People loosely use the English word atheist interchangeably with the Indian word nāstika, but they are very different. The primary reason why nāstikta differs from the Western idea of atheism is because Abrahamic religions like Christianity and Islam are monotheistic and their philosophical doctrine mostly revolves around one holy book. Their classical theology doesn’t give much space to many pluralistic ideas or different schools of thought to prosper. For them, ideas of (rebirth, karma, soul, creation of the universe, heaven, enlightenment) fall under one umbrella. If you believe in God’s ideas about these topics, you’re a believer; otherwise, you’re an atheist.

Indian tradition, on the other hand, differs significantly. To give a glimpse of it, let me introduce you to the famous Nāsadīya Sūkta of the Rig Veda. Its famous ending shlokas go like:

को अद्धा वेद क इह प्र वोचत्कुत आजाता कुत इयं विसृष्टिः ।
अर्वाग्देवा अस्य विसर्जनेनाथा को वेद यत आबभूव ॥ ६ ॥

इयं विसृष्टिर्यत आबभूव यदि वा दधे यदि वा न ।
यो अस्याध्यक्षः परमे व्योमन्त्सो अङ्ग वेद यदि वा न वेद ॥ ७ ॥

translation:

“Who truly knows? Who can here declare whence this creation came? The gods are later than this world’s arising. Who then knows from where it came?”

“He from whom this creation arose, whether he fashioned it or did not; He who looks down on it from the highest heaven, He alone knows… or perhaps He does not know.”

we can see how vaidik rishis are questioning the ultimate reality with such intellectual honesty .

And at the end they even question the god that may even god doesn’t know that how existence came into existence .

He alone knows… or perhaps He does not know.”

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when i was juggling between agnosticism and atheism this was a life changing verse for me . i would recommend you to listen to its hymm it will keep you hooked through out.

Nāsadīya Sūkta

Now let’s talk about the definition of nāstikta and how it evolved with time.

The first known grammatical definition of the terms āstika and nāstika appears in Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī (4.4.60: asti-nāsti-diṣṭaṃ matiḥ). Later commentators in the Pāṇinian tradition, particularly Jayāditya in the Kāśikāvṛtti, explained this distinction as belief in or denial of the existence of the other world (paraloka), along with its associated ideas of rebirth and karmic consequences. Later, orthodox philosophers such as Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (Ślokavārttika) and Jayanta Bhaṭṭa (Nyāyamañjarī) used the āstika–nāstika distinction in terms of acceptance or rejection of Vedic authority (śabda pramāṇa). Thus, a school could be nāstika even if it accepted concepts such as karma, rebirth or the soul, while an āstika school could reject a creator God.

There are many other definitions out there, but these two definitions are the major ones.

Scholars use the method of epistemic authority to classify Indian schools of thought.

There are major 9 Indian darshan, out of which 6 are āstika. They’re referred to as (ṣaṭ darśana) and 3 are nāstika philosophies.

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The Fun Part: Godless Believers and reincarnated atheists

If you go by the definition of atheism, Sāṃkhya and Mīmāṃsā don’t believe in a creator God, so they should be considered nāstika, right? No.

Why Mīmāṃsā Rejects a Creator God:

• The universe is eternal (anādi-ananta), undergoing continuous natural transformations without an absolute beginning or end created by a deity.

• The Vedas are authorless (apauruṣeya); positing an author—even God—would make the scriptures contingent, fallible, and historical.

  ---

Why Sāṃkhya Rejects Īśvara (God):

• A perfected being would have no unfulfilled desire to create a world.

• An imperfect being would lack the omnipotence required to create it.

• Attributing the creation of suffering to a benevolent deity produces severe logical contradictions.

Still, they’re called āstika because they believe in the epistemic authority of the Vedas.

The Flip Side: The Theistic "Nāstikas"

We see the exact opposite paradox on the other side. Neither Buddhism nor Jainism are materialistic philosophies. Both systems deeply embrace the metaphysical realities of reincarnation, karma, and ultimate spiritual enlightenment. one of them also accepts the concept of soul .

Yet, because they reject the epistemic authority of the Vedas, they are classified as nāstika. According to modern Western definitions, calling a Buddhist or a Jain a strict “atheist” completely misrepresents their deeply spiritual, non-materialist worldviews.

Cārvāka: The Original Indian Empiricists

There’s that one school of thought that can be compared with modern day atheism and they’re none other than “charvakas”. contrary to popular belief, the ancient Indian tradition birthed the world's oldest materialist philosophies.

But there’s an important chronological wrinkle: Cārvāka as a clearly identifiable, systematized school is difficult to date precisely, because its foundational texts are lost and much of what we know comes from its opponents. Some sources place the Cārvāka/Bārhaspatya tradition around the 6th century BCE.

They were radical materialists. They rejected testimony (śabda) and inference (anumāna) as independently valid pramāṇas and accepted perception (pratyakṣa) as the sole independently valid means of knowledge, which is very close to scientific methodology of empiricism.

Arguments of Cārvāka Philosophy:

The Fermentation Analogy: Just as mixing yeast, water, and grains produces an intoxicating power that none of the individual ingredients possessed on their own, the aggregation of non-conscious elements produces conscious awareness.

Death as Complete Annihilation: The soul is simply the living, conscious body (caitanya-viśiṣṭa-deha). When the physical body dies and the elements dissolve, consciousness ceases permanently; no entity remains to transmigrate.

Rejection of Mokṣha: The idea of spiritual liberation is dismissed as a fantasy; genuine mokṣha is nothing other than the natural death of the physical body.

Why Linguistics and Context Matter

This is precisely why linguistic nuance matters. When we casually translate nāstika as “atheist” and āstika as “theist,” we commit an act of unwitting Eurocentrism.

We force a modern, Western, Abrahamic category onto a deeply sophisticated Indian philosophical vocabulary that was built around entirely different parameters. We squeeze centuries of complex debates regarding epistemology, ontology, and perception into external binaries where they were never designed to fit. Understanding these traditions requires that we look at them through their own intellectual and cultural context.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this deep dive, consider subscribing to get high-quality essays delivered straight to your inbox (and to help me keep going).

What do you think about the Nāsadīya Sūkta or the Cārvāka school? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! And if you have a friend who still thinks nāstika just means “atheist,” share this post to clear up their misconceptions.

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प्रेम — साध्य भी, साधन भी

प्रेम ही परिश्रम और प्रेम ही विश्राम।
प्रेम ही परीक्षा और प्रेम ही मुक़ाम।

प्रेम ही अलंकृत मेरा, प्रेम ही अलंकार।
प्रेम ही उपमेय मेरा, प्रेम ही उपमान।

प्रेम ही प्रत्यक्ष और प्रेम ही परोक्ष।
प्रेम ही दोषी है, और प्रेम ही निर्दोष।

प्रेम ही निर्गुण है, और प्रेम ही सगुण।
प्रेम ही साध्य है, और प्रेम ही साधन।

प्रेम ही प्रश्न है, और प्रेम ही प्रमाण।
प्रेम ही भिन्न है, और प्रेम ही समान।

प्रेम ही है द्वैत, और प्रेम ही अद्वैत।
प्रेम ही सापेक्ष है, और प्रेम ही निरपेक्ष।

प्रेम न कोई आडंबर, न प्रेम में कोई द्वंद्व।
प्रेम छुड़ाए बंधन सारे, प्रेम है स्वच्छंद।

तब भी कहता हूँ—
प्रेम मेरा परमेश्वर, मैं प्रेम का दास।का दास।

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Love :Both the End and the Means

Roman (Hinglish) version:

Prem hi parishram aur prem hi vishram.
Prem hi pariksha aur prem hi mukaam.

Prem hi alankrit mera, prem hi alankaar.
Prem hi upmey mera, prem hi upmaan.

Prem hi pratyaksh aur prem hi paroksh.
Prem hi doshi hai, aur prem hi nirdosh.

Prem hi nirgun hai, aur prem hi sagun.
Prem hi sadhya hai, aur prem hi sadhan.

Prem hi prashna hai, aur prem hi pramaan.
Prem hi bhinna hai, aur prem hi samaan.

Prem hi hai dvait, aur prem hi advait.
Prem hi sapeksh hai, aur prem hi nirpeksh.

Prem na koi aadambar, na prem mein koi dwand.
Prem chhudaye bandhan saare, prem hai swachhand.

Tab bhi kehta hoon—
Prem mera Parmeshvar, main prem ka daas.

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“the holy roman empire was neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire.”

one of the greatest one-liners ever written. Said so much without saying much. today we’re gonna learn about the guy behind this .
okay let’s take one more,

“Le sens commun n’est pas si commun”

i love how voltaire writes with such subtleness at the same time such on face raw ridicule . he won’t explain or argue , he blurs the line of absurdity and seriousness with his wit , it’s on you to decide . Also he didn’t deliberately wrote these punchlines , it’s just the voltairic way of giving witty wisdom.

yes ik ik u didn’t understand that french quote. it was,

“common sense is not so common”

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this was just a warm up ppl , we’re dealing with the all mighty lord of satire.

voltaire’s work feel like a sit com of wit which is filled with layers of underlying philosophy, psychology, politics . they feel like let’s say the closest depiction is i guess georgle carlin , they come from the same school of satire . wait aren’t you getting what i’m saying ? then see one of my fav carlin joke.

“Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ‘til the end of time! “”

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money!”

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Legends say voltaire was the great grand father of georges (carlin , orwell).

orwell invoked voltaire in animal farm’s preface ,
“I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it”
the fun part ? according to historians This ain’t a voltaire line . this happens with voltaire a lot , so many jokes and one liners are attributed to him , historias still debate about which ones are his ? but it’s futile to us , let’s drink more from the holy wine of wit .

remove the spirituality. say it plainly. then watch everyone get uncomfortable. voltaire did it way before carlin .

take pangloss from voltaire’s book candide. i genuinely love this guy. pangloss believes that everything happens for the best because we live in the best of all possible worlds.
here voltaire is roasting “ Leibniz” (yes the calculus guy with newton he was a philosopher too) for his philosophical doctrine of optimism .

Leibniz argued that God, being perfectly good, wise, and rational, created the best possible world.

Given all logically possible worlds God could have created, this particular world is the best one compatible with God’s purposes.

This was part of Leibniz’s attempt to answer the problem of evil:

If God is omnipotent and perfectly good, why does evil exist?

Liebniz’s answer was something like this:

so voltaire says : “yeah, right” and pangloos begins.
pangloss gets syphilis. a sexually transmitted disease that was extremely painful, disfiguring, and deadly because there were no antibiotics to treat it at that time.
he rationalizes it using genealogy and trade-off.

he proudly traces the lineage of his infection—from the maid Paquette, to a learned friar, to a Jesuit, and finally back to a companion of Christopher Columbus. and argues that if columbus had not travelled to the americas and brought back this disease), the expedition wouldn’t have happened at all.
Therefore, without this devastating disease, europe would never have received luxurieslike chocolate and cochineal .

then there is horrific war . villages are burned to the ground, and civilians, including his beloved cunégonde, are subjected to mass rape and slaughter.
pangloss argues that “private misfortunes make up the general good.” even her beloved cunégonde goes through assualt.but he's detached and doesn't feel any empathy cause this fits his rigid framework: the more individual suffering there is, the better the whole system is functioning.

This is the similar framework by which till date atrocities and massacres are justified (if there is communal tension between 2 ethnic groups where minority is just 5% , either ask them to compromise or kill em , atleast 95% of them will stay happy after that or if a poor family has 3 kids , they sell one of em for a handsome amount so atleast the other family members can live a better life and the sacrificed person will be called martyred , the hero of altruism who had the greatness of putting the greater good over his narrow selfish desires )

in an another chapter, when Candide and pangloss arrive in lisbon, a catastrophic earthquake strikes, killing tens of thousands of people. (This is based on the real 1755 Lisbon earthquake, a massive trauma for Europe that deeply shook Enlightenment thinkers).

As the city collapses into rubble, pangloss immediately begins rationalizing the disaster. he argues that the earthquake had to happen exactly where and when it did because the world is perfectly ordered:

“If there is a volcano at Lisbon it could be in no other spot; for it is impossible but things should be as they are, for everything is for the best.”

(no this is not the i told you so moment during your friend’s break-up, this is ridicule and dogmatic cruelty)

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one of the darkest and frustrating scenes in the book comes, when candide is crushed under fallen stones, bleeding and begging for a drop of oil and wine to survive. instead of helping him, pangloss stands over him and debates the philosophical causes of the disaster. [insert crying emoji ]

Gandhi did something similar during bihar’s eartquake in 1930s , this is god’s punishment for the sins we’re committing . that’s where tagore stepped up and opposed gandhi ,but gandhi too didn’t give up on his dogma and doubled down.

now as earthquake has happened, everyone int the town gives their own theories. some people decide that god must be angry. others decide that the victims must have deserved it. and then they go to the wisdomized guy of the town , the apostles and messageners of god.

The religious leaders of Lisbon (the Inquisition) respond to the earthquake by deciding the earth is shaking because the people have sinned. Their “solution” is to hold an auto-da-fé—burning heretics alive, including Pangloss and Candide, to appease God and prevent further tremors.
one of the funniest things about candide is how calmly people explain horrible things.

this is why voltaire said ,
“those who can make you believe absurdities can make you create atrocities “

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if you think you’ve heard this before ? yes witch burning .
from the 15th to 17th centuries across europe, if the crops froze, if milk turned sour, if an infant died of illness, or if a hail storm wiped out a harvest, people didn’t blame meteorology or bacteria. they blamed a local woman.

women, especially older women, widows, herbalists, midwives, or any woman who lived independently outside the strict authority of men, were the primary targets. they were accused of making pacts with the devil or casting spells to ruin the village. and just like the inquisition in lisbon burning heretics to stop the earth from shaking, towns burned tens of thousands of women at the stake to “fix” the weather or stop a plague.

let’s continue our story . pangloos and candide didn’t die actually .

pangloss was sentenced to be hanged instead of burned (hanging was apparently the proper punishment for speaking heresy, plus it started raining so fires were a hassle). but the executioner was so bad at tying knots that pangloss didn’t actually die. he just fainted into a coma. his body was sold to a surgeon for a dissection class, and when the surgeon cut into his chest, pangloss woke up screaming lol. the terrified surgeon stitched him back up, and pangloss survived to keep spouting optimism later in the story.

candide didn’t get burned either. he was sentenced to be brutally whipped on his bare ass while the church choir sang hymns in perfect harmony.
i want you to read it by your self, you’ll absolutely love it.

after surviving shipwrecks, inquisitions, flogging, war, disease, and losing all his money, candide finally gathers what’s left of his crew on a tiny farm in turkey.

now comes our vinland saga moment .

everyone is exhausted, traumatized, broke, and miserable. cunégonde has lost her beauty and turned into a bitter cook. pangloss has lost an eye and an ear .

one day they meet an old turk sitting under an orange tree outside his house. candide asks him about the latest political massacres and political coups in constantinople. the old turk basically says: i don’t know and i don’t give a damnn. i just cultivate my small plot of land with my children. work keeps away three great evils: boredom, vice, and necessity.

candide takes this in. then pangloss, who refuses to ever shut up, tries to drop one last grand philosophical monologue:

“you see, candide, all events are linked in this best of all possible worlds. for if you had not been kicked out of a fine castle with big kicks to your ass, if you had not been put into the inquisition, if you had not walked across america on foot, if you had not lost all your sheep from el dorado, you would not be sitting here now eating candied citrons and pistachios.”

and candide, who has finally had enough of the intellectual gymnastics, cuts him off with the most famous shutdown in Western literature:

“that is well said, but we must cultivate our garden.”

yes this is the ultimate vinland saga moment.

that’s the final conclusion. drop the grand theories. stop trying to justify why innocent people suffer or looking for a divine script. stop arguing about whether the universe is fundamentally good or evil. shut up, put your head down, and do the tangible, practical work right in front of you. plant your tomatoes, clean your room, look after your friends. it is a brutal, pragmatic, proto-existentialist sanity.

and if you think pangloss died in the 18th century, you’re not paying attention buddy . when we call a work classic , it’s timeless .
today’s world is packed with modern panglossians . (yes traditional ones are there too)

when you show that even today millions of people die because of hunger , ppl are like that’s the natural order of the world , sacrifice is necessary for the greater good (do you have any idea how much money and food the world has ? it can feed many more billions easily . but there is no empathy . we’re so used to this propaganda that the response comes almost instinctively , we’ve rehearsed the standard replies as if they’re the ultimate truth . apply critical thinking , use critical thinking , be kind)

look at how tech broz justify AI gutting whole creative industries. “sure, millions of artists, writers, and voice actors are losing their livelihoods right now, but that is just necessary friction so that humanity can reach post-scarcity synthetic art!!!”
that is literally “private misfortunes make up the general good.”chocolate and cochineal dye, baby. it’s the exact same trade-off.

look at climate change . rising sea levels, burning forests, extreme heatwaves? modern panglossians will look you in the eye and say: “don’t worry, carbon capture technology and geoengineering will handle it, and besides, this suffering is just a necessary step in making us a multi-planetary species so we can colonize mars!”

it’s all the exact same illness. using abstract, high-sounding systems to ignore real, physical, blood-and-bone human suffering sitting right in front of you.

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i can go on and on but i want you people to read voltaire yourself , believe me candide is very thin and it’ll keep you hooked till the end. also go beyond jokes , read between the lines . voltaire will give you a new way of looking at things.

if you liked this article , consider subscribing . comment down your opinions , your favorite parts or criticisms. share it with your friends.

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Had enough of Brutus.

Done with Judas.

Give me Vibhishan.

Ain't no Karna.

Brother of Balarama.

Ranchod over Rama.

Give me Arjuna.

Don't need karma.

I milk these snakes.

Who'll pass that stake.

Let altruism prevail.

Can't turn to hate.

Cynicism's too costly.

Be water like Bruce Lee.

