Dr. Norman Finkelstein Presents "What Gandhi Says about Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage"

[Music] good afternoon I'm Steve Shalem the director of the Gandhian forum for peace and justice and a faculty member in the political science department thank you all for coming the Gandhian forum was established at William Paterson in might in 2008 with a mission of promoting dialogue and education on some of the great challenges that confront the human race in the 21st century resolving conflicts eliminating war and advancing the cause of social justice as part of that mission we bring to campus speakers who can educate engage and challenge us the Gandhian forum believes as do the co-sponsors for today's event the political science department Asian Studies Program the College of Humanities and Social Sciences like at sockos College of Business and the Office of the provost that one of the goals of the university is to and I quote now from the official University document ensure that students are challenged to think and act creatively about critical issues by providing guest lectures workshops and seminars from diverse perspectives our speaker today has just written a book about the thought of Mahatma Gandhi the namesake of the gun informed it was an obvious choice to invite him to come to share his analysis with us will we all agree with his reading of Gandhi we wait to hear his arguments but this we know the quest to discover what Gandhi or anyone believed is part of the search for the truth and that's a quest that Gandhi would have wholeheartedly endorse Norman Finkelstein got his PhD from Princeton University he's the author of seven books most of them dealing with the Middle East Professor avi Shlaim an Israeli British historian an Oxford University who is recognized as one of the world's leading experts on the israel-palestine conflict calls Finkelstein a quote very impressive learned and careful scholar his work has also been praised by the late Raul hilberg one of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians an author of the essential three volume work the destruction of the European Jews as Professor Finkelstein studied the troubled history of the israel-palestine conflict he wondered if there was a way to achieve a nonviolent in to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and he decided to look at the writings of Gandhi to see what insights he could glean he discovered that Gandhi's collected works ran to some 100 volumes he's read about half of them now some of the students in the audience are probably saying well how come he only had to do half the readings where always being totally need to do all the readings well you can stop when you've finished 25,000 pages as Professor Finkelstein has from his reading professor Finkelstein came to believe that common understandings of Gandhi are incomplete and he concluded as well that Gandhi's ideas can be applied not just to the israel-palestine conflict but to the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street and to many other contemporary struggles this is what led him to write his book professor Finkelstein will speak for about 45 minutes and then we'll use the remainder of the time for Question and Answer and discussion now I know that some of you have been given a leaflet that attacks our speaker the leaflet tells you what he's going to say but I hope you'll listen to yourself and hear what he actually has to say the leaflet also says a bunch of false and slimy things about professor Finkelstein that he's not planning to address and his prepared remarks he's been invited to talk about Gandhi but by all means if anyone wants to ask him a question based on the leaflet or anything else during the question-and-answer period please feel free to do so we encourage discussion and different points of view I might note that if you'd like to get a copy of professor Finkelstein's book and got on Gandhi and read it for yourself it's available in the back for $5 half off the list price and now without further ado I'm proud to present professor Norman Finkelstein well thank you for having me let's just do a simple soundcheck back row you hear me fine good okay well thank you for having me here this afternoon I'm gonna be speaking on the Mahatma mr. Gandhi I can tell from once having been a professor there are some students here who have been conscripted into being here that means to here under coercion or force and so my challenge always is to satisfy those students so they actually want to stay and so I'm going to make occasional eye contact with them and see if I'm succeeding in my go yes I know as Steve mentioned Gandhi is actually a quite formidable undertaking I didn't quite know I what I was going to get into and I started reading him he comes to about not about he comes to exactly 98 volumes and it's about 500 pages per volume it was a surprise to me when I went to NYU to start checking out his collected works it was a surprise to me that apart from one volume apart from one volume I was the first person had ever checked out any of Gandhi's volumes from NYU library and they had acquired the collected works he could tell at the beginning it's them they had acquired it in 1985 I mentioned that not to denigrate the scholarly accomplishments of or bona fides of NYU but because I think a lot of people talk about Gandhi and they think they know Gandhi and Gandhi seems like a pretty simple figure lacking in any pretense and you just think Gandhi non-violence pretty straightforward pretty simple but on a moment's reflection you start when you start thinking about it non-violence is not really a very obvious or simple concept and when you read through I read about half of the Gandhi's collected works you realize it's very complicated exactly what Gandhi is trying to say and what he has in mind now I want to make two caveats cavy it's just a fancy word for qualifications number one the hundred volumes don't contain any systematic exposition of what Gandhi means by non-violence most of the hundred volumes his letters that Gandhi's wrote he spent a lot of time in jail and he had what he called silent periods every day where for like two or three hours he didn't text message he just did his work and most of the hundred volumes is not political in a normal sense of the term most of it actually is devoted to diet and good health Gandhi was a kind of premature Oprah he was obsessed with his diet and his weight when he's in prison many of his letters literally most of his letters consist of I weigh 90 point five pounds I weigh 91 pounds I weigh 89 pounds I thought it was a little too much information for my interest but these were private letters to friends and he was absolutely obsessed also with diet home cures diet Gandhi had a home cure for everything he was the head of an ashram people were constantly getting ill in the ashram and was always prescribing some home cure or other