{"id":177913,"date":"2021-02-01T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=177913"},"modified":"2021-01-25T10:02:35","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T10:02:35","slug":"is-mahatma-gandhis-satyagraha-significant-in-our-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/02\/is-mahatma-gandhis-satyagraha-significant-in-our-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s Satyagraha Significant in Our Times?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abstract<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This paper was the fruit of two conceptions.\u00a0 The first was that it was part of a book-length manuscript on the making of Gandhi\u2019s Satyagraha movement that I started in 1993, a completed manuscript that has been revised at least six times, and remains unfinished.\u00a0 The second motive arose from a deep concern over the consequences of terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on the one hand, and, on the other, by the recent horrific acts of violence in America, especially the murder of children at an elementary school. To this horror was added the sordid and painful story of the gang-rape and death in Delhi of the physiotherapy student, a young woman, Nirbhaya. <\/em>What started in the mode of a scholarly exercise shifted to a more activist mode of a civilizational question: Is Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s <\/em>Satyagraha significant in our times?<\/em><\/p>\n

*******************<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have selected two studies for reflection.2<\/a>\u00a0 The first is Joseph Lelyveld\u2019s Great Soul–Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India<\/em>, published in 2011.\u00a0 This work brought great controversy, especially in India, where there arose a movement to ban the book.3<\/a>\u00a0 It is difficult to place this thoughtful and critical work within an academic discipline.\u00a0 A journalist by profession, Lelyveld admitted that he was hardly a historian.\u00a0 His was not a traditional biography.\u00a0 Generally an admiring study, his focus was more on Gandhi as a social reformer than his Satyagraha<\/em> movement.\u00a0 More specifically, his interest was on Gandhi\u2019s struggle to end the injustice of India\u2019s caste system and untouchability.\u00a0 His early chapters narrating Gandhi\u2019s twenty one years in South Africa are of interest because it was in South Africa that Satyagraha<\/em> was conceived, developed, and practiced.\u00a0 My own study of Gandhi placed its emphasis on his experience in South Africa and the inspiration he drew from the indentured Indian labourers.\u00a0 As a descendant of indentured Indian labourers from Trinidad, I had a deep interest in Gandhi\u2019s campaigns in South Africa. Indeed, Gandhi played a great part in the 1917 abolition of Indentured Indian labor, or semi-slavery, as he called it.<\/p>\n

The second work is Mary Louise Gude\u2019s Louis Massignon: The Crucible of Compassion.<\/em>\u00a0 I was drawn to this work after reading a paper by Carool Kersten, \u201cMacchiavelli or Gandhi? Chaiwat Satha Anand\u2019s Nonviolence in a Comparative Perspective.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 The second part of this paper was on the renowned French Catholic scholar of Islam and Arabic, Louis Massignon.\u00a0 Criticized as an Orientalist by Dr. E.W. Said in his seminal work, Orientalism<\/em>, Massignon was a faithful follower of Gandhi\u2019s Satyagraha from the 1920s to his death in 1962. Mary Louise Gude\u2019s scholarly biography of Massignon allowed me to view Gandhi\u2019s Satyagraha<\/em> from an insightful perspective. I thought that Massignon was able to understand and connect Gandhi\u2019s political, social, and spiritual ideas and actions in a luminous way.<\/p>\n

For Joseph Lelyveld, Gandhi initially was invited to serve as an advocate of the Indian elite in South Africa against racial discrimination, but\u00a0 his political transformation came when he became aware of the extreme injustice towards the indentured Indian laborers or \u201ccoolies\u201d as they were called.\u00a0 Lelyveld argued that this awareness led Gandhi to acknowledge at the same time the injustice and cruelty of the caste system and untouchability practiced in India.\u00a0 Gandhi\u2019s decision to mobilize the Indian indentured workers and women in the great march of 1913 was his moment of truth, the real birth of Satyagraha<\/em>, and Gandhi\u2019s journey to becoming the mahatma.<\/p>\n

Lelyveld slowly and deliberately painted the landscape of Gandhi\u2019s experiences in South Africa from the day after he arrived in Natal on May 23, 1893 to his departure in 1914.\u00a0 He stated that he would not accept Gandhi\u2019s narrative of his experiences in his Autobiography<\/em> but would seek to interrogate the accepted version. This method of raising critical questions of a dominant and accepted narrative is interesting and insightful but at times the interpretation of evidence can be problematic.\u00a0 Its purpose did not necessarily mean that the author sought to demean the achievements of Gandhi, but rather to show that, in this case, Gandhi was also an imperfect human being with weaknesses, flaws, defeats, and fads, and so be of greater influence for others if seen as human and not as a saint.\u00a0 Or, as Giriraj Kishore, the author of The Girmitiya<\/em> Saga,<\/em> declared as the motivation for his novel, Gandhi was Mohan before he was Mahatma.4<\/a>\u00a0 Yet, at times, the interpretations proposed by Joseph Lelyveld seemed in line with avowedly imperialist Western writers.\u00a0 For example, Lelyveld raised the suggestion that Gandhi in South Africa created several changes of ideals which the author called \u201cself-invention.\u201d\u00a0 He hinted that Gandhi\u2019s Autobiography<\/em>, written in 1927, called \u201cExperiments in Truth,\u201d<\/em> could have been the fruit of expediency to \u201cjump-start his career.\u201d<\/p>\n