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Note: All references and primary sources used in this article are listed at the end

in part-1, we explored the controversies surrounding Gandhi’s racial views, his position on caste, controversies surrounding his wife, his infamous celibacy experiments, and his statements on rape victims and the dignity of women. Rather than treating these as isolated incidents, we inferred his underlying moral philosophy: one that elevated ideals of purity and sacrifice above individual autonomy.

This is part 2 of a two-part series. If you haven't read Part 1, i'd recommend starting there:

In Part 2, we'll see what happens when that same philosophy moves from the private sphere into politics. from nazi Germany to noakhali and partition, Gandhi applied the same moral philosophy. this essay will examine the consequences of that moral doctrine.

Critiquing this is not about partisan character assassination or scoring political points. It is about taking Gandhi’s ideas seriously and examining what happened when his moral absolutism met the real world.

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The Bihar Earthquake

On January 15, 1934, a massive earthquake flattened northern Bihar, killing around 10,000 to 30,000 people. Gandhi was mid-tour campaigning against untouchability at the time. Instead of seeing the disaster as a natural tectonic event, he claimed God was punishing India for its caste prejudices:

“You may call me superstitious if you like; but a man like me cannot but believe that this earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins... against those whom we describe as untouchables.” (CWMG, Vol. 57, p. 46)

It is easy to dismiss this as standard religious rhetoric. plenty of leaders throughout history have blamed natural disasters on human sin. But politically, it matters for a specific reason: once suffering is interpreted spiritually instead of causally, solving the suffering becomes secondary to interpreting it.

If an earthquake is caused by fault lines, your task is material: clear the rubble, build safer structures, send medical aid, and work on seismology. But if an earthquake is caused by ethical failure, physical destruction is secondary to the spiritual lesson. The dead become collateral damage in a cosmic scolding.

When a leader asks people to ignore cause and effect, to believe the ground under their feet shattered because of how they treat others, he asks them to set aside basic reasoning. Once logic is set aside, it becomes much easier to convince people to accept extreme demands for self-sacrifice later on.

Rabindranath Tagore saw this danger immediately and pushed back:

“I am compelled to utter a truism in asserting that physical catastrophes have their inevitable and exclusive origin in certain combinations of physical facts... It is all the more unfortunate because this kind of unscientific view of phenomena is too readily accepted by a large section of our countrymen.”

Tagore was not defending caste prejudice; he was protecting basic logic. He knew that using a mass tragedy to score a point for social reform, even a noble cause like fighting untouchability, was dangerous.

Gandhi refused to back down. Replying in Harijan, he admitted he could not prove the connection scientifically, but insisted he “instinctively felt” it. For Gandhi, when empirical explanation conflicted with moral intuition, moral intuition retained sole interpretive authority.

The Asymmetry of Restraint

When this same instinct was applied to religious conflicts, As historians and contemporary critics from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar to Perry Anderson (The Indian Ideology), have observed that the burden did not fall equally across communities. In major communal controversies, Gandhi placed an asymmetrical demand on Hindus to absorb provocation, ignore aggression, and display spiritual endurance.

1. The Rangila Rasul Controversy

We see this pattern first during the pamphlet wars of the 1920s in Punjab.

As Ambedkar documented in Pakistan or the Partition of India, the publication of Rangila Rasul in 1924 did not occur in a vacuum; it was written in response to derogatory tracts like Sita Ka Chinala (prostiute of Sita), Krishna Teri Gita Jalani Padegi, and Unnisvi Sadi Ka Maharshi that had been circulating in the region.

Ambedkar, in Chapter VII (“Mr. Gandhi’s Tenacious Quest for Hindu-Muslim Unity”) of Pakistan or the Partition of India (1946), wrote:

“Mr. Gandhi has never called the Muslims to account even when they were in the wrong. He has never used his great position to reprimand the Muslims for their excesses... This attitude of open surrender to Muslim aggression has created a feeling among Muslims that whatever they do will be supported or condoned by Mr. Gandhi.”

The issue is not whether Rangila Rasul was offensive, it clearly was. Nor is it that Gandhi had no right to condemn it. The question is whether he applied the same public standard across both communities.

In Young India (June 19, 1924), Gandhi wrote under the heading “Inflammatory Literature”:

“I have asked myself what could be the motive of writing or printing such a book except to inflame passions. Abuse is not argument... An ordinary and petty publisher, in order to earn a few rupees, has published a pamphlet... It can do no good to a Hindu who holds that belief.”

When Rangila Rasul appeared, Gandhi unequivocally condemned it in Young India as an abuse of religious freedom and urged Hindus to prevent such writings. Yet when offensive tracts targeting Hindu deities circulated, he didn’t condemn the other side with same intensity, but urged Hindus to rise above the provocation.

Rajpal, the publisher, survived assassination attempts in 1926 and 1927, but on April 6, 1929, he was stabbed to death in Lahore by Ilm-ud-Din.

2. The Murder of Swami Shraddhanand (Escalation to Violence)

Two years later, the debate escalated from offensive literature to political assassination.

In December 1926, Swami Shraddhanand, a prominent Arya Samaj reformer who was bedridden with pneumonia, was shot and killed in his home by Abdul Rashid. Shraddhanand was a major national figure, and the murder sent shockwaves across India.

Yet speaking weeks later at the Gauhati Congress Session, Gandhi sought to neutralize Hindu anger by shifting the ethical burden back onto the victims:

“I have called Abdul Rashid a brother and I repeat it. I do not even regard him as guilty of Swamiji’s murder. Guilty indeed are all those who excited feelings of hatred against one another.” (CWMG, Vol. 32, p. 459)

By calling the assassin an “erring brother” and declaring him “not guilty,” Gandhi shifted the discussion from individual agency to the collective moral condition of society. The assassin’s personal accountability dissolved into a general critique of hatred, while the victim’s community was asked to absorb the loss without anger.

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3. “Bully and Coward”: The Philosophy Behind the Pattern

Although written prior to the assassination of Shraddhanand, Gandhi’s reflections on the Kohat riots in May 1924 (imo) provide the clearest statement of the philosophy underlying these episodes.

Writing in Young India on May 29, 1924:

“There is no doubt in my mind that in the majority of quarrels the Hindus come out second best. My own experience confirms the opinion that the Mussalman as a rule is a bully, and the Hindu as a rule is a coward.”

He immediately followed it with:

“Need the Hindu blame the Musalman for his cowardice? Where there are cowards there are bound to be bullies.”

Gandhi was not praising aggression here; he explicitly called the aggressor a “bully.” But notice where he located the primary problem. In Gandhi’s worldview, the central issue was not restraining the aggressor, but reforming the victim. He argued that bullies exist primarily because cowards permit them to exist.

Gandhi was not opposed to physical courage in principle (“Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice”). Yet when real conflicts broke out, his practical advice pushed people back toward non-retaliation. The result was an ethical trap: the aggressor’s violence was treated as a given fact of nature, while the victim’s self-defense was criticized as a failure of spiritual discipline.

To evaluate Gandhi fairly, one must acknowledge the core logic behind his stance. Gandhi operated with a conviction that retaliatory violence merely feeds an endless cycle of vengeance. From his perspective, responding to a blow with a blow guarantees mutual destruction. The only way to shatter an escalating chain of communal hatred was for one side to stop the momentum by taking the blow without striking back.

Prescribing Satyagraha to Extermination

When Gandhi applied this same logic to totalitarian regimes, the structural flaw in his philosophy became obvious to international observers.

In November 1938, Gandhi wrote an article titled “The Jews” in Harijan:

“If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of, and for, humanity, a war against Germany... would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war... The German Jews can challenge the Nazi power by non-violent resistance... Free people would drop their arms; Jews should do the same.” (CWMG, Vol. 68, p. 137)

He argued that if German Jews marched unarmed to their deaths, their martyrdom would convert the heart of the German people.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, writing from Jerusalem in February 1939, published an open letter pointing out the fatal blind spot in Gandhi’s reasoning:

“An effective stand in the form of non-violence may be taken against unfeeling human beings... but a diabolic universal steamroller cannot thus be withstood... Do you know or do you not know, Mahatma, what a concentration camp means?”

Buber pointed out that Satyagraha requires an opponent who operates within a legal framework, feels public shame, or answers to an electorate. Against a regime built on systematic state extermination, non-violent submission does not change the oppressor’s heart; it simply makes the executioner’s job easier.

In June 1946, Gandhi reiterated this stance in an interview with his biographer Louis Fischer:

“Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs... It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

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Mass Trauma and Practical Rejection

1. The Valmiki Mandir, Partition, and the Quran Recitation Controversy

Between April 1946 and June 1947, Gandhi stayed at the Valmiki Temple (Bhangi Colony) on Mandir Marg in New Delhi. As violence swept through West Punjab, thousands of Hindu and Sikh refugees poured into Delhi, stripped of their homes, families, and livelihoods.

