A Philosophy of Walking (22 page)

In the conception and accomplishment of that huge march one can discern several spiritual dimensions, all linked to Gandhi's convictions.

For a start, the slowness of the march constitutes a rejection of speed: the Mahatma's mistrust of the machine, accelerated consumption, mindless productivism. In a tract (
Hind Swaraj
) dating from November 1909, written on the ship taking him from London to South Africa, Gandhi attacks modern civilization. As well as a defence of non-violence, the text appears to be a defence of tradition, an apologia for slowness. For Gandhi, the real opposition wasn't between East and West, but rather between a civilization of speed, machinery and the accumulation of forces and one of transmission, prayer and manual labour. Which doesn't imply, however, that the choice is between the inertia of tradition and the conquerors' dynamism, but rather between two energies: the energy of the immemorial
and the energy of change. Gandhi's choice was not between conservative torpor and adventurous boldness, but between calm force and perpetual agitation, the quiet illumination and the blinding flash.

Gandhi liked to think of that tranquil energy as maternal, feminine. For centuries in traditional societies, slow walking was the preserve of women: they would trek to distant wells to draw water, or set off down the paths to find plants and herbs. Men favoured violent expenditures of strength, appropriate to hunting: sudden attacks, short but very fast chases. Walking with Gandhi nurtured the slow energies of endurance. With walking, you are far removed from the lightning action, the fine deed, the exploit. It is done with that humility Gandhi loved: constant reminder of our gravity, our weakness. Walking is the condition of the poor. Humility, however, is not quite the same as poverty. It is the quiet recognition of our finiteness: we don't know everything, we can't do everything. What we know is nothing compared to the Truth, what we can do is nothing compared to Strength. And that recognition puts us in our proper place, locates us. In walking, far from any vehicle or machine, from any mediation, I am replaying the earthly human condition, embodying once again man's inborn, essential destitution. That is why humility is not humiliating: it just makes vain pretensions fall away, and thus nudges us towards authenticity. And there remains something proud in walking: we are upright. Humility in Gandhi's sense expressed our human dignity.

Walking also fitted with the theme of simplification he pursued all his life, taking the paths of non-possession (
aparigraha
). All the way from well turned-out young gent to the ‘half-naked fakir' mocked by Churchill, Gandhi pursued his quest for stripping back in every area of life: clothing, housing, food and transport. From his early days in London wearing a greatcoat, double-breasted waistcoat and striped trousers, carrying a silver-knobbed walking stick, he gradually simplified his attire until in his last years he was dressed only in a loincloth of hand-woven white cotton. In South Africa, he left his comfortable rooms in Johannesburg to live on community farms, doing his full share of domestic chores. He made it a point of honour to travel only in third class, and by the end of his life ate nothing but fresh fruit and nuts. This simplification of life enabled him to go faster, straighter, more dependably to the essential. Walking is of a perfect simplicity: one foot in front of the other, there's no other way of advancing on two legs. But beyond that, the simplicity had a political aim. To live above your needs, Gandhi warned, is to be already exploiting your neighbour.

The task was to get rid of everything that might pointlessly encumber, embarrass, obstruct. Walking – marching – promoted an ideal of autonomy. Gandhi always set great value on indigenous crafts, produced locally. He gave the spinning-wheel a new lease of life, making it a duty to weave by hand every day. To work with your hands is to reject exploitation of others. The concept of marching fulfilled by itself the double ideal contained in the term
swadeshi
, employed by Gandhi to call on Indians to boycott British textiles, alcohol and manufactured goods. It signifies both ‘proximity' and ‘autarchy'. During a march, you make contact with people living their daily lives: you pass the fields where they work, and in front of their houses. You stop and talk. Walking is the right speed to understand, to feel close. Apart from that, you depend on yourself alone to advance. Given that you are up to it, your will alone is in charge, and you await only your own injunction. Neither machine nor fuel. Especially as walking can seem positively nutritious. Gandhi experienced that in the long 1930 march, when he arrived, after more than 390 kilometres on foot, looking more radiant than he had when he started.

Finally, Gandhi promoted through the marching movement a dimension of firmness and endurance: to keep going. That is essential, because walking calls for gentle but continuous effort. To suggest the sort of campaigns he hoped to wage, Gandhi at a political meeting in South Africa had invented a new word to describe his style of action:
satyagraha. Satyagraha
is the idea of force and truth rolled into one, the idea that one should be anchored firmly to truth as to a solid rock. Walking calls for determination, tenacity and willpower. Accordingly, during his years of struggle among the community structures he had set up here and there, Gandhi had managed to train some disciples along these lines. The key virtue of the
satyagrahi
is internal self-discipline. It means being ready to take blows without returning them, go quietly when unjustly arrested, and suffer humiliation, slander and insult without replying.
The mastery needed is double-sided: an ability to repress outbursts of rage and indignation, but also to weather moments of discouragement or cowardice; to remain calm, immobile, serene, sure of yourself and of the truth. Walking drains anger away, it purifies. When the
satyagrahis
reached the sea their indignation had been purged of hatred and anger: all that remained was a calm determination to break the law, because the law was unjust and iniquitous, making it a duty to transgress it, with the firmness and calm of prayer.

