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Keynote Address, Annual Banquet 2002
Dr. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi
Annual Banquet
October 2, 2002
Friends, let me first of all thank the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace for inviting me and giving me this chance of being with all of you. Let me also express my congratulations to the Foundation and all its supporters for the projects accomplished and planned.
As we partake of this banquet in this warm space in friendly Edmonton in the great country of Canada, and remember the message of Mahatma Gandhi, I am acutely conscious, as I am sure all of you are, of irony, sadness, and concern.
The irony comes from the fact that the India-Pakistan region, where Gandhi was born, now seems to worship the nuclear bomb. The sadness comes from the fact that blood, a lot of it innocent blood, continues to be spilled in many parts of the world close to our hearts, including but not only in India, Pakistan and Kashmir. The concern comes from what seems to be a growing acceptance, in this the twenty-first century, of the view that might may after all be more right than anything else, and a related view that what the world most needs for its security is to sight forces of evil and take them out.Let me amplify the India-related irony. Gandhi still appears on India’s stamps, coins, and currency notes. His statues may be seen at the entrance to our Parliament and elsewhere in the country; and his picture may hang behind our Prime Minister when he broadcasts to the nation. And many still call him the father of the nation. But Gujarat, the state where Gandhi was born and where he spent many years, witnessed inconceivable barbarity in the first half of this year, and again, very recently, on September 23. The subcontinent’s faith in its atom bombs turns at times into ominous excitement, and popular films, advertised through posters from where a gun or a dagger invariably pokes at the viewer, show heroes exploding their way out of danger and into victory against evil neighbors.
A man who must now be called a well-known Gujarati, Dr. Praveen Togadia of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or the World Hindu Assembly, which describes itself as a religious and cultural body, has called, after the horrible attack on the temple, for Pakistan to be cut into forty pieces.
As for the sadness, I need only refer you to any news summary of any day. For our sanity, most of us exit quickly from an item that causes pain; but for our humanity we need, from time to time, to face the daily diet of the cruel and premature extinction of life on every continent and especially in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
At the end of the last century, someone that I am sure all of us respect, admire and have a warm feeling for, the Dalai Lama, said at a conference I attended that while the 20th century had been one of violence, he hoped the 21st century would be one of dialogue. He did not predict that the 21st century would be one of peace – the astute Dalai Lama, his feet planted on the ground, is no utopian.
But he did express the hope that this new century would give due place to dialogue. Yet we know that on September 11 the rage of some in the Middle East was not expressed in conversation. It was uttered in letters of fire as tall as the World Trade Center. And we know too that one reply to that fiery message has been the bombing of Afghanistan, though acknowledgement must be made of the effort, whether or not successful, to limit the bombing to military targets. And acknowledgment should also be made of the commitment, as of now only half-heartedly pursued, to reconstruct Afghanistan.
As for concern, I have a few points. For one thing, following September 11, one section of humanity, the Muslims, have received more than their fair share of unfriendly attention. I will return to this question but those like me who are troubled by this undue attention have to assign original responsibility for it to the attackers of 9/11, whose Islamic and Arab identity was proclaimed by the attackers themselves. Since the attack, a large number of non-Muslims and Muslims have tried hard, and often with success, to highlight the difference between Islam and terrorism, and between Arab values and terrorism. But there have also been those, again non-Muslims and Muslims, who have sought, whether or not knowingly, to blur the distinction.
I think all of us have to ask whether or not we are ready to fight on our own turf, in our own countries, in our own cultures. And here Gandhi is quite an example. This loyal Hindu, born into an atmosphere of extreme conservatism, was not blind to extremism or narrowness in cultures other than his own, in, for example, British or Muslim cultures, but he began by fighting what he felt was inadequate or unjust in his own world. To realize the nature of his conservative upbringing, let me relate two incidents.
