**1. Introduction**

The publication of *The Healing Power of Peace and Nonviolence* by the Catholic moral theologian Bernhard Häring in 1986 was a "clarion call to Christians to embrace nonviolent action" (Berger et al. 2020, p. 114). The Catholic Church has reacted positively to this call, as the development of its peace ethics shows. So far, it has culminated in Pope Francis' message for the World Day of Peace on 1 January 2017, in which he mentioned—among other examples of successful practices of nonviolence—Mahatma Gandhi's liberation of India (Francis 2017, #4). Häring's book refers to Gandhi too, recommending his "militant nonviolence" as the "only meaningful and promising way" to fight "oppression and exploitation" (Häring 1986, p. 81). Häring frequently refers also to the work of the French-American anthropologist René Girard, whom he praises for seeing nonviolence as a "central aspect of redemption through Jesus Christ" (Häring 1986, p. 87).

Following Häring's appreciation of Gandhi's militant nonviolence and Girard's mimetic anthropology, this article connects these two approaches, and shows how this leads to a deeper understanding of nonviolence and its religious preconditions. Gandhi shares with Girard important insights into the nature of violence and why nonviolence has become a necessity for the survival of humanity. Reading Gandhi with the eyes of Girard strengthens the plausibility of Gandhi's concept of *satyagraha*. It also complements Girard's mimetic theory by offering an active practice of nonviolence as a response to threats of violence, and by broadening the scope of its religious outreach. Girard's strength is his anthropological analyses of the causes and the nature of human violence. He also examines extensively

**Citation:** Palaver, Wolfgang. 2021. Gandhi's Militant Nonviolence in the Light of Girard's Mimetic Anthropology. *Religions* 12: 988. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12110988

Academic Editor: Jeffery D. Long

Received: 16 September 2021 Accepted: 7 November 2021 Published: 11 November 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

how early religions dealt with violence. Like Gandhi, he too, underlines the importance of nonviolence for today. He has, however, less to say about positive and practical ways out of violence in our modern world. Whereas Girard emphasizes a rather passive renunciation of violence, Gandhi offers an active practice of nonviolence that addresses the challenges that Girard's anthropology illuminates. Militant nonviolence represents a third way between complacence that remains indifferent toward injustice and a dangerous imitation of violence that leads to its escalation.

Gandhi's work also complements Girard's anthropology in its religious scope. Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005, Girard claimed a superiority of Christianity in his support of the Pope's battle against relativism (Girard and Gardels 2005, p. 46). The Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra responded by expressing his admiration for Girard's account of the Gospels as opposing the "cycle of violence", and showing that Gandhi's nonviolence was greatly inspired by the New Testament. With Gandhi he rejected, however, Girard's claims for a Christian superiority, and recommended instead to find—like Gandhi traditions among the world religions that "chime with the truth of the Gospels" (Mishra 2005, p. 53). With the help of Gandhi, Girard's mimetic anthropology gains in its universal validity because many of his key insights are indeed expressed in other world religions, too.

This article discusses first Girard's and Gandhi's discovery of mimetic rivalry as a cause of violence. The second part deals with the contagious nature of violence and how easily it can escalate. Thirdly, a further step explains how nonviolence can break the cycle of violence, and how Gandhi complements Girard by offering an active understanding of nonviolence. The final part engages with the religious preconditions of nonviolent action by addressing the need to orient our desires in godly pursuits so that we can act in a spirit of detachment, and the need to overcome the fear of death by God's grace.

