The purification week

August 7, 2023

What do you do when the people who share your desire for reform do not share your method for reform? Gandhi found himself faced with this challenge in 1934.

During this phase of his life, Gandhi took a break from politics and made equality for Dalits (the so-called untouchables) his primary concern. Referring to them as Harajin, or children of God, Gandhi started a newspaper by that name and on November 7, 1933, began a national tour to raise the country’s conscience.

Orthodox Hindus were not amused by this challenge to the caste system. A group led by Swami Lalnath began a bird-dogging campaign against Gandhi. They turned up at Gandhi’s events, blocking his car and disrupting meetings. When Swami Lalnath met with Gandhi on November 18, he described his efforts as satyagraha, telling him, “we want to be hurt by the police or by your volunteers. When this happens I know you would give up the tour.”

Eventually, their provocation succeeded. At a public forum, where speakers on both sides of the issue would make their case, Swami Lalnath was assaulted by Gandhi’s supporters who were not so committed to nonviolence as he was. However, Gandhi did not give up the tour, and pledged to observe a week’s fast as penance when it concluded. That happened August 6.

On August 7, 1934, Gandhi began his fast. As a practical matter, he wrote, the fast was “intended as a penance for the hurt caused to Swami Lalnath and his friends at Ajmer at the hands of sympathizers with the movement.”

As a principled matter, the real target was the rogue sympathizers themselves. Gandhi wished to make clear the principle of satyagraha, “we can only win over the opponent by love, never by hate. Hate is the subtlest form of violence. We cannot be really non-violent and yet have hate in us.”

The fast was not without problems, but Gandhi didn’t mind. He wrote to a friend afterward, “The last day was one of physical torture. It was well perhaps it was so. What was the penance worth, if it did not cause me any physical suffering?”

I think it’s interesting to compare this fast with Gandhi’s first in 1913, which was directed at his son. I’ve written about aspects of coercion in some of his fasts, and this seems to be among the cleanest. There’s no real threat to his health (having completed 21 days the previous May), there’s no direct action that he’s demanding be taken, there’s no one individual that is the target of moral coercion. Instead, Gandhi accepts that wrong has been done in his name, and feels called by an inner voice to make amends. (This is similar to his actions in 1919 and in 1922, and the three- and five-day fasts respectively.)

What responsibility do you feel for the actions of groups you are a member of?