What Gandhi really thought about guns
Original article at http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/what-gandhi-really-thought-about-guns/
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Representation of Gandhi from the pro-gun blog Everyday No Days Off. (© Everyday No Days Off)
Those familiar with pro-gun activists know that they love a good quote. Do some surfing on pro-gun websites and you will find a cottage industry of quotations from American leaders and other voices of wisdom from throughout history. Some are legitimate, and some are completely bogus, but all are cherry-picked and presented entirely without context to suggest that their subjects hold the same pro-gun beliefs as Ted Nugent.
Even history’s greatest proponents of nonviolence are not immune from such treatment. This includes Mohandas Gandhi himself, whose words appear on countless pro-gun websites as follows: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
Pro-gun activists frequently use those words to suggest that Gandhi supported individual gun ownership both as a means of defending oneself and as a tool to violently resist government tyranny. But are these assertions true?
In that passage, Gandhi references India’s Arms Act of 1878, which gave Europeans in India the right to carry firearms but prevented Indians from doing so, unless they were granted a license by the British colonial government. The full text of what he wrote is: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.”
These words come from a World War I recruitment pamphlet that Gandhi published in 1918, urging Indians to fight with their British colonial oppressors in the war, not against them. According to K.P. Nayar, chief diplomatic editor for The Telegraph in Calcutta, Gandhi saw “an opportunity for a political struggle against the colonial rulers and for the repeal of the unjust Arms Act,” not “for more Indians to have access to guns.” Peter Brock, a noted historian of nonviolence, wrote in his article “Gandhi’s Nonviolence and His War Service” that Gandhi “believed at that time (although he became more skeptical of this later on) that India could win equal partnership for itself within the British Empire if as large a number as possible of its able-bodied men volunteered to help the Empire, in one way or another, in times of need.” The British, that is, would regret passing the Arms Act because they’d discover Indians to be such valuable fellow soldiers.
At this time, Gandhi was still a British loyalist. He hoped to encourage the British to repeal the Arms Act and grant India Home Rule within the British Empire. In his autobiography, Gandhi quotes a letter he wrote to the viceroy of India during the war, in which he declared, “I would make India offer all her able-bodied sons as a sacrifice to the Empire at its critical moment, and I know that India, by this very act, would become the most favoured partner in the Empire … I write this because I love the English nation, and I wish to evoke in every Indian the loyalty of Englishmen.”
Gandhi wanted Indians to fight in World War I to prove themselves trustworthy with arms and fit for citizenship. He was advocating for appeasement of India’s colonial rulers, not independence from them. Later, Gandhi’s thinking on this subject would change dramatically, but when he did initiate a campaign for full independence from the British Empire, he advocated only nonviolent means of resistance.
Pro-gun activists frequently try to claim with that one, out-of-context sentence that Gandhi supported violence to defend oneself and others. This is a vast oversimplification of Gandhi’s views.
In truth, Gandhi did not oppose the use of violence in certain circumstances, preferring it to cowardice and submission. Even though Gandhi’s spiritual philosophy of ahimsa rejects violence, it permits the use of violent force if a person is not courageous and disciplined enough to use nonviolence. Gandhi regarded weakness as the lowest human flaw, and would rather see a person use violent force in self-defense than be passive. His attitude stemmed in part from the British view at the time that Indians were a “weak” people. This also explains why Gandhi encouraged Indians to serve alongside the British in war. He believed such military service would give Indians, as Brock explains, “‘an opportunity to prove their mettle’ and disprove the allegations frequently made by Europeans that they were mostly cowards.”
Even while allowing for violent force in place of cowardliness, Gandhi remained a staunch advocate of nonviolence his entire life. And to Gandhi, nonviolent resistance was anything but passive. The form of nonviolent resistance that Gandhi himself consistently practiced, satyagraha — loosely translated as “insistence on truth” — rejects violence in any and all forms. Indeed, in the same document that pro-gun advocates cite to claim that Gandhi was a supporter of armed self-defense, he stated, “I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier.”
