Menu

Index

Gallery

Contact

Mahatma Gandhi

October 29, 2020

India, Culture

This content regarding Mennonite (GC/General Conference, MC/Mennonite Church and MB/Mennonite Brethren) writing about Gandhi first appeared in my 325-page, self-published book titled Mennonites Encounter Hinduism: An Annotated Bibliography, 2015.1

A number of Mennonites have written briefly about the noted Indian Mohandas K. Gandhi (Mahatma or “Great Soul” in Sanskrit) known as: Hindu peace advocate, social reformer, implementer of satyagraha, and leader of masses of people. Some wrote when located in India. S. T. Moyer (GC) called Gandhi’s negation of British rule “satanic”; by promoting swarag (home rule) he did “all he could to break down their rule.” Others judged Gandhi “blind to the evils” of caste and Hindu Brahman money-lending patterns. Moyer’s solution would have been for Gandhi to accept Jesus’ and his teaching of nonviolence. From Bihar state S. J. Hostetler (MC) wrote to an Elkhart office several weeks after Gandhi’s death: having been invited to ‘immersion day,’ “I joined a procession to the river where I read Matthew 5:1-14 and gave a little tribute to Gandhi. That I could do with honest heart,” he wrote. Leah Sonwani (GC), an Indian then attending the Mennonite seminary in Elkhart, wrote of Gandhi as “the brightest star of the Indian skies.” She knew both British lust for power and Indian weakness; the latter was defeated by an honest, determined man.2

In India for a Fulbright lectureship sabbatical in 1960 and with later, short MCC assignments there, life-long peace advocate Atlee Beechy (MC) quotes Gandhi as mentor: “Nonviolence succeeds only when we have a real living faith in God.” Beechy learned further about building peace from Charu Choudhry whose “indestructible soul” joined with Gandhi’s as early as 1925.3 John A. Lapp’s (MC) 1972 PhD study of Mennonites in India reflects their awareness of Gandhi’s conviction that no need existed for conversion between religions. To prompt others to join your religion was arrogant, he thought. Lapp reports that some missioners questioned Gandhi’s nonviolent techniques, describing them as “rabid, stubborn, revolutionary, and belligerent.” Their critiques, however, combined with a growing defense of or love for India and Indians.

Griselda Gehman Shelly (GC) expresses an account of human interest of Gandhi the man with her father.4 Of Mennonite background 34-year-old Gilbert Gehman, with keen interest in peace and nonresistance, wrote in appreciation to Gandhi (addressing the same to “London”) after preaching on peace. Gandhi’s response, sent from Port Said on 17th Dec. ’31, expressed:

Dear Friend,
I must thank you for your letter of 15th Nov. last. I am glad that your congregation appreciates the non-violent means we are adopting to regain our lost liberty.
Yours Sincerely, M. K. Gandhi.

Rather than bring Mennonite writers together through a narrative format focused on particular themes, this section highlights material from specific authors’ insight or experience.

A short article by Orlando Waltner(GC)5 reviews life details about Gandhi:

Waltner quotes eight lines of a Gujarati hymn that shaped Gandhi’s meaning of satyagraha or “soul force.” This hymn combined with Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount fixed in Gandhi’s heart awareness that Truth cannot be destroyed. “Satya” the fact of truth and ahimsa (nonviolence or non-killing) the method for applying the fact came together. Gandhi believed that the Indian mind and heart could practice using these weapons:

We will match our capacity to suffer against your capacity to inflict the suffering.
We will match our soul force against your physical force.
We will not hate you but we will not obey you.
Do what you like and we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer.
And in the winning of our freedom we will so appeal to your hearts and consciences that we will win you.
So, ours will be a double victory. We will win our freedom and our captors in the process. (57

With the sword of satyagraha being love, Gandhi refused government protection when going directly to where partition—mass killings between Muslims and Hindus along with Sikhs—needed his message of love and peace. But fasting, after due spiritual preparation, became the major moral force for him, Waltner explains. Gandhi compared his redemptive ‘conversion’ known through fasting with the ‘coercion’ practiced by Jesus from the cross. Each made others good by taking on suffering himself. Convinced that his objective and method were correct, Gandhi set out eight points needed for agreement between Hindus and Muslims, points that favored the minority group. Then he “left the consequences to God.”

