Indian Home Rules Gandhiji

Author(s): Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gandhiji
Publisher: Yann Forget

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HIND SWARAJ OR INDIAN HOME RULE
Limitations of the Doctrine
G.D. H. Cole has put the following poser: "Is it so when German and Italian airmen are massacring the Spanish people, when Japanese airmen are slaughtering thousands upon thousands in Chinese cities, when German armies have marched into Austria and are threatening to march into Czechoslovakia, when Abyssinia has been bloodily bombed into defeat? Until two years ago or so, I believed myself opposed to war and death-dealing violence under all circumstances. But today, hating war, I would risk war to stop these horrors." How acute is the struggle within himself is apparent from the sentences that follow: "I would risk war; and yet, even now, that second self of mine shrinks back appalled at the thought of killing a man. Personally, I would much sooner die than kill. But may it not my duty to try to kill rather than to die? Gandhi might answer that no such dilemma could confront a man who had achieved his personal Swaraj. I do not claim to have achieved mine; but I am unconvinced that the dilemma would confront me, here and now in Western Europe, less disturbingly if I had."
Occasions like those Mr. Cole has mentioned test one's faith, but the answer has been given by Gandhiji more than once, though he has not completely achieved his Swaraj, for the simple reason that for him Swaraj is incomplete so long as his fellow-beings are bereft of it. But he lives in faith, and the faith in non-violence does not begin to shake at the mention of Italian or Japanese barbarities. For violence breeds the results of violence, and once you start the game there is no limit to be drawn. Philip Mumford in the War Resister has replied as follows to a Chinese friend urging action on behalf of China:
“Your enemy is the Japanese Government and not the Japanese peasants and soldiers
– unfortunate and uneducated people who do not even know why they are being asked to fight. Yet, if you use ordinary military methods of defending your country, it is these guiltless people who are not your real enemies whom you must kill. If only China would try and preserve herself by the non-violent tactics used by Gandhiji in India, tactics which are indeed far more in accordance with the teachings of her great religious leaders, she would, I venture to say, be far more successful than she will be copying the militarist methods of Europe... Surely it is a lesson to mankind in general that the Chinese, the most pacific people on earth, have preserved themselves and their civilization for a longer period in history than any of the warlike races. Please do not think we do not honour those gallant Chinese who are fighting in defence of their country. We honour their sacrifice and recognize that they hold different principles from ourselves. None the less we believe that killing is evil in all circumstances and out of it good cannot come. Pacifism will not spare you from all suffering, but in the long run, it is, I believe, a more effective weapon against the would-be conqueror than all your fighting forces; and what is more important, it will keep alive the ideals of your race."
Miss Irene Rathbone poses a similar question: "What human being on this earth, normal or saint-like, can endure that small boys and girls should perish if, by bowing to the tyrant and denying his own conscience, he can save them? That question Gandhi does not answer. He does not even pose it... Christ is clearer... Here are his words: "But whose shall offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better that millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." ... Christ is a greater help to us than Gandhi..." I do not think Christ's words express anything more than his wrath, and the action suggested
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