In 1945, soon after the defeat of Germany and the end of World War II, Karl Jaspers delivered a series of profound and moving lectures on ‘The Question of German Guilt’.1 These were published in German as Die Schuldfrage in 1947, a few months before Gandhi’s assassination, and in a widely discussed English translation in 1948 soon after. Jaspers begins by acknowledging that ‘The temptation to evade this question is obvious; we live in distress – large parts of our population are in so great, such acute distress that they seem to have become insensitive to such discussions’ (Jaspers 1948; 2000: 21). Perhaps, a vast number of Indians also felt a similar sense of distress and apathy after the traumas, bloodletting, and displacement of the Partition. Under the circumstances, it would not be difficult to understand the evasion, if not repression, of their guilt not only in the enormous carnage and violence of Partition but also in the murder of the Mahatma which was somehow so intrinsically linked to this subcontinental tragedy. Though the circumstances were so different, we may have much to learn from Jasper’s exploration of German guilt over the atrocities against the Jews and the great bloodbath of the war.
Jaspers distinguishes four types and levels of guilt. First, there is criminal guilt, which concerns actual crimes and cognizable offences punishable under existing laws and juridical processes. Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were tried, sentenced and hanged to death under this process. Several of their accomplices also went to jail after being convicted; some, like Savarkar, who were also charged with criminal conspiracy, were acquitted for want of evidence. The re-examination of the case by Justice Kapur resulted in the unearthing of many more links and widened the circle of blame for Gandhi’s murder, but did not result in any fresh convictions. To all intents and purposes, this brief account more or less spells out the extent of the criminal guilt in Gandhi’s murder. But if we consider Gandhi’s murder as intimately tied to the logic of the Partition and the two nation theory, to the civil war between Hindus and Muslims, the internecine strife between Indians themselves, then the criminal guilt of the thousands, even hundreds of thousands, who committed murder, rape, arson, loot, pillage, destruction of public property, and all kinds of other crimes cannot be so easily exonerated or forgotten. That the law and order machinery had failed or that during mass rioting and mob violence the rule of law was defunct is no excuse for their culpability. Their criminal acts would never be tried, nor would they be brought to justice, but that is no reason to absolve them of their crimes. Their criminal guilt remains and, given the failure of the law to persecute them, turns into moral and metaphysical guilt.
The second category of guilt according to Jaspers is political guilt. Its circumference, as far as India is concerned, is much wider. It extends not only to those responsible for Gandhi’s security or for law and order in general, but the newly installed government of India itself, at whose helm were Gandhi’s own closest disciples, followers and associates. But political guilt, according to Jaspers, extends to all citizens of a state because they are responsible for the actions of the state: ‘Everybody is coresponsible for the way he is governed’ (1948; 2000: 3). Even if we are ‘alienated from politics’ (ibid.: 29) or apathetic to political issues, we are still responsible. That is because political inactivity or non-participation in politics cannot save us either from political responsibility or from guilt: ‘Politically everyone acts in the modern state, at least by voting, or failing to vote, in elections. The sense of political liability lets no man dodge’ (ibid.: 56). The only way to counteract political guilt is by supporting the right causes and by refusing to collaborate with evil regimes. That is because ‘Every human being is fated to be enmeshed in the power relations he lives by’; we must therefore join in the ‘struggle for power for the sake of serving the right’ (Jaspers 1948; 2000: 28). Failure to do so ‘creates basic political guilt and moral guilt at the same time’ (ibid.).
Thus we see how easily political guilt may also slide into moral guilt of some sort. When it comes to events leading to the Partition of India, political guilt must squarely rest on the shoulders not only of those who committed the criminal acts mentioned above but those who directed them and used them to create nations. The application of rioting, killing, raping, looting and so on to achieve political ends taints so many regimes, not the least of which is Pakistan, clearly one of the most violent states in the region. At its inception, there was violence with many ghastly incidents such as ‘Direct Action Day’, the Calcutta killings, the invasion of Kashmir by mercenaries and so on; the three wars fought with India, one of which culminated in the creation of Bangladesh after the failure of its genocidal oppression, and the continuing acts of terror against India may all be given as examples. But other states in the region including India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, who also have histories of violent civil strife, cannot be spared either. Each of these states has used the state and non-state actors to perpetrate acts of violence for political ends.
