Gandhi on Jesus' Teaching of Non-violence

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT is Jesus' revolution. It is a reversal of values of the "world"-- e.g. from power as dominion into service, from accumulation of wealth and properties into communal use, etc. The beatitude is a summary of the core teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Captivated by this teaching of Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi developed his own philosophy of  satyagraha or active non-violence which led to the independence of India from its colonizer. However, Gandhi accused the Christians for abandoning this central teaching of Jesus. Thus, he said "I like your Christ. I don't like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

In my short article on Mother Teresa, sked482 wrote:

I think it was Gandhi who said "I like your Christ. I don't like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Jesus himself showed what sets Christians apart, he set the example by washing his disciples' feet and then telling us to love one another, because by our love we will be shown to be his disciples. Mother Teresa is truly admirable and should inspire us all to display our faith through our actions.

I agree with sked482 that being a Christian is to follow the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth who walked this earth. Jesus said: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, ...he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." However, what Gandhi said about Christ and the Christians keeps on nagging me like a gadfly. And so, I make this article.

My Hindu Experience

When I was still a Christian and in the prime of my youth I thought that this thought of Mahatma Gandhi on Christ and the Christians was simply meant to wake up the followers of Christ to be vigilant and never lose sight of the man called Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. During retreats I facilitated among college students, I often used this criticism of Gandhi to challenge the young Christians to strive to be Christlike in thoughts, in words and in actions.

Going back to my college years, I did a research on satyagraha (see, ahimsa) or non-violence. Like Marxism, Gandhi's satyagraha was one of the challenging topics among college students. For Gandhi, Satyagraha is not simply a philosophy that guide moral actions; it is fundamentally a praxis-- it liberated India from its colonial ruler. Gandhi also deployed satyagraha during his stay in South Africa which planted a seed for sustained efforts to dismantle apartheid. In result, the prominent African leader Nelson Mandela successfully dismantled the apartheid in South Africa through active non-violence. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and many social justice movements around the world, were inspired by the spirit of satyagraha. Our own Edsa People Power was a non-violent revolution. 

I think, my agnostic journey can be traced to Hinduism’s Unknowable, the Om. While we can experience the manifest One, we cannot totally know the unknowable One. As I tried to put into words my thoughts this early morn, words like atman, maya, and Brahman flashed into my mind – I remember that atman’s (man) liberation from ignorance (maya) is like a personal “Big Bang” of the universe, or Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” or a deep, experiential knowledge (a knowing that transcends the grasp and reach of rational and scientific mind.) or realization of the ultimate ground of one’s true self. For Christians, this is called faith, the ultimate ground of being. This is akin to Paul Tillich’s new and liberating insight of “being grasped by ultimate concern.”

Ignorance, the maya, is the root of all human problems. This self-ignorance as an atman can be liberated by knowledge of being one with the Brahman, that is, a self-realization that everything is One. I become more aware of the divine in everything in the world. Gandhi wrote: "A Hindu is one who . . . believes that moksha is the supreme end of human striving . . . The central principle of Hinduism is that of moksha. I am ever striving for it." When the book “Sadhana-- A Way to God” of the Jesuit Father Anthony de Mello became the bible for Christian meditation, there was a liberation of consciousness that the contemplative and the active in the Church learned to say namaste—a Hindu gesture of greeting which has deeper religious significance of the “meeting” of two divines. It means that the divine in me greets the divine in you and we are one. With this consciousness of the divine, or in Christian term “the awareness of being a brother and a sister to one another with God as our Abba (Father),” the wall that divides people—our prejudices, our social classes, our religions, our cultural differences and alike – is destroyed like tearing down of wall of Berlin, or the dismantling of the Apartheid in South Africa, or the unchaining of the workers of the world, or the emptying of the tomb of Jesus. “Oh death, where is your sting? Oh death where is your victory. Jesus is alive! Alleluia!” – as the Christians sing. Sadly, the Vatican was unhappy and silenced Father Anthony de Mello. Despite the prohibition of the Vatican, most of us -- religious and non-religious, believers and non-believers --  continue to say, namaste.

Why I told you my experience in Hinduism? Like Gandhi, I was fascinated by some teachings of Hinduism but I remained a Christian at that time. And I know I was not alone. There were many Christians, deeply religious and committed in their missionary vocation, learned from the Sadhana of Father de Mello and other Eastern practices that aid them to be one with God.

