Ahimsa, Bhakti and Saintliness in Politics:

Mahatma Gandhi’s continuation of a uniquely Indian tradition

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Sixty years after his assassination by a Hindu fanatic, Mohandas

Karamchand Gandhi’s importance to South Asian civilization has not
diminished. Even those who ridicule some of his ideas are compelled to
explain his charisma and his ability to communicate with the masses in the
sub-continent through a mixture of words and deeds, gestures and stances,
and even through his sartorial simplicity and minimalism. Winston Churchill
sneered at him and called him a half-naked fakir. Rabindranath Tagore used
the epithet ‘Mahatma’ to describe him. ‘Mahatma’ means a ‘Great Soul’ or
the ‘Great Spirit.’

Both descriptions are right. Gandhi was a fakir --- a half-naked mendicant
whose needs were simple and basic. His figure represented a shunning of
worldliness and an indifference to wealth. For centuries, individuals who
renounce worldly life and material concerns in search of spiritual truth have
been revered by Indians. Tagore called him ‘The Great Spirit’ perhaps
because he saw in Gandhi the meekness of his millions of followers
transformed into the might of a rich and deep civilization standing up to face
colonizers from a different culture. He was the collective spirit of an India
aroused and awakened in the 20th century world.

What made Gandhi such a charismatic leader holding sway over millions of
Indians, most of them poor and illiterate people from the hundreds of
thousands of villages that comprise rural India? We know from the existing
audio recordings of his speeches that he spoke in a feeble monotone with
hardly any flourishes. He spoke mostly in basic Hindustani in a land divided
by many languages belonging to different language groups. He travelled
constantly, often on foot or by rail, with a small band of followers. He
addressed his audiences in prayer meetings that started or ended with multi-
lingual prayer singing. He was scantily dressed in a hand-spun cotton
loincloth and a loose piece of cloth covering his chest and thrown over his
shoulders.

Gandhi’s style of dress sharply contrasted with that of other contemporary

Indian leaders’. Recall the princely North Indian dress of Nehru, or the
Western formal attire of Jinnah and Ambedkar, and Gandhi’s sartorial style
stands out as the closest to the common Indian man. In his refusal to visibly
rise above the people he led Gandhi was making a profound statement about
his style of leadership itself.

Though he was a householder with a wife and children, he had taken pains to
raise those relationships to another level by renunciation. He preached and
practised celibacy. He preached and practised simplicity and self-reliance in
daily life. He cleaned toilets, swept floors, washed his own clothes, at times
cooked for himself and others, and created an example of what he
considered an authentic lifestyle or truthful living for his followers.

It was his practice of life, in full public view, that authenticated Gandhi the
politician. People felt he would never cheat them. People also felt that he
would not hurt even his opponent. They were convinced that Gandhi’s
character was expressed in his doctrine of non-violence. There are some
conspicuous exceptions, historically recorded and ever since debated, such
as the confrontation between Ambedkar and Gandhi when Gandhi’s fast-
unto-death shook Ambedkar and made him relent and reluctantly agree to
the Yerwada pact. Many of his critics have blamed Gandhi for emotional
blackmail whenever he offered satyagraha or insistence on truth. Gandhi’s
concept of ‘truth’ has itself been questioned. However, the Indian public saw
in Gandhi a saintly being and a moral authority above the dirty world of
politics.

Gandhi’s own character and personality are derived from a long Hindu
tradition---the protestant Bhakti movement against oppressive Brahmanical
Hinduism that marginalises women and the variously ‘polluted’ and
‘polluting’ castes. Though there seem to be four castes and many jati
divisions among each caste, the segregation between the Brahmins and the
rest is inflexible and absolute. Bhakti---the way of realizing a personal God
through devotion----is an alternative to people denied access to the sacred
texts in Sanskrit and to the right to perform religious rites without the
priestly mediation of Brahmins. Thus Bhakti sabotages the hierarchical
structure of religious politics with the Brahmanical elite at its top and the
untouchables at its bottom.

