Photo taken by AlbinoFlea under Creative Commons license
I wrote this ‘controversial’ article Was Gandhi a Libertarian? last month which had many positive and belligerently negative responses from the readers as well as the other RFL team members. The question which came up again and again(Gandhi was asked this during in his lifetime as well), which I unfortunately couldn’t answer satisfactorily. In fact I haven’t seen anyone answer that question satisfactorily. The question is, how would Gandhian philosophy help the Jews in Nazi Germany. What could have Jews in the Nazi Germany have done consistent to Non-violence principle to deter Nazis.
This argument seems to be like the lynchpin of Gandhian philosophy. Gandhi himself wasn’t very informed of the situation in the Nazi Germany. So even his own answer is not sufficient in my opinion. Upon being asked about the Nazi persecution of Jews, Gandhi answered:
If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy […] the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror.
This answer is very unpopular in the western world. Gandhi is called anti-semite(try typing the terms Gandhi and Jews in your favorite search engine and see what shows up in results). The question almost always asked is “How do you think Jews in Nazi Germany should have followed the philosophy of non-violence, the Jews were slaughtered in millions without any resistance anyway. In fact the task of the Nazis would have been much more easier had they just gone to the gas chambers peacefully”
I really had to think a lot about the possible solution of this issue. What I came up with was simple, the person who asks the above question actually doesn’t really understand Gandhian method. He confuses Gandhism with non-violence, but it is really important to differentiate between the two. Not all non-violence is Gandhism. Nor all civil disobedience is Gandhism. If few people want to bring Socialism(which is an inherently violent philosophy) through non-violent civil diobedience, they may or may not succeed for a short period of time, but in long term they will fail, because they are not being a Satyagrahi.
As I wrote in my previous article on Gandhian philosophy, what Gandhi managed to do was to remove the the color of righteousness from a morally wrong aggressor. If a thief steals something from someone, and then tries to be all non-violent when the person tries to take back his property through violence, then that’s not Gandhism. This is why Gandhi coined the term ‘Satyagraha’, because civil disobedience does not capture the essense of Gandhian philosophy.
Lets come back to the original question, what could Jews have done as they were standing in front of the gas chambers, consistent with the Gandhian philosophy. The answer would be NOTHING. They could not have done anything as they stood in front of the gas chambers, that is not the time to become Gandhist, its just too late. Then what is the right application of Gandhian philosophy in case of Jews in Nazi Germany? The answer is simple, the Jews in Germany should have done Satyagraha long before they were shipped to the concentration camps.
What Jews should have done is the moment Hitler gave the order that the Jews must stop owning all the businesses, the Jewish businessmen should have done Satyagraha against it. The moment the government took away the guns from the people in Nazi Germany they should have started Satyagraha against it. The moment Hitler ordered all the Jews to get registered and move to the ghettos the jews should have started Satyagraha against it. There are two possible outcomes of this situation:
- The German government backs out and allows Jewish businessmen to continue doing businesses, allow people to own guns, give up trying to register and move Jews to ghettos, which solves our problem but is highly unlikely, knowing what we know about the history.
- The Germany government orders shooting of the Jewish Satyagrahis or forcefully ship them to the concentration camps.
We don’t have to worry about the first outcome, so we will just discuss the second. There are some historical facts you must know about the Nazi Germany, at that particular time nobody in the world knew about the concentration camps. These gas chambers and concentration camps were not publicly known until the war ended. The only news about such atrocity were regarded as mere rumor and war gossip. When Hitler forced Germans to give up their guns, it wasn’t foreseen by anyone that he is disarming the Jewish people in some diabolical plot to eventually have his ‘Final Solution’. I am not saying that the Jews walked gladly into the concentration camps, but all I am saying is had Jewish businessmen not followed the Nazi instructions, had Jews not given up their guns so gladly for the ‘peace’ in Germany, had the Jewish people not registered and moved to the Ghettos, but instead refused to follow the orders from the exact point where they were living their lives exactly how they wanted, they would have been able to expose the Nazis WAY EARLIER, and that exposure would have been the most effective thing to do to fight against the Nazis.
When the news spread about how the Nazis shot 500 Jewish businessmen because they refused to stop owning businesses, or that they sent 1000 people to places from where they were never seen just for refusing to turn over their weapons, or that German soldiers shot 20 families inside their homes in Warsaw who refused to move to the ghettos or registered, this would have uncovered the truth of the Nazi Germany. This would have shown Jews what was coming up for them. A lot of jewish people would have still died, no doubt about that. In fact I can’t even say if more jews or less jews would die in this scenario, either way the number of people killed by the Nazis would have been much much less. It would have mobilized people against the Nazi Germany. Remember, Nazi Germany did not look as monsterous as it looks now to us. Imagine Nazi Germany just as Germany who is invading its neighboring countries without all the holocaust stuff. This is what Allies thought they were fighting during Second World War.
Conclusion
Photo taken by jrodmanjr under Creative Commons license
Gandhian philosophy is not applicable for the Jews already standing in front of the firing squad or gas ovens. The correct application of Gandhian philosophy is on the day when the German government first aggressed against them, when the German government wanted to take away their guns, when the German government wanted to them to move to ghettos, when the Germany government wanted them to move to concentration camps. As the aggression of Germany government increased against the Jews, the time to do anything slipped away with every new aggression. We are facing the same situation here, we trade our liberties for temporary security or peace. The UK government orders every citizen to give up their guns, and the British follow the orders, after all who wants to risk getting arrested, so people fool themselves that this will help in maintaining law and order, what they are doing is laying the ground work for another possible Hitler. Yeah the current UK government may not do anything like what Hitler did, but trust me, the new Hitler will not be racist(it won’t be Nick Griffin of British Nationalist Party, it won’t be the Klan association in US, and it won’t be Bal Thakarey in India), whomsoever it would be, you wouldn’t be able to expect him.
Today US government is installing checkpoints across the border to look for illegal immigrants. Indian government is creating a national database of all citizens and every citizen have an ID card. Whatever reasons given for these things, however rational these actions may sound, the fact is you are giving up your liberties! Once you have given up your civil liberties they are much more difficult for you to get them back. Do not give in to evil! Lets say you live in India and you think we cannot allow Indian citizens to have guns otherwise we will have a gun culture like we have in America (where our kids are shooting each other in schools). The thing is, if China attacks in India again or any foreign government for that matter, tries to disable our government and military, we will lose so many lives and property that few disturbed kids shooting each other will sound such a fair deal to the possible resistance Indian citizens could have done to a foreign invasion.
