Gandhi: Portrait of a Friend

by E. Stanley Jones

Overview

"On the day that Mahatma Gandhi was killed, I arrived in Delhi just an hour and a quarter before the tragedy ... the greatest tragedy since the Son of God died on the cross." So begins this compelling account of Gandhi by E. Stanley Jones, the world-renowned missionary evangelist to India during 40 seething years of struggle. Based on an intimate knowledge and understanding, Jones's revealing interpretation was written in gratitude to Gandhi, who, although they often disagreed, showed Jones "more of the spirit of Christ than perhaps any other . . . in East or West."

"Martin Luther King, Jr., told me he owed a debt to my father for his book on Mahatma Gandhi. He had read many books on Gandhi, read his writings, but it was that particular book of my father's that had triggered his decision to use the method of ... nonviolence in his civil rights movement for his people." --Eunice Jones Mathews

"Highly recommended."--Library Journal

"To understand the meaning of this great leader ... read this book of interpretation."--Kirkus

"Jones ... possesses a great gift of sympathetically interpreting the East to the West."--[London] Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501871290
Publisher:	Abingdon Press
Publication date:	01/15/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	672 KB

About the Author

Called "the world's greatest missionary evangelist" by Time magazine in 1938, E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973) spent 70 years presenting Jesus Christ as the universal Son of Man without the trappings of Western culture. His message had a life-changing impact on the millions of people who heard him speak or read his books.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The End of the Road

On the day that Mahatma Gandhi was killed, I arrived in Delhi just an hour and a quarter before the tragedy. I had requested a friend to get me an appointment with Mahatma Gandhi for that afternoon. But my train was five hours late — symbol of India's internal upset — and when I arrived, I was told that the appointment could not be arranged as he was taking a minimum of interviews since his fast. It was then suggested that we go to the prayer meeting that he held daily and that would possibly give an opportunity for a word at the close. I had often seen him in the post-prayer periods.

We had just time to make it and get back to a supper meeting at which I was to speak, along with the wife of Acharya Kripalani, the president of the Indian National Congress. We had time to make it, provided we took a taxi. That decided me against it, for the taxi would have to wait, and that would be expensive. I allowed the expense item to decide the matter. I said to my friend that I could see Gandhi later, on my return to Delhi for a series of lectures, but the real reason was the expense. I am ashamed to confess that a matter of rupees kept me from being at the greatest tragedy since the Son of God died on a cross. In a way I am grateful I was spared the sight; but one would like to have been near him in his last moments.

I was walking up and down near the Y. M. C. A. building, thinking of what I was going to say in the coming supper meeting, when the playing in the field alongside stopped as if by a silent, but imperious command. An awful hush settled on everything. This was a symbol of what had taken place all over Delhi and India. What had happened? One of the players ran over to me and broke the news; the Mahatma had been shot and killed on his way to the prayer meeting! It was unbelievable. People stood in little clumps and discussed the tragedy. "Now," said a prominent man, "India is in for chaos. With the restraining influence of Mahatma Gandhi gone, India will sink into chaos." I quietly disagreed. I said that I thought Mahatma Gandhi would be greater in death than he had been in life; that through this tragedy good would come to India. I didn't see just how, but I felt it would. I could not help thinking of the cross and what happened through that tragedy. That tragedy-triumph held me inwardly steady.