His circular and allusive method of constructing his argument was held together by the main theme of Gandhi as a social reformer.\u00a0 Writing letters to the newspapers was Gandhi\u2019s first method of responding to unjust legislation against Indians.\u00a0 In May 1894, as he was preparing to return home to India, he saw an article about a bill to disenfranchise Natal\u2019s Indians.\u00a0 As a response, he wrote his first pamphlet to the colonial legislature in Natal. When the newspaper, The Critic<\/em>, responded that it was the caste system and not the laws of Natal that condemned Indians to be a servile race, Gandhi said that the comment reached the depths of his heart.\u00a0 Although hired to defend Indian businessmen, he was aware early in South Africa that the Indian laborers on sugar plantations and the coal mines were the most exploited in their state of \u201csemi-slavery.\u201d Embarking on a life of service, he drafted petitions, and founded the Natal Indian Congress. Among its objectives were to inquire into the conditions of indentured Indians and to take proper steps to alleviate their suffering and to help the poor and helpless in every reasonable way.\u201d5<\/a>\u00a0 As his prestige as leader of Indians in South Africa grew, he made every effort to persuade Indians of all regions, religions, castes and classes to see themselves as Indians.<\/p>\n

His relationship to the indentured Indians was a major key to understand Gandhi\u2019s transformation from a diffident British educated lawyer in South Africa to become a radical political activist against injustice to the poorest Indians.\u00a0 He became aware of the terrible exploitation of indentured Indians, and their suffering.\u00a0 It did not go unnoticed that many of them were from lower castes and untouchables.\u00a0 As Gandhi later commented, \u201cI believe implicitly that all men are born equal\u2026I have fought the doctrine of superiority in South Africa inch by inch and it is because of that inherent belief that I call myself a scavenger, a spinner, a weaver, a farmer and a laborer.\u201d6<\/a><\/p>\n

Some admirers of Gandhi suggested that\u00a0 Lelyveld\u00a0 had accused Gandhi of racism against Black Africans.\u00a0 The other accusation was that the author had written that Gandhi had a homosexual relationship with his Jewish friend, Herman Kallenbach.\u00a0 Both narratives were brief and presumably included to show that Gandhi was not a saint, but human with weaknesses. In neither issue did the author conclude that Gandhi was either a racist or had a homosexual relationship with his friend.\u00a0 Since these stories caused such a storm of protest, it is useful to examine how the author developed the narratives and to what purpose.<\/p>\n

Lelyveld argued that Gandhi should have known that his use of the word kaffir<\/em> to describe Africans carried the meaning of inferior.8<\/a>\u00a0 However, consonant with his method of argumentation, the author balanced this description with the story of a debate at the YMCA in Johannesburg on the question: \u201cAre Asiatic and Colored Races a Menace?\u201d\u00a0 In his contribution, Gandhi argued:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIn a well-ordered society industrious and intelligent men can never be a menace.\u00a0 We can hardly think of South Africa without the African races\u2026South Africa would probably be a howling wilderness without the Africans.\u00a0 Africans are the world\u2019s learners.\u00a0 They are able-bodied and intelligent.\u00a0 They are entitled to justice and fairness, like the indentured Indians.\u00a0 It\u2019s a question of being able to own land, live and trade where they want, move freely from province to province. If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the different races commingle and produce a civilization that perhaps the world has not yet seen?\u00a0 There are differences and misunderstandings but I do believe, in the words of the sacred hymn, \u201cWe shall know each other better when the mists have rolled away.\u201d9<\/a> <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1906 was a significant year for Gandhi. Protests by Zulu artisans from a small independent church against taxation saw a police detachment sent to arrest the leaders who were armed with spears.\u00a0 In the ensuing conflict, two policemen were killed.\u00a0 Twelve protesters were arrested and summarily shot and killed.\u00a0 Later, a chief, Bhambatha, refused to pay the tax and took to the hills with 150 men.\u00a0 White officials sent an army of 1,000 men to attack them.\u00a0 Gandhi offered his ambulance stretcher bearers but could get only 19 men.\u00a0 The colonial army mercilessly machine-gunned Zulu homesteads and was told not to take prisoners.\u00a0 The small Indian ambulance brigade was present in the final weeks of the brutal war.\u00a0 They treated the Zulu prisoners who were wounded and villagers who were beaten by white troops.\u00a0 In his Autobiography<\/em>, Gandhi said that the Zulus were grateful for their assistance since white medics would not touch them.\u00a0 This experience of brutality by white colonists and Black suffering had a deep impact on Gandhi who said that \u201chis heart was with the Zulus.\u201d10<\/a>\u00a0 The horror he experienced and, perhaps, his doubt and guilt whether he was right to support the white colonists remained etched in his conscience up to 1943 when he recounted to his doctor and friend, Dr. Sushila Nayar, the atrocities done to the Zulus.\u00a0 Could this experience have been a major moment of truth and another transformation in his spiritual and political life?\u00a0 Gandhi decided to embark on a life of perfect celibacy and take the vow of Brahmacharya<\/em> in order to undertake a life of service and poverty.\u00a0 More significant for our topic, on September 11, 1906, at the Empire theatre in Johannesburg, Satyagraha<\/em>, the nonviolent civil resistance to injustice method, was born.\u00a0 Gandhi called for the defiance of the Asiatic law amendment ordinance, called the Black Act.\u00a0 In the Transvaal, Indians only were required to register for rights of residence, be fingerprinted, pay a 3 pound head tax, and carry a certificate.\u00a0 Worse, police could enter an Indian home to check the certificates of the family.11<\/a><\/p>\n

