Gandhi: Portrait of a Friend

PREFACE

This book was not easy to write, not for me. When the cable came from the publishers in America asking me to write the book, I put it aside as impossible. I never write a book by request. It must come as a result of an inner urge that I cannot put aside. I felt no such inner urge about this.

I have believed in and have loved Mahatma Gandhi through the years, in spite of differences. I have stood in sympathy with the Mahatma and have expressed that sympathy during the years when to do so was to open one to the charge of being the strange defending the strange, the off-center defending the eccentric. But to try to interpret such a complex character as he was; well, it was beyond me and wasn’t my task. He was simple and yet very complex amid that simplicity. You thought you knew him, and then you didn’t. It was intriguing. There was always something there that eluded your grasp, something that baffled you. And yet out of that many-sidedness that amounted to complexity, there arose simplicity, a unified character, simple and compelling. Could I interpret that? It was like trying to interpret Mount Everest. It is many-sided. It rises in simple grandeur, and yet there are subsidiary peaks, crevices, depths, plateaus, all contributing to the sum total of the grandeur that is Everest. Would I get caught in the secondary things in the Mahatma’s character and magnify them and not see the sum total of the grandeur that is Gandhi? Many have done so. There is a book out entitled What Does Gandhi Want? picking out the inconsistencies in his statements during the years. It is a microscopic examination, thoroughly done, but in the end the real man is lost. After you have looked at him through a microscope, you have to look at him through a telescope to get the total man. For he stands against a background of the ages and must be interpreted with that background, to get the full stature and meaning of the man.

Many get caught in subsidiary statements and miss the sum total of the meaning of his teaching. A prominent man from the West has fastened on two statements made by Gandhi in Young India (October 20, 1927): "Its [Hinduism’s] worship of the cow is, in my opinion, its unique contribution to the evolution of humanitarianism. . . . Finally the discovery of the law of varnashrama [caste system] is a magnificent result of the ceaseless search for truth. There, says this critic, Mahatma Gandhi has picked out cow worship and caste as the unique contributions of Hinduism. What shall we think of a man like that? And yet when you look at the Mahatma through the years, you see that it is not the worship of the cow but the worship of God that has gripped him, molded him, and made him. He says that the cow is a poem of pity. . . . Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God."¹ Thus interpreted it turns out to be different from cow worship. He says so: "The present ideas of cow worship and varnashrama are a caricature of what in my opinion the originals are."² As for caste, he so explains it that he explains it away; and in his life he breaks all the rules of caste, transcends them, adopts an outcaste as his daughter, and in the end does more to break down the system of caste than any other man, living or dead. In the Mahatma, caste just didn’t operate, no matter what he said about it. He was a man outgrowing constantly the literal interpretation of his words. He reconciled and transcended inconsistencies in himself. Would I get caught in the marginal and miss the central? That made me hesitate.

I hesitated for another reason. For forty years, I have been intimately associated with the dual struggle taking place in India. There has been a struggle with the West in two phases: political and religious. India wanted political freedom: the right to make its own mistakes and to shape its own destiny. And then India wanted its soul to be its own, not dominated and molded by a seemingly foreign faith. There were many things in Hinduism that were unsatisfactory to modern Hindu minds, but at least it belonged to India, and they would defend it as such. They have defended it, the good and bad. Mahatma Gandhi was the spearhead of that political-religious battle. He was the voice.

I found myself, very early, taking sides with him in the political struggle. For years I was discreet, discreet enough to be able to stay in India during the years of struggle for independence. I went to Sir James Crerar, the Home Member, the head of the police of India, at the height of the struggle and told him my position: I believe in the moral right of India to independence and am sympathetic toward the national leaders and their aims, but I give you my word of honor that I am not taking part in politics as such. I was allowed to stay. But later, when the war came on, I felt I should throw aside a cramping discretion and expose my heart. I did so in many addresses in the West. For this I was refused a visa when I wanted to return to India in 1944. When I applied for a visa, I said: I give my word of honor that I will not take part in politics, but I want the right, when asked, to say that I believe in the moral right of India to self-government. Would I be allowed that freedom? It was a privilege to be kept out of India on that issue. I believed fundamentally in the method and motive of the struggle for political independence.

But the religious struggle with the West came home even closer to me. I was an evangelist in the midst of an India fighting with all its resources for freedom. What I presented seemed to be bound up with Western domination, the religious side of imperialism. I tried to present a disentangled Christ standing in his own right, apart from any mediation through the West. I tried to say that we of East and West stood in the same deep need, of Christ. My present plan of dividing my time equally between India and America—six months in each—is a practical application of my belief in our common need. I look on them both as mission fields. But no matter how much we tried to clarify our position and present a disentangled Christ, the clash was there. And Mahatma Gandhi voiced the protest. The pages of Young India were the debating ground. Other papers echoed the Mahatma and reinforced his arguments and protests with their own. In my public meetings, these things would come to the surface at question time, sometimes in bitter form. The center of that clash was this: since there was communal representation in India—representation in government according to the numbers in the religious community—religious conversion could be used to build up one’s own communal power and, incidentally, to undermine the political power of the other community; which meant that the political power of the Hindus was jeopardized by conversions, especially mass conversions. For thirty years, I lived at the nerve center of that clash. It has left scars on me. Again and again, I found myself disagreeing with the Mahatma in his positions. For ten days, he and I opened our hearts to each other in the early morning hours at the Sabarmati Ashram. There were deep disagreements. And yet something held me to him amid those disagreements. I felt that he had a way of coming out on the right side of things, even when the intellectual processes by which he arrived at that end could not be followed by me. He had a way of being right, even when I thought he was wrong. His spirit transcended the mental processes and came out on the right side of things.

