M.K. Gandhi & Hind Swaraj
Week 5, Lecture 1

Today’s Music:

Asian Dub Foundation

Today, we will discuss…

•Hindu and Muslim Relations in India

•Brute Force vs. Passive Resistance

•Gandhi on Writing

•Gandhi, the Mother, and the Prostitute

•Gandhi on Masculinity

What is Gandhi’s interpretation of writing?

•Petitions (84-85)

•Newspapers (32-33)

•“Their writings hypnotise us. And so…we are drawn into the vortex.” (35)

•“[The English] have a habit of writing history…and hypnotise us into believing them.” (56)

•“…then India, as so many writers have shown, has nothing to learn from anyone else…” (67)

Gandhi, the Mother, and the Prostitute

•Parliament as a sterile woman and a prostitute (30, 32)

•“Women, who should be the queens of households, wander in the streets, or they slave in factories.” (37)

•“If pleaders were to abandon their profession and consider it just as degrading as prostitution, English rule would break up in a day.” (61)

Gandhi on Masculinity

•“They lack real physical strength or courage.” (37)

•“We have become emasculated and cowardly.” (44)

•“…render us effeminate…” (44)

•“I should prefer to be killed by the arrow of a Bhil than to seek unmanly protection.” (44)

•“Believe me that a man devoid of courage and manhood can never be a passive resister.” (93)

Hindus and Muslims: How can India be one nation?

•“India cannot cease to be one nation because people belonging to different religions live in it.” (52)

•“In no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous.” (53)

•“The fact is that we have become enslaved…” (54)

•“These thoughts are put into our minds by selfish and false religious teachers.” (56)

•“We Hindus and Muslims would have to blame our folly rather than the English…(56)

Brute Force

•Resistance by arms, violence

•“…the force of love and pity is greater than the force of arms.” (84)

•“Extremists are considered to be advocates of brute force.” (93)

•One of the aims of non-violence is the moral regeneration of the pertpetrator/oppressor

Passive Resistance (Satyagraha)

•Passive Resistance is soul-force (93)

•(Sat=Truth/God/Soul)+ (agraha=force)

•Sacrifice of self (90) [vs. sacrifice of others]

•Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering (90)

•Opposite of “resistance by arms” (90)

•“Real home rule is possible only where passive resistance is the guiding force of the people. Any other rule is foreign rule.” (96)

Passive Resistance, continued…

•“Those who want to become passive resisters for the service of the country have to observe… (96)

1.Perfect chastity (Celebacy)

2.Adopt poverty (Simplicity)

3.Follow truth (God)

4.Cultivate fearlessness

Conclusion

Reader: This is a large order. When will all carry it out? (118)

Editor: You make a mistake. You and I have nothing to do with the others. Let each do his duty. If I do my duty, that is, serve myself, I shall be able to serve others.

Editor: I bear no enmity towards the English, but I do towards their civilization.

Images:

1. “Grief of Mother India”

2. “Mahatma Gandhi in Mother India’s Lap”

3. Advertisement (1940s)

4. “A message of love” (1930)

5. “…it behoves every lover of India to cling to the old Indian civilization even as a child clings to its mother’s breast.”
Gandhi, p. 70, HS

Google Video: GandhiServe

Google Books: Hind Swaraj