We went over to the Congress House, where Acharya Kripalani lived, to get some firsthand word. He had gone to the side of the fallen leader. When we arrived, a big Sikh guard saluted and said, "Jai Hind" (Victory to India). Was that a prophecy? Would victory come out of this to India? We went back and sat around the radio to hear Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhai Patel break the news to the nation. These strong men, veterans of many battles for independence — men who had gone to jail time after time without a quiver — now shook with emotion. They could scarcely go on, and their words were often unintelligible. Strong men in uniform sat by the radio and sobbed unashamedly. My tears mingled with theirs. Ours was a common sorrow. They asked me to read a passage and pray. I wondered if I could do it. An Englishman handed me the Apocrypha, and I read:

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God. ... In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died;
and their departure was thought to be an affliction,
and their going from us to be their destruction:
but they are in peace.
For though in the sight of men they were punished,
their hope is full of immortality;
Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good,
because God tested them, and found them worthy of himself;
like gold in the furnace he tried them,
and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.
In the time of their visitation they will shine forth,
and will run like sparks through the stubble.
They will govern nations, and rule over peoples.
and the Lord will reign over them for ever.
— Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-8

Every word seemed to apply to the Mahatma. I felt that in his martyrdom he would "govern nations" and would "rule over peoples." That has happened in a way of which I never dreamed. I prayed for a stricken nation, a broken prayer. An Indian commented as we ceased praying: "And this is Friday, too."

We called up Dr. John Matthai, the minister for transport, and suggested that we as Christians should pay our respects. He replied that he had tried to get to the Birla House, where the Mahatma lay, but could not get near because of the crowd. Three of us — British, Indian, American — walked the three miles to get a sight of him. We managed to get inside the gate; strangely enough, our white faces helped. We were told by a secretary that they were sorry but no one could see him till morning. We departed about midnight, not to sleep, but to meditate on the meaning of the tragedy of the day. For we knew that something of world significance had happened, something that people will talk about ten thousand years from now.

I wanted to see him that day to renew my plea for a national pageant, which would be a befitting celebration, I thought, of the meaning of the nonviolent struggle for independence. Mahatma Gandhi had left the Ashram at Sabarmati on March 12, 1930, to go on "the Salt March." He proposed to march to the sea, one hundred fifty miles distant, to Dandi, and there make salt, which was a government monopoly, and thus civilly break the Salt Law, precipitate a crisis, and go to jail, to be followed by tens of thousands of others. It was a dramatic launching of a Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Movement. It was made more dramatic by the announcement as he left that he would not return to the Ashram until he had gained independence for India. It seemed completely absurd. Here was a man in a loincloth and with a lathee (or lathi, bamboo walking stick) going out to do battle with the greatest empire that ever existed and promising not to return until independence had been gained. Never were two sides more unequally matched. But here was something more than a little man and a stick. Here was the embodiment of an idea: he would match his capacity to suffer against the others' capacity to inflict the suffering, his soul force against physical force; he would not hate, but he would not obey, and he would wear down all resistance by an infinite capacity to take it. Here was a technique that had been applied here and there in history, but never applied to a problem on the scale of nothing less than the freedom of one fifth of the human race. The stakes were immense, and the cards seemed all stacked against him. How could he win? But we soon began to see the immense power of an embodied idea. The British were baffled. This was illustrated when a burly Irish military officer said to me: "If they'd only fight with weapons we understand, we would show them something. But this ..." And he shook his head helplessly. Gandhi was getting behind the military armor and striking at the heart and conscience, and a great nation was striking back, but wincing under the blows falling upon its inner spirit.

After a struggle of seventeen years, from the time he left the Ashram, the battle was over. The little man had won. Independence was conceded. Never in human history had such a battle been fought with such weapons and with such a victory. My suggestion was that, now that independence had been won, Mahatmaji should come back to the Ashram, reversing the Salt March. Let him begin, say five or ten miles out, and march back over the same road with the same stick (the stick is in the Ashram Museum at Sabarmati), and that humble but triumphal march back would be a national pageant that would concentrate the attention of India — and the world — on the method by which independence was gained: the method of nonviolence. It would be a landmark in the history of the world. A new type of power had been revealed and demonstrated: the power of soul. Millions would line that road, I suggested, and I would like to be among them. I further suggested, not too seriously, that Mr. Attlee might march back with him, symbol of mutual consent to the victory.