Some Christians may reflect bias when questioning whether satyagraha was effective because used against British people who believed in God and human rights. So too some fanatic Hindu folk reflect bias today when negating Gandhi because he credited people other than Hindus. The Hindi word atma for eternal spirit deserves attention. “Things that make for peace” lie in the atma; the power that Gandhi reflected was atma. Waltner summarizes Gandhi’s universal principle this way:

No individual group or nation needs to submit to wrongs or injustices nor need they go to war to right that wrong. There is a third way, the way of nonviolence. If nonviolent resistance is organized in a thorough and disciplined way, then the individual, group, or nation need not be forever vulnerable. Gandhi would insist that his method will conquer any and all enemies. (58)

Weyburn W. Groff (MC) did the most extensive study of and writing about Gandhi, that I know among Mennonites. He titled his 1963 dissertation “Satyagraha and Nonresistance A Comparative Study of Gandhian and Mennonite Nonviolence.” Originally submitted at Princeton Theological Seminary, this doctoral work was first printed in 2009.6 Groff, when a missioner faculty member at Union Biblical Seminary in Yeotmal (Yavatmal) located in the state of Maharashtra, often took, through the 1950s, seminary students and guests the forty miles to Gandhi’s Sevagram Ashram. [Some people spell the ashram name Sabarmuti.] Aware of Gandhi’s hopes for “freedom for all faiths,” Groff counseled Mennonites to understand that Christian faithfulness emerges in the context of multiple faiths, not in isolation. He hoped that readers of his study would gain “insight into the many efforts being made to find nonviolent ways to resolve conflicts and bring peace with justice.”7

Groff explores “Gandhian nonviolence: Satyagraha” in chapter 3. Intent to bring together teaching from the Hindu religious text, the Bhagavad Gita, and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Gandhi views complete renunciation as the “highest form of religion.” The battle within the Gita story symbolizes a person’s struggle between good and evil; the battlefield represents the human soul. Krishna, depicting the divine “dweller within,” whispers in response to human Arjuna’s inner struggle, his duel between evil and good. Krishna recommends faithfulness to the Divine within. Gandhi’s nonviolent direct action called satyagraha, his principle of social action for a situation of conflict, is known as “truth-force,” “love force,” or “soul-force.” It insists on Truth. For him, to realize Truth is to realize God; to realize God is to realize Truth. Through a half century Gandhi’s creed became “Truth is God.” Truth for him meant “what the voice within tells you” while faith expressed the “living, wide-awake consciousness of God within.” Either Truth or God transpires through reason as well as living faith. Methods of satyagraha may involve any of multiple steps of civil disobedience like negotiation, strike, demonstration, self-purification, fasting, economic or tax noncooperation.8

Groff’s chapter 4 is titled “Mennonite nonviolence: Nonresistance.” He explains the Anabaptist-Mennonite term nonresistance as “belief that the will of God requires the renunciation of warfare and other compulsive means for the furtherance of personal or social ends.”9 Chapter 4 highlights important writings or events through Anabaptist-Mennonite history on the theme of nonresistance:

founder Menno Simon’s Fundament-Boek 1539-1540 with emphasis on truth in the scriptures;
the Dordrecht Confession of 1632, notably Articles XIII and XIV; and a cluster of meetings and writings in 1946, 1950, 1951, 1961 that highlight yieldedness, agape the root of nonresistance, and foundations of covenant, Jesus Christ, and New Testament teaching;
dynamics for nonresistance: faith, discipleship, love, responsibility, and hope; and three areas for application: 1. service and witness, 2. Social, economic, and political relations, and 3. war and military service. He notes names like Guy F. Hershberger, Gordon Kaufman, Edward Yoder, John Howard Yoder, and J. Lawrence Burkholder.10