Another major change in Gandhi\u2019s life in 1906 was his decision to move from Durban, Natal, to Johannesburg in the Transvaal from August 1906 to January 1913.\u00a0 Gandhi had hoped to continue his experiments in building his nonviolent movement as well as his spiritual development.\u00a0 He embarked on constructing an alternative family.\u00a0 He said that his family now consisted \u201cof all living beings.\u201d12<\/a>\u00a0 Tamils from South India were among his enthusiastic followers, especially Thambi Naidoo who was his most devoted supporter.<\/p>\n

Several Muslims joined, and relatives of Gandhi, his wife and sons, nephews and cousins.\u00a0 Among his friends were Westerners \u2013 Sonja Schlesin, his secretary, Henry Polak and Herman Kallenbach, non-observant Jews, and Anglican minister, Charles Andrews.\u00a0 As Gandhi defined his family at this time, it was \u201ca heterogeneous family where people of all kinds and temperaments were freely admitted.\u201d Gandhi had met Henry Polak in 1904, then a copy editor of the newspaper, The Critic.\u00a0 They shared a mutual admiration of Tolstoy.\u00a0 It was Polak who months later gave Gandhi a copy of John Ruskin\u2019s Unto This Last that inspired Gandhi to establish Phoenix Settlement.\u00a0 Attracted by the book\u2019s criticism of industrial society, Gandhi had hoped that he could begin to put into practice his own ideas about an alternative humane rural society in the manner of Tolstoy\u2019s ideas and his own view of the possibilities of traditional rural Indian villages.<\/p>\n

Gandhi\u2019s move to Johannesburg brings us to the \u00a0issue of Gandhi\u2019s relationship with Herman Kallenbach, Lelyveld stated that \u201cthis relationship was the most intimate, also the most ambiguous relationship of his lifetime.\u201d13<\/a> Agreeing that Platonic love did not have much credibility in contemporary society, Lelyveld admitted that he was interested in the character of the love between Gandhi and Kallenbach.\u00a0 They had written notes to each other, confiding intimate details of their life.\u00a0 Faithful to the honor of his friend, Gandhi destroyed the letters Kallenbach sent him; Kallenbach did not.\u00a0 After the death of Kallenbach, his heirs auctioned Gandhi\u2019s letters to Kallenbach.\u00a0 The National Archives of India acquired them and published them.<\/p>\n

Kallenbach was raised and educated in East Prussia, and trained as an architect in Stuttgart.\u00a0 He arrived in Johannesburg in 1895 at the age of 24.\u00a0 Gandhi and Kallenbach lived in a house in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, called Kraal or homestead, and then in a bigger house, Mountain View.\u00a0 The letters use the language of love clearly, but often the context was Gandhi advising him to embark on a life of self-denial and simplicity where they would both give up their professions as lawyer and architect, and earn their living by manual labor.\u00a0 When Gandhi conceived of building a rural settlement in the Transvaal, called Tolstoy Farm, Kallenbach purchased 1100 acres of land where Gandhi could put in place his ideas of an alternative society as described in Hind Swara<\/em>j, and, at the same time, house the families of his movement.\u00a0 The letters showed their deep feeling for each other. As spiritual pilgrims, they loved taking long walks of 21 miles to the center of Johannesburg at dawn and twilight.\u00a0 Was there anything sexual in their relationship?\u00a0 Interviewed in the Times of India<\/em> as the controversy over his book became intense, Joseph Lelyveld admitted that he raised the issue of sex but reached no conclusion.\u00a0 He said that his own view was that \u201cit was to be guided by what they said about celibacy, abstinence, and the control of diet in the pursuit of those aims, and that two men can be on loving and intimate terms without becoming overtly sexual\u2026The discussion of the letters showed that Gandhi had a deep love for his Jewish friend and wanted him by his side for the rest of this life.\u201d14<\/a><\/p>\n