I shared this suggestion for a national pageant celebrating independence with Sardar Vallabhai Patel, outstanding cabinet minister and deputy prime minister. He is "the iron man," and is not supposed to get excited. But he became most enthusiastic, and said: "It would be wonderful. I'd like to be there, for I was the first one arrested on the Salt March. If you can get the Mahatma to agree, I'll arrange it." I wrote to the Mahatma and said that I knew that he did not like pageantry, but this was different; it would sum up the meaning of a movement. Would he come back to Sabarmati, say on March 12, 1948, eighteen years after he set out? He replied that "the withdrawal of the British troops from India would be the greatest pageant conceivable," and moreover, "I don't know when I will be able to leave my present haunts." He was then in Behar, where the anti-Muslim riots had taken place, and was preaching to the people to restore the burned houses and the loot; those who had taken part in the rioting should come forward and confess it and take the consequences, go to jail. He was preaching a corporate and individual repentance to his people. In his letter, he had not turned down the suggestion for a pageant; nor had he accepted it. It gave me hope that he might accept it at a future date. I shared this idea with other national leaders, like Premier Kher of Bombay, who was enthusiastic and said he would make all the arrangements since it was in his province. It was nearly a year since I first raised the question of the pageant, and the day he was killed I wanted to renew my suggestion to him. I had written beforehand to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, minister of health in the Central Government, a Christian who was his private secretary for a long time before being appointed minister. I knew she was the best one to present it to him. After his death, she wrote me his response: "When I presented the suggestion to him, he smiled and said, 'I must do or die here in Delhi. Nothing else matters now.'" This was just before he undertook his fast. He had the feeling, doubtless, that the crisis had come and the battle of the new India had to be fought out in Delhi; for this capital city was drenched in bitterness and hate after the blood bath of riots. Delhi was filled with refugees, and each refugee had a tale of death and loss. So Delhi was the nerve center of anti-Muslim hate. The battle for the new India must be lost or won there. And Mahatma Gandhi unerringly tackled the problem at the very center. As we look back, we marvel that he put his finger on the center of the problem — Delhi. That was a rare insight indeed. His last battle was the greatest and the most important. So he gently pushed aside the suggestion of a pageant and tackled the grim business of changing the heart and atmosphere of a nation. He pushed it aside, and rightly, for the thing he was entering had the feel of a real battle upon it, the battle for a new India with a new spirit.

My suggestion for a pageant was surpassed and supplanted by a pageant that only God could have produced. Alongside what happened, my suggestion was poor, pale, and colorless. For the pageant that ensued after the assassination of the Mahatma was perhaps the greatest pageant that humankind has ever witnessed. The assassin fired three shots into the breast of Mahatma Gandhi as he walked toward the platform to begin the prayer meeting. This meeting was called a prayer meeting, but in addition to prayer it was really the daily message of the Mahatma to the nation. Here he commented on intimate affairs of the nation and gave his advice on current happenings. The people of India and the world listened. During the French Revolution, a leader said to the crowd as a saintly priest was about to address them: "Listen, men, for forty years of pure living are about to address you." India knew when the Mahatma spoke that forty years of pure living and sacrificial struggle were about to address them. They hung upon every word as upon an oracle. That fateful day, they waited breathlessly as usual for him to come to the prayer meeting. He was coming, leaning on the shoulders of two of his relatives, granddaughters. A man stepped forward and folded his hands in salutation and said, "You are late today, Mahatmaji." And then whipping out a pistol he fired three shots point-blank into the breast of the Mahatma. He sought to stop the Mahatma and his ideas. Stop him?

