1 October 2001, 11:07pm IST
GLYN RICHARDS.
Mahatma gandhi's attitude to war is unequivocal; he considers it to be wholly wrong. in his view it degrades, demoralises, and brutalises men trained for it. with its tendency to glorify brute force it outrages moral standards and inflames passions. it is totally opposed to the qualities of gentleness, patience and self-restraint. gandhi's opposition and resistance to war as a means of solving problems is total and yet his adherence to the principle of ahimsa does not mean a failure to recognise that there might be situations of moral dilemma in which different moral considerations apply for different people.
gandhi's repugnance, for example, does not take him to the point of seeking to prevent those who wished to take part in war from doing so. he prefers simply to place the issue before them, and allow them to make their own moral decisions and to choose what they might want to do. it means that one is not forcing one's moral decisions on someone else. but gandhi goes one step further than this. when those who believe in war refuse to do their duty, that is, when they refuse to fight for some reason or other, gandhi feels it to be his moral duty to enlighten them as to their responsibilities as soldiers, while at the same time presenting them with the alternative path of ahimsa. that is, he maintains that while they are soldiers, it is their duty to fight, but should they choose the way of non-violence then it would be their duty to refuse to fight.
here gandhi is indicating his adherence to one of the fundamental principles of the hindu tradition, namely, that one is morally obliged to fulfil the functions of the order to which one belongs. he feels that the choice is really between himsa and ahimsa , and not between doing one's duty or not doing one's duty. should the reason for refusing to do one's duty as a soldier be loss of belief in the efficacy of war then that could well be interpreted as a choice of ahimsa.
by relating belief to duty in this fashion, gandhi is able to claim that he would have no compunction under swaraj, a self-governing india, in recommending those who had no objection to taking up arms, to fight for their country. yet, at the same time, he is able to maintain that the person who participates in war should strive to free both himself and the world from war. he justifies this attitude by claiming that ``one's life is not a single straight line; it is a bundle of duties very often conflicting. and one is called upon continually to make one's choice between one duty and another.''
if we were to argue that, as a firm believer in the way of ahimsa, and an unequivocal opponent of war with its brutalising tendencies and degrading effects, gandhi's moral responsibility could hardly be regarded as extending to recommending people to fight for their country, it might seem difficult at first sight to know what his response would be other than that if a man is unable to choose the higher path of ahimsa, he should be encouraged to fulfil the obligations of the choice of the lower path of duty to his country. why he should be so encouraged might not be immediately clear in view of the demoralising effect of training for war. gandhi does not equate ahimsa with non-killing and notes the distinction between ahimsa and himsa by indicating that himsa means killing from motives of anger or selfishness and ahimsa means refraining from so doing ^ in which case, it might be possible to be a believer in ahimsa and yet kill, provided the killing is not prompted by angry or selfish motives and is performed with detachment as one's duty. gandhi could certainly quote the teaching of the bhagavad gita in support of this view, but it would still not detract from what he says about the demoralising, degrading, and brutalising effects of war.
different moral considerations apply for different people in similar situations. one person might consider it his moral duty to fight and another to desist from fighting. yet even when a person maintains the principle of non-violence, as gandhi does, it is absolute only in the sense that it informs the spirit and circumstances in which acts of violence are done, and not in the sense that it constitutes a rule which permits no exceptions. this does not mean that gandhi is not aware of the wrong that is being done when acts of violence are committed or tolerated, or that he does not share in the feelings of guilt that result from so acting. what it means is that as life ``is not a single straight line'' he does what he thinks must be done and what it is morally possible for him to do in situations of moral dilemma.
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