Gandhi and the deadly coil of ‘Himsa’

Gandhi is once again remembered. His day came once more. His Jayanti. His anniversary was commemorated once again. Countless programs were conducted all across the country. Universities, colleges, and schools became proactive and organised numerous events in memory of this man. Messages kept pouring from people and organisations with a mission of putting his ideas into practice. Gandhi invokes respect across nations and ideological divide. He is invoked passionately time and again by people, parties, and nations, in particular, by the powerless. Powerful may only feel like providing lip service. Anyways, the father of the nation, yet again, had his Jayanti.

Is he relevant today as well? Some feel he was too idealistic to be relevant today. Idealism and pragmatism apart, let’s first take a test before we succumb to the trap of abstruse ideals. In the times when Gandhi Jayanti is commemorated on the same day when the Ukraine war is being fought on the one hand, and on the other, the one-sided brutalities let loose on the Palestinian population by the state of Israel, what would have been Gandhi’s response to all this if he had been living today? Would he be content with his public prayers? Wouldn’t the Ukraine war & Palestinian genocide have given him sleepless nights? How would have he responded to the violence that seems to have no end? It is not the question of whether he would have been effective or ineffective in peace-building. It is a question of whether he would have acted or not.

Being conversant with how he responded to similar situations in his own time, we know he would surely have taken action. We almost know what would have been his stand on this international conflagration. He minces no words when he, in his ‘My Experiments with Truth’ states: “When two nations are fighting”, he goes on, “the duty of a votary of ‘ahimsa’ is to stop the war.” He elaborates further, “he who is not equal to that duty, he who has no power of resisting war, he who is not qualified to resist war, may take part in war, and yet wholeheartedly try to free himself, his nation and the world from war.” This passage makes his stand nuanced, yet clear. A votary of Ahimsa must stop the war if he has power; if he hasn't, he must try other means that have the potential to bring the conflict to an end. We may not agree with this line of argument, or we may not find it pragmatic, but this line serves as Gandhi’s criterion and condition for resisting war, and upholding ‘ahimsa’.

It should be left to the readers’ imaginative minds to think how he would have responded to this situation or similar kinds of situations. Would he, with his companions, have gone on a ‘fast unto death’? Would the world have listened to his pleas? Would he have lead a march to the war-zone? Would he have been spared? Or maybe he would have put together a Satyagraha movement of a different kind? Who knows? He was aware of the inevitable violence in the world that would befall humanity, time and again, as in the past.

Gandhi explains the inevitability of violence and the dilemma confronting the principle of non-violence in the following words: “Ahimsa is a comprehensive principle. We are helpless mortals caught in the conflagration of ‘himsa’ (violence).” He explains further, “the saying that life lives on life has a deep meaning in it. Man cannot for a moment live without consciously or unconsciously committing outward ‘himsa’” He goes further to add, “the very fact of his living –eating, drinking and moving about—necessarily involves some ‘himsa’.

Destruction of life, be it ever so minute.” Here comes his decisive line to alleviate the spiritual dilemma that arises in this world of inevitable himsa, “A votary of ‘ahimsa’ (non-violence) therefore remains true to his faith if the spring of all his actions is compassion, if he shuns to the best of his ability the destruction of the tiniest creature, tries to save it, and thus incessantly strives to be free from the deadly coil of ‘himsa’”. According to him, ahimsa (non-violence) is not a single isolated act but a continuous striving that inclines to save us from the ‘deadly coil of himsa’.

Despite being the votary of ahimsa all his life, the ‘deadly coil of himsa’ knocked at his door on 30 January 1948. If he was not killed on that day, he would have been on the other day, or in the next year, or in the years to come. The ‘deadly coil of himsa’ would not have spared him. He would not be spared even today. In fact, all Gandhiwadis (devotees) that may live after him shall meet the same fate. Himsa-ahimsa, in this world, seems to operate as per the Marxian dialectical principle.

It is an ongoing and ever-going conflict usually, yet not always traced to material. A Hegelian synthesis too does not seem in sight. Munna Bhai MBBS does touch some subtleties of ‘Ghandhigiri’ beautifully in the personal context: “aye mamoo, jadu ki jappi de dal aur baat khatam” (O uncle, give a hug and bury the hatchet). Leave countries and nations ‘jadu ki jappi’ does not come easy even to soulful mortals. We carry huge egos in our brains and on our shoulders. Ahimsa is a demanding ideal even in life’s much smaller battles. Its spirit is always killed to breathe and infuse life into the violent. The nuclear world direly needs the ‘ahimsa’ of Gandhi, we know it for sure, but the same world thrives on fear, hate, and inhumanity: the key ingredients of the ‘deadly coil of himsa’. It shall kill Gandhi’s spirit of ahimsa each time to keep the deadly coil of ‘himsa’ bleeding humanity. But each time some Gandhi must be born to douse the flames of ‘himsa’.