#### **2. Mimetic Rivalry as the Root of Human Conflicts**

Girard's basic insight into the roots of human violence is his discovery that many conflicts stem from mimetic rivalries that occur when a person imitates another's desire for an indivisible object. He therefore preferred competition to aggression as the key concept to understand human violence:

We are *competitive* rather than aggressive. In addition to the appetites we share with animals, we have a more problematic yearning that lacks any instinctual object: *desire*. We literally do not know what to desire and, in order to find out, we watch the people we admire: we imitate their desires. [ ... ] Unlike animal rivalries, these *imitative* or *mimetic* rivalries can become so intense and contagious that not only do they lead to murder but they also spread, mimetically, to entire communities. (Girard 2004, pp. 9–10)

Girard first discussed mimetic rivalries in personal relationships, often love relationships, as described in key novels in his book *Deceit, Desire, and the Novel* (Girard 1966). In *Violence and the Sacred* he deepened his understanding by turning to sibling rivalries, which are a prevailing theme in ancient and traditional cultures (Girard 1977, pp. 59–67). Following Girard, Jonathan Sacks used recently sibling rivalry as a key to the understanding of religious violence in his careful reading of the Book of Genesis (Sacks 2015). Girard did not limit his reflections to the personal sphere, but also showed how mimetic rivalries contribute to dangerous dynamics in the political realm between states or other political actors, as Girard's last book *Battling to the End* illuminates. By emphasizing competition, Girard was able to reject, for instance, concepts like Huntington's "clash of civilizations" to explain terrorism in our contemporary world. Soon after 9/11, Girard recommended that we focus on globalized competition to explain terrorist attacks against the West, instead of seeing it as being caused by religious differences (Girard and Tincq 2002).1

In Gandhi's life and work, we see that he was very much aware of the conflictual potentials that easily follow entanglements of mimetic desire, although he would not put it in these words. Following Girard's unfolding of his understanding of mimetic rivalries, we can start with Gandhi's marriage to Kasturba. Despite all his efforts to become a perfect husband, he suffered severely from jealousy, which burdened his marriage, as his autobiography tells (Majmudar 2005, pp. 59–60). Girard showed, in his book on Shakespeare, that envy and jealousy are "exactly the same thing", because both are an offspring of mimetic rivalries (Girard 1991, p. 10). Jean-Michel Oughourlian, an Armenian-French psychologist, studied the different forms of jealousy that threaten couples by following Girard's view of mimetic rivalry, and distinguished between jealousy of a third party and jealousy of the other partner (Oughourlian 2010, pp. 119–43). In Gandhi's case, we find a mixture of both forms of jealousy. Reading guides for a good marriage diligently convinced Gandhi of the importance of faithfulness, which he tried to achieve for himself and demanded rigorously from his wife, too:

The thought made me a jealous husband. Her duty was easily converted into my right to exact faithfulness from her, and if it had to be exacted, I should be watchfully tenacious of the right. I had absolutely no reason to suspect my wife's fidelity, but jealousy does not wait for reasons. I must needs be for ever on the look-out regarding her movements, and therefore she could not go anywhere without my permission. This sowed the seeds of a bitter quarrel between us. The restraint was virtually a sort of imprisonment. (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 39:14; cf. 25)