for illnesses everything from constipation to impotence Gandhi had his magical cure for it and that's a large part of the collected works the actual politics in the narrow sense I would say probably doesn't take up more than half of Gandhi's collected works and that half is mostly speeches by Gandhi so that's the first qualification the second thing about Gandhi is Gandhi is doesn't pretend to be a theorist or somebody trying to create a systematic theory of non-violence he doesn't really care about theories very much and he doesn't care very much about being consistent in what he says you'll say one thing one day something else the next day he will claim quite often that he's not contradicting himself in fact he is contradicting himself and it's perfectly obvious and then he would say I don't really care he said just judge me by my actions and don't look for intellectual or theoretical consistency Gandhi was as he said he's essentially a man of action he wants to get things done and I'm getting something done today requires contradicting something he said the day before he didn't really care he was much smarter even in the conventional sense than most people would take him to be obviously everyone knew him to be politically very shrewd he drove the British med because he was politically very shrewd but he was also much better read than you would think we know that because in his prison letters he's talking about the books he's ordered and the books he's read and he's read a lot and he's one of the things I really admired about him was that Gandhi was constantly ordering books on the minutia the details of peasant life in India he wants to know every detail about how the poor of India how they live he wants to know about soil conservation he wants to know about the water he wants to know about everything the most dull technical treatises and texts that's what Gandhi is constantly order ordering and it tells you something about him that's what it means to be a real organizer you have to know the people and you have to know every detail of their life to really understand to really get inside the people and become a leader of them so he was no much smarter I think then he led on he liked to give the impression of being very simple no he was not it was very shrewd very smart very calculating the other thing about Gandhi that makes it a little bit difficult to present a Gandhi doctrine is that Gandhi's whole thinking was steeped in religious faith and so it's very hard to give a rational accounting of what Gandhi is trying to do Gandhi relied and what he calls his inner voice he keeps referring to my inner voice tells me to do this my inner voice tells me to do that a few years ago I was in South Africa and as many of you know Gandhi spent a long period of his life there and his granddaughter lives there and I spent some time with her elegant elegant II really a very terrific person I have to say and one of the things she commented to me was she said Gandhi had great confidence in his inner voice he says at one point I am NOT guided by reason but by instinct or in other words by the inner voice and one never knows where that voice would lead you to so when you would ask him for his reasoning why are you doing this what's the argument behind doing that he would simply say well that's my inner voice tells me to do and obviously it's not possible to argue rationally with an inner voice and that I think speaks to a really unattractive unappealing side of Gandhi which was a very authoritarian and I guess we can call dictatorial site you either agreed with him or you're out you can't it was not possible really to disagree with Gandhi because how do you argue with an inner voice and so it was an element of his which was I think it was deeply undemocratic on the other hand I kind of accepted it because politics is often about just having good political instincts you can have all the fancy theories in the world but often politics comes down to just having good judgment and good instincts and you can't really explain that rationally why the particular moment in time somebody says you should do a instead of B well he or she will give some elaborate theoretical explanation but the elaborate theoretical explanation really doesn't get to the heart of it the heart of it is some gut instinct tells me this is the right thing to do at this particular moment and some people have good instincts in some dome Gandhi had very good political instincts I think people like Trotsky and Lenin had very good instincts oh you happen to think professor Chomsky has very good political instincts very good judgment my good friend Alan Aaron for those of you who know him he has very excellent political judgment part of political judgment let's be clear part of political judgment it comes from rich political experience there's no question about that you're not going to get have good political judgment unless you've had rich political experience leading being immersed in being part of political movements and mass movements so I'm not going to claim their political judgement just you know it's just there in the genes no requires a rich life experience which is what Gandhi plainly had Bond the other hand you could have rich life experience and you can have bad political judgment I remember asking somebody about somebody who had rich life experience in politics David Dellinger I said well how was this political judgment the person said it was terrible it could be a very decent guy I have lots of rich life experience but still have that for the co judgement but I think political judgment the end of the day it really is irrational so when Gandhi spoke about his inner voice he was just speaking to what we nowadays would call political judgment and political instincts a knack for politics and Gandhi had the knack for politics as I said the problem of course was he could never argue with him it was impossible to disagree with him and it made for a movement which was very much top-down you couldn't do with Gandhi you couldn't even go on the fast without his permission he had to give the permission because he says I'm the general I know about fasting I have the life experience if you want to go on a fast you have to always get my permission it's it's an infantilizing I think relationship that he created there plus people tell me I can't say for sure but he's surround himself with mostly yes men the people who his his coterie but there were mostly mediocre people they didn't have except of course and they were they didn't really they weren't a very impressive bunch okay having said that what did Gandhi mean by non-violence who knows the term he used for yes ahimsa is non-violence but what about the exactly my but what's the whole movement satyagraha and what does that translate is anyone know satyagraha well the loose translation the one that Gandhi used was hold on to the truth or grasp the truth I kind of like