Gandhi’s Fears for Both Hindus and Muslims Were Proved Right
Excerpted with permission from Gandhi: The End of Non-Violence.
Gandhi pointed out on 23 October that Sheikh Saheb Hisam-ud-Din, former President of the All India Majlis-e-Ahrar, issued two separate public statements condemning the murder and forced conversions in Noakhali. Gandhi reiterated the importance of Sheikh Saheb’s statements,
‘The value of these statements lies not so much in the numbers of Muslims supporting it, but in the fact that these Muslims of undoubted repute in Islam have no hesitation in condemning in unmeasured terms the nefarious deeds of the Muslims in East Bengal.’
In a prayer meeting in Delhi on 24 October, Gandhi admonished the men for creating a scene that made the women in the audience leave. He remarked that it was an ironic demonstration, considering their empathy for outraged women in East Bengal. Gandhi said that his statement that women would have done better to commit suicide than experience dishonour was misunderstood. He clarified that he was not against them carrying weapons for self-defence, but that it wouldn’t work if the odds were overwhelming. In that case, he had suggested, taking recourse to poison was better than submitting to dishonour. Gandhi made the argument (paraphrased in Pyarelal’s ‘Weekly Letter’): ‘Their very preparedness should make them brave. No one could dishonour a woman who was fearless of death. They had two ways of self-defence —to kill and be killed or to die without killing. He could teach them the latter, not the former. Above all he wanted them to be fearless. There was no sin like cowardice.’
At first glance, Gandhi’s clarification doesn’t seem to improve or change the perception that he preferred suicide for women facing the horror of rape. On closer reading, he seems to be saying two things that are connected but can be taken separately. On the one hand, Gandhi seems to be emphasizing that in situations where you face radical violence, you must be prepared for death. To be prepared to die is a state of bravery where you become fearless. To fear is to lose the battle in advance, and proof of cowardice. This can be an ethic of courage not restricted to a premodern culture, but can be meaningful for people with modern sensibilities facing violence in our times.
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
Gandhi: The End of Non-Violence
Penguin, 2025
There is, however, another side to Gandhi’s argument. His use of the word ‘honour’ comes uncomfortably close to an ethic of chivalry that connects it to medieval ideas of honour and ownership. It provokes certain questions: Why—and for whom—is sexual dis/honour of a woman a matter of life and death? Is sexual humiliation a permanent state of dishonour? The harping on dis/honour adds a patriarchal burden to the ordeal of humiliation. If a woman is sexually humiliated, does she lose moral resources to live? Does her voluntary death become a mark of bravery that purifies the humiliation?
There is a slippage between the personal and the communal. A woman’s humiliation affects the community, so it is a matter of affective ownership. Modern sensibility based on autonomy and freedom does not subscribe or aspire to this gendered law of belonging to a community. It is true that self-defence doesn’t work when confronted by brutal power. Life’s options against such power are limited. To act out of vulnerability and confusion, trying to protect oneself with the means at hand is not a sign of cowardice. The strength of vulnerability lies in the ability to survive humiliation and heal its scars. Gandhi’s discourse of honour does not leave women with the right to live with their humiliation freely, from within the depths of their horrifying experience.
A month earlier, at the prayer meeting on 2 September after reaching Delhi from Sevagram, Gandhi was still making the lost argument on the Muslim League not abiding by the principles of Islam in its non-cooperation with Hindus. Taking the violent events in Calcutta into account, Gandhi added:
‘I have said a good deal about communal unity. Unlike the abolition of salt tax this cannot be achieved by a stroke of the pen. The Ministers will have to stake their lives for it. If I had my way I would not let them seek military or police help. Well, if Hindus and Muslims must fight each other it is better they bravely do their fighting themselves. So long as we depend on the British for protecting us, true freedom will not be ours.’
Gandhi invokes the figure of the idealist politician, or government representative as the best arbitrator or negotiator of peace in a communal conflict, rather than men in uniform. He is not innocent about the politician’s role (as we will see), but is airing his democratic expectations. Military peace is not a genuine, long-lasting option.
On 9 September, in response to a question Gandhi said,
‘We are not yet in the midst of civil war. But we are nearing it. At present we are playing at it. War is a respectable term for goondaism practised on a mass or national scale.’
Gandhi could see where the Calcutta killings were headed. He could read the political pulse. It was, in his estimate, going to be something more messy and mischievous than a war. He had been warning everyone, Jinnah most importantly, to come to their senses. When leaders aren’t in their senses, they can’t read the outcomes of their in/actions. Gandhi also had a clear-headed view regarding the various strands of politics around him battling for power. He was also forthright about it. In reply to questions posed by the presidents and secretaries of various Provincial Congress Committees who had assembled in Delhi for the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session held on 23 and 24 September, Gandhi said:
‘Today there are all sorts in the Congress. That is why I have suggested the removal of the words “peaceful and legitimate” from the Congress objective. That need not mean abandonment of truth and non-violence by Congressmen. The object is only to purge out hypocrisy. It jars. Let those who believe in the doctrine of the sword openly avow it. To take the name of non-violence when there is [a] sword in your heart is not only hypocritical and dishonest but cowardly.’
On 9 July that year, Gandhi had spoken his mind at the AICC session in Bombay of ‘the danger within’. He warned against ‘smug satisfaction’ that came from Congress members suffering prison sentences, and competing for posts during forthcoming elections. The two ends of a satyagrahi’s life were ‘the slaughterhouse even as that of the spotless lamb.’ Gandhi next asked: ‘Who is responsible for the mad orgy in Madura and, coming nearer, in Ahmedabad? It will be folly to attribute everything evil to British machinations.’
The Congress had rejected the British proposal for an interim government that led to rioting in Madura, a place in the south, where five people died and a few sustained injuries. On 1 July, the Jagannath Rath Yatra in Ahmedabad resulted in communal clashes where two men, one Hindu and the other Muslim, were killed.22 The Congress was in power in both these provinces after the January 1946 elections.
Gandhi was categorical on the Muslim League position:
‘The Muslim Leaguers have today raised the slogan that ten crores of Indian Muslims are in danger of being submerged and swept out of existence unless they constitute themselves into a separate State. I call that slogan scare-mongering pure and simple. It is nonsense to say that any people can permanently crush or swamp out of existence one fourth of its population, which the Mussalmans are in India . . . Therefore, those who want to divide India into possibly warring groups are enemies alike of India and Islam. They may cut me to pieces but they cannot make me subscribe to something which I consider to be wrong.’
This preconceived fear—whatever its justifications—comes with a solution: the need for a state for Muslims, where only a handful of Muslims can be accommodated, and the rest will be thrown into the jaws of Hindu majoritarianism. The solution is clearly aimed at creating a rival nation where multiple fears (fears of the Hindu minority in Pakistan, and the Muslim minority in India) will be left to their fate. Gandhi’s fears for both Hindus and Muslims were proved right.
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is a writer, political theorist and poet.
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