I always have a few books on the go at any one time. This morning, I have been reading Louis Fischer's "Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World" (Signet Classics, 2010, ISBN 978-1-101-66590-9; Amazon), which appears to me to be a shorter (and digital) version of Fischer's "Life of Mahatma Gandhi" (HarperCollins Publishers, 2004, ISBN-13 978-0-006-38887-6, Amazon), which I still have on my shelves (my version was published in the 70s).
Now, Gandhi was flawed - and admits to those flaws that he considered significant in his autobiography. Those admissions are, in themselves, indication of Gandhi's blind spots - especially around women and sex. For more on that, see:
- "How would Gandhi’s celibacy tests with naked women be seen today?" (Guardian);
- "Gandhi Was a Racist Who Forced Young Girls to Sleep in Bed with Him" (Vice);
- "Gandhi Is Deeply Revered, But His Attitudes On Race And Sex Are Under Scrutiny" (NPR);
- "Women suffer from Gandhi's legacy" (Guardian); and
- "Gandhi wanted women to 'resist' sex for pleasure" (BBC).
The famous film about Gandhi ignores this this, as do most biographies (one - written by a male - glosses over it).
Fischer's book also raises some criticisms that Gandhi did not appear to consider.
However, there is also no question that Gandhi played a key role in India achieving both independence and a changed attitude towards herself as a nation. Because of Gandhi's equal emphasis on non-violent non-cooperation and constructive or practical matters (which addressed issues such as nutrition, education, hygiene, undoing the caste structure, and local economic revival to fight poverty - and opposition to purdah [female exclusion], child marriage, dowry and sati [killing of widows]), India was able to liberate her heart, mind and soul as well as physically removing the British.
For more on Gandhi's constructive programme (which I consider has parallels with the consciousness raising of the 70s and the programmes in the old Mechanics Institutes) see here, here, here, here, and here.
OK, so having set the scene about this flawed leader and his capacity for change, I would like to include a few quotation from Fischer's book for your consideration, Dear Reader.
The actions of Gandhi were often shaped by a fear that if he did not lead the people, ugly passions would. His strategy on such occasions was to advance toward the popular goal but insist on his own methods.
Rabindranath Tagore had reprovingly warned him that the fire that consumed foreign clothing might also inflame minds, and Gandhi was afraid.
“Suppose,” he asked, “the nonviolent disobedience of Bardoli was permitted by God to succeed and the government had abdicated in favor of the victors of Bardoli, who would control the unruly elements that must be expected to perpetrate inhumanity upon due provocation?”
But Gandhi would not purchase independence at the price of national blood-drenching; a free India born in murder would bear the mark on her forehead for decades. He sacrificed the end, doubtful in any case at that time, because bad means would poison it.
He remained, he declared in Young India on April 10, 1924, “a strong disbeliever in this government.” But most people were incapable of the sacrifices noncooperation demanded, and the Mahatma saw that the flagging popular temper could not sustain his anti-government boycott. He accordingly withdrew from politics in the usual sense and for the next few years devoted himself to politics in his sense, which was the ennoblement of the people.
He put the cure in a few words: Hindu-Moslem amity was possible, he said, “because it is so natural, so necessary for both and because I believe in human nature.” That sentence contains most of Gandhi. Since the goal is good and man is good, he was saying, the goal can be achieved"
(When Fischer was interviewing Jinnah) “I am a realist,” he replied, “I deal with what is.” I called his attention to the mess which religious and nationalistic divisions had made of Europe. “I must deal with the divisive characteristics which exist,” he insisted. Gandhi too was a realist—“I am a practical realist,” he proclaimed—but his was the realism which combats evil instead of using it. Not being a daydreamer, he knew that though man is good the goodness has to be evoked; otherwise somebody would exploit the bad.
To communicate, the West talks or moves. The East contemplates, sits, suffers. Gandhi availed himself of Western and Eastern methods. When words failed, he fasted.
“I fasted,” Gandhi once said, “to reform those who loved me,” and he added, “You cannot fast against a tyrant,” for the tyrant is incapable of love, therefore inaccessible to a weapon of love like fasting. Gandhi never fasted to wring advantages from the British government. His fasts were directed to his own people.
My key points from those quotes, for the consideration of current leaders, are:
- the means shape the ends, and leaders have a duty of care for the means used. This obliges one to take the longer term view, and, if the short term outcome will harm the ultimate end, desist;
- consider the state of being of those one is leading as much as the aims one is trying to achieve;
- communication has many forms: use that which is most appropriate (not necessarily "most effective", given the need to consider means and ends);
- pragmatism has many forms: some are good, some neutral, and some harmful. Use the good - that which fights evil (on that, see here);
- admit to mistakes, and learn from them.
Others will, of course, see other lessons, quite likely of equal or greater validity 😊