that as an idea some of you know the African American spiritual keep your eyes on the prize and hold on and this is a kind of variation on it satyagraha means to hold on to the truth and Gandhi actually he's not himself but I think it was a cousin of his coined a term because people were referring to his movement as passive resistance and he would recoil an indignation and anger his non-violence is not passive it's the most active force in the world so don't so he wanted to coin a different phrase and he came up with satyagraha and I'll explain why in a moment he called it the most active force in the world in any case what did he want to do with the satyagraha and here I think I learned something important from Gandhi it was useful for me to understanding politics Gandhi's understanding of politics is very different than say the tradition I came from when I was growing up as roughly the age of the younger people in this audience what we took politics to me was there was a small group of people who possessed the truth they knew what is the truth in fact our truth was so true that we called it a scientific truth it was as true as the laws of physics and our job was to go out among the masses the benighted masses and to bring light where there was darkness to free them from their enslavement to false consciousness commodity fetishism we had all sorts of terms but basically we knew the truth the masses were ignorant and we're going to enlighten them well Gandhi has a very different understanding of politics for Gandhi politics is the people out there they already know what's wrong there are a thousand things that most people for the moment they get up in the morning to the moment they go to sleep they're venting about their indignant about that's wrong that shouldn't be that's not right that's unfair that's how a lot of people go through each day or in my case go through my entire life complaining about how everything is unfair or wrong or unjust and so forth so for Gandhi the problem was not the problem was not that people were ignorant that was not the problem for Gandhi for Gandhi the problem of politics is how do you get people to act on what they already know is wrong we all know a thousand things are wrong we all complain about a thousand things they're wrong but most of us including yours truly most of us don't do much about it we don't get past complaining and for Gandhi the challenge of politics is how do you get people to act on what they already know is wrong or as he puts it how do you quicken the dead conscience into life how do you get people to act on what they already know is wrong and Gandhi's major insight some of you may not think it's so brilliant but actually the more I think about the more I realize he's right he says most people will not act until they see others suffering they have to see suffering it has to be real suffering it can't be as it were routine suffering and so Gandhi he wants to stir the dead conscience of the public about a room by having his followers having them commit acts of extreme self suffering through the up to the point of being willing to sacrifice one's life if you read Gandhi's works he has a kind of you have to cold he has a kind of death cult he's very adamant he's very insistent that you have if you want to be my follower you have to get yourself killed and he would say if you don't get yourself killed I'm not interested no he would if you don't get you're using his words if you don't get your skull broken I'm just not interested in anything you have to say don't come back to me from a demonstration alive well that's what he would say now it wasn't because obviously he had a pathological streak in him or he derived any great pleasure from another person's death obviously not though it is true to say in my opinion and he tended to trivialize life but that's a separate issue it's because Gandhi was realistic he understood just for better or for worse a fact of human sentiment people are not moved to a degree of indignation that they're ready to do something they're not moved to a magnitude of anger such that they're ready finally I'm going to do something about that they're not ready to do it until they see real human suffering and anything short of that will not break people out of their routine way of going about this which is venting here complaining there but not doing much about it and everybody knows that you know I can give a thousand examples I remember during the civil rights movement there are a lot of african-americans they said when they saw the kids being attacked at the Woolworths lunch counters that's what moved them to get involved the case of me with the Occupy movement last year I heard about it I thought you know these guys have a point but you know I'm a little old to be capting out in zucchini park or whatever it is and my Woodstock days are behind me so I gave as it were my moral support which counts for exactly zero and so what finally gets me to act or one day I hear 800 people are arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge I said well now wait a minute Nolan you've been complaining about how unfair this system is since the day you emerge from your late mother's womb and now there are people getting arrested so why aren't you doing something and then the next great the next you know turning point was when the cops pepper sprayed in the eyes the demonstrators those are the things that get people to act now the important thing about the Occupy movement in Gandhi in terms was nobody had to enlighten the ignorant masses that our system is unfair everybody knows it or at least has become aware of it and say the last 10 years that 1% are making out very well thank you have a good day and 99% are being shafted the slogan we are the 99% the reason it was a kind of brilliant Gandhian slogan is what is not that an enlightened people is that it captured the sentiment that was already there and that's what Gandhi's politics are all about not trying to enlighten but trying to get people to act on the sentiment that's already there in people and what it required is exactly what Gandhi said it required you know the bystanders the sympathetic bystanders it required them to see people getting arrested people getting pepper sprayed that's the way that's what human motivation is about now there's one qualification it has to be made to that and no amount of non-violence however self-sacrificing it might be no amount of non-violence is going to get people to act unless they agree with your goal it's not enough that your means your tactics are just the broad public has to also agree with your goals or your nonviolent tactic is never going to work so what does that mean concretely well you take the United States about 50% of Americans right down the middle 50% of Americans call themselves pro-choice and 50% of Americans call themselves pro-life so if you were to do a little thought experiment and you