Mahatma Gandhi's Letters to Adolf Hitler

I had heard from my friend Ashok that Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (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. He inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (from Sanskrit, meaning great-souled, or venerable), first applied to him in South Africa in 1914, 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 Nazi Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the start of the Second World War. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war 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, lit. 'nonviolence') is the ancient Indian principle of nonviolence which applies to actions towards all living beings. It is a key virtue in Indian religions like 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 (AIML) was a political party founded in 1906 in Dhaka, British India with the goal of securing Muslim interests in South Asia. Although initially espousing a united India with interfaith unity, the Muslim League later led the Pakistan Movement, calling for a separate Muslim homeland after the British exit from 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, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, resulting in 70 to 85 million deaths, more than half of which were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. 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.