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Gandhi-Chapter II: Jawarharlal Nehru |
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Page 9 of 22
“Truthful action, for Gandhi, was governed by the readiness to get hurt and yet not hurt –action governed by the principle of ahimsa. … With all respect to the traditional translation of ahimsa, I think Gandhi implied in it, besides a refusal not to do physical harm, a determination not to violate another person’s essence. For even where one may not be able to avoid harming or hurting, forcing or demeaning another whenever one must coerce him, one should try, even in doing so, not to violate his essence, for such violence can only evoke counter-violence, which may end in a kind of truce, but not in truth. For ahimsa as acted upon by Gandhi not only means not to hurt another, it means to respect the truth in him….. a man should act in such a way that he actualizes both in himself and in others such forces as are ready for a heightened mutuality … Gandhi made a similar assumption when he viewed Satyagraha as a bridge between the ethics of family life and that of communities and nations… Truth in Gandhi’s sense points to the next step in man’s realization of man as one all-human species, and thus to our only chance to transcend what we are.” (13) Let us agree to amend Erikson’s words by making the pronouns inclusive rather than male, and by replacing “essence” with the “status as a member of a Habermasian ideal speech community,” or some other phrase which makes the self to be honored and nurtured relational. Then one might paraphrase, and perhaps extend, Erikson by saying that for Gandhi a core element of truth was fidelity in human relationships. Facts and figures are important because one must be true to the people who are counting on one to be truthful.
This interpretation jibes with Gandhi’s own account of the beginning of his fascination with truth in his Autobiography. He writes that as a child he was persuaded by a young companion to take up eating meat, to become strong and to become the kind of Hindu who could rise up and throw out the British. But he could never tell his pious mother that he was eating meat, nor could he lie to her. Truth meant being true to his mother and that meant not eating meat, however much he might want to do so, and however much he might rationally be persuaded that it was the right thing to do. |