Gandhi adopted as his credo a song created by Narsi Mehta---a 15th century
devotee of Krishna and therefore of Vishnu whose avatar Krishna is
supposed to have been. The Gujarati song ‘Vaishnava jana to tene kahiye jo
peed parayi jaane re’ in my translation or, rather paraphrase, reads:
A Vaishnava is he who feels the other’s pain
Remaining oblivious of the good he does to the other, taking no pride in his
deed
He shuns the world whether it praises or damns him for what he is
He is not lured by women nor attracted by wealth, praise such a man who is
the jewel of his family,
He is the same to everyone, devoid of desire, treats the wives of others as his
mothers,
He never speaks falsehood, nor casts a covetous eye on another man’s
wealth,
He is not enslaved by passion or bonded to any possessions, and the spirit of
renunciation is his supreme ruler,
His heart is attuned to the Lord, whom he yearns to meet, his body is really
nothing but a pilgrim’s cover,
He is not greedy, nor wicked, nor driven by desire or fury,
Says Narsi, such a one and his entire family will be freed from the wheel of
re-birth.

Narsi Mehta’s song is just one among the jewels of Bhakti poetry written
from the South to the North and from the West to the East of the Indian sub-
continent signalling waves of humanism and spiritual liberation in a long-
oppressed society. Bhakti encompasses teachings from Hindu, Buddhist,
Christian, and Islamic sources and lays the foundation of a syncretic,
inclusive culture that uniquely defines South Asia.

Gandhi intuitively understood the spirit of Bhakti and identified with it.
Arousing the conscience of a devotee and raising the level of his awareness
of life was the crux of the agenda of Indian saints. Most of them, as Gandhi
himself was, were householders who raised families before answering the
call of a higher human conscience that they identified with their personal
deity.

Bhakti is religion devoid of theological sophistry and scriptural

hermeneutics. It does away with rituals that ordinary people do not
understand. It advises people to lead a simple and good life, be sensitive not
only to the human but also to every other form of life, to shun all forms of
aggressive behaviour, to share and to care for one another in the spirit of true
community.
Devotees come together after a hard day’s work to sing bhajans or to listen
to a keertan discourse. Gandhi’s evening prayer meetings were modelled on
this. He took care to quote from the Q’urraan or the Bible to his audiences.
He took pains not to leave anybody out on the basis of religion or caste. Ever
since his return from South Africa and till his assassination, Gandhi’s life
was one continuous pilgrimage. His image as a saint and a pilgrim will
outlive his legend as a political leader. He was perceived as a political leader
only by the Western-educated upper classes and by outsiders unfamiliar with
the Bhakti movement.

Gandhi’s concept of Svaraj, about which volumes have been written, is

impossible to translate into English in one word. The Sanskrit noun swa
refers to the ‘self’ or ‘own’ ( for which the other, more metaphysical term is
atman). Raj means ‘rule’, ‘regime’, or ‘domain’.

In Gandhi’s usage, svaraj variously meant ‘self-rule’, ‘autonomy’, ‘domain

of the self’, or ‘own regime’. ‘Governing the self’ or ‘being ruled by one’s
conscience’ is a spiritual and an ethical idea. ‘Ruling one’s own domain’ or
swadesh is a political idea. The fusion of the idea of spiritual selfhood with
political nationhood best describes Gandhi’s peculiar vocabulary and its
ramifications.

Gandhian economics laid stress on the manufacture and consumption of

svadeshi goods to become independent of imports and their exploitative
nature. Sva---the ‘self’---was the cornerstone of Gandhi’s thought, belief,
and action. His idea of truth was a return or a recourse to one’s self as a
part of a larger cosmic self or ultimate being. This is the thread that
connects Hindu philosophy with Bhakti, which is devotion to praxis---the
responsibility to lead an authentic life based on one’s innate goodness that is
a part of universal goodness.

Gandhi and one of his main companions Vinoba Bhave have interpreted The
Lord’s Song or Bhagawadgita from the perspective of Karma-yoga or doing
one’s duty without expecting any benefit. This is just how Narsi Mehta
defines the role of a Vaishnava in his song quoted earlier.

