Transcription
What I had called the essential elements of a Gandhian grammar, we're a long ways from finishing that. Today we will finish it today. So today is a lecture that is going to be rather theoretical, in the sense that I want to try to explain to you at some length and through various illustrations what we really mean when we speak of non-violence. Because before we can begin to understand the deployment of non-violence as a strategy by Gandhi, we have to understand that he had a much richer understanding of it. It was not simply even a strategy; it's a way of being in the world. But in order to understand that, in turn, it seems to me that there are a number of things that we have to first go through.
Now, in connection with that, I also want to remind you—and I'm going to dwell on that at some length—remind you of the fact that you have an assignment which is due on the Tuesday of the fourth week, a non-graded assignment. And that assignment was—you might recall what I'd mentioned to you in my opening lecture—that I expect each one of you to write a couple of pages, a page or two, to give it to me. And what you're gonna write about is: what does it mean to give up something? Right? So I said, you know, give up something that is dear to you, very likely, for example, the cell phone. You know, you might think that you can't do without it for even three hours; we'll try giving it up for 24 hours, or give up something else that is really dear to you. Now we want to understand the importance of that, because it's not a random assignment; it has an intrinsic relationship to many other things that Gandhi stood for. And I have also dwelled upon the importance of reading texts carefully.
So today, one of the things I want to do is I want to look at some passages, beginning with a passage from the autobiography. When I give citations to the autobiography, this is not the edition you have; there are many editions. This is an earlier edition, so you have a slightly later edition, but that's why I've given Part 1, Chapter 11. So the page number is 4 for my reference, because it's from the edition that I have. But if you have Part 1, Chapter 11—these chapters are very short, you know, the autobiography is comprised of several dozen chapters; in fact, I mean I think all told they're probably over a hundred chapters, and they're all very short chapters—so all you have to do is go to the part and the chapter, and you'll be able to locate that passage.
Now, before Gandhi left for England, you may recall that his mother had him give a vow. So let's just look at what that vow was, because recall that we are here thinking about, first, in the first instance, about what it means to give up something, right? And what was—what did Gandhi understand by a vow? Is there a technical sense in which one can understand it, which is rather different than understanding it in the spirit of the vow, right? So he gives a vow, and the reason he has to give a vow is because he's leaving home, he's crossing the oceans, he's going to England, and apparently this is too complicated a matter for me to enter into right now. Apparently, there was an objection to it. So, you know, historically, some people have argued that, well, if you cross the oceans, as it were, the kala pani, as they say, literally "Black Waters," you become outcasted. But remember that Gandhi comes from a Gujarati community, and the Gujaratis, as I have on more than one occasion mentioned, were a people who were eminently diasporic; they traveled considerable distances, and Gujaratis were to be found all over the world, in any case.
So, page 28—so this is Chapter 11, Part 1. Gandhi has resolved to go to England, and you know he's been threatened that he's going to be outcasted; nonetheless, he decides that he's going to go. But then his mother is going to administer a vow, and this is a passage: "Swami was originally a moth Bunny"—and that's—you don't need to worry about the detail—"but had now become a Jain monk; he too was a family adviser; he came to my help and said, 'I shall get the boys solemnly to take the three vows, and then he can be allowed to go to England.' He administered the oath, and I vowed not to touch wine, woman, and meat. This done, my mother gave her permission." I mean, it's a very, very short passage; you can—you can spend hours on this. Why was he asked to give up wine? Well, it's an intoxicant. Woman: temptations of the flesh. Meat: again, well, then we would have to look at the—his associations. I mean, of course, partially because the family was strictly vegetarian—I've already spoken about that at some length—but you know, in many Indian families there are—there's also the association of meat with virility, masculinity. For example, in my extended family—there—I'm talking about aunts and uncles, you know, on both sides of the family and other relatives—many of the men may eat meat occasionally, but the women will not. And I'm—and I'm not making any—not making any inference from that that this is true of all of India, of all communities; I'm not suggesting that. But I'm suggesting that there were many kinds of associations with meat-eating, and again I had hinted at that in my previous lecture when I had mentioned to you that when Gandhi was growing up, one of his childhood friends was McCobb, a Muslim boy, who then told him that, well, why is it that we Indians are being colonized by other people? Because, well, among other things, you know, the Englishman is strong, he's masculine, his virile, he eats meat; you can see the chain of associations.
So he gives his mother a vow, but now what is he doing? He's giving up these things, right? He's giving up meat, he's giving up the association with women, and of course that means that he is now sworn to a notion here of celibacy, right? But incidentally, he—this doesn't mean that he's going to have henceforth a celibate relationship with his own wife, although when he went to England he went alone; Kasturbai did not accompany him. So he is going to be separated from his wife for several years, and he's going to continue to enjoy a conjugal, sexual relationship with his wife until he takes a vow of celibacy as such, which is going to be in his mid-30s, right? But at this point, the implication was that since he's married and now he's going, as a young man alone, to England, he should not try to consort with English women or other women over there because he is already married, right? So he gives this vow. Now what is the importance of vows? One way to understand it, because you know, vow is a—I mean, the only context I think in which most Americans, young Americans especially—as many of you in the room are today—would understand the word is when you—when you think of marriage vows, right? That's the most frequent context in which the word "vows" appears in the English language today; that when a man and a woman, or a man and a man, for that matter nowadays, of course, a woman and a woman, whatever the nature of the relationship, you know, when they get married, they take marriage vows, right? So you—you give a solemn promise to the other party that you shall be faithful to him or her, so forth and so on, right? I think all of you understand that that's the most common context in which we think of vows. Now this is, of course, a different kind of a vow, but I'm saying that the word itself now doesn't really have a resonance except outside the context of marriage, right? But this is not the context of marriage that we are speaking about here. So one way in which to think of it is a promise; a vow is a promise. And I would recommend—I'm going to do that constantly—you might want to take up these readings in the next few weeks, you might want to take that in the next few years of your life, maybe 20 years from now, but there's an essay by David Hume, the great English philosopher writing in the mid-18th century, on the meaning of a promise. What does it mean to give a promise? So I promise to do such and such thing, and if I don't deliver on my promise, the likelihood is that the person to whom I have given this promise will cease to trust me, will cease to trust me, particularly if I renege on my promises frequently, right? If I constantly fail to live up to my promises, then I'm going to become a person of very little credibility. That's another definition of a politician, by the way, just for your information, if you haven't thought about it, because politicians constantly give promises, and of course they never adhere to any of them, right? That—that's one definition, and no political scientist in the department of political science will tell you that that's a definition, but it is, if you think about it, right? Because we have to be creative in how we think about what it means to actually be in politics and live the political life. There is an intrinsic relationship between politics and promise as well.
