THAT FELLOW GANDHI AND HIS IDEAS

ri Sri as Gandhi - Radha Rajan Inbox X
Mohan Gupta
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THAT FELLOW GANDHI!
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mohan Gupta
Date: Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 7:16 PM
Subject: Sri Sri as Gandhi - Radha Rajan
To: walter_fred@zipmail.com.br


http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=319
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> Sri Sri as Gandhi
> Radha Rajan
> Ordinary Indians who responded to Gandhi's call and took to the streets for satyagraha and became victims of British repressive state power, did not know that they had suffered great physical abuse and pain, imprisonment, even death, not for political independence, but only for Gandhi's swaraj-as-self-rule which was equal to inner self-liberation. The stalwarts of the freedom movement, the leaders of the INC and Gandhi himself did not think they needed to spell out their goal explicitly to ordinary Indians.
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> This was tragic because in the Hindu tradition, Hindus do not have to suffer the repressive power of the state to achieve self-liberation. There were other, more fulfilling and less painful ways to attain the same, though Gandhi indulges in considerable Portian quality-of-mercy eloquence to sell his idea on self-suffering passive resistance:
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> Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. Everybody admits that sacrifice of self is infinitely superior to sacrifice of others.
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> Passive resistance is an all-sided sword, it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used.
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> Real home-rule is possible only where passive resistance is the guiding force of the people. Any other rule is foreign rule.
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> It is not clear how and when passive resistance acquired the capacity to 'bless' people while the last is a snide reference to the Nationalists who were prepared, if need be, to also take to arms. Gandhi cleverly uses the Love-is-blind, God-is-love, therefore God-is-blind reasoning.
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> According to Gandhi (with no supportive historical reference to substantiate his claim) only passive resistance can lead to self-rule; use of active resistance or force is therefore not self-rule, but foreign rule. Therefore, says Gandhi, the Nationalists who say they want to end foreign rule when they advocate armed resistance, which is the antithesis to passive resistance, are not enabling self-rule but its antithesis, foreign rule!
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> Gandhi concluded his astonishing dissertation on passive resistance with the astounding, bordering-on-the-juvenile story about facing a lion:
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> It may be as well here to note that a physical-force man has to have many other useless qualities which a passive resister never needs. And you will find that whatever extra effort a swordsman needs is due to lack of fearlessness. If he is an embodiment of the latter, the sword will drop from his hand that very moment. He does not need its support. One who is free from hatred requires no sword. A man with a stick suddenly came face to face with a lion; and instinctively raised his weapon in self-defence. The man saw that he had only prated about fearlessness when there was none in him. That moment he dropped the stick, and found himself free of fear.
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> In the above story of the man and the lion Gandhi surprisingly uses hatred and fear interchangeably; if one were to accept Gandhi's opinions as the last word on any issue, it seems there can be no other weighty, compelling reason than fear and hatred, to take up arms.
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> This is not in line with Hindu ithihasa. If anything, the defining war in the Ramayana and the war at Kurukshetra teach us that sometimes people will have to take up arms and wage war to remove forces inimical to dharma. Hindu nationalists do not need to look anywhere else except at their own history and tradition for lessons on how to protect and defend the Hindu nation.
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> Gandhi also did not tell his readers about the story's end: was it happy for the man or the lion? It seems surprising how Indians particularly, and the world at large, accepted these self-defeating and self-destructive Gandhian arguments for absolute, unqualified and un-nuanced non-violence, even when world history and the history of the victims of Islam and Christianity and other deadly political ideologies have proved repeatedly that violence has never been checked or defeated by professions of love or peace or use of unequal force of arms. Gandhi advocated passive resistance not only to man against lion, but to Hindus against their aggressors, native Australians against White Christian invaders, and Jews against Nazis.
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> He even advocated passive resistance to the Allies against Nazi Germany and offered his services to mediate actively between Hitler and the Allies!
> Those people who have been warred against have disappeared, as, for instance, the natives of Australia, of whom hardly a man was left alive by the intruders. Mark please, that these natives did not use soul-force in self-defence, and it does not require much foresight to know that the Australians will share the same fate as their victims.
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> Gandhi prescribed the same solution to the British fighting the Nazis:
> I venture to present you with a nobler and a braver way, worthy of the bravest soldiers. I want you to fight Nazism without arms or... with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions... If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.
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> And for the Hindus against jihad:
> Hindus should not harbour anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives. None should fear death. Birth and death are inevitable for every human being. Why should we then rejoice or grieve? If we die with a smile we shall enter into a new life, we shall be ushering in a new India.
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> That nation is great which rests its head upon death as its pillow. Those who defy death are free from all fear.
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> Gandhi's explicit injunction that evil should not be ended at any cost was standing Hindu dharma on its head.
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> The author is Editor, www.vigilonline.com. This is an excerpt from her forthcoming book, "Gandhi and his legacy. Eclipse and Rise of Hindu nationalism."
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