The goal of a devotee is to personally experience God and s/he achieves this
by sacrificing one’s personal ego to realize ‘the greater self’. The saints,
however, saw in the service of humanity----particularly the most exploited
and humiliated people---a way to realize God. Gandhi was a Bhakta and a
Saint precisely in this sense; and his ordinary contemporaries perceived him
as such.

I am a Marathi speaker and I live in Maharashtra that has a rich tradition of

saints who also composed and sang songs that are now considered the
foundation of Marathi literature. The most famous of Maharashtra’s poet-
saints---or Bhakta poets---is Tukaram. Tukaram, like Gandhi, was a Vaishya
or trader because of his family profession; and he was also a Kunbi or a
farmer. Today, he would be included among the Bahujansamaj Marathas;
some would put him in the O.B.C. or other backward castes category.
However, in 17th century Maharashtra, the Brahmins considered Tukaram a
Shudra, and he used that stigma to get even with them through his poetic
genius.

Although he started composing songs rather late in his life, he achieved

phenomenal popularity as a poet and a performer of kirtans wherever
Marathi was spoken. Tukaram’s poetry, protestant in spirit, critical of
religious bigotry, Brahmanical hypocrisy, and ritualized religion in which the
priestly class held all the strings in society had been irritating the Brahmin
ordthodoxy. His apotheosis and stature as a saint infuriated them so much
that they officially pronounced his works as blasphemous and ordered his
entire collection of poetry to be sunk in the river Indrayani at Dehu, where
he lived.

According to oral ( and later written) tradition, Tukaram’s manuscripts were

sunk in the river and lay there for thirteen days during which period
Tukaram performed a satyagraha appealing to his deity Pandurang for a
restoration of all his life’s work. Tukaram went on a fast-unto-death, not
even drinking a drop of water. After thirteen days, by a miracle, his
manuscripts came up undamaged. On the other hand, Tukaram’s chief
Brahmin detractor and tormentor---Rameshwarbhatt Wagholikar---suffered
from an inexplicable inflammation all over his body until he fell prostrate in
front of Tukaram and asked for his forgiveness.

Tukaram’s plea to God was that his poetry was inspired by God, addressed
to God, and was about God. Its ‘truth’ depended on the truth of God’s
existence and His acceptance of his devotee’s faith. Whether we believe in
the miracle or not, we must understand that the public perception of
Tukaram’s righteousness and vindication is a part of the Bhakti tradition and
its rich folklore.
Its remarkable resemblance to Gandhian methods of persuasion need not be
stressed any further. The few occasions on which Gandhi went on a fast unto
death, the attention of the entire nation was focussed on his act of
satyagraha putting his own life at stake for the sake of principles. The act
was addressed to both his followers and his antagonists.

Tukaram was one of Gandhi’s favourite poet-saints. While in the Yerwada

prison, Gandhi translated sixteen of Tukaram’s abhangs into English and he
later persuaded his followers to translate selected works of Tukaram into
Gujarati and Hindustani. Gandhi was a Vaishnava--- a worshipper of Vishnu
and his avatars Rama and Krishna--- and so was Tukaram. Assuming that
Gandhi had read at least some of the most quoted of Tukaram’s poems, I
would like to quote in my own translation three of these as they define the
spirit of a Vaishnava saint and his engagement with society:

1.
“He who identifies
With the battered and the beaten
Mark him as a saint
For God is with him

The good man’s mind

Is soft outside
And soft inside
Say it’s like butter

He holds
Every forsaken man
Close to his heart
He treats
A slave
As his own son

Says Tuka
I won’t be tired
To repeat again
Such a man
Is God
In person.”
2.
“We slaves of Vishnu
Are softer than wax
We are hard enough
To shatter a thunderbolt

