REFLECTIONS ON GANDHI
of this. Applied to foreign politics, pacifism either stops being pacifist
or becomes appeasement. Moreover the assumption, which served Gan–
dhi so well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings are more
or less approachable and will respond to a generous gesture, needs to
be seriously questioned. It is not necessarily true, for example, when
you are d ealing with lunatics. Then the question becomes: Who is sane?
Was Hitler sane? And is it not possible for one whole culture to be in–
sane by the standards of another? And, so far as one can gauge the
feelings of whole nations, is there any apparent connection between a
generous deed and a friendly response? Is gratitude a factor in in–
ternational politics?
These .and kindred questions need discussion, and need it urgently,
in the few years left to us before somebody presses the button and the
rockets begin to fly.
It
seems doubtful whether civilization can stand
another major war, and it is at least thinkable that the way out lies
through non-violence. It is Gandhi's virtue that he would have been
ready to give honest consideration to the kind of question that I have
raised above; and, indeed, he probably did discuss most of these questions
somewhere or other in his innumerable newspaper articles. One feels of
him that there was much that he did not understand, but not that
there was anything that he was frightened of saying or thinking. I have
never been able to feel much liking for Gandhi, but I do not feel sure
that as a political thinker he was wrong in the main, nor do I believe
that his life was a failure. It is curious that when he was assassinated,
many of his warmest admirers exclaimed sorrowfully that he had lived
just long enough to see his life work in ruins, because India was engaged
in a civil war which had always been foreseen as one of the by-products
of the transfer of power. But it was not in trying to smoothe down Hindu–
Moslem rivalry that Gandhi had spent his life. His main political ob–
jective, the peaceful ending of British rule, had after all been attained.
As usual, the relevant facts cut across one another. On the one hand,
the British did get out of India without fighting, an event which very
few observers indeed would have predicted until about a year before it
happened. On the other hand, this was done by a Labor government,
and it is certain that a Conservative government, especially a govern–
ment headed by Churchill, would have acted differently. But if, by
1945, there had grown up in Britain a large body of opinion sympathetic
to Indian independence, how far was this due to Gandhi's personal in–
fluence? And if, as may happen, India and Britain finally settle down
into a decent and friendly relationship, will this be partly because Gan–
dhi, by keeping up his struggle obstinately and without hatred, dis-
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