He only succeeded in freeing the ideas and spirit of the Mahatma from his frail body and making them the possession of the human race. For an astonishing thing took place. I had suggested that he march into Sabarmati in a humble, but triumphal procession. Instead, he marched into the soul of humanity in the most triumphal march that any man ever made since the death and resurrection of the Son of God. The Roman triumphal processions were tawdry compared to this. It was worldwide; it was all-embracing. Never before had such a flood of love and sympathy been poured out as was poured out on the death of this strange little man. People from every land — people whom we never suspected as being interested in the Mahatma and his ideas and methods — poured out their affection. Even Winston Churchill, who some years before had protested against the sight of "a half-naked fakir" coming up the steps of the Viceregal Lodge "to confer on equal terms with the representatives of His Majesty's Government," sent his tribute. And Jinnah haltingly spoke of "the loss to the Hindu nation," not to the Pakistan nation, but only "to the Hindu nation." He thus revealed himself in the process of paying a grudging tribute. The Mahatma judged people, even in death, by their attitudes toward him. Incidentally, let me say that a Muslim officer from Pakistan assured me that a great many in Pakistan expressed disappointment and disapproval of this grudging tribute of Jinnah. The prime minister of Pakistan referred to Mahatma Gandhi as "the father of us both." All Pakistan was plunged in mourning.

What was the secret of this little man? How can we interpret him and the world's interest in him? Why did he draw people even when they disagreed with him? People came to see him with blood on their horns and came away subdued and captivated. Why? Why did his death shake the heart and conscience of the world? What is this power wrapped up in such a strange wrapping? Did humanity see in him something they have been looking for? He began life as a timid boy who used to run home from school lest the boys tease him or poke fun at him. This timid boy became one of the world's bravest men, defying social custom and confronting empires with unbreakable courage. How do we interpret him?

CHAPTER 2

Antitheses Strongly Marked

A French philosopher once said that "no man is strong unless he bears within his character antitheses strongly marked." One of the secrets of Mahatma Gandhi's strength was just this holding, in a living blend and balance, strongly marked antitheses. He was a combination, a meeting place of currents. And yet he was no mere patchwork of qualities gathered from here and there. The ensemble was unique. In the end, an entirely new thing emerged — the character of Mahatma Gandhi.

He was a combination of East and West. The soul of Mahatma Gandhi was intensely Eastern. Born in a native state, Porbandar, where his father was the prime minister, he early imbibed ideas of independence. He was Indian to the core, and yet he was deeply influenced by the West. Had Mahatma Gandhi not been educated in large measure in the West, he would never have had the worldwide influence he has had. He stepped out of India and exposed himself to the West, studying law in Britain. He even tried to absorb the civilization of the West: dinner clothes, spats, meat-eating, and all. But he soon saw that this wasn't for him. It was like Saul's armor on David. It didn't fit. A friend who is one of God's troubadours once said, "People give me their clothes, but they soon begin to look like me." The clothes and the person became a unit. But Gandhi never really inwardly surrendered to Western civilization. He had his inner reservation, so the clothes never really fitted him. They were discarded.

Just as David, when they put Saul's armor on him, laid it aside and took the pebbles from his own brook, so the Mahatma laid aside the social armor of the West and took the simple pebbles out of his own national brook. To change the figure, he would plant his receiving posts deep in the soil of his own culture, and then he could lift his antennae to receive from the rest of the world, then and then only. It was a wise decision. In Gandhi, you see a truly Indian soul flowering, and yet he absorbed much from the West and was at home in its language and literature. His use of English was remarkable for its clarity and correctness. I have never seen him make a mistake in English. It was not ornate, for that would not have fitted the soul of Gandhi. His language was simple and direct as his soul was simple and direct.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Preface,
Preface to the 1983 Edition,
Publisher's Preface,
1. The End of the Road,
2. Antitheses Strongly Marked,
3. The Meaning of His Death,
4. The Coming into Being of Pakistan,
5. Gandhi and the Christian Faith,
6. My Experiments with Truth,
7. The Center of Gandhi's Contribution — Satyagraha,
8. The Fastings of the Mahatma,
9. Sevagram versus Delhi,
10. Gandhi's India — The Outlook,
11. "Bapu Is Finished" — Is He?,
Notes,