[E-rundbrief] Info 1701 - Gandhi's disciples in Europe

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1701 - Matthias Reichl: Gandhi's disciples in 
Europe - Experiments in creating a human society. Zum 70. Todestag von 
Mahatma Gandhi am 30.1.2018.

Bad Ischl, 30.1.2018

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

================================================

Zum 70. Todestag von Mahatma Gandhi am 30.1.2018 veröffentliche ich 
meinen Text, den ich zum 125. Geburtstag Gandhis für einen Sammelband 
geschrieben habe - herausgegeben von B.R. Nanda, Indian Council for 
Cultural Relations (ICCR), New Delhi, 1995.


GANDHI'S DISCIPLES IN EUROPE

EXPERIMENTS IN CREATING A HUMAN SOCIETY

In occasion of: 125th birthday of Mahatma K. Gandhi (2. October 1994), 
100th birthday of Vinoba Bhave, successor of Gandhi (11.9.1995) 15th 
"birthday" of "The Right Livelihood Award" (Alternative Nobel-Prize) 
(Dec. 1994)

Matthias Reichl

1.3./ 11.7.1994, edited 19.6.2017

Gandhi was asked in June 1947, "How can you account for the growing 
violence among your people on the part of political parties for the 
furtherance of political ends? Is this the result of the thirty years 
of non-violent practice for ending British rule? Does your message of 
non-violence still hold good for the world? I have condensed the 
sentiments of my correspondents in my own language. In answer I must 
confess my bankruptcy, not that of non-violence. I have already said 
that the non-violence that was offered during the past thirty years 
was that of the weak. Whether it is a good enough answer or not is for 
others to judge. It must be further admitted that such non-violence 
can have no play in the altered circumstances. India has no experience 
of the non-violence of the strong. It serves no purpose for me to 
continue to repeat that the non-violence of the strong is the 
strongest force in the world. The truth requires constant and 
extensive demonstration. This I am endeavouring to do to the best of 
my ability. What if the best of my ability is very little? May I not 
be living in a fool's paradise? Why should I ask people to follow me 
in the fruitless search? These are pertinent questions. My answer is 
quite simple. I ask nobody to follow me. Every one should follow his 
or her own inner voice. If he or she has no ears to listen to it, he 
or she should do the best he or she can. In no case should he or she 
imitate others sheeplike. There is no hope for the aching world except 
through the narrow and straight path of non-violence. Millions like me 
may fail to prove the truth in their own lives, that would be their 
failure, never that of the eternal law."

Mahatma K. Gandhi in "Harijan", 29.6.1947 quoted in M.K.Gandhi: "For 
Pacifists", Ahmedabad, 1949 p. 129-30

Mahatma Gandhi's testament to his disciples and to all those striving 
for active non-violence is not to adore him as a guru, but to accept 
him as an inspirator for many decentralized communities and movements. 
His campaigns against threats and oppression demanded from them to 
keep a part of their energy to create constructive life-systems 
(Ashrams and others) as a base for a survival-movement. Not only for a 
minimal material living standard but also to stimulate their cultural 
and spiritual base for a common life of human beings and the rest of 
the nature.

Gandhi's commemoration - and also that of his follower Vinoba Bhave's 
100th birthday in 1995 - should respect their message and life. Some 
academic intellectuals, oriented on "western cultural traditions" and 
groups headed by them, are too often based in centralized structures 
and big cities. Their attitudes to exploit the "underdevelopped", 
marginalized peoples living in the "deep province" are themselves 
supporting oppressive structures but do not strenghten efforts to 
transform them into living ones. Ethnological research on exotic 
objects instead of ethical based solidarity with subjects is one of 
these attitudes - with tragic consequences.