As if anticipating such possibilities, Gandhi clearly warned against the creation of belligerent states in Hind Swaraj (1909). Acts of terror in the service of freedom from imperial rule, according to him, were sure to result in a state which would be violent and warlike itself. The citizens of all such aggressive states, whether victorious or defeated, must share in their political guilt. No wonder, the citizens of the United States, one of the most aggressive and warlike states in our world, cannot avoid their share of political guilt in its acts. Political guilt must also accrue from the structural violence and oppression within states, those systems of exploitation, inequality and discrimination that continue to best the poor and the dispossessed in our very midst. We are all guilty for the ill-treatment of the wretched of the earth, as Gandhi said to us over and over again. To some, following Jaspers, this may be an example of moral, rather than political guilt: ‘Blindness for the misfortune of others, lack of imagination of the heart, inner indifference toward the witnessed evil – that is moral guilt’ (Jaspers 1948; 2000: 64). To Gandhi political guilt was no different from moral guilt, because politics to him was nothing but a form of morality.
Moral guilt is the third kind that Jaspers identifies. Its basis is simple, even self-evident: ‘I, who cannot act otherwise than as an individual, am morally responsible for all my deeds’ (ibid.: 25). Therefore, even if my crimes escape detection or criminal proceedings, even if I am somehow not politically responsible for them, I cannot escape moral responsibility. There may, of course, be mitigating circumstances, but ‘every deed remains subject to moral judgment’ (ibid.: 26). However, Jaspers is quick to point out that ‘Morally man can condemn only himself, not another’ (ibid.: 33). This is because we cannot sit in judgement on others. Moral guilt, unlike criminal or political guilt, is a matter of one’s own conscience. That is why Jaspers considers it ‘nonsensical’ to
charge a whole people with a crime. The criminal is always only an individual. It is nonsensical, too, to lay moral guilt to a people as a whole. There is no such thing as a national character extending to every single member of a nation. … Morally one can judge the individual only, never a group.
(Ibid.: 34)
Ideas of ‘collective guilt’ are thus essentially political to Jaspers, not moral. Indeed he says, ‘To pronounce a group criminally, morally or metaphysically guilty is an error akin to the laziness and arrogance of average, uncritical thinking’ (Jaspers 1948; 2000: 36). It was, after all the ascription of collective guilt to Jews that became the precondition for their slaughter; to brand all Germans guilty, as posters put up during the Allied occupation did, was also not sustainable. Indeed, it was to take the issue of German guilt head-on that Jaspers gave these lectures in the first place. That is why, though he admitted that ‘Guilt … is necessarily collective as the political liability of nationals’, he was quick to clarify that it was collective ‘not in the same sense as moral and metaphysical, and never as criminal guilt’ (ibid.: 55–56).
To avoid a purely solipsistic and isolated notion of moral guilt, however, Jaspers also provides for an engagement with others ‘in the solidarity of charitable struggle’ (ibid.: 27). It is only when one makes ‘common cause’, in an arena of closeness with other actors that one might conduct the examination of moral guilt outside one’s own solitary or personal space: ‘moral guilt can truthfully be discussed only in a loving struggle between men who maintain solidarity among themselves’ (ibid.). Though the jurisdiction for moral guilt rests with my own individual conscience, I can carry the dialogue forward ‘in communication with my friends and intimates who are lovingly concerned about my soul’ (ibid.: 26). It is in this sense that one engages one’s own countrymen and women in an exploration of the death of the Father of the Nation because it is a matter that concerns us all, taking us to the very heart of how we became a nation. As Jaspers puts it, ‘we are free to talk with one another, insofar as we are in communication, and morally to help each other achieve clarity’ (ibid.: 57). This is what we are attempting here by exploring such a topic together.
However, there are times when we may not be involved criminally, politically, or even morally, but we feel metaphysically guilty. If the crime is as great as the Holocaust, then even the fact ‘That I live after such a thing has happened weighs upon me as indelible guilt’ (Jaspers 1948; 2000: 26). That we are comfortable, secure, and well-fed while others are starving, homeless, or destitute may also fill us with a metaphysical guilt. For metaphysical guilt, Jaspers says, ‘Jurisdiction rests with God alone’ (ibid.). Indeed, ‘If human beings were able to free themselves from metaphysical guilt, they would be angels, and all the other three concepts of guilt would become immaterial’ (ibid.: 27). It is in this fourth category of metaphysical guilt that Jaspers comes closest to traditional Christian theology, with its notion of original sin. By being human and participating in the collective human condition, with all its flaws and horrors, we are all ‘guilty’ metaphysically.
But what of those who don’t care, whose hearts are hardened? As Jaspers says, ‘tens of thousands, are beyond moral guilt for as long as they do not feel it. They seem incapable of repentance and change’ (ibid.: 57). Citing Hitler and his closest followers as examples, Jaspers concedes, ‘They are what they are. Force alone can deal with such men who live by force alone’ (ibid.). This is a revealing insight about the way the cosmic law seems to operate: those who live by the sword die by the sword. Jaspers’ remarks, or indeed explorations such as these on the meaning of Gandhi’s death, cannot be directed at such men, though Gandhi would say that no man has lost his humanity to such an extent as to be impervious to the force of non-violence or love. Yet, more ordinarily, ‘moral guilt’ for Jaspers ‘exists for all those who give room to conscience and repentance. The morally guilty are those who are capable of penance’ (ibid.: 57).
