The Jews: Gandhi

Lord Bobo · Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Sharmila Sekaran wants us to re-read Mahatma Gandhi's views written some 70 years ago, taken from here

(Harijan, 26 November 1938).

Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew

question in Palestine and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation that I

venture to offer my views on this very difficult question.

My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them

became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long

persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their

treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious

sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out

to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my

sympathy for the Jews.

But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home

for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the

tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like

other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they

earn their livelihood?

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France

to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in

Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction

but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so

that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.

The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and

bred. The Jews born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they

relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do

they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a

colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.

But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old

never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For he is

propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of which any

inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter. The crime of an

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obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If

there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to

prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe

in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or

province.

But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is being committed against

the Jews, surely there can be no alliance with Germany. How can there be alliance between a

nation which claims to stand for justice and democracy and one which is the declared enemy of

both? Or is England drifting towards armed dictatorship and all it means?

Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered

by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous,

terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.

Can the Jews resist this organised and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their

self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has

faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal

than the God of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus, though as a matter of fact in

essence, He is common to all and one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews

attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel

helpless. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim

Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or

cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment.

And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would

have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the

Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And

suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of

resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France

and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner

strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by

way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be

prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of

thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the

tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking

that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

It is hardly necessary for me to point out that it is easier for the Jews than for the Czechs to follow

my prescription. And they have in the Indian satyagraha campaign in South Africa an exact

parallel. There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that the Jews occupy in Germany.

The persecution had also a religious tinge. President Kruger used to say that the white Christians

were the chosen of God and Indians were inferior beings created to serve the whites. A

fundamental clause in the Transvaal constitution was that there should be no equality between the

whites and coloured races including Asiatics. There too the Indians were consigned to ghettos

described as locations. The other disabilities were almost of the same type as those of the Jews in

Germany. The Indians, a mere handful, resorted to satyagraha without any backing from the world

outside or the Indian Government. Indeed the British officials tried to dissuade the satyagrahis is

from their contemplated step. World opinion and the Indian Government came to their aid after

eight years of fighting. And that too was by way of diplomatic pressure not of a threat of war.

But the Jews of Germany can offer satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than the Indians of

South Africa. The Jews are a compact, homogeneous community in Germany. They are far more

gifted than the Indians of South Africa. And they have organised world opinion behind them. I am

convinced that if someone with courage and vision can arise among them to lead them in nonviolent

action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer

of hope. And what has today become a degrading man-hunt can be turned into a calm and

determined stand offered by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given

to them by Jehovah. It will be then a truly religious resistance offered against the godless fury of

dehumanised man. The German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the

sense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity. They will have

rendered service to fellow-Germans and proved their title to be the real Germans as against those

who are today dragging, however unknowingly, the German name into the mire.

And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it in the wrong

way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if

they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under

the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or

the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to

convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can

offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea

without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in their favour in their

religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only

discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-shares with the British in despoiling a

people who have done no wrong to them.

I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting

what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according

to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the

face of overwhelming odds.

Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of nonviolence

for vindicating their position on earth. Every country is their home including Palestine not

by aggression but by loving service. A Jewish friend has sent me a book called "The Jewish

Contribution to Civilisation" by Cecil Roth. It gives a record of what the Jews have done to enrich

the world`s literature, art, music, drama, science, medicine, agriculture, etc. Given the will, the Jew

can refuse to be treated as the outcaste of the West, to be despised or patronised. He can

command the attention and respect of the world by being man, the chosen creation of God,

instead of being man who is fast sinking to the brute and forsaken by God. They can add to their

many contributions the surpassing contribution of non-violent action.

Segaon, November 20, 1938

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