AnAnswer to Gandhi byHayim Greenberg
1939
In his article concerning the Jewish question, a statement for which certainelements in Jewry have long waited with impatience, the spiritual leader ofYoung India directs against us two important accusations. He blames us for notexhibiting the heroism of militant pacifism in those lands where Jews arepersecuted, and especially in Germany. On the other hand, he accuses us offollowing an aggressively nationalist - almost imperialist - policy in Palestineand of a desire to deprive the Arabs of their fatherland.
Gandhi`s first accusation is quite natural and is in complete harmony with hisentire world outlook. His temperament does not tolerate passivity and hisethical-religious convictions dictate to him the duty of heroic and activeresistance according to the principle of Satyagraha.
The motivating idea of Satyagraha is not, as some claim, a practical strategywhich Gandhi "made to order" to meet the concrete demands of theIndian situation. Long ago he advocated it as a universal ideal which could beapplied by all the oppressed and injured everywhere and independently of thespecific historical situation. Personally, I feel that the individual and groupstruggles according to the plan of Satyagraha - aside from its moral-religiousimplications - have proved to be practical and effective. The truth of theSatyagraha teaching - which in another form has been expressed by Jesus andother Jewish teachers many generations ago - is in my eyes as self-evident as amathematical axiom. But I must admit to myself in order to apply Gandhi`s methodof struggle, it is necessary to accept it not only on a purely intellectualplane; it is also imperative that it be assimilated emotionally, that it shouldbe believed in with all the force of one`s being. Such faith the Jews of Germanydo not possess. Faith in the principle of Satyagraha is a matter of specialpredisposition which, for numerous reasons, the German Jews have not developed.The civilisation in which German Jews have lived for so many generations, and tothe creation of which they have so energetically and ably contributed, has notprepared them for the "pathos" of Satyagraha. As a result, they arenow defenceless, The accepted defence methods of the European-American worldcannot be applied by the German Jews. They cannot resort to passive resistancebecause they lack the heroism, the faith and the specific imaginative powerswhich alone can stimulate such heroism. When Gandhi accuses German Jews oflacking that mentality which, in his estimation, is the only truly heroicmentality, I am ready to concur with him, but with one reservation which he alsomust accept - that this accusation should also be levelled against the millionsof non-Jewish Germans who wear the yoke of the Hitler regime with impotenthatred and show no more affinity for Satyagraha methods than do the Jews;against the millions of Italians who for years have breathed the contaminatedair of their own tyranny; against the tens of millions of Russians who haveexhausted their strength in civil war and do not find their way to the Gandhimethod of resisting the Red despotism; against hundreds of millions of Chinesewho by their military resistance aid the Japanese aggressors to ravage theircountry instead of following the path of non-cooperation.
It is true that one may demand - as Gandhi does - that Jews, and particularlythe Jews of Germany, should be the "pioneers" of new forms of socialstruggle in the Western world and should be the first to embrace the practice ofSatyagraha. Gandhi wishes that we should set an example to the non-JewishGermans, that we should point the way to a spiritual crusade against theirwicked government. He may have a sound reason for believing that theincomparable suffering and degradation to which German Jews are subjected "compels"them to act more heroically and to be more "adventurous" spirituallythan their neighbours. I do not question the idea implicit in Gandhi`s demand,that there is a mutual relationship between the intensity of suffering and theintensity of the moral reaction to suffering. But there is no reason to assumethat when suffering and insults transgress certain bounds it is quite naturalthat the reaction should be a feeling of futility and despair instead of thatheroism which Gandhi suggests. This is especially true when the group concernedis historically and psychologically not prepared for such a catastrophe andtherefore looks upon it as a sudden and unexpected occurrence. The prophet ofYoung India has in this instance exhibited an unusual lack of psychologicalunderstanding.
Gandhi should also have understood that it is far less simple to preachSatyagraha to German Jews than it is to Indian masses, even to the lowest casteof "untouchables". We all know the evils of English rule andadministration in India. But one should be wary of drawing comparisons betweenthe situation of the Indian masses today, or even twenty years ago, and theposition of the German Jews today. Throughout the years that the Indian NationalCongress conducted its struggle for emancipation, there existed in India scoresof legal newspapers and journals which voiced the needs and the politicaldemands of the people. The British government never questioned the right of theoppressed population to live, to work and to earn their bread; it did not evenquestion their right to hold responsible government positions. The most brutalBritish administration bore in mind that it had to deal with 350 million peopleliving compactly in one area. Together with Gandhi it understood that, to usehis (Gandhi`s) own words, "If we Indians could only spit in unison, wewould form a puddle big enough to drown 300,000 Englishmen" - the entirenumber of Englishmen who live in India and govern it. When Satyagraha ispractised by an organised group that is backed by such an immense population itbecomes a force that the scattered half million German Jews cannot even dreamof. Let me cite the words of one of Gandhi`s disciples and colleagues who, justbefore he was sent to prison, declared: "We can thank our lucky stars thatwe are fighting the British and not someone else, for the British have somethingin them to which we can appeal." The same British judge who sentencedGandhi to prison found it possible and unpunishable to declare, afterpronouncing sentence, that it was the law which sends Gandhi to prison but thathe personally looks upon him as "a great patriot and a great leader";that "even those who differed from Gandhi look upon him as a man of highideals and of noble and even saintly life." At the same time one of themost prominent British missionaries compared Gandhi`s trial to the trials ofJesus and Socrates, and the English Bishop of Madras declared to the entireworld: "Frankly I confess, although it deeply grieves me to say it, that Isee in Mr. Gandhi the patient sufferer for the cause of righteousness and mercy,a truer representative of the crucified Saviour than the men who have thrown himinto prison and yet call themselves by the name of Christ."
