Post No. 12,128
Date uploaded in London – – 13 June , 2023
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One person has written a letter to Gandhiji asking him to clarify whether Bhagavad Gita teaches Himsa (violence) or Ahimsa(Non-Violence). Gandhi replied to him and it was published in Young India on 12-11-1925.
“The question put is eternal and everyone who has studied the Gita must needs find out his own solution. And although I am going to offer mine, I know that ultimately one is guided not by the intellect but by the heart. The heart accepts a conclusion for which the intellect subsequently finds reasoning. Argument follows conviction. Man often finds reasons in support of whatever he does or wants to do.
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My first acquaintance with the Gita was in 1889, when I was almost twenty. I had not then much of an inkling of the principle of Ahimsa. One of the lines of the Gujarati poet Shamalbhatta, had taught me the principle of winning even an enemy with love, and that teaching had gone deep into me. but I had not deducted the eternal principle of non violence from it. It did not, for instance, cover all animal life. I had before this, tasted meat whilst in India. I thought it is a duty to kill the venomous reptiles like snake. It is my conviction today that even venomous creatures may not be killed by a believer in ahimsa. I believed in those days preparing ourselves for a fight with the English. I often repeated a Gujarati poet’s famous doggerel:
What wonder if Britain rules! etc.
My meat eating was as a first step to qualify myself for the fight with the English. Such was my position before I proceeded to England, and there I escaped meat eating etc. because of my determination to follow unto death the promise that I had given to my mother. My love for truth has saved me from many a pitfall.
Now whilst in England my contact with two English friends ‘made me to read the Gita’. I say ‘made me read’ because it was not my own desire that I read it. But when these two friends asked me to read the Gita with them, I was ashamed of my ignorance. The knowledge of total ignorance of my scriptures pained me. Pride, I think, was at the bottom of this feeling. My knowledge was not enough to enable me to understand all the verses of Gita unaided. The friends, of course, were quite innocent of Sanskrit. They placed before me Sir Edwin Arnold’s magnificent rendering of the Gita. I devoured the contents from cover to cover and was entranced by it. The last nineteen verses of the second chapter have since been inscribed on the tablet of my heart . they contain, for me, all knowledge. The truth they teach are the ‘eternal verities’. There is reasoning in them but they represent realized knowledge.
I have since read many translations and many commentaries, have argued and reasoned to my heart’s content but the impression that the first reading gave me has never been effaced. Those verses are the key to the interpretation of the Gita. I would even advise rejection of the verses that may seem to be in conflict with them. But a humble student reject nothing. He will simply say, “ it is the limitation of my own intellect that I cannot resolve this inconsistency. I might be able to do so in the time to come.” That is how he will plead with himself and others.
A prayerful and study and experience are essential for a correct interpretation of the scriptures. The injunction that a Shudra may not study is not entirely without meaning. A Shudra means a spiritually uncultured ignorant man . He is more likely than not to misinterpret the Vedas and ignorant scriptures. Everyone cannot solve an algebra equation. Some preliminary study is sine qua non . How ill the grand truth ‘I am Brahman’ lie in the mouth of a man steeped in sin! to what ignoble purposes would he turn it! What a distortion it would suffer at his hands!
A man, therefore, who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline. He must practise the yamas and niyamas– the eternal guide of conduct. A superficial practice thereof is useless. The shastras have enjoined the necessity of a Guru. But a Guru being rare in these days, a study of modern books inculcating bhakti has been suggested by the sages. Those who are lacking in bhakti, lacking in faith, are ill-qualified to interpret the scriptures.
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Renunciation of flesh is essential for realizing truth.
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Tulsidas on beating wives by husbands
Another canon of interpretation is to scan not the letter but to examine the spirit. Tulsidas’ Ramayana is a total book because it is informed with the spirit of purity, pity and piety. There is a verse in it which brackets drums, shudras, fools and women together as fit be beaten. A man who cites that verse to beat his wife is doomed to perdition. Rama did not only not beat his wife, but never even sought to displeasure her. Tulsidas simply inserted in his poem a proverb current in his days, little dreaming that there would be brutes justifying beating their wives on the authority of the verse. But assuming Tulsidas himself followed a custom which was prevalent in his days and beat his wife, what then? The beating was still wrong. But the Ramayana was not written to justify beating of wives by their husbands. It was written to depict Rama, the perfect man and Sita, the ideal wife, and Bharata the ideal of a devoted brother. Any justification incidentally met with therein of vicious customs should therefore be rejected. Tulsidas , did not write his priceless epic to teach geography, and any wrong geography that we come across in Ramayana should be summarily rejected.
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After this Gandhi goes deeper into Gita slokas and Arjuna’s decision not to kill his own kins.
Source-Young India, 12-11-1925.
—subham—
Tags- Meat eating, Tulsidas, wife beating, 17 verses, Bhagavad Gita, Edwin Arnold, Gandhi
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