After some six years Gandhi ended his stay at Tolstoy Farm.\u00a0 It appears that Gokhale\u2019s visit to South Africa in December, 1912 was the decisive event.\u00a0 Gokhale had assured Gandhi that from his meeting with General Smuts the three pound head tax on Indians would be withdrawn, and persuaded Gandhi to return to India.\u00a0 This news confirmed Gandhi\u2019s feeling that he had reached an agreement with Smuts to repeal the Black Act.\u00a0\u00a0 He was already thinking about returning to India.\u00a0 Indeed, his blueprint for an alternative modernity for India, Hind Swaraj<\/em>, written in 1909, made no reference to South Africa.\u00a0 On January 9, 1913, Gandhi and his followers at Tolstoy Farm left for Phoenix Settlement.<\/p>\n

As negotiations with General Smuts collapsed, the 3 pound head tax, new restrictions on Indian immigration, and the decision to invalidate Hindu, Muslim and Parsee marriages, incensed Indians.\u00a0\u00a0 Declaring a new Satyagraha<\/em> campaign, Gandhi demanded the abolition of the three pound head tax on former indentured laborers which was adopted in 1895. The story of the Great March of 1913 is well-known and remained an enduring source of inspiration to Gandhi.\u00a0\u00a0 Lelyveld\u2019s narrative of this campaign is powerful in its detail and deserves describing somewhat.\u00a0 Gandhi, Kallenbach, and Thambi Naidoo planned the campaign at Naidoo\u2019s home.\u00a0 On October 11, Naidoo, his wife and 10 other Tamil women marched illegally from Transvaal into Natal to the mining town of Newcastle and urged the miners to strike.\u00a0 Gandhi described their action as throwing a match onto fuel.\u00a0 The strike of miners and sugar workers spread like wildfire to include Indian street cleaners, and house servants, among many others.\u00a0 Lelyveld captured brilliantly the relation between Gandhi as leader and the strikers.\u00a0 Gandhi asked the miners to leave their compounds and march across the Transvaal to court arrest.\u00a0 Assembled at Charlestown, the Natal Railroad terminus, thousands of miners lined up for food.\u00a0 Lelyveld cited an article by a reporter of the Sunday Times on the situation.\u00a0 He found Gandhi in shirtsleeves, sitting on an upturned milk case.\u00a0 Next to him was a galvanized tub filled \u201cwith an unsavory concoction which he took to be soup.\u201d Next to the tub were sacks of loaves of bread.\u00a0 Gandhi was observed \u201ccutting the loaves into three-inch hunks, then digging with his thumb a small hole into each hunk which he then filled with coarse sugar, as the men filed by in successive batches of a dozen strikers.\u00a0 Lelyveld commented that this picture of Gandhi feeding his followers with his own hands, set a new standard for Indian leadership, and for leadership anywhere.\u00a0 An agreement came in 1914.and Parliament enacted the Indian Relief Act.15<\/a><\/p>\n

Returning to India in 1915, traveled around India for a year experiencing the reality of India.\u00a0 Encouraged by Prof. Gokhale, his political mentor, he brought with him a broad notion of Swaraj<\/em> or freedom which he had developed in South Africa and was the theme of his first book, Hind Swaraj<\/em> (1909). Its surface meaning was freedom from British imperial rule but it included the centrality of nonviolence as the means to achieve it.\u00a0 It embraced a more creative idea of freedom which meant working on a project to abolish untouchability, building unity among all the different cultures, languages, religions, castes, and regions in India, strengthening Hindu-Muslim unity, the advancement of women\u2019s equality, and the uplift of the poor.\u00a0 Lelyveld remarked that Gandhi\u2019s\u00a0 respect for the poorest Indians was sincere and he genuinely admired their courage and dedication and concluded that this experienced transformed him: \u201cHe identified with them till his dying day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sections on Gandhi\u2019s experience in South Africa contained the most interesting and insightful narratives of Lelveld\u2019s study.\u00a0 He did not follow a linear method of painting historically Gandhi\u2019s life, but a more episodic one.\u00a0 He takes up the theme of Mahatma or Great Soul and brings Gandhi down from the clouds to see him as human. Lelyveld asserted that fearlessness and truth became the heart of Gandhi\u2019s teaching.\u00a0 He quoted Jawaharlal Nehru\u2019s impression of Gandhi\u2019s impact:\u00a0 \u201cHis voice was somehow different from others.\u00a0 It was quiet and low, and yet it could be heard above the shouting of the multitude; it was soft and gentle and yet there seemed to be steel hidden away somewhere in it.\u00a0 Behind the language of peace and friendship\u2026the quivering shadow of action and a determination not to submit to a wrong.\u201d16<\/a><\/p>\n

Gandhi witnessed unimaginable violence over minority rights and partition in the last years of his life.\u00a0 Lelyveld admitted that his activity to stop it was miraculous.\u00a0 This was how he summed up his search for the truth of the Great Soul:\u00a0 \u201cHe struggled with doubt and self until his last days but made the predicament of the millions of the poor and the excluded his own, whatever the tensions among them, as no other leader of modern times has.\u00a0 And\u00a0 his flawed efforts as a social visionary and reformer can be more moving in hindsight than his moments of success as a national leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

