OSHO COMPARED ADOLF HITLER WITH MAHATMA GANDHI



ADOLF HITLER WAS A VIOLENT MAN BUT MAHATMA GANDHI WAS NOT A NON-VIOLENT MAN THOUGH HE PREACHED NON-VIOLENCE

"It is very easy to misunderstand me."

"I did compare Adolf Hitler with Mahatma Gandhi. Obviously, it is difficult to understand because they seem to be totally opposite to each other; but that opposition is only seemingly so."

"Adolf Hitler created the greatest violence in the world up to now. He killed one million Jews in gas chambers, in concentration camps, and for five years continuously invaded countries, butchered people – children, old men, women, who had nothing to do with the military. They were simple citizens."

"To compare Adolf Hitler with Mahatma Gandhi seems to be absurd, but it is not. Mahatma Gandhi preached nonviolence, but Mahatma Gandhi was not a nonviolent man. Preaching is one thing; to live it is totally different. I will give you a few examples which can show you what I mean."

"Gandhi used to have an ashram in South Africa, called Phoenix. His wife was continuously tortured by him for the simple reason that she was not willing to clean the toilets of other people of the ashram."

"In India it is accepted that only a certain caste – the lowest, the untouchables – do that work. The higher caste people never do that kind of work. Kasturba, Gandhi's wife, was a simple, traditional woman. It was hard for her. Because she refused – she was pregnant – in the middle of the night Gandhi threw her out of the house and told her that unless she feels that she has committed a sin, he will not allow her in the house."

"A cold night, a pregnant woman in a country where she does not know any language to communicate with people – do you think of this act as nonviolence? I cannot see it as nonviolent. It is pure violence. In the first place, if Gandhi feels it right to clean toilets, he can do it. But to force it on the wife is trespassing on the freedom of the individual – which also is violence."

"Gandhi had five sons. The eldest, Haridas, escaped from home because Gandhi would not allow him to go to any school. Gandhi was against modern education; he thought modern education – particularly science – had destroyed people's religion, innocence, faith, so he was not going to educate his children."

"Haridas was very interested in knowing more and more things. Naturally he wanted to be educated; and I don't see that he was wrong. In fact, whatever Gandhi knew was through education, and Gandhi was educated in England. If British education could not destroy him, could not destroy his religiousness, why should he be afraid that his son would be destroyed?"

"But he was so much against it, that it came to a climax point. He told Haridas, "Either you stop asking to be educated, or just get lost. Then this is not your home."

"Haridas must have been a courageous child: he left home."

"Do you think of this as nonviolence? Violence is not only killing people. Violence is an attitude, an approach."

"Gandhi was trying to impose his ideology on his son. This is not nonviolence at all. And to tell the small child either to accept his ideology or leave the house and never come back again – this seems to be hard, harsh, ugly."

"Haridas left the house and stayed with one of his distant relatives who could understand that his demand was not wrong. He educated him. And because Haridas became educated, Gandhi wouldn't accept him in the house; not only that, he disinherited Haridas, and told him he was no longer his son."

"This is an extremely violent, revengeful attitude."

"And in fact, Haridas proved that Gandhi was wrong. He became educated; no religion was lost, no innocence was lost, no faith was lost. If Gandhi was really a nonviolent person he should have apologized to Haridas, and welcomed him home, because he had existentially proved that "You are wrong." But on the contrary, he was so resentful, so revengeful that he disinherited him."

"Gandhi used to say that Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, are all the same. All the religions of the world teach the same doctrine, the same God. Their languages may be different, but their essentials are not different. Anyone reading Mahatma Gandhi will think him a great synthesizer of all the religions, but that is not true. It was not a philosophical understanding, but a political strategy."

"In India the majority religion is Hindu, the second major religion is Mohammedan, the third is Christianity. Gandhi wanted all these three religions to follow his fight against the British rule. And it was possible only if all these three were not religiously antagonistic to each other. So it was a political strategy, and Haridas proved it perfectly."