Gandhi practiced what he preached, even when violently attacked. His autobiography contains an account of such an incident that occurred during a trip to South Africa. Gandhi was traveling on a ship from India to Natal province with 800 other passengers, including his family. Racial discrimination in the province was rampant. Once white residents learned that Gandhi was aboard the ship, they became furious. They accused him of denouncing Natal whites while he was in India and bringing Indian immigrants to settle in the province as provocation.
Gandhi was innocent of both charges, but the residents attacked him when he disembarked from the ship anyway. He was hit with punches, kicks, stones and bricks, but refused to retaliate and simply kept walking (to the best of his ability). The mob was subdued only when the wife of the town’s police superintendent opened her parasol and stood between Gandhi and the mob. Later, Gandhi remembered thinking, “I hope God will give me the courage and the sense to forgive them and to refrain from bringing them to law. I have no anger against them. I am only sorry for their ignorance and their narrowness. I know that they sincerely believe that what they are doing today is right and proper. I have no reason therefore to be angry with them.” Ultimately, the press condemned the mob and the whole affair “enhanced the prestige of the Indian community in South Africa and made [Gandhi’s] work easier.”
Gandhi’s nonviolent strategies were also a key component in the satyagraha campaigns, which often consisted of masses of unarmed men and women courageously blocking the path of British soldiers. On several occasions, they were fired upon, and many were killed, sacrificing their lives to the movement for Indian independence. Even during his World War I recruitment campaign, Gandhi called satyagraha India’s mightiest weapon. “But he cannot be a satyagrahi who is afraid of death,” he cautioned.
Perhaps the most powerful piece of evidence is Gandhi’s own absolute refusal to use firearms. During his work with the ambulance corps in England in 1914, Gandhi said, “A rifle this hand will never fire.” And it never did.
Gandhi’s philosophy and satyagraha campaigns became indomitable after World War I, and on August 15, 1947, India won its independence. The British-era Arms Act of 1878 would not be repealed for 12 years, however, until it was replaced by the 1959 Arms Act and the supplemental Arms Rules of 1962 — laws that strictly limited civilian access to firearms. In the years up to and following independence, until his assassination in 1948, Gandhi did not speak out against the Arms Act of 1878 again. One can infer that Gandhi did not regard the Arms Act as significant enough to advocate against once India had actually achieved independence. Thus, individual gun ownership proved to be unimportant to Gandhi, who was far more concerned with establishing nonviolence as a principle of state policy.
In the end, India rejected the “doctrine of the sword” and gained independence from the British Empire through “Soul Force.” Indians learned from Gandhi the methods of the strong, the methods of satyagraha; acknowledging that guns only add more violence to the world. Will the United States be so brave?
Co-authored with Caitlin Rosser.
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This reminds me of a line from Camus’ The Fall, which goes something like, “martyrs are either made use of or forgotten. As for being understood, never.”
Among other things, to me this all too common phenomena points to the need for more education on how ideology and interests function in relation to all of our social productions (and uses) of knowledge. Good productions try to foreground their interests, bad ones conceal them.
I just came across a compelling comment at one place where this article was shared on Facebook that may be worth bringing up here:
That’s a fair comment from John, Nathan. I would offer a few thoughts in response, however.
For starters, this article was NOT written to address the average American gun owner, who typically has politically moderate views and supports a wide range of reforms to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals. It was written to respond to pro-gun activists who routinely and purposely misrepresent the views of Gandhi to push a far more extreme agenda on guns – one that defines “self-defense” in a way that many of us would consider “aggression” (think “Stand Your Ground” laws).
Second, it seems John himself is trying to draw a distinction between (bad) violence and (good) “justified violence.” Gandhi did not draw that distinction himself, something this article points out in detail.
Finally, Caity and I do not make any assumptions about Gandhi’s view on “proper” gun laws. We simply point out the extent of his advocacy on gun laws, which waned as India drew closer to achieving independence.
