Gandhi also spoke of the abduction of women by rioters. On the Indian side of the border, Hindus and Sikhs had acted likewise with Muslim women. They estimated that the number of abducted women was close to forty thousand in all, a large, perhaps we should say alarming, figure. It is meaningless to ask which of them is more barbaric. He first met Gandhi with Horace Alexander in June , and then caught up with him again in late In September Symonds returned to India to work among Partition refugees.
In December he fell seriously ill with typhoid, and was admitted into a hospital, from where Gandhi had him removed to Birla House, where he spent several weeks recovering.
Every day, Gandhi would drop in to see the patient, and have a chat. In truth, Gandhi probably found the experience nourishing too; despite his hostility to British imperialism, he was enormously fond of the British, and in this time of tension and stress, conversations with a sensitive young Englishman would have been a relaxation. The public mood in Delhi remained angry, and soon rioting broke out once more in the city.
Gandhi further postponed his plans to visit Punjab. This was just as well, for the trouble escalated. In Mehrauli, a village on the outskirts of Delhi, there was a celebrated Sufi shrine, visited by tens of thousands of people, including Hindus and Muslims. Now the Muslims whose families had tended the shrine for hundreds of years were hounded out by a Hindu mob. On 12th January, Gandhi informed his prayer meeting that he was commencing a fast the next day.
But all of a sudden you lost patience. Gandhi would not be moved. On the morning of the 12th, he went to the Viceregal Palace to inform Mountbatten of his fast. Later, Nehru came to Birla House and sat with Gandhi for two hours. Then he had a long conversation with Vallabhbhai Patel. The fast formally began at He spoke of, among other things, the perception that Indian Muslims trusted both him and Nehru, but not Patel. Gandhi thought this slightly unfair. Inside the house, speaking with Gandhi, were Patel, Azad, and Nehru.
They told him that the slogans were on behalf of the refugees who needed food, homes, clothes, and jobs. With a single shot from a pistol the mad dash began, and land-hungry Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. Durant, a high-school dropout, had made his fortune building horse-drawn carriages, and in fact he hated cars—he thought they were noisy, smelly, and The Burke-Wadsworth Act is passed by Congress on September 16, , by wide margins in both houses, and the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States is imposed.
Selective Service was born. The registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began exactly one Live TV. These actions orchestrate a form of mass refusal, or the collective withdrawal of consent, that should erode the foundations of an unjust government, which, according to Gandhi, can never stand by force alone.
Such mass withdrawal, alongside the refusal to obey unjust laws, should thus constitute an active break from colonial rule without stepping outside of nonviolence. Within a discourse that so emphatically denounces violence, inscribing satyagraha as a weapon retains a strong touch of irony. These tactics were varied and included the hunger strike as a way to demand political status in prison.
Gandhi was critical of the combination of nonviolent and violent tactics, which he saw the Sinn Feiners to be practicing and found to be a frustrating aspect of the Indian struggle, which he tried to prevent from happening , as a sign of the immaturity of the masses and the proof of their weakness, their lack of preparedness for self-rule. Perhaps, since he fasted out of love, he wanted India to reciprocate: the elimination of violence was the ultimate test of whether he had gained this love.
These struggles, whether they seek national independence or revolutionary transformation, whether they demand political status for prisoners, better prison conditions or the recognition of basic human rights, deploy self-starvation as the means by which actors forge their lives into weapons.
Your email address will not be published. Fasting for Truth It is well known that Gandhi went on a hunger strike many times between Fasting for Love What are the limits of a Gandhian fast? Fasting as a Weapon? Next Article Bernard E. Just as prayer may be merely a mechanical intonation as of a bird, so may a fast be a mere mechanical torture of the flesh Neither will touch the soul within.
It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh. Mortification of the flesh is a necessity when the flesh rebels against one; it is a sin when the flesh has come under subjection and can be used as an instrument of service. In other words, there is no inherent merit in mortification of the flesh. There is something in denying satisfaction of the flesh. It is not possible to see God face to face unless you crucify the flesh. It is one thing to do what belongs to it as a temple of God, and it is another to deny it what belongs to it as the body of flesh.
Out of the fullness of my own experience and that of fellow cranks, I say without hesitation, fast 1 if you are constipated, 2 if you are anemic, 3 if you are feverish, 4 if you have indigestion, 5 if you have a headache, 6 if you are rheumatic, 7 if you are gouty, 8 if you are fretting and fuming, 9 if you are depressed, 10 if you are overjoyed; and you will avoid medical prescriptions and patent medicines.
Fasting can only be resorted to against a lover, not to extort rights but to reform him, as when a son fasts for a father who drinks. My fast at Bombay and then at Bardoli was of that character. I fasted to reform, say, General Dyer, who not only does not love me, but who regards himself as my enemy. It is not to be denied that fasting can be really coercive.
0コメント