"When he was abandoned by Gandhi, disinherited, Haridas became converted to Mohammedanism. The word 'haridas' means 'servant of God'. He told the Mohammedan priest who was converting him, "Please keep my name – of course in the Arabic translation, but with the same meaning." So the name given to him was Abdullah Gandhi. 'Abdu-ullah' means the same as Haridas – 'servant of God'.

"Gandhi was furious. Now, in the first place, you have disinherited him, he is no longer your son – why should you be furious? And it is everybody's freedom to choose any path."

"This is absolutely violent. He said to his wife, "I am not going to see his face again in my life. And remember...." The custom in India is that when the father dies, the eldest son sets fire to his funeral pyre. So Gandhi made it clear to all his sons, wife, friends, followers, that in no case should Haridas be allowed to start the fire at the funeral. He even managed to dominate after death! Certainly his mind must have been really full of hate."

"It happened only once.... Where I used to live in Jabalpur, there is a junction railway station, Katni, a hundred miles away, where – just by chance – Gandhi was traveling in one train and Haridas was traveling in another train from another direction. Both trains had to wait at Katni for another train from a third direction to arrive."

"Haridas, seeing that his father, his mother, were in the train, rushed just to have a look at the old man – he was never revengeful – and to see his mother. As Haridas came close, Gandhi closed the door, closed the windows, and told Kasturba, Haridas' mother – who was really crying, because she wanted to see Haridas, just to see him! – told her, "If you want to see him, then go with him. Just as I have abandoned him, you are also abandoned."

"Haridas is standing outside the compartment – windows closed, door closed – Kasturba is crying, and Gandhi will not allow her even to see her son's face."

"Do you think this is nonviolence, compassion, love?"


GANDHI'S 'NON-VIOLENT FREEDOM STRUGGLE' WAS A SIMPLE STRATEGY BECAUSE INDIA HAD NO MILITRY POWER TO ENTER INTO ARMED STRUGGLE WITH BRITAIN. UNDER GANDHI PEOPLE REPRESSED VIOLENCE FOR FORTY YEARS BUT AS BRITAIN LEFT INDIA THAT VIOLENCE EXPLODED.

"Gandhi had said to an American journalist, Louis Fisher... because Fisher had asked him, "You are against violence. If India becomes independent, what will happen to the biggest army in the world?" – which was in India. "What will happen to your air force, your navy and all your war weapons?" – a relevant question."

"Gandhi said, "I will dissolve all armies, send them to the farms to work there, and I will drown all the weapons in the ocean. My country is going to be absolutely nonviolent." India became independent. The army was not dissolved; the question was not even raised. On the contrary, India and Pakistan started a war. The three war planes – the first to go over the Pakistan borders to bomb citizens – were blessed by Gandhi. This is a strange kind of nonviolence."

"When India was under British rule, nonviolence was a good policy because India could not have managed any armed revolution against the British – that was impossible. The only way was what Gandhi did: "Fill the prisons. Go and declare to the prison authorities, 'We are for independence. If you want to imprison us, imprison us.'"

"Now, India is a vast country. Today its population is eight hundred million. Where can you find so many prisons?"

"And Gandhi insisted that no freedom fighter do anything which could provoke and give an excuse to the British government to be violent. "Don't throw a stone at a police station. Don't burn a train, don't dynamite a bridge, because anything done by you will be enough excuse for the British government to kill thousands of people. And we will not be able to stand before the world to say that we are nonviolent and nonviolent people are being killed who have not done any harm. Then we will not be able to gain the sympathy of the whole world."

"This is simple strategy, and Gandhi succeeded in his strategy; he really confused the British government. What to do with this man? He would not do any violence, nor would he allow his followers to do any violence, and if people are not doing anything, how can you start shooting them? On what grounds?"