Now what we are speaking about in this instance is that Gandhi has given a promise to his mother, right? But we might want to make a distinction now between the letter of the promise and the spirit of the promise, right? And what illustration do I want to give about that? The illustration I want to give about that is that Gandhi had decided that he was—when he goes to England, he—because he has given this promise, right, that he's not going to touch wine, women, or meat. Now if you look, Part 1, Chapter 17, let's look at the passage—passage is there—a little bit carefully, because when he is in England he's going to encounter a difficulty; the difficulty is that vegetarian food is really difficult to come by, and he decides that he's going to at least eat eggs—eat eggs. Okay, that's not a living thing, right? So here is what he says, because then eventually comes to the realization that no, his mother almost certainly had eggs in mind when, on her behalf, the vow of giving up meat was administered to him. This—that's the difference between the letter of the promise or the vow and the spirit of the vow, right? There were many experiments, he says, going on along with the main one, and remember, by the way, the autobiography subtitle is "My Experiments with Truth"—that's the subtitle of the autobiography. The word "experiment" is very critical, because in a way you can think of Gandhi as a scientist in the domain of ethics and politics; he's experimenting. It's not as though he has beforehand decided, "This is my worldview, and I'm gonna make everything fit into this worldview." That's what economists do; they create a model, and then they try to fit everything into that model; doesn't matter whether it fits in there or not, right? That's a definition of economics, by the way, you know, you create a model, and then you make the whole world try to fit into that model, even if it's completely absurd. Okay. Now I'll—I'll get—just a moment. Okay. Now so what—"My Experiments with Truth," right? So he's gonna experiment. There were many—minor experiments going on along with the main one, as for example, giving up—notice the phrase again—"giving up"—he's giving up things, and that's the assignment to you: what does it mean to give up? What is the meaning of renunciation, right? Giving up—strategy foods at one time, living with bread and food alone at another, and once living on cheese, milk, and eggs. This last experiment is worth noting; it lasted not even a fortnight. The reformer who advocated starch foods has spoken highly of eggs and held that eggs were not meat. It was apparent that there was no injury done to living creatures in taking eggs. He says, "I was taken in by this plea and took eggs in spite of my vows, but the lapse was momentary. I had no business to put a new interpretation on the vows. The interpretation of my mother who administered the vow was there for me." I know that our definition of meat included eggs, right? So he allowed—he deluded himself into thinking for a moment, "Then I can eat eggs because I did not give my mother a vow to give up eggs; I only gave up a vow to eat meat." But then, once he's done that, then he steps back and says to himself, "I actually dishonored my mother and the vow that I took, because I know very well that in her understanding of meat, eggs is included," right? Now notice also—you see each of these foods—we could go on for hours—but notice also that he is imposing a certain standard and discipline on himself. And I want to make the point—and I'll give you a different illustration, and then I'll come back to this—I want to make a point that one fundamental thing about Gandhi, which we see right at this juncture and we'll see it for the rest of his life, and it has an intrinsic relationship to non-violence: that Gandhi never asked anything of anyone else which he did not first ask of himself.
Let me give you an illustration of that. This is an anecdote from the 1930s, recorded in a number of works. So Gandhi was living in central India in one of these ashrams, as they're called, a community, and you know, by this point he is the Mahatma, the great soul; he's been the Mahatma for 20 years; he's the most renowned figure in India by far. You know, there are letters that are addressed to Gandhi in envelopes—I mean, I've seen these envelopes—"Mahatma Gandhi, India," and the letter will come to him, of course. I mean, if anybody wrote a letter to—in a—to India, you think the letter is gonna come to me? You know, of course not. But "Mahatma Gandhi, India," because he was synonymous at this point in time, right? So now Gandhi is a man who is also going to be visited. So every day at his ashram there would be people who would be lined up to see him, to receive solace and comfort from him, to seek his advice and his blessings. So there is this old woman in line to see Gandhi with her young grandson, about five or six years old. She's been waiting patiently in line; finally her turn comes, and Gandhi is seated there and says—Gandhi says to the woman, "What can I do for you?" And she said, "I have a problem that I would like you to address, and the problem is, here's my grandson, you know, he eats too many sweets, and his teeth are starting to rot already; he's only six years old, and I tell him to give up on eating sweets, but you know he doesn't listen to me. You are the Mahatma; maybe he'll listen to you." And Gandhi says to the woman, "Come back to me after a month." She's very bewildered; he just says, "Come back to me after a month." You know, the Mahatma has spoken; the Oracle has spoken. Once the Oracle has spoken, what do you do? You follow the advice. She goes home; a month later she reappears; she's in line; finally her turn comes again, and she is about to remind Gandhi of who she is, and Gandhi says, "I know who you—I remember who you are." So then he speaks to the boy, and he says to the boy, "You know, young boy, you know, sweets are not good for you. Look at me," and you know, he was largely toothless, Gandhi at this point, "Look, I don't have any teeth, and that's because I was eating too many sweets. This is what's going to happen to you, young boy, if you keep on eating that many sweets." And the boy says, "Yes, yes, Mahatmaji, I shall—you know, I shall follow your advice," etc., etc. The woman says to Gandhi, "But Mahatmaji, everything you are saying right now you could have said a month ago. Why did you have us come back?" He says, "The matter is very simple. Months ago when you came to me, I think I was eating too many sweets. For the last one month, I haven't eaten any sweets. Before I could give advice to the young boy, I wanted to see if it was possible for me to completely give up on sweets for a month," right? Now, very simple illustration of the principle that is involved here, right? That you do not make a demand of others that you do not first impose upon yourself. And this matter is going to come up constantly.