Gandhi's struggle with jealousy continued during his years of study in London, and stayed with him for some time in South Africa (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 39:77). It contributed to his vow of chastity, *brahmacharya*, which he took in 1906 to overcome "lustful attachment" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 39:165–71). Oughourlian is right to connect Gandhi's "withdrawing from any carnal possession [ ... ] to completely liberate love from desire and no longer be dominated by it" with his awareness "that all sexual relations involve a dose of rivalry and aggression that is susceptible of degenerating into violence" (Oughourlian 2010, pp. 68–69). He, however, incorrectly claims that Gandhi and his wife promised to renounce carnal love at their wedding ceremony. Gandhi and Kasturba married at the age of thirteen, and this child marriage was partly responsible for Gandhi's early obsession with sexual love, which even caused him to sleep with his pregnant wife on the night of his father's death. The negligence of his dying father encumbered Gandhi throughout his life (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 39:28–30). It would, however, be wrong to understand Gandhi's negative view of sexuality in a purely puritanical sense. Erik Erikson shows that at its root was an "aversion against all male sadism—including such sexual sadism as he had probably felt from childhood on to be part of all exploitation of women by men". Gandhi's criticism of his father as being dominated by "carnal pleasures" when he married, at the age of forty-eight, an eighteen-year-old woman—Gandhi's mother—supports Erikson's thesis. According to Uma Majmudar, Gandhi viewed such "old man-young woman marriages [ . . . ] as an abominable social custom that formally sanctioned male violence over females" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 39:7; Majmudar 2005, p. 35). It is not by chance that his vow of chastity happened immediately after he served in an ambulance unit during the Bambatha Rebellion, where he witnessed the "outrages perpetrated on black bodies by white he-men" (Erikson 1993, p. 194). Gandhi recognized a close connection between male sexuality and violence (Parekh 1999, pp. 199, 220; Bose 2014, p. 171). After his vow, he described his relation to Kasturba as a relation of friendship in which one no longer regards "the other as the object of lust" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 39:222). Gandhi identified sexuality with a narrow but widespread male perspective which, according to Erikson, closes off all possibility that "a sexual relationship could be characterized by what we call 'mutuality'" (Erikson 1993, p. 236). Girard, too, was aware of how easily sexuality can trigger violence: "Sexuality leads to quarrels, jealous rages, mortal combats. It is a permanent source of disorder even within the most harmonious of communities." (Girard 1977, p. 35). Contrary to Gandhi, however, the French-American anthropologist recognizes more clearly mimetic rivalries as the source of violence and knows that, detached from them, sexuality can be enjoyed mutually: "I think that sexual pleasure is possible to the extent that the other is respected—and maybe there's no true satisfaction except in that case, when the shadowy

presence of rivals has been banished from the lovers' bed: that's probably also why it is experienced so rarely." (Girard 2014a, p. 12)

Gandhi was also aware of how strongly mimetic conflicts occur in our daily family lives. He grew up in a closely-linked Indian family in which such conflicts occurred frequently, as his secretary Pyarelal recounted:

A single tactless remark, a slip or oversight, an uncouth habit, heedlessness or disregard of another's feelings may set people's nerves on edge and make life hell for the whole family. Competition in this narrow world is keen; even the youngsters feel the edge of it; little things assume big proportions; the slightest suggestion of unfairness or partiality gives rise to petty rivalries, jealousies, and intrigues. (Pyarelal 1965, p. 193)

Like Girard, also Gandhi observed sibling rivalry as a root of human conflicts when he remarked on how often fights break out between "two brothers living together" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 10:32). He too knew from his own experience that "little quarrels of millions of families in their daily lives" are just part of human life (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 10:48).

Gandhi's awareness of the mimetic roots of human conflicts becomes most obvious in his book *Satyagraha in South Africa*. In his overview of the history of South Africa, he describes the conflict between the Boers and the English in terms that come close to Girard's mimetic theory in the emphasis on how the proximity between rivals enhances the likelihood of conflicts:

As the Dutch were in search of good lands for their own expansion, so were the English who also gradually arrived on the scene. The English and the Dutch were of course cousins. Their characters and ambitions were similar. Pots from the same pottery are often likely to clash against each other. So these two nations, while gradually advancing their respective interests and subduing the Negroes, came into collision. (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 29:16)

Even more interesting from a mimetic point of view is Gandhi's description of the conflicts between Europeans and Indians that broke out in Natal, and his assertion that were also the main cause of Gandhi's plan to stay for one year in South Africa finally becoming twenty-one years. He refers to "competition" to explain the main reason for these conflicts (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 29:25–28). The other term that he frequently uses to address white discriminations against Indians is "trade jealousy". We find it already in his 1895 petition to Lord Ripon, the colonial secretary in London, and later in a letter to Tolstoy (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 1:207; 9:444; cf. Coovadia 2020, p. 64). In Transvaal, too, competition made European traders jealous of the Indian newcomers:

Their great success excited the jealousy of European traders who commenced an anti-Indian campaign in the newspapers, and submitted petitions to the Volksraad or Parliament, praying that Indians should be expelled and their trade stopped. The Europeans in this newly opened-up country had a boundless hunger for riches. (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 29:31)