Political analysts interpreted the murdered Gandhi and the continuing 
violent conflicts, caused by political nationalistic and religious 
fanatism, as a defeat of his concept. The merely non-violent changes 
in Eastern Europe from 1989 on and the expectations after the 
breakdown of the communist dictatorship raised the hope, this could 
become a basis for an alternative way oriented on a Gandhian socialism 
and similar concepts. Politics could leave the power-play tactics of 
the cold-war period towards an "active non-violence of the strong". 
Instead of this the ethnocide is accompagnied by destruction of 
multicultural and multireligious communities (in the Balkans as well 
as long before in other non-European regions) gave military oriented 
politicians arguments to blame Gandhian principles as "dangerous 
naivity". Not to blame but to mediate between enemies and to convert 
oppressive forces. They concretize Gandhi's and Vinoba's concept of a 
"non-violent army" now within the "Peace Brigades International" 
(initiated by Narajan Desai), active in conflict-regions in many 
countries.

"You cannot build non-violence on a factory civilization, but it can 
be built on self-contained villages." M.K. Gandhi in "Harijan", 
4-11-'39. His critic on the industrialization of life and the 
domination by a worldwide circle of materialistic goods is clear (in 
"Harijan" on 28-7-'46): "Life will not be a pyramid with the apex 
sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre 
will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the 
latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the 
whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in 
their arrogance but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic 
circle of which they are integral units... In this there is no room 
for machines that would displace human labour and that would 
concentrate power in a few hands. Labour has its unique place in a 
cultured human family. Every machine that helps every individual has a 
place..."

Lanza del Vasto, a french philosopher, writer and artist marched to 
India searching for the sources of non-violence by discovering 
Gandhi's way to initiate and develop communities. He went back to 
Europe as "Shantidas" (servant of peace) and started to gather friends 
in the Larzac region in southern France for a Ashram-like 
"Ark-Community" as a "laboratory for a non-violent living and 
politic". Their spiritual base is oriented on religious plurality 
following Gandhi's view (in "Harijan", 28-7-'46) "In this picture 
every religion has its full and equal place. We are all leaves of a 
majestic tree whose trunk cannot be shaken off its roots which are 
deep down in the bowels of the earth..."  Rural work, cultural 
activities and art, but also paticipation in - regional and 
international - political campaigns are a base of their common life, 
organised like a secular order.

He described his relation to the world of western intellectuals and 
his respect on the Indian culture as follow:
"A force de me balancer d'un pied sur l'autre, j'ai fini par oublier 
ce qu'on ma fait apprendre á l'école, par oublier ce que j'ai lu dans 
les livres... C'est le fait d'un imbécile d'affirmer des choses 
évidentes avec une grande ferveur et avec l'air de les avoir 
découvertes. Pardonne, ami, si désormais je ne sais pas faire 
autrement. Je ne sais plus que des choses tellement évidentes qu'un 
homme intelligent dédaignerait de les dire. Tellement évidentes que la 
plupart des hommes intelligents ont fini par les oublier." Lanza de 
Vasto in "Principes et préceptes du retour a l'évidence". 1945 p. 5-6. *)

With this thoughts, far away from simplistic sceptizism, he had much 
in common with Vinoba Bhave. From his second pilgrimage to India in 
1954 on they cooperated in the development of communities in many 
countries, mainly in poor, marginalized regions. They are also knots 
in a net for social care, sane nurriture and health care with natural 
medicine (Ayurveda, diagnosis and therapy based on traditional 
methods...) Some of their common aims are: the Satyagraha-resistance 
against various violent threats, to survive in living communities and 
to develop the knowledge of old and new ethical principles of life.
But can these values of deep rooted communities be defended against 
the clever strategies of mass-manipulation by media, consumerism, 
political and religious sects and other tactics? How to start a dialog 
in Gandhi's spirit with anonymous powers? How to change the usual 
political and economical negotiations in the GATT, European Union, the 
UN and other dominating organizations into a dialog without winners 
and loosers? Is a violent mass-protest and guerilla-actions a logical 
consequence of the lack of positive human relations?

Similar to the Gandhian movement in India networks appeared also in 
Europe (in France for example the "réseaux èsperance"). And the debate 
on alternative visions and laboratories in Europa and worldwide went 
on in the British journal "Resurgence" (with the participation of 
Vinoba Bhave, Leopold Kohr, E.F. Schumacher and others). Political 
alphabetization to rediscover their authentical language-culture is 
organized - not only for poor illiterates - in basic-communities by 
the Brasilian pedagogian Paulo Freire.

Many of these grassroots-movements faced - and still face - a lot of 
political, social and also financial problems. The 
propaganda-machinery of the mainstream of mass-media all over the 
world marginalizes them as courious and exotic examples of 
"modernization-loosers" to be conservated as museal examples of a 
"past world". So, Jakob von Uexküll sponsored and organized from 1980 
on an annual "Right Livelihood Award (RLA)". One of his main aims is 
to honour them, ignored by the "Nobel-Prize-Committee", because of 
their unconventional and oppositional initiatives with a so called 
"Alternative Nobel-Prize" and to provide them publicity. I cite some 
of the laureates:

Vandana Shiva is one of the laureates of 1993, an ecological activist 
at the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural 
Resource Policy in Dehra Dun, India. She states in 1991 (in "The 
Future of Progress", p. 47, 52): "Indigenous knowledge and social 
systems had ensured the protection of nature by treating vital natural 
resources as sacred and as held in common. Western reductionist 
science emerged as a perfect instrument to remove the barriers of 
sanctity whilst Western market economies were emerging to transform 
nature's commons into market commodities... While Third World ecology 
movements focus on people's rights, global prescriptions focus on 
international markets as a solution to the environmental crisis."

Vandana Shiva's colleagues from Narmada Bachao Andolan, an Indian 
ecological movement concerned with the consequences of the disastrous 
Narmada dams, had been laureates of the RLA in 1991. They, represented 
at the Stockholm ceremony by Medha Patkar and Baba Amte, were honoured 
"for their steadfest opposition to the ecologically and socially 
disastrous Narmada dams - the largest river development project in the 
world - and their clear articulation of an alternative water and 
energy strategy that would benefit both the rural poor and the natural 
environment."

As a consequence of the struggle of indigenous peoples all over the 
world to protect their "Mother Earth" also many western human rights 
activists, like the Austrian "future-activist" Robert Jungk, demand 
"to give the land back to those willing and able to use and respect 
it." And José Lutzenberger, former minister for environment in Brasil, 
encouraged in October '93 500.000 Indian farmers on their 
manifestation in Bangalore to seek alternatives for an agriculture 
endangered by genetical-engineering, the "Green Revolution", 
GATT-trade-agreements. He trains worldwide alternative biological 
farming in combination between traditional regional methods and new 
insights in a holistic conception to use nature without to destroy it. 
His GAIA-philosophy of "Mother Earth" as a living body is deep rooted 
in Gandhian and Buddhist philosophy.

Leopold Kohr, laureate in 1983, who recently died in the age of 85 
denounced the propaganda in the postmodern society on the "breakdown 
of visions". Instead of this he warned about "the breakdown of 
over-developed nations" (not only in Eastern Europe but also in the 
western hemisphere). "The victory of the western materialistic model 
is suggesting that there is no 'Third Way' between the state- and the 
free market capitalism." He illustrated his philosophy of the "human 
size" by a modified Shakespeare phrase: "To be small or not to be, 
that's the question!", popularized by E.F. Schumacher with "small is 
beautiful". Jakob von Uexküll and other activists are busy to develop 
social acceptable solutions within the emerging crisis and discover a 
new political role for a reactivated opposition in Eastern and Western 
Europe.

"I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as 
old as hills". M. K. Gandhi in "An Autobiography" "My life is my 
message". M.K.Gandhi 7.9.1947#

Matthias Reichl, Bad Ischl, 1.3./11.7.1994

*) "So lange schon habe ich einen Fuß vor den anderen gesetzt, daß ich 
nicht mehr weiß, was ich in der Schule gelernt habe. Was ich in den 
Büchern las, habe ich vergessen...
Nur ein Dummkopf bringt es fertig, mit großem Eifer von Dingen zu 
reden, die jeder weiß und kennt, und sich dabei noch einzubilden, daß 
er sie selbst entdeckt hat. Verzeih mir, mein Freund, denn auch ich 
kann von nichts anderem zu dir reden.
Mein Wissen beschränkt sich auf Dinge, die so selbstverständlich sind, 
daß sich ein intelligenter Mensch nicht mit ihnen abgibt. So 
selbstverständlich, daß die gebildeten Leute sie schon ganz vergessen 
haben." (Übersetzung: Manfred de Voss)

Literature:
M.K. Gandhi: An Autobiography or The Story of my Experiments with 
Truth. 1927 Navajivan Publ. House, Ahmedabad
M.K. Gandhi: For Pacifists. 1949 Navajivan Publ. House, Ahmedabad
Lanza del Vasto: Principes et prèceptes du retour a l'èvidence. 1945 
Ed. Denoel, Paris
Lanza del Vasto: Le Pèlerinage aux sources. 1943/1972 Ed. Denoel, Paris
Lanza del Vasto: Vinóbà ou le nouveau Pélerinage. 1954 Ed. Denoel, Paris
Vinoba Bhave: Third Power. 1972 Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, Varanasi
Paulo Freire: The pedagogy of the oppressed. 1970 (www.paulofreire.org)
Leopold Kohr: Development without Aid. 1973
Leopold Kohr: The Over-Developed Nations. 1977
Leopold Kohr: The Breakdown of Nations. 1978 Ed. Dutton, New York
E.F. Schumacher: Small is Beautiful. 1974 Spere Books, London
Michael North/ Satish Kumar (ed.): Time Running Out? The best of the 
journal RESURGENCE. Ed. Green Books, Schumacher College, Ford House, 
Hartland, Bideford EX39 6EE, UK
The Future of Progress. Reflections in Environment & Development. 1992 
The International Society for Ecology and Culture, Bristol, UK
Tom Woodhouse: People and Planet and Replenishing the Earth (2 volumes 
on the "Right Livelihood Award") Green Books
Jeremy Seabrook: Pioneers of Change - Experiments in Creating a Human 
Society. 1993 ZED Books, London
José Lutzenberger: Adress to the international Conference on 
Ecological Responsibility, New Delhi autumn 1993. Fundacao GAIA, 
Jacinto Gomes, 39, PORTO ALEGRE/ RS, 90040 BRASIL, 
http://www.fgaia.org.br/texts/index.html
Johan Galtung: Der Weg ist das Ziel. Gandhi und die 
Alternativbewegung. 1987 Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal

Journals:
"Rundbrief" (Newsletter in German), Begegnungszentrum für Aktive 
Gewaltlosigkeit, Encounter Center for active Nonviolence, 
Wolfgangstrasse 26, A-4820 BAD ISCHL, AUSTRIA ,
digital Newsletter „E-Rundbrief“ - (partly in English), to order at: 
info at begegnungszentrum.at, www.begegnungszentrum.at
Radioprogram „Begegnungswege“ (in German) - twice in a month, Freies 
Radio Salzkammergut, www.freiesradio.at, Archive (Stream): 
http://cba.fro.at/series/begegnungswege

Matthias Reichl, Wolfgangstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, AUSTRIA, Tel. 
06132/24590, matthias at begegnungszentrum.at, www.begegnungszentrum.at

Bad Ischl, 1.3./ 11.7.1994/ edited 19.6.2017

Published in:

B.R. Nanda (ed.): Mahatma Gandhi 125 Years. Remembering Gandhi, 
Understanding Gandhi, Relevance of Gandhi. 1995, Indian Council for 
Cultural Relations (ICCR), New Delhi, New Age International Publishers 
Limited, Wiley Eastern Ltd., ISBN: 81-224-0723-4


-- 

     Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
     Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
     Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
     Wolfgangerstr. 26, 4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
     fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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