imagine the 50% of Americans who call themselves pro-life they decide that in Gandhian fashion they're going to gather on mass descend on all the abortion clinics in the United States and they're going to go on a collective fast unto the death until these clinics stop performing abortions now nobody here can take exception to the tactic it's the ultimate Gandhian tactic you're not hurting anyone else you're not inflicting bodily damage in anyone else quite the contrary you to give your life for your belief but if you are pro-choice anyone here would like to identify him or herself as pro-choice okay with that fast until the death move you certainly it wouldn't change your mind of course not in fact most people who are pro-choice they're thinking inside themselves I hope they do go on the fast until the death I hope they all drop dead the I gather from that laugh you were in that group the tactic of non-violence can never work unless there's already an agreement a consensus about the goals and so you have to always in Gandhi's Gandhi mind you have to always concern yourself with choosing a goal that the public is ready for if you choose a goal that exceeds what the public is ready for that goes beyond what the public is ready for they're never going to be moved to act now in the time that remains how much time do I have 20 minutes correct according to my body clock okay yes okay the last thing I want to do because there's so much misunderstanding about it is what does Gandhi what is Gandhi's opinions on non-violence the usual assumption which I suppose most of you carry with you and I did until I started to read him is that Gandhi was categorically absolutely totally completely against violence well that's not true it's actually a gross distortion of Gandhi's view so let me give you let's start for the beginning because I don't want end up myself exaggerating there's no question Gandhi attached a great deal of value to non-violence as a principle and basically for two reasons one a personal reason evenings violence is personally corrupting it degrades you as he says to the level of a beast and so as a personal moral issue he founded a a degradation of what it means to be human he also had a very practical political opposition to violence and that's he says that when you start practicing violence it ends up almost always that the most violent people end up on top and so what you end up with is just replacing one set of bad corrupt leaders with another set of bad corrupt leaders and the people at the bottom end up either way the people at the bottom end up basically disenfranchised the metaphor he liked to use was the means may be likened to a seed the end to a tree that is if you start using violence as a means it's like a seed and it's going to shape and influence what comes at the end you can't separate the means and say well we recognize the means are bloody we recognize the means or anti human we recognize the means are corrupting but it's for a desirable end it's for a desirable end know Gandhi says the relationship between the means and the ends is like a seed and a tree if you're using corrupt means you're going to end up with corrupt ends and the system that you want to replace with a better system if the means you use are corrupt then the end is also going to be corrupt it's not going to be a better system speaking strictly for myself after a long period in life seeing some sort of virtue in what was once called armed struggle I am now more persuaded by Gandhi that the corrupt means or anti-human means ends up producing an anti-human and corrupt end well what were Gandhi's views on the non-violence number one again we accept as a basic principle yes non-violence is is a critical for Gandhi but there are quite a few exceptions number one Gandhi believed that you're allowed to use force when you're in a situation facing impossible odds because the force he says is not really force in the sense of inflicting harm on someone the forest is a kind of instinctive reaction to trying to preserve your dignity as you're about to be killed so Gandhi gives the example he says if a woman who is resisting a rapist with scratches and scratches and bites he says that's not really violence that's just a woman trying to preserve her dignity before her death and he says the same thing is true he says in 1939 you have the powerful German me the vert mock it invades Poland the Polish have this rinky-dink army a few tanks a few artillery weapons he says yeah they resisted they used quote-unquote violence but he says when you have this army and this resistance he says that's not really violence that's just an attempt to have a dignified end to your existence number 2 Gandhi says I can't tell other people that they have to use non-violence if the world accepts violence as a legitimate means of resistance he says I can recommend it I can prefer it that is non-violence but I can't impose it on anyone because he says well that's the accepted standard and Who am I to say to anyone that they have no right to use violence if that's the accepted standard of the world so in 1936 the Arabs in Palestine they enter into revolt against the British Mandate and the British were in control of Palestine at the time and the British are in control of India also so obviously people are curious what's Gandhi's position and what's going on in Palestine and it was a very violent revolt after a certain period it became violent and Gandhi said look speaking of what he called the Arabs of Palestine he said look I would prefer I wish that they use non-violence but he said according to the accepted canons CA and OH&S namely basically the accepted rules accepted canons of right and wrong nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds that that's that's the rules of the game in the world in which we live he doesn't like it but he says I have no right to tell people that they don't have a right to use force because everybody uses force and if it's legal for everyone else it's legal for them the more important for our purposes because here's where I think the big misunderstanding comes in the more important qualification for Gandhi regarding non-violence is and I know this will be a surprise to many of you but I can assure you it is easy to richly document as I try to do in my little little little book which is selling for five dollars which is like I don't know it's a slice of pizza with mushrooms and anchovies so there's no excuse of course there's a second step I would like you to read it I know that's a gigantic step I'm going to put the book in text message form that's an idea I have to talk to my publisher about that that Gandhi's foremost value his upper most value was not non-violence it was courage there was nothing Gandhi detested more nothing he found more repugnant nothing he found more repellent than cowardice he loathed he hated he had complete contempt for cowards and if you read through