Letters to the Editors
Two letters in response to “Gandhi, His Grandson, Israel, and the Jews” by Shalom Goldman, the first by Michael Nagler, founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at UC Berkeley, the second by Ira Chernus, professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder:
To the Editors:
Professor Shalom Goldman has posted an excellent, thoughtful, well-researched and sensitive booklet on Religion Dispatches that does justice to the seriousness of the issue raised by my friend Arun Gandhi’s unfortunate statements in January—not just the issue of Jewish identity but the overarching issue of the practicability of satyagraha. (Indeed, as we will see at the end of this commentary, the even larger question, Who are we?). Very well taken is the contrast he draws between the Gandhi exchanges of the ’20s and ’30s—and Professor Goldman’s own writing, for that matter—with the immature kneejerk discourse of the blog roused by Arun Gandhi’s remarks.
I want to point out, however, that as I see it there are subtleties in nonviolence that are important to take into account but have escaped Prof. Goldman—understandably. Nonviolence, or satyagraha, is so poorly understood in today’s culture that even thinkers of depth, like Professor Goldman, can miss some of its important nuances.
The important issues in Mahatma Gandhi’s exchanges with Buber and other Jewish thinkers is whether satyagraha could have prevailed against an opponent as brutal and dehumanized as the Nazis and why Gandhi recommended that the Jews trapped by the Holocaust offer up their lives—or more accurately, take their own lives preemptively—rather than submit to their extermination. Otherwise put, is nonviolence (or satyagraha, as we call it in its active form) a universal law, as Gandhi claimed. Prof. Goldman believes that the Mahatma based his claim on the following argument:
“…there is an element of truth in each side of a dispute. Conflict can be resolved through a process in which each side can see the kernel of truth in the other side’s position. Missing from Gandhi’s analysis: a scenario in which one side denies the possibility of dialogue and rests its claim on total force and the denial of the other.”
Actually, I don’t think Gandhi based his faith in nonviolence on any mere argument of logic, but let’s let that objection pass for the moment. Professor Goldman’s first two propositions are correct. The third is incorrect: Gandhi often enough stated that in Satyagraha there were ways to open the eyes or, as he sometimes put it, ‘melt the stoniest heart’ of such a dehumanizing adversary. Since Gandhi’s time there has been at least one systematic study of the issue: “Nonviolence and the Case of the Extremely Ruthless Opponent,” by Ralph Summy, and it concluded that (as advocates of principled nonviolence have always insisted) Satyagraha, if carried out correctly, has a kind of ‘jiu-jitsu’ quality that actually thrives on the ruthlessness of the opponent. But let us take this question down to its most frequently articulated form: “It never would have worked against the Nazis.” It can now, thanks to the careful research of Nathan Stolzfuss, be answered in a single word: Rosenstraße. I refer not to the absurd and trivializing film made on this crucial episode but the event itself, in which a few thousand Berlin housewives brought the Gestapo to a standstill. Briefly put, not only could Satyagraha have worked against the Nazis, it did.
Secondly, in the real world there are often occasions when Satyagraha can and must be offered to force needed change without converting the heart of the opponent—or at least not to where you’d notice it: more on that in a moment. Take the ouster of General Pinochet by constitutional means in Chile in 1989 (a year in which, as studies have shown, close to two billion people were affected by more or less nonviolent uprisings). Was the General’s heart moved? For simplicity’s sake, let’s say no. Was he nonetheless removed from power (and made vunlerable to international justice)? Thankfully, yes. Persuasion, in other words, is the ideal in nonviolence; in the real world sometimes you have to rely on its power of coercion, which is also considerable.