"Finally Britain decided to leave India – not because of Gandhi's movement; his movement happened in 1942, and the British government left India in 1947. Revolution brings immediate effect. Cause and effect are joined, not five years apart. The revolution that happened in 1942 in India was crushed within nine days. Never in history has there been such an impotent revolution, ever. Nine days, and the whole revolution had disappeared."

"There was no reason for the British government to be afraid of such a revolution and let India be free. India was almost half the empire of Britain. The reason why they left was totally different. The reason was that they had exploited India enough; now there was no more possibility to exploit it. On the contrary, it was becoming an economic burden on Britain. They were the rulers, obviously they were responsible for the people, and the responsibility was growing every day as India's population was growing."

"It is simple arithmetic that if an empire becomes an economic burden on you, then the best way out is to make it free. Let them have their own responsibility. And moreover, it was beautiful to give India freedom while there was no revolution, so you could keep a friendship with the country. You have not been thrown out, but by your own will you have made the country free. You have obliged the country."

"So as far as Gandhi's nonviolence goes, the moment Britain left India, nonviolence also disappeared. And a strange coincidence is, that Gandhi had been for forty years continuously forcing people not to be violent. He had no discipline, no method of meditation that could recreate a man's energy, could transform his being and make him nonviolent. He had only this ideology: don't be violent.

"And violence is within you. It is man's inheritance of millions of years, it needs tremendous work to change it. Gandhi had not given any idea how it had to be changed. But "Don't be violent" meant repress it, go on repressing. For forty years he managed to force Indians to repress their violence. And his logic was appealing: "If you are violent, Britain is never going to leave India. If you are nonviolent, then sooner or later they will be ashamed of keeping an innocent, nonviolent country in slavery."

"So people remained nonviolent for forty years, and as Britain left India, a tremendous violence exploded in India. And the coincidence is, just one million people were killed in that violence; riots between Hindus and Mohammedans killed one million people – exactly the same number as Adolf Hitler killed in Germany!"

"Of course, they arrived from different directions, but both came to the same conclusion. Who is responsible for one million people killed in India after independence? Gandhi has to accept that he was responsible for forty years' repression, and when the pressure was gone – Britain had moved with her armies out of the country – it erupted like a volcano."

"In fact, Adolf Hitler's violence with the Jews was far more peaceful, because he killed people in the most up-to-date gas chambers, where you don't take much time. Thousands of people can be put in a gas chamber, and just a switch is pressed. Within a second you will not know when you were alive and when you died. Within a second, you evaporate. The chimneys of the factory start taking you, the smoke – you can call it the holy smoke – and this seems to be a direct way towards God. The smoke simply goes upwards."

"But the violence that happened in India was really cruel, ugly, barbarous. Children were mutilated, killed; old men were mutilated, killed. Trains were burned, buses were burned, houses were burned. All over India there was freedom to kill. There was no rule, no government; nobody could prevent it."

"But psychologists have not looked into why it happened, who is responsible for it. I make Mahatma Gandhi responsible for it. That's why I had compared Mahatma Gandhi with Adolf Hitler. If you look just at the sentences where I compare them, you may be confused. But if you go into all the details of why I did it, you will not be surprised."

"I was condemning the monks when I compared them with Adolf Hitler. I was condemning Mahatma Gandhi when I compared him with Adolf Hitler. I was not praising Adolf Hitler. I was using him as a comparison. The reasons that you respect a saint – he fulfills them perfectly. The reasons Mahatma Gandhi is thought to be a great soul – Adolf Hitler fulfills perfectly. And yet the man turned out to be the biggest monster in the whole history of humanity."

"You can now see my standpoint. Neither vegetarianism, nor a structured life, nor celibacy, bachelorhood, is going to transform you. These things could not transform Adolf Hitler. How could these things transform Mahatma Gandhi? How could these things transform the thousands of saints and monks living in the monasteries? These things have no relevance as far as the transformation of man is concerned."