Several of Groff’s informative statements about Gandhi include the following:

Groff’s final, short chapter (151-59) identifies a few ways that satyagraha and nonresistance are similar with more examples of how they differ.11
Similarities:
Satyagraha and nonresistance both see continuity between religion and morality.
Both nonresistance and satyagraha are essential to a whole way of life.
Differences:
Whereas satyagraha evolved over decades in a setting of political and social activity, nonresistance reflects religious, not political, reform. However, Groff admits that Gandhi was “essentially religious” in his political and social activity. (151)
Whereas satyagraha as a technique of direct action was conceived pragmatically, nonresistance came into being through dogma.
Whereas Hinduism and Gandhi claim that Ultimate Reality (with many names like Truth or God, and incarnations) is indefinable, Mennonites know with certainty through history and scripture something of God’s nature and that God is. (152-53)
Whereas satyagraha credits humanity as good, “Mennonite belief holds that natural humankind is essentially evil and that it becomes good and responsive to good only by the gracious act of God.”
Whereas Gandhi’s satyagraha is based in reason, nonresistance finds sanction in scripture. (153)
Groff sees motivation for self-suffering in satyagraha’s appeal to justice and empathy to move an opponent, whereas with nonresistance suffering naturally follows from identity with Jesus. (155)

Paul G. Hiebert’s (MB) article titled “Conversion in Hinduism and Buddhism”12 includes a brief section on Gandhi’s understanding of conversion as a change of behavior within a way of life. It does not suggest a change of creed, action or conduct changes. As Margaret Chatterjee writes in her insightful book Gandhi’s Religious Thought, the goal within the satyagrahi’s search for truth is to improve relations. Not a matter of changing one’s label or turning against former traditions, conversion improves how Hindus and Muslims or caste Hindus and untouchables behave with each other. Not defeating or winning over another, seeing the other’s nonviolent conduct leads a person to transform personal action and understanding.

Luben W. Jantzen (GC) titles a report that appeared in India Calling “Has Gandhi Gone to Heaven?” 13 The report follows Jantzen’s having heard lectures on Hinduism by Rev. A. C. Chakravarti, a former Hindu Brahmin who works among Hindu priests and ascetics in holy places like Vrindaban and Benares. The lecture was given at the Landour Language School, Mussoorie, U.P. India, where Jantzen was studying. Jantzen provides helpful details for two reasons why Hindus would answer the question raised here in the negative. First, a person consists of three parts: 1. Gross body made up of five physical elements; 2. Subtle body or desire, that is the mind, intellect and ego; 3. Atma or eternal spirit.

When Gandhi’s first part perished on January 30, 1948 at 5:00 p.m., his spirit entered directly into another gross body determined by the seat of desire (no. 2). Gandhi clearly still desired either the full realization of India’s freedom from a foreign controller or that Hindus and Muslims be united in a New India. As long as desire continued, further existence (rebirth) was required, Jantzen explains. Salvation, that follows innumerable re-incarnations, means that desire no longer exists. At that point the spirit returns to the Great Atma or Heaven which entails absence of desire.

Second, the lecturer told listeners gathered with Jantzen, Gandhi could not have gone to the Hindu understanding of Heaven because he was not born a Brahman, the highest caste in the Hindu social system—those who perform religious rites and ceremonies. Only Brahmans might escape rebirths because of the merit that they achieve while doing religious observances. Even then, a born Brahmin also knows karma, consequences positive or negative for how life is lived.

