I just finished reading Rajmohan Gandhi’s biography of his grandfather, Mohandas. What a page turner it is! Enjoyed it very much, tho at over 700 pages, it took me fair while to go thru it.
One of the trivial things I brought home from the book was about how impressive Rajmohan Gandhi’s own lineage is – his grandparents included Katurba, Mahatma Gandhi, C Rajagopalachari; his father, the youngest son of the Gandhis, was the editor of Hindustan Times. Disappointingly, there is an unnatural silence about the author’s mother in the book. Btw, am I wrong in guessing that the author could have gone to no other school except Modern School in Delhi, perhaps it was even his father who was instrumental in starting the school? Anyway, I don’t really know.
But there is an interesting question running through the book, quite obviously, why did satyagraha work? Or really how did MKG make satyagraha work? In a world where, law of self-preservation is the first law, Satyagraha should not work. The satyagrahi should not perpetuate it, and the oppressor should not be bothered by it. In fact, I personally believe, most of the times people try to do stuff like satyagraha, it does come across as a joke. I am not sure what is more surprising, whether satyagraha (or peaceful resistance by the physically weak) worked at all or that it has been made to work by only a handful of individuals in the world? Let us not be fooled that the British were any bit more soft than any other race in the world, we are talking about self-preservation of the empire here – and the individuals personified the empire, they believed themselves to be the empire, killing people for the empire was nothing personal for them.
So, why did it work? Was it the pragmatic, the sharp intuition that MKG had about how people would behave in any environment? That explanation is completely realistic considering that MKG would deliberate when and exactly how and who was going to be a satyagrahi as much as he could. Also, MKG understands that for most non-violence was not a Truth but a policy; and he justifies it even as that. He says, once the violence against the actual oppressor has ended, will it not naturally turn towards others from whom one has perceived oppression. Is it not natural that a ‘WAR’ of independence should ALWAYS lead to a civil war? But then MKG also says that he knew that the soul must act on another soul? So is that second statement bull shit; or more accurately, since India is perhaps, paradoxically (is it paradoxical?), one place on earth which at least till recently managed to stay open to any religion and yet every aspect of lives of the majority population, Hindus, is governed or at least touched by their religion. In such an environment, is it that the only solution that MKG had was sublimating the religion to ground realities of the country? So, my question is, was MKG cloaking a pragmatic approach, pragmatically applied, in the only cloak the general populace would see it, that of religion? The question, dear readers, is, was ‘insistence on TRUTH, satyagraha’ a cloak?
Depending on where you stand it is just as tempting to say yes, as it is to say no. Of course, I do not know what to believe either.
In the above section, I think, I have presented the argument for it being a pragmatic approach. But an interesting argument for it being a spiritual/ethical* tool is that only an ethical/spiritual tool, a tool in tune with the most fundamental realities of our existence, in tune with LIFE itself, will be something pragmatic enough to work. Having said that, lets get back to the perceptible realities of how satyagraha worked. If we look at people who could make Satyagraha work, if we look at MKG, we see a large part of why it worked, was MKG’s intuition, his uncanny sense of how most people would respond to a certain environment. Another reason, I think, was that he would not give up his cause; he had the commitment and the patience to keep at it. The question perhaps then is slightly different. It is not whether satyagraha was a cloak on something pragmatic, something far more hard nosed. The question perhaps is, what is the source of human intuition? Commitment? Patience?
*By ethical/spiritual tool, I mean, any tool that aligns itself with the idea that all creatures are all expressions of Life and thus interconnected. To serve them is to serve ourselves; to hurt them is to hurt ourselves.
3 comments:
There is an equation with millions and millions of variables; every variable with its own exponent (squares, cubes, quadruples). The intuition that you refer to here was MKGs ability to predict the change in the equation if one of the variables were adjusted.
Satyagraha was simply an adjustment of those variables. I think the efficacy of MKG's Satyagaraha was in his ability to make it look sublime, noble, logical, effective; thereby appealing to most parts of the society. He somehow got the karm kar; phal ki chinta mat kar attitude into it too; wherein nobody really expected it to work overnight. But the most important thing about it was his own personal convictions, which made it look less like a ploy to fool.
The most crucial aspect of Satyagraha was that it appealed to the most basic, most fundamental aspect of human psyche - the desire for fairness and equality. Wherein, a greater populace were fighting one common enemy, all of the angst of unfairness was directed towards them.
The key question, Neha is not why did it work; but would it work again? Was it the social environment that contributed to its success? Do we have the factors in the current society that would probably make it work again?
And do we have a person with the uncanny sense or ability to understand this current equation and manipulate it to a good cause. And what do we do to prevent this exact ability from making Bin Laden's of the world from making the kids blow themselves up.
If you believe in something very very strongly, chances are that you would start attracting a lot of people who believe in it too. Conviction? Yes. Patience? Yes.
And thanks for this awesome post. Loved it!
Hi Bhai,
Thank you for letting me know that you enjoyed it. that did make my day, i was, as usual doubting if i even made sense ;P
sorry for the late response... I was hoping for a discussion from a few other readers...
anyway, I'll probably need a bit of time to think and get back to you..
Ok, I have been thinking, and here is what I came up with -
Vision, which was an important reason why Gandhi could do what he did, comes ONLY with detachment. You cannot see a picture you are a part of; you have to stand apart from it. To see things, for what they are, you have to be open to what they will show, which means you have to be unaffected by what they will show, you have to be beyond wanting and hoping that you will get to see what you want to see – or else you will hypnotise yourself to see what you want to see. But to make a difference, you must be totally absorbed in the very same picture, trying to learn all about it and acting in it.
How can you beyond wanting and hoping; and still give your life away to make a difference? I think, that is what the Bhagvad Geeta is so much about. “Karmanya vadhika raste…” Since we cannot get beyond wanting and hoping, at this point in time, at least; hope and want something in the next dimension. Gandhi calls it Truth.
Does that solve our problem? Does it tell us why did Satyagraha work, non-violence work? I think, what Gandhi did by ‘insisting upon Truth’, is that he found for himself some higher desire/ideal to latch on, which gave him the vision to be ABLE to make a difference in this plane. That he could make a difference just shows how successful he was in earnestly latching on to the higher ideal. What is interesting is, that he could also see the manifestation of that Truth, in the world that he was detached from (See first paragraph), enough to actually want to make a difference – to have the patience and persistence to want to make a difference.
So, this latching on to Truth, or some higher desire/ideal which helps you move away from the picture, is a ‘necessary’ condition – as the mathematician would say. And is proven by the fact that peaceful protests are not ALWAYS successful.
Non violent protests by the physically weak, is not what Satyagraha is ALL about, there is more to it.
I think, to know what exactly made Satyagraha work, we will have to see what he saw. As the famous lines go, “until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”; of course when we are talking about Gandhi, it is a darn difficult thing to do!
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