"The Christian saints have been responsible for immense violence throughout two thousand years of Christian history. They have killed Jews, they have killed Mohammedans. They have burned people alive – particularly they have burned millions of women alive. And if Adolf Hitler burned one million Jews in a very scientific, peaceful way – nobody was tortured – what is the difference between these people?"

"Gandhi managed to repress violence – which was bound to explode one day, and it did explode. And in that explosion he himself was assassinated. Strange, a man who has been teaching nonviolence his whole life is assassinated.

"Not much difference.... Hitler committed suicide, Gandhi was assassinated, but both died in an unnatural way."


INDIAN MASSES WERE NOT INTERESTED IN GANDHI'S POLITICS; BUT THEY WERE INTERESTED IN HIS MAHATMAHOOD, HIS SAINTLINESS. HIS FOLLOWERS WERE NOT INTERESTED IN HIS MAHATMAHOOD BUT THEY WERE INTERESTED IN HIS POLITICAL POWER.

"In fact, before Gandhi was assassinated, in his diary, he mentions many times, "Now I would like God to take me away from life." When he was young he had written in his autobiography, "I would like to live one hundred and twenty-five years." And he repeated it again and again until India became independent."

"When India became independent, his followers... they were not really his followers, because none of them was listening to what he was saying."

"He was against smoking, but almost all his political followers, the leaders, were smokers; they were all drinkers. His successor, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, was a meat-eater; Indira too, was a meat eater."

"Strange, a country of nonviolent people, a country of vegetarians has been for the last forty years almost continuously ruled by a single family who are not vegetarians. Now again, Indira's son is there on the throne, and he is not a vegetarian either."

"So those disciples were not listening to him, but they still kept him high in the sky because he had immense influence over the Indian masses. The Indian masses were not interested in his politics, they were interested in his mahatmahood, his saintliness."

"His followers were not interested in his mahatmahood. They all laughed behind his back, they thought that he was a crackpot. But they were interested in political power, and that man had the whole country in his hands. So until these political leaders came into power, they went on listening to Gandhi. The moment they were in power, nobody bothered about Gandhi."

Gandhi said, "I have become absolutely useless. Nobody listens to me, nobody is ready to follow my advice. It would be good if God took me away from life. Now I do not want to live for one hundred and twenty-five years."

"Asking God to release you from your body is a religious way of being suicidal. He could not commit suicide, because that would go against his whole philosophy. But he was waiting for somebody else to do the dirty job. And one man, Nathuram Godse, did it."

"The last words of Gandhi when he was assassinated were, "Ah, God!" My feeling is that he felt immensely relieved. He was in a constant torture after the freedom. First the explosion of violence all over the country – one million people dead, many more crippled, blinded, their hands cut, their legs cut; many more made beggars because their houses were burned...."

"And this man was thinking that after independence there would be an era of nonviolence, peace. His intentions were good, but his understanding was poor. His intentions were good, but how to implement those intentions in reality, he was absolutely unaware."

"He was not a meditator. He used to pray every day, but prayer is not meditation. Prayer is faith, belief in God. You start with a lie! You don't know whether God exists or not; or even if he exists, whether he bothers about prayers or not."

"Gandhi's religion is just the religion of the mediocre masses, it is not the religion of an enlightened man. So he was praying every day, his followers were praying every day, and all their prayers resulted in a chaos. That was the answer from God. Forty years of prayer, discipline, celibacy.... And about small things Gandhi was really nasty. He wouldn't allow anybody to drink tea. In his ashram tea was prohibited, coffee was impossible to bring in. The question of alcohol did not arise." For forty years the people followed all kinds of ascetic disciplines, prayed morning and evening – and the answer was millions of people either murdered or half-murdered; and Gandhi himself assassinated. If this is the result of practicing nonviolence, then I don't think there is any difference practicing violence."

"Adolf Hitler and Mahatma Gandhi both ended the same way. They both landed their countries in the same mess."