So now we've got—we've got several trajectories going here. I want you to—this is going to be—it's part of the complexity of the issue—that you cannot isolate these issues, right? So partly it's a question of vows and promises; partly it's a question of what Mahadevan—and one of the readings you had, the article—and approach to the study of Gandhi, where he makes the claim that Gandhi's approach is heuristic, not holistic. Now I don't think he's entirely right, but we need to understand what he means when he says it's heuristic. Does anybody here know the meaning of "heuristic"? Gandhi's approach is heuristic, not holistic. Do not look up the dictionary on Google right now. Okay, I know there's always a tendency, you know, it's nowadays when you're talking to people, and immediately on their iPhone they're—you know, they're—they're trying to figure out, you know, whatever it is, right? Now "heuristic" means very simply "trial and error," practical, hands-on, right? That the truth is not given; it's not out there, and all you do is just appropriate it. No, it's a hands-on approach. Gun—so Marvin is saying it's a trial-and-error method, right? In the intellectual realm, if you had to take an analogy, it would be something like the Socratic method; the Socratic method, because the Socratic method is—I enter into a—you know, I ask this young man here, "Well, what do you think justice is?" Then he gives me a reply, and then I say, "Well, let's try to understand if you're entirely correct," and then you try to falsify the proposition, and you keep on refining it; you keep on going back and forth until you come to a definition which seems really agreeable because it cannot, for example, be easily falsified, right? That's the Socratic method. So now the heuristic method is the trial-and-error, hands-on approach. The reason I don't entirely agree with Mahadevan is because yes, Gandhi's approach is heuristic, but it is also holistic, in the sense that when we are speaking about Gandhi's experiments with diet, you know, many practitioners of non-violence, young activists, they say, "This is all rubbish; what does this have to do with non-violence? Non-violence is strategies, or boycott, and resistance," but Gandhi is going to suggest that you cannot compartmentalize life in this fashion, right? So his method is both heuristic, and the outlook is certainly holistic as well. Now, so that's another strand, a stream of thought that we are interested in, right? But fundamentally, keep in mind what we're speaking about: the large rubric is non-violence, and then I'm saying there's this question of vows and promises; then there's a question of the method, the heuristic method; then there's the question of what is the spirit of doing something as opposed to the letter of doing it, right? And as I said, fourthly, here, the fact that partly Gandhi's view is that you do not make demands of others that you do not first impose upon yourself.
Now let me look at a few more illustrations very quickly of what we mean when we say that Gandhi gave up things constantly, right? So we noticed—right—we get—a weird illustration where he says, "I'm gonna give up on eggs." I'm gonna take the questions together—two or three—I just want to finish this part of my exposition, and then I'll take the two questions together. Okay. So let me just finish with this kind of thought. If you look at Part 4, Chapter 7 of the autobiography, right, this chapter is called "Experiments in Earth and Water Treatment." I'm quite certain that all of you had heard of Gandhi—I'm sure everybody in this room had—before you walked into this class—that you didn't know that he was engaged in lifelong experiments with food, with diet, and all of these things. His best-selling book, by the way, in India is "Gandhi on Food and Diet." It is not his autobiography; it is not his collection of essays on nonviolent resistance, all right? That his best-selling book in India is a collection of things that he's written on experimenting with food and diet and nutrition and hygiene, so forth and so on, all right? So here again—now he says—let me just give you a very, very simple illustration. This is how the chapter begins; the chapter once again is called "Experiments in Earth and Water Treatment." "With the growing simplicity of my life," pause—Henry David Thoreau—"the essence of life consists in simplifying your wants and even needs," right? Again, entirely opposed to the modern ethos. You know, I'm filling up gas yesterday evening; I am big ad there, you know, that if you get the credit card from that particular company, Shell, this—you know—then they have this woman, "Well, I saved one hundred and forty dollars," and then with that hundred and forty dollars I indulge myself in my favorite pastime. You know what the favorite pastime here would be? Shopping—you know, acquisition. You constantly keep on acquiring, right? Now here—Henry—this is—if the invocation of Thoreau here—"the essence of life consists in the simplification of wants," right? Because after all, think of it this way: if you gave up everything—eventually you gave up, you know, salt, you gave up sugar, you gave up alcohol, you gave up meat, you gave up sex—what is anybody—what kind of purchase does anybody have on your life? What are they—what are they going to tempt you with? How are they going to bribe you, so to speak? Right? This is the—this is the interesting problem for Gandhi's opponents, in fact, actually, right? And you think about—you'll have to think about it metaphorically; we'll see what—what the connection there will be. "With the growing simplicity of my life, my dislike for medicines steadily increased. While practicing in Durban, I suffered for some time from debility and rheumatic inflammation." You know, this is again a very unusual autobiography; there are pages and pages about, you know, his experiments with this, you know, the occasions when he had constipation. I mean, how many people who write their autobiography are going to talk about their constipation and expect you to really sit there and read it? And Gandhi, in fact—and you—and see, it's also a very private part of your life. So now we are on to something else; this is what I mean, that each—each argument leads to another set of things, and I want you to keep all of these arguments in mind: the fact that the advocate of non-violence never makes a distinction between his public and private life; it does not make a distinction. Because if you have a private life—I mean, they often—very often say—and in English this is a well-known saying—that politicians really don't have, or ought not to have, public figures in any case, a