But Professor Goldman’s third, and crucial assertion also misses a subtle point which Gandhi himself did not often articulate: What exactly do we mean by “work” in a nonviolent struggle? I have adopted this punctuation to mean “do what you want, now” in contrast with the question that arises, as it should with all human actions, does it nonetheless do some work (no quotation marks) to change the overall situation for the better? Nonviolence differs from other forms of action for change precisely in this: that it is interested in subtle ‘field’ alterations whose results may only show up later and perhaps in an unpredicted form. This kind of work always results from Satyagraha, which is therefore indeed, as Gandhi, insisted, a universal law. To suggest, as Prof. Goldman does, that Gandhi was out of line for a European conflict would be like proposing that gravity only works at the Equator.
As Professor Goldman points out, Buber raised the objection that although the Jews had offered nonviolence against the Nazis, “such actions, however, exerted apparently not the slightest influence on their opponents.” Italics added; because there is a deep issue of human identity involved here, the resolution of which must rest with each person’s faith position and vision of what it means to be human. Using again the “work” vs. work formulation proposed above, we are at liberty to assume, and I for one cannot but assume, that it is literally true that “Mussolini and Hitler were susceptible to political and moral persuasion;” but it is not by any means true that this persuasion can be effected visibly in any and all situations—nor is that assumption necessary for the validity of Satyagraha as a practical tool for protection of life and establishment of justice, as we have seen.
On the other hand, let me turn to one of Gandhi’s harsh statements (and one that invites remote comparison with the one his grandson was to make many years later) in the debate with Buber and others:
The Jews, so far as I know, have never practiced non-violence as an article of faith or even a deliberate policy. Indeed it is a stigma against them that their ancestors crucified Jesus.
Italics added again. Because we now know something that Gandhi did not, thanks to recent work by Jewish scholars like David Daube and others in the “Jesus of History” movement, primarily John Dominic Crossan. We know, namely, that in ancient Palestine the Jews did practice nonviolence in a way that they could not have done if it were not an article of faith. Crossan finds no less than seven popular uprisings of this type between 4 c.e. and 65 c.e., and reports that “all... were nonviolent, all had very specific objectives, and four out of the seven achieved those objectives without loss of life.”
So this first error in Gandhi’s statement rested on a lack of historical knowledge. It was similar to the error of judgment that lead him to defend the Caliphate in the early 1920s, not realizing that the Arabs themselves were sick of the excesses of the present ruler and the whole system. The second error, far more harmful in its consequences, comes from his uncritical acceptance of one of history’s most egregious lies. Let’s put it simply: “the Jews” did not kill Jesus. The Roman occupiers killed him, no doubt in collusion with Jewish authorities who had their own reasons for fearing him.
Maybe it’s because I am Jewish myself, but I find the enormity of this crime overwhelming: to deprive the Jewish people of their greatest teacher and then blame them for killing him. That, however, is a different subject.
Professor Goldman is unfortunately exactly correct at his conclusion, where he points out that neither the Christians, nor the Hindus for that matter, nor the Jews have followed the nonviolent example of Jesus, Gandhi, or anyone else. There were startling episodes, as Crossan points out, in ancient Palestine. That was then—this, unfortunately, is now. Hayim Greenberg is wrong when he says that “for two thousand years Jews have practiced ahimsa;” Gandhi is unfortunately right that, for the most part, it was not real ahimsa, or principled nonviolence, but “the non-violence of the weak.” What else could one expect? Nonviolence is still in its infancy, despite examples ancient and modern—or perhaps it is more accurate to say, we still are. And Professor Goldman would I’m sure agree that we have reached a time in human history when we have to grow up fast.
Berkeley, California
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To the Editors:
Earlier this year Arun Gandhi, grandson of the famous Mahatma Gandhi, wrote a column in the Washington Post that included some truly stupid statements about Jews. Perhaps Arun Gandhi can take some solace in his grandfather’s lifelong belief that we are all imperfect servants of truth, constantly experimenting to come closer to truth, constantly bound to make mistakes. Still, one wonders how the grandson could have strayed so far from his grandfather’s goal of truth.
Tags: activism, gandhi, ira chernus, israel, jews, michael nagler, non-violence, peace, shalom goldman
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