Mahatma Gandhi's Letters to Adolf Hitler

I had heard from my friend Ashok that Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; GAHN-dee; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (Sanskrit: "great-souled", "venerable"), first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world. wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany during the Nazi era from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 under his leadership marked the outbreak of the Second World War. Throughout the ensuing conflict, Hitler was closely involved in the direction of German military operations and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust, the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims. , asking him to stop the war and teaching him about Ahimsa Ahimsa (Sanskrit: अहिंसा, IAST: ahiṃsā; IPA: [ɐ́.ɦĩ.sɑː]; lit. 'nonviolence') is the ancient Indian principle of nonviolence that applies to actions toward all living beings. It is a key virtue in Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. . I stumbled upon a link discussing that letter in the Wikipedia article on Mahatma Gandhi.

Here is an article that discusses Gandhi's letters to Hitler. We learn that Gandhi addressed Hitler as his friend and emphasized that it was not just words—he truly believed in universal friendship and extended it to Hitler as well. This was during a time when Hitler was suggesting to the British that killing Gandhi would suppress the Indian rebellion.

The article discusses various political instances where Gandhi's ideologies could have been applied. One can notice that the author gives a favorable treatment of Gandhi's ideologies in these situations. The last paragraph of the article was particularly impressive.

To quote from the article itself:

It is not certain that this would have worked, but then Gandhism is not synonymous with effectiveness. Gandhi's methods were successful in dissuading the British from holding on to India, not in dissuading the Muslim League The All-India Muslim League (Urdu: آل انڈیا مسلم لیگ or AIML), popularly known as the Muslim League, was a centre-right political party in the British Indian Empire active between 1906 and 1947 that advocated for the interests of the Muslim minority in the Indian subcontinent. The party emerged from the Aligarh Movement and the broader Islamic modernist and communalist traditions, which sought to preserve the distinct social and political identity of Muslims against the more secular, majoritarian policies of the Indian National Congress. In December 1906, following the successful Simla Deputation in October, the All-India Muslim League was founded in the 20th session of the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference in Dacca (modern-day Dhaka). It created and spearheaded the movement for the creation of Pakistan based upon the Two-nation theory of the Indian scholar Syed Ahmad Khan. After the creation of Pakistan in August 1947, the party came to power and formed the government with Muhammad Ali Jinnah as the Governor-General and Liaquat Ali Khan as Prime Minister. The party disbanded in December 1947 and was succeeded by Muslim League in Pakistan and Indian Union Muslim League in India. from partitioning India. From that angle, it simply remains an open question, an untried experiment, whether the Gandhian approach could have succeeded in preventing World War II World War II, or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945), was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes. . By contrast, there simply cannot be two opinions on whether that approach of non-violent dissuasion would have been Gandhian. The Mahatma would not have been the Mahatma if he had preferred any other method. Our judgment of his letters to Hitler must be the same as our judgment of Gandhism itself: either both represented a lofty ethical alternative to the more common methods of power politics, or both were erroneous and ridiculous.