I understand and admire Gandhi’s teachings, and the article was a good representation in this regard, but I think it’s important not to take Gandhi out of context either in support of gun control, since I don’t believe he ever favored it. I support non-violent means to bring society to a higher level of understanding and a better way of relating to each other and all life. However, this is an expression of choice after long deliberation, an act of maturity and grace that has to be learned voluntarily. To have it imposed by removing people’s ability to defend themselves would have been highly against Gandhi’s teachings, and to have violence directed unopposed against the innocent would have taxed him I believe to the utmost. Gandhi’s philosophy is all about the dignity of individuals and learning better ways to achieve our desires that are non-destructive and protective of individuals, of all life, but taking away a person’s choice would have been highly offensive to him, and I think for that reason alone, he never would have advocated gun control. He walked a path of increase to individual liberty, but rather than take away a person’s dignity by removing the tools they might use in necessity, he instead taught a better way of using those tools, offering people “the choice” not to use them and die, if that reflected their highest ideals. That’s a brave and loving choice, but it should never be compelled on anyone, and denying people the means to defend themselves would have been violent to their ability to make that choice, violent to their ability to rise above violence. I think it’s better not to confuse Gandhi’s way with either a pro-gun OR an anti-gun position in our present political drama.
John, you seem to be committing the error you are accusing us of: reading too much into Gandhi’s views on this topic. Obviously, if the shape of India’s (extremely strict) gun laws was of importance to him, Gandhi could have spoken out forcefully on this topic. He did not, even once the country had achieved independence.
The key point here is that India by that point was able to determine for ITSELF what the shape of its gun laws should be. In that sense, they were exercising choice as democratic citizens. And their resulting decisions speak volumes about Indians’ views on this topic.
Would Gandhi eventually have spoken out on gun laws? Maybe. No one can say for sure. But would a man who dedicated his life to rejecting violence in all its forms really have spent energy working to liberalize India’s gun laws and emulate the United States?
That, sir, is a strained case if ever there was one.
Ladd, you’re fun to debate with!
Gandhi was a man living under a government who sought to control an unwilling populace using many tools, political and economic. One of those tools was gun control, or the ability of the populace to resist force when it was being used against them, even by the government. In effect, these were the same tools the British sought to use against the American colonists, which is a seminal reason the 2nd Amendment was formulated.
Gandhi, at his core, was a man who was being told in the most forceful terms available that he was not competent to exercise the choices of a free and equal citizen, and his people (like ours) were therefore deprived of the right to make those choices. Gandhi’s answer as a teacher and moralist was to show the oppressor their error by taking a superior moral stand and maintaining it in love, even under the most relentless of pressures. To a society of professing Christians, the effect was obvious. Having said that, I simply don’t see him as advocating taking away anyone else’s right to choose, infringing on their rights the same way his own had been. It would be the same as telling them they were incapable of rising to the same moral character which he himself chose to exemplify, and he was nothing if not a teacher. If the students were unteachable, then he would be denying his own experience and the crucial life lessons these taught him. By denying others the right to make the better choice, wouldn’t he in effect be denying himself?
The ability to choose between right and wrong is what makes a moral person possible. Take away those rights, and the person never really grows and becomes truly good, truly responsible, truly loving. Without the opportunity to exercise choice and choose wrong on the path to choosing right, real goodness never emerges, and that’s perhaps one of the primary lessons of Gandhi’s life, his living example according to his own choices.
Gandhi’s India after independence was a complex entity in the process of splitting in two, so I won’t seek to imagine what might have happened under different circumstances, but while Gandhi taught non-violence as the best way to teach, to lead by example, the article didn’t indicate that he forbade violence, only that he thought it was weakness. Given the right circumstances, even he might have chosen to risk inflicting harm in order to protect life. That’s another unanswered question, though.
Nevertheless, in the absence of the same kind of moral courage, custom, or leadership, the ability to resist is often the same as resistance itself. If a bully knows resistance will be met, then the likelihood of bullying falls dramatically. That Gandhi’s choice on non-violence, along with his superior ability to carry it out, was the best example is not really in question by most people. That fact that he approved in resisting is maybe the key here. Others may not yet possess his ability to resist in such a loving way, yet the need for resistance to prevent harm may be no less for others than it was for him.
If we’re debating the past, then leave me out of this one.
What Gandhi did is one thing, while the what if’s are meaningless for us today, for we must be ourselves or be nothing. Without an ability to grow and mature, then one is dead. We become what we were meant to be, or we are lost in the universe. Others may point out a thing or two, however, even our mistakes can point in the right direction.