The first refers to Gandhi when he was about twelve and was recalled by Gandhi in 1921, when it was charged that Christian influences lay behind his attack on the untouchability that India practiced in his time and has not yet eradicated. Said Gandhi:
I regard untouchability as the greatest blot on Hinduism. It is wrong to think, as some people do, that I have taken my view from my study of Christian literature. These views date as far back as the time when I was neither enamored of, nor acquainted with, the Bible or its followers.
I was hardly yet twelve when this idea had dawned on me. A scavenger named Uka, an untouchable, used to attend to our house for cleaning latrines. Often I would ask my mother why I was forbidden to touch him. If I accidentally touched Uka I was asked to perform the ablutions, and though I naturally obeyed, it was not without smilingly protesting.
I was a very dutiful and obedient child and so far as it was consistent with respect for parents I often had a tusssle with them on this matter. I told my mother that she was entirely wrong in considering physical contact with Uka as sinful.
But here is the punch line:
While at school I would often happen to touch the ‘untouchables’ and as I never would conceal the fact from my parents, my mother would tell me that the shortest cut to purification after the unholy touch was to cancel the touch by touching any Muslim passing by.
So the boy Mohan was asked by his devout mother to cancel one sin by contracting another sin, one negative by another negative. And when, a few years later, he became keen to go to England to study, his mother and all senior relatives (his father was dead by now) tried their best to stop him. An important uncle said to him:
I am not sure whether it is possible for one to stay in England without prejudice to one’s own religion…. When I meet these big barristers (returning to India after studying in England), I see no difference between their life and that of Europeans. They know no scruples regarding food. Cigars are never pout of their mouths. They dress as shamelessly as Englishmen… I am shortly going on a pilgrimage and have not many years to live. At the threshold of death, how dare I give you permission to go to England, to cross the seas? (Auotbiography)
But Mohandas did go to England. Raised in such a background of conservatism and complacent prejudice, he would become the strongest foe of untouchability and the strongest champion of Hindu-Muslim friendship, of equal rights for all, and of minority Muslim rights in an independent India.
Most here are aware of Gandhi’s battles, not wholly successful, to get the Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent to find a relationship of trust and partnership. One result of that battle was the Constitution of India, framed by his lieutenants and followers, which assured equal rights to all, irrespective of religion, caste or gender, in independent India. Whether or not fully or consistently reflected on the ground, this Constitution is what any citizen in India can invoke.Most here are also aware that Gandhi failed in one of his greatest goals, which was to preserve the subcontinent’s unity. India was divided, thanks to extremism among Indians of all kinds, Hindus and Muslims both, and thanks also to British unwillingness to let its Indian adversaries inherit a united India. Not only was India divided, Partition was accompanied by terrible violence. Gandhi’s voice, pleading for magnanimity, forgiveness, wisdom, sanity, true courage, was not heeded.
His prescriptions were undoubtedly hard. In December 1947, some months before he was killed, Gandhi was told of a couplet written in Urdu by a Muslim poet in India who called for a new Mahmud of Ghazni, or Ghaznavi as he was called, to avenge attacks on Muslims. For those who do not know, Ghaznavi had descended several times from Central Asia into India in the 11th century, collecting treasure and raiding and desecrating Hindu temples. Gandhi’s response, expressed at his prayer meeting discourse and communicated to everyone through All India Radio, which, following independence, was managed by his followers, was this:
It is painful to think that such a thing has been said. But I cannot return evil for evil. Hindus must not remember the wrong that Ghaznavi did. Muslims must realize and admit the wrongs perpetrated under Islamic rule.
You can decide which was harder, for Hindus not to remember Muslim wrongs of the past, or for Muslims to acknowledge them.
Soon after this remark, Gandhi, as all know, was killed by a group of Hindus who thought him too friendly and forgiving towards the Muslims. On January 30, 1948 he was killed. The plan was to kill him ten days earlier. That incident, and Gandhi’s comment on it, is I think of some relevance to our subject this evening.
