On Jews & Middle-Eastby by Mohandas K. Gandhi　　Part II ( その他人文科学 ) - あらぶだからぶら Dubai the Wonderland

　　　Part I　からのつづき

Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution?
Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel
helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who
has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah
of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians,
the Musalmans or the Hindus, though, as a matter of fact in
essence, He is common to all the one without a second and beyond
description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and
believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to
feel helpless.

If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood
there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest
gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in
the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to
discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait
for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have
confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example.
If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here
offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering
voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy
which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world
outside Germany can.

Indeed, even if Britain , France and America were to declare
hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner
strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a
general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the
declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be
prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have
imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that
Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of
the tyrant. For to the god fearing, death has no terror. It is a
joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more
refreshing for the long sleep.

It is hardly necessary for me to point out that it is easier for
the Jews than for the Czechs to follow my prescription. And they
have in the Indian satyagraha campaign in South Africa an exact
parallel. There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that
the Jews occupy in Germany . The persecution had also a religious
tinge. President Kruger used to say that the white Christians were
the chosen of God and Indians were inferior beings created to serve
the whites. A fundamental clause in the Transvaal constitution was
that there should be no equality between the whites and colored
races including Asiatics. There too the Indians were consigned to
ghettos described as locations. The other disabilities were almost
of the same type as those of the Jews in Germany. The Indians, a
mere handful, resorted to satyagraha without any backing from the
world outside or the Indian Government. Indeed the British
officials tried to dissuade the satyagrahis (soldiers of
non-violence) from their contemplated step. World opinion and
the Indian Government came to their aid after eight years of
fighting. And that too =0 A was by way of diplomatic pressure,
not of a threat of war.

But the Jews of Germany can offer satyagraha under infinitely
better auspices than Indians of South Africa. The Jews are a
compact, homogeneous community in Germany. They are far more
gifted than the Indians of South Africa. And they have organized
world opinion behind them. I am convinced that if someone with
courage and vision can arise among them to lead them in nonviolent
action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye
be turned into the summer of hope. And what has today become a
degrading man-hunt can be turned in to a calm and determined stand
offered by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of
suffering given to them by Jehovah. It will be then a truly
religious resistance offered against the godless fury of
dehumanized man. The German Jews will score a lasting victory
over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have
converted that latter to an appreciation of human dignity.
They will have rendered service to fellow-Germans and proved
their title to be the real Germans as against those who are today
dragging, however unknowingly, the German =2 0 name into the mire.

　　．．．Part III　へつづく．．．

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