Gandhi and the American Indian
An Excerpt from Mahatma Gandhi: An American Profile
by Srimati Kamala
The way of life of our first Americans has become increasingly meaningful to our society grown tired by competition and alienated by a standard of living based solely on the number of things a man possesses. We view with more appreciation the ancients’ ability to build a satisfying and colorful life without constant aid of gadgets. We look to discover their close kinship with nature and the world of the spirit, their zest for life, the value of silence and a soul at peace, and the need for a healthy life comprised of more than getting and spending.
The entire religious experience of the American Indian—purification of mind and body, prayer and fasting, a strong personal relationship with God, meditation to learn from the “Great Mystery” its teaching beyond words—describes the spiritual heritage that nourished Mahatma Gandhi perfectly in one word: Yoga, the ideal of union of soul with God and the oneness of Man-God-Nature.
The same ideal of Yoga drew the attention of Henry David Thoreau to study both the American Indian and the Indian of the East. He recognized in the American Indian a spiritual dignity and freedom attained through pursuit of the art of living studiously close to Nature and Mother Earth:
“The charm of the Indian to me is that he stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully.”
Hence, to ponder the roots and kinship of Gandhi’s idealism in America, I do not start with Emerson’s philosophy of the Oversoul (Brahman) nor with Thoreau’s ideas “On Civil Disobedience.” It was our native Americans who first established the spiritual current of Mahatma Gandhi’s thought in America.
Followers of the Eternal Way
As a Hindu, Gandhi called himself a follower of the ancient ideal of Sanathan Dharma. Dharma refers to the cosmic principle or law. Sanathan designates that reality as eternal, abiding and sustaining. Believing in the essential oneness of all life in the Eternal Dharma, one aspires to center and to harmonize his life in that indwelling, supreme life-intelligence-love.
The American Indian distinguished himself by the same persistent characteristic perception of himself and of his relation to the universe around him. He centered his life in the natural world, committed to its spiritual bonds for his self-awareness, ethics, joys, and aesthetics, as well as for his religious practices. Religious rites varied among the tribes, but the purpose remained the same as that of the Hindu: a seeking for an infusion of the divine power through the medium of the natural world of universal forces.
Usha, the Dawn, lifts her gaze over the horizon and illumines the world of man with her embrace of living light. The devotee enters the river to bathe with the prayer that the holy stream of life may purify and bless him with the realization that the same divine power links life within and without.
Gandhi, too, was nourished by the daily purification of body and mind by the indwelling spirit:
“Just as this physical purification is necessary for the health of the body, even so spiritual purification is necessary for the health of the soul…Far more indispensable than food for the physical body is nourishment for the soul. One can do without food for a considerable time, but a man of the spirit cannot exist for a single second without spiritual nourishment.”
Compare that bhav (“state of consciousness”) persisting for millenniums through India’s spiritual heritage to the manner of worship described by Ohiyesa, Santee Dakota physician and author in 1911:
“In the life of the Indian there was only one inevitable duty—the duty of prayer—the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal. His daily devotions were more necessary to him than daily food. He wakes at daybreak, puts on his moccasins and steps down to the water’s edge. Here he throws handfuls of clear, cold water into his face, or plunges in bodily. After the bath, he stands before the advancing dawn, facing the sun as it dances upon the horizon, and offers unspoken orison. His mate may precede or follow him in his devotions, but never accompanies him. Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth and the Great Silence alone!”
Nature
“There is an orderliness in the universe; there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law, for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings.” – Gandhi
Gandhi’s views of the responsibility of man to live morally and in harmony with God’s nature are basic to his philosophy of ahimsa and the teaching of the ancients in India, a reverence for the life of all beings.
To one believing in a natural order of the world, our well-being is related to the order around us. In Hinduism this harmony with the purpose of the cosmic spirit is called Rta, meaning rightness, order, and balance.
Gandhi respected the powers of nature for purification, and based his ideas about health on a conviction that disease can be prevented (or cured) if one lives naturally in harmony with nature’s forces.
The American Indian’s reverence for nature with a deep feeling for the world of the Spirit is his greatest legacy to our life. What Western culture will one day relearn from him is the synergetic relatedness of life—that is, that the experience of the whole