That perfect self-mastery is the precondition for a perfect love of all beings and for non-violence:
ahimsa
. This lies at the heart of the doctrine. Gandhi's non-violence wasn't a passive withdrawal, neutral resignation or submission. It gathered in a single sheaf, displayed in a single posture, all the dimensions identified above: dignity, discipline, firmness, humility, energy. Non-violence wasn't a simple rejection of force. It was more a matter of opposing physical force with the force of the soul alone. Gandhi did not say: make no resistance when the blows rain down, when the brutality redoubles. He said almost the opposite: resist with your entire soul by standing up for as long as possible, never surrendering any of your dignity, and without showing the slightest aggression or doing anything at all that might restore, between the whipper and the whipped, any reciprocity or equivalence in a community of violence and hate. On the contrary, show immense compassion for the one who is beating you. The relation should remain asymmetric in every respect: on one side a blind, physical,
hate-filled rage, on the other a spiritual force of love. If you hold firm, then the relation is reversed; physical force degrades the one who uses it, who becomes a furious beast, while all human qualities are reflected in his prone victim, raised to a state of pure humanity by the attempt to lay him low. Non-violence puts violence to shame. To continue beating someone who opposes physical brutality with pure humanity, simple dignity, is to lose your honour and your soul there and then.

So it was with the next, terrible march, on which the
satyagrahis
set off in May 1930 to take possession of the Dharasana salt works in the name of the people. Gandhi had taken care to inform the viceroy in a letter of the march and its purpose, adding that the abrogation of the salt tax would be enough to cause its cancellation. But he was arrested, and unable to take part in the projected peaceful occupation of the salt pans. Four hundred police officers, armed with steel-tipped clubs, waited in the marshes. The
satyagrahis
slowly advanced, refusing to disperse. On reaching the police line they were savagely attacked, beaten to the ground and replaced by the next rank, beaten down in its turn. The
satyagrahis
didn't even try to protect themselves with their arms, but took the blows on their heads and shoulders. The police were seized with fury and some marchers were beaten to death on the ground. An American journalist, Webb Miller of the United Press Agency, witnessed the carnage and described the silent, determined advance of the
satyagrahis
‘walking with firm tread, head high', before falling. A painful silence punctuated only by
the thud of batons on flesh, breaking bones and a few involuntary groans. Several hundred were injured.

But the political gains of the 1930 movement didn't live up to expectations, or to the grandeur of the act. The Gandhi–Irwin pact (February 1931) was limited to minor concessions, and the London conference attended by Gandhi that September produced no decisive progress. When World War II broke out in 1939, India was still largely a subject country. Independence only came in August 1947, and at the cost of the partition of India and Pakistan – the worst of solutions, for Gandhi, who had always hoped for freedom in unity and brotherhood.

Gandhi never stopped walking all through his life. He attributed his excellent health to the habit. He walked to the very end. The final years of his life saw his dream both fulfilled and destroyed: freedom with disintegration. When Britain was seriously preparing to abandon its Indian possessions, in the late 1940s, the rivalries between religious communities, hitherto exploited by the British to divide and rule, became intensified and soon exploded in violence, leading to unprecedented massacres between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.

In the winter of 1946 Gandhi took up his pilgrim's staff once more, to travel on foot through two regions ravaged by hatred (Bengal and Bihar), to walk from village to village in the hope that here and there, by talking to everyone and praying for all, he could revive the principles of love and fraternal unity. Between 7 November 1946 and 2 March 1947 he passed through several dozen villages, always on foot.
He walked because he wanted to make it clear that destitution was peaceful. He rose every morning at four to read and write, spun his daily measure of cotton, led prayers open to all, reciting Hindu and Muslim texts to show their peaceful convergence, and walked onward. He set off each morning chanting Rabindranath Tagore's terrible lines:

In September 1947 Gandhi performed ‘the miracle of Calcutta': his simple presence, and announcement of a fast, were enough to extinguish the explosion of hatred that was ravaging the city. Independence had been proclaimed in August, and the announcement of Partition had provoked an unprecedented surge in inter-communal violence.

Gandhi died at the hands of a fanatical Hindu assassin on 30 January 1948.

The enduring image is that of an old man of nearly seventy-seven, walking all day leaning on the shoulder of his young niece, holding his pilgrim's staff in the other hand, going on foot from village to village, from massacre to massacre, supported by his faith alone, dressed like the poorest of the poor, underlining everywhere the reality of love and the absurdity of hatreds, and opposing the
world's violence with the infinite peace of a slow, humble, unending walk.

The same image was retained by his indefatigable companion Nehru, the first leader of independent India. When he thought of Gandhi, what he most remembered was the salt march. As he wrote, back in 1930:

Repetition
 

W
alking is dull, repetitive and monotonous. That is all too true. But for that reason it is never tiresome. We mentioned earlier the need to distinguish between monotony and boredom. Boredom is an absence of plans, of prospects. You circle around yourself, at a loose end. Waiting, but not for
anything specific
: not expecting anything, but indefinitely suspended in empty time. The bored body reclines, gets up restlessly, jerks its arms about, steps out in one direction, then another, stops suddenly, starts again, fidgets. It is trying desperately to fill each second. Boredom is an empty rebellion against immobility; nothing to do, not even looking for something to do. You despair of yourself when bored. You tire of
everything straight away, because it is on your own initiative. That faces you with the immense, unbearable ordeal of recognizing the poverty of your desires. Boredom is dissatisfaction repeated every second, disgust with beginnings: everything is wearisome from the start, because it's you who starts it.