Louis Massignon (1883-1962)<\/h3>\n

An outstanding French Orientalist scholar of Islam and Arabic, Massignon\u2019s life was characterized by many transformations.17<\/a> Gandhi was a model for Massignon\u2019s response to the upheavals that shook the Middle Eastern world following World War II.18<\/a>\u00a0 His interest in the thought of Gandhi began from 1921 during the Indian non-cooperation campaign and the movement to preserve the Caliphate.\u00a0 He recalled that two Muslims visited him at the College de France at the head of a mission to get his support for the Caliphate and cited Gandhi\u2019s example: \u201cIt was through Muslims that I knew Gandhi\u2026I understood the ideals of Gandhi, the ideal of Satyagraha, the pursuit of truth by steadfastness in will \u2026I also learned that Satyagraha<\/em> was a sacred thing for Muslims also.\u00a0 I realized immediately there was something in Gandhi that was valuable.\u00a0 For perhaps the first time in the world, there was a man influencing people of other religions and with great social results.\u201d19<\/a><\/p>\n

Massignon published the Satyagraha<\/em> pledge in the April 1921 issue of the Revue du Monde Musulman<\/em>.\u00a0 He sympathized with Gandhi\u2019s political position that unity and mutual understanding between Muslims and Hindus were crucial for India\u2019s freedom.\u00a0 But he felt that Gandhi\u2019s support for the Caliphate, which the Turks abolished in 1924, was motivated by Gandhi\u2019s respect for Muslim values.\u00a0 It was a view that he hoped the French would adopt in its relations with Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa.\u00a0 Massignon met Gandhi for the first time in 1931 when, following the second Round Table Conference in London, he stopped over in Paris to visit Romain Rolland.\u00a0 The meeting was held at the home of Mme Louise Giresse who in 1932 founded the Amis de Gandhi<\/em> Association which Massignon joined and later was President.\u00a0 With Rolland, the association established a newspaper, Nouvelles de l\u2019Inde<\/em>.\u00a0 Massignon said that he remembered that a question was asked about what role religion could play in preventing war, to which Gandhi replied that \u201cofficial religions are very weak in stopping wars.\u201d\u00a0 The newspaper kept the French people informed of India\u2019s efforts in their struggle for independence.<\/p>\n

Recognized as a major scholar of Islamic and Arabic studies in the 1920s, he founded the Institut des etudes Islamiques<\/em> to study the economy of the Middle East.\u00a0 His scholarly research was accompanied by political activism against social injustice.\u00a0 In Paris he started night classes for illiterate workers from North Africa.\u00a0 His membership on the committee for the approaching centenary of French colonization of Algeria educated him about French colonialism at the time Arab consciousness was rising in the Middle East and North Africa and the idea of Algerian independence was arising.\u00a0 This new activism drew him closer to Gandhi\u2019s Satyagraha<\/em> campaign.\u00a0 He found in Gandhi the connection between his political struggles against social injustice and his spiritual development, and \u201ca soul-mate who practiced his deeply- held belief of sacred hospitality.\u201d20<\/a>\u00a0 Persuaded by Gandhi\u2019s principled commitment to nonviolence and his view of British imperialism as an unjust system, Massignon began to have doubts about French imperialism.\u00a0 In a short article on French colonialism in 1935, he presented two views.\u00a0 One was the dilemma posed by a young Frenchman who asked how he could take a civil service position in Algeria and support colonialist policies and square this with his Christian conscience.\u00a0 The other was that of an Algerian student who wrote to Massignon:\u00a0 \u201cI cannot forgive you this one thing, that I loved you who were humane to me, because in so doing you were my worst enemy, causing me to risk losing my hatred for a race and culture different from my own and one capable of giving my people only ruin and despair.\u201d21<\/a><\/p>\n

The Spanish civil war in 1936 and 1937 saw Massignon active in the politics of Europe.\u00a0 As the Republican and Fascist forces engaged in unspeakable atrocities, Massignon joined Jacques Maritain, Georges Duhamel, Gabriel Marcel, Francois Mauriac, and other French writers in founding the Committee for civil and religious peace.\u00a0 They protested the massacre of the republicans in the bullring of Badajoz, the bombings of Madrid and Guernica.\u00a0 They worked to bring a peaceful end to the war by reconciliation.<\/p>\n