his collected works you'll find there is only one place in Gandhi where he uses violent language because Gandhi believed that non-violence meant to be nonviolent in thought word and deed you had to be nonviolent in thought word and deed but there is one place in Gandhi where he actually uses quite violent language and it is not it is not in denouncing people who do use violence actually he was pretty soft on Adolph H on Hitler but on cowards he is very tough he says and now I'm quoting him a coward is less than a man he does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women those who prefer security to freedom have no right to live well those are very strong words coming from the Mahatma and it's the only place in his collected works where you'll read phrases like that the thing Gandhi detested even more than cowardice he detested people who used his doctrine of non-violence as a cloak to conceal their cowardice so somebody is attacking you you run south and you're asked why are you running away and the person responds well that's because I believe in non-violence Gandhi says it's not because you believe in non-violence it's because you're a coward and you don't deserve to live Gandhi I cannot stand cowardice let no one say when I am gone that I taught the people to be cowards if you think my ahimsa my non-violence amounts to cowardice or leads to it you should expect that you should reject it without hesitation I would far rather that you died bravely dealing a blow and receiving a blow than you died in abject terror fleeing from battle is cowardice and unworthy of a warrior he said to his son where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I say use violence that's what I told my eldest son when he asked me what he should have done had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 19 wait whether he should have run away and seen li killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use and offended me I told him it was his duty to defend me even by using violence now that might raise in the minds of some of you I'm going to coming out to that that may raise the minds of some of you a question which is if Gandhi values courage more than non-violence then shouldn't he be preferring violence to non-violence because it takes more courage to be violent than it takes courage to be nonviolent and I puzzled over that if you say courage is the most important value to you well it does seem to me that going into a battlefield takes more courage than say being a draft resister and going to jail that seemed to me logical but I think the problem is it's because people don't understand what Gandhi meant by non-violence that's the biggest misunderstanding where Gandhi meant was non-violence requires much more courage than violence well that's easy enough to say and it's kind of soothing and consoling to believe it but as a practical matter its kind of anti intuitive that just means your intuition tells you no that's not true that's not true violence takes or courage the non-violence that's because you don't understand or and I didn't understand what Gandhi meant by non-violence so what does he mean he says picture the following if you're in conduct you have a weapon you're opposite on the battlefield has a weapon so you have something to protect yourself there's a 50/50 chance you'll come out of the combat alive you'll end up dead or your opposite will end up dead okay you're putting your life on the line 50% chance what does Gandhi mean by non-violence what Gandhi meant by non-violence and now I'm quoting him verbatim you are supposed to March smilingly and cheerfully into the line of fire and you're supposed to get yourself blown to bits but that's what he meant by non-violence and that's why when you think about it hey you know what he's got a point that does take more courage than violence with violence you have a 50% chance your bullet may kill your adverse you're opposites where your opposites may kill you you have 50% chance in his understanding of non-violence you have zero chance you're supposed to get killed now bear in mind it's for Gandhi two things number one it's the personal thing the value he attaches to courage he loathes he hates cowardice but obviously Gandhi is a political animal it's politics he is convinced that getting yourself killed in a cause that the public perceives as just will get the public to act that's what's required to quicken the dead conscience of the public it requires people to get killed so it's a personal credo for him but it's also a political one he says we're in wherein is courage required in blowing others to pieces from behind namely you have your weapons and you kill others in blowing others to pieces from behind a cannon or with a smiling face to approach a cannon and to be blown to pieces the odd thing about Gandhi is and I'm ending here a lot of people don't want to have anything to do with Gandhi because they say he's too Wimbush they want armed struggle and weapons the thing about Gandhi is in fact is his he sets the bar so high there are very few people who can really meet that standard there are some crazed people crazy people like in one of the departments in this school who who might go into the line of fire and get themselves blown to bits but they're lacking in self consciousness but how many people in complete lucidity of their mind complete collection of their thoughts have the courage to march into the line of fire and get themselves alone to make glitz smilingly and cheerfully so I think the irony about Gandhi is not that he's or his politics are so to speak wimbush but they require a magnitude of inner wherewithal and courage but I think very very few people possess okay I'm happy to hear from people I know it usually takes a little time for some of their break the ice good the question is does explain the question is this Gandhi tried to explain why people lack courage and maybe I think the person was asking maybe there's a rational reason why they lack courage the thing about Gandhi is he's deeply steeped in his religion as he understands his religion which is not to say other Hindus understand religion Hinduism the way he did and Gandhi's understanding of it was sort of it's hard to say without seeming unfair to him but he didn't attach a great deal of big deal to life he just felt there's life there's death these are the cycles of nature don't get so excited about it and it's just God God wills when you're going to die so he would get messages say a woman or a man a friend of his would write him a note and say you know my daughter she was six months old she died from typhus or whatever illness it was and you know what Gandhi would reply big deal she lived as long as it was intended that she should live and if she died sooner than say you or I that was God's intention and it's no big deal so in part you have to internalize his whole mindset to understand where this idea of courage