When Gandhi addressed these refugees during his evening prayer meetings, his message remained unchanged:

“Hindus should never be angry against the Muslims even if the latter might make up their minds to undo even their existence. If they put all of us to the sword, we should court death bravely... We are destined to be born and die; then why need we feel gloomy over it?” (Speech at Prayer Meeting, April 6, 1947; CWMG, Vol. 87, p. 222)

During daily prayer meetings, Gandhi insisted on incorporating recitations from Islamic scripture (Surah Al-Fatiha) into the interfaith prayer services held within the temple premises.

As documented by writer and contemporary observer Vaidya Gurudatt in his historical and political accounts of Partition and the freedom movement, specifically in works such as Desh Ki Hatya and Vishwasghaat, Hindu refugees and local congregants, many of whom had grieving relatives killed in West Punjab, objected to reading the Quran inside a Hindu temple unless reciprocal recitations of Hindu scriptures like the Gita or Gayatri Mantra were permitted inside mosques, or until Muslim leaders offered a similar gesture.

When people protested, Gandhi sometimes cancelled the prayers entirely or scolded the refugees for their intolerance and lack of spiritual breadth. He insisted on Quranic recitations inside the Hindu temple while asking them not to demand reciprocal Hindu scriptural recitations . To the refugees, this was not universalism; it was a one-sided demand for Hindu accommodation enforced at their place of worship.

2. Noakhali, Calcutta, and Gopal Patha: The Practical Rejection of Non-Resistance

This demand for non-resistance met direct armed rejection during the mass atrocities in Bengal between August 1946 and early 1947.

The Great Calcutta Killings (August 1946)

When the Muslim League provincial government declared August 16, 1946, as “Direct Action Day,” three days of unchecked violence swept Calcutta. Historical estimates place the death toll between 4,000 and 10,000 people killed within 72 hours, with over 15,000 injured and between 100,000 and 200,000 displaced. Mobs engaged in mass stabbings and gang rapes, leaving bodies piled in gutters and thrown into the Hooghly River.

Gandhi’s calls for non-violent appeal had little effect on the ground. The slaughter in Calcutta only stopped when local neighborhood groups organized armed defense units to protect their areas.

One of the prominent organizers of this counter-defense was Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay (known as “Gopal Patha”), who ran a meat shop near Wellington Square. In a 1997 interview with British journalist Andrew Whitehead, Patha recalled:

“It was a very critical time for the country. We thought if the whole area became Pakistan, there would be more torture and repression. So I called all my boys together and said it was time to retaliate. If you come to know that one killing has taken place, you kill 10 others. That was the order to my boys.”

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The Noakhali Genocide & Mass Atrocities (October–November 1946)

Two months later, in October 1946, systematic communal violence erupted in East Bengal’s Noakhali and Tipperah districts. While official colonial records underreported the death toll at 200 to 300, non-official estimates placed Hindu deaths in the thousands. However, the defining characteristic of Noakhali was not merely lethal violence, but a systematic campaign of social and religious erasure:

• Mass Forced Conversions: Estimates of forced conversions ranged from 50,000 to over 75,000 Hindus forced at knifepoint to recite the Kalma and eat beef. Bengal Chief Minister H.S. Suhrawardy later admitted in the Legislative Assembly to at least 9,895 forced conversions in Tipperah alone, while ICS officer Edward Skinner Simpson documented 22,550 forced conversions across the Faridganj, Chandpur, and Hajiganj thānās.

• Atrocities Against Women: Hundreds of Hindu women were subjected to gang rape, forced marriages to their abductors, and abduction. Married Hindu women were stripped of their traditional shankha (conch-shell bangles) and sindoor (vermilion). As historian Dr. Taj-ul-Islam Hashmi noted, far more women were raped, abducted, or forcibly converted than the total number of physical fatalities.

• Arson and Desecration: Over 50,000 Hindus were trapped in mob-controlled areas. Hundreds of family temples and shrines were systematically destroyed, with butchered cattle thrown inside sacred premises to ensure permanent desecration.

Gandhi spent four months walking barefoot through Noakhali’s rural villages on a peace pilgrimage. Yet his core instruction to the terrorized population remained unchanged: stay in your homes, do not flee, and accept martyrdom without harboring hatred toward your attackers.

The Uncompromising Stance on Martyrdom

For Gandhi, absorbing destruction without anger was the ultimate proof of spiritual purity. Speaking at a prayer meeting in New Delhi on April 6, 1947, Gandhi articulated this stance in its most explicit form:

“Hindus should not harbour anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all, we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus, we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives... If we die with a smile, we shall enter into a new life; we shall be ushering in a new India.”

Mahatma Gandhi, Speech at Prayer Meeting, New Delhi (April 6, 1947; CWMG, Vol. 87, pp. 217–219)

When Gandhi arrived in Calcutta later to restore calm and demanded that local leaders surrender their weapons, Gopal Patha refused to meet him twice. Upon finally facing Gandhi, Patha flatly rejected the demand to disarm:

“Gandhi told me to deposit my arms. I said, ‘Gandhi has called me, I have come. But I will not deposit my arms. With these arms I saved the women of my area; I saved the people. I will not surrender them. Where was Gandhiji during the Great Calcutta Killing?’... Even if I’ve used a nail to kill someone, I won’t surrender even that nail.”

This is not an endorsement of Patha’s actions. Rather, Patha’s response represented the practical aspect of the incident. It was a clear rejection of Gandhi’s authority. Faced withshatteting destruction, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing, many people thought that Gandhi’s doctrine of purity may lead to their annihilation.

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Conclusion: The Unbearable Burden

The thread connecting all these accounts, from his ashram experiments in Part 1 to his responses to natural disasters, riots, total war, and Partition in Part 2, is identical: forcing complex material realities into a rigid, personal doctrine of purity.

Whether it was expecting young ashram women to test his celibacy, treating an earthquake as divine punishment for caste sin, asking victims of communal riots to absorb slaughter without anger, forcing Quran recitations in a temple while expecting no reciprocity in mosques, or advising Jews to use non-violence against Nazis, Gandhi demanded that human beings set aside cause and effect, material self-defense, and practical reason.

Critiquing Gandhi does not mean erasing his historic achievements. But there is a fundamental difference between a leader who chooses personal martyrdom for an ideal, and a political philosophy that expects defenseless people to suffer destruction to prove a theory.

When a philosophy demands that victims refrain from physical defense, that refugees absorb slaughter without anger, and that a society replace reason with moral dogma, it ceases to function as a tool for liberation. It becomes an unbearable burden imposed on the very people it claims to save.

P.S. I wrote and researched this piece under a tight deadline because I wanted to publish it before August. If you spot any factual errors, missing context, or better primary sources, I'd genuinely appreciate corrections. I'm open to disagreements and will update the article if needed.

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Primary & Secondary Sources

1. Primary Sources – The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG):

   • Philosophical Continuity on Purity and Politics: CWMG, Vol. 10 & Vol. 21.

   • The Bihar Earthquake: Tirunelveli Speech (24 Jan 1934) & Harijan articles (2 Feb 1934, 16 Feb 1934) (CWMG, Vol. 57, pp. 45–50).

   • The “Bully and Coward” Essay: Young India (29 May 1924): “Hindu-Muslim Tension: Its Cause and Cure” (CWMG, Vol. 24, pp. 141–154).

   • The Rangila Rasul Response: Young India (19 Jun 1924): “Inflammatory Literature” (CWMG, Vol. 24, p. 270).

   • Swami Shraddhanand Assassination Speech: 41st Session of Indian National Congress, Gauhati (26 Dec 1926) (CWMG, Vol. 32, pp. 458–461).

   • Nazi Germany & Kristallnacht: Harijan (26 Nov 1938): “The Jews” (CWMG, Vol. 68, pp. 137–141).

   • Valmiki Mandir Refugee Prayer Meetings: Address at Prayer Meeting, New Delhi (6 Apr 1947) (CWMG, Vol. 87, pp. 222–225).

2. Debates, Open Letters, Contemporary Memoirs & Critical Texts:

   • Rabindranath Tagore, Open Letter on the Bihar Earthquake, published in Harijan (16 Feb 1934).

   • Martin Buber, A Letter to Gandhi (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1939).

   • B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India (Thacker & Co., 1940 / 1946).

   • Vaidya Gurudatt, Bharat Ka Vibhajan / Aapbeeti (Delhi: Kitabghar Prakashan), providing an account of prayer meeting disputes at Valmiki Mandir (1946–1947).

   • Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (Harper & Brothers, 1950): Interview on Jews and Hitler (June 1946).

   • Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, Part 5 (1771).

3. Historical Accounts & Critical Secondary Scholarship:

   • Andrew Whitehead, Audio Interview with Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay (”Gopal Patha”), Calcutta (1997), preserved in the British Library Sound Archive.

   • Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology (London: Verso, 2012).

   • Jad Adams, Gandhi: Naked Ambition (London: Quercus, 2010).

   • Joseph Lelyveld, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).

The Cost of Looking Away

As of today, July 18, 2026, Sonam Wangchuk is lying in Safdarjung Hospital. After 21 days of a gruelling hunger strike, the police forcibly moved him to the hospital. Suddenly, last night, the Delhi Police Commissioner was changed. One man is risking his life. Millions who claim to care are watching. We don’t stand for people; we just stand with the crowd.