For the next 15 years Gandhi and his movement were his inspiration as cries for freedom arose in the French colonies in North Africa and the Middle East.\u00a0 Massignon expressed sympathy and solidarity with their desire for independence.\u00a0 In 1947 he and his friends, Jean Scelles and Andre de Peretti, formed the Comite Chretien d\u2019Entente France-Islam to defend the political and religious rights of Muslims, \u201cto work for loyal civic and social understanding with the Muslims for our common destiny.\u201d22<\/a>\u00a0 Massignon often confessed in this period that Gandhi was his model for the sacred and political path that he was following.\u00a0 He saw similarities between the freedom struggles in the Middle East, North Africa, and India.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian issue was of great interest to him.<\/em>\u00a0 Massignon made a plea for peace and mutual understanding to stop the violence.\u00a0 He was criticized for his support for the Palestinians and his opposition to Zionism which he equated with European colonialism.\u00a0 In the summer, 1948, he wrote an article on the plight of the Palestinians, \u201cPalestine and Peace with Justice\u201d.\u00a0 The article reflected the influence of Gandhi who had been assassinated earlier in January 1948. He presented the view that when conflicts had become extreme and difficult to resolve, only the lives and deaths of truly spiritual persons could resolve them peacefully.\u00a0 He asserted that the nonviolent and courageous witness to the truth of a situation, as with Gandhi, remained our best hope in conflicts that were seemingly intractable by human effort.\u00a0\u00a0 Massignon revived the Amis de Gandhi<\/em> Association the year of Gandhi\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

During the years of his political activism, he examined the thought and actions of Gandhi intently.\u00a0 He saw a coincidence between Gandhi\u2019s notion of civic virtue and the Muslim imperative of treating the stranger as a guest which he called sacred hospitality.\u00a0 Mutual respect and understanding were the key premises for constructing the bridges for peace in political and social conflicts.\u00a0 Massignon agreed with Gandhi that where two peoples shared historically the same territory, segregation or partition was not likely to bring peace.\u00a0 In 1947 Gandhi opposed the partition of India as he did that of Palestine.\u00a0 Massignon felt that Gandhi \u201cwould have wanted the Jews to reach understanding directly and freely on an equal footing with the Arabs.\u201d23<\/a>\u00a0 As Gude herself said, \u201cOnly dialogue and an honest effort to understand differences could replace suspicion and hostility with respect and understanding.\u00a0 When the Algerian issue burst into flames in 1954, Massignon felt that the Palestinian issue portended the same consequences for the Algerian conflict.<\/p>\n

Massignon periodically revisited the writings of Gandhi for inspiration:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one to whom I owe the most in this regard is Gandhi, whom I saw twice.\u00a0 He taught me to listen to the cries of the excluded, the pariahs, and the displaced persons. We must not love him as ourselves, as our neighbor.\u00a0 We must love this stranger more than ourselves.\u201d<\/em>24<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the 1950s to his death in 1962 Massignon was actively engaged in the conflicts between France and its North African colonies.\u00a0 Initially holding out hope that the French government would treat Algerians with respect and equality by granting them a larger role in governing themselves, Massignon was disturbed that the official policies were demeaning and smacked of contempt.\u00a0 He still kept proposing consistently his favourite themes like sacred hospitality, mutual respect, dialogue, and reconciliation hoping that they would reach a receptive ear.\u00a0 The narrative of reconciliation made some critics think that Massignon was a supporter of imperialism, What Massignon hoped for by reconciliation was that French and Arab could come to an understanding of each other\u2019s point of view and arrive at solutions peacefully.\u00a0 He certainly did not belong to those Orientalist scholars who felt that Arabs could not govern themselves humanely.<\/p>\n

Massignon remained faithful to his commitment of nonviolent means of securing peace.\u00a0 When crises became extreme and seemingly impossible to resolve, he embarked upon fasting following the practice of Gandhi. 25<\/a><\/p>\n

Invited to speak on Gandhi\u2019s influence on his life and work at the UNESCO conference in Delhi in 1953, he spoke about how Gandhi gave him a vocabulary for ideas about meditation and action that he had sought for fifty years, among which were his commitment to nonviolence and the courage to bear witness to the truth even in the face of death.\u00a0 He meditated in the garden at Birla House where Gandhi was assassinated, and laid a wreath at Raj Ghat where he was cremated.\u00a0\u00a0 For Massignon, Gandhi\u2019s constant efforts to heal ethnic and religious strife and maintain unity represented concretely what he called the imperative of sacred hospitality.<\/p>\n

Massignon continued his days of fasting every first Friday of every month for peace.\u00a0 Prayer, fasting and the vow were all part of his methods of struggle.\u00a0 He interpreted Gandhi\u2019s use of the vow in this way: \u201c The point\u2026is that you meditate before beginning to act and do not act merely by idealism.\u00a0 It means that you are no longer theoretical; it means that you are steadfast, that you meditate, contemplate.\u00a0 You try to find the inner meaning.\u00a0 You are fixed.\u00a0 You have vowed your life.\u201d26<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Massignon also had an original view of Gandhi\u2019s inconsistencies.\u00a0 These arose only in cases of conscience where he embraced the truth as he experienced it. Another insight he learned from Gandhi\u2019s writing was the distinction between destiny and vocation.\u00a0 Destiny was life\u2019s purpose as inspired by one\u2019s history and culture; vocation was higher than destiny.\u00a0 It often arose after a troublesome crisis where one chose a different path, or more appropriately, a different calling.\u00a0 Massignon saw vocation as open to transcendence and hope.\u00a0 This was the stage where one possessed the courage to bear witness to the truth, what Gandhi meant when he said that nonviolence was the weapon of the strong.<\/p>\n

