Gandhi Reference

I was recently sent an inquiry into the Chesterton/Gandhi connection, and the evidence proving what Chestertonians often say, that is, that Chesterton had some direct influence on Mahatma Gandhi, which caused Gandhi to begin his movement to free India from English control.

There is direct evidence of this, and since the question is not a new one, nor infrequent to those doing scholarly work, research or thesis papers, I think the evidence should be put forth here for all future inquiries.

So, this will be a long post, but if you aren't interested in Chesterton's influence on Gandhi, you can skip this by not clicking here.

In his Illustrated London News column on September 18, 1909 (Oct. 2 – American edition), Chesterton wrote the following:

It is this lack of atmosphere that always embarrasses me when my friends come and tell me about the movement of Indian Nationalism. I do not doubt for a moment that the young idealists who ask for Indian independence are very fine fellows; most young idealists are fine fellows. I do not doubt for an instant that many of our Imperial officials are stupid and oppressive; most Imperial officials are stupid and oppressive. But when I am confronted with the actual papers and statements of the Indian Nationalists I feel much more dubious, and, to tell the truth, a little bored. The principal weakness of Indian Nationalism seems to be that it is not very Indian and not very national. It is all about Herbert Spencer and Heaven knows what. What is the good of the Indian national spirit if it cannot protect its people from Herbert Spencer? I am not fond of the philosophy of Buddhism; but it is not so shallow as Spencer's philosophy; it has real ideas of its own. One of the papers, I understand, is called the Indian Sociologist. What are the young men of India doing that they allow such an animal as a sociologist to pollute their ancient villages and poison their kindly homes?

When all is said, there is a national distinction between a people asking for its own ancient life and a people asking for things that have been wholly invented by somebody else. There is a difference between a conquered people demanding its own institutions and the same people demanding the institutions of the conqueror. Suppose an Indian said: "I heartily wish India had always been free from white men and all their works. Every system has its sins: and we prefer our own. There would have been dynastic wars; but I prefer dying in battle to dying in hospital. There would have been despotism; but I prefer one king whom I hardly ever see to a hundred kings regulating my diet and my children. There would have been pestilence; but I would sooner die of the plague than die of toil and vexation in order to avoid the plague. There would have been religious differences dangerous to public peace; but I think religion more important than peace. Life is very short; a man must live somehow and die somewhere; the amount of bodily comfort a peasant gets under your best Republic is not so much more than mine. If you do not like our sort of spiritual comfort, we never asked you to. Go, and leave us with it." Suppose an Indian said that, I should call him an Indian Nationalist, or, at least, an authentic Indian, and I think it would be very hard to answer him. But the Indian Nationalists whose works I have read simply say with ever-increasing excitability, "Give me a ballot-box. Provide me with a Ministerial dispatch-box. Hand me over the Lord Chancellor's wig. I have a natural right to be Prime Minister. I have a heaven-born claim to introduce a Budget. My soul is starved if I am excluded from the Editorship of the Daily Mail," or words to that effect.

Now this, I think, is not so difficult to answer. The most sympathetic person is tempted to cry plaintively, "But, hang it all, my excellent Oriental (may your shadow never grow less), we invented all these things. If they are so very good as you make out, you owe it to us that you have ever heard of them. If they are indeed natural rights, you would never even have thought of your natural rights but for us. If voting is so very absolute and divine (which I am inclined rather to doubt myself), then certainly we have some of the authority that belongs to the founders of a true religion, the bringers of salvation." When the Hindu takes this very haughty tone and demands a vote on the spot as a sacred necessity of man, I can only express my feelings by supposing the situation reversed. It seems to me very much as if I were to go into Tibet and find the Grand Lama or some great spiritual authority, and were to demand to be treated as a Mahatma or something of that kind. The Grand Lama would very reasonably reply: "Our religion is either true or false; it is either worth having or not worth having. If you know better than we do, you do not want our religion. But if you do want our religion, please remember that it is our religion; we discovered it, we studied it, and we know whether a man is a Mahatma or not. If you want one of our peculiar privileges, you must accept our peculiar discipline and pass our peculiar standards, to get it."

Perhaps you think I am opposing Indian Nationalism. That is just where you make a mistake; I am letting my mind play round the subject. This is especially desirable when we are dealing with the deep conflict between two complete civilisations. Nor do I deny the existence of natural rights. The right of a people to express itself, to be itself in arts and action, seems to me a genuine right. If there is such a thing as India, it has a right to be Indian. But Herbert Spencer is not Indian; "Sociology" is not Indian; all this pedantic clatter about culture and science is not Indian. I often wish it were not English either. But this is our first abstract difficulty, that we cannot feel certain that the Indian Nationalist is national.

According to P.N. Furbank (“Chesterton the Edwardian,” G.K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal. John Sullivan, ed., Harper and Row, 1974)ISBN 13: 9780236176281 & ISBN 10: 0236176285, Gandhi was “thunderstruck” when he read this article.