Seven men in a conspiracy to kill Gandhi went to his prayer meeting on January 20, 1948. One threw a grenade and there was an explosion. The plan was for the others to shoot into Gandhi at this point, but it misfired. The man who threw the grenade was captured, and the others slipped away.
Gandhi, who was speaking when the explosion occurred, continued to speak as if nothing had happened. He was praised for his poise. At this prayer meeting the next day, January 21, he said:
Let me first deal with the bomb incident of yesterday. People have been sending me wires congratulating me and praising me. In fact I deserve no congratulations. I displayed no bravery. I thought it was part of army practice somewhere. I only came to know later that it was a bomb and that it might have killed me if God had not willed it that I should live.
You should not have any kind of hate against the person who was responsible for this. He had taken it for granted that I was an enemy of Hinduism. Is it not said in Chapter 4 of the Gita that whenever the wicked become too powerful and harm dharma, God sends someone to destroy them?
The many who exploded the bomb obviously thinks that he has been sent by God to destroy me.
But if we do not like a man, does it men that he is wicked? If then someone kills me, taking me to a wicked man, will he not have to answer before God? When he says he is doing the bidding of God, he is only making God an accomplice in a wicked deed. Those who are behind him or whose tool he is should know that this sort of thing will not save Hinduism.
If Hinduism has to be saved, it will be saved through such work as I am doing. I have been imbibing Hindu dharma right from my childhood. My nurse taught me to invoke Rama whenever I had any fears. Having passed all the tests, I am as staunch a Hindu today as intuitively I was at the age of five or six. Do you want to annihilate Hind dharma by killing a devout Hindu like me?
Some Sikhs came and asked me if I suspected that a Sikh was implicated. I know he was not a Sikh. But what even if he was? What does it matter if he was a Hindu or a Muslim? May God bless him with good sense.
Asked to speak on Gandhi last Sunday in Urbana, two professors, one of history and the other of social work, quite naturally felt like recalling their fathers and grandfathers. Because of when he lived, Gandhi reminds us of our forebears, of those who loved us and inspired us.
One person I am reminded of this evening, a person who stands in history with Gandhi, is Abdul Ghaffar Khan, 1890-1988, the leader of the people on the frontier between the subcontinent and Afghanistan, who like Gandhi was committed to nonviolence, reconciliation and forgiveness despite the suffering his struggle invited, and is a role model for our times.
I find much that is similar in the attitudes of Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln. Three weeks ago, on September 11 this year, the University of Illinois gave me the privilege, and difficult task, of speaking at its 9/1 commemoration. Since Lincoln was from Illinois, I took the liberty, on that solemn occasion, of recalling to the audience words from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. Referring to the two sides of the civil war, Lincoln had said:
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.
I added: "In the final sentence of the Second Inaugural, Lincoln spoke of the need for healing. 'To bind up the nation's wounds' was his phrase. And in the very last words of that address he spoke of the need 'to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.'
"In some of our world’s recent confrontations (I went on), both sides have again prayed to the same God, each invoking His aid against the other; and men have dared to ask a just God's assistance in wreaking destruction. And if this return of 9/11 sends our thoughts also to the Middle East, perhaps we should have the courage, with Lincoln, to pray for a just and lasting peace there, with the involvement, perhaps, of ourselves and all nations."
Now we know that the USA is home to a range of perspectives. In that range, we can, if we want, compare Lincoln’s focus, as the civil war was coming to an end, on both sides reading the same Bible and praying to the same God, with the focus, often articulated today, on the battle between good and evil, and on the question put to the world, ‘Are you with us or against us?’
The comparison is not, of course, a simple contrast. We should not forget that Lincoln, who spoke of both sides praying to the same God, did lead a military war against one side. Yet the two perspectives are instructive, and they throw up an interesting and difficult philosophical question: should human beings, all of whom fall short of their own standards, brand others as evil? Are there occasions when they can or should do so? What about Hitler? Or Pol Pot? If someone has used chemical and biological weapons against his own people, is he not evil?
