I Talked with Gandhi
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I Talked With Gandhi
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A DIGEST OF IDEAS AND IDEALS.
I
TALKED WITH
GANDHI
By LOUIS FISCHER
A radio interview with J. FRANK BURKE, KFVD, Los Angeles
Director, Citizens in Action, Inc.
Burke: Mr. Fischer. I am very glad that you are with us today, and I have been greatly interested, as I know so many of our listeners have been, in your book "Gandhi and Stalin” and I understand you are engaged in writing a book on Mr. Gandhi, and his life. I can conceive of no one more interesting to the public, and whose life and record at this time coming from your hands could be more timely, than the life of Mr. Gandhi. I've wondered as I've read your books and followed you, what has led you to take an interest originally in Mr. Gandhi.
Fischer: I first went to India in 1942 in order to see what India would contribute to the war. It was during the war. I was worried that our position in the Middle East was very weak and that the Japanese might come to India, and some people in Washington encouraged me to go and to have a look at the situation in India. Well, I went to India and I talked to the British officials. I talked to leading Indians, but I immediately realized that the biggest thing in India was Gandhi, and that if you didn’t know Gandhi, and that if you didn't understand Gandhi, you didnt' understand the political situation, you didn't understand India, and that you didn’t understand the future of India. So I went down for an interview with Gandhi. I thought I’d stay for an hour or two. He was living in a little village in the center of sizzling hot India. It was 110 all day. I thought I’d stay for an hour or two, but he was so absorbing and exciting, and our interview was so successful that he urged me to stay, and so I stayed until the next day, and we weren't through the next day. We still weren’t through the next day—so I stayed a whole week. I saw him several hours each day. I walked with him in the morning and the evening—I spent a week with him, and it was then that my interest became quite serious and permanent. I saw him again in 1946, and the closer one gets to him, the bigger he grows, and now that I’m writing this biography, which is a full length story of the facts of his life, his works, and his writing—the closer I come to him now, the bigger he grows.
Burke: Mr. Fischer, I'm glad to hear that, and I noted in your book the one idea that stayed with me was this (possibly the implications of the book, "Gandhi and Stalin"): you had to choose, it seemed to me, and properly, a Hindu, one who is not of my faith, the Christian faith, who represented the absolute in truth, as we all believe them in life, in order to contrast that life with the life of Stalin who also represents certain absolutes in thinking. and that you had to bring those two in contrast, and to me as a Christian and a believer in the teachings of Christ, I couldn’t help remembering that E. Stanley Jones remarked that he was the best actor of Christian principles that he knew anywhere. Now I'd like to ask in this respect what is the central idea as in contra-distinction possibly from "Gandhi and Stalin”?
Fischer: Well, "Gandhi and Stalin" is a discussion of current international events. It deals with the present world situation: that is it deals with the present world situation and it contrasts Gandhi, who I think is the essential democrat. It contrasts Gandhi with Stalin, who I think is the absolute totalitarian, the dictator, and there are discussions in that book "Gandhi and Stalin" on the way the world is going, on how to prevent a war with Russia, on how to so strengthen democracy morally, economically and politically that we can defeat Stalin without a war, which is my aim and, I should say yours, and the aim of all decent people. Now, the biography that I’m doing is, as I said, the detailed story of Gandhi's life way back to 1869 when he was born, taking him through to London where he went as a student to study law. Then he came back to India, was a very bad lawyer: then he went on to South Africa and spent 20 years there. In those 20 years in South Africa, he became the Mahatma, the great soul, the great leader—outside of his country. Then he came back to India, acknowledged the leader, and he had, (1914 to 1948) when he was shot), 34 years of being the leader of India acknowledged by the Indians and the British as THE leader of India, and he did it—he had no organization, no money, no clothing, he didn’t have a house, no insurance—nothing. He just had himself.
Burke: And now, Mr. Fischer, that interests me and particularly the remark you made about his being a bad lawyer, and the other day I heard you remark that he had almost been a failure up to the time that he got a new vision in South Africa. I’d like to ask you: "Isn’t this true—and why is it true, if you think it is—that he, in the thinking from the American point of view, never was a success. He failed in nearly everything that we consider success. Why was this man—a failure—able to get such a following when we think in this country that a man must always succeed?"
Fischer: Gandhi succeeded in being true to himself. That’s the greatest success. He was true to himself; he was true to his God: he was true to his ideals. That’s a greater success than making a lot of money.
Burke: That is true, but what I'm wondering is, would that kind of man, instead of spending his time in a counting house, spending and buying property and getting large values, would he win out in this country, standing for the same things if he spent most of his time in jail?
Fischer: No, I suppose not, but there was something of Gandhi in Lincoln, and there’s something of Gandhi in Professor Albert Einstein, apart from his science where he has been a great success. The way to judge a man is by what he strives for—what he wants. If he wants to rebuild the world, of course he's not going to be a success in the material things, but he is going to become a great person; he’s going to grow. The interesting thing about Gandhi was that he grew to the last day of his life at the age of 78 and you could see him increase in stature—in moral, intellectual stature.
The growth we count other people by is how much money they have in the bank, how much more money they have this year than last year. And with Gandhi, as well as with a number of other people, we judge them by their increase in stature and by their loyalty to their principles. That's the way India judged Gandhi, and that’s the way the world is beginning to judge Gandhi.
Burke: Doesn’t India really consider people of that character more valuable than men of wealth?
Fischer: Yes, yes, they stand in awe before wealth and strength, but they have reverence for the weak and the poor: for those who renounce the material things. And I think that Gandhi’s hold on the Indian mind is because he renounced wealth, and what is more important, he renounced power. He didn't want power. He had power because he didn't want it. People came to him and offered to be his followers; to contribute their strength to him because he didn’t want anything for himself.
Burke: You know as I look at our own country, at the men who stand out pre-eminently, I wonder if Mr. Eugene Debs, had had the religious and deeply spiritual element that Mr. Gandhi had, if he wouldn’t be pretty much a type of Mr. Gandhi.
Fischer: Yes, there are quite a number of people who are say 10% Gandhi’s and 5% Gandhi’s. To the extent that they are spiritual, they approach the Gandhi, but the essence of Gandhi was not what he said, not what he wrote, not what he believed, but there was an integration; there was an intimate connection between what he said, what he believed, and what he did. His life was his great monument, the root of his life was what he did. Out of that grew what he believed and what he said, and of course there were imperfections in the trunk—there were imperfections in the leaves. He blamed it on himself, the way he lived. Everything in Gandhi came from the way he lived. The rest was the outgrowth. And what we are, we talk too much—we base too much on statements and professions of our faith; but there is such a gulf, and I always talk about this, but I think it bears repetition. There's such a gulf in our churches, in the lives of each one of us, a gulf between what we say we believe and what we actually do.
ANGER
To get angry for instance when somebody calls you a fool is to prove their assertion.
To get angry when things cannot be helped is to make them worse.
To get angry when folks disagree with your opinions is to discredit the worth of your opinion.
To get angry when you are slandered is the poorest kind of an answer to make.
To get angry when you cannot have your own way is to prove you cannot be trusted.
To get angry when your conscience tells you you are wrong is to fight a losing battle.
PLATO PHILOSOPHY
Plato was given training by four wise men into whose care he was committed at the age of fourteen.
The first wise man taught him religion.
The second taught him to be ever upright and true.
The third taught him to be master of his own desires.
The fourth taught him to fear nothing.