private life, but not in the modern sense, because the modern sense it means that everyone's dirty linen is out there in the public, you know, right? No, but in the sense that you cannot have secrets, because if you have secrets you are doing something wrong. So if Hillary Clinton is not releasing her speeches—this—to Goldman Sachs, there's something going on there, you know, right? You don't have to be a Trump follower to believe that; let's be quite clear about that. But there's some element of secrecy here that is frankly disturbing for people, you see. So even though people may not have reasoned through all of that, tacitly they understand some of what Gandhi is really talking about over here, right? And so now what is he gonna do? This very short chapter is essentially about how he gives up modern medicines, and I just want to read out to you—okay, one paragraph there, and then I'll take the questions—though I have had two serious illnesses in my life, I believe that man has little need to drug himself. 999 cases out of a thousand can be brought around by means of a well-regulated diet, water and earth treatment, and similar household remedies. He who runs to the doctor for every little ailment and swallows all kinds of vegetable and mineral drugs not only curtails his life but, by becoming the slave of his body instead of remaining its master, loses self-control and ceases to be a man, right? So this is going to be a constant theme; I can—I could give you illustrations here on and on. I've just given you a few of what it means to give up things. How do—
You simplify your life. How do you eventually reduce yourself to becoming, as it were, empty? Right. So here's the metaphor: you become empty of all of these things. Because, of course, in theology, in the world of devotion—not only Hindu devotion but even in Christian devotion—right, when you empty yourself, you become the receptacle for God's love. Right. There is a dialectical relationship between emptiness and fullness. So when Gandhi is—because what is what is he doing? He is emptying himself of all of these things. But this is not again a negation in the ordinary sense of the term. It is a way of becoming someone who can lead a much more fulfilled life. And there are different languages one can use to understand this enterprise. But one other language, of course, is you try to rid yourself of the ego, of the ego. And this is where, if you do not come from a Hindu background, well, it doesn't matter, because there's enough in the writings of Christian saints. You know, if you just read Saint Francis of Assisi, for example, or Christ for that matter, you know. Right. When I said “we Christ,” I mean, of course, reading the Gospels, because Christ himself didn't write anything, as we know. Right. But the Gospels, the synoptic Gospels, or other portions of the New Testament, all right, all the lives of Christian saints. So that might be the other word through which you can approach it if the world of Hinduism and Jainism, which I'm going to turn to in just a few moments, is somewhat alien to some of you.
Question? You had a question. You don't remember? Sorry. Yeah, you had a question. Say that again. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Heuristic, heuristic. Yeah, yeah. Okay. No, so when I when I say that his method was heuristic, I’ve—it’s a method of trial and error. Right, trial and error. The outlook is holistic; holistic meaning that he has a view which encompasses the different spheres of life and insists, if I may put it this way, that these spheres of life are not separated. I will give you a different illustration of what I mean. Let's take the example of—and giving a very complicated example here deliberately—because because I think part of my enterprise is to complicate my own understanding of things. All right. So the example I want to give you is from the life of, let's say, the person who's most well known after Gandhi in the 20th century as an exponent of nonviolent resistance, and I'm speaking obviously of Martin Luther King. Right now, Gandhi believed that there is an intrinsic relationship between your ability to carry out nonviolent resistance, right, your ability to carry out nonviolent resistance and how you treat your own body, how you treat your own body, what you put in your body, what you ingest, right, the manner in which you, for example, have a relationship with it. And I don't mean that, for example, somebody would say, well, you know, I go to the gym and I exercise for three hours every day, right, so I keep fit. Well, that may be a very partial way of keeping fit. All right. So a holistic view would be that you take into account Gandhi's views on medicine, nutrition, diet, sexuality, and Gandhi's view is all of these have a relationship to my political theory of non-violence. And we'll begin to see over the course of the quarter how he develops these arguments. All right. Now, Martin Luther King, in Gandhi's language, abused his body. Let me just finish that. Yeah, he abused his body in—and got—in Gandhi's view, for example, and I'm not passing a verdict on King, I hope you understand. I have—I think—is enormously influential and great figure, but I'm just giving you a very different illustration to complicate my own argument. King was addicted to alcohol, tobacco, and meat. He partook of all three in very liberal measures, very liberal measures. Right. So now then, for us the question would be that King, we are saying, did not take the view that there is a relationship with what you eat and your doctrine of nonviolent resistance. And the question is not whether Gandhi is right or King is right. You see, that's what most people will say. They'll say, okay, then I want to know who's right. Well, it's not a question of who's right. We are saying that this is Gandhi's worldview, right, and if you're going to take Gandhi's worldview, certainly the holistic view then would be to say that we cannot take Gandhi's views on nonviolent resistance and say that we'll accept and we'll reject everything else. So we might—we may have to understand how King derived his holism in a different way. We may have to understand that, right, but that would mean looking at King's theology and his life in very great detail, which is not the subject matter of our course. You know. Okay. So you get a sense of what I mean. Yeah, question at the back. Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, yeah. I expect that. You know, I I said that, you know, if you look at it lightly, I mean, the man looks like a lunatic in some ways, you know, to many people. But we'll have to understand—so he sounds crazy, but why?