“…To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” is the better way than being told. Life requires some guidance, however.
While I’m not now that force of youth setting paths into the unknown, some wisdom has been accumulated to reason that without such paths, my life would not be the same without taking those paths.
Living in the aftermath of WW2, guns were ever coveted, but later on, what was the point in having so many? To defend oneself by taking a life goes to an important part of who one is. To prepare to take a life is to also be fully aware of what life is and how precious little time we have to do the things we want to do. A day may come where rushing to the emergency room impresses on a person to reason that guns and life can go together as much as they don’t. Later, it can be reasoned this debate over firearms is irrelevant and distracting from other greater activities.
Does one tackle what one thinks is achievable and no more? Does one restrain oneself when the times demand a freer grasp to attempt to do more?
We get one life, we can’t save everyone, but we must leave a better World when we’re done using it. Without understanding enough to reason that a better World comes from improvement of self, then just what are we doing here?
John – great stuff! Your thoughts have made me reflect a lot on the article. However, the point of the article isn’t what Gandhi would have supported had he lived long into India’s independence, but to clarify what he actually said in the past. As Ladd pointed out before, folks seem to be reading too much into Gandhi’s words to come up with a presumed vision of what Gandhi would have believed (which is what those who misuse the quote end up doing). We were simply pointing out his philosophy, clarifying a misused quote, and examining the historical context in which Gandhi used those words.
To your other point, we DO have the choices of free and equal citizens, something Gandhi fought staunchly for. The U.S. Government isn’t a tyrannical colonialist government that hands down laws from on high. Our democratic government is constituted of elected representatives who speak FOR the people. So if the people ARE exercising their right to choose when they choose their elected officials. This is exactly what Gandhi had envisioned when he fought for independence from Britain. For citizens to have uninhibited choice regardless of the law and their responsibility to society would be complete anarchy.
It’s also important to note, completely aside from the article and speaking to your last point, that no one here is advocating for complete elimination of guns – well, at least I’m not. We, through our elected officials, have the choice of what kind of restrictions we want on firearms. So the issue isn’t guns or no guns, unbridled protected or absolutely no protection – the issue is being able to balance the right to protect oneself and their family with arms (if one so chooses) with the right of our children and families to actually live, as David Wheeler so beautifully put it in his recent testimony.
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/30/a-sandy-hook-parent-gives-testimony-the-senate-should-have-heard/
Ms. Rossler – did you just say “the U.S. Government isn’t a tyrannical colonialist government” without either laughing out loud or choking? What hubris that is! You must not have thought about the way a huge portion of the rest of the world views the USG, nor about our very history. Can you cite the numerous dictatorships the USG has supported throughout the world, the number of times it has invaded Latin American countries alone (56 since 1890), the treatment of blacks even 100 years after we fought a civil war for their emancipation, the interment of our own citizens in concentration camps, its refusal to allow equal protection of LGBT citizens under the law (a clear violation of our Constitution), or its aggressive acts in the name of national security without disgust? And when did our duly elected representatives last hold the interests of the common person above those of the super PAC or corporation that (or, more inconceivably, who, now that the USG has afforded corporations personhood, [shudder]) lined their war chests to secure their seat in the congress? While I certainly think that we have a great country full of wonderful Americans, I absolutely scoff at your claim that the USG is not a tyrannical colonial government, with the vast majority of its efforts focused on keeping the status quo and the elite in charge.
Why do we cloth ourselves and have evolved magnificant bodies only to allow exploding bullets to rip through us? One has to say it is abhorant to destroy or be destroyed by any method. Anything that can take the lives of dozens of children in seconds simply is a weapon of mass destruction and not something Ghandi confronted. Walking through a shower of stones etc. did perhaps come close yet still he bravely walked on. Depriving chlildren to have and understand the choice of creative non violence makes the weapons we supply to massive numbers of people pure evil.
While it may have been and is impossible to convince everyone of the benefit of bravely walking through life without a gun it is still the choice taken by the truly brave and those that would confront the core of evil that hides in the often distant and respectable masses. Ghadhi addressed that hidden cowardice and unfeeling part of society that had to think better. WMD’s simply need to be exposed as an evil and attached to the cowardice Ghandi confronted for the masses to reject the hysteria of having them.
