View source | |
# 2020-01-27 - Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer | |
I found this book in the local library discard pile. It had several | |
biographies of Gandhi and i decided that this one suited me best. | |
The book was very long for my tastes, but i was inspired by the | |
narration of the author. It touched me more than the movies have. | |
Gandhi was born in 1869. Louis Fischer spent time with Gandhi in his | |
ashram on multiple visits. | |
My notes follow below. | |
# Chapter 3, Mohandas K. Gandhi, attorney at law | |
Gandhi advanced in greatness by doing. The Gita became Gandhi's | |
gospel, for it glorifies action. | |
# Chapter 4, Gandhi and The Gita | |
Gandhi felt the Gita was allegorical for internal conflict within the | |
hearts of people. The Gita condemns inaction. It advocates | |
selflessness in action. The renunciation of the Gita is the litmus | |
test of faith. One who is ever brooding over results often loses | |
nerve in the performance of duty. Renunciation gives the inner peace | |
and spiritual poise to achieve results. Gandhi advocated perfect | |
ahimsa (non-violence). Since we are all bits of God who is perfect, | |
how can we and why should we kill? Gandhi summarized detachment in | |
one word: Desirelessness. The yogi's highest reward is to become so | |
firmly united with God so as to need never again return to the status | |
of migrating mortal. | |
# Chapter 9, The transformation begins | |
Gandhi said that book Unto This Last by John Ruskin marked the | |
turning point in his life. He immediately decided to change his life | |
in accord with the ideals of the book. He also took a vow of | |
celibacy at age 37 that he kept for the rest of his life. | |
# Chapter 11, Gandhi goes to jail | |
There was nothing passive about Gandhi. He disliked the term | |
"passive resistance." He offered a prize for a better name for this | |
new kind of mass-yet-individual opposition to government unfairness. | |
He arrived at Satyagraha. Satya is truth, which equals love. Agraha | |
is firmness or force. Satyagraha is truth-force or love-force. | |
"A Satyagrahi," Gandhi said, "bids goodbye to fear. He is therefore | |
never afraid of trusting the opponent. Even if the opponent plays | |
him false twenty times, the Satyagrahi is ready to trust him for the | |
twenty-first time--for an implicit trust in human nature is the very | |
essence of his creed." | |
Optimism about human nature was the starting post of all Gandhi's | |
activities; it sometimes made him sound naive. | |
> Death is the appointed end of all life. To die by the hand of a | |
> brother, rather than by disease or in such other way, cannot be for | |
> me a matter of sorrow. And if, even in such a case, I am free from | |
> the thought of anger or hatred against my assailant, I know that | |
> will redound to my eternal welfare, and even the assailant will | |
> later on realize my perfect innocence. | |
This, Gandhi declared, is one of the virtues of Satyagraha: it | |
uncovers concealed motives and reveals the truth. It puts the best | |
possible interpretation on the opponent's intentions and thereby | |
gives him another chance to discard baser impulses. If he fails to | |
do so, his victims see more clearly and feel more intensely, while | |
outsiders realize who is wrong. | |
Many Christian clergymen supported him. They saw Satyagraha as | |
Christianity in action against a system that merely called itself | |
Christian. Gandhi worked through moral conversion. ... No true | |
devotee of Christ could resist this. | |
# Chapter 20, First fast | |
"I fasted to reform those who loved me," Gandhi said on a subsequent | |
occasion, and he added, "You cannot fast against a tyrant." | |
# Chapter 22, The history of British rule in India | |
From remote antiquity to modern times, India has been invaded | |
twenty-six times. The British invasion was the last. Alexander the | |
Great invaded India in 326 B.C., at the age of thirty. After a | |
nineteen months' stay, Alexander, a pupil of Aristotle, left for | |
home, taking with him several Indian philosophers. He died two years | |
later in Babylon. | |
The Greeks, and subsequently the Romans, carried to the West the | |
achievements of Indian science. The so-called "Arabic" numerals were | |
invented in India. The zero is an Indian concept. An Indian brain | |
likewise evolved the present worldwide [base 10] system of numeral | |
placement: the system whereby a one with a four after it is fourteen | |
and a four with a one after it is forty-one. | |
On July 8, 1497, Vasco da Gama in three Portuguese ships, the largest | |
