Gandhi's Letter to Hitler (1940)
mkgandhi.org
mkgandhi.org
Nonviolent methods often require the possibility of violence as a backdrop to be effective. Otherwise, they might not yield the desired results.
While Gandhi's philosophy sounds nice in theory, it may not always be the most practical in real-world scenarios.
That is why the GP put the "evolved" in quotes. It takes something more than the basest human instincts and the animal sides of us to take this approach. Some may consider it naive. I personally think Gandhi was smart enough to deduce this on his own yet still chose the nonviolent approach regardless. That alone shows he was a greater "man" than most, in my opinion.
The historical record says otherwise:
* https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolen...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeLKfPdP0E4
* https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/1/3/21048121/ezra-klein-er...
And we have to watch out for thinking that "fittest" implies "strongest". "Smartest" or "most devious" as in the Cuckoo (https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/birds/facts-ab...) also meet the criteria.
In our modern world, the "smartest" and "devious" are headed to a dead end with below replacement birth rates while the "dumb" rednecks and religious are set to eventually become the majority.
If poor people were going to "outcompete" and wipe out rich people, it would have happened a long time ago.
Also, "religious" have been steadily declining for a while, so that theory doesn't work out. (Of course, the idea that most bad behavior stems from religion, and everyone would be nice to each other without it, is another fallacy.)
https://fortune.com/2023/05/25/labor-shortage-child-teenage-...
You do know his philosophy worked, right?
Mandela initially followed Gandhi's example of nonviolent resistance to end apartheid but later abandoned it when it became clear it was ineffective.
Just imagine getting independence 5 years earlier by nationwide violent uprisings and non-cooperation moment together. Britain was already fighting on multiple fronts during WW2, it was a plausible path to early independence.
Sure we saved some lives that would've been lost in violent uprisings, but we lost just as many if not more from inaction.
If a movement of violent uprising resulted in Indias independence, the British may have packed their bags but the armies and militias would stay and given the nature of militias, will probably not suddenly turn peaceful. The British was the enemy yesterday, the other <religion, language or another faction> would the enemy today. See any African country.
What the nonviolent movement achieved in India is not just independence. Like you said there were other ways for independence, arguably faster. What the nonviolent movement achieved was long term stability and lack of civil wars /internal conflicts(for the most part).
Violence should be a last resort.
Just because other countries have had more violence doesn't make the incident any less shocking or less applicable to the argument.
By a cyclone, accidents, and japanese blockades, the independent states suffered more because of poor infrastructure, lastly it was only known to Britain come August '43 whereupon 150,000 tonnes of wheat were redirected from Iraq and Aus.
In her book Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44096650-civil-resistanc...
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10056014-why-civil-resis...
Erica Chenoweth has an appendix listing six hundred movements dating from 1900 which are classified in how violent they were. She found that those that used violence (more) succeeded in achieving their goals 25% time, but those that did not use violence (at all, or much less) succeeded over 40% of the time: you almost double your odds by eschewing violence.
Further, movement that were violent and succeeded were more likely to be oppressive/authoritarian (possibly because the movement leaders internalized the possibility that the same methods would be used against them: the overthrown often don't end up in pleasant places in those situations), while non-violent ones were less likely to be (though no guarantee, with 1970s Iran being the main outlier).
So it appears that the general historical record seems to support Gandhi's philosophy.
You and I have a different interpretation of the parent's comment.
The world has been shaped by power and wars, an undeniable fact that stands without the need for statistical gymnastics.
Yes it has.
It has also been shaped by non-violent methods, e.g., one of the biggest being the fall of Communism, which was done without wars and those without power in: Poland (Solidarity); the Baltic countries (Singing revolution); Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (Baltic Way); Czechoslovakia (Velvet Revolution).
It was done in the Philippines (People Power Revolution), etc.
That said, I believe you are tackling some highly complex topics here. Have you explored well-researched studies, such as “The Strategic Defense Initiative and the End of the Cold War” [1]?