Jantzen then notes the Christian view of Heaven. While some Christians might presume that following Gandhi ‘s physical death he, because of his good quality of life, would have entered Heaven, others would deny Heaven to Gandhi and between those two options many would choose not to decide. Jantzen expects literal, traditional interpretations of biblical scriptures to answer his question: from John’s gospel: 3:36, 8:24b, 14:6; Acts 4:12, and II Cor 5:17. “Apart from Christ, there is no other Savior for man’s soul,” he believes. For the “Christian heaven is to be with Christ eternally, after death.”

Jantzen’s final paragraph notes three quotes, without sources, from Gandhi to prompt readers to draw a conclusion to his question: 1. “I cannot give Jesus Christ a solitary throne.” 2. “I place Ram, Krishna, and Jesus Christ on one level.” 3. Gandhi’s last words when assassinated were “Ah, Ram.” He “fell asleep in Ram, not Jesus Christ,” Jantzen testifies.

Missioner J. N. Kaufman’s (MC) chapter on “Political Matters”14 includes insight into Gandhi’s struggle for swaraj (self-rule). Leonard Gross lifts much from Kaufman’s chapter in two pages of the April 1983 issue of Mennonite Historical Bulletin. Kaufman describes the agonies, imprisonments, and riots en route to independence. He credits Gandhi’s double role—political and religious leader.

Political neutrality led to varied decisions. Kaufman reports the missioners’ having felt cowardly from having obeyed a British official’s command to gather from their scattered locations to the medical station in Dhamtari in case riots would follow a planned intent to arrest Gandhi. The group soon after decided to “stick to our duties and take the consequences” should such a future “emergency” arise. On another occasion Kaufman turned down a government offer to be an honorary magistrate—to mix church work with government affairs countered a resolution forged already in 1921 by missioners. Then with wife doctor Lillian, Kaufman attended a tea party with Dhamtari lawyers on Independence Day. Officials were pleased to find a flag unfurled that day in the Mennonite school yard. Another account reports Kaufman’s receiving a postcard from Gandhi on 30-6-47.

Henry G. Krahn’s (MB, former missioner to India) review of A Gandian Theology of Liberation by Ignatius Jesudasan 15 appears in Mission Focus. Krahn credit’s Indian writer Jesudasan for interweaving Gandhi’s liberation theology, life experiences, and link to India’s history. He sees the theology of “Swaraj” as central, though rather than clarify that term to mean “self-rule,” he describes it as a “universal concept upheld by most living religions . . . built on the broader ground of culture, religion, and civilization.” From Jesudasan, Krahn understands Gandhi’s foundation for swaraj as religious, his opposition toward any godless civilization, and his belief in “no autonomy apart from God-realization.” Krahn observes Gandhi’s challenge to Christianity as tension with views of Christ as exclusive [as a means to salvation?] and as a universal image. Whereas Krahn sees both Gandhi and Jesudasan as affirming “the lordship of Christ,” they both question “the lordship of the church.”

(MC) Shantkumar Kunjam’s Thesis for a Master’s in Peace Studies degree is titled An Exploratory Examination of the Ethics of Gandhiji in the Light of Biblical Teachings.16 I value reading an Indian Mennonite’s view of distinct themes relevant for understanding Gandhiji.

M. C. Lehman’s (MC) article titled “Gandhi’s Program of Non-violence—A Critical Estimate from a Christian Point of View” appears in the Goshen College Bulletin.17 The Sanskrit term ahimsa—doing harm of any kind to any person or living thing is sin—offers a religious context for Gandhi’s belief. (1) Mentioned in the early Vedic literature this concept gains prominence in the sacred Hindu text called Bhagavad Gita. Gandhi expressed personally to Lehman how the Gita and Laws of Manu formulated his ethics. Lehman encourages readers to read a good English translation of the Gita to understand that Gandhi’s non-violent stance stemmed from Hindu scripture, despite some inconsistencies.