comes from on the other hand it's also true to say that every culture produces at certain points in each cultures history values the equivalent of Gandhi's so you say marching into the line of fire and getting yourself blown to bits for a cause that sounds awful crazy well in American history we have give me liberty or give me death or we have I regret they have only one life to give for my country but every moment in the history of any people there is a period where these kinds of sentiments become widespread and popular so I don't find it altogether surprising the Gandhi's saying this because he realizes you know what in order to get these British British to budge this is India it's the jewel of the crown in order to get these British out of here there's gonna have to be an awful lot of people getting killed and I might as well prepare people for that fact there's gonna be a lot of death here because these British otherwise they're not gonna budge they're not going to leave I think that was realistic he put in his own language and he wrapped in a lot of you know religious metaphors but the bottom line is you know as Gandhi said in his more candid moments you are not going to melt the heart of Churchill it ain't gonna happen he says the only language they understand I'm calling him the only language they understand this open rebellion you know sometimes Gandhi talked and this is the stuff that's always quoted from Gandhi that he wants to melt the heart of the oppressor and he has you know the famous dear Adolf letter where he talks about trying to melt Hitler's heart I don't think Gandhi really believed that now we can disagree and I'm sure Gandhi would say he believed it because Gandhi pride in I'm never lying and I don't think he ever self-consciously lied I think that's true he didn't it sounds weird and corny but it's probably true he never self-consciously lied but I don't think Gandhi believed you can melt some people's hearts and when you read there's like - Gandhi's won Gandhi says melt our heart the other Gandhi says we have to mobilize all our resources and create chaos here otherwise so all the way quit India movement and these people will not move move they found conviction and I was that in the ashram the 7080 people know sort of the purpose mediocre or not but they were very disciplined and they were asked to be very disciplined and they have to really and think about things and then come to the conclusion so this whole idea about courage finishing the enemy without any weapons on your side and going into the fire or nightly which was like almost like in harmony the discipline of these people was inculcated over a long period of time it wasn't just people getting up and standing in front of cannons it was it was really highly disciplined movement and he wanted to keep that discipline so the second point I wanted to say is that sometimes there may be a confusion between maintaining discipline and being authoritarian and I think that it's hard to find a clear line on that but I have numerous personal anecdotal knowledge about Gandhi being very respectful of other people's opinion and you know talk he had said that he wanted to be he didn't want to educate the masses about what was wrong they already knew how people think and the way in which they see justice within society okay actually both of those points are important and had a the time I would have made more distinctions there is what Gandhi called the satyagraha they are the very disciplined experienced individuals filled with deep conviction you would call them and nowadays they use another language they were the cadres or the core of the movement but cadres and core the ad or a hundred they don't make for a mass movement Gandhi was true blue he wants to mobilize the masses there are four hundred and fifty million as he like to say dumb masses meaning they can't express themselves he wants all those for her 50 million moving and then the question is how do you get the masses to move which is different than his core of Satya grahas and the way you get the masses to move is his core are supposed to get killed that was - that was supposed to arouse the indignation his big goal was how do you get people the masses to act and it was the Satya grahas and their example in particular getting themselves killed that was supposed to get the rest of the people to act by the way I think that's realistic I mean when you look around you and you ask yourself what you know I'm involved with the israel-palestine conflict politically and I say nothing we do here nothing we do here can possibly change things until Palestinians themselves start to act and get themselves killed I mean it's a very regrettable fact but that's what you know what was the last there were two two moments in the last three years where the public was seized by the Palestine question what were the two moments one when nine people were killed in the Mavi Marmara the Freedom Flotilla that captured the public's attention - when several Palestinians went on these incredible hunger strikes that lasted to like 70 or 80 days those are the two things that's what that's what grabs that's what seizes the attention of people and gets them involved so I think Gandhi was you know pretty realistic about that you know if you take the Palestinian example can everyone go on a hunger strike for 80 days no I can do 48 hours and then I'm out of the running occasionally I do 48 hours in the spirit of the Mahatma but that's about it 75 days no that requires as you say training conviction something very very deep that most people don't have but it can get the rest to act the second question you raised you know people are contradictory if you read Gandhi he's very respectful of all of his opponents arguments I was struck that when you read his upon this argument and then his rephrasing of the argument he always rephrases his opponents argument accurately most of us when we rephrase our opponents argument we rephrase in such a way that's easier to expose or defeat and whatever no he could be very respectful that's true and it's also true as you say it's the nature of politics that some of the end of the day has to make a decision but I think you would agree also that there is a difference between a political movement and an army and that if we want to build a movement as Gandhi said where the seed will produce a better tree at the end we want our movement to be democratic as much as it can be but if you read Gandhi and it's interesting your comment Gandhi is always comparing his movement to an army and he's always saying I am the general in the army of the nonviolent now part of it is of course Gandhi wants to show that his movement requires as much courage as any army does and that part I can understand the problem is when you describe your movement as an army it doesn't leave much room for democracy I'm the general and all the rest of you are just there to follow