It is this longing for wealth that makes the conflict almost inevitable. As Gandhi rightly remarked, the Europeans' aim "to amass the maximum of wealth in the minimum of time" did not allow for Indians to become "co-sharers" with them in South Africa (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 29:76). Gandhi is aware of the divisiveness of "acquisitive mimesis", i.e., the longing for indivisible goods (Girard 1987, p. 26). Where he reflects on ways to overcome the exploitation of the masses in the Western world, he expresses the need for a just distribution that could not be gained by multiplying "material wants" but by "their restriction consistently with comfort" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 28:148): "We shall cease to think of getting what we can, but we shall decline to receive what all cannot get." He also underlines the dangers of acquisitiveness in his interpretation of the *Bhagavadg¯ıta¯* (4:21; 6:10): "Where there is possessiveness, there is violence", and this necessitates not only the "renunciation of possessions" but also the "desire for possessions too" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 32:115, 240; cf. Conrad 2006, p. 217).

Like the current attempts to cloak mimetic conflicts in the terms of a civilizational clash, we find a similar discussion during Gandhi's stay in South Africa. He refers to General Smuts, one of the South African leaders, who described the conflict between Europeans and Indians as a conflict between cultures. According to Gandhi's account of Smuts' position, the General saw neither "trade jealousy or race hatred" as the main problem, but rather deep cultural differences between the "Western civilization" and an "Oriental culture" endangering the Westerners in South Africa, such that they "must go to the wall" as if committing "suicide" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 29:77). In a letter to Gandhi, Smuts expressed his position in the following way:

I may have no racial legislation, but how will you solve the difficulty about the fundamental difference between our cultures? Let alone the question of superiority, there is no doubt but that your civilization is different from ours. Ours must not be overwhelmed by yours. (Hancock 1962, p. 346)

Gandhi saw Smuts as a man of the "highest character among the Europeans", but he nevertheless criticized his position harshly as "hypocrisy" supported by "pseudo-philosophical" arguments seeking a justification to mask selfish enrichment and racism (Gandhi 1958– 1994, p. 29:76–77). "The only remaining factors are trade and colour." (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 29:78). In an article in *Indian Opinion* from February 1905 on "Questions of Colour", Gandhi claims that only a racist view neglects the fact of rivalrous competition: "The origin of the whole matter is trade jealousy. It is this petty motive alone that animates the anti-Indian movement; and it is perfectly apparent to all who are not blinded by colour prejudice." (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 4:355) By pointing to rivalry as the real cause of the conflicts between Europeans and Indians, Gandhi implicitly deconstructs racism as an offspring of acquisitive mimesis that easily results in scapegoating.2 He comes close to Girard's insight that racism is best explained with the help of our modern use of the term scapegoat, which describes how groups often contain their internal rivalries by channelling them to the outside. Scapegoats multiply "wherever human groups seek to lock themselves into a given identity—communal, local, national, ideological, racial, religious, and so on" (Girard 2001, p. 160; cf. Reineke 1998, pp. 76–81). Girard discovered in ancient myths, medieval texts, and in the modern world many examples of groups and societies that turn to scapegoating if they are facing a crisis. He refers, for example, to medieval and modern anti-Semitism, and also to the fact of how often "ethnic and religious minorities tend to polarize the majorities against themselves [ ... ]. In India the Moslems are persecuted, in Pakistan the Hindus" (Girard 1986, pp. 17–18; cf. 48).

Furthermore, Gandhi refers to the mimetic image of the "dog-in-the-manger" to describe the conflicts between Europeans and Indians in Natal and Transvaal. This ancient metaphor describes a dog enviously preventing the oxen or the horse from accessing the fodder for which the dog himself has no use. It illustrates an advanced stage of mimetic rivalry among humans in which the original object that triggered the conflict has been replaced by aggression against the rival. According to Girard, mimetic conflicts start with the rivalry over a concrete object that is often quickly forgotten as soon as the conflict escalates (Girard 2001, p. 22). Gandhi already used this image in 1895 when he visited the Trappist community in Mariann Hill and observed that the Europeans prevented the Indians from developing agriculture in Natal without using it for themselves:

