In a 1938 essay, Mohandas (“Mahatma”) Gandhi, the spiritual and political leader of the Indian independence movement, counseled Jews in Nazi Germany to neither flee nor resist but rather offer themselves up to be killed by their enemies, since their “suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy.”
And Gandhi’s advice was even more disturbing in light of his admission, in that same essay, that the “cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me.” Jews, he said, should “make… their home where they are born.” It is, moreover, he went on, “inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs.”
The Universality of Anti-Semitism
Mahatma Gandhi was an anti-Semite. We think of him as peaceful and benevolent because he advocated satyagraha, which is passive, non-violent resistance. It worked against the British in India. Does that mean it is always appropriate? In an article in the November 26, 1938 issue of a magazine called Harijan, Gandhi suggested that Germany’s Jews could successfully confront their Nazi oppressors with non-violence. Well, this was 1938. World War II had not yet begun.
If we wish to excuse Gandhi on the grounds that he didn’t know what he was talking about, since he was writing before Hitler’s plans were known, we should also consider that he told Louis Fischer, one of his biographers, after the war was over, that “collective suicide” might have been a better strategy: “The Jews died anyway, didn’t they? They might as well have died significantly” (see “The Gandhi Nobody Knows” by Richard Grenier, Commentary, March 1983).
Collective suicide is not satyagraha, since it is in no way passive. And how passive can one be about one’s children when committing collective suicide? Gandhi never advocated collective suicide in any other situation.
Gandhi statue to be unveiled near Churchill’s in London
London (AFP) – A statue of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi is to be unveiled on Saturday at the heart of the British establishment which once loathed him for his campaign against imperial rule.
Gandhi will join figures including Britain’s World War II leader Winston Churchill, who described him as a half-naked “fakir”, in London’s Parliament Square, opposite Big Ben and the House of Commons.
The giant bronze statue will be unveiled by Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister David Cameron, Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and Gandhi’s grandson, Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi.
Despite such pomp, Gandhi was historically resented by many in Westminster as the leader of the non-violent campaign for Indian independence from Britain, which was granted in 1947.