Yeah. Well, you know, a mind-body-soul one. I mean, Mohandas Gandhi is not a California New Age hippie. Let us be—let us be very clear about that. Okay. Now, I appreciate what you're saying. I understand the spirit of what you're saying, but that's why I have already—and we're only into week two yet—I have a number of times already cautioned you about the fact that one of the problems with reading this, you see, and most courses on Gandhi, you know what they do? They omit all of this. They'll say, let's just get to what he was doing in South Africa, what was a non-violent movement he was leading there, right, and what was he doing in Gandhi? How did he throw the British out? That's what we want to know. But how did he get there? How did he get there? And why is it that if you are a Christian, okay, minister—I mean, one of my friends is a man who I've mentioned in passing once, I think you know, he's in his late 80s, a close associate of Martin Luther King—in fact, the greatest living person in the United States who have been associated with the civil rights movement, James Lawson, Reverend James Lawson. You know, Lawson understands the relationship of all of this, right, even though he's himself comes from an African-American background, was very closely associated with King. Right. Scene. So now what is the implication of what I'm saying? The implications are the following: one, yes, you're absolutely right that—and I think you put your finger on something which which is important, namely that when you read all these early pages, the impression is of a man who was highly conflicted, highly conflicted. Number one. Number two, and this is the point I have made several times already, he speaks in a language and in a tone which is really unavailable to most people living today, especially the young generation. Vows—what a vows mean. You know, why does Gandhi have to give a vow? Why does he have to renounce the pleasure, etc., etc., etc.? Right. This is part of the problem. Yes. Yeah. Yes. But you see—yes, but you see, you are arguing from a standpoint where you are thinking that he is denying himself. You see, that’s—but he doesn't see himself as only denying himself. And that is why I professed some of this with the observation that when you empty yourself of all of these things, the opposite, the corollary, is life becomes richer. You see, well, that's—that's—we have to enter into his worldview. We have to enter into his worldview. And to enter into his worldview, what we will have to do in part is we will have to suspend the common meanings that we have grown up with about a great many things. Right. For example, what is reason? You're saying is he sounds crazy, and at one level I understand what you mean, but then you might have to ask yourself whether the world you are accustomed to is in fact actually not crazy, so to speak, and that you have become so accustomed to it perhaps that in some ways you cannot see the possibility of another world. It much in the way in which all of us have become completely habituated to the idea of violence. Violence has become completely normalized in society in every sense of the term, you see. Right. So I think that the spirit in which you're reading it is correct in the sense that you're saying, I'm not going to accept everything that he says just like that. I want to question him. I think that's good, because that's precisely—but one does—Gandhi himself, did he question everything? Right. So keep on questioning, but try to see if you can also develop a different worldview which may enable you to enter into his life. All right. So these are all the trajectories here. Now, now let us look at some other elements. And all of this is part of understanding—that's what we're seeking to do in this particular lecture—is trying to get a sense of the worldview. Now, both—as Gandhi was not a Jain monk, but Jainism, I've already mentioned to you, was important in his life—a religion which I have said to you before is a religion that is eminently associated, in particular, with the idea of non-violence. I and I want to—I I want to be certain that you understand that I am NOT suggesting that Gandhi was a monk. In fact, he is the very opposite of that, because in the Indian tradition and even in the Christian spiritual tradition, the most common thing for a person, a man who wanted to renounce the world was you retreat, you retreat into the desert, for example, right, you subject your body to various forms of asceticism. Gandhi was of the view that the only way to be ethical is to wade into the slum of politics, to wade into the slum of politics. In the Indian tradition, if you want to be detached from the world, at peace, okay, at peace and all of that, what do you do? You go to a Himalayan mountain—and India's plenty of them—and you sit and meditate the rest of your life. Mohandas Gandhi did not do that, because he said the only way for me to really be ethical now is to actually wade into the slum of politics. And politics is Islam. You know, you wade into the slum of politics, you enter into the pores of life and see if you can emerge from that with your sanity intact. That is a much greater test, of course. Right. So when I give you the five vows of the Jain monk, I am NOT saying the monk is what a monk is what Gandhi was. I'm—I put forward this slide to you because the ideas that inform the life of the Jain monk were certainly important to Gandhi. And needless to say, as you will see as we move along in the course, we will see that Gandhi was involved in everyday life to an extraordinary extent. Right. So these vows are himself. I will turn to that in much greater detail later on. And Satya, the truth. So the Jain monk takes the vows that he will observe these five things to the best of his ability. Right. Asteya, non-stealing, to take nothing that is not properly given. And this is important because you cannot do a mere literal interpretation of this. A mere literal interpretation was, I take our bottle of Perrier and I have stolen it because it is not mine. That would be a pathetic reading of the idea of not taking what is not properly yours. The much more expansive reading of that would be, for example—and this is where it becomes controversial—somebody can say, I don't agree with that. Well, living well beyond your means, extracting things from the earth which you do not need, it's a theft. Some radical environmentalists will argue that our generation has engaged in the greatest plunder in history. They're environmentalists will argue that, right, because the levels of consumption are so high, are so high that they have to be future generations who are going to pay that price of our levels of consumption. Now, that is included in this, to take nothing that is not properly given. It's not simply a matter of, well, you know, I've got 10 shirts, I can do with two. Okay. It's thinking about all the ways in which one is in fact actually improperly living, very often on someone else's labor, on someone else's labor. Right. And of course, in a in a way we are all complicit. Right. And that is why the radical activists, very often, people think they're crazy. Well, they're not, because if they've thought through the political economy of this as well, that you know, yes, you go and you buy your ten-dollar shirt, you know, and it looks like a designer