Gandhi's Truth-based Anger (Satyagraha)
(A collection of writings by and about Gandhi)
Gandhi on Europeans in South Africa:
“The Europeans in this newly opened up country had a boundless hunger for riches. They were almost strangers to the dictates of morality. Here are some statements they made in their petitions: ‘These Indians have no sense of human decency. They suffer from loathsome diseases. They consider every woman as their prey. They believe that women have no souls.’ These four sentences contain four lies. It would be easy to multiply such specimens.—Mohandas Gandhi, 1928.
Gandhi’s criticism of Britain’s dividing united India into India and Pakistan:
“The Englishman was quitting because he had discovered that it was wrong on economic and political grounds to hold India in bondage. Herein he was quite sincere. It would not be denied, however, that sincerity was quite consistent with self-deception. He was self-deceived in that he believed that he could not leave India to possible anarchy if such was to be India’s lot. He was quite content to leave India as a cockpit between two organized armies. Before quitting, he was setting the seal of approval on the policy of playing off one community against another. And he lacked the courage to do the right so far as the States were concerned. The speaker admitted freely that if the Englishman left India in an uncertain condition and left the possibility of several warring States, all independent of England and, therefore, of one another, he could not conceive a greater reflection on the British name than this would be. “–The Harijan, July 20, 1947, 242.
Gandhi as a socialist (?):
“My ideal is equal distribution, but so far as I can see, it is not to be realized. I therefore work for equitable distribution.” –Young India, March 7, 1927, 86.
Gandhi against the creation of Pakistan:
“If the Muslim state implied freedom to make unfriendly treaties with foreign powers to the detriment of the country, then obviously it cannot be a matter of agreement. No one can be asked to sign an agreement granting freedom to another to launch hostilities against himself; that would be a suicidal policy.”
Gandhi on religion:
“The most henious and the must cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.”--Young India, July 7, 1950
Gandhi on Palestine:
“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.” --Harijan, Gandhi's magazine (26 November 1938)
Bishop Desmond Tutu on Gandhi's "Righteous Anger":
“The award that I am privileged to receive today is named for Mahatma Gandhi. He spent nearly two decades in South Africa, where he and other people of color were discriminated against quite harshly with very few political rights. He was thrown off a train because he sat in a whites-only first class compartment, even though he had paid the fare. Am I glad that he suffered this great indignity, he, a London-trained lawyer? I am glad because it aroused a righteous anger in him and provoked him to develop his Satyagraha methods of nonviolent resistance.”—Bishop Desmond Tutu, “Goodness is Powerful,” September, 2007.