All over the Colony, the small farms are owned by Indians, whose keen competition gives offence to the white population. They are following a dog-in-themanger and suicidal policy in so behaving. They would rather leave the vast agricultural resources in the country undeveloped, than have the Indians to develop them." (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 1:223)

He criticized the dog-in-the-manger policy frequently during his time in South Africa and also later in his Indian fight against the British salt tax (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 4:26.117.52.349; 43:168). In 1939, he criticized the Kathiawar States in India for their dog-in-the-manger policy, which prevented them from overcoming the drought in an area where there would

be plenty of water if all aimed for the common good. This critique indirectly shows how often scarcity is not caused by nature, but rather artificially created by mimetic rivalry (Dumouchel 2013, pp. 3–96).

When Gandhi wrote about these conflicts in his book *Satyagraha in South Africa*, he had already stayed in India. In 1925, the problems in South Africa increased again, and there were attempts to repatriate Indians. Gandhi criticized the "Class Areas Bill" at the Kanpur Congress in December 1925, and emphasized again trade jealousy as the main problem. This time he recommended a pamphlet by Frederick B. Fisher, an American Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church who had just visited South Africa to investigate the situation of Indians there. Against Smuts' expression of a "conflict of the two civilizations", Gandhi again highlights—along with Bishop Fisher—"jealousy" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 29:359–60). Frederick Fisher indeed underlined jealousy in his report, and described the fate of the Indians under attack from "white supremacy" as being similar to Jewish scapegoats in "old Russia" (Fisher 1926, pp. 149–50): "There is a strange jealousy on the part of the whites with reference to the prosperity of the browns." (Fisher 1926, p. 149). In Fisher's later book on Gandhi, he describes this trade jealousy impressively:

What happens when a brown man can afford a Rolls Royce! Is that not a direct insult to those white people who still have to run Fords? There is something wrong somewhere, argued the whites. We must look into this matter. They did! To such purpose that the legislative adoption of a series of anti-Asiatic Acts aggravated the disparity between the whites and browns. Here was social, legal and commercial discrimination. (Fisher 1932, p. 39)

Mimetic rivalry easily results in violence, as the fate of the Indians in South Africa clearly illustrates.

We can also find evidence for Gandhi's awareness of mimetic dangers during his years in India. A striking example is his positive view of the traditional Vedic division of society into four classes (*varnas*), in which he recognized a bulwark against the dangers of envious comparisons. According to Gandhi, this tradition could help to prevent worldly ambitions for riches from displacing much more important religious pursuits. Gandhi's own formula—"Let us not want to be what everyone else cannot be" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 35:520)—illustrates his insight that following the profession prescribed according to one's *varna* could avoid "all unworthy competition" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 59:320; cf. Bondurant 1988, pp. 167–72; Conrad 1999, p. 406). Gandhi is, in this regard, close to modern interpreters of the fourfold order described in the *Bhagavadg¯ıta¯* (4:13) who emphasize a functional order of "complementarity and cooperation, and not competition" without, however, overlooking like them the "underlying inequalities" (Rambachan 2019, p. 155). He did not identify the *varnas* with the caste system, and strongly insisted on the equality of all human beings: "Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man. Thus caste, in so far as it connotes distinctions in status, is an evil." (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 46:302) His understanding of "prejudice and racial hierarchy in South Africa" inspired his criticism of the discrimination against the untouchables in India (Coovadia 2020, p. 84): "Just as we are treating our brothers here, our kith and kin are being treated as pariahs and Bhangis in South Africa." (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 32:510).3

Mimetic rivalries easily lead to discrimination, persecution, and violence. The necessary response to this question will be addressed in a later section. We must first reflect on the fact that imitation is not only at the root of human violence but also takes hold of violence itself by igniting a destructive cycle of violence.