That is why we must ask to what extent we ourselves condone or even approve of those who caused Gandhi’s assassination. Such a question will reveal that part of us where the killer has already made his home. All those who had suffered the horrors of the Partition and wanted retribution, all those who believed that Gandhi was a nuisance, the enemy of Hindus, whose ideas had made us impotent, incapable of retaliation, therefore sitting ducks to militaristic Muslims, all those who wished secretly that the old man was better dead than alive, all such Indians surely have cause for introspection. Our guilt, despite its repression, will not leave us so easily. ‘Only the forgetful can deceive themselves’ Jasper says, ‘since they want to deceive themselves’ (Jaspers 1948; 2000: 58).
But is it so simple? Does not the repressed return with a vengeance, troubled by a bad conscience: ‘Many a young man or woman nowadays awakens with a horrible feeling: my conscience has betrayed me’ (ibid.). And why must we do something to alleviate our guilt – not only because that will free us from our neurosis as a nation, but because ‘The consequences of guilt affect real life, whether or not the person affected realizes it, and they affect my self-esteem if I perceive my guilt’ (ibid.: 30). What is more, we must learn to atone for our guilt because we love India. As Jaspers says, ‘The fatherland ceases to be a fatherland when its soul is destroyed’ (ibid.: 59). This may apply as well to our motherland, India, which will cease to be itself if it continues to harbour hatred and ill-will not only towards Gandhi, but towards some sections which make up its very core components, whether these are other Hindus, Muslims, dalits, women, or some other subgroup.
From deep searching into the roots of guilt comes great and transformative knowledge: ‘The outgrowth of the moral guilt is insight, which involves penance and renewal’ (ibid.: 30). If this is what an analysis of moral guilt leads to, then metaphysical guilt ‘results in a transformation of human self-consciousness before God’ (Jaspers 2000: 30). Just soul-searching may lead to a new life not just for individuals but for nations, ‘This self-transformation by inner activity may lead to a new source of active life’ (ibid.), one in which our pride is shattered, we grow in humility, and ‘where arrogance becomes impossible’ (ibid.). It is towards such a transformation that our exploration of the death of Gandhi logically leads us. This exercise is not about wallowing in some sort of self-indulgent guilt trip; rather it is a process in which we learn to ‘analyze, judge and cleanse ourselves’ (ibid.: 43).
Jaspers speaks as astutely and candidly of how a large number of the German people may have been tacitly complicit in the Nazi regime by ‘partial approval … by straddling and occasional inner assimilation and accommodation’ (ibid.: 61). I think by similar processes, a great number of Indians may have partially approved not only the murder of Gandhi but also participated in communal hatred, which in one form or another still continues. We need to remember how Gandhi’s death is not merely the death of one man, but also the slaying of a dream, the dream of communal harmony. That his murder is an act of communal hatred, not hatred for a man is what makes it a matter for the general populace to atone for.
We must also not confuse such hatred with a genuine desire or necessity to defend ourselves from aggression and violence. Here, Krishna’s injunction to Arjuna may serve as a guide: we must fight for the sake of dharma, but not out of hatred, anger, or desire. Gandhi himself said that a valiant’s man’s self-defensive violence was preferable to a coward’s non-violence. But just as it was important in Nazi Germany to make an ‘either-or’ choice for or against Nazism, similarly we need to make an either-or choice – against communalism, the two-nation theory, and hatred for one another. We cannot camouflage our tacit approval for the crimes of nations and communities through ‘convenient self-deception’ (Jaspers 2000: 61). If we do so, we ‘would remain inwardly brittle otherwise, and inclined to further fanaticism’ (ibid.: 63). What Jaspers says of Germans may apply equally to Indians:
Whoever took part in the race mania, whoever had delusions of a revival based on fraud, whoever winked at the crimes then already committed is not merely liable but must renew himself morally. Whether and how he can do it is up to him alone, and scarcely open to any outside scrutiny.
(Ibid.)
Jaspers offers us a clear insight into how hatred is generated and renewed in repetitive cycles that reproduce themselves.