There are a lot of folks in this discussion—many of whom I suspect are Americans and may have a particular (historical) view of how to gain "freedom"—who seem to jump to the 'violent struggle' path. I'm simply pointing out references that support the possibility that is not the only path, and other ones may actually be better, especially in more recent decades (as opposed to what happened hundred-plus years ago).
You probably meant that the animal kingdom follows the law of the strongest, or "might is right".
Time to post that legendary soundbite from Starship Troopers, I guess:
One girl told him bluntly: “My mother says that violence never settles anything.”
“So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn’t your mother tell them so? Or why don’t you?”
She said shrilly, “You’re making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”
“You seemed to be unaware of it,” he said grimly. “Since you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea—a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon.
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”
Or that the soldiers that actually fought for the British in WW2 western theater came back with the ideas of democracy that didn’t really exist in India because of the various puppet governments that people actually interacted with.
This is also true in the USA where you have figures like MLK who had complementary aggressive forces like Malcom X.
It is interesting also because India has turned from Gandhi in a lot of ways. A lot of my own family now think that Gandhi was a useful idiot. Useful at the time, but long past his due and that there needs to be a refocus on a more assertive Hindu identity like Bose.
You are aware that Darwin as the originator of that phrase specifically pointed to non-violent cooperation as the “fittest“ strategy for survival?
In Gaza and Ukraine right now, the colonial powers simply want the territory, and are largely indifferent or are openly hostile to the continued physical existence of the people who live there.
In Ukraine, since the point is controlling the land and not replacing the original population, non-violent resistance would not have stopped Russia but would have saved the Ukrainians most if not all the suffering and bloodshed.
Bucha would like to have a word with you.
Not disputing the atrocities of Bucha but an episode (a war crime at that) is not enough to call a war genocidal.
Remember that the Russian aggression effectively started a decade ago after several successive country-wide popular uprisings in Ukraine which, despite violent crackdowns, strived for and put the country on the path towards democracy, westernization and reduction of oligarchic and Russian influence. Without wide popular support, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and a large proportion of the population involved in the war effort would be just as, if not more, likely to turn on their own government. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what the Russians expected on the eve of their invasion, when the Ukrainian state was supposed to fold as a stack of cards and the Ukrainian people were supposed to accept their "liberators" without a hitch. Instead, Russia was instantly bogged down and pushed back by a determined popular resistance and a massive popular mobilization and the Ukrainian people are determined to keep fighting even after massive destruction of their infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Of course, the reasons for the foreign involvement in the war have much more ominous undertones and, especially in the case of the US, geopolitics are a major factor. However, one would have to be extremely misguided to pretend that motivations of the amorphous US political apparatus reflect the motivations of the Ukrainian (or even American) people in any way.
- The Balfour declaration, announced by a colonial power without permission or proofreading from the natives or landowners
- The consequential Arab-Israeli war
- Operation Cast Thy Bread and the introduction of ethnically targeted chemical warfare funded by the government
- The 70 collective civilian casualties from Qibya being raided by IDF
- The 400 collective civilian casualties from Rafah and Khan Yunis being raided by IDF
- Israel's routine violations of the 1949 Armistice Agreements throughout the 1950s
- The Six Day War's extended annexations and territorial reparations
- The passing of the Golan Heights law and the consequential defense of it despite international outcry
- The decades-long occupation of Lebanon and (entirely accidental) formation of Hezbollah
- The Ibrahim al-Maqadma Mosque bombing and other effects of "Dahieh Doctrine" as applied to civilian populations
- The "Blue Line" and subsequent disagreements concerning it crossing territory Israel does not possess
- The continued government support of the illegal and internationally disavowed settlement of northern Israel
Unfortunately, my family has lived too close to this conflict for a comfortable accounting. Israel' history is colonial, from the moment they were issued land by Britain (anyone remember the Raj?), to the modern day where they deploy the IDF to defend illegal settlements. Except for the US and Israel's own objections, those settled areas are unanimously not acknowledged as Israeli territory by the UN and EU.
