GANDHI'S RELIGIOUS THOUGHT LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION General Editor: John Hick formerly H. G. Wood Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham This series ofbooks explores contemporary religious understandings of man and the universe. The books contribute to various aspects of the continuing dialogues between religion and philosophy, between scepticism and faith, and between the different religions and ideologies. The authors represent a correspondingly wide range of viewpoints. Some of the books in the series are written for the general educated public and others for a more specialised philosophical or theological readership. Already published William H. Austin THE RELEVANCE OF NATURAL SCIENCE TO THEOLOGY Paul Badham CHRISTIAN BELIEFS ABOUT LIFE AFTER DEATH Paul and Linda Badham IMMORTALITY OR EXTINCTION? Patrick Burke THE FRAGILE UNIVERSE Margaret Chatterjee 'S RELIGIOUS THOUGHT William Lane Craig THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FROM PLATO TO LEIBNIZ Stephen T. Davis LOGIC AND THE NATURE OF GOD Lynn A. de Silva THE PROBLEM OF THE SELF IN BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY Padmasiri de Silva AN INTRODUCTION TO BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY Ramchandra Gandhi THE AVAILABILITY OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS J. C. A. Gaskin HUME'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION H. A. Hodges GOD BEYOND KNOWLEDGE Hywel D. Lewis PERSONS AND LIFE AFTER DEATH Eric Lott VEDANTIC APPROACHES TO GOD Geddes MacGregor REINCARNATION AS A CHRISTIAN HOPE Hugo A. Meynell AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERNARD LONERGAN F. C. T. Moore THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF MORALITY Dennis Nineham THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE BIBLE Bernard M. G. Reardon HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION John J. Shepherd EXPERIENCE, INFERENCE AND GOD Patrick Sherry RELIGION, TRUTH AND LANGUAGE GAMES SPIRIT, SAINTS AND IMMORTALITY Wilfred Cantwell Smith TOWARDS A WORLD THEOLOGY Shivesh Chandra Thakur RELIGION AND RATIONAL CHOICE Robert Young FREEDOM, RESPONSIBILITY AND GOD Further titles in preparation GANDHI'S RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

Margaret Chatterjee

Foreword by John Hick © Margaret Chatterjee 1983 So ftc over reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1983

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission

First published 1¢3 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world

ISBN 978-1-349-05367-4 ISBN 978-1-349-05365-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05365-0 'Personally, I think the world as a whole will never have, and need not have, a single religion.' The Collected Works qf , vol. xn Publications Division, Government of , Delhi, 30 May 1913, p. 94

'True religion ... is faith in God, and living in the presence ofGod, it means faith in a future life, in truth and .' roung India, 30 Aug. 1928, p. 291

' ... if we are imperfect ourselves, religion as conceived by us must also be imperfect. ... Religion of our conception, being thus imperfect, is always subject to a process of evolution and re• interpretation'. reravda Mandir, Navajivan Press, Ahmedabad, 1930, chs X & XI

' . . . I can clearly see the time coming when people belonging to different faiths will have the same regard for other faiths that they have for their own'. Harijan, 2 Feb. 1934, p. 8

'For me all the principal religions are equal in the sense that they are all true. They are supplying a felt want in the spiritual progress of humanity.' Hari.Jan, 6 Apr. 1934, p. 59

'Every living faith must have within itself the power of rejuvenation if it is to live.' Harijan, 28 Sept. 1935, p. 260 Contents

Foreword by John Hick ix Preface Xlll

1 Introduction 1 2 Gandhi's Religious Thought and Indian Traditions 14 3 The Impact of Christianity on Gandhi 41 4 Experiments with Truth 58 5 The Non-Violent Weapon of Suffering 75 6 Waiting On God 94 7 Diversities of Gifts 114 8 The Vision Splendid 136 9 Mo~a Rethought 155 10 Epilogue 174 Notes 182 Select Bibliography 1 go Index 191