Lehman describes two major cases that illustrate Gandhi’s non-violent resistance. After a year of legal practice in India, Gandhi was called to South Africa to advise people from lndia who lived there regarding unfair laws. Miners and farmers worked in Natal while thousands crossed the border (against the law without permission) to settle in Transvaal. Offensive laws affected registration, marriage, property, and personal worth; they attacked religion, national honor, and racial self-respect. Gandhi organized mass meetings, mine picketing, and strikes. Four thousand joined a march, going great distances each day, continuing their non-violent pattern even after Gandhi was arrested and jailed—until General Smuts’ yielded

A second case that Lehman reports transpired in Bombay in June of 1930. Warned “If you come as far as the corner, we will shoot!” the silent crowd moved “relentlessly, proudly” forward. The English fired as promised. With leading ranks fallen, the next in rank moved, stepping over the dying, toward the guns. As more fell, more women and men replaced them ready to die until a young English lieutenant asked that the guns be moved to the next corner. The crowd still marched on. The Indian leader broke the silence:

“So long as you point your guns at us, we will march. Rescind your order against our meeting, take away your guns . . . and we will disperse!”
“But that would be to surrender!”
“Very well then. We will march until every one of these thousands is dead!”

When the guns were removed, “the crowd melted away like magic, lifting up the wounded and burying the dead.” Gandhi’s process of nonviolent protest, designed to exhaust, caused the powerful to see tax, legislation, and strength in a new light.

Jacob A. Loewen’s (MB) article titled “My Personal Pilgrimage toward Peace” includes a brief section titled “What Gandhi Taught Me.” Although Loewen had been warned by another MB minister not to use Gandhi’s life as an example for acceptable protest, because “Gandhi was not a Christian,” Loewen proceeded. He named Gandhi his “best example of what a Christ-like life of renouncing force and depending only on the moral force of love and self-giving looks like.” (13) Feeling that orthodox Christianity distorts Jesus’ message, Gandhi turned to the Gospels, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, to engage with his Hindu Gita.

Obedience to non-use of force appears in Gandhi’s protest efforts, as in South Africa against passbook laws, Loewen explains. When protestors wished to blockade the passbook office, Gandhi countered: they had no right to inconvenience either passersby or those with legitimate reason to enter that office. They instead gathered in a park across the street. Before striking with textile workers in southern India, Gandhi studied what wage increases the mill owners could in fact manage. Although workers wished for more advantage, Gandhi proposed a just solution, fair for all involved. He nudged protestors to be neither arrogant nor subservient in their requests. Gandhi also learned in the process that some workers simply needed to return to work in order to survive. Although he had food available at his ashram, going on a hunger strike was appropriate for him as moral leader. To “suffer without flinching empowers the sufferer.” (13)

From Gandhi, Loewen further learned that Anabaptist efforts of nonviolence dare not violate the dignity of another and that verbal aggression in order to disrupt, block traffic, or shame others can be questionable signs of moral power. (14)

Although the Mahasabha and Gandhi agreed on several points—against religious conversion and for nationalism—their approaches to achieve each proved to be most different. Believing in religion as a “heart-process known only to God,” Gandhi saw no reason to change loyalty. He opposed efforts to proselytize and urged each individual simply to become a better, more faithful religious person in the pursuit for Truth. The Mahasabha credited only Hindu being for Indians. (140, 147)

While the Hindu Mahasabha saw violence, Vedic martial heritage, and male machismo as necessary for nation building, Gandhi called for a nonviolent strategy. Mahasabha reacted intensely toward Gandhi’s “rabid,” senseless principle; he described their tactics as “vicious.” Sarvarkar glorified martial aspects and teaching for himsa (violence) in the Gita and Ramayana epic as directives for the fight for independence. Gandhi knew the Gita as allegorical; he explained the battle therein as an internal struggle between good and evil. (134, 147-48)

