August 19:

“If you believe in true communism, you would have to give up violence.”

–Gandhi (Mahadevbhai ni Diary, vol. 19)

Both men of the 20th century, Gandhi and Marx sought the well-being of the world, and the Socialists and Gandhi worked together for various efforts, including the effort to prevent partition.  But there were differences. According to Narayan Desai, “Marx was an intellectual, but Gandhi was an experimenter. . . Marx’s ideas matured in a library, while Gandhiji’s were formed inside the heart.”  In fact, the Congress Socialist Party wanted Gandhi to bring their ideas to the Indian people, but alas, Gandhi was not a Socialist, even though he did a thorough study of Socialist literature while in prison from 1942-1944. Where Socialists maintained that spirituality was escaping from reality, Gandhi used it to draw closer to reality — for example, to those around him.  Where Socialists sought centralization, Gandhi promoted decentralization, village rule. Where Socialists said ‘swaraj’ (self-rule) by any means, Gandhi said that by any other means than nonviolence would not be true swaraj. Again and again he had to point out that their means were not congruent with the end they sought, namely, equality. During one long dialogue with key Indian Socialist party members, he offered the following challenge:“The socialists believe that all are equal but they want to enforce that equality through violence. But without true nonviolence there can be no equality.” Who can use violence without seeing themselves as superior to others? Thus the problem for him was less of inequality and more that of inferiority and superiority. He added, “Violence is where inferiority exists.”  Nonviolence is necessary for the maintenance of equality. And, it’s more than just a good idea–it works in practice, too.

Experiment in Nonviolence:

“Violence is where inferiority exists.” Where does this play out in the social field today?