I think we should remember that Hitler started by insinuating and then asserting that the Jews were in the enemy category, worthy of elimination. And Pol Pot said the same about people he called class enemies.
One problem with the good-and-evil rhetoric is that it is almost impossible to confine it to one seemingly evil force, or to one confrontation, or to one part of the world. Can India, should Indians, call Pakistanis evil -- after all there has been terrorist violence emanating from the Pakistani side of the border? Should Pakistanis call Indians evil – after all India did support the creation of Bangladesh and its secession from Pakistan?
Should Hutus and Tutsis call each other evil? What about Sinhalese and Tamils? It seems to me that in many if not most cases it is better to stay with Lincoln and remember that both sides are vulnerable, and praying, and flawed, and in need of wisdom. In our defective world the use of force cannot be ruled out, but that use would be more effective in the long run, and even perhaps in the short run, if accompanied by an awareness of our common and imperfect humanity.
Another fallout of 9/11 and of the reaction to 9/11, already alluded to, has been the singling out of Islam as a particularly defective religion. The argument, or the progression in thought, is roughly like this: Saddam is evil, bin Laden is evil; they are Muslims; Islam seems flawed; all Islamic societies appear to be failed and dangerous societies. Therefore Muslims may be more prone to, or likely to be, evil.
I will not take this distinguished gathering through an exercise in logic to show the fallacy and the danger in this reasoning. I will merely ask all of us to recall Rwanda 1994, Cambodia in the 1970s, Sri Lanka and Nepal in recent years, and the two World Wars of the last century, and to discover the Islamic component in the misery of all these bloodlettings.
After hearing a few times the argument about the uniquely flawed nature of Islam, I have sometimes asked myself, when looking at a Muslim bent in prayer, or when looking, in a picture, at many Muslims kneeling in prayer, whether I could believe that these prayers that I was observing could not be answered, since they came from flawed Muslims. I could not, and do not, believe that. And I remain unconvinced that almost all modern violence and terrorism, and especially that in which Muslims seem to be involved, can be traced back to some Koranic verses removed from their context.
But let us not overlook the loud and pervasive rhetoric in some parts of the world regarding the wickedness of the USA. Driven by blindness, rage, or whatever, such an outlook only multiplies the problems of the lands that foster it, and alienates those lands from a country that contains immense resources for freedom and justice.
Also causing concern is the doctrine of pre-emption, which is something that almost every country, or any organized and armed group, can invoke to justify an attack on a weaker entity in the neighborhood. Despite horrific blows, the world needs to find responses that make the world safer and stabler. In searching for such responses, Gandhi, Lincoln and Lester Pearson may offer us some clues.
We should ask if we are doing enough to search for the best responses. It is my longing that India, which in recent years has made impressive economic strides, will show greater activity in such a search. The world seems to need clear and independent voices on the world stage, voices that, no matter how imperfectly, seek a combination of justice, freedom, and peace. Obviously, I hope that Canada and India can provide these voices.
It has been not only sad but painful to find so much blame and recrimination from both sides in the India-Pakistan discourse, and to see the dispute over beautiful Kashmir continuing as a source of danger for the South Asian region and beyond. Along with some patient friends, I have tried for years now to address that dispute. I wish I had progress to report. But I am not about to report an abandonment of the effort. I seek the prayers and good wishes of all men and women of goodwill, and I covet some fresh and inspired ideas. We ignore the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi if we do not apply our minds and hearts to reconciliation between India and Pakistan and to normality and peace for the long-suffering people, of different religions and backgrounds, in Jammu and Kashmir.
Let me conclude by paying my respects to Canada, which offers, in relation to the USA, a different and sometimes dissenting perspective, which, as I see it, is helpful both to the USA and the world. That the best should come out of North America, out of Canada, Mexico, and the USA, is the desire of the whole world. Over the decades I have had some experience of the gifted minds and large hearts of the people of Canada, of Canadians of a variety of backgrounds, including First Nation Canadians, who have given and done much for the world. May God always protect and bless them.
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