Neufeldt explains Savarkar’s view of nationalism as a whole way of life, being intentional to defend the Fatherland as Holyland with no plan for minorities. He saw suddhi not only as reconversion to Hindu practice but as removing all that was impure from another religion. For him, a person could not be loyal to India as a country if not loyal to its indigenous religion. He presumed that Muslims intended to turn India into a Muslim state. In contrast to Muslims, he presumed that Parsees, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains were all Hindu in a cultural sense. For, a true Hindu defends Hindu, not foreign, culture. By contrast, Gandhi expected India to be open to people of any religion; he himself valued and drew from their diverse scriptures. (138, 145-46) Neufeldt suggests a stark conclusion: “Gandhi believed in breaking down barriers; Savarkar and Mahasabha were intent to set up barriers.” (149)

James Pankratz (MB) wrote “Gandhi and Mennonites in India” for the 2012 Benjamin Eby Lectureship held at Conrad Grebel University in Waterloo, Ontario, 23 pp.19 Pankratz had done doctoral research in India on 19th century religious debates between Hindu society and European Christianity and had served three years in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal with Mennonite Central Committee.

Pankratz explains the context for Mennonite and Gandhi interpretations of their religions via several pages of personal history about both. Direct encounters between Gandhi and Mennonites were rare. In addition to M. C. Lehman (see “Glimpses . . .”), Pankratz includes an anecdote from Leoda Buckwalter’s writing about Amos Dick a Brethren in Christ missionary located in north Bihar state.20 When Gandhi was to visit a nearby town, Dick prepared to provide goat milk for the entourage. Looking forward to ask personal questions from having read Gandhi’s speeches, Dick was disappointed to learn that because the day was a Monday, Gandhi’s weekly day to be silent, conversation was impossible. Sitting six feet from Gandhi all day, all he heard was the click of a spinning wheel. Then when Gandhi addressed the crowds, on Tuesday, no occasion for Dick to engage the guest occurred.

While early missioners knew little about India or the Hindu religion on arrival, they gradually formed assumptions and attitudes through experience. Some letters and reports provide personal insight into Hindu teachings, scriptures, and deity forms or names. Without providing direct sources, Pankratz observes that North American and European framework and cultural assumptions shaped missioner comparisons. They described Hindu shrines and worship and also met opposition. Their overall evaluation of popular Hinduism “was strongly negative,” but “more than a dozen” focused advanced academic degrees over seven decades on aspects of Hindu thought or practice. [Four of those studies are mentioned in a note; one is quoted on p 5.] For example, George J. Lapp notices that worship of images may be symbolic or literal, depending on a practitioner’s depth of understanding.

Language used shapes and reflects perspective. While missioners often used the term heathen, to suggest that people were inferior or spiritually misguided, common public discourse also used it. Pankratz’ answer to his question: “What did Mennonites find offensive in Hinduism?” is summarized as: 1. polytheism—universal or local god forms with stories; 2. sensuous, popular worship—priests and processions, temples and sacrifices, devotees encountering god forms; 3. diverse scriptures along with diverse levels of literacy; and 4. social identity through the caste system, seen by missioners as degrading for the majority with whom they worked. (7-8)

Pankratz also asks how Gandhi interpreted and practiced Hinduism. From a vegetarian family that honored the god form Vishnu and friendships with “philosophical-occult“ Theosophists who enabled his life-long claim to accounts and Truth in the Bhagavad Gita, religious practices of meditation, prayer, and scripture reading (from diverse religions) came to be vital for Gandhi. As is true for most people of faith, Gandhi was selective about Hinduism. (8) Some features he praised, others like untouchability he questioned. Not a literalist with scripture, he rejected what was inconsistent with key terms of satya (truth) and ahimsa (nonviolence). He interpreted the Gita’s key battle as symbolic of a person’s inner conflict between good and evil. As is true for honest people of any religion, he did not defend social ills viewed in texts or acted out by co-religionists. With no intent to change religious loyalty, Gandhi could critique the Hindu caste system and avoid offending common people who relied more than he on certain rituals. He was intent, Pankratz says, “to work within Hinduism as it was.” (9)