Therefore, Israel is a colonial power. You can argue that they're one of the good colonizers if you want, but you'll need some pretty convincing evidence to justify 70 years of nationalism-fueled bloodshed concerning territories that were never part of their nation in the first place. Most Americans with internet access have started to realize that they can only support this occupation because it inherently necessitates Israel relying on American imported weapons. It's becoming a second "Pakistan situation" very quickly, and politicians are starting to realize it.
Surprisingly you haven't mentioned the "recent" Oslo Accords. Do you think that Israel (colonial or not) should exist?
You asked how exactly Israel is a colony, and I provided a complete and internationally agreed-upon accounting of why that is considered the case. If you feel justified in killing people that intrude upon Israel without the intention of living there peacefully, then you know precisely how the natives felt when they were targeted and attacked by national defense forces at a time when Israel hardly existed.
It's by no fault of today's Israelis that they live in such a terrible place. However, it is their decision to deny their sins (the occupations) and the world will judge them in accordance with those choices. Israel can still redeem itself by rejecting the nationalist notion of perpetually occupying territory they do not legally possess. It is a necessary precondition to meaningful liberal development of the Levant - the status quo is a nightmare scenario.
Israel has a responsibility to end their colonial ambitions regardless of how other nations feel about it. If they do not rise above the conditions of unjust political persecution that necessitated the creation of Israel in the first place, they are bound to succumb to it's failures as an unsustainable double standard.
Israel is not abiding to UN resolutions, nor ICJ arbitration, and it is non-violent resistance have so far been met with violence by the occupier. That does not leave many option for Palestinians, does it. And I would certainly say Palestinians have fought, and tried to get rid of the occupation that way. Personally, I really wished Israel would have responded to the non-violent option. A lot of lives would have been spared. And, that is sort of the point of the UN in the first place.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/unsealing-secret-hamas-papers-...
Iran does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist group, they don’t have any laws nor international agreements where they promised they wouldn’t send Hamas money. They may be breaking US law by this, but that is not comparable to Israel breaking the fourth Geneva convention on the rights and obligation of occupied territories. Israel has signed the fourth Geneva convention and have promised not to move citizens to and from occupied territories, they have also promised to keep occupation as a temporary state.
And to stay on topic of colonization. Moving money to a terrorist group is not a colonial behavior. Prolonging occupation, annexing occupied territories, and settling occupied territories is textbook colonization through military conquest.
EDIT: And on the topic of funneling money to foreign agents. International law is pretty clear that you are supposed prevent genocide, and that complicity with genocide is punishable equal to genocide (1948 genocide convention; Article III (e)). The USA giving money and weapons to Israel is not only breaking the Genocide convention, but also several of their own laws, including the Leahy Law.
I think you were gonna try a gatcha with me and accuse me of a double standard, but it is hard to find a more clear case of double standard as withing USA, and how they apply their own laws in foreign policy.
Surely you must understand how this entitled anecdotal "whataboutism" doesn't revise or justify the nationalist actions Israel took. You haven't denied or even expressed regret at any of the relevant accusations made in this thread; if the UN Ambassador of Israel acted this way, their peers would probably take it as an admission of guilt.
Israel is still on track to increase one-state annexation because there isn't a majority of Israelis who desire two-state enough to throw them out.
Their new Minister of Defense, Israel Katz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Katz#Peace_and_security
The new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Sa'ar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Sa%27ar#Likud_leadershi...
Right off the bat you’re implying Israel has no right to exist…
I personally believe Israel has a right to exist. There are two fundamental claims that lie unaddressed and compromise the legitimacy of the borders Israel chooses to recognize for themselves:
1) The originally misrepresented Balfour declaration that promised land Britain had no right to administrate
2) The continued unrepentant settlement of the Golan Heights in spite of multinational, worldwide objection to the action
The first issue does not make Israel inherently any more colonial than America, but does obviously start a blood feud with the native population. The second issue does make Israel inherently colonial and contradicts the idea that Zionism is not predicated on expansionist policy.