orders and I think that's how Gandhi conceived it I mean that's I'm telling you from reading I can claim to be an expert on in the practical realities how he conducted himself but there is a lot in Gandhi which when you read it it's extremely unappealing there's a it's just don't argue with me because you can't argue with me yes you said that don t be will have really interesting that welcome a theory of non-violence how would you relate your understanding of Gandhi's non-violence and Jean sharks theory of non-violence based on guiding principles you know I'll tell you the truth I didn't reach any sharp eye I don't know how he bases it what I do know from quite a lot of reading is I'm surprised at how few people have actually read what Gandhi has to say in this subject and how divergent is the understanding of Gandhi from what Gandhi really said for example I doubt there's one or more than two people in the room who would be aware that for Gandhi the supreme value was not non-violence but courage and the supreme negative value was not violence but cowardice so I'm not sure what she sharp has I've not read him frankly you know until gene sharp was conjured up as the grand you know wizard of The Wizard of the Arab Spring I would say about six people wear a gene sharp though he wasn't bad you know during the first Palestinian Intifada he was actually pretty good anyone else yes you think she would be considered an example of standing without weapons I don't know she thought she would get killed no you know first of all I think she's what she did was you know it's very impressive I don't know I don't think I had it I have happened in me to do that and her parents for those of you don't know Rachel Corrie was the young woman who was in Gaza the Israelis were going to bulldoze American yes she's from Olympia Washington they were going to pull those home of a Palestinian physician the home of the family she was staying with and she went in front of the bulldozer and the bulldozer ran her down once backed up and ran her down twice and her parents are just wonderful I mean Cynthia Corrie Rachel Corey's mother is a very special person so is the father but Cindy Corey Tamizh you know she's in the classroom she managed to turn the worst horror that could ever before the parent name leadeth death of a child into something positive and that's really a very impressive feat I would say that as do you mind if I ask your name your your name my as Maya said to be a real satyagraha you were in the ashram years of training deep conviction it's not something that just springs inside you Rachel Corrie talking you know talking with her other members of what was called is M the International Solidarity movement who are with her she did not expect to get killed and she her face just erupted in shock when it actually came to her and she tried to get out of the way it's not in any way to diminish her it's rather to illustrate quite the magnitude of courage that Gandhi had in mind yeah you're supposed to sit there and smile while it's happening no she was not smiling she was from what her colleagues tell me she was seized with horror at the last moment she could not believe they were going to go all the way I could say also I had a problem with Gandhi because he says smilingly and cheerfully and remember his goal is to evoke a reaction from the public to get them to act I thought to myself reading it most people if they see them they see someone else smilingly and cheerfully getting glow blown to bits most people will not admire that they'll think these people are crazy it has a it emanates an aura none of bravery and courage but it emanates the aura of a crazed cult and I had a problem with that reading Gandhi if let's say to take your example if Rachel Corrie were sitting there the bulldozers coming and she says come run me over and smiling and yeah you think this girl's a little Betty so I couldn't quite get that in Gandhi either how would that really how would that really stimulate the public to act no okay and I'm not even tell me something about Indian culture that I don't know and I'm having [Music] I have to say I wish you had edited Gandhi's works and that we hadn't used the word smilingly and cheerfully but you said what was it cold because now now what you're describing you know what you're saying to me that reminds me of the civil rights workers you know snick the Student Nonviolent you're going into a small town in the deep south that is a very mean country and you want to register black people to vote and your black yourself and you don't want to show fear you don't want to show cowardice and you try to show that coolness and calmness that to me it registers better than what you read in Gandhi which is smilingly and cheerfully now you say don't take him literally I don't know how to answer that maybe you're right maybe it's a bad translation you know that's ok set up again you see that Gandhi did not attend to develop material so therefore if he said that inside one time who knows maybe he said many times that it is not right about yet that okay when you offense the guns not the smile this time so that's you know his collected works are full of his speeches and every speech every public speech he gives is collected there and those are the images you get from him yes you can remind me when Gandhi himself was assassinated was he smiling [Music] it's just recently discovered nobody had it it's recently found is that moment of being shot and he was just sort of bending down like this and greeting him and this man his hand is you can see them in his hand I only after I read the gandhi only after that I watched the film that you know the Richard Attenborough film on Gandhi and it's very interesting when you watch it because he would never know from watching the film that it was not a Muslim who killed Gandhi but a Hindu it was a Hindu fanatic and it is impossible it is impossible not to be profoundly moved to be just spiritually transported by that last year in Gandhi's life there's just nothing like it India has now erupted into this horrific bloodletting Hindus killing Muslims Muslims killing Hindus in numbers that boggle the mind one week in Calcutta there can be 10,000 bodies in the streets horrible and you know for Gandhi beyond beyond the horror is the humiliation here he had thought he built a movement on non-violence the British are leaving and now how are the Indians carrying on among themselves he was had to be so deeply humiliated by that last act in the play so the guy commands so much moral force so much moral how that they're begging him in this city in Saxony Gandhi please come to stop to get them to stop fighting please come to get them to stop fighting and Gandhi would come to this village that village he would go to this city or that city and he would say very simply if you continue killing each other I'm going to fast and die I'm going to die you got a stop and