Bypassing the non-Hindu section titled “Mennonites and Christianity,” several comments deserve mention from pages focused “Gandhi and Christianity.” On reading a copy of the Bible from a friend in England, Gandhi said: “while chapters following the book of Genesis invariably sent me to sleep,” the Sermon on the Mount “went straight to my heart.” (11) He thereafter brought together teaching from the Gita, the Buddhist Light of Asia, Jesus’ Sermon, and Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. While he valued Christian hymns like “Lead Kindly Light,” he seriously objected to Christian thought about human beings being inherently sinful or vile. Viewing each person as responsible for sin, he did not accept Jesus’ atonement for sins of others. Valuing Jesus as one of the greatest, but not perfect, teachers led to seeing him as belonging to all people. (12)

Pankratz also notes critiques of Christianity named by the Hindu Gandhi, some of which judgment Mennonites would share. He opposed Constantine’s claim of Christianity; he strongly countered conversion (except “in the sense of self-purification, self-realization.”) All religions are resourceful; none is arbiter for others or the “only path to spiritual fulfillment.” To add what enriches from other faiths to make a person a better Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian is a goal, not to replace another. Gandhi was irked when former Hindus became Europeanized (as with clothes) and truly offended by Christian use of abusive language to describe Hinduism. (13) When massive political agitation called for swaraj (self-rule), new Indian Christians who no longer used their “mother tongue” could be charged for ceasing to be Indian. What really scorned him was Christian blessing of war through prayers of military chaplains who blessed wartime murder. (14)

While Gandhi and Mennonites agreed on non-violence being based in spiritual being, they differed in detail. Gandhi was convinced that nonviolence relied on God rather than a religion and that human nature is basically good. Mennonites thought of human nature, being inclined to sin and violence, needed a radical conversion through encounter with God through Jesus Christ. Might Pankratz glorify Mennonite nonresistance as direct obedience to God symbolic of their separation from the world?

According to Pankratz Mennonites countered Gandhi’s “Quit India” approach that could make use of arms or nonviolent force like non-cooperation. (15) They faulted his civil disobedience for being provocative or coercive with intent to retaliate. But, for Gandhi, passive resistance was negative. His intent with satyagraha, an active principle, was to lift up or move the adversary’s conscience on meeting an opponent willing to suffer. Why might Pankratz place in an endnote Gandhi’s insistence that “nonviolent, suffering-resistant discipline was rooted in reliance on God”? (23, note 63) Whereas violence tried to crush an opponent, nonviolence worked to gain a partner. (16-17)

Pankratz’ final section names further attention to Gandhi from Mennonites. Correspondence between several Indian leaders including Gandhi and MC leaders J. N. Kaufman and P. J. Malagar transpired in 1947. A couple months prior to India’s Independence, Kaufman and Malagar wrote asking that provision be made in the new Constitution for Mennonites whose conscience opposes “militarism in general and war in particular.” Assuring their intent to be responsible citizens, Mennonites expressed willingness to give public service instead of participate in war, if that ever occurred.

Gandhi replied via a handwritten postcard dated 30.6.47: “Dear Friend, Your letter. Why worry! I am in the same boat with you. Yours sincerely, M. K. Gandhi.”

Pankratz presumes that Gandhi meant to assure Mennonites of receiving the same treatment; they agreed on the issue. He notes that no provision for conscientious objection appears in the Constitution but that “freedom of religion” is expressed. Further, since an all-volunteer army has functioned during India’s three wars since then, the “same boat” could reflect that “religious identity and convictions are not factors.” (18)

Mennonites also noted Gandhi’s assassination that occurred on January 30, 1948. Aldine and Eva Brunk’s (MC) records include a torn copy of the two-page clipping that appeared in the Goshen, Indiana newspaper, The News-Democrat, the day of Gandhi’s death. Within J. D. and Minnie Graber’s (MC) files is a copy of the Memorial Service held on February 1, 1948 at the New York City Community Church that honored Gandhi; it reflects his ecumenical openness. Graber’s Gospel Herald column a week later also reflected on the fact that “Gandhi is dead.” He credits the Hindu’s worthy example, his love for principles based on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Not crediting also devotion to the Gita and writings from other religions, he does sensitively conclude: “Gandhi, the Hindu, helping Mennonites to be better Christians. He would have been pleased.” (19)