1954 was an eventful year for Massignon.\u00a0 He retired from the College de France and became president of the Friends of Gandhi<\/em> society.\u00a0 It was also the year when the tragic Algerian war began which caused him great sadness in his later years.\u00a0 He could claim success in the independent movements in Morocco and Tunisia.\u00a0 But, as the Algerian war continued with escalating violence, he felt that his efforts to bring a peaceful reconciliation where both sides would respect each other\u2019s culture and religion had failed.\u00a0 During the war Massignon wrote several articles as president of the Friends of Gandhi<\/em> society.\u00a0 He criticized the harsh policies of France and stressed his theme of Christian \u2013 Muslim understanding.\u00a0 For seven years the violence escalated.\u00a0 He looked to Gandhi\u2019s actions before 1947 for hope, and asked his countrymen to support Muslim demands for justice and to respect their religious customs.\u00a0 Supported by French intellectuals, he wrote letters against the government\u2019s policies of repression and recommended negotiation with the Algerian movement.\u00a0 In France increasing numbers of North Africans were arrested and imprisoned.\u00a0 With a sympathy born from teaching night classes to poor North African workers, he made it his policy to visit the prison where they were kept, demanding that they receive the status of conscientious objectors.\u00a0 On October 12, 1955, together with the Friends of Gandhi<\/em> society and the France-Islam<\/em> Committee ,Massignon recited a prayer from the Quran for \u201call the victims\u2026the women and children above all, fallen on both sides,\u201d<\/em> and read this declaration:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe consider that the government of the Republic has not yet treated Muslim Algeria like Christian Auvergne and Brittany.\u00a0 We want it henceforth to treat its children as our children, its women like our women, and its men like our men, as free men with their own destiny.\u201d27<\/a>. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They then took an oath to continue the struggle:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cJust as Gandhi did in Delhi in 1947, in front of the Muslim women, we commit ourselves under oath to pursue our efforts to maintain our pledged word and demand justice.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the army adopted harsher measures, the FLN answered violence with violence.\u00a0 When news spread about internment and relocation camps, Massignon organized demonstrations against the torture and the camps.\u00a0 Matters reached such desperation that there arose a movement to ask General De Gaulle to become leader again and he was invested in 1958.\u00a0 A measure of order was restored under De Gaulle but the harsh security measures remained.\u00a0 Massignon continued his days of fasting.\u00a0 He was hopeful when General De Gaulle announced Algeria\u2019s right of self-determination.\u00a0 Since the internment camps continued\u00a0 to operate, Joseph Pyronnet, a young disciple of a well-known Gandhian from France, Lanza del Vasto (1901-1985), organized a demonstration to protest against the camps by prayer, fasting and courting arrest.\u00a0 On January 28,1961, the 13th<\/sup> anniversary of Gandhi\u2019s assassination, the Friends of Gandhi<\/em> society members and Massignon met to reflect on their understanding of Satyagraha<\/em>.\u00a0 Massignon declared that he had faithfully followed nonviolence but confessed that he had failed to achieve peace.\u00a0 However, he said that he now understood the significance and value of Satyagraha<\/em> to lie not in success but in the articulation of the truth:\u00a0 \u201cIn the end, we do not live here below in order to conquer, but to give witness and to pass on the testimony to those younger than ourselves.\u201d28<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Hopes revived when General De Gaulle called a referendum on Algerian independence in 1961.\u00a0 The positive results on self-determination led to negotiations between the government and the FLN.\u00a0 Supporters of French colonialism refused to accept this and began a policy of terrorism.\u00a0 On October 17, some 20,000 North Africans participated in a protest against a curfew.\u00a0 The police responded with extreme brutality killing 100 and arresting thousands.\u00a0 Dead bodies were thrown in the Seine river and in the bushes.\u00a0 One of the dead was a student of Massignon.<\/p>\n

On October 24, he went to the morgue and paid for the right to remove the body and accompanied it to the cemetery.\u00a0 On March 18, 1962 the Algerian war ended, but the violence against North Africans continued.\u00a0 Massignon insisted that hospitality to foreign guests extended to interring them with the prayers of their faith.\u00a0 While writing an article on October 31, Massignon died.\u00a0 At a memorial mass by the Amis de Gandhi<\/em>, Massignon\u2019s devoted friend, Francois Mauriac, gave this acclaim: \u201cI know no more striking example of knowledge transformed into love.\u201d<\/p>\n

