SECTION I : Selected Letters

Gandhi Letter 99 : To Madame Edmond Privat1

Birla House,
New Delhi,
November 29, 1947

DEAR BHAKTI,

I was glad to receive your argued letter of 27th August. I see that you have grasped the fundamental difference between Passive Resistance and
Non-violent Resistance. Resistance both forms are, but you have to pay a very heavy price when your resistance is passive, in the sense of the weakness of the resister. Europe mistook the bold and brave resistance full of wisdom by Jesus of Nazareth for passive resistance, as if it was of the weak. As I read the New Testament for the first time I detected no passivity, no weakness about Jesus as depicted in the four gospels and the meaning became clearer to me when I read Tolstoy's Harmony of the Gospels and his other kindred writings. Has not the West paid heavily in regarding Jesus as a Passive Resister? Christendom has been responsible for the wars which put to shame even those described in the Old Testament and other records, historical or semi- historical. I know that I speak under correction for I can but claim very superficial knowledge of history—modern or ancient.
Coming to my own personal experience, whilst we undoubtedly got through passive resistance our political freedom, over which lovers of peace like you and your good husband of the West are enthusiastic, we are daily paying the heavy price for the unconscious mistake we made or better still, I made in mistaking passive resistance for non-violent resistance. Had I not made the mistake, we would have been spared the humiliating spectacle of weak brother killing his weak brother thoughtlessly and inhumanly.
I am only hoping and praying and I want all the friends here and in other parts of the world to hope and pray with me that this blood-bath will soon end and out of that, perhaps, inevitable butchery, will rise a new and robust India—not warlike, basely imitating the West in all its hideousness, but a new India learning the best that the West has to give and becoming the hope not only of Asia and Africa, but the whole of the aching world.
I must confess that this is hoping against hope, for, we are today swearing by the military and all that naked physical force implies. Our statesmen have for over two generations declaimed against the heavy expenditure on armaments under the British regime, but now that freedom from political serfdom has come, our military expenditure has increased and still threatens to increase and of this we are proud! There is not a voice raised against it in our legislative chambers. In spite, however, of the madness and the vain imitation of the tinsel of the West, the hope lingers in me and many others that India shall survive this death dance and occupy the moral height that should belong to her after the training, however imperfect in non-violence for an unbroken period of 32 years since 1915.
As to the last paragraph of your letter, I must confess my ignorance of psycho-analysis. Richard Gregg of U.S.A. has put the problem in a more concrete form than you have. You must have seen his letter and my reply in the columns of Harijan.2
I hope this will find you both in the same vigour in which you used to be during those happy days that you passed with me in India. I wonder if you will ever again come to India and see it, not in her madness, but wisdom, inspiring every department of life.

Love to you both,
BAPU

MADAME EDMOND PRIVAT,
1 AVENUE DE LA GARE,
NEUCHATEL,
SWITZERLAND

From a photostat: S.N. 23961

1. Madame Edmond Privat - Wife of Dr Edmond Privat, Professor, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland.
2. Vide Appendix II, pp. 272-275