of which displaced 150 tons, anchored off the southwest shore of | |
India. Thus began the first seaborne invasion of India. | |
The Papal bulls of 1493 and an agreement with Spain gave Portugal, | |
then a world power, a Catholic monopoly in southeast Asia. This did | |
not prevent the Dutch from establishing several lucrative trading | |
posts in India early in the sixteenth century. The French followed a | |
few years later. They sent home pepper, cinnamon, and other spices. | |
England hesitated to encroach on the formidable Portuguese. Instead, | |
since they had wool to sell which torrid southern Asia did not need, | |
the British searched for a northwest passage through North America | |
and a northeast passage around northern Europe to the colder regions | |
of China. But when this quest proved vain, England, emboldened by | |
her victory over the Spanish armada in July, 1588, dared to defy | |
Portugal, Spain's confederate, and dispatched her first expedition | |
into the Indian Ocean in 1591. Despite the war with Spain and | |
Portugal, other British expeditions followed. The peace signed with | |
these nations increased the traffic and intensified the commercial | |
competition. | |
An East India Company was formed in London in 1600; its renewed | |
charter in 1609 gave it a British trade monopoly in Asia unlimited in | |
time and space. | |
Wars, intrigues with Indian provincial warlords, and shrewd trading | |
filled the coffers of the East India Company and enhanced its power. | |
In the first half of the seventeenth century, England was importing | |
cotton piece-goods, indigo, drugs, lac, sugar, and carpets from | |
India. Indian calicoes were a special favorite with British | |
housewives. In return, the company brought India broadcloth, | |
industrial metals, and gold. | |
Feuds between the Moslem or Mogul emperors of India and the warlike | |
Maratha Hindus of south-central India, in the area centering on | |
Poona, east of Bombay, enabled the Company to proclaim the fusion of | |
money-making and imperialism; it announced in December, 1687, that it | |
proposed to create such civil and military institutions "as may be | |
the foundation of a large, well-grounded, sure English dominion in | |
India for all time to come." | |
The accretion of British power moved with accelerated speed. The | |
process was simple: early in 1749, for instance, Prince Shahji, | |
native potentate of the state of Tanjore, on the southeast coast, was | |
dethroned by a rival; he offered the British a town called Devikottai | |
at the place where the Coleroon River empties into the Bay of Bengal | |
"on condition," says The Cambridge History of India, "of their | |
helping him to recover the throne." After a few days of siege, | |
Devikottai surrendered. "The English kept it with the country | |
belonging to it; and as for Shahji," the British chronicle notes, "no | |
one thought of restoring him to his throne." | |
Anybody wronged by the British was wooed by the French, and vice | |
versa. | |
William Hastings, the Governor-General of Bengal, continued the | |
policy of British expansion through armed force, enforced tributes, | |
and dynastic conspiracies. His trial in England, which lasted from | |
February, 1788, to April, 1795, showed that the British | |
administration in India was neither scrupulous nor incorruptible, nor | |
concerned with the welfare of Indians. | |
Gradually, by means mostly foul, but considered normal in that age | |
and place, the British established themselves throughout the length | |
and breadth of the vast Indian subcontinent. | |
While India was being subjugated, the invention of the spinning jenny | |
in 1764, Watt's perfected steam engine in 1768, and the power loom in | |
1785 were converting England into a maker and exporter of textiles. | |
Indian cotton goods were no longer wanted in Britain; on the | |
contrary, Britain exported textiles and other factory products to the | |
people of India who, in 1800, numbered approximately 140,000,000. | |
India's industries consequently languished; Indian treasure flowed to | |
the British Isles as profit or plunder. Indian handicrafts suffered | |
too. India was transformed into a purely agrarian country whose | |
villages, overcrowded by the influx of unemployed townsmen, could not | |
produce enough food. According to a British source, the deaths from | |
famine in India between 1800 and 1825 were one million; between 1825 | |
and 1850, four-hundred-thousand; between 1850 and 1875, five million; | |
and between 1875 and 1900, fifteen million. | |
Engineered by wit and violence, England's annexations in India in the | |