In this context, Jaspers quotes Kant, ‘who called it a premise of international law that nothing must occur in war which would make a later reconcilement of the belligerents impossible’ (ibid.: 66). When we think of all the acts committed during the Partition, many, we would acknowledge, make later reconciliation extremely difficult, if not impossible. Of course, there was an older basis for the belligerence between the Hindus and the Muslims, which includes the much earlier invasion and conquest of India by the latter, with its history of great violence, genocide, conversion, vandalism, loot, pillage and destruction. Since there was no clear acknowledgement of these wrongs let alone atonement for them, it is not difficult to reopen the unhealed wounds that were left in the national psyche. But, ultimately, ‘the recapitulation of the others’ actions does not have the significance of alleviating our guilt’ (ibid.: 91). We must find another way out.
This, clearly, is ‘to purge ourselves of whatever guilt each one finds in himself, as far as this is possible by restitution, by atonement, by inner renewal and metamorphosis’ (Jaspers 1948; 2000: 97–98). Given how deep the taboo against and the horror for patricide is and how pervasive ideas of prāyaścitta (atonement) if not guilt are in the Hindu psyche, penance and atonement would seem the only way to exorcise or lay to rest the haunting of the nation by Gandhi’s ghost. According to Jaspers, we must accept not only our helplessness in the face of the enormity of an event such as Gandhi’s murder, but ‘guilt must be accepted’, so that some sort of ‘transmutation’ may follow (ibid.: 103).
In a short concluding section, Jaspers talks of the ‘way of purification’, bringing his discourse in line with our earlier speculation on the deeply polluting nature of the murder of Gandhi and of Partition violence. He advocates ‘Purification in action’ which means, ‘first of all, making amends’ (ibid.: 112). We must make reparation, but how? The answer is rather straightforward: by resisting the misuse of religion for political ends in public life and resisting hatred within ourselves. Religious fanaticism and intolerance, we must realize, has the capacity to destroy us; we must therefore never succumb to it, regardless of the temptation and provocation. It would be utterly unfortunate and self-defeating to succumb to its appeal either in a vengeful spirit, in retaliation of real or perceived wrongs, or out of expedience and calculation, because it may help us achieve our political ends faster or easier. Like Frankenstein’s monster, communal hatred has the capacity to turn around to devour its creators.
But reparation will not work, will not succeed, Jaspers insists if it is ‘not earnestly willed’: it will not ‘fulfill its moral purpose except as it ensues from our cleansing transmutation’ (ibid.: 113). In other words, reparation, making amends, and penance – none of these can be faked or performed merely as gestures of appeasement or mollification. These will remain token gestures, empty of content, if they do not emanate from inner transmutation and cleansing. It is not what we display to the world, but what we are inside that really matters. That is why enforced constitutional and other measures to remove social differences in India will not work without an inner change of heart. This was precisely Gandhi’s line as opposed to Ambedkar’s; the latter wanted legal and other guarantees to promote the rights of the untouchables. In the process, we have today another war zone within Indian society along caste lines, with continuing hostilities, resentments and cynicism. The problem has not really been solved because there has been no inner transformation, no genuine atonement, no real penance on the part of the upper-castes from crimes committed and wrongs done.
That is why, like Gandhi, Jaspers avers that ‘purification is an inner process which is never ended but in which we continually become ourselves’ (Jaspers 1948; 2000: 114). Like the struggle for Svaraj, atonement and purification are a continuous process. We can never fully arrive, ridding ourselves of all our guilt, whether it is moral or metaphysical. But without purification and penance there cannot be freedom, for ‘Everyone comes again and again to the fork in the road, to the choice between the clean and the murky’ (ibid.). We definitely need to come to terms with Gandhi’s murder and with the great violence of the Partition that preceded it and in preventing which the frail, old Mahatma gave his life. We have to confront this collective repression in the Hindu mind; we have to accept our share of the guilt that accrues from the extent that we participated or continue to participate in violent hatred against other communities and in religious intolerance. For, as Jaspers puts it, ‘without purification of the soul there is no political liberty’ (ibid.: 115). It is only ‘such purification’ that ‘makes us free’ (ibid.). Connecting to this theme of guilt and redemption and revisiting another German philosopher, Ashis Nandy in ‘Adorno in India: Revisiting the Psychology of Fascism’, ends by meditating on the value of genuine soul-searching for a society like India: ‘Such a society does not have to turn psychotherapeutic. It has continuously to try to be humane’ (Nandy 1998: 110); in the very next sentence, he avers, ‘there is not much difference between the two’ (ibid.). This is the sort of transformation much hoped for in the subcontinent.
Note
1 Jaspers, as he himself acknowledges, was following in the footsteps of Hannah Arendt’s ‘moving, soberly factual article, ‘Organized Guilt’, Jewish Frontier, January, 1945 (Jaspers 1948; 2000: 78). To my knowledge no one has tried to apply his essay to the murder of the Mahatma or the partition of India.
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