vii Foreword

The figure of Gandhi is being increasingly recognised as a significant source oflight and hope in a world threatened by many kinds of violence, by the erosion of the human environment, and by widespread despair of the future. There are innumerable biographies of Gandhi: indeed his is possibly the most minutely recorded and scrutinised life that has ever been lived. There are also numerous books on his political, economic and moral teachings. But, surprisingly, whilst there are studies of Gandhi's relationship to Christianity, there are none (known to me) devoted to his religious thought as a whole. Here Margaret Chatterjee presents to the west, in a splendidly balanced way, Gandhi's religious message. Not that his life and thought can ever be separated; for what made Gandhi the centre ofso powerful a field of spiritual force was the fact that his ideas were always incarnated in his actions. And so although Professor Chatterjee does not retell the familiar story of Gandhi's life, she does constantly relate his ideas to the Indian culture and the world history of which he was a part. What we witness above all in the phenomenon of Gandhi is religion becoming creative in human life. The function of religion, as man's response to ultimate Reality, is to transform human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. We see this transformation in Gandhi with a clarity which both uplifts and challenges us. His life was a continuous growth in which he became increasingly dedicated to the service of the higher Reality which he thought of as Truth or God. In response to the claim of Reality upon him he renounced the interests of his private ego and became a servant of mankind, transparent to Truth. He loved Truth, or God, with all his heart and mind and soul, and his neighbour as himself; and he did so amidst the pressures, disturbances, ambiguities and confusions of historic liberation struggles, first in South Africa and then in India. There are at least four areas in which this phenomenon of Gandhi

lX X Foreword

is importantly relevant today, more than thirty years after his death. One is religious pluralism. Christian theologians are much concerned today with the relationship between Christianity and other religions, with their apparently competing gospels. In this context Gandhi poses a challenge: how could one who lived and died a Hindu have taught so many people, including the great Christian missionary to India, E. Stanley Jones, 'more ofthe spirit of Christ than perhaps any other man in East or West'. (E. Stanley Jones, Mahatma Gandhi: An Interpretation, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1948, p. 76). It has often been assumed that Gandhi learned of non-violence and self-giving love from Christianity. But in fact he responded so positively to the teachings ofJesus because he found in them a confirmation of what he had already received from his own tradition. He often quoted the verse of a Hindu poet, 'The truly noble know all men as one, and return with gladness good for evil done' (p. 91 ), and he cherished the traditional Gujarati saying, 'If a man gives you a drink of water and you give him a drink in return, that is nothing. Real beauty consists in doing good against evil' (p. 74). Indeed the which provided the supporting framework ofGandhi's life of service affirmed the underlying unity of all mankind, as all being individuations of the same atman or soul; from which Gandhi derived the call to renounce egoism and to act in the interests of the whole human community. Gandhi's own solution to the problem of religious pluralism was learned from the ancient Jain tradition of his native Gujarat. This held that all religious awareness is inevitably partial and incomplete, so that different traditions can complement and enrich one another rather than being mutually exclusive rivals. This world-ecumenical outlook is more widespread today than it was fifty years ago, and we can now proceed with the complex task of working out its epistemological, metaphysical and doctrinal implications. A second relevance of Gandhi today is to the liberation movements in Southern Mrica, South America and elsewhere. Gandhi was perhaps the first practitioner ofliberation theology. For he heard the voice of God, which was to him the insistent voice of Truth, calling him to fight, non-violently, for the liberation of the oppressed-in his case, Asians in South Mrica, outcastes and the poor in India, and the Indian people as a whole in their struggle for political freedom. This revolutionary activity, rather than any cult Foreword Xl