Secondly, if the argument that the “native” population (which of course has always lived there, absolutely no migration) has superior rights than an immigrant population was advanced in Europe in order to get rid of said immigrants, then we don’t need to imagine what that would be called, it was a whole thing.
Also worked in Poland with Solidarity against the Communists. Also worked in the Philippines with People Power:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Power_Revolution
Etc:
> They focused on cases of “nonviolent mass mobilization featuring at least one thousand observed participants seeking maximalist (country level) goals [such as the overthrow of a government or territorial independence, (see p.13] from 1900 to 2006 [now updated to 2019]. We did not count smaller campaigns, or reform movements” (p. xx). It took them two years to put the data set together, but it was well worth it – after analyzing those data, in 2011 they published their results in their highly acclaimed book, Why Civil Resistance Works, which received the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Prize of the American Political Science Association. Chenoweth and Stephan found that “[m]ore than half of the campaigns that relied primarily on nonviolent resistance succeeded, whereas only about a quarter of the violent ones did” (p. xx).
* https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/chronicle/review-of-civi...
For example it is not untrue to say that Yemen successfully fought the UK to gain independence (at least South Yemen). In Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi) calls for independence (by ANC, NAC, etc.) was met with crackdown by the white Rhodesian army (who ruled south Rhodesia post independence with apartheid). In Kenya the Mau Mau rebellion was brutally suppressed by the British Army, with over 35000 insurgents killed by British colonial forces. The Mau Mau lost, and Kenya peacefully gained independence a few years later.
Even though most former British colonies got their independence by voting in a pro-independence government who negotiated for independence between the mid 1960s and the 1980s, which the British peacefully accepted (with rare exceptions), the years prior, any independence prospects were definitely met with various tactics to prevent their success, including violent and armed colonial warfare.
May we all be able to approach those with whom we disagree with such clear eyes and full hearts.
It is easy to see these poisons in the events leading to the rise of Hitler. The ignorance of racial characteristics, the greed of land and power, the hatred of foreigners, they are all so obvious now.
What is more disturbing is how the same poisons seem to be widely popular nowadays and many, including some of the most powerful people in the world, appear to actively embrace them.
Edit: This seems a more controversial opinion than I expected...
You are correct. Yet it has always been so.. Starting point at least to me seems is the culture and its values.
it's a degradation that evolves because it appears to make some people succeed.
In Buddhism aren't these all aspects of (or knock-on effects of) attachment ?
Profound.
1919 - Jallianwala Bagh massacre (over 1500 shot dead in a few minutes). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
1943 - Bengal famine of 1943 (over 3 million dead). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
1947 - Partition of India (2 million deaths) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
Indian school text books just gloss over British brutality in India.
All of this was covered in our text books. From Jallianwala to the partition.
Seems to be a rather dehumanizing and belittling view of the latter.
I just found it to be a strange choice of wording.
The Bengal famine primarily happened because the British directed food stocks to be held back for their war efforts. The actions of local businesses were ultimately directed by the British government preferences. If the British wanted they could have had the food distributed to relieve the population. Once again this happened because they held racist views about Indians.
Nearly every tragedy that took place in the Raj was ultimately caused by the British. Because they were the sovereign. And they looked at the governed population like we were subhuman.
I understand the Brits of today want nothing to do with the decisions their ancestors took in India. And this is right. You weren’t around back then. But because you want to look back at the imperial project with pride, you want to engage in victim blaming when it comes to the atrocities that happened in the Raj.
This might pass in the UK, but as Indians we can’t indulge you in your delusions. The British were to blame. They were in control of the state. They had a responsibility to the governed. And in many cases they neglected or actively worked against their duty.
... not part of the Partition, and occurred decades before in fact.
The Bengal famine
... had nothing to do with the Partition either, last we checked.