Before anyone imposes a political label on me, let me make it clear: this isn’t about the BJP or the CJP. This is about accountability and basic democratic values. His hunger strike demands answers for the NEET exam leaks, student suicides, and pushes for systemic education reforms he believes are essential for the country’s future.

Here is our biggest hypocrisy: we all sit around and complain that the education system is broken. We want it to change. But the second a man actually puts his life on the line to fix it, we refuse to support him.

Whether you agree with his demands or not, Wangchuk believes strongly enough in his cause to risk his own life. Meanwhile, the performative activism of the people right next to him exposes a deeper rot. Take some of the co-protesters on the ground. They have essentially outsourced the physical toll of protesting to a 59-year-old Wangchuk. While he fasted, some of his supporters treated the movement like a hangout, eating meals and enjoying themselves. It reached a point where a frustrated Wangchuk had to call out his own crowd, telling them:

“I’m on a hunger strike, and you’re all sitting here stuffing yourselves with food. At least observe a one-day fast too. If you don’t, you’ll get so fat you’ll be in trouble before I am.”

If the person risking his life has to beg his own supporters to put in effort and maintain the spirit of the protest, something is clearly wrong.

People ask, “Well, what can we even do? I have a job.” I am not asking everyone to become a street activist. Democracy has room for many forms of participation. Read. Educate. Donate. Volunteer. Write. This is the age of the internet. Support independent journalism. Support people you believe are right.

We don’t ask, “Is this right?” We ask, “Which side is winning?”

How Hypocritical We Are

To understand how fake our principles are, look at how we treat free speech. Take comedian Samay Raina. He built a massive fanbase on dark, edgy humor. People loved it. But the moment a free speech joke crossed a line and the internet mob came for his show, what did his own audience do?

They threw him under the bus immediately. (They didn’t cancel him for Ranbir’s joke; they cancelled him because everyone was cancelling him.)

People didn’t suddenly develop a nuanced opinion on comedy. Many simply adopted the opinion that was already dominating their timeline.

The exact same people who were enjoying his content a week prior were suddenly saying, “Yeah, he went too far. He deserves it.” They cursed him just to blend in with the mob. And then? When the heat died down and Samay made his comeback, those exact same individuals were the first in the comments section typing, “GOAT! We always knew it.”

I repeat, we don’t stand for people or principles; we just stand with the crowd.

This has nothing to do with comedy. It has everything to do with conviction. We don’t defend free speech or the artists we consume. We just wait to see which way the digital wind blows so we can ensure we are standing on the winning side.

What we are witnessing isn’t just apathy; it is selective courage. We have no problem screaming over our favourite cricket team or celebrity. We are remarkably brave when we are fighting on behalf of a tribe. But the moment an issue demands individual conviction, the moment there is no crowd to hide behind, we completely disappear.

“It Is What It Is”

This habit of taking the easy way out starts long before we come online; it begins in our personal lives. Imagine a scenario everyone recognizes: someone actively bullies your friend, but you stay friendly with the bully anyway. When your hurt friend finally asks you why, you dodge the confrontation. You say, “You know I don’t like them, but what can I do? Should I fight with them? It’s bad, but it is what it is.”

That phrase, “it is what it is,” is the anthem of a spectator. We choose personal comfort over loyalty. We tolerate bad behavior because challenging it means we might have to face some friction. When you scale up that exact interpersonal cowardice to a national level, you get our collective silence on Wangchuk.

The Content Consumption Trap

I don’t think we are less compassionate than previous generations. I think we are more distracted.

Everything has become content. A protest is content. A war is content. A comedian getting cancelled is content. We consume outrage the same way we consume reels. We react. We comment. We scroll. And somewhere along the way, we forgot that democracy was never meant to be watched.

This is why the “apolitical” loophole is so dangerous. The most common excuse from young people is, “Why are you so political? Just chill.” “Get a life.” But as political philosopher Hannah Arendt used to say, democracy depends on citizens participating in public life rather than retreating into passive spectatorship.

Saying, “I am apolitical,” is like saying, “I don’t believe in gravity.” You can choose to ignore it, but it’s going to pull you down anyway. Calling yourself apolitical is just a fashion choice now. It invites zero criticism. It lets you enjoy the perks of a free country while forcing someone else to do the heavy lifting of protecting it.

The Price of Standing Up

We love to share quotes from historical revolutionaries. Why? Because we celebrate reformers only after history has guaranteed they were right. Supporting them today costs us nothing.

Supporting them while they are alive, however, often costs reputation, friendships, convenience, and comfort. We only celebrate reformers after society no longer has to pay the price of standing with them. We keep asking, “Where is the next Bhagat Singh?”

Maybe the question was never, “Where is the next Bhagat Singh?”

Maybe the real question is, “When the next person asks us to care, will we?”

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A small birthday gift to my favourite writer of all time, Encore ABJ.

I’ve been inspired by Kabir Saab, Jaun Elia, Dinkar, Dhoomil, and many others, but no one’s writing has ever resonated with me the way ABJ’s does. To me, his writing is as much therapy as it is literature. he is the greatest to ever hold the pen, for me.

What better day to try my hand at English poetry than my guru’s birthday?

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I wish I could see the smile
Of that loved one of mine.
I want an ego more fragile;
I’m in an emotional famine,
And it’s eating me alive.
I’m the fish trying to fly;
My limit isn’t the sky.
Where is the eternal divine?
I’m tired of all the trying,
Now I just want to thrive.

I wish you all the best,
I’m tired of this pretence
That it doesn’t affect.
I’m fuckin’ distressed.
Was it all fake?

I shiver from the fever;
Every tear that appeared
Made it all the more clear
That I’ll have to disappear.

It’s the curse of being real,
The wounds that don’t heal.

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Author’s note:
This wasn’t pre-planned. it came spontaneously.
I wrote this almost in one sitting during lectures, somewhere between free verse and rhyme, without overthinking the form or dressing the emotions up too much.

I’ve tried to keep it raw. As ABJ said,

“ना मैं नहीं हूँ कोई शायर,
बातें बनाने की फ़ितरत है दिल में,
पर लिखता हूँ क्योंकि मैं नहीं हूँ कोई कायर।”

The rhymes are still there; I guess that’s the ABJ influence I can’t escape.

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Note: All references and primary sources used in this article are listed at the end.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is remembered worldwide as the apostle of non-violence , Human rights and the Father of the Indian Nation. For decades, his image has been presented to generations of Indians as that of a moral saint, a man of peace, sacrifice, and almost unquestionable virtue. But when you read Gandhi’s own writings and the accounts of those who lived closest to him, a far more disturbing figure emerges.

The irony is that Gandhi himself left us much of the evidence. This is perhaps my favourite quality of Gandhi: He was an open book . He believed in confession and made his private life part of his public philosophy. We do not need rumours to uncover the uglier consequences of his ideas. the things written in those books are devastating enough.

Gandhi’s ethics were most powerful when directed inward. I will fast. I will suffer. I will refuse violence. I will conquer desire.

But the moral grammar changed when the pronoun shifted from “I” to “you.” You will embrace cleaning toilets as a sacred duty. You will surrender your demand for political autonomy to end my fast. You will submit your bodily autonomy to my experiments. You will choose death before sexual violation.

That shift is the central problem with Gandhi’s moral philosophy. His obsession with self-mastery did not remain confined to himself. his personal principles became moral demands imposed upon people with far less power.

The Evolution Alibi and Early Racism

Defenders of Gandhi frequently point out that his views evolved over time. They note that while he harboured racial prejudices into his 40s, he later praised the African American struggle. We can grant this premise. But “evolution” cannot function as a justification to discard every criticism.

Gandhi’s selective outrage over hierarchical domination was visible long before his ashram experiments. In South Africa, his early politics challenged racial humiliation selectively rather than attacking the racial hierarchy itself. His own words expose this mindset clearly:

“Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.” [1]

He also wrote,

“Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilised; the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty, and live almost like animals.”

He aggressively petitioned authorities to separate Indians from Black Africans in prisons [2]. When he first encountered a structural hierarchy, his instinct was not to destroy it, but to ensure his people were not at the bottom.

The Spiritualization of Oppression: Caste and Moral Blackmail

Gandhi understood that the body itself could become political language. His adoption of the loincloth was a consciously adopted symbol, a piece of political theater meant to identify with India’s agricultural masses, even though his personal reality sometimes differed. (As Sarojini Naidu famously said, “It costs a fortune to keep the ‘Mahatma’ in poverty.”) At Poona, he demonstrated that the body could also become political pressure.

This instinct to spiritualize degrading conditions rather than destroy them is most glaring in his defense of the caste system. Gandhi personally cleaned latrines and demanded upper-caste Indians confront the work they despised, but his answer to degrading labor was to universalize and embrace it.

B.R. Ambedkar’s answer was to reform the social structure that forced one community to inherit that degradation. In his 1936 article, The Ideal Bhangi,

Gandhi argued that a scavenger should do his work “not as a profession, but as a calling from God,” explicitly stating the ideal Dalit “would not dream of amassing wealth out of it.”