#### **3. The Contagious Nature of Violence and the Danger of Its Escalation**

According to Girard, imitative desire easily causes violent conflicts. This, however, is only the beginning of the cycle of violence. As soon as violence starts to dominate human relations, it becomes more and more contagious. Frederick Hacker, a psychiatrist and expert on violence, formulated a thesis about the nature of violence that parallels Girard's insight: "Violence is as contagious as the plague." (Hacker 2017, p. 13; cf. Tournier 1978,

pp. 13–14, 91). Girard already described the contagious nature of violence in his earlier work:

The *mimetic* attributes of violence are extraordinary—sometimes direct and positive, at other times indirect and negative. The more men strive to curb their violent impulses, the more these impulses seem to prosper. The very weapons used to combat violence are turned against their users. Violence is like a raging fire that feeds on the very objects intended to smother its flames. (Girard 1977, p. 31)

This contagious nature of violence easily results in an escalation to extremes: "The slightest outbreak of violence can bring about a catastrophic escalation." (Girard 1977, p. 20) Girard refers, for instance, to the "nuclear rivalry" that installs the atomic bomb as the world's supreme idol, ultimately leading towards death (Girard 1987, pp. 255, 414).

Girard describes the escalating dynamic of violence even more broadly in his book *Battling to the End*, which reflects on Carl von Clausewitz's theory of war to explain our world of global terrorism and wars against terror. The passage that immediately caught Girard's eye in the work of Clausewitz was the description of war as a mimetic relationship between two rivals that ultimately surges toward extremes: "War is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force. Each side, therefore, compels its opponent to follow suit; a reciprocal action is started which must lead, in theory, to extremes." (Clausewitz 1984, p. 77) Girard emphasizes this anthropological insight of Clausewitz over his much more often quoted remark that war is nothing but an instrument of politics. "If you start reading Clausewitz carefully, you can see it works exactly like a mimetic novel. It doesn't matter which side wins. Clausewitz does not teach you how to win, but he constantly shows you the mimetic nature of war." (Haven 2020, p. 107). A good example of the way in which a careful reading of Clausewitz reveals his deeper anthropological insights can be found in the chapter in which he explains war as a means of politics, where he does not overlook the fact that means easily influence and often also change ends. The "political aim" is, according to Clausewitz, not "a tyrant. It must adapt itself to its chosen means, a process which can radically change it" (Clausewitz 1984, p. 87). This confirms Girard's mimetic reading, but also precedes Gandhi's reflection on the necessity that means must correspond with ends (Conrad 2006, p. 85). Girard's careful reading of Clausewitz shows that the underlying mimetic dynamic often does not allow politics to prevent a violent "escalation to extremes" (Girard 2010, pp. 53–57). It is this dangerous escalation that threatens, according to Girard, our modern world.

Gandhi shares Girard's insight into the contagious nature of violence. In his book about Indian self-rule from 1909, *Hind Swaraj*, he distanced himself from terrorist attacks against the British occupation, referencing Jesus' saying about "those that wield the sword shall perish by the sword" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 10:48 [Mt 26:52], cf. Chandhoke 2014, pp. 72–81). Gandhi feared that by violently fighting against the occupiers, India would just mirror the occupying power. The Boer War also provided him with an example of escalating violence when he observed that "each side was protesting against the other's activities and strengthening its own preparations" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 29:60). He even more clearly expressed the danger of escalating violence in 1947, close to the end of his life, when Hindus and Muslims fought against each other in India. A first quote resonates with Girard's reading of Clausewitz: "Once the evil spirit of violence is unleashed, by its inherent nature it cannot be checked or even kept within any prescribed limits." (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 87:424). Another quote from 1947 problematizes self-defense that often cannot be distinguished from attack: "Self-defence is invoked for taking up the sword. But I have never known a man who has not passed from defence to attack. It is inherent in the idea of defence." (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 88:145).