But because you want to look back at the imperial project with pride .... This might pass in the UK, but as Indians we can’t indulge you in your delusions
And now you're pretending to "know" what country I'm from, and to "know" also that I therefore hold a certain stereotypical set of views that you believe people from that country typically have.
I wish I could engage you further, but there's simply no logic at all in your response.
As for the stereotypes, I took an educated guess. But then it's not just the British who look back at the imperial times with fondness. Plenty of Europeans do the same. Even many Americans, which is ironic considering the USA embraced capitalism (or at least sincerely tried to) and abhorred colonialism. Whereas most European projects were mercantilist in nature. Because they couldn't compete.
I didn't "pretend" about anything. In fact even now I'm unconvinced you don't hold these views. The only thing in doubt is that you are from the UK. Sorry if you don't believe in those things.
Then they had nothing to do with my post. But you went on and on about them anyway.
In fact even now I'm unconvinced you don't hold these views.
If you prefer to live in a world of speculation, imputing views to people they simply don't have - that's up to you.
What’s amazing is that he didn’t waver in his principles, even when addressing one of history’s most brutal figures. It’s like he saw through the monster to the lost human underneath and tried to remind him of his better self. That level of courage and empathy is just… next-level.
People who don't deny such things would not be Nazis for long.
So with this mindset, yes.. they absolutely will be called woke.
It then morphed to be a virtue signal of high status by the neo-liberal bourgeoisie.
That's a group of inflammatory, partisan claims; what evidence is there?
(At least in my country,) I think there is still a majority of people that are very reasonable and to resolve issues through dialogue. But given the former, they stay out of debates and the whole discourse is dominated by the extremes.
That's not incidental, it's intentional - a tactic well-known and practiced by people trying to radicalize society. People need to stand up for the things they believe, in the same way Dr. King would emphasize that he wasn't passive at all, that he was a warrior who created real tension and pressure.
But I think the 'both sides' isn't born out factually. One side controls governments, including the most powerful one soon. They control business, international affairs, much of social media, etc. They are fighting wars of conquest. The other side has no power anywhere.
You don’t have to look very hard to find active genocide specifically or human rights atrocities in general.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
> I have a feeling they would call the protestors of that genocide woke.
Woke means “aware”. By definition any protester is “woke”.
Some people use it as a slur but I’m not sure why it would be insulting.
Interesting thought. It would imply that denying one's own wrongdoings is a necessary prerequisite for being actually evil.
I am wondering what it means in the context of the recent US election, where Trump denies that he did anything wrong on January 6 2021, where he denies that the numerous trials against him are legitimate, where he surrounds himself by people who are supporting him in these denials with a straight face.
It seems very dangerous to me. He has been building a cult of deniers around him for years. And now the most loyal of these deniers will end up running the government.
The reality is that narcissists are very fragile and can't handle reality, so they insist that everyone around them play roles the narcissist feels safe with (think of their kids or spouse) and that reality be a certain way.
It just came to mind that in studying IT security I read a criminolgy expert (not specific to IT), who said that criminals need a justification or rationalization; iirc examples include 'this big company steals from ordinary people', 'they won't miss it', etc.
Despite the Silicon Valley fantasy and the neo-alt-whatever attempt to condition people otherwise, humans are inherently moral. Sociopaths are very rare. Even criminals need a rationalization.
Look how much effort political leaders put into giving people a rationale, even awful people like Hitler, Stalin, etc.
Interestingly the backlash towards the director's Oscar acceptance speech - a plea for peace and anti-Zionism - ended up highlighting that such people can even congratulate themselves for such atrocities when forced to reckon with an opposing voice. I wonder if this letter had a similar effect (given it clearly didn't temper any of their upcoming bloodlust)
"IB TIMES: Is it true that Himmler always kept a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in his pocket and read passages from it every night?