Thanks so much for this article. I hope you don’t mind I quoted and linked to you in my own blog post on this issue:
http://truth-dots.blogspot.com/2013/02/gandhi-hijacked.html
I wrote in a previous post about how the same thing is done with Martin Luther King every year:
http://truth-dots.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-hijacking-of-martin-luther-king.html
Thanks again fro providing some much needed perspective on this subject.
I appreciate your attempt to explain Gandhi’s words here in the context of the gun control debate, but they’re still very troubling. I can’t agree that Gandhi “remained a staunch advocate of nonviolence his entire life.”
Your article describes his military recruitment in support of the British military during World War I. This is not support for nonviolence. Neither was his participation in the British war against the Zulus in South Africa or his support for the British military during the Boer war (see my brief commentary on this at http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pacifist-critique-gandhi).
In addition, you quote Gandhi above as equating courage with manliness, which he did often, but is quite a misogynistic formulation. Please see also Starhawk’s critique of some aspects of Gandhi’s misogyny at (http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/print/226).
For Gandhi’s efforts to develop mass nonviolent campaigns we are forever in his debt, and I am sure I will continue to learn about nonviolence through critically studying Gandhian campaigns throughout my life. Our appreciation for the nonviolent movements which Gandhi led (in quite an authoritarian way, I would add) need not prevent us from learning from both the positive and negative aspects of his actions.
Thanks for that thoughtful comment, Sam. Very thought provoking.
And yet we use guns to defend our presdint and our stores and mostly everything else. So i’m sorry that I use a gun to defend myself and my family and also anything can take the lives of childen in seconds. By the way if you feel you don’t need a gun then go for a walk in the mountiuons without a gun and if ya get attcked by a mountion lion then you just convice the lion not to eat you.
Yeah big guy, you’re just as guilty as cherry picking quotes and figures. When will you put the same effort into stemming gang violence that you do in trying to restrict regular folks from having an A-R? Do you even know that Adam Lanza didn’t use a rifle? You are a leech on society, make your money by writing gibberish and pushing leftist policies.
Ghandi would be so proud of all the gang raping going on in India. People ignoring the violence and blaming the tool.
— Mohandas Gandhi, First Letter to Lord Irwin, March 2, 1930, in which he announced the Salt Campaign.
Go read the whole letter. Gandhi was not a loyalist trying to recruit Indian soldiers in 1930. He was listing, to the British viceroy, why he thought British rule was a curse on India. Those curses of British rule were, impoverishment, political serfdom, and the spiritual degradation caused by disarmament.
Certainly, he did not intend to use arms himself; he abjures violence in the letter, saying he will not harm an Englishman. He does not want them for a tool to overthrow the British; he expects to cause British withdrawal by his non-violent action. He does not want them to prove India useful to the Empire; he calls out in the letter that he is following an explicit policy of non-cooperation with the British. He is not speaking of the usefulness of guns for self-defense, hunting, or any other practical end. And no, he is not complaining the law was not enacted by the Indian people.
Rather, he decries “all but universal disarmament” as degrading to the spirit, saying disarmament teaches people “cowardly helplessness”. Imposed disarmament is clearly in the opinion of Gandhi in 1930 an attack upon the Soul Force, which would indeed explain why it was the blackest act of British rule.
Impoverish a man, make him a serf; those are curses indeed. But degrade his spirit? What worse could you do?
Don’t rationalize this away and make a hypocrite of yourself. Follow the lead of the Great Soul. Support arms in the hands of the people; work to overturn the laws in those countries that prohibit it. Including Mother India, who has shamefully continued the spirit-sapping policies she learned from the British.
The pro-gun people are comparing apples with oranges.
Gandhi was talking about a ruling nation depriving a subject nation of arms. That’s not the same as a sovereign government controlling its guns–as in fact all competent governments do. Even ours, in our own inadequate way.
Hello.
I’m a high school student working on a very important project, and I picked gun control as my topic. I am very supportive of your cause, and I was wondering if perhaps an interview with one of your members can be arranged. I just want to ask a few questions. If it is not too much of a bother, I would really appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Amber Lacombe