or creed, was to him true religion. He said, 'To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare to appear is work and promise offood as wages' (p. 229). Gandhi's challenge to the liberation movements of today lies in his profound belief in the ultimate unity of all human beings, including the oppressors, and his consequent absolute commitment to non-violence. A study of Gandhi's life shows that ahimsa is not mere passivity but a living organism of intense educational activity (or as we say today, conscientisation), highly organised economic and political pressure, and moving symbolic acts. His life and thought should be studied afresh by all who seek to work for human liberation in our contemporary world. A third area of relevance is the deepening ecological crisis. Although Gandhi was no doubt mistaken in opposing the inevitable industrialisation of India, he was surely right in advocating the production of basic food and clothing rather than wasteful luxuries, and in stressing the dignity of physical labour, th beauty of smallness, the importance of self-sufficiency, and the values of village life. He was not an economist, but he saw the dangers of the modern self-consuming consumer society, with its violent rape of planet earth, with a clarity at which others have only recently arrived. We can profit again today from the human values by which Gandhi lived and the thoughts on human living which he expressed. And a fourth area of relevance lies in Gandhi's exhibiting• without consciously intending to-a viable style of contemporary sainthood. He was a saint, and indeed a Mahatma, because he was so transparent to the Truth that through his life the claim of Truth was felt and responded to by others. And the Truth that shines through him is both demanding and attractive. For example, in the ashrams and the journeys through India which were among his 'experiments with Truth' Gandhi and his followers lived in freely accepted poverty and constructive hard work. People rose early (prayers at 4.20 a.m.) and worked late. In a land where dirt abounds Gandhi stressed, almost fanatically, cleanliness and sanitation. In a culture in which time is only half real he insisted on punctuality and the stewardship of time. In a society fragmented by caste he deliberately broke all the rules, bringing brahmins, 'untouchables', Muslims, Christians, Sikhs together in the common service of their country. The Truth which grasped him grasped others through him, making great demands on their lives. And yet xu Foreword at the same time everyone who worked with Gandhi has attested that he was full of fun, bubbling over with humour and the joy of living, even in the dark periods of his career. The pattern ofsainthood which we see in him, then, was powered by a complete acceptance of all human beings as ultimately one, and a deep practical love of neighbour which made sacrifice and suffering acceptable. This relationship to the neighbour created a structure of tough political commitment involving careful research, accurate information and prolonged thought. And it overflowed in a continuous delight in human fellowship which won for Gandhi more friends, of more varied kinds, than perhaps anyone else of whom we know. Although he experienced tragic setbacks, hardships and sorrows, and finally met a violent death, Gandhi was a most fortunate person. For his life was a series of experiments with Truth, and the Truth made him free- free from selfishness; free to love and to be loved; free to live creatively, deeply involved in the struggles ofhis own time and place. Hence he is also a great witness to Truth for other times and place. Margaret Chatterjee is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delhi. Born in England and trained at Oxford, she has made India her home since 1946 and has been teaching philosophy there since 1956. She is therefore uniquely equipped, among interpreters of Gandhi to the west, to appreciate the Indian context of his thought and its deep roots in Indian history and religious life. She has succeeded admirably in her aim to discuss 'Gandhi's religious thought in his own idiom so as to present him as a very exceptional personality whose thinking stretches back into the traditional life of India and reaches forward to times which are yet to come' (p. 265).

JOHN HICK Preface

The following study can only claim to be an introduction to a very vast subject. The source material available on Gandhi is voluminous and no present-day researcher can profess to have been through it all. Students of modern Indian history and political thought have been largely concerned with Gandhi's role in a sequence of events which amounts in fact to the story of the making of modern India. But there is an inner story which has yet to be explored. Having said that, something else must also be admitted. Gandhi himself made no such distinction. He never looked on social, political, economic and religious issues as if they were in watertight compartments. He saw them as a complicated fabric, spun by the hands of millions, to use the idiom of spinning and weaving that he so loved. To try to isolate his religious thought is in a sense to do violence to this most non-violent of men. A full-length study would require constant reference to the socio-economic and political implications of the religious component in his thought. I could not do more, in a book of this size, than indicate from time to time the context in which particular facets of his thought were worked out. The reader will need to fill this out from other sources. I have tried to keep in mind Gandhi's contribution to religious thought against the broad canvas of India's many -faceted traditions. Where it seemed of interest I have made passing references to matters engaging those concerned with philosophy of religion and theology in the west and elsewhere. My own impression is that Gandhi takes us beyond the language of encounter, and even the language ofdialogue, to an approach which I try to characterise at the end of the book. In this respect I believe him to be the man of tomorrow. I am grateful to a number of people in the writing of this book: first of all to John Hick for his encouraging thought that there may well be an audience for some of Gandhi's ideas about religion in the west and for his recommending this project to the publishers; to the seminarians at 'Vidya Jyoti', Delhi, and successive audiences of

Xlll XIV Preface

American friends in India and university audiences in England who stimulated me by their questions; to Judith M. Brown for encouragement; to Stephen N. Hay for lively discussions about soul• force many years ago; to Manoranjan Guha and B. N. Ray for patient answers to persistent questions; to Krishna Kripalani for help on the relation between Gandhi and Tagore, useful suggestions for reading and for allowing me to try out some of my wilder hypotheses on him before committing them to print. I owe most, however, to Nirmal Kumar Bose, 1 anthropologist, and secretary to Mahatma Gandhi during a critical period in his life, the source of most of the personal anecdotes in this book and my first teacher in Gandhian thought.

December 1g8o MARGARET CHATTERJEE