By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
After our recent trip to London, I am reading a fascinating book by historian William Manchester about the early life and middle career of Winston Churchill. Set in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the book studies the declining British Empire’s relationships with soon-to-be-independent nations like Ireland and India, and Churchill’s interactions with, or views of, leaders like Michael Collins and Mohandas K. Gandhi. Statues of Churchill and Gandhi stand a few feet apart in London’s Parliament Square.
Manchester’s book, addressing England’s struggles in Ireland and India, notes that, “Ireland was difficult, but in India the problems of nationhood were magnified a thousandfold.” Churchill called India an “abstraction,” explaining, “India is a geographical term. It is no more a nation than the equator.” At the time the population of the subcontinent, which consisted of four dominant ethnic strains who spoke 225 different languages, increased by 34 million each decade. “The possibilities for religious conflict were limitless.” (William Manchester, THE LAST LION Winston Spencer Churchill Visions of Glory 1874-1932, Dell Publishing 1983.)
Ironically, the person who almost united this diverse group of people was someone Churchill disliked and opposed- Gandhi. Gandhi was a lawyer (proud to claim him in my profession), statesman and philosopher, and was called the “mahatma” or “great soul.” How did Gandhi almost unite an “abstraction” like India? I am no Gandhi scholar, but I think one reason was his admiration for the wide variety of ways that human beings express their spirituality and his willingness to adopt some of them as his own.
One example involves a religion we do not often consider here in the West- Jainism. Jainism is “an ancient religion from India that teaches that the way to liberation and bliss is to live lives of harmlessness and renunciation. The essence of Jainism is concern for the welfare of every being in the universe and for the health of the universe itself.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/jainism/)
Gandhi was a lifelong Hindu, but Jainism also was esteemed in his childhood home. Manchester’s book explains that Gandhi’s “respect for it was to shape the destiny of the subcontinent,” especially his adoption of core Jain briefs such as tolerance, vegetarianism, fasting to purify the self, and a belief in the sanctity of all living creatures. And, of course, Gandhi adopted the supreme principle of Jain living, which is nonviolence (ahisma).
The Catholic Church eventually came to a similar ecumenical view as Gandhi. In the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), the Church noted that people look to different religions for an answer to the “riddles of human existence” such as human nature, the purpose of life, moral concerns, the problem of suffering, the meaning of death, and questions of judgment, reward and punishment. The Church declared “sincere reverence” for those “ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects” from those the Church holds, “nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.”
Gandhi was a great soul for many reasons, including for modeling a promising formula for peace and unity: be open to good practices regardless of source, respect divergent views, and love everyone whether you agree with them or not. Yet, despite even Gandhi’s skills and efforts in espousing this formula, an independent India soon was partitioned based on Hindu-Muslim religious lines. This caused a massive migration, and as it drew to a close in 1948, some fifteen million people had been uprooted, and between one and two million were dead.
When it comes to human unity and harmony, especially on issues of religion, we all still have a long way to go.