shirt, well, the person who's making it there in Bangladesh is getting one dollar for it. So you have in fact improperly taken what is not given to you. Okay. So we have to do a more expansive reading than simply saying that if I steal from, you know, the MAC store when I go in there because the surveillance cameras are not working and I think I can get away—well, that of course is theft, simple and plain. But there are other kinds of theft too. Right. Brahmacharya, celibacy, renunciation of sensual pleasures. Again, we will dwell on this at much greater length, but technically it's not simply a matter of being celibate, because Brahmacharya means to turn your mind towards God. Right. I'm using the word “God,” though of course it need not be a personal God. It need not be a personal deity. It could be some notion of the divine, some transcendent being. Right. And finally, aparigraha, which is related to asteya, right, not—but it has a more extensive meaning. And there are critics of Gandhi, we have to be candid about that, right, who will say that Gandhi's interpretation of this verges on the cruel. I will give you an illustration. Once again—a paragraph—means non-attachment, non-possession. This is where it seems to overlap with asteya. Okay. But it has a different meaning as well. Attachment—what does that mean? It does not simply mean that we should not be attached to material goods. That is obviously the most common implication, but it means something well beyond that. And this is the illustration. One of the criticisms of Gandhi's life by his critics is that even though Gandhi became, quote, you know, he's technically the father of the nation, that's his designation, that he was the father of the nation, but he was never a father to his own sons. He had four sons. One of them became an absolute rebel, a matter of huge torment to both Mohandas and his wife, Kasturba. Right. I—this—this guy was—on the day that Gandhi was assassinated, his oldest son was lying in a ditch drunk, drunk absolutely. And so you know, everybody said, all the cynics said, hey, hey, look at the Mahatma, father of the nation, and yet why did his sons turn away from him? Now, one of the reasons that his oldest son may have turned against him because Gandhi took this principle of aparigraha very seriously. And what is the relationship? The relationship is, why should I favor my son over everyone else? Right. What is my son to me? And somebody will say, your blood ties. By the way, blood—this is very mystical, you know. Yeah, blood ties—what does that mean? I want to really know, you know, because nationalism is very often based on this idea of blood, you know. Well, if you prick five people, you know, it’s—as you can’t distinguish—and you know whose blood is whose blood. Yeah, you can simply say one is B-plus and the other is O-plus or A-plus or whatever it is. Right. Yeah. But you can’t really distinguish between the blood of a black man and a white man and a brown man and a brown woman. Very mystical, this idea of blood, frankly, if you ask me. But leave that aside. Again, you don't have to accept that. All you have to think about is this: that Gandhi says that why should I think of my son as someone who deserves more attention from me than anyone else around? You know. And I want to remind you of what Christ says in the New Testament. Right. So this may be a problem with all people of that caliber or that mind, of that way of thinking. Christ says very clearly in the New Testament, there is no such thing as a wife or a brother or a sister or a son. You all come to me equally. You cease to be a brother or a wife or a husband, any of that. These are contingent relationships. These are contingent relationships. And so non-attachment means—of course, this is only one illustration—but the real meaning of the phrase here is that you do not be attached to, right, the results, the rewards. If there is a duty that is obligatory upon you, you must do it without thinking of what you get in return, without thinking of what you get in return. Okay. And by the way, that’s a spirit in which you should be writing—as a little footnote—your papers for me, that you do the best that you can. You shouldn't really be thinking about grades. I mean, this is a modern disease, this whole grading business and everything, you know. All right. You should really do what is obligatory for you to do in the best spirit of things. That this cultivation of non-attachment is an essential part of the development of not just one’s character but the idea of non-violence. Now, the Jains also have a doctrine which is going to be important in the development of ideas of non-violence, and that is a doctrine—in particular, I want to look at the first one; the second one we can omit for the moment—anekantavada, many-sidedness, the doctrine that reality can be perceived from multiple points of view, which in turn means, by the way, that Gandhi himself has to recognize that his own perspective, his own outlook, is only one way of looking at the world. Right. There’s a contingency there. No one point of view enables us to grasp the entire truth, though all of them taken together may help us to do so. Right. And I want to give you a hair and illustration, and this is the—this is a parable from India. It's a wonderful parable of the six blind men and the elephant. Some of you may have heard this in your childhood, perhaps. This is a—this is actually an English poet who turned it into a poem. Right. So there is a—there’s an elephant, and there’s six blind men who are going to be asked to characterize—so let me read it out to you. “It was six men of Hindustan to learning much inclined. Right. So they all think of themselves as wise, who went to see the elephant, though all of them were blind, that each by observation might satisfy his mind. The first approach’d the elephant, and happening to fall—remember they’re blind—and happening to fall against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl, ‘God bless me! but the elephant is very like a wall.’ Right. You know, that big portion of the elephant there, it’s like a wall. The second, feeling of the tusk, cried, ‘Ho! What have we here so very round and smooth and sharp? To me it is mighty clear this wonder of an elephant is very like a spear.’ The third approach’d the animal, and happening to take the squirming trunk within his hands, thus boldly up and spake, ‘I see,’ quoth he, ‘the elephant is very like a snake.’ The elephant appears like a snake because he was just holding that part, the trunk, right. The fourth reached out his eager hand, and felt about that knee. ‘What most this wondrous beast is like is mighty plain,’ quoth he, ‘it is clear enough the tree; the elephant is very like a tree.’ The fifth, who chanced to touch the ears—you remember the ears of an elephant—said, ‘Even the blindest man can tell what this resembles most; deny the fact who can, this marvel of an elephant is very like a fan.’ The sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope, than seizing on the swinging tail that fell within his scope, ‘I see,’ quoth he, ‘the elephant is very like a rope.’ And this is of course the conclusion. And so these men of Hindustan—induced on—is India, Hindustan—disputed loud and long, right, the modern days in area six scholars in a room, each one of which has a very partial view of what they are studying, right, each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong, though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong.” Right. Let’s think about the last: “Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong.” None of them is actually correct per se, but none of them is entirely wrong. Now, the implications of this are that when there is a dispute between parties, the tendency very often for each party is to think, I’m in possession of the truth, my view is correct. And so one of the things that Gandhi will seek to do, using this Jain doctrine of anekāntavāda, the many-sidedness of perspective, that perspective itself is many-sided—what Gandhi will seek to do—we will say, well, let’s try to first find the grounds that are common between us and then build up on that, then build up on that. Right. And now we need to pursue the implications of that, because I want to go back to this idea of what are the implications of this for the study of non-violence. Right. So we had started with the idea of non-violence, and in my remarks to you on the previous occasion I had said to you that what we need to understand is that non-violence cannot be viewed simply as a negation. It cannot be viewed simply as a negation. It is complete unto itself. Okay. So Gandhi is going to say—and you have—for one of your books you have—you have this—well, you have a different cover; it’s exactly the same pagination—you have the black cover, nonviolent resistance. So if you look at the first passage here, which I had assigned to you, pages three to 36, just the first passage, Satyagraha. Satyagraha is a word that he coins, and Satyagraha is comprised of the word satya, which is truth, and agraha, which is force; truth force, or soul force, as he calls it. Right. Satyagraha is literally holding on to truth. And it means, therefore, truth force. Truth is soul or spirit. It is therefore known as soul force. It excludes the use of violence, and we’re going to—we have to understand this—it excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and therefore not competent to punish. Right. Let’s dwell upon that a little bit. So he’s saying ahimsa, non-violence, is not just the absence of violence. He’s giving you a definition which does not make it dependent upon violence. Ahimsa—and I am going henceforth to use that in this class, so you should know the word ahimsa—non-violence, right, translated into English as non-violence, his truth force, its soul force. And then there, in this very passage, which in the interest of saving time I’m not going to quote at any length, but he’s going to distinguish it from passive resistance. And in fact, he actually mentions Thoreau, and he says that well, Thoreau had this idea of civil disobedience, for example, but this—but he wasn’t really thinking of all the context in which I have been thinking of it. He’s not thinking of it as a collective. Moreover, his main objection is—or main critique, if you want to put it this way—is if Thoreau is only talking about violating one particular law which is objectionable, right, then it is that this law which says that I must pay my taxes. Gandhi—Thoreau said, well, I’m not going to subject myself to this law. But what Gandhi is talking about is that there may be a whole apparatus, and under colonialism there was—there might be a whole apparatus that is in fact actually oppressive. So we have to think in a much wider scope than what Thoreau was thinking about. And similarly, he says that passive resistance is not adequate for understanding non-violence. So this is—it describes the pacifism of the early Christian martyrs, because the early Christian martyrs simply understood by non-violence not offering any resistance at all. And Gandhi saying, no, there is a difference between passive resistance and Satyagraha, the force of truth. I want you to think about the word force, agraha, force. There is a force, right, that I am going to deploy, but I’m not going to use the arsenal of violence when I deploy this force. So if you’re not going to use the arsenal of violence, then what kind of force are you going to deploy? Right. Then he says in this passage that I read out to you—so I want to now elaborate because he’s only given you one section—
Before we can get to the idea of non-violence, ahimsa, let us understand what Gandhi's problems are with violence. And I'm saying there are four fundamental problems: what I call the ontological, epistemological, pragmatic, and moral. And I'll explain each of these in turn. Right, so here he gives you one; one; and in other writings, you'll see all of these other develop. Let me read out that line again. Right. Satyagraha, soul force, truth force excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and therefore not competent to punish.
Now let's unravel that. So his first objection—they're not in—they're not in any order of importance; all four are equally important, just put them randomly—right—the one that he's speaking about here is the epistemological objection. That one reason you have to disavow violence, give up violence, is because man is not in possession of the absolute truth. Now let's unpack that a bit. Right. That is, if you think about it—by the way, let me give you the most—the most pedestrian interpretation first. Right. Why is it that there are people who oppose the death sentence, capital punishment? Hey, you know that we know that there are also many people who—who support it. You know, they say, "Oh, this man was a monster, the serial killer was a monster, and he deserves to die." You know, and of course, a pedestrian objection—just because it's pedestrian and—and up, you know, the most evident one doesn't mean that we should dismiss it—it's important, but it's the lowest one—is that there is always the possibility—even though that possibility may be—you'll bet we made an error; we caught the wrong man. And you know, by the way, that happens all the time—that you know somebody's been in jail for 40 years, and then you know now the DNA testing shows that, well, frankly, the guy was put in jail for the wrong—the wrong man was put in. Well, you've already wasted that man's life, but what if that man had already been executed? Once life has been taken, it cannot be taken back. And please, nobody should tell me that Hindus believe in the doctrine of reincarnation, so therefore it doesn't matter, you know, because that person will be reborn, so over them, so on. Once that life has been taken, that's it; it's a—there's a finality to it. And when we take that life, we do so thinking to ourselves, "My truth cannot be contested; it is 100 percent certain." 100 percent certain. There is no 100—you cannot be 100 percent certain; you cannot be in possession of the absolute truth. So that's a fundamental objection. But you have to—you have to—I took the example of capital punishment, but—but he's not talking about capital punishment; he's saying that even a simple act of slapping your son or daughter—right—because they've been disobeying you or they've been getting out of hand—that that act of violence also presumes on your part the—the—the idea that your version of what is happening here is superior to that person's. And Gandhi's saying that we can never be certain of that, and that is one reason we have to be wary of violence.