IN THE HISTORY BOOKS, ADOLF HITLER WILL BE CONDEMNED, MAHATMA GANDHI WILL IS PRAISED. BUT I WANT IT TO BE ON RECORD THAT ADOLF HITLER WAS A MORE SINCERE MAN THAN MAHATMA GANDHI.

"I have said I have a certain love for Adolf Hitler, for the simple reason that at least he was straightforward; Gandhi was not. Adolf Hitler was not cunning. Whatever he wanted to do he did. He was a little crazy, but a crazy man managed to be the world's greatest conqueror. He had some integrity, some insight. Germany is a small country, but he managed to threaten the whole world. And he was not a hypocrite. That's why I have said I love the man."

"I cannot love Mahatma Gandhi; he was a hypocrite, he was a cunning politician. Adolf Hitler was simply what he was, with no mask. Mahatma Gandhi had a mask, and I hate people who have masks, because they are deceiving everybody, including themselves."

"When you have a mask, slowly slowly, as many people start believing in your mask, you also start believing in your mask. And obviously, if you stand with a mask before a mirror, the mirror can only show your mask, not your real face. Adolf Hitler had no mask. Mahatma Gandhi had a very thick mask." "In the history books, Adolf Hitler will be condemned, Mahatma Gandhi will be praised. But I want it to be on record that Adolf Hitler was more sincere a man than Mahatma Gandhi."

"Mahatma Gandhi used to say, "I love all of my disciples equally."

"Each year there was an election of the Indian national congress of which he was the uncrowned king, and whomsoever he wanted to be the president was chosen. But one man, Subhash Chandra Bose, who was not a believer in nonviolence although he was a member of the Indian national congress, stood for the presidentship in 1939."

"I was very small, but that is the only convention that I have attended – because it was very close to my home. It was just thirteen miles from Jabalpur where Subhash Chandra presided over the congress. Without Gandhi's blessings, without even asking him, he stood for that position. Gandhi was very angry. His followers suggested that Jawaharlal Nehru could be put to oppose him, but Gandhi had really a political mind – perhaps better than Machiavelli."

He said, "That is not a good idea. Jawaharlal is my most precious disciple. If he wins, nothing is gained; people will say he had Gandhi's blessings. But Subhash has also the same charismatic personality, perhaps more charismatic than Jawaharlal, and there is every possibility that Subhash may win. Then it will be a double defeat: the man who has my blessings is defeated, and Jawaharlal's whole future will be dark. That defeat will put him into the back rows."

"So Gandhi managed to persuade a man who was not known in the country at all, was not of the caliber of Subhash Chandra or Jawaharlal – Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Nobody had even heard his name."

"The strategy was that with Gandhi's blessings, even a person who was not known in the country at all could win the election. "If he wins, then that will be a great victory. If he loses, we can say that it was clear that he would lose, because Subhash is a world-famous name, and Pattabhi Sitaramayya is not even a provincial name." And Gandhi forgot all about the fact that he loves his disciples equally."

"Of course, Subhash was victorious, even with the declaration of Gandhi that "Pattabhi Sitaramayya's defeat will be my defeat." That was blackmail, blackmailing the masses, that "If you vote against Pattabhi Sitaramayya you are voting against me; he is simply my representative." Still Subhash won the elections, became the president. And Gandhi, after Subhash's big victory, did not even congratulate him."

"He repeated again, Pattabhi Sitaramayya's defeat is my defeat." And just to avoid being present in the convention, the annual convention of the congress – because Subhash would be the president there – Gandhi pretended to fall sick in Rajkot so that he need not go."

"It was so clear, that Subhash resigned from the presidentship. He said, "If this is the way that Mahatma Gandhi behaves – in whom we all have always had immense trust – if he cannot come to the convention just because somebody is victorious who had not taken his blessings, then it is not worthwhile. Against him I am not going to remain the president of the congress." He resigned."

"Gandhi's whole life has to be studied – not by historians, but by psychologists, psychoanalysts, who can figure out this man, his cunningness, strategies, his lies, his political games. In comparison to this, Adolf Hitler is straightforward."

