just a mistake in an otherwise healthy world. They are the logical outcome of an aggressive way of life and the result of materialistic world view and industrial culture. There is a conceptual revolution in the realm of sciences. The old materialistic mechanistic Newtonian conception is in a state of crisis. Fritz of Capra presents a new vision of reality in his famous book The Tao of Physics. In his recent book, The Turning point, Fritz of Capra says “what we need, then, is a new paradigm, a new vision of reality, a fundamental change in our thoughts and values.” This is change from the mechanistic to the holistic conception of reality, leading to new economics and technology with ecological bias. Like Gandhi, Alvin Toffler condemns the mad rush towards industrialism and both the capitalist and communist paradigms because they have failed to solve the basic problems of poverty, hunger, unemployment on the one hand and alienation, dehumanisation, resource exhaustion, environmental pollution, ecological threat, and violence and war. On the other hand, both the systems have brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust and if we want our survival, we have to find out the third wave or a new alternative. In his most absorbing book the Arrogance of Humanism (Oxford University press) Professor David Ehrenfield, says that the Western materialistic civilization has provided a life of vulgar ostentation and luxury for a few. This materialistic humanism unduly inflates our ego and assumes that we can do anything with the aid of reason, science, and money. In this control, mankind has incurred heavy losses-the loss of hoary forests and wilderness of animals and vegetable species, of land-scales and scenic spots, of human skills, of environment, human health and human sanity. In his well-known books, Small is Beautiful, A guide for the Perplexed and Good work, eminent economist E. F. Schumacher decries the economics of gigantism and automation. We must learn to think in terms of an articulated structure that can cope with multiplicity of small-scale units. If it can get beyond its abstructions, the G.N.P., the rate of growth, capital output ratio, input-output analysis, labour mobility and capital accumulation have no meaning. “If it cannot get beyond this and make contact with human poverty, frustration, alienation, despair, breakdown, crime, escapism, ugliness and spiritual death, then let us scrap economics and start afresh.” The only alternative is decentralized, small-scale production in village homes and small communities, a mode of production in which the producer is also the consumer the “Prosumer”. Erick Fromm in his To Have or To be Bet (Abacus, 1978) classifies into two modes - “having” and “being”. The first is dominant in modern industrial society, both capitalist and communist, which concentrates on material possessions and power and is based on greed, envy and aggressiveness. The second way i.e., “Being”, manifests in the pleasure of shares experience and truly productive rather than wasteful activity, and is rooted in love and ascendancy of human over material values. The first mode is bringing the world to the brink of ecological and psychological disaster, while the other is the only course to avoid catastrophe. In the history of human progress, the first wave was Agricultural Revolution which dominated the earth for 10000 years. The second wave is the Industrial Revolution, which changed our entire life-style. It has led to alienation and dehumanisation in economic sphere, it has consolidated the power of the State and has made war an omni-suicidal phenomena. Infact, technology and ideology go together. Hence, if we want culture of peace and harmony, we must have a technology of peace. Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of selfish wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment and increases the capacity for services.

Beyond Politics or the Politics of the Apolitical:-

Whether they are our nuclear or technological policies, they are determined by politics. Hence, the Mahabharat says “politics pervades and encircles all disciplines and walks of life.” But today, there is an antithesis between goodness and politics. Late President Louis McHenry Howe had rightly said: “you cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.” ¹² “The politics of courts” says Lord Nelson, are “so mean that private people would be ashamed to act in the same way, all is trick and finesse to which the common cause is sacrificed”. To day, politics is without principles and at least a science of exigencies.” Thanks to politicians, the world has become a great arsenal and therefore politics has become the greatest menace to man. Hence, while politicians might be worrying about so many things, we should, indeed be worrying about politics itself. Mclver rightly says that power-conception of the state reveals its menacing defects. In the Indian context, today perhaps Machiavelli will fade into insignificance before the present powerbrokers of our country and even Adolf Hitler and his publicity secretary Goebbels will hesitate to tell such crudest falsehoods and stupid things on the mass media as is done today. The very line of demarcation between good and bad means has been so much blurred that the very problem of means and ends has become a non-issue.

Hence either we adopt a “Spiritual approach to history” (as Plato has opined) or “spiritualise politics (Gokhale and Gandhi) or be prepared to be crushed under the wheels of present politics. “Unless we moralise politics,” Aristotle says, “a polis.....will cease to be a polis.” ¹³ Hence, we can conclude that present day politics which has lost its dynamics and humanity is in search of a ‘new politics.’

Around the world we witness today a gap between principles and practices in politics, between public opinion and government policy, with the result that there is a growing alienation between political leadership and the common mass. There is therefore an increasing struggle between “the people in power” and “the power in the people.” The young people even in the affluent west are not sure about their future, whether they would at all see the end of the century. Man is suffering from a morbid death wish. The world is still divided into two camps and the cry of co-existence of Capitalism and Socialism is a huge hoax. Though the Communists had given the call of fight against Capitalism, they accepted the basic tenets of capitalism, for example, materialism, gigantic industries exploitation of Asia the third world, common market and international fiscal jugglery, naked competition in arms-race and nuclear proliferation, pseudo-democracy, affluence sabotage of their rival countries and so on. ¹⁴

The labour unions in the capitalist regimes have little faith in socialist revolution. They are interested only in continuously raising their pay, pension and promotion, on the contrary, labour unions in Russia have become Labour Welfare Organisations against which workers have risen in revolt against Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. Thus we find the fight between Communism and Capitalism is a fight between two brothers pertaining to their own affairs and is not a fight for establishing a new order. In the earliest days of Communism, it had declared that Communism is international but today it has become not only national but also chauvinistic like any other country.