Only recently I met an Englishman, an ex-army officer in India (now a member ofParliament), who had been brave enough to refuse to carry out the command toarrest Gandhi, with the full knowledge of the punishment prescribed for suchinsubordination. That punishment was not meted out. Even during the days ofGeneral Dyer`s brutal administration in India there did not reign thatbestiality and "moral anesthesia" which characterise the Germany oftoday. A Jewish Gandhi in Germany, should one arise could `function' for aboutfive minutes - until the first Gestapo agent would lead him, not to aconcentration camp, but directly to the gallows.
Gandhi demands heroism from the Indians; he demands of the German Jews a measureof super-heroism unexampled in history. Gandhi`s comparison of the situation ofthe Indians to that of the German Jews contains an element of unfairness whichcrept in against his will and against his intentions.
But if Gandhi demands that we practise super-heroism in Germany, he requeststhat in Palestine we should renounce the most elementary rights which everypeople may and should claim. When he asks why we do not "like the otherpeoples of the earth" make our home in the land where we are born and wherewe earn our livelihood he indicates that he has not pondered the unusual dramaof the paradoxical Jewish history. Jews have been dispersed for many generations,and it could not be an accident that after sojourning in so many lands and withso many peoples they have not become so rooted in those countries that theseshould cease being "stepmother lands". Gandhi should have known of thenumerous attempts the Jews have made throughout the ages to transform lands ofrefuge into true homes, beginning with Babylonia and the Hellenic city ofAlexandria in Egypt. The contribution of the Jews to the economic growth and thecultural blossoming of those countries is sufficient proof of this attempt tobecome rooted which has so frequently ended in failure. Gandhi`s question ringslike a veiled accusation; it sounds as if we have purposely refused to becomerooted in any country but Palestine. If it should be true that we have condemnedourselves to remain eternal strangers, then such an unusual phenomenon in humanhistory should have evoked Gandhi`s wonder and he should have asked whether theJews do not bear within themselves unrealised forces which can only manifestthemselves in a Jewish territorial environment where these may come to fruition.
But Gandhi refuses to recognise our right to a distinct territorial settlement,a right which is enjoyed, almost without exception, by all the peoples of theworld. Were it not so, he would see the Palestine problem in an altogetherdifferent political and moral light. For when he says that "it would be acrime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs, so that Palestine can berestored to the Jews partly or wholly as their National Homeland" heforgets that if national honour is at stake (this is the burden of hisstatement, and he knows full well that one may not repeat the discreditedallegations of economic or cultural harm that Jews supposedly caused to Arabs)he should also have thought of Jewish honour. Either it is dishonourable to be aminority in a country or it is merely a question of fictitious prestige forwhich he can have no sympathy. If only pseudo-honour is involved, why should hebe concerned lest the "proud Arabs" be deprived of the enjoyment of aninflated pride? But if real national honour is at stake, why should the Arabsenjoy it throughout the length and breadth of the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Syria,Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Egypt (an area almost as large as the Europeancontinent) while the Jews should be deprived of this honour even in an areawhich occupies about one percent of the above-mentioned lands, an area to whichthey have historical claims and the natural right they acquired during twogenerations of diligent work, initiative, heroism and suffering?
I do not claim that so-called historical rights possess absolute validity. It ifis true, for instance, that Gypsies came to Europe from a certain section ofIndia and that section is now completely settled, no intelligent being wouldclaim that the Gypsies have a right to build their national home in that area.They could do so only through the expulsion of the present population. Jewishhistorical rights to Palestine are of an altogether different nature. Thecountry is underpopulated and inadequately cultivated; it contains room forseveral times the number of people that now reside in it. For Jews Palestine isthe cradle and the "laboratory" of their civilisation and theirspiritual bond with the country was not broken at any time during their history.For the Arabs Palestine is, in a certain sense, an "accidental"geographical unit for which they do not even have a name. To this day Palestineis only "South Syria" to the Arabs.