"I am not saying that Adolf Hitlers are needed in the world. I am not saying that Adolf Hitler should be worshipped as a messiah. I am simply saying that we are living in a strange world where a man like Mahatma Gandhi, who has done everything undercover, is worshipped, and Adolf Hitler is condemned because he has done everything in the sunlight. Both have to be condemned."

"And when I said I have some love for Adolf Hitler, I meant I have love for sincerity, integrity, courage, straightforwardness. And these qualities were in that man. He misused them. I condemn the way he used his qualities, but I cannot condemn the qualities themselves. Every individual needs those qualities."

"But of course, in Germany they must have misunderstood, because Germany has suffered so much because of Adolf Hitler. The wound is still there. Even the name of Adolf Hitler makes the German mind angry. And when I compared him with the Christian saints in the monasteries, of course they were more offended. But what can I do? He lived like a monk."

OUR SOCIETY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING THE ATMOSPHERE WHERE PEOPLE LIKE ADOLF HITLER ARE BORN

"He did tremendous harm to humanity; but that is another side of his personality. And for that too – I have looked deeply into Adolf Hitler's life – he alone is not responsible."

"He wanted to be an artist, but no art school in Germany accepted him. Just the entrance examination – and he was failed. He was not a great artist, but his intention was to become an artist, a creator. When he failed in art schools, he decided to become an architect; he wanted to make new kinds of buildings, new structures. But no school of architecture accepted him."

"He was in love with a woman who simply rejected him because he was unemployed, uneducated. And of course you know his picture; nobody can say it is beautiful – particularly with that small mustache. He looks worse than Charlie Chaplin. And if any woman just got rid of him, we cannot blame the woman. But one thing is certain, he was rejected in every possible way by the society."

"No love was given to him. His father was a very strict disciplinarian, continuously condemning him, continuously letting him down. It was his practice to call in the neighbors, and before the neighbors, condemn Adolf Hitler."

"This man, finding, "This world does not accept me in any way, I am just unworthy," started feeling a deep inferiority complex. It is natural: rejection from all sides will make anybody feel an inferiority complex. And the inferiority complex is the cause of what Adolf Hitler became in his life."

"He entered the army – that was the only place where he was acceptable, because in the army your face is not considered, whether it is beautiful or ugly. Ugly is better; in the army we don't need film actors, we need monsters. And in the army he proved very successful – he won awards. And he found out one thing: that as a killer he could prove his superiority in the world; there was no other way."

"That's how he entered into politics, and that's how he became the chancellor of the country. He used army tactics."

"When he made his party for the first time, the National Socialist Party, there were only nineteen members – all unemployed, because in the first world war Germany was defeated, and many army people were retired before the usual age. Hitler was also retired, and he was young. These nineteen people were all army people who had been thrown into unemployment; they made this party. And it is a miracle of history that nineteen men managed to come into power within ten years' time."

"Their way of working was strange, one which no political party has ever known. This was their strategy. First, they were only nineteen people. They would go to all other parties' meetings and disturb them. For that, nineteen people were enough. Those nineteen people would be sitting separately in the crowd, and suddenly they would start beating people."

"Naturally, if nineteen people start beating, others will stand up, others will get involved in saving or beating – but the meeting is finished. And by the time the people reach home, they are all hurt. Somebody has broken his leg, somebody has a fracture, somebody's head is bleeding."

"The biggest party in those days was the communist party. Slowly it became clear that it was dangerous to go to any party meeting. So communist party leaders would call the meeting, advertise the meeting, put the posters all over the city – and nobody would turn up to listen to the leaders."

"Then Adolf Hitler started having his meetings. And on his posters it was written, "Don't be worried – in this meeting there is not going to be any disturbance. And we will see that if anybody does any harm, he is finished." Of course, those nineteen people were standing on the gates. Soon it became clear in Germany that only Adolf Hitler's meeting is safe."

