Peace, Truth, and Violence
Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and the endless cycle of violence symbolised by the Hindu 'wheel of karma'
“The way of peace is the way of truth. Truthfulness is even more important than peacefulness. Indeed, lying is the mother of violence. A truthful man cannot long remain violent. He will perceive in the course of his search that he has no need to be violent, and he will further discover that, so long as there is the slightest trace of violence in him, he will fail to find the truth he is searching.” -Mahatma Gandhi, 1926
Einstein considered Gandhi “the greatest political genius of our time”, and especially praised him for demonstrating that “a will governed by firm conviction is stronger than a seemingly invincible material power.” Gandhi’s campaign of non-violent resistance caused the British Empire to relinquish control of India, which earned its independence without a shot fired. He inspired Martin Luther King Jr in his struggle to earn equal rights for black citizens of the United States, Nelson Mandela in the fight to end apartheid in South Africa, and even today inspires imprisoned freedom campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi in her campaign for liberty in Myanmar.
Yet despite his influence, despite his enormous political success, there persists a somewhat dismissive attitude towards Gandhi in Europe and North America today: he is supposedly a special case, from which we cannot draw conclusions. This has always felt quite absurd to me, and seems rooted either in ignorance of Gandhi’s philosophy, a wilful misunderstanding of its implications, or perhaps simply an unquenchable faith in warfare to solve problems rather than merely - as a sober assessment of military intervention would suggest - to make matters far worse.
Central to Gandhi’s approach to political action is non-violence. He flatly rejected armed uprisings, considering them “a remedy worse than the disease sought to be cured”. But make no mistake, he was absolutely opposed to careless ‘appeasement’, and made it clear that while he strived for peace among all humanity he rejected the idea of “peace at any cost”, vehemently opposing the idea of “placating the aggressor”, or of earning peace by discarding honour. Gandhi’s non-violence was founded upon commitment to principle, something that has always been difficult but has recently become tragically unthinkable.
The opening quote may seem strange - why is truthfulness more important than peacefulness? Why does truth preclude violence? The answer is that it is strictly impossible to bring an end to hatred by hating. Opponents must necessarily be conquered with love, because in order to earn the lasting peace that was Gandhi’s dream it is ultimately necessary to reconcile with your enemies. Martin Luther King Jr and his allies understood this too - no matter how brutal the opposition becomes, the eventual end must be turning enemies into neighbours. Letting anger and hatred cloud out the truth is a one way path to the self-perpetuating hell of murder and genocide.
Only by renouncing the engines of destruction can we hope to seek a lasting justice. It makes no difference to the refugee, the dead, or the orphaned, whether the destruction wrought against them is done in the name of brutal concepts like totalitarianism or for paragoned principles like liberty and democracy. Justice is not contingent upon what motivates battle, but upon the temperance of our methods. This is the essence of non-violent resistance. Thus Gandhi agreed that we should hate tyranny, injustice, and greed, but cautioned that we should despise these within ourselves, and not project our hatred onto others. That path leads only to violence, and this always conceals the truth of a situation, without which peace is impossible, for a message can only be truly heard when it is offered in love.
For Gandhi, peace was not an absence of conflict but the capacity to cope with it. This is only possible through love and a commitment to discovering truth, which fosters a receptiveness to those fragments of the true picture held fast by each and every side in its own way. Violence, and the hatred and rage it fosters, cloud our judgement, making the complexities of truth harder to recognise and understand. Violence inevitably drives an endless cycle of harm, known to Hindus such as Gandhi as ‘the wheel of karma’, an immense stone turned through hate and violence to crush everyone and everything beneath it. The path to peace is not something to be found, peace itself is the path. This is the truth revealed by Gandhi, and it still echoes today.