latter part of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the | |
nineteenth left many disgruntled and dispossessed native rulers. | |
British attempts to introduce law and order and an equitable system | |
of taxation further irritated innumerable persons nursing innumerable | |
wounds. Widespread economic stringency intensified the general | |
unrest. Only a spark was needed to produce a flame. India had not | |
yet become totally docile, nor had the British learned the technique, | |
which they subsequently mastered, of firm yet smooth and barely | |
visible administration. | |
It was 1857, and a Hindu prophecy declared that on the centenary of | |
the Battle of Plassey in 1757, British rule would perish. A war, | |
officially called the Mutiny or the Sepoy Mutiny, broke out. ... Rail | |
and telegraph lines were out. Both sides committed numerous murders. | |
Much blood also flowed in pitched battles and sieges. | |
The mutiny was unplanned, unco-ordinated, leaderless, and hopeless. | |
Inevitably, after many months, the British, aided by loyal Indians, | |
suppressed it. With the restoration of peace, the East Indian | |
Company [was blamed] and abolished. In 1858, Queen Victoria assumed | |
the government of India and appointed Lord Canning her first Viceroy. | |
For eighty-nine years thereafter, until August 15, 1947, India was a | |
colony of the British Empire. | |
The blood-and-plunder period was ended. England's ideals of clean | |
government filtered into the British administration of India. The | |
British watered some deserts and improved communications. Many | |
British officials, after twenty or thirty years' service in India, | |
felt at home in India and like foreigners when they went home to | |
England. They were devoted to India. They ate out their hearts and | |
ruined their health coping with difficult problems. | |
The British in India, however, were a fifth caste, the first caste. | |
They interdined with Indians perfunctorily and intermarried | |
seldom[ly]. The British were the super-Brahman-Kshatriyas; all | |
Indians were "untouchables" The British were in India, never of | |
India. The British were masters in somebody else's home. Their very | |
presence was a humiliation. Despite the best intentions of the best | |
among them, their every act was a humiliation. Then they complained, | |
with pain, that Indians were "ungrateful." The complaint was a | |
measure of the lack of understanding. | |
Even if the British had converted India into a land flowing with milk | |
and honey they would have been disliked. Imperialism, like | |
dictatorship, sears the soul, degrades the spirit, and makes | |
individuals small, the better to rule them. Fear and cowardice are | |
its allies. | |
The requirements of British prestige hurt Indian pride. Subjection | |
stimulated a desire for liberation. | |
This is why colonial administration never is, and never can be, | |
successful. History has known no good colonizers. Every empire digs | |
its own grave. Imperialism is a perpetual insult, for it assumes | |
that the outsider has the right to rule the insiders who cannot rule | |
themselves; it is thus arrogant nationalism and inevitably begets | |
opposing nationalism. | |
Unloved and unwanted, the British found it dangerous to arouse too | |
many expectations of self-government and inconvenient to kill too | |
many hopes for it. Hence, all the eighty-nine years of British rule | |
constitute a series of oscillations between bold promises and | |
disappointing performances. | |
Similarly, Britain divided the country between British India, | |
governed directly by England, and native India, governed indirectly | |
by England, but directly, and ostensibly, by Indian princes. It was | |
a cynical device, avowed as such by Lord Canning on April 30, 1860; | |
he wrote, "It was long ago said by Sir John Malcom that if we made | |
all India into zillahs [or British districts] it was not in the | |
nature of things that our empire should last fifty years; but that if | |
we could keep a number of native states without political power but | |
as royal instruments, we should exist in India as long as our naval | |
supremacy was maintained. Of the substantial truth of this opinion I | |
have no doubt; the recent events make it more deserving of our | |
attention than ever." | |
Professor Rushbrook Williams, a brilliant Englishman who often served | |
as official intermediary with Indian princes, wrote in the London | |
Evening Standard of May 28, 1930, "The situations of these feudatory | |