Acharya Kripalani, then president of the Indian National Congress, put it this way to me one day: The Mahatma is more right when he is wrong than we are when we are right. That was a deep insight and is the key to the understanding of his character. His spirit and magnificent intention carried him past mental detours and brought him almost unerringly to his goal. His spirit was so great that it could absorb mental limitations and make something great even out of them. Many of us are correct in our little correctness and are small in the process. But the Mahatma was incorrect in many things and yet correct in the sum total, and big in the very inconsistencies. In the end, he seldom or never came out at the wrong place. The words of Browning:

I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first,

I ask not: . . .

In some time, [God’s] good time, I shall arrive.³

could be applied to Mahatma Gandhi in full measure.

And yet the above must be corrected, for it may leave the impression that he had a large capacity for blunders in thinking. That would be wrong. He had an amazingly clear mind and an amazingly clear style and vocabulary. They were the expression of his inner spirit. He thought clearly because his intentions were simple and clear. He was not intellectually brilliant, but he was so fundamentally straight that his moral intentions carried him almost by intuition to right conclusions.

As I thought on all these things, I found myself coming to the conclusion that I could lay an honest tribute at the feet of the great little man. And I could do it with my whole heart. To have won an evangelist to a wholehearted affection amid the clash of thirty years is no small conquest. But in the end he had conquered me. This book is a sign of that conquest. Mahatma Gandhi wrote in the Harijan (June 18, 1938):

Intellectually, of course, even many people of the West have come to recognize the futility of violence, and have begun to ask if nonviolence may not after all be worth a trial. Dr. Stanley Jones has sent me a copy of his recent article, Gandhian Solution of the Chinese Trouble,—and he has seriously discussed various forms of non-co-operation that may be successfully adopted. There was a time when Dr. Jones had not much belief in non-co-operation, but he now seriously suggests it as a nonviolent solution and has pressed me to go to Europe to preach peace.

Had not much belief—that expresses the distance I had to travel to where I am today. In the beginning I had none. But gradually, the facts conquered me. If there are scars on my spirit, they are now radiant scars, for in the end I see something bigger than hurt from clashes. I see a man with whom I have often disagreed, but whom I have intensely believed in and loved, and I would like my readers to see the man I see. For Mahatma Gandhi has significance, very great significance, world significance in fact.

I am still an evangelist. I bow to Mahatma Gandhi, but I kneel at the feet of Christ and give him my full and final allegiance. And yet a little man, who fought a system in the framework of which I stand, has taught me more of the Spirit of Christ than perhaps any other person in East or West. This book is a symbol of my gratitude.

And yet none of the things mentioned above could have overcome my hesitancy in writing this book had not the inner urge, which to me is an Inner Voice, said, You must. Perhaps the years have prepared me to write this book.

—E. Stanley Jones

PREFACE TO THE 1983 EDITION

Few people have presented as clear an interpretation of the spirit and leadership style of Mahatma Gandhi as did Dr. E. Stanley Jones, an American Christian missionary in India for over forty years. Dr. Jones knew Gandhi in a unique and personal way. Gandhi: Portrait of a Friend, first published in 1948 (as Mahatma Gandhi: An Interpretation), contains quotations from letters and conversations between them.

This book reappears at a crucial time in our history. It is remarkably synchronistic that it can be read as a companion to the 1983 movie on Gandhi’s life. In these pages, we are confronted with much more than Gandhi the person; we are brought face to face with the reality of our own choices for survival. For we are also a people who are being prepared to ponder our future as a nation and world. What alternatives remain for us as we reflect on violence, militaristic mind-sets, nuclear war, and world peace?

We Americans need clear guidelines through these anxiety-riddled days ahead. We need spiritual and social options and values that point us to Christlike alternatives for personal and social change. We have a choice; are we going to continue tightening the boundary lines, constricting our options toward a global battleground? Or are we going to construct deliberate and courageous lines of humble nonviolent integrity? Dr. Jones’s interpretation of Gandhi is a prophetic and timely guide to this end.

The Christ who affirms culture calls us to the cross through the example and influence of Gandhi. It is time that we take up our nonviolent crosses and follow Jesus during peacetime and at all times.