Theologian John Howard Yoder (MC) is known for extensive teaching and writing about nonviolence, as well as for Anabaptist-Mennonite mission history. His “The Religious Origins of AHIMSA: A Twentieth-Century Distillation” links with Gandhi.21

Yoder discusses a quote from M. Gandhi that appeared in Indian Opinion April 6, 1921 that makes public the ancient “law of self-sacrifice, the law of suffering.” He refers to the Rishis (legendary Hindu scholars behind the Rig Veda) who discovered the law of non-violence. “Non-violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute.” Such non-violence Gandhi wished Indians to practice. Yoder’s commentary affirms the rootedness of nonviolence and place for suffering in ancient Hindu religion and shows how Gandhi modernized that legacy beyond earlier scholars.

Because of attention to Gandhi by the 1930s, an Indian author who had spent a few years in the Gandhian movement and Tagore’s school near Calcutta, Krishnalal Shridarani, made public “the spiritual and cosmological roots of the notion of ‘the power of suffering.” (1) Yoder details Shridarani’s outline of stages through which nonviolence emerged, beginning with the Vedas where Yajna (ritual sacrifice) was natural law—sacrifice or suffering produced a reward from the gods. After sacrifice became a discipline to refine the self with the Upanishads, Jainism, through legends of those who conquered via non-violent force, made ahimsa (non-harming) the very core of religion.

Next, Buddha, who used ahimsa to get rid of the cause of suffering, was followed by the ruler Asoka who shifted ahimsa from a focus on spiritual qualities to its daily cultural dynamic. With the Muslim takeover came a return, as through poetry, to ahimsa’s being “spiritual resistance for people without political power.” (2) Shridarani notes legends and songs that promoted nonviolence. Gandhi then linked this Hindu heritage of stages with his exposure to Hebrew, Christian and western views of suffering to shape his expression of ahimsa. Yoder also introduces an even earlier level, pre-Vedic (but not earlier than tenth century BCE) ahimsa, with an ascetic vision through Unto Tahtinen’s 1976 overview. Such history of a concept important to Mennonites can prompt us to be humble with the practice of nonviolence.

Based on content discussed in this study of Gandhian influence, this writer observes that Mennonites agree with Gandhi about religion as the foundation of life and nonviolence as the preferred approach to occasions of conflict. Other than Yoder, few of these writers showed freedom to credit what Gandhi valued in Hinduism. They notice Gandhi’s positive gestures toward Christianity but seem not to reciprocate. The writer wonders why this imbalance exists and how it determines what we learn from a noted world figure and what we lose in overall rapport with Hindu people.

Many possible resources (other than Mennonite) could be incorporated for broader understanding, like:

Chatterjee, Margaret. Gandhi’s Religious Thought. Notre Dame Press, 1983.
Ellsbert, Robert, ed. Gandhi on Christianity. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995.
Howard, Veena R. “Rethinking Gandhi’s Celibacy: Ascetic Power and Women’s Empowerment,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2013, 81/1, 130-61.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. Fighting with Gandhi. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984.
Kripalani, Krishna, ed/compiler. All Men are Brothers Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as told in his own words. Ahmedabad: Nava Jivan Publ House, 1960.
McDaniel, Jay. Gandhi’s Hope Learning from Other Religions as a Path to Peace. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis 2005.
Samartha, S. J. “Jesus Christ: The Ideal Satyagrahi – Mahatma Gandhi.” in The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ. Madras: CISRS, 1974.
Tan, Sharon. “Satyagraha and Reconciliation,” Interreligious Dialogue, Issue # 1, 72-81.