states, checkerboarding all India as they do, are a great safeguard. | |
It is like establishing a vast network of friendly fortresses in | |
debatable territory. It would be difficult for a general rebellion | |
against the British to sweep India because of this network of | |
powerful, loyal, native states." | |
In 1939, India, with three times the population of the United States | |
and two-thirds the area, had 41,134 miles of railroad track, compared | |
with 395,589 miles in the United States. India produced | |
2,500,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy in 1935; the United | |
States, 98,464,000,000 kilowatt-hours. | |
These conditions were not the sole fault of the British. Indians | |
shared the blame. But Indians blamed everything on the British. | |
# Chapter 33, On the way home | |
[Rolland asked] "What do you call God? Is it a spiritual personality | |
or a force which rules over the world?" | |
"God," Gandhi replied, "is not a person... God is an eternal | |
principle. That is why I say that Truth is God... Even atheists do | |
not doubt the necessity of truth." | |
# Chapter 34, Climax | |
Gandhi took the hard road. His doctrine was: By their works shall ye | |
know them. His God required him to live for humanity. "If I could | |
persuade myself," Gandhi wrote, "that I should find Him in a | |
Himalayan cave I would proceed there immediately. But I know I | |
cannot find him apart from humanity." | |
Gandhi's relation with God was part of a triangle which included his | |
fellow man. On this triangle he based his system of ethics and | |
morality. | |
The first duty of the God-worshiper is truth: for truth is God. | |
"There should be Truth in thought, Truth in speech, and Truth in | |
action," Gandhi wrote in From Yeravda Mandir. | |
# Chapter 35, Without politics | |
Gandhi was more specific, however, in an address at the Y.M.C.A., in | |
Colombo, Ceylon, in 1927. "If then," he said, "I had to face only | |
the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not | |
hesitate to say, 'Oh, yes, I am a Christian.' ... But negatively I | |
can tell you that much of what passes as Christianity is a negation | |
of the Sermon on the Mount. And please mark my words. I am not at | |
the present moment speaking of the Christian conduct. I am speaking | |
of the Christian belief, of Christianity as it is understood in the | |
West." | |
But Gandhi frowned on proselytizing, whether by Christians, Hindus, | |
or Moslems. He said, "I do not believe in people telling others of | |
their faith, especially with a view to conversion... Faith does not | |
permit of telling. It has to be lived and then it is | |
self-propagating." | |
# Chapter 38, My week with Gandhi | |
At seventy-three, Gandhi never reminisced. His mind was on things to | |
come. Years did not matter to him because he thought in terms of the | |
unending future. Only the hours mattered to him because they were | |
the measure of what he could contribute to that future. | |
Fearing nothing, he could live the truth. Having nothing, he could | |
pay for his principles. | |
Mahatma Gandhi is the symbol of the unity between personal morality | |
and public action. | |
Gandhi enriched politics with ethics. His greatness lay in doing | |
what everybody could do but doesn't. | |
# Chapter 43, Gandhi revisited | |
Jesus was a Jew. He was the finest flower of Judaism. You can see | |
that in the four stories of the four apostles. They had untutored | |
minds. They told the truth about Jesus. Paul was not a Jew, he was | |
a Greek, he had an oratorical mind, a dialectical mind, and he | |
distorted Jesus. Jesus possessed a great force, the love force, but | |
Christianity became disfigured when it went to the West. It became | |
the religion of kings." | |
He inquired about the treatment of Negroes in the United States. "A | |
civilization," he said, "is to be judged by its treatment of | |
minorities." | |
# Chapter 44, Pilgrim's progress | |
Would literacy help, Gandhi was asked. He held that it was not | |
enough. The Germans were literate yet they succumbed to Hitler. "It | |
is not literacy or learning that make a man," Gandhi said, "but | |
education for real life. What would it matter if they knew | |
everything but did not know how to live in brotherliness with their | |
neighbors?" | |
author: Fischer, Louis, 1896-1970 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Louis_Fischer | |
LOC: DS481.G3 F44 | |
source: gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia/details/lifeofmahatmagan00loui | |
tags: ebook,biography,history | |
title: Life of Mahatma Gandhi | |
# Tags | |
ebook | |
biography | |
history |