Before Gandhi wrote *Hind Swaraj* on a ship going from England to South Africa, he stayed, in 1909, for some months in London, where he discovered in the *Gujarati* of Bombay a poem that helped him to illustrate the self-destructive and contagious nature of violence. The first lines of the poem 'Blow for a Blow' show how violence begets violence, and moreover aims at self-destruction like the moth is attracted by the flame:

The lamp not burning, On what will the moth throw itself and be burnt? Seeking to burn us, You burn yourself first. (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 9:489)

The moth-and-flame metaphor illustrates the self-destructive nature of violence and highlights the mimetic dimension of it, because it is the fire that attracts the moth like violence begets violence. Gandhi understood very well that all violence, like fire, will ultimately destroy itself, and can only sustain itself if it is fed by counterviolence—in this manner, mutual violence escalates catastrophically. At the time that Gandhi wrote *Hind Swaraj* in 1909, he also translated Tolstoy's *Letter to a Hindoo* into Gujarati. In his introduction to this edition, he emphasizes the importance of it to the understanding of the way in which injustice can be resisted non-violently, and accuses those you do not follow the way of nonviolence of being "caught up in the toils of this huge sham of modern civilization, like moths flitting round a flame" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 10:2). He sees modern civilization as it was exemplified by the British Empire, as being governed by the law of brute force. In *Hind Swaraj* he does not directly mention the moth-and flame metaphor, but by mentioning all of the "victims" that are "destroyed in the fire of civilisation" with its "scorching flame", he indirectly refers to it (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 10:24). Like fire, a society ruled by force is self-destructive, and Gandhi tried to convince Indians to resist the contagious attraction of brute force if they do not want to be destroyed like moths in the flame.

The moth-and-flame metaphor has a long tradition in India. It is mentioned in the *Bhagavadg¯ıta¯* (11:29), in the *Arthasastra* (7.15.14), and in traditional Indian sayings. One of these sayings compares the rash fight against an enemy with the moth aiming for its self-destruction: "He who through folly, sets out impetuous to face a foe without judging rightly/the other's power and his own, will perish like the moth that flies headlong into the fire." (Sarma 2006, p. 136) Violent revolutionaries sacrificing their lives in their fight against the colonial power behaved like moths aiming for the flame. Gandhi did not directly mention this metaphor when he referred to Madan Lal Dhingra, the student who assassinated a British official in London shortly before Gandhi arrived in 1909, but the words he used in *Hind Swaraj* chime with the metaphor: "Dhingra was a patriot, but his love was blind. He gave his body in a wrong way; its ultimate result can only be mischievous." (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 10:42). According to Gandhi, this blind love was the result of an intoxication by bad ideas (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 9:302).<sup>4</sup> Others who followed the example of Dhingra used the moth-and-flame metaphor to recruit more revolutionaries. The most prominent of them was Bhagat Singh, who described in his 1928 series on sacrifices for liberty these "patriotic young men" who gave up their lives as "moths hovering around the flame of liberty" (Lal 2019). Singh himself committed several acts of violence in India, for which he was executed in 1931. He and his executed fellows were widely celebrated as martyrs who, like moths, sacrificed their lives for India's independence (Maclean 2014).

After the discovery of this poem, Gandhi frequently used the moth-and-flame metaphor to describe the self-destructive nature of violence (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 22:62; 30:372; 53:09– 10). The most striking example occurs in Gandhi's letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, which he wrote on 5 October 1945, just two weeks after they discussed the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to Gandhi, the atomic bomb is the summit of accelerated technological progress as it is expressed in humanity's reliance on machines and life in cities, against which he recommends the spinning wheel and village life as preconditions for a nation committed to truth and nonviolence:

It does not frighten me at all that the world seems to be going in the opposite direction. For the matter of that, when the moth approaches its doom it whirls round faster and faster till it is burnt up. It is possible that India will not be able to escape this moth-like circling. (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 81:319–20; cf. Rothermund 1998, pp. 107–17)

Gandhi saw the atomic bomb as the peak of the Western reliance on brute force, and did not overlook its mimetic dimension when he claimed, in an interview on the day before he was assassinated, that the United States should give up nuclear weapons because "the war ended disastrously and the victors are vanquished by jealousy and lust for power" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 90:522). He not only shares with Girard the recognition of the dangers coming along with nuclear rivalry but also recognizes that the bomb "usurps the place of God" (Gandhi 1958–1994, p. 88:167).