He immediately translated it into Gujarati, and on the basis of it he wrote his book Hind Swaraj, his own first formulation of a specifically “Indian “ solution to his country’s problems. Thus you might argue, not quite absurdly, that India owed its independence, or at least the manner in which it came, to an article thrown off by Chesterton in half-an-hour in a Fleet Street pub.

This account was first described in Gandhi by Geoffrey Ashe (Stein & Day, NY, 1968) p. 137-138, and is repeated in his new book, The Offbeat Radicals (London, Metheun, 2007).

I also have a fascinating interview with GKC that was published in the NY Times in 1916. It is with an Indian journalist, and Chesterton repeats his point that India should be for Indians. Use a library's article research function, and look up:
"India for Indians, Says Gilbert K. Chesterton", by Harendranath Maitra, New York Times, May 21, 1916 subtitled: Noted English Author Declares That She Must Be Nationalistic and be Represented as a Nation in Councils of British Empire. Indian author Maitra interviews GK Chesterton in this fascinating piece.
***
Here is something you can look up in the Chesterton Review.
Feb 1993 Vol XIX No 1 pp 88-93 of Chesterton Review which quotes some of Gandhi's actual writing about GKC.

Dallas Optimistic about Mr. Huckabee and Iowa

Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee both have the potential to bring about a clean break with the hyper-partisan politics of the recent past. You could see this in their gracious, hopeful victory speeches. Quoting the English writer G.K. Chesterton, Mr. Huckabee said, "A true soldier fights not because he hates those who are in front of him, but because he loves those who are behind him." Mr. Obama's remarks were in the same generous spirit. It's thrilling to see two happy warriors prevail in such an important battle.

The presidential primary races are far from over, of course. But come what may, it's hard to shake the sense that a new era in American political history has begun. Dallas Morning News, 01/-5/08

Love and Fables

In the most recent issue of Gilbert (the most recent which *I* have had delivered, --if only I could catch that Chestertonian mailman!-- which is the anniversary issue, all covered in silver) there is an essay entitled Love and Fables, which I enjoyed but considered it too short. I felt something was missing. So, as it read Illustrated London News, July 2, 1910, I decided to look it up and see if I could put the whole thing here for your consideration. Here it is:

I pointed out last week that our makers of ultramodern moralities (and

immoralities) do not really grasp how problematical a problem is.

They are not specially the people who see the difficulties of modern

life; rather, they are the people who do not see the difficulties. These

innovators make life insanely simple; making freedom or knowledge a

universal pill. I remarked it in connection with a clever book by Miss

Florence Farr, and took as an instance the proposition (which she

seemed to support) that marriage is good for the common herd, but

can be advantageously violated by special "experimenters" and

pioneers. Now, the weakness of this position is that it takes no

account of the problem of the disease of pride. It is easy enough to

say that weaker souls had better be guarded, but that we must give

freedom to Georges Sand or make exceptions for George Eliot. The

practical puzzle is this: that it is precisely the weakest sort of lady

novelist who thinks she is Georges Sand; it is precisely the silliest

woman who is sure she is George Eliot. It is the small soul that

is sure it is an exception; the large soul is only too proud to be the

rule. To advertise for exceptional people is to collect all the sulks and

sick fancies and futile ambitions of the earth. The good artist is he

who can be understood; it is the bad artist who is always

"misunderstood." In short, the great man is a man; it is always the

tenth-rate man who is the Superman. Read more.

But in Miss Farr's entertaining pages there was another instance of

the same thing which I had no space to mention last week. The writer

disposes of the difficult question of vows and bonds in love by

leaving out altogether the one extraordinary fact of experience on

which the whole matter turns. She again solves the problem by

assuming that it is not a problem. Concerning oaths of fidelity, etc.,

she writes: "We cannot trust ourselves to make a real love-knot unless

money or custom forces us to 'bear and forbear.' There is always the

lurking fear that we shall not be able to keep faith unless we swear

upon the Book. This is, of course, not true of young lovers. Every

first love is born free of tradition; indeed, not only is first love

innocent and valiant, but it sweeps aside all the wise laws it has been

taught, and burns away experience in its own light. The revelation is

so extraordinary, so unlike anything told by the poets, so absorbing,

that it is impossible to believe that the feeling can die out."

Now this is exactly as if some old naturalist settled the bat's place in

nature by saying boldly, "Bats do not fly." It is as if he solved the

problem of whales by bluntly declaring that whales live on land.