Hence, if the Socialists and Communists embrace spirituality, they can give a lead to the world. Socialism is no doubt the ultimate product of our civilization and culture as this is the spirit of sharing and fellow-feeling. The practical side of spiritualism is also universal love. If God resides in every heart, then a socio-political order can only be based on the principles of liberty, fraternity and non-exploitation. True Spirituality and real Socialism are based on the spirit of the scientific unity of man. No man is an island and therefore one cannot be really happy when someone is not. This is sarvodaya or the welfare of all, which is the basis of spiritualism and Socialism.

Hence, we can conclude, that “there is no politics devoid of religion” (spirituality) or “politics bereft of religion is a death trap.” ¹⁷ However, Gandhi advocated the concept of Ethical Religion, and, not dry and dead ritualism. According to him, the biggest threat to religion is not from the side of atheists, but dogmatists, fundamentalists and ritualists. Thus true religion has no conflict with true politics. To bring God into politics is to bring in Truth and Love. ¹⁸ This is “higher politics” or as Jaspers says, “religious politics of the self-revealing man.” ¹⁹ Sir Mohmad Iqbal says it more strongly that “politics devoid of ethics and religion is tantamount to naked bloodshed.” So says Gandhi that ‘politics divorced from religion has absolutely no meaning.” ²⁰ A most secular socialist like R. M. Lohia expresses this spirit most significantly that “politics is religion viewed in immediate perspective while religion is politics viewed in the long range.” What is “Spiritualisation of public life” ²¹ to Gokhale and Gandhi, that is “Goodness politics” ²² to J.P, Bas politics is “a pathology of political life.” The Marxist movement in Russia is still facing the dilemma of means and ends²³ resulting in their ambivalent attitude towards the masses. If we banish moral considerations in politics, it will become a quagmire of opportunism and exigencies. The modern mind, no doubt, distinguishes between the religious (sacredotium) and the secular (Regnum). But this is because of long fight between the Church and the State. The Indian tradition is different. Here Dharma has never been understood in communal or sectarian terms, nor politics has been a synonym of deceit and dishonesty. The king is only the guardian, executor and servant of Dharms. Hence, his ideal state is RamRaj or government based on righteousness. ²⁴ It is divine Raj, the kingdom of God²⁵, sovereignty of the people based on pure moral authority²⁶. Apart from the political ideal of RamRaj, Gandhi devised spiritual and moral mode of political action and political weaponry called Satyagraha, based on two universal principles of Truth and Love. It is a war without violence or untruth.

A few years ago, 53 Nobel Prize winners of the world while diagnosing the cause threatening the survival of humanity has accused politics and politicians for the ills of the world. Hence, either we find out a ‘new politics’ or be prepared to be wiped out of our existence. With nuclear bomb in both our hands but diplomatic double talk, hatred, envy and jealousy in our minds, we are fast approaching a holocaust. Hence, we cannot hope to go to the 21st century with a medieval and militaristic mentality. Nationalism is no less than tribalism and religious fundamentalism is the greatest menace of this century. Gandhian politics steers clear between the Scyalla of national Chauvinism and Charybriddis of religious fundamentalism. Positively, it is synthesis of Socialism and human rights, non-violence and social change, national sovereignty and grass-root democracy.

¹ Nathan, O and Norden, H. Einstein on peace, 1960 pp.628-629.

² General Omar Bradley:- “Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share in the guilt for the dead.”

³ General Douglas Mac Arthur:- “I have known war as few men now living know it. Its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.”

⁴ General D. Eisenhower:- Speaking “as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy the civilization” he warned against the military-industrial complex.

⁵ John F.Kennedy:- “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.”

⁶ Lyndon B. Johnson:- “The guns and the bombs, the rockets and warships, all are symbols of human failure.”

⁷ Pope John XXIII:- “If civil authorities legislate for or allow what is contrary to the will of God, neither the laws made nor the authorizations granted can be binding on the consciences of the citizens.”

⁸ Pope Paul II:- “Humanity is not destined to self-destruction.”

⁹ Herman Goering:- (At Nurembarg Trials): Naturally the common people do not want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany.

¹⁰ Einstien on peace, p.584.

¹¹ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, March 1979, p.38.

¹² Address to the Nation, 17.1.1933.

¹³ Aristotle, Politics trans. William Ellis, London, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1912, Book, Book-I, Ch.II, P.4.

¹⁴ Mishra, Ramnandan, To The Socialists, Darwhaugh, Nav-Bharat Prakashan, 1981, p.1.

¹⁵ Ibid. p.9.

¹⁶ Malik, B.K. Gandhi - A prophecy, Bombay, Hind Kitabs, 1948.

¹⁷ Radhakrishnan, S., (ed.) Mahatma Gandhi: Essays and Reflections, Bombay, Jaico, 1956, p. 14.

¹⁸ Painter-Briak, S., Gandhi Against Machiavellism, Bombay, Asia Publishing House, 1960, p. 13.

¹⁹ Jaspers, K., “Gandhi on His 100th Birthday”, Mahatma Gandhi-100 years, New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1968, p.521.

²⁰ Gandhi, M.K., The Mind of Mahatma (ed). Prabhu & Rao, 3rd ed., p.310.

²¹ Goyal, O.P., Political Thought of Gokhale, Allahabad; Kitab Mahal, 1960, p.16.

²² Dhawan, G.N., “Goodness politics”, Politics of persuation ed Mishra & Avasthe, Bombay, Manak Talas 1967, pp. 336-39.

²³ Moore, B., Soviet Politics - The Dilemma of Power, Harvard University press, Ch. III

²⁴ Gandhi, M. K., Young India, 12.5.1920.

²⁵ Gandhi, M. K., Young India, 28.5.1931, 19.9.1929.

²⁶ Gandhi, M.K., Harijan, 2.1.1937.

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