MR. & MRS. TRIMONDI: Yes, this is true. In fact, it has been well documented by Felix Kersten, his Finnish masseur, that Himmler liked to indulge in philosophical monologues in his presence. The Reichsführer SS called the Gita a high Aryan Canto. Kersten also reported that Himmler read the Vedas, especially the Rig-Veda, the speeches of the Buddha, and the Buddhist Visuddhi-magga. Himmler made frequent references to karma, especially when he was talking about providence." [0]
From reading practically the same texts, the Nazis and Ghandi came to the opposite conclusions. And why? Because the Bhagavad Gita teaches one to remove all fear of death, relinquish all responsibility for ones actions in the face of great violence and atrocity; it is a story about an interfamily war where all the characters are close to each other, and the advice is that one has a duty to fight, to act, even in the most horrifying circumstances. Both readings are valid, since non-action is a form of action, so to not be violent is also a way of "fighting back." There is no moral quality like we might understand in modern ethics, the only thing that was right was doing your duty as was right in the cosmic order, and as a warrior, your duty is to kill your enemies, no matter who they are.
It derives from what we can only reconstruct from the cultures of similar, related tribal peoples, that the original values of these peoples while they were still wandering bands of cowherders was to honor strength and victory in battle over all else, and the only articulation of this that made sense to a settled, literary people was the above. The Brahmins maintain the scholarly and religous basis of society, the Kshatriyyas, the warriors, are the administrative class, the Vaishyas the skilled laborers and the merchants, and the Sudhas the unskilled laborers, like farmers. Both the Nazis and Gandhi felt that this was an inauthentic articulation of the values of Hinduism, but the Nazis attempted to reinstate what they interpreted as the original violent and agonistic quality of the pre-settled "Aryan" peoples, whereas Gandhi took on a more modern approach, saying caste was post-vedic and not inherent to Hinduism. While Gandhi took an interpretation that aligned closely with modern values, the Nazis were supermodern: if one relinquishes all action, one also must relinquish oneself, and relinquish oneself to the hellscape of machine killing like we see in the concentration camps, to give all power to the machines which themselves will one day overcome humanity itself. They used modern anthropology to justify adopting pre-modern morals which they used to pursue their ultra-modern goals of the technological annihilation of humanity. Its called technofascism, its the ideology of the BJP, the ruling party of India today[1][2]. (His supporters are particularly active online, especially in forums like these, so I expect backlash for this claim, though not so much since they lost power in the recent elections). The only difference between the Nazis and Hindu Nationalists is that the latter believe the Aryans came from modern South Asia into the Steppe[3], and from there to Germany, whereas the Nazis believe they migrated from the Steppe to both Germany and modern South Asia[4], one ideology is the mirror of the other.
Gandhi's ideology of attempting to mold modern values over a pre-industrial society collapsed when the Soviet Union fell apart and couldn't afford to fit the bill anymore, the growth of the BJP was only a means to industrialize in a capitalist world to keep the economy growing. It was a failure because he failed to recognize that all pre-modern value systems collapse with the advance of technology. Violence is meaningless, "banal," at a mass scale.
[0]https://www.ibtimes.com/heinrich-himmler-nazi-hindu-214444 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Golwalkar# [2]https://web.archive.org/web/20150610003500/http://www.carava... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Aryanism [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis
Two main epics of Hinduism: Ramayan and Mahabharat are both stories of good vs. evil, where good ultimately wins through violence. In both cases, the good side tries to avoid violence as much as they can, but when it is necessary they don't hold back. Arjun holds back during the Mahabharat war and Krishn convinces him to fulfill his duty as a warrior.
What "villain" thinks of themselves as a villain / bad person? People do things because they believe—rightly or wrongly—that they're the right thing, bring either happiness or pleasure in some fashion.
And after reading a few comments: be cautious before idolizing Gandhi. Of course, he did great things, but he was not a saint. His stature in South Africa (where he worked as a British solicitor) is contested because of his racist opinions at the time. When I read Gandhi's memoirs, I was also shocked by his low consideration for women: he claimed he would kill his daughters rather than they were dishonoured ; he didn't care for what his daughters thought. He didn't care either for the women's feelings (and his wife) when he used to sleep with young girls, to test his repression of his sexual desires.