--oOo--

“I like your Christ.

I don't like your Christians.

Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

(Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi)

--oOo--

Now, let me go to your concern. In 2008, Terrence Rynne made a study on “Gandhi and Jesus: The Saving Power of Non-violence.” But I find his lecture at “Justice and MercyShall Kiss: A Conference on the Vocation of Peacemaking in a World of ManyFaiths” on September 22 – 24, 2005 at Marquette University, easier to read.

In that conference, Terrence Rynne focused his discussion of the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and the symbol of the Cross that influenced Gandhi’s non-violence, or satyagraha.

Gandhi and Jesus’ teaching on the Sermon on the Mount

Terrence Rynne traced how Gandhi discovered the teaching of Jesus:

As a young adult, he began to study various religions including his own. He was studying for the bar exams in London when he was given the New Testament to read. He later wrote: “the Sermon on the Mount went straight to my heart… the verses, ‘But I say to you, resist not evil: but whosoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man take away your coat, let him have your cloak as well,’ delighted me beyond measure” The Sermon on the Mount inspired him for the rest of his life.

Rynne explained that the Gujurati poem that deals with the “turn the other cheek” message: “But the truly noble know all men as one, and return with gladness good for evil done” and the Hindu teaching of “ahimsa” which dictates “do no harm to life” may have provided a strong foundation for Gandhi to embrace non-violence of Jesus Christ.

For Gandhi, Rynne explained further, the message “turn the other cheek” is opposite to “passivism; “it was heroic, brave, and creative action. It was the only way to break through the circle of violence that kept people oppressed and convert the oppressors.” Going through Roger Tannehil’s article in Harvard Biblical Review on the Sermon at the Mount, Rynne said Gandhi’s understanding resonates with the contemporary exegesis: 

Jesus is putting his listeners in situations of oppression that are very recognizable to them, a master striking his slave with the back of the left hand; an occupying roman Soldier pressing a Jew into service to carry his pack; a debtor taking a person to court to take away even the last garment in which a poor person slept out tin the cold – and is asking them to imagine how they might creatively and nonviolently oppose the oppression and surprise the oppressors, inviting them to changes. Turning the other cheek signifies to the master that the one struck is not cowed. He looks the oppressor in the eye and says do it again. It will not overawe me. Think again about what you are doing. Voluntarily going an extra mile will surprise and throw that soldier, and force him to see you as a human being. Give the cloak to the one taking you for every last dime. Walk out of the law court naked. It will dramatize just how rotten the whole moneylender, stealing-the-land-from-the-peasants system really is.

Gandhi coined the word “satyagraha” “to separate out what he heard in the Sermon on the Mount and saw as he world’s best and last hope, from ideas of ‘passive resistance,’ or ‘pacifism’ or mere ‘civil disobedience.’ Satyagraha subsumes the message of Jesus (and Hinduism as he understood it) and applies it to politics and relations between masses of people. It is not just a personal ethic; it is the way of people nonviolently fighting against oppression and evil in this world.”

Gandhi, Rynne said, was greatly disturbed that Christians take for granted the message of the Sermon on the Mount: 

For many of them contend that the Sermon on the Mount does not apply to mundane things, and that it was only meant for the twelve disciples. Well I do not believe this. I think the Sermon on the Mount has no meaning if it is not of vital use in everyday life to everyone.

Rynne commented that Gandhi was perplexed by this seeming indifference of the Christians, the followers of Christ, to commit themselves in this ethical norm of action as “the center of what Jesus taught and lived and died for”. Gandhi wrote:

Christianity is no Christianity in which a vast number of Christians believe in governments based on brute force and are denying Christ every day of their lives…. Just now Christianity comes to a yearning humankind in a tainted form.

Gandhi and the Symbol of Jesus’ Cross

Terrence Rynne recounted “a famous scene, captured on film, Gandhi had stopped at the Vatican on his way back from the Roundtable Conference in London, when he happened to see a rough crucifix. His reaction was immediate and emotional.” Gandhi wrote:

Chance threw Rome in my way. And I was able to see something of that great and ancient city … and what would not I have given to bow my head before the living image at the Vatican of Christ crucified. It was not without a wrench that I could tear myself away from that scene of living tragedy. I saw there at once that nations like individuals could only be made through the agony of the cross and in no other way. Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others, but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself.