There is a problem of vows, as of bats and whales. What Miss Farr

says about it is quite lucid and explanatory; it simply happens to be

flatly untrue. It is not the fact that young lovers have no desire to

swear on the Book. They are always at it. It is not the fact that every

young love is born free of traditions about binding and promising,

about bonds and signatures and seals. On the contrary, lovers wallow

in the wildest pedantry and precision about these matters. They do the

craziest things to make their love legal and irrevocable. They tattoo

each other with promises; they cut into rocks and oaks with their

names and vows; they bury ridiculous things in ridiculous

places to be a witness against them; they bind each other with rings,

and inscribe each other in Bibles; if they are raving lunatics (which is

not untenable), they are mad solely on this idea of binding and on

nothing else. It is quite true that the tradition of their fathers and

mothers is in favour of fidelity; but it is emphatically not true that the

lovers merely follow it; they invent it anew. It is quite true that the

lovers feel their love eternal, and independent of oaths; but it is

emphatically not true that they do not desire to take the oaths. They

have a ravening thirst to take as many oaths as possible. Now this is

the paradox; this is the whole problem. It is not true, as Miss Farr

would have it, that young people feel free of vows, being confident of

constancy; while old people invent vows, having lost that confidence.

That would be much too simple; if that were so there would be no

problem at all. The startling but quite solid fact is that young people

are especially fierce in making fetters and final ties at the very

moment when they think them unnecessary. The time when they want

the vow is exactly the time when they do not need it. That is worth

thinking about.

Nearly all the fundamental facts of mankind are to be found in its

fables. And there is a singularly sane truth in all the old stories of the

monsters - such as centaurs, mermaids, sphinxes, and the rest. It will

be noted that in each of these the humanity, though imperfect in its

extent, is perfect in its quality. The mermaid is half a lady and half a

fish; but there is nothing fishy about the lady. A centaur is half a

gentleman and half a horse. But there is nothing horsey about the

gentleman. The centaur is a manly sort of man - up to a certain point.

The mermaid is a womanly woman - so far as she goes. The human

parts of the monsters are handsome, like heroes, or lovely, like

nymphs; their bestial appendages do not affect the full perfection of

their humanity - what there is of it. There is nothing humanly wrong

with the centaur, except that he rides a horse without a head. There is

nothing humanly wrong with the mermaid; Hood put a good comic

motto to his picture of a mermaid: "All's well that ends well." It

is, perhaps, quite true; it all depends which end. Those old wild

images included a crucial truth. Man is a monster. And he is all the

more a monster because one part of him is perfect. It is not true, as

the evolutionists say, that man moves perpetually up a slope from

imperfection to perfection, changing ceaselessly, so as to be suitable.

The immortal part of a man and the deadly part are jarringly distinct

and have always been. And the best proof of this is in such a case as

we have, considered - the case of the oaths of love.

A man's soul is as full of voices as a forest; there are ten thousand

tongues there like all the tongues of the trees: fancies, follies,

memories, madnesses, mysterious fears, and more mysterious hopes.

All the settlement and sane government of life consists in coming to

the conclusion that some of those voices have authority and others

not. You may have an impulse to fight your enemy or an impulse to

run away from him; a reason to serve your country or a reason to

betray it; a good idea for making sweets or a better idea for poisoning

them. The only test I know by which to judge one argument or

inspiration from another is ultimately this: that all the noble

necessities of man talk the language of eternity. When man is doing

the three or four things that he was sent on this earth to do, then he

speaks like one who shall live for ever. A man dying for his country

does not talk as if local preferences could change. Leonidas does not

say, "In my present mood, I prefer Sparta to Persia." William Tell

does not remark, "The Swiss civilisation, so far as I can yet see, is

superior to the Austrian." When men are making commonwealths,

they talk in terms of the absolute, and so they do when they are

making (however unconsciously) those smaller commonwealths which

are called families. There are in life certain immortal moments,

moments that have authority. Lovers are right to tattoo each other's

skins and cut each other's names about the world; they do belong to

each other in a more awful sense than they know.

The Ideal Detective Story

I pause in the Man Who Was Thursday discussion to bring you this:

Harry Potter Moment: [I have a HUGE, I mean HUMONGOUS announcement to make in connection with Harry Potter and Chesterton. Stay tuned.] Meanwhile, listen to this: Last night, I opened an Illustrated London News at random. And this was God. I know you've done this with the Bible, but do you ever do it with Chesterton? I do. Anyway, listen:

"Nor need there be anything vulgar in the violent and abrupt transition that is the essential of such a tale. The inconsistencies of human nature are indeed terrible and heart-shaking things, to be named with the same note of crisis as the hour of death and the Day of Judgment. They are not all fine shades, but some of them very fearful shadows, made by the primal contrast of darkness and light. Both the crimes and the confessions can be as catastrophic as lightning. Indeed, the Ideal Detective Story might do some good if it brought men back to understanding that the world is not all curves, but that there are some things that are as jagged as the lightning-flash or as straight as the sword.

That lightning-flash scar of Harry's is symbolic, I think, of this "darkness and light" contrast, which Rowling so very aptly writes into her novels. Chesterton isn't saying "The world is not curves, but straight like a sword," he says, "the world is not all curves." I think this is important.