I could imagine future generations warning us of today's "good" people because they ate meat etc.
Unfortunately this is not a rhetoricallly exaggerated and obviously impossible choice. Settler colonialism exists and relies exactly on this approach. I wonder how certain could Gandhi be that the British wouldn't choose this approach.
On the contrary he had everything to lose. Backpedaling on his entire agenda, performing an about face would have been political suicide. Hitler stopping the war by himself in response to Gandhi could never have happened. Gandhi would have to have convinced not only Hitler but all of Hitler's henchmen. If they stopped the war, they would have all been finished politically. Their only rational end game was to keep marching forward.
If Hitler had approached his men saying you received an awakening letter from Gandhi which changed his outlook, he would have been regarded as crazy, probably stripped of his power.
> For, if a fair number of men and women be found in India who would be prepared without any ill will against the spoliators to lay down their lives rather than bend the knee to them ...
The Nazis were fanatics who were also willing to lay down their lives and did, including Hitler.
That is one of the problems that is often omitted but matters a lot. After Putin dies, what kind of legacy will he leave for Russians? They already struggle with the attitude to adapt. Many choose to ignore it totally, which seems logical because as ordinary citizens they have zero influence on the war.
What about their children, though? You learn that your country attacked another one, your compatriots were torturing, mutilating, raping and murdering innocent civilians. You can no longer pretend, as all countries do, that they are the righteous one. Just like Germany after WW2, you need to live with this stain.
Its also quite close to engineering and analysis in some ways, there were very custom solutions to a problem he faced.
TLDR - Gandhi found a way to neutralize massive weaknesses which would stop typical revolutionary movements by flipping them on their head.
1) India was incredibly divided, and the divisions were a core pillar of how India was run. This was a major challenge that had multiple attempts to deal with the Brits futile.
2) Indians were impoverished, not something you would consider dry tinder ready to throw their lives down in battle.
The techniques used are very interesting because they either negated these challenges, or converted them into strengths.
Gandhi outright challenged untouchability, whether people approved of his choice or didn’t. Given his upper class roots and the way he chose to live his life, it meant that many accusations to discredit him simply didn’t hold.
That credibility was one section of the foundation.
The other foundations were the effectiveness of non violence.
You have a massive divided population, which had lost its dignity and self determination, and would require massive resources to arm and coordinate them.
Non cooperation and non violence flipped those constraints and broke many assumptions of how power operated.
Non cooperation meant that choice was immediately returned to everyone in India. You regained agency to choose.
Non violence returned agency and dignity to people. It meant that you didn’t need a weapon to stand up for yourself. It means that you recognized the weakness of your position, and you still could choose to stand for yourself without having to become what the attacker wanted you to become.
Getting beaten and not retaliating is hard, it means not responding to many base instincts carved into our biology. Standing there and taking it removed the accusation of cowardice and weakness. It’s the difficult choice that makes you human.
But on their own these are moral stands, not effective politics. Gandhi’s tactics targeted the economic machine which is what mattered to the British empire.
He was also very active with the press, during the salt march there were talks with Press every night when they rested.
Non violent communication was born from these techniques. Mandela and MLK both found him inspiring - and both said that there was a limit to the efficacy of Gandhian techniques in their respective scenarios.
In the end it’s the pragmatism and the uplifting nature of these techniques and ideas that I find fascinating.
A friend of everyone is a friend of no one. Same goes for "love of everyone". The terms are effectively rendered useless.
The core teachings of the purported "unofficially official religion" of the US would beg to differ.
I find this statement quite unsettling and devalues the lives of a 'a fair number of men and women be found in India'. It is practically a green signal to mow down the population without any aversive consequences for violent acts and dubiously hoping to evoke some humanity and kindness out of the British Military and State machinery.