Need anything more be added to explain Jewish rights to Palestine? In easternEurope an anecdote is current (an anecdote the implications of which arealtogether too frequently overlooked) concerning a thief whom the judge chidedin the following words: "Don`t you know that it is forbidden to takeanything that belongs to others"? But the thief posed an intellectualdilemma before the judge. "What shall I do," he asked the judge,"since at the time of my birth everything already belonged to otherpeople?" Absolute poverty, in a world filled with riches, confers a naturalright upon those whom fate mistreated to demand their share, first of all at theexpense of those who possess too much, more than they need or can use. One maynot say to Jews: "The world is already divided up; some received more andothers less but there is nothing left for you and no one is obliged to sharewith you, even though he possesses fields which he cannot or does not wish tocultivate, or factories where the machines are left to rust in inaction, simplybecause at one time he succeeded in obtaining these possessions by force orthrough trickery." Gandhi does not realise that he has erred in sanctioningthe "absolute" nature of private property and its inviolability. Groupownership of territories is also a form of private ownership which should besubjected to control and regulation by a broader human or internationalprinciple. Although he is not a Socialist in the accepted meaning of the term,Gandhi is aware that the property relationships between individual members ofsociety will have to be modified in some way in order to attain a minimum ofjustice. Earnest and logical consideration should have led him to the conclusionthat the same criterion of justice - the assurance of the necessary minimum toevery creature that is stamped with "the image of God" - must also beapplied to entire nations, races and tribes. Another non-Socialist andnon-internationalist (in the modern sense of the terms), Benjamin Franklin,several generations ago admirably expressed this simple idea in a letter toRobert Morris. He said: "All property except the savage`s temporary cabin,his bow, and other little acquisitions absolutely necessary for his subsistence,seems to me the creature of public convention. Hence, the public has the rightof regulating descents, and all other conveyances of property, and even oflimiting the quantity and the uses of it. All the property that is necessary toa man for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species,is his natural right which none may justly deprive him of; but all propertysuperfluous to such purposes is the property of the public, who, by their laws,have created it, and who may therefore, by other laws, dispose of it, when everthe welfare of the public shall demand such disposition. He that does not likecivil society on these terms, let him retire and live among savages. He can haveno right to the benefits of society, who will not pay his club toward thesupport of it."
Had Gandhi taken the trouble to consider this elementary truth in relation topresent-day reality, he would also not have written in such a tone ofnear-disdain about the Mandate. From a purely legalistic point of view, it maybe possible to agree with him that "the mandates have no sanction but thatof the last war". This does not mean, however, that the basic idea of themandates, and even the mandatory system as it has been practised during the pasttwenty years, was born from the war. The idea underlying the mandates which,according to the constitution of the League of Nations, should be applied interritories where the population is not ready for self-government or where localinterests must be subordinated to more important considerations of aninternational character, is potentially of great humanitarian significance. Itis a prelude to that "civil society" of which Franklin wrote in theeighteenth century; it is a way to a more rational and justcollective-international control of the world`s wealth. I am not unaware of theshortcomings with which the League of Nations is weighed down nor of its sadfate during recent years which also brought misfortune to all humanity. Butwhoever observed closely the activities of the League in the administration ofmandated territories - naturally excluding those areas mandated to Japan, acountry which cynically mocked League control even when its representatives werestill sitting at Geneva - must admit that the mandatory system is a step forwardwhen compared with the uncontrolled colonial regimes of the past and the present.The fact that a mandatory government is responsible to the Permanent MandatesCommission, in which the majority of the members represent governmentspossessing neither mandates or colonial possessions, is in itself an advance inthe direction of internationalism and the humanisation of the world.
It is regrettable that Gandhi approached our problem without that fundamentalearnestness and passionate search for truth which are so characteristic of hisusual treatment of problems. He therefore missed the deeper implications of theMandates system. He therefore also failed to grasp the unequalled tragedy ofJewish existence. This is the reason why he can justify the phenomenon of fiveArab States demanding in London the establishment of a sixth one on the eve ofthe founding of two other sovereign Arab governments in Syria and Lebanon, whileat the same time sanctioning the denial of refuge to Jews in their old home.This also explains his stand that Arabs must nowhere be reduced to the status ofa minority while tens of millions of Russians, Poles, Czechs, Germans, Irish andItalians live in dozens of countries as ethnic minorities and while Jews live asa persecuted minority on the entire globe.
With all my respect for the Mahatma (I doubt if there is another man living whoevokes within me such a moral awareness of his loftiness), I cannot help feelingthat in the present instance he has betrayed his inner nature. I cannot avoidthe suspicion that so far as the Palestine problem is concerned, Gandhi allowedhimself to be influenced by the anti-Zionist propaganda being conducted amongfanatic pan-Islamists. His understandable and praiseworthy desire for a unitedfront with the Mohammedans, apparently misguided and blinded him to significantrealities and deprived him of that analytical clarity which is a part of hismoral being. Years ago he was, for the same reason, misguided into supportingthe agitation for the re-establishment of the Khalifate, an institution that isat such variance with his general views. Gandhi was wrong then; he is alsomistaken in the present instance, and the source of these mistakes seems to bethe same.
I know that this is a serious accusation - at any rate a serious suspicion. Butwhen it comes from a Jew, such an accusation does not indicate a lack ofveneration. Hero worship among Jews is traditionally circumscribed. We venerateMoses, our first prophet and liberator. But we do not forget that also he wassinful - so sinful that God denied him entry into the Promised Land and hisearthly remains were interred on the solitary height of Mount Nebo.