He elaborated on this servitude with chilling specificity, writing, “My ideal Bhangi would know the quality of night-soil and urine.” In Gandhi’s hierarchy, the “Brahmin’s duty is to look after the sanitation of the soul, the Bhangi’s that of the body of society” [3].

Gandhi offered moral dignity where Ambedkar demanded structural emancipation.

When Ambedkar secured separate electorates for the Depressed Classes under the Communal Award, Gandhi opposed them and began a fast unto death. The resulting Poona Pact replaced separate electorates with reserved seats in joint electorates. The number of reserved seats increased, but Ambedkar’s deeper demand for an independent Dalit political electorate was lost.

Here, Gandhi played a political masterstroke that guaranteed his victory: I will hurt my body, but the political cost of my death will fall upon you. Gandhi did not place a knife at Ambedkar’s throat; he placed his own life on the negotiating table. But when the man threatening to die is the Mahatma, surrounded by enormous public devotion, the distinction between moral witness and moral blackmail becomes dangerously thin.

The Hypocrisy of the Body: Diet, Medicine, and Mortality

“Gandhi's obsession with bodily purity extended to his bizarre dietary experiments too.” Biographer Ved Mehta notes that “constipation was the commonest complaint in the ashram.” Gandhi became intensely preoccupied with the bowel movements of his followers, routinely asking his female attendants, “Did you have a good bowel movement this morning, sisters?” Enemas, castor oil, mud treatments, and dietary restrictions became the tools through which Gandhi exercised extraordinary medical and moral authority over his dependents [4].

This would be merely eccentric if it remained confined to his own body. But Gandhi preached strict physical discipline and “nature cures” while applying this bodily philosophy inconsistently when it met mortality.

This tension is most tragic in the death of his wife, Kasturba. In early 1944, the 74-year-old was severely ill with bronchial pneumonia in British custody. Her son desperately secured a supply of the newly available antibiotic penicillin. Gandhi objected to the proposed injections and argued with his son, invoking God’s will and questioning the value of the medicine [5].

Whether penicillin could have saved Kasturba at that advanced stage is medically uncertain. The more revealing contradiction lies elsewhere. Gandhi’s suspicion of modern medicine was never absolute when his own body was at stake. He had submitted to surgery for appendicitis in 1924 and taken quinine for malaria.

The issue is not that Gandhi “killed” Kasturba. It is that the bodily philosophy he preached with such moral certainty, including dietary restriction, nature cure, faith, and relentless bodily discipline, was applied inconsistently even within his own family.

The Ashram Laboratory: Purity and Power

The darkest manifestation of Gandhi’s philosophy occurred in his ashram, which morphed into a highly intrusive authority over the bodies, preferences, and marriages of his followers.

His obsession with purity frequently exerted punishments on others. At the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa,

when a young man engaged in “improper behavior” toward two girls, Gandhi’s response was to devise a “penance” that would be physically marked on the girls themselves. He persuaded them to surrender their long hair so that, in his own words, the mark might “sterilize the sinner’s eye” [6].

Whatever Gandhi believed he was teaching, the moral logic was grotesque: a man’s sexual misconduct became a reason to alter the bodies of the female victims.

Gandhi’s celibate ideal also entered the marriages of his followers. Prabhavati Devi adopted a vow of brahmacharya while living within Gandhi’s ashram. Gandhi actively managed this arrangement, dictating the terms of her celibacy despite the profound marital strain and anguish it caused her husband, socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan [7]. Gandhi did not merely regulate his own sexuality; his conception of purity became a moral force inside the intimate lives of other couples.

Yet, while praising abstinence,

None of this proves clandestine intercourse. The ethical problem is stranger: Gandhi repeatedly recruited the intimate presence and bodies of younger women into experiments designed to measure his own conquest of desire.

Even granting his defenders their best premises, the experiment remains radically Gandhi-centric. His celibacy. His test. His spiritual development. The bodies of younger, dependent women were reduced to the instruments of his laboratory.

Rape Apologism and “Die Before Dishonour”

Gandhi’s inability to recognize material coercion reached its horrific peak in his advice to women facing sexual violence. During the widespread riots of 1946, he placed the burden of resistance on the victims.

He controversially claimed that a woman could only be violated if she succumbed to fear:

“I have always held that it is physically impossible to violate a woman against her will. The outrage takes place only when she gives way to fear or does not realize her moral strength.” (Harijan, September 1, 1940) [9]

He doubled down on this belief, arguing that a rapist would simply stop if the victim was spiritually pure enough:

“It is my firm conviction that a fearless woman, who knows that her purity is her best shield can never be dishonoured. However beastly the man, he will bow in shame before the flame of her dazzling purity.”

When physical violence was unavoidable, his advice was to “die before dishonour.” In his prayer speeches and writings, he repeatedly instructed women to kill themselves rather than submit:

“When a woman is assaulted... Her primary duty is self-protection. She is at liberty to employ every method or means... God has given her nails and teeth. She must use them with all her strength and, if need be, die in the effort.” (Harijan, March 1942)

He made it clear that self-destruction was the only acceptable choice:

“When it is a question of choice between killing oneself or the assailant, I have no doubt in my mind that the first should be the choice... A woman would most certainly take her own life rather than surrender. In other words, surrender has no room in my plan of life.” (Harijan, February 1947)

He even discussed the logistics of this with doctors, initially suggesting that women could end their lives by biting their tongues or choking, and later advising that women facing abduction or assault should carry poison to consume before being violated.

There is no polite language necessary here: this is rape-apologist reasoning. By insisting that violation becomes possible only when a woman “gives way to fear,” Gandhi relocated moral responsibility from the physical violence of the rapist to the spiritual resolve of the victim. His language transformed rape from an act imposed by an aggressor into a moral test the victim could supposedly fail.

Gandhi’s defenders may reply that he often subjected himself to the same severe moral disciplines he preached to others. He fasted, he went to prison, and he practiced celibacy. But this misses the asymmetry which is the central problem. The right to choose suffering for oneself does not automatically confer the moral authority to prescribe suffering to someone with less power.

Gandhi’s radical belief in individual moral agency is what made him a huge historical figure. But when imposed on those with less power, such as a political rival, a dying wife, a teenage grandniece, or a woman facing a mob, that same philosophy became a weapon of profound cruelty.

If this article made you look at Gandhi from a different perspective, consider sharing it with others. History deserves to be questioned as much as it deserves to be remembered.

Note : Part-2 is out now

https://open.substack.com/pub/kavya2k6/p/did-gandhi-ask-too-much-of-his-victims?r=8i0ev2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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References & Primary Sources

[1] The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), Vol. 1, p. 364 (Open Letter, Dec 1894).

[2] CWMG, Vol. 4, p. 193.

[3] Gandhi, M.K. “The Ideal Bhangi,” Harijan, November 28, 1936.

[4] Ved Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles (1977), p. 213.

[5] For historical accounts of the penicillin controversy and Gandhi’s earlier acceptance of surgery, see Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World (2018), pp. 743-745, and Jad Adams, Gandhi: Naked Ambition (2010).

[6] CWMG, Vol. 96, p. 189.

[7] CWMG, Vol. 79, p. 213.

[8] For explicit admissions of sharing a bed with Manu, see CWMG, Vol. 94, p. 333 (Letter to Parasram, Dec 30, 1946). For accounts of ashram tensions, nude bathing, and the objections of Sardar Patel and Devdas Gandhi, see Ved Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles (1977), pp. 195-201; Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi (1953), p. 117; and Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel: A Life (1990).

[9] Quotes compiled from Gandhi’s writings in Harijan (1940, 1942, 1947) and My Non-violence (Compiled speeches, 1946).

We romanticize the criminal underworld. Pop culture loves the “gang gang” myth, the idea that even among thieves, there is a code of honor, a brotherhood, and unshakable loyalty.

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight shatters this illusion in its opening five minutes.

During a bank heist, a crew of masked robbers systematically murder each other the second their individual tasks are complete. But the true horror of the scene isn’t just the betrayal; it is their absolute blindness. Even as they watch their partners get gunned down one by one, they refuse to learn the lesson. They are so consumed by the promise of a larger share that they ignore the obvious pattern unfolding right in front of them. Every single robber thinks they are the apex predator, right up until the moment they get shot in the back.

There is no brotherhood. There is only primal greed. The Joker’s genius isn’t just that he planned the heist; he weaponized their absolute predictability. He knew that the moment money was involved, all loyalty would evaporate.

The bank manager, bleeding on the floor, recognizes this shift. He represents the “old guard” of Gotham’s underworld , a system built on transactions, territory, and a twisted sense of professional courtesy. He looks at the Joker and spits, “Criminals in this town used to believe in things. Honor. Respect. What do you believe in, huh?”

The Joker pulls off his mask. “I believe whatever doesn’t kill you, simply makes you... stranger.”

With that single line, he mocks the traditional villain archetype. He doesn’t want money. He doesn’t want respect. He is introducing Gotham to a new era of criminality, one where the polite rules of civilization no longer apply.

