Certainly, Gandhi’s idea of non-violence was more complicated than many appreciate. Faisal Devji’s work, The Impossible Indian, though I found impenetrable in some places, has particularly arresting insights on this. As he shows, Gandhi’s idea of non-violence and suffering was not based on a liberal human rights discourse. It was not based on an objection to violence rooted in humanitarianism. For Gandhi, preservation of life was not the end in itself. Suffering and death were in fact human duties and not something to be avoided. In November 1947 he wrote,
“Man does not live but to escape death. If he does so, he is advised not to do so. He is advised to learn to love death as well as life, if not more so. A hard saying, harder to act up to, one may say. Every worthy act is difficult. Ascent is always difficult. Descent is easy and often slippery. Life becomes liveable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy. To conquer life’s temptations, summon death to your aid. In order to postpone death a coward surrenders honor, wife, daughter and all. A courageous man prefers death to the surrender of self-respect”
Though he held non-violence to be the ultimate virtue, he felt violence was still preferable to cowardice. In 1924 he wrote, “between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. I can no more preach non-violence to a coward than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes.”
Violence and non-violence were also entangled. For Gandhi, violence led to suffering and it was suffering, in a courageous manner, that held the key to engendering change in other humans, to converting people to a cause. Violence therefore was not to simply be ended or avoided.
It was also why he was not really interested in what he perceived as suffering of ‘victims’.
Rather he wanted individuals that had been wronged to be active agents whose suffering could potentially transform their tormentors. It is only in this context, that we can understand his notorious speech in October 1920, when he said: “The men and women who died in Jallianwala Bagh were not martyrs or heroes. Had they been heroes, when General Dyer came on the scene in all his pride, they would have fought with swords or sticks or would have stood up before him and faced death.”
His disdain for ‘life as an absolute value’, for those who suffered - in his mind - as mere victims, provides a contrast to the softer image of him peddled by many sections of the media. As Faisal Devji noted, he could be very hard-hearted:
“Had they not been so keen to see him as a sentimental and idealistic figure, the Mahatma’s critics would have noticed that he was in some sense as hard-hearted as Hitler where human suffering was concerned. For as long as it was voluntarily undergone, this suffering could only receive Gandhi’s approbation as a form of heroism, while those who suffered only as victims enjoyed no moral standing in his eyes.”