—Hal Edwards, executive director

Christian Laity of Chicago

May 1983

PUBLISHER’S PREFACE

Abingdon Press is delighted to bring back into print Gandhi: Portrait of a Friend. For this edition, the publisher has made some minor revisions but has also made every effort to retain E. Stanley Jones’s voice for today’s readers. The updates include spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and some language usage and references that would distract or confuse the reader. But there have been very few changes to content or style. Some references that were specific to the time of writing still have relevance for our time. References to humanity, no longer expressed as men and mankind, have been updated. Some references to God have been recast to avoid masculine pronouns. A major effort to provide source citations where none existed was often but not always successful.

CHAPTER 1

THE END OF THE ROAD

On the day that Mahatma Gandhi was killed, I arrived in Delhi just an hour and a quarter before the tragedy. I had requested a friend to get me an appointment with Mahatma Gandhi for that afternoon. But my train was five hours late—symbol of India’s internal upset—and when I arrived, I was told that the appointment could not be arranged as he was taking a minimum of interviews since his fast. It was then suggested that we go to the prayer meeting that he held daily and that would possibly give an opportunity for a word at the close. I had often seen him in the post-prayer periods.

We had just time to make it and get back to a supper meeting at which I was to speak, along with the wife of Acharya Kripalani, the president of the Indian National Congress. We had time to make it, provided we took a taxi. That decided me against it, for the taxi would have to wait, and that would be expensive. I allowed the expense item to decide the matter. I said to my friend that I could see Gandhi later, on my return to Delhi for a series of lectures, but the real reason was the expense. I am ashamed to confess that a matter of rupees kept me from being at the greatest tragedy since the Son of God died on a cross. In a way I am grateful I was spared the sight; but one would like to have been near him in his last moments.

I was walking up and down near the Y. M. C. A. building, thinking of what I was going to say in the coming supper meeting, when the playing in the field alongside stopped as if by a silent, but imperious command. An awful hush settled on everything. This was a symbol of what had taken place all over Delhi and India. What had happened? One of the players ran over to me and broke the news; the Mahatma had been shot and killed on his way to the prayer meeting! It was unbelievable. People stood in little clumps and discussed the tragedy. Now, said a prominent man, India is in for chaos. With the restraining influence of Mahatma Gandhi gone, India will sink into chaos. I quietly disagreed. I said that I thought Mahatma Gandhi would be greater in death than he had been in life; that through this tragedy good would come to India. I didn’t see just how, but I felt it would. I could not help thinking of the cross and what happened through that tragedy. That tragedy-triumph held me inwardly steady.

We went over to the Congress House, where Acharya Kripalani lived, to get some firsthand word. He had gone to the side of the fallen leader. When we arrived, a big Sikh guard saluted and said, "Jai Hind" (Victory to India). Was that a prophecy? Would victory come out of this to India? We went back and sat around the radio to hear Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhai Patel break the news to the nation. These strong men, veterans of many battles for independence—men who had gone to jail time after time without a quiver—now shook with emotion. They could scarcely go on, and their words were often unintelligible. Strong men in uniform sat by the radio and sobbed unashamedly. My tears mingled with theirs. Ours was a common sorrow. They asked me to read a passage and pray. I wondered if I could do it. An Englishman handed me the Apocrypha, and I read:

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God. . . . In the

eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died;

and their departure was thought to be an affliction,

and their going from us to be their destruction:

but they are in peace.

For though in the sight of men they were punished,

their hope is full of immortality;

Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good,

because God tested them, and found them worthy of himself;

like gold in the furnace he tried them,

and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.

In the time of their visitation they will shine forth,

and will run like sparks through the stubble.

They will govern nations, and rule over peoples.

and the Lord will reign over them for ever.

—Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-8

Every word seemed to apply to the Mahatma. I felt that in his martyrdom he would govern nations and would rule over peoples. That has happened in a way of which I never dreamed. I prayed for a stricken nation, a broken prayer. An Indian commented as we ceased praying: And this is Friday, too.

We called up Dr. John Matthai, the minister for transport, and suggested that we as Christians should pay our respects. He replied that he had tried to get to the Birla House, where the Mahatma lay, but could not get near because of the crowd. Three of us—British, Indian, American—walked the three miles to get a sight of him. We managed to get inside the gate; strangely enough, our white faces helped. We were told by a secretary that they were sorry but no one could see him till morning. We departed about midnight, not to sleep, but to meditate on the meaning of the tragedy of the day. For we knew that something of world significance had happened, something that people will talk about ten thousand years from now.

I wanted to see him that day to renew my plea for a national pageant, which would be a befitting celebration, I thought, of the meaning of the nonviolent struggle for independence. Mahatma Gandhi had left the Ashram at Sabarmati on March 12, 1930, to go on the Salt March. He proposed to march to the sea, one hundred fifty miles distant, to Dandi, and there make salt, which was a government monopoly, and thus civilly break the Salt Law, precipitate a crisis, and go to jail, to be followed by tens of thousands of others. It was a dramatic launching of a Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Movement. It was made more dramatic by the announcement as he left that he would not return to the Ashram