The villain Archetype: why the joker is different

To understand why the Joker remains uniquely terrifying, we have to first understand what he isn’t.

Most great villains, no matter how ruthless, still operate within a framework we recognize. Take Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. Bateman is a prisoner of the very society he despises. His murders emerge from obsessive status anxiety. Every act of violence is rooted in a desperate desire to belong to a world that constantly reminds him he isn’t enough.

The Joker exists at the opposite extreme. When he finally gains access to a mountain of cash, he doesn’t spend it or protect it , he burns it. By reducing billions of dollars to ash, the Joker declares that he refuses to participate in the game everyone else is playing.

Tyler Durden from Fight Club shares part of this rebellion. He rejects consumerism and the empty routines of modern life. But Tyler’s violence is still directed towards a destination. He wants to tear civilization down so that something stronger can emerge in its place.

The Joker has no such ambition. He offers no manifesto and no better world waiting beyond the ashes. He destroys because he wants to expose that the existing world was never as stable as people imagined.

Tyler Durden is a revolutionary. Patrick Bateman is a narcissist. The Joker is an experiment.

Throughout The Dark Knight, he isn’t trying to conquer Gotham. He is conducting a series of psychological tests. Every explosion and every hostage situation is designed to answer a single question: How much pressure does it take before ordinary people abandon the principles they claim to believe in?

The Arrogance of Conventional Power

When confronted with the Joker, Bruce Wayne makes a fatal assumption.

“Criminals aren’t complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he’s after.”

Batman believes every criminal is ultimately rational. Once you understand what they value : money, power, revenge, or survival , you can predict what they’ll do next. Gotham’s mob bosses make the exact same calculation. Cornered by Batman and Harvey Dent, they hire the Joker as if he were just another mercenary, believing chaos itself can be bought, controlled, and pointed toward a target. Instead, they unleash something they fundamentally fail to understand.

Alfred recognizes the danger long before Bruce does, recalling a story of a bandit in Burma who stole priceless rubies only to throw them away in the jungle.

“Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with.”

Nowhere is this clearer than in the interrogation room. Batman walks in believing the Joker is simply another criminal. Like every interrogation before it, he assumes the familiar script will work. Gordon plays the good cop. Batman becomes the bad cop. Information is extracted through fear, pressure, and physical intimidation because every criminal ultimately fears losing something.

The Joker laughs.

“You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all your strength.”

In that moment, the entire strategy collapses. Good cop. Bad cop. Violence. Bargaining. None of it matters against someone who has already abandoned the instinct for self-preservation. For perhaps the first time in his career, Batman realizes that strength is useless against an opponent who refuses to play by the rules that make strength meaningful.

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The Trial of Humanity

If the Joker truly believed that life was nothing more than chaos, his actions would be remarkably simple. He could blow up buildings and leave Gotham to pick up the pieces. Instead, he spends the entire film constructing elaborate moral experiments.

Why? The answer lies in one of his most peculiar habits. Every time someone asks about his scars, he tells a different story.

Most films use a villain’s backstory to make them understandable. Nolan deliberately denies us a definitive origin because the details don’t matter. The Joker changes them depending on who he wants to manipulate. This deception reveals his true psychological motivation.

The Joker doesn’t simply want to destroy Gotham.

He wants Gotham to agree with him.

“I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.”

That may be the most revealing line in the entire film.

The line sounds arrogant on the surface, but it reveals something much deeper. The Joker isn’t claiming to be different from everyone else. He’s claiming to be earlier. In his mind, everyone eventually arrives where he already is. The only difference is how much suffering it takes to get there.

“I’m not different from everyone else. I simply reached the truth before they did.”

This is where the Joker becomes psychologically fascinating. Rather than confronting the possibility that he freely chose violence, he projects his own darkness onto everyone around him. If Batman kills, then Batman was always like him. If Harvey abandons justice, then justice was always an illusion. If ordinary citizens choose murder to save themselves, then morality was never real in the first place.

His schemes are not random acts of terror. They are carefully designed experiments built to prove a verdict he has already reached. Every explosion is another exhibit.

Every broken person is another witness. Every impossible choice is another piece of evidence presented before the jury. The Joker isn’t searching for the truth. He is trying to force reality to confirm his own. Because if everyone eventually becomes a monster when the stakes are high enough, then perhaps he never really had a choice either.

Perhaps he isn’t uniquely broken. rather he is simply the first person willing to admit what everyone else eventually becomes.

That is the lie he desperately wants Batman and Gotham to believe.

The Spectrum of Chaos: Chance vs. True Anarchy

The tragedy of the film is that the Joker almost wins his case. He successfully breaks Gotham’s “White Knight,” Harvey Dent.

When Dent loses everything, he realizes the justice system is rigged. Good people die, and corrupt people thrive. To cope with this meaningless tragedy, Dent becomes Two-Face. He abandons the law and surrenders his morality to the 50/50 probability of a coin toss.

“The world is cruel. And the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.”

Thanos reaches a remarkably similar conclusion on a cosmic scale. He wipes out half of all life at random and calls it fairness. Like Dent, he hides behind probability to escape the burden of moral judgment.

The Joker rejects even this logic. Dent and Thanos replace one system with another—a mathematical one. The Joker wants to burn the very idea of systems to the ground.

True anarchy has no odds, no percentages, and no safety nets. The Joker proves that the ultimate terror isn’t a 50/50 coin flip; it is the realization that the coin never mattered in the first place.

In physics, entropy describes the tendency of systems to move toward disorder. It does not discriminate between palaces and prisons, kings and beggars. Everything eventually decays. The Joker views civilization through a similar lens. Laws, institutions, reputations, and even morality are temporary structures resisting an inevitable collapse. His mission is not merely to create disorder, but to reveal how little pressure it takes before order begins to dissolve.

Gazing Into the Abyss

The bank robbery was the Joker’s first experiment. The ferries are his last. Everything in between was data.

He rigs two ferries with explosives , one carrying civilians and the other convicts. he tells them they must blow the other up to survive. He has presented his final, undeniable exhibit to the jury. He expects that when survival is truly on the line,

these “civilized people” will eat each other.

But in the face of certain death, neither boat pushes the button. On the convict boat, a menacing criminal takes the detonator from the warden and simply throws it out the window.

The Joker’s nihilism shatters against human empathy.

as Nietzsche said :

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

The Joker’s final experiment isn’t designed to kill Gotham.

It’s designed to justify himself.

If Batman kills him, if the ferries explode, if Harvey’s corruption becomes universal, then the Joker’s entire life is vindicated. He wasn’t uniquely broken. He was simply the first person to admit what everyone else truly is.

But Gotham refuses. Batman refuses. The prisoners refuse.

In the end, the Joker isn’t defeated by superior strength or intelligence. He is defeated by the one possibility he could never allow himself to believe:

That suffering does not inevitably turn people into monsters.

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For the first time, his experiment fails. The evidence refuses to support his hypothesis. Humanity, even in its darkest hour, chooses compassion over survival. Batman willingly takes the blame for Dent’s crimes. He becomes the hunted villain, shouldering pain, hatred, and isolation so Gotham can continue believing in something greater than itself.

The Joker believed that suffering inevitably strips people of their principles. Batman proves the opposite. Suffering does not determine character. It reveals it.

In the film’s final image, the Joker hangs upside down above the city he tried to corrupt. His perspective is literally inverted. He spent the entire film trying to prove that morality was a performance waiting to collapse. Gotham proved otherwise.

The greatest flaw in the Joker’s philosophy wasn’t that he underestimated Batman’s strength. It was that he underestimated humanity’s capacity to choose hope even when despair seemed inevitable.

Perhaps that is why the Joker remains one of cinema’s greatest villains , not because he understood chaos better than anyone else, but because he asked a question about human nature that still refuses to leave us.

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Somewhere between mountain trails and those pages, I ended up writing a shayari of my own. It’s been a while since I returned to poetry, and it still feels like home.

I also experimented with a little more Urdu than I usually do. I hope you enjoy reading it.

P.S. My internship kept me busier than expected, so thank you for sticking around.

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Having done my entire schooling in my native language (Gujarati), I’ve noticed a funny dynamic. I don’t say this with any elitism or self-centered pompousness, but my college peers are often shocked when they find out about my vernacular background. Even the ICSE board students occasionally appreciate my command over the language and my lexicon.

Meanwhile, it is a quiet source of amusement watching kids who spent 12 years in elite English-medium schools sweat over whether to use “affect” or “effect.”

Previously, I used to think it was just a coincidence that I’ve always liked reading, whether it was Hindi, Sanskrit, or anything else. But looking back, it wasn’t an accident. I remember the days when I struggled with words like subjectivity, evolution, perception, bias, and conspiracy.

And now? I casually drop words like hegemony, kakistocracy, subjugate, pragmatic, and aversion.

So, how did I bridge the gap? I took a few non-traditional steps that changed everything.

1. The YouTube Rabbit Hole

I cannot emphasize enough how important YouTube was for my generation. As Gen Z, we didn’t have Instagram or Netflix in our early adolescence; we binged YouTube. If you are a curious person, it is an absolute goldmine.