of course it was tough he was main target because his he's Hindu is other Hindus he goes from Hindu temple to Hindu temple and he begins every prayer service by reading from the Quran that's how he began every prayer service it would drive the Hindu fanatics mad why are you reading from the Quran in the first place and the second place they're slaughtering us and you're reading from the Quran at the beginning Gandhi would literally he would stay in the temple the whole night I'm going to excuse a to them because it'd be like two or three fanatics heckling him he'd say I'm going to stay I'm gonna patiently explain to you my point of view and he would stay for 10 12 14 hours just trying to explain why he's reading from the Quran but you know it's driving them crazy and he persisted it's just an end in a couple of places at least the fighting did stop you know it's you may not agree with him but you know everybody understood in India you agree with him or you don't agree with him but at the end of the day he reflects what's best in all of us he is the best in us as human beings if he says stop fighting we'll stop now it was interesting what happened because of course he was called to another town and so what do you do if you leave and he would tell the people there he would say the head the heads of the Muslim and the Hindu community he says well you better get yourself killed or I'm not coming back to help you that was the requirement he said he said don't come back from a demonstration of life and but finally they said ok if that's what it takes to get you to come back if troubles resume that's what we'll do and at the end you get the feeling that Gandhi had sent so many people to their death that he felt he had to get himself killed if you read at the end you felt Gandhi wanted to die because he felt I told this person you got to get your skull broken that person you got to get yourself killed that person you gotta get stuff killed well you know what it's time for me to go and I think he wanted to die that way it was a there are 10,000 things you can fault with Gandhi I know I have to go I'll just leave you with when the Gandhi film came out there was an article and commentary magazine this ghastly periodical it was by a guy named Richard Grenier and it was a huge attack on Gandhi and I'm reading an expected it would just be nonsense you know this is commentary magazine what do you expect and I'm reading it and I'm saying well you know that's true about Gandhi and that's true about Gandhi and yeah it's true - and it was all nasty things and it was like a fifty page article which eventually became a little book filled with every imaginable nastiness about Gandhi and they were all true but I thought but you missed the whole Gandhi you managed to get every fact right but you got the whole person wrong he was a he was a deeply impressive person he used to say I want to live to a hunch be a hundred twenty five yeah well I guess there's some sort of in Yiddish we have this 120 and there must be something I guess in Indian culture living to 125 but he always said I only want to live for one reason one reason public service that's the expression he used that's all we live for to serve to serve the public public service oh it was pretty impressive it was pretty impressive it seems a little bit humorless and a little bit dour but I talked to his granddaughter and she said no it's not really true Gandhi was a lot of fun on picnics but you know public service it's an impressive show so I don't want to idolize Gandhi and ironically a lot of people walked away reading my little book by disliking him a lot but if that's the result that's certainly it was not my intention it was a very impressive man and he has even a very deep impact on any reader I know of cause me to think a lot about a lot of things I know I have to go just one last thing which you know it caused me to think about Gandhi at one point he wants to explain the difference between Western and Eastern culture and he says the basic difference is this Western culture or Western civilization it's about multiplying people's needs and then increasing the technology in order to satisfy those needs you have one car you want two cars you have a cell phone you want an iPad you have an iPad you want a video and that's what progress is in Western civilization the multiplication of human needs and then the multiplication or expansion of Technology in order to satisfy those needs that's what we call Western civilization I think that's basically accurate Gandhi says Eastern civilization is about reducing your needs until as he says when he was asked what's your goal in life what's your ideal he always gave the same answer I want to reduce myself to a zero that's the goal reduce yourself to a zero no needs and the less you need the less he become dependent on any technology on anything external so his goal was reduce the needs maximally and thereby reduce your dependence on technology and so forth and I have to say choosing between the two I don't own a cell phone I never used an ATM machine I only got a credit card two or three years ago my first one because my laundry room in order to use the washer and dryer you have to use them a credit card and everyone always asks me okay how could you live without a cell phone you know my best friend he was once talking about his son's girlfriend and said oh she has such a horrible life such a terrible life her father is abusive her brother is a drug addict she doesn't have a cell phone and as an ideal I kind of agree with Gandhi then it's a more desirable goal I sit on a subway now I see young people your generation of those of you who are young in the room and they have a wire coming out of every orifice in their body you know one two three four professor Chomsky once commonly he was observing his grandson doing his homework and he says these people their stimulus starved that's the expression you constantly have to be stimulated except by something external constantly have to be stimulated by something external and then when you come back contrast that with Gandhi three hours a day has to be complete silence calm this internal peace not dependent on all of these no I am dependent yes I have my email I have my computer I would die without cut and paste and my word I would but to try it as much as possible to reduce your needs rather than becoming caught up in a culture which is constantly multiplying it more boy I've got more and more more and more more MORE I kind of agree with Gandhi I think his is the more desirable ideal that's how I see it so god he may have spent 14 hours [Applause] [Music]

Channel: WPU IRT

Views: 14,618

Keywords: Nonviolence, Gandhi, Politics, Resistance, Mahatma Gandhi, Political views, Social views, Nonviolent resistance, Norman Finkelstein, Norman Finklestein

Id: W8N1HT0Fjtw

Length: 87min 0sec (5220 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2017