"People are political animals. They could not go to other parties, but they would like to know what is going on. They all started gathering at Adolf Hitler's meetings. It was a miracle the way he managed.

"Thousands and thousands of people would come and spread the news that in Adolf Hitler's meeting there was no problem; nobody was hurt, no chaos, no beating. This is the party! And people started joining it, because this was the only leader they were listening to. Within ten years' time Hitler was the head of the government. And then he used all his qualities in a wrong way."

"He had tremendous capacity to arouse people's feelings, emotions, and he used it in a very scientific way to influence people."

"He used to have big rallies. For example, if a rally was happening in Munich, then all his followers from other cities would go there. But the people of Munich would feel that Munich had so many followers of Adolf Hitler! The rallies were arranged in the night with burning torches in everyone's hands. Thousands of people with burning torches in their hands in the dark night left a tremendous mark on people's minds."

"When it was in Berlin, then the Munich people and other people would be in Berlin. Slowly slowly, he convinced the whole country that "The whole country is in my hands." It was not true, but the way he worked it out proved perfectly successful."

"This man would not have been there if he had been accepted by an art school, or an architecture school, or by a woman. This man would not have been the head of the government. There would not have been a second world war."

"What I want to say to you is: never reject a man."


Excerpts from: (From Death to the Deathlessness # 15)

GANDHI'S NON-VIOLENCE WAS ONLY A POLITICAL STRATEGY.

"In India, Jainas were a great majority of my lovers, but the day I spoke on sex that majority – camels – simply disappeared. Yes, a few remained; a few of them are even here. They proved to be lions; they could see and connect themselves with my truth."

"There were many Gandhians – until the day I spoke against Gandhi and said that he was the most cunning politician, not only of this century but of the whole history, that all his religion was mumbo-jumbo; it was a curtain to dominate the whole country. And although he was saying that he was in search of truth, he was continually lying, just like a politician."
 
"He was saying that when the country becomes free, all the armies will be dissolved; there will be no military, there will be no weapons, because a nonviolent country has no need of such things. One American author, Louis Fisher, asked him, "If you dissolve all the armies and the military, and you don't have any weapons, and somebody attacks you, what will you do?"

He said, "We will welcome them. We will say to them, 'There is no need for any bloodshed. If you want to live here in this country, come, be our guests. You are welcome.'"

"But this was before freedom came to India. When India became independent, everything changed. The army was not dissolved, but increased. The military was not dissolved – now India has one of the biggest military forces. Weapons were not dissolved. India has atomic plants and is now making every effort to have nuclear weapons – at the cost of half of the country dying, without food! India is exporting wheat to other countries, because the politicians need money to make a nuclear plant."

"And these are all Gandhians."

"When Gandhi was alive, after independence, Pakistan attacked one part of Kashmir. India had to fight with the invaders, and you cannot believe that Gandhi blessed the first fighter planes to go and destroy Pakistanis – who were Indians just a few days before! Where had his nonviolence gone? He was blessing fighting planes, sending them to destroy the same people for whom he had been fighting for freedom his whole life."

"When I said that his nonviolence was a political strategy.... It was clear that to fight against the British government with weapons was impossible. From where are you going to get all those weapons against the empire? – perhaps the biggest empire that has existed ever. It was said that the sun never sets on the British empire. It was true: if it sets in one country, it rises in another, but as far as the whole British empire is concerned, it never sets. This was the biggest empire of man's history. Against this empire how can you fight?"

"And not only can you not fight, you don't have the means to fight. You don't have even men to fight – Indians are so lousy, so cowardly, so superstitious, and so faithful to the idea that nothing happens without God's will. "It is God's will that Britain is ruling our country. To fight against Britain and its empire is to fight against God's will." That was the Indian conditioning.'

"Naturally Gandhi invented a new strategy – nonviolence, which was always respected by the Indians as the most significant religious quality. But his nonviolence was not that of a religious man."


[Excerpts from: 'From False to the Truth # 24]

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