Rynne explained it more persuasively, so I quote him at length:

Gandhi’s understanding of the cross was that when one lived the life that Jesus lived, he would probably end up in conflict with the powers that be. He saw that Jesus befriended eh poor and stood with those whom society considered outsiders. Furthermore, he tried to get those responsible for oppression, both religious and civil leadership, to change. They rejected his efforts and found him to be a threat =. Why did Jesus die? Because of the way he lived. The cross was the result of his living out this way of life to the end.

The theology of atonement that has held sway for a thousand years, the “penal substitution theory” which has the Father offering up his Son in a bloody sacrifice for forgiveness of humanity’s sins, was revolting to Gandhi. Gandhi understood the cross, not metaphysically but politically and historically, as the final step and consequence of a way of life, a life spent befriending those in need and resisting oppression and violence.

In concluding his talk, Terrence Rynne quoted Stanly Jones, an American missionary, saying:

Never in human history has so much light been shed on the cross as has been shed through this one mans and that man not even a Christian.

And he ended his talk with a bang:

I trust than tin these remarks it is clear just how much Gandhi treasured the life and death and teaching of Jesus. What I hope is even more clear is just how much we, as Christians, owe to Gandhi.

Imagine yourself in that conference, listening to this Christian speaker telling you that, of all the great saints and martyrs in the history of Christianity, there was a Hindu who took seriously the life and death and teaching of your dearest Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ!

I really don’t know if the audience immediately stood up to give Terrence Rynne an outstanding ovation with a deafening sound of thousand hands clapping as he went down from the podium, or the Christians there were forced in silence and looked at the mirror whether they recognized themselves as followers of Christ.

Perhaps, this will give us an insight why Gandhi criticized Christianity as he praised Christ. There are other ways of interpreting it but I find Terrence Rynne’s explanation plausible. Kudos!

Why did Gandhi remain a Hindu, if he was moved by the teaching of Christ and his cross?

Mohandas Gandhi wrote:

I must tell you in all humility that Hinduism, as I know it, entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being, and I find solace in the Bhagavadgita and Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount.

This will tell why Gandhi remained a Hindu and did not convert himself into Christianity. It is very interesting to know that Gandhi discovered the beauty of Bhagadavgita during his studies in England where he met two Theosophists who invited him to read with them the Gita, which was translated by Sir Edwin Arnold, and he was struck by certain verses in the second chapter:

If one ponders on objects of the sense, there springs

Attraction; from attraction grows desire,

Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds

Recklessness; then the memory—all betrayed—

Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind,

Till purpose, mind, and man are all Undone. (2:62–63)

For this, Gandhi wrote:

The book struck me as one of priceless worth. The impression has ever since been growing on me with the result that I regard it today as the book par excellence for the knowledge of Truth.

At first glance, I cannot find the said verse so powerful to evoke a strong emotional impression on Gandhi. Since I have a Bhagavadgita in my book collection let me look at it now. Yes, I am writing in real time. My copy is “Bhagavad-gita As It Is” by his Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Here the other account:

While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops attachment for them, and from such attachment lust develops, and the lust anger arises. (2:62)

From anger, complete delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost one falls down again into the material pool. (2:63)

Honestly, I find it so arrogance (with blatant hypocrisy) for the Catholic Church to claim that the Church alone has the truth.

--oOo—

Some intriguing facts:

If Gandhi is still alive today and visit the Philippines, he would be rallying with the anti-RH Bill advocates.

In his autobiography, Mohandas Gandhi wrote:

I think it is the height of ignorance to believe that the sexual act is an independent function necessary like sleeping or eating. Seeing, therefore, that I did not desire more children I began to strive after self-control. There was endless difficulty in the task. We began to sleep in separate beds. I decided to retire to bed only after a day's work had left me completely exhausted.

BCC on Religion featuring Mohandas Gandhi commented on his writing: “Gandhi had come to think that sex was for procreation, not for pleasure.” Isn’t it that Humanae Vitae keep on insisting that a conjugal act must remain open to the transmission of life, the procreation?  Just for fun!


add:

When Godse was about to shoot Gandhi to death, he vowed in reverence to him. In return, Gandhi, before he fell on the ground, raised his arms as a gesture of forgiveness and uttered the name... Rama.


In calvary, hanging on the cross, with stretched arms, Jesus said: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."