Dead yet alive

Asleep but aware
Ask for anything
We shall give it

We strip ourselves naked

To clothe the needy
We strike down the wicked
Without batting an eyelid

We are more loving

Than natural parents
We are deadlier
Than mortal enemies

We are sweeter than the tonic

Of immortality
And more bitter
Than the deadliest poison

Says Tuka
Ours is a wholesome flavour
As good as anyone
That wishes to savour”

3.
“We battle all day
We battle all night
We battle with the world
and with our own mind

We remain alert
For a sudden assault
We have to make
A constant stand

Says Tuka
The power of Your name
Gives us the strength
To thwart them all”

Other than his classic early autobiography in Gujarati Mara Satyana

Prayogo ( My Experiments with Truth) Gandhi always came out in the
open with facts of his personal life and his constant effort to cleanse
himself, to not only keep his conscience clear but also lead a transparent
life. Many of his experiments such as celibacy were ridiculed or analysed
using modern psychoanalytic tools.

Erik Erikson (1969) and later Wolfenstein used post-Freudian methods

to analyse and explain what Gandhi was about in theory and practice.
Wolfenstein, contrasting Gandhi with Lenin and Trotsky as
revolutionaries, observed that while the two Russian revolutionaries
emulated strong, masculine father-figures, Gandhi emulated the
persuasive methods of a seemingly weak mother-figure.

Some of his Indian detractors too described Gandhi’s satyagraha as

‘emotional blackmail’. Militant non-violent protest, though, is a
leitmotif in the lives of Indian saints who gave up the idea of ‘self-
realization’ through ‘sannyasa’ and turned instead to social
transformation by arousing human conscience. A more human ordering
of human society was the objective of saints. They practised a politics of
ahimsa or opposition to the prevailing oppressive and violent social
order by empowering the weak and by enlightening the ignorant and
the confused.

The brilliant Indian philosopher Ramchandra Gandhi (incidentally a

grandson of the Mahatma) has compared the advaitin mystic Ramana
Maharshi with Gandhi in his monograph Moksha and Martyrdom. He
has further clarified the Gandhian concept of Svaraj in his outstanding
discourse on art Svaraj: A Journey with Tyeb Mehta’s ‘Shantiniketan
Triptych.’

Moral dissent, passive resistance, civil disobedience and conscientious

objection were perhaps concepts Gandhi had borrowed from his
Western mentors. However, the scale on which he used them to oppose
British colonialism and the measure in which he succeeded in
transforming meek subject people into citizens demanding their rights is
simply mind-boggling. That he found a native idiom to propagate his
ideas is worth stressing because that is what brought him millions of
followers including women and the oppressed castes who lacked
political weapons and social recognition as citizens before Gandhi gave
them a voice.

Gandhi’s mission was more comprehensively social than just political.

He urged his followers to find strength within themselves-----the roots of
Svaraj (self-rule) in their mind’s refusal to suffer injustice. Gandhi’s
‘truth’ was synonymous with ‘justice’ which he believed was divine in its
origin and social in its human implications.

Gandhi’s comprehensive agenda comprised of realizing the self through

social action. He found the vocabulary for this neither in the writings of
Ruskin and Thoreau nor in the practices of Tolstoy. He found it in his
own Indian tradition. His principle of ahimsa is derived from the
teachings of the Buddha and Mahavir still practised by Buddhists and
Jains. His militancy, however, can be traced to saints such as Tukaram.
It comes close to the spiritual jihad of which the Prophet Muhammad
spoke: a constant internal struggle before one’s small ego is eventually
sacrificed to the universal spirit of Allah. And, of course, Gandhi’s spirit
is equally close to the teachings of Jesus.

This is exactly the stance of Indian saints who opposed caste hierarchy
and pleaded for universal spiritual equality and brotherhood. These
paradigms are rooted in Indian history and culture and they help us to
understand Gandhi in his local context though they have a universal
relevance as well.

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(text of a lecture delivered on July 28, 2008 to the participants of

Fulbright-Hays Group Studies Abroad at the Kasturba Samadhi Hall,
Aga Khan Palace Pune. Copyright 2008, Dilip Chitre).