My early internet days were a signature 2005–2007 Gen-Z experience. I was fascinated by history, philosophy, astronomy, and of course, conspiracy theories. I went deep into Greek history, the Big Bang, relativity, Jordan Peterson, Area 51, the Bermuda Triangle, and of course, The Illuminati.

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To consume this content—especially from Western creators—I had to adapt. They were bound to use words like bias, subjective, multiverse, fascist, narcissist, or hypocrite.

When I encountered a word like subjective in every other video, I was practically forced to search for its meaning. That is how familiarity is built. Nobody builds a vocabulary by memorizing a dictionary. You learn because you are desperately trying to decode what the guy on the screen is saying.

2. Context Clues in Hip-Hop

Another massive catalyst was a love for music. When I discovered artists like Billie Eilish, Juice WRLD, and Eminem, I wasn’t there just for the production and melody; I wanted to understand the lyrical storytelling.

Take a song like Lucid Dreams. To actually understand the track, you have to go search for what lucid means. Curiosity drags your vocabulary forward. When I listened to Godzilla, it was nothing less than an English literary fest for me. I hadn’t watched any zombie movies until then, so I didn’t know what an apocalypse was. I learned about ADHD and OCD from people like Slim Shady and NF.

I’m not saying you should use music solely as a means to learn English, but sometimes you will feel the need to peel back the metaphor used by an artist to convey a feeling. When Elley Duhé sings, “I captivate, you’re hypnotized,” you get the sudden urge to know exactly what captivate means.

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3. Read Anything

People don’t want to accept it, but reading is non-negotiable. However, here is the secret: it doesn’t matter what you read. Sports, fashion, rom-coms, sci-fi, comic books—it’s all valid. You do not need to read heavy literature or dense editorials to learn English.

But there is one sabotaging genre you should avoid at all costs: Self-Help. It is a cliche, a canon event in every reader’s life, and ultimately, it’s a failed experiment. Much like communism, you don’t get shit out of it. Skip it. Read a comic book instead.

4. Find Your Linguistic Idol

For me, George Carlin was a seismic event. His articulation skills and clarity of thought had an immense impact on me. He didn’t just speak English; he dissected it.

Carlin pointed out how society uses “soft language” to hide from reality. Through his stand-up, I learned that people don’t live in slums anymore; they live in economically disadvantaged occupied substandard housing. People aren’t broke; they have negative cash flow. He highlighted how the brutal reality of shell shock from the World Wars was sanitized into post-traumatic stress disorder. Suddenly, no one is deaf; they are hearing impaired. No one is dumb; they are minimally exceptional—I mean, how would you like to be told that your child is minimally exceptional?

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Everyone needs someone whose language feels intriguing—someone who makes

you dream of speaking like them one day. In Hindi, many people get inspired by the flow of Saurabh Dwivedi or Vikas Divyakirti. The way their language flows feels refreshing and astonishing. You can use these figures as motivation. But when you improve, stay humble. Don’t look down upon others, and drop the elitism. As Isaac Newton famously said:

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

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5. The Subtitle Strategy

Finally, movies and anime. It’s a widespread phenomenon for people to learn English by watching shows with subtitles, and honestly, it’s incredibly effective. When you watch a show like Suits and encounter a word like jeopardize five times in one episode, it sticks with you.

The Takeaway

At the end of the day, English isn’t a velvet-roped VIP section guarded by people who know the difference between “affect” and “effect.” It is basically open-source code. You don’t need a fancy English-medium background to build a vast lexicon. You just need cheap internet, a refusal to be bored, and the curiosity to reverse-engineer the words standing between you and a damn good story.

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For anyone who has encountered existentialist or absurdist philosophy, a certain question inevitably emerges: Is there any place for morality in a meaningless universe? Critics often argue that such philosophies become an easy escape route, a way to bypass the gritty complexities of real life. If existence has no inherent meaning, then what prevents a person from becoming indifferent, selfish, or even cruel?

While this criticism is frequently directed toward existentialist thinkers in general, it becomes especially common in discussions surrounding Albert Camus. His early works, particularly The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, often appear to present a world stripped of moral certainty and social convention. To many readers, Camus seems dangerously close to nihilism.

But this interpretation is incomplete.

The Myth of the Cold Absurdist

The misunderstanding usually begins with Meursault, the protagonist of The Stranger. The novel opens with the now-famous line:

“Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”

For many readers, this line immediately establishes a world devoid of empathy. Meursault does not grieve conventionally after his mother’s death. He smokes beside her coffin, refuses to perform socially expected displays of sorrow, and casually spends time with Marie shortly afterward. As the novel progresses, he commits a seemingly arbitrary murder on a beach and shows little visible remorse afterward.

Understandably, many readers conclude that Camus is promoting emotional detachment and moral indifference.

However, Meursault is not necessarily presented as a moral ideal. Rather, he functions as a figure through whom Camus exposes society’s obsession with emotional conformity. During Meursault’s trial, the court appears more disturbed by his behavior at his mother’s funeral than by the murder itself. His crime becomes symbolic not only because he killed a man, but because he refused to participate in society’s expected rituals of meaning and sentimentality.

Even the murder itself feels disturbingly arbitrary, almost devoid of rational justification. The blinding sun, the oppressive heat, and the overwhelming sensory environment create an atmosphere where human actions begin to feel absurdly disconnected from coherent moral narratives. Camus is not glorifying violence; he is illustrating the unsettling irrationality that often underlies existence itself.

The Sisyphus Trap and the Problem of Resignation

This misunderstanding deepens when some critics interpret The Myth of Sisyphus as a philosophy of passive resignation. In this reading, Camus’s absurd hero begins to resemble a distorted form of Stoic detachment, where suffering is endured rather than resisted. Critics argue that such an interpretation can unintentionally favor oppression.

They often imagine a hypothetical scenario: a slave is given an impossible task by a tyrant with the false promise of eventual freedom. A flawed reading of Sisyphus might suggest that instead of resisting the oppressor, the slave should simply embrace the struggle internally and remain psychologically content despite the injustice. In this interpretation, rebellion becomes purely mental while the oppressive structure itself remains untouched.

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However, this criticism largely emerges from reading Camus’s earlier works in isolation. While The Myth of Sisyphus emphasizes personal confrontation with the absurd, Camus’s later writings move far beyond individual endurance toward ethical rebellion and collective solidarity.

This distinction is crucial. Unlike the Stoics, who believed the universe ultimately possessed a rational order, Camus viewed existence as fundamentally indifferent. Yet rather than collapsing into nihilism, he argued that this very indifference demands revolt.

The Evolution of Rebellion

Camus’s later works, especially The Plague and The Rebel, represent a major philosophical evolution. Here, Camus attempts to construct what might be called an ethics of limits. Rather than offering absolute commandments or religious morality, he argues that rebellion itself must recognize boundaries.

Camus lived through the brutal realities of the Second World War, fascism, the French Resistance, and widespread political violence. These experiences profoundly shaped his thinking. He openly condemned totalitarianism, state tyranny, and capital punishment. In The Rebel, he criticizes political ideologies that justify murder in the name of utopia, revolution, or historical destiny.

For Camus, rebellion is not blind destruction. The true rebel says no to injustice while simultaneously refusing to become an oppressor himself. This is what separates rebellion from nihilism. Nihilism destroys without limits; rebellion recognizes that some lines should never be crossed.

At this stage in his philosophy, Camus shifts from the isolated absurd individual toward the idea of shared human solidarity. Suffering itself becomes the foundation for ethical responsibility.

The Plague and Common Decency

This evolution reaches its clearest expression in The Plague, set in the quarantined Algerian city of Oran. Through characters such as Dr. Bernard Rieux, Jean Tarrou, and Father Paneloux, Camus explores how morality can exist even in a silent and indifferent universe.

Initially, Father Paneloux interprets the plague as divine punishment for the city’s sins. However, as the suffering intensifies, abstract theology begins to collapse under the weight of human pain, especially during the horrific death of a child.

In contrast, Dr. Rieux refuses to justify suffering through metaphysical explanations. He continues treating the sick not because he expects divine reward or eternal meaning, but because human suffering itself demands resistance. For Rieux, helping others is not heroism; it is simply “common decency.”

This idea forms the core of Camus’s mature philosophy.

Morality does not require heaven, divine commandments, or universal meaning. Human solidarity emerges from the recognition that all people suffer under the same indifferent conditions of existence.

Camus replaces transcendent morality with human responsibility.

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The Verdict

This is the ultimate rebuttal to the claim that absurdism lacks morality. Camus recognized that the universe might be silent and irrational, but human beings do not have to be. The absurd is not an excuse for indifference.

Far from promoting passive nihilism, Camus demands something far more difficult: to confront a meaningless universe without surrendering either to despair or cruelty.

In the absence of absolute meaning, decency itself becomes an act of rebellion.

And perhaps that is what makes Camus enduringly relevant. He forces us to ask whether human beings can remain compassionate even when the universe offers no reward for doing so.

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