What did we learn in this reflection on the two studies? Joseph Lelyveld\u2019s work questioned the accepted narrative of Gandhi\u2019s Truth in order to understand him as a human being who was not a saint.\u00a0 What is to be gained by raising questions of those we consider as models of humanity? Lelyveld contended that others have more to learn and praise from the acknowledgment of Gandhi\u2019s failures and defeats as well as his courage and compassion for all peoples.\u00a0 Massignon argues this point of view also but goes further.\u00a0 For him, Gandhi was a heroic figure, who suffered defeats, to be sure, but men and women like Gandhi are heroic because they are willing to die as witnesses to what is true and just. In times when truth and justice seem to be hidden, they inspire us and give us hope to engage with our world with reason and persuasion to resolve conflicts nonviolently, and to crown knowledge with compassion.<\/p>\n

NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

2<\/a> In addition to the two that I will examine, I had initially selected Norman G. Finkelstein, What Gandhi Says abiout Nonviolence, Resistance and <\/em>Courage, NY: OR Books, 2012; Arthur Herman, Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our <\/em>Age, NY: Bantam Books, 2008; Simone Pantner Brick, Gandhi and Nationalism: The Path to Indian Independence<\/em> London: I.B. Tauris, 2012; and Carool Kersten\u2019s online article, \u201cMacchiavelli or Gandhi: Chaiwat Satha Anand\u2019s Nonviolence in a Comparative Perspective,\u201d http:HCL.academica.edu\/caroollersten\/papers 17056-7\/9\/2012,p.77<\/em><\/p>\n

3<\/a> Joseph Lelyveld, Great Soul. Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India,<\/em> NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011; see the reviews of Hari Kunzru, \u201cAppreciating Gandhi Through the Human Side,\u201d NY Times<\/em>, April 20, 2011;\u00a0 Andrew Roberts, \u201cAmong the Hagiographers,\u201d The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, March 26, 2011.<\/p>\n

4<\/a> See Giriraj Kishore, The Girmitiya Saga<\/em>. Translated from the Hindi original to English by Prajapati Sah, New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2010.<\/p>\n

5<\/a> Lelyveld, op.cit<\/em>., p. 38.<\/p>\n

6<\/a> Ibid., p.25.<\/p>\n

8<\/a> Lelyveld, p. 53.<\/p>\n

9<\/a> Ibid., p.60.<\/p>\n

10<\/a> Ibid., p,68.<\/p>\n

11<\/a> Ibid., p.70.<\/p>\n

12<\/a> Ibid., p.83.<\/p>\n

13<\/a> Ibid., p.88.<\/p>\n

14<\/a> See the Times of India<\/em>, April 6, 2011.<\/p>\n

15<\/a> Lelyveld, p. 116.<\/p>\n

16<\/a> Lelyveld, p. 153.<\/p>\n

17<\/a> Mary Louise Gude, Louis Massignon: The Crucible of Compassion<\/em>, Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996.<\/p>\n

18<\/a> See L. Massignon, La Passion de Al Hallaj, Martyr Mystique de\u2019Islam<\/em>, 2nd<\/sup>. Edition, Galimard, 1975. Massignon attended the Lycee Louis Le Grand in Paris in 1896 and received his Baccalauriat in 1901 following which he made visits to Algeria where he met Alfred Le Chatelet who had founded the Chair of Muslim Sociology at the College de France.\u00a0 His interest in North Africa continued when he did field work in Morocco for his diploma in Higher Studies.\u00a0 He was sent to Mesopotamia in 1907 on an archaeological mission and was befriendedby a Muslim family, the Alusi, whose hospitality was a source of inspiration for Massignon\u2019s study of Islam and Arabic.\u00a0 It was a time of the Turkish revolution and Massignon was captured as a spy, but was saved by the Alusi family.\u00a0 In World War I he was a translator of the 17th<\/sup>\u00a0 French Colonial Division, and, as and Islamist and Arabist, he was made a temporary captain to the Sykes-Picot Mission of 1917.\u00a0 He was saddened by the collapse of the Mission.<\/p>\n

19<\/a> Gude, op.cit<\/em>., p. 126.<\/p>\n

20<\/a> Ibid., p. 145.<\/p>\n

21<\/a> Quoted in Gude, op.cit., pp..144- 145.<\/p>\n

22<\/a> Ibid. p.162.<\/p>\n

23<\/a> Ibid., p. 168.<\/p>\n

24<\/a> Ibid., p. 175.<\/p>\n

25<\/a> Ibid., p. 193.<\/p>\n

26<\/a> Ibid., p. 209.<\/p>\n

27<\/a> Ibid, p.222.<\/p>\n

28<\/a> Ibid., p. 236.<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/p>\n

David M. Traboulay \u2013 Professor at City University of New York, CUNY College of Staten Island<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – academia.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This paper was the fruit of two conceptions.\u00a0 The first was a manuscript of Gandhi\u2019s Satyagraha movement revised at least six times, unfinished.\u00a0 The other arose from a deep concern over the consequences of terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":154965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[241],"tags":[93,867,524,950,741,444,1243,86,723,602,70,481],"class_list":["post-177913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-the-week","tag-afghanistan","tag-anglo-america","tag-gandhi","tag-invasion","tag-iraq","tag-nonviolence","tag-nonviolent-action","tag-occupation","tag-research","tag-satyagraha","tag-usa","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}