Show of bravery

 

THE HINDU  

 

August 23, 2010

Show of bravery

V. R. DEVIKA

 

An effective weapon : Satyagraha.

 

Photo: The Hindu Photo Libarary

 

Gandhiji's answer to every question in life was Satyagraha…

 

Can you define bravery? Many take bravery to be the ability to defeat an opponent through physical strength. Read this anecdote from Mahatma Gandhi's life and make your own definition.

 

On April 16, 1939, Mahatma Gandhi was taking part in a prayer meeting at Rashtriya Shala in Rajkot. About 600 demonstrators, (Bhayats or the relatives of the King of Rajkot who were afraid to lose power after Independence) arrived on the scene with black flags and placards with offensive slogans on them. They lined the fence enclosing the prayer ground from the main road.

“Gandhiji bowed to the demonstrators,” recounts his secretary Pyarelal, “as was his wont, before he sat down for the prayer.”

 

The demonstrators kept shouting and yelling throughout the prayer session. Gandhiji rose after the prayer and the demonstrators began to pour into the ground through the narrow passage. Gandhiji, instead of going by car as usual, decided to walk through the crowd so as to give the demonstrators full chance to say or do to him whatever they pleased.

 

At the entrance, the crush was too great to allow further progress. The pushing and jostling of the crowd at the rear on either side of the gangway was growing apace. The dust and the din added to the confusion. Some people tried to form a cordon around Gandhiji. But Gandhiji waved them off. “I shall sit here or go alone with them in their midst,” he told them.

 

He addressed a Bhayat who stood confronting him “I wish to go through this crowd under your sole protection not that of my co workers.” The stunned crowd quickly made way for him and leaning on the shoulder of the Bhayat, Gandhiji walked to the waiting car. “This is the way of Satyagraha,” he remarked as he drove off, “to put your head unresistingly into the lap of your ‘enemy', for him to keep or make short work of you as he pleases. It is the sovereign way and throughout my half a century of varied experience, it has never once failed me.”

 

Such risk taking was a part and parcel of Gandhiji's life. There were many occasions in South Africa and in India when he had risked his life like that and in all the cases the would-be assailants had ended up becoming his friends.

 

Comments to : web.thehindu@thehindu.co.in   Copyright © 2010, The Hindu

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs