Greatest passive resister

Stanly Jones, an American missionary wrote:“Never in human history has so much light been shed on the cross as has been shed through this one mans and that men not even a Christian.”

Gandhi treasured the life and death and teaching of Jesus. What I hope is even more clear is just how Christians, owe to Gandhi.When Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed in 1948, among his spare worldly possessions carried a dozen books, including the "Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ", gospel of St. John. On the wall by his side was a picture of Jesus with the words, "He is our peace."

Gandhi's interest in Jesus began early in his life. In England, sent to learn law in l888, the young Hindu was persuaded to read the Bible even before he had studied the Bhagavad-Gita and other Indian classics. The Sermon on the Mount, he said, "Went straight to my heart": "When I read in the Sermon on the Mount such passages as...'whoever smitten thee on thy cheek turn to him the other also' I was simply overjoyed."

Later, during his struggles in South Africa, Gandhi called on the Indians of the Transvaal to "stagger humanity without shedding a drop of blood," by following the example of "Gentle Jesus, the greatest passive resister the world has seen."

Though Jesus died, Gandhi said, "He lives in the memory of all true sons of God."

Cross- symbol of love

The second lesson, of many, that Gandhi took from Christianity was embodied in the symbol of the Cross.Gandhi had stopped at the Vatican on his way back from the Roundtable Conference in London, when he happened to see a rough crucifix.

His reaction was immediate and emotional and He wrote:“Chance threw Rome in my way. And I was able to see something of that great and ancient city … and what would not I have given to bow my head before the living image at the Vatican of Christ crucified. It was not without a wrench that I could tear myself away from that scene of living tragedy. I saw there at once that nations like individuals could only be made through the agony of the cross and in no other way. Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others, but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself.”

Gandhi’s understanding of the cross was that when one lived the life that Jesus lived, he would probably end up in conflict with the powers that be. He saw that Jesus befriended eh poor and stood with those whom society considered outsiders. Furthermore, he tried to get those responsible for oppression, both religious and civil leadership, to change. They rejected his efforts and found him to be a threat. He thought “Why did Jesus die? Because of the way he lived”. The cross was the result of his living out this way of life to the end.

The theology of atonement that has held sway for a thousand years, the “penal substitution theory” which has the Father offering up his Son in a bloody sacrifice for forgiveness of humanity’s sins, was revolting to Gandhi. Gandhi understood the cross, not metaphysically but politically and historically, as the final step and consequence of a way of life, a life spent befriending those in need and resisting oppression and violence.

Sermon on the mount

Well you may have a doubt like “How did Gandhiji understand the Sermon on the Mount?” First, he heard it with Hindu ears. He learned a Gujarat poem at a young age, for example, that echoed the “turn the other cheek” message. It concluded “But the truly noble know all men as one, and return with gladness good for evil done.” Overcome evil with good.

Secondly, he heard it as a son of the soil of India. Until you visit India you have no idea how religion soaks the daily life of people. The sense of the reverence for life jumps out at you – as a town elephant wanders through a business district and is given breakfast offerings by each shop owner. As, first thing in the morning at the front doors of their simple dwellings, people put out breadcrumbs in an elaborate mandala design as an offering, which the ants will then eat. All life is sacred and all life is one. The basic spirit of ahimsa, “do no harm to life” permeates the culture. Gandhi brought that sensibility to his reading of the New Testament.

Gandhi understood the return good for evil, love for hate, and nonviolence for violence message of the Sermon on the Mount much as contemporary exegesis does today. The words for him, and for contemporary scholars, are not just the expression of a lofty moral ideal. They are, as Roger Tannehill writes in the Harvard Biblical Review, a particular kind of language, focal instances.
Jesus is putting his listeners in situations of oppression that are very recognizable to them, a master striking his slave with the back of the left hand; an occupying roman Soldier pressing a Jew into service to carry his pack; a debtor taking a person to court to take away even the last garment in which a poor person slept out tin the cold – and is asking them to imagine how they might creatively and nonviolently oppose the oppression and surprise the oppressors, inviting them to changes. Turning the other cheek signifies to the master that the one struck is not cowed. He looks the oppressor in the eye and says do it again. It will not overawe me. Think again about what you are doing. Voluntarily going an extra mile will surprise and throw that soldier, and force him to see you as a human being. Give the cloak to the one taking you for every last dime. Walk out of the law court naked. It will dramatize just how rotten the whole moneylender, stealing-the-land-from-the-peasants system really is.

For Gandhi the message of “turn the other cheek” was the reverse of “passivism” (double s); it was heroic, brave, and creative action. It was the only way to break through the circle of violence that kept people oppressed and convert the oppressors. He later had to coin the word satyagraha to separate out what he heard in the Sermon on the Mount and saw as he world’s best and last hope, from ideas of “passive resistance,” or “pacifism” or mere “civil disobedience.” Satyagraha subsumes the message of Jesus (and Hinduism as he understood it) and applies it to politics and relations between masses of people. It is not just a personal ethic; it is the way of people nonviolently fighting against oppression and evil in this world.

It disturbed Gandhi greatly when he heard Christians put aside the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount as impractical or dreamy idealism or to be practiced only by the very few as a personal ethic – the typical ways Catholics and Protestants make the Sermon on the Mount irrelevant to daily life.

Jesus contends that the Sermon on the Mount does not apply to mundane things, and that it was only meant for the twelve disciples. Well I he tells that the Sermon on the Mount has no meaning if it is not of vital use in everyday life to everyone.

A famous author wrote this “a commitment to nonviolence was at the center of what Jesus taught and lived and died for. I could not understand how one could be a disciple of Jesus if one was not fundamentally committed to nonviolence”.

He spent the whole of his life demonstrating that the Sermon on the Mount could be eminently practical politics – as he nonviolently opposed a ruthless and globe-spanning Empire, as he nonviolently opposed the thousands of year’s old injustice of untouchability, as he labored nonviolently to rise up the lives of his cherished “dumb millions,” in the villages of India. He continues to hope that Christianity would some day be authentically lived and that the West would come to the message of he Sermon on the Mount afresh. He was intent, through “experiments with truth,” to demonstrate its workability in a whole range of situations of violence.

Christ's key lessons

Reflecting on what Gandhi, a confirmed Hindu took from the life and teachings of Jesus are very illuminating for a Christian. Now I highlight just two of the key lessons Gandhi took from Christianity: the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and the symbol of the Cross.

During his childhood, advocates of India’s various religions, Sikhs, Muslims, Jains, were all welcome in Gandhi’s house. As a child, Gandhi was put off only by Christianity. Christian missionaries stood on the corner of his grade school loudly deriding the gods and beliefs of Hinduism. Converts to Christianity were “denationalized,” and “Britishzed.” Christianity was “beef and brandy.” It was the religion of the “sahib.”

As a young adult, he began to study various religions including his own. He was studying for the bar exams in London when he was given the New Testament to read. He later wrote that the Sermon on the Mount went straight to his heart the verses that Jesus said, "but I say to you, resist not evil: but whosoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man take away your coat, let him have your cloak as well,’ delighted me beyond measure” .

The Sermon on the Mount inspired him for the rest of his life.

Jesus "True Satyagrahist"

For Gandhi, to say that Jesus was the only begotten son of God was to say that in Jesus' own life was the key of his nearness to God that he expressed as no other could, the spirit and will of God. He does believe that something of the spirit that Jesus exemplified in the highest measure; in its most profound human sense exist.

If he did not believe it, should be a skeptic, and to be a skeptic is to live a life that is empty and lacking moral content. Or, what is the same thing, to condemn the human race to a wrong end. Gandhi believed that in every man there was an impulse for good and a compassion that is the spark of divinity that will one day burst into the full flower that is the hope of all mankind.

An example of this flowering, he said, may be found in the figure and in the life of Jesus. "I refuse to believe that there not exists or has ever existed a person that has not made use of his example to lessen his sins, even though he may have done so without realizing it. The lives of all have, in some greater or lesser degree, been changed by His presence, His actions and the words spoken by His divine voice... I believe that he belongs not solely to Christianity, but to the entire world; to all races and people, it matters little under what flag, name or doctrine they may work, profess a faith or worship a God inherited from their ancestors.

"For Gandhi Jesus was the true satyagrahist who passed the test of non-violence even if he seemed to be otherwise a failure.This is the true test of Ahimsa is being passed when being killed bears no anger against his murderer and even asks God to forgive them is truly non-violent.

History relates this of Jesus Christ. With his dying breath on the Cross, he is reported to have said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what to do." According to the theory of Satyagraha, said Gandhi, an adequate appeal to the heart never fails. “Seeming failure is not of the law of Satyagraha but of incompetence of the Satyagrahist by whatever cause induced. The name of Jesus at once comes to the lips. It is an instance of brilliant failure. And he has been acclaimed in the west as the prince of passive resisters. I showed years ago in South Africa that the adjective 'passive' was a misnomer, at least as applied to Jesus. He was the most active resister known perhaps to history."

Gandhiji's love

For Gandhi what struck him most in the Sermon on the Mount was Christ's teaching on non-retaliation or non-resistance to evil.

Of all the things Gandhi have read what remained with him forever was that Jesus came almost to give a new law - not an eye for an eye but to receive two blows when only one was given, and to go two miles when they were asked to go one. He came to see that the Sermon on the Mount was the whole of Christianity for him who wanted to live a Christian life. It is that sermon that has endeared Jesus to him.

" Jesus occupies in my heart," said Gandhi

Gandhi said that the place of one of the greatest teachers who have considerable influence on his life and said to the Hindus that their life will be incomplete unless you reverentially study the teachings of Jesus. Also to make this world the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything will be added unto them.

Gandhiji said .......“I tell you that if you will understand, appreciate, and act up to the spirit of this passage, you won't need to know what place Jesus or any other teacher occupies in your heart" For Gandhi, Jesus was the prince of Satyagrahists. Jesus’ suffering is a factor in the composition of his faith in non-violence.

Gandhi said “ He was one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had."

Teachin of Jesus

It is to him at the best that people comes running, kneels down and asks...

"Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

And Jesus said unto him........,

"One thing thou laciest. Go thy way, sell what thou hast and give it to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven - come, take up the cross and follow me. Here you have an eternal rule of life stated in the noblest words the English language is capable of producing."

Gandhi went on to say that he could quote even stronger passages from the Hindu scriptures and the lesson he wanted to draw was that if we could clean our houses, palaces and temples of the attributes of wealth and show in them the attributes of morality we could fight all hostile forces without military strength. "Let us seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness," as Jesus said, "and the irrevocable promise is that everything will be added upon us".

greatest economist of his time.

Gandhi said....... " The message of Jesus contained in the Sermon on the Mount unadulterated and taken as a whole... If then I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, 'Oh, yes, I am a Christian.' But negatively I can tell you that in my humble opinion, what passes as Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount... I am speaking of the Christian belief, of Christianity as it is understood in the west."


Gandhi said beautifully about the message and personality of Jesus.Talking about the Gospel passage of the rich young man called St.Mark , he said, Jesus is in his solemn mood is earnest. He talks about eternity. He knows the world about him. He is the greatest economist of his time.

The Perfectionist

Mohan Das karamchand Gandhi was a staunch practitioner of "Justice" and "Non-violence". He advocated others also to do so. He wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a spinning wheel. He was a vegan , and also did fasting as means of both self-purification and social protest.

2000 years ago, a gallilean suffered the most brutal death in the history of mankind. The high priests spitted and slapped upon his face. They stripped his clothes and *** him. They tied ,scourged him mercilessly,crowned him with thorns and then crucified him on a cross. Even hours before that galillean died, he was no longer bleeding blood but only water from his wounds. Many believe that he resurrected two days after. Now he has most number of followers than anyother and are named as "Christians".

Gandhi had been reading the Bible, since young, to keep a promise he had made to a friend. He found the Old Testament extremely difficult . He disliked the Book of Numbers. But the New Testament produced a different impression, especially the "Sermon on the Mount" which went straight to his heart. The verses about not resisting evil but offering the other cheek and giving the cloak to one who asked for one's coat delighted him beyond measure. They reminded him about something he had learned in his childhood about returning with gladness good for evil done.

Gandhi told “I did once seriously think of embracing the Christian faith, the gentle figure of Christ, so patient, so kind, so loving, so full of forgiveness that he taught his followers not to retaliate when abused or struck, but to turn the other cheek”. He thought it was a beautiful example of the perfect man. But, he could accept Jesus as a martyr and a divine teacher, but certainly not as the most perfect man ever born.