**4. Non-Violent Liberation Theologies**

The previous section dealt with the many parallels between Gandhi's and Heschel's thoughts and acts. The most striking affinity between them lies in the conception and realization of a non-violent liberation theology, in which God is present in all his creatures. They aimed at transforming human beings into humble servants for each other. To be sure, Gandhi was less systematic than Heschel in shaping his religious thoughts, but, like Heschel, he uttered them in view of the liberation of all. Their theologies contested economic and political inequalities. The main objective of their religious thought was the improvement of the situation of the oppressed, the poor, and the disenfranchised. They did not close themselves in small community life and did not content themselves with rituals. Their religiosity forbade the humiliation of others and implied the mending of the world.

Whereas liberation theologies in the seventies of the preceding century and also today are at times associated with violent struggles and armed rebellion, Gandhi's and Heschel's liberation theologies were explicitly non-violent. It is not to be excluded and even plausible that Heschel heard about Gandhi's *satyagraha* through his friends Martin Luther King and Thomas Merton, who admired Gandhi. In his prophetic religiosity, which asks for the mending of the world and for activity in the social, economic, and political arenas, Gandhi defended the defenseless and supported the cause of the oppressed and the poor. His active non-violence wanted to uncover Brahman in all that lives. Many times, the Bhagavad Gita affirms the identical existence of God in all beings. So, for instance, in chapter 13:18: "The Supreme God exists identically in all beings" or in chapter 18:61: "God abides in the heart of all beings." King, Heschel, and Gandhi loved to march for the cause

of the disadvantaged and in support of civil rights. Their marches were a religious act, a non-violent testimony to the presence of God in all human beings.

In the US, where racial segregation was common, Heschel stated: "From the point of view of religious philosophy it is our duty to have regard and compassion for every man regardless of his moral merit. God's covenant is with all men, and we must never be oblivious of *the equality of the divine dignity* of all men. The image of God is in the criminal as well as in the saint" (Heschel 1967, p. 95). For him, "[t]he symbol of God is man, every man" (Heschel 1967, p. 95). The human being was created in the image of God and in His likeness: "Man, every man, must be treated with the honour due to a likeness representing the King of kings" (Heschel 1967, p. 95).

In his Yiddish poems, Heschel identified with God's concern for suffering people. Parallel to Gandhi, he developed a theocentric view in which the human being was considered to be "something transcendent in disguise" (Heschel 1951a, p. 47). Whereas Gandhi uncovered Brahman in all human beings, even the evil ones, Heschel in his neo-Hasidic view looked for the divine "sparks" in the souls of all (Heschel 1996a, p. 250).

Gandhi lived his relationships with people in interconnectedness. Like Heschel, he was convinced that only deep interaction with others could lead to a better future. Brahman was in everyone; one had to make efforts in order to become conscious that creation was nothing less than Brahman's self-multiplication. The unity of mankind unveiled the oneness of God: "I believe in absolute oneness of God and therefore also of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul. The rays of the sun are many through refraction. But they have the same source" (CWMG 1999, 25: 199).

#### *4.1. Suffering the Sufferance of Others*

Much like Gandhi, whose religiosity manifested itself in the understanding of the pains and suffering of others, Heschel suffered with the sufferers and shared the hope of the dispossessed and the oppressed (Kaplan and Dresner 1998, p. 79). In a parallel way, Gandhi experienced the suffering of (human and non-human) others as his own suffering. His favorite hymn "The true Vaishnava" begins with the words, "He is a real Vaihsnava, who feels the suffering of others as his own suffering" (Chatterjee 1983, p. 27). He saw his God Rama "face to face in the starving millions of India" (Chatterjee 1983, p. 17). Meeting poor peasants and living with untouchables, he felt face to face with God. A first untouchable family entered in the Sabarmati ashram, which was founded in 1915. Like Swami Vivekananda, Gandhi saw God in the faces of the poor (Chatterjee 1983, pp. 178, 256). Similarly, in his Yiddish poem *Ikh und Du*, Heschel recognized God and himself in the bodies of millions "as if under millions of masks my face would lie hidden" (Even-Chen and Meir 2012, pp. 16–17).

Gandhi's empathy for the poor and the maltreated runs parallel with the Jewish prophets, who—according to Heschel—identified with the divine pathos (Heschel 1962). Heschel and Gandhi were modern prophets, who cared for the humiliated and protested against white privilege and white supremacy. They felt the pain of others. Gandhi even wanted to be reborn as an untouchable, sharing their degradation. He belonged to the class of the traders. Yet, Brahmans, warriors, traders, workers, and untouchables were all equal in that all had to perform humble and polluting tasks. In Gandhi's non-dualist religiosity, God was present in all of them. Following John Ruskin and Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi thought there was no social hierarchy and no distinction in status in the *varnas* (classes) (Markovits 2000, pp. 182–88).

#### *4.2. Guilt*

Gandhi and Heschel emphasized the responsibility of each individual for all. They both wrote and talked about responsibility and about guilt as its counterpart. February 1938, Heschel lectured before a public of Quakers (Kaplan and Dresner 1998, pp. 259–62). He reminds their leaders that human beings are in the likeness to the Creator. He further quotes the Ba'al Shem Tov, who said: "If a person sees something evil, he should know

that it is shown to him so that he may realize his own guilt—repent for what he has seen." All had to repent, victims and evildoers. God was in exile, imprisoned in temples. Only by abandoning indifference could one bring an end to the divine exile: "Perhaps we are all now going into exile. It is our fate to live in exile, but He has said to those who suffer: 'I am with them in their oppression.' The Jewish teachers tell us: Wherever Israel had to go into exile, the Eternal went with them. The divine consequence of human fate is for us a warning and a hope" (Kaplan and Dresner 1998, pp. 261–62). God wanted the human being; He went into exile with his *Shekhinah* (the divine Inhabitation). He suffers with the fate of the world, until all is united by human beings. In difficult times, Heschel said that all have to repent.

In a parallel manner, Gandhi used to fast when something went wrong and when people did not behave as non-violent *satyagrahis*. He felt himself the guilty party (CWMG 1999, 21: 462–64, 481). Gandhi blamed himself for what befell the Indians in colonial Africa and India. Faced with evil, both Heschel and Gandhi strived for self-improvement. They turned inward in self-examination. In their attempt to change evil, they looked for ways to counter the tide.

#### *4.3. Use of Religious Sources*

In their liberation theology, Gandhi and Heschel developed a non-violent hermeneutics of their foundational religious sources. Just as the Gita was for Gandhi the book par excellence, the Hebrew Bible was for Heschel the most holy book. The Bible had a message for the world: "It would be an achievement of the first magnitude to reconstruct the peculiar nature of Biblical thinking and to spell out its divergence from all other types of thinking. It would open new perspectives for the understanding of moral, social and religious issues and enrich the whole of our thinking. Biblical thinking may have a part to play in shaping our philosophical views about the world" (Heschel 1976, p. 23, n. 8).

The Bible as well as the Gita were used for violent purposes. Many times, one read the Bible in function of white supremacy and the privileges of whiteness. In the United States, one turned to the Bible in order to justify slavery (Johnson 2020, pp. 41–46). In South Africa, the Boers saw themselves as elected. They read the Bible in a racist way. Gandhi emphasized non-violence in biblical literature and interpreted the Gita as describing the inner battles of the human being. His allegorical interpretation of the Gita runs parallel with King's peaceful use of the Bible. In his previously mentioned speech, "I have a dream," King referred to the prophet Amos in affirming: " [ ... ] we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24) (Johnson 2020, p. 49).12 Heschel identified with King's peaceful struggle for an egalitarian society and participated in mass protests of the black people in America. In a prophetical manner, he became intensely involved in worldly affairs. Racism and religion excluded each other (Johnson 2020, p. 48).

In their struggle for human rights, Gandhi and Heschel used religious texts that linked religiosity and politics. They participated in public assemblies that contested the status quo and promoted the equality of all. They desired to change politics and bring it into contact with spiritual realities. In Gandhi's *Hind Swaraj* (Gandhi 2009), home-rule or *swaraj* (swa = self; raj = rule), was not merely presented as political independence; it was an elevated spiritual reality.