Then there is the ontological argument. The ontological argument, very simply, is no matter how monstrous a person appears to us—how monstrous a person appears to us—there is always the spark of divinity in that person. Maybe a very small spark, but there is that—every human has some element of the Divine within. And incidentally, in a humanist kind of framework, we all passively understand it. Very recently, I watched a South African film that came out many years ago, clutzy; it's called Okay. And this, you know, this young black person in South Africa—absolute thug, you know, I mean, you know, he's the kind of person who's got a gun and has absolutely no compunction and just shooting somebody dead. Right. So you know, he does a—he shoots somebody and does a carjacking, and he doesn't realize there's a baby in the car when he takes his car. So then now he's—he's suddenly finds—when he's about to dump the car—he hears his baby cry. Right. And now he's—well, what does he do? Like—and you—what you would expect is that because he's shot somebody dead before, well, why should he even bother? He's that just that kind of person. But he does bother, and that's what the whole film is—right—how he begins to develop and kind of an affection almost for this completely unknown baby—no relation to him—right. So you see, if we have condemned him outright as, you know, in the language of some politicians today in America, "or he's just scum of the earth," but that's what they would say. Gandhi addresses a letter to Adolf Hitler. Hitler never received that letter, by the way. You know, there are people who always ask me, "Well, you know, what was Hitler's reply?" You know, well, he never received a letter because India was under colonial rule, and the British censored every letter that Gandhi wrote—when going out was censored. Okay, particularly when he's a political prisoner, and the British censors simply did not let—let that—let her get to its destination. But how do you think it began, that letter? He begins his letter by—with the following salutation: "My dear friend." My dear friend. And you know, then what the critics of Gandhi will say—"He was very friendly with Hitler." I've actually read that in a number of books—the people who will just make that inference—"He was very friendly with Hitler; he was Chancellor, then you know, they maybe had tea together or a German beer together," whatever. Absurd. Why is he writing a letter addressed to Hitler as "My dear friend"? Right. So what should he have done? "Dear monstrous Adolf Hitler"? Right. Would that—would that be the option? Think of it. Right. And it's not simply a matter of saying that their norms, their protocols, their, you know, their people that you dislike, but you still begin the letter ordinarily. You used to—nowadays people, of course, simply don't even have salutations very often, but you would say, "Dear so-and-so." Right. And you could say that, well, Gandhi was simply following a protocol. No, he's not following a protocol because he was following a protocol; he would simply say, "Dear Mr. Hitler." You know, "My dear friend"—he's giving an opening immediately—number one—and number two, he's suggesting that, "Look, whatever the world may think of you, I happen to think that even you are not beyond redemption"—if I may use a Christian framework—"a redemption"—even you are not beyond that. Any—actually goes on to say, by the way, that I think that you know you have engaged in conduct that's atrocious. So he, you know, and—and I'm saddened to see that, but I would like to see a better outcome. It's a short letter, as I said, never reached its destination. Now that's a long story—right—what his relationship is to, you know, the Jews, what he thinks about the Holocaust—we won't get into that at the moment. Keep in mind what the gist of the argument is. The gist of the argument is that one of the four reasons he opposes violence is because he takes the view—a human being is the ground of divinity—or to use a phrase from Emerson—so remember I've mentioned Emerson in my previous lecture—that one of the—one of the great American writers, dissenting writers in a way—Emerson has a phrase, and this is an exact quotation: "Man is God in ruins." Man is God in ruins. And this is what he meant when he addressed Adolf Hitler as "My dear friend."
Third argument against violence—a pragmatic argument—you see, which is important because Gandhi is not speaking from, you know, he's not there woolly-headed in the clouds—"Oh yeah, he's got this idealistic"—representation. Man was on the ground constantly; you know, he visited more Indian villages and spoke to more Indians than anyone else ever did. So—and what is a pragmatic argument? Very simply, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. So we launched a war on Afghanistan; we were supposed to have resolved it—right—the United States was supposed to have resolved their problem; it was supposed to have resolved the problem of Iraq. And now five trillion US dollars has already spent in Iraq—has a problem in resolved. I want to know that, right? Why do we suppose—and somebody would say, "Well, what about the Russian Revolution?" Yes, but then I also want to know that as a consequence of the Russian Revolution—and you don't have to be anti-communist to make this argument; you just have to survey the evidence very closely—before you—that at least 30 to 40 million people are killed by the Soviet state. And there are various ways of killing of people; for example, when a famine takes place and you decide you're not going to intervene—that's genocide, by the way; that's called genocide—when—when the state knows a famine is taking place and they say, "We're not going to intervene; let the people die"—that's it—exactly what they did, by the way, in China, 1959 to 1962, during the Great Leap Forward, when Mao was chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. Right. So every rep—every instance we can take, we can examine it in detail, and we can—don't have to go to mega examples; we begin with what happens when we use violence in the household—against her spouse, against her children. Right. Gandhi's view is very simply—frankly—there is a pragmatic objection: it doesn't work.
And finally, the moral objection to violence. The moral objection to violence is it creates a split between cognition and feeling. This was a very little more difficult to understand, so I'll end with this; I'll give you an illustration: a split between the mind and the heart. What do I mean when I say a split between cognition? Cognition is the faculty of reason—right—which includes instrumental reason. When you instrumentalize reason, you deploy it deliberately—right—to create an outcome favorable to you. A split between cognition—meaning—meaning the faculty of reason, excuse me, and reasoning and feeling. So, for example, my son is disobedient; he's rebellious; he's playing video games when he shouldn't be playing. Right. So what is my temptation? My temptation is—let me give him a whack; let me give him a whack; maybe that will teach him a lesson. Right. And in the generation that I grew up in India, giving your son a whack was very common. Nowadays, of course, you can't do it. My son very often says, "You know, I'll report you to child services; protect you." No, okay, yeah, you know, he's learned everything from the school, you know, right. But now, of course, I don't give him a whack, but the temptation to do so is very strong. All right. So now there's a split here within me. The split is—I know really that what I'm doing is not right; I know that it's not right; it's not right because the way you try to persuade somebody—particularly when there is a huge disproportionate relationship of power—I have disproportionately exercised power over him—right—and in that relationship, in particular, one should never undertake that act of violence because one is allowing that disproportionate power to already determine one's reaction. Yes, has diminished—is that the question? Okay. The answer is long; I will keep your question in mind; I'll give you the short answer now. The short answer, and then I will pick it up. The short answer is that when we become modern, we think we have become more progressive. What happens very often is the forms of violence become more disguised. And one of the major European thinkers of the 20th century, Michel Foucault—one of the things that Foucault argued—and I'll give it to you in a very cryptic formula to tantalize all of you as a provocation—then you think about it—now we kill by kindness. Now we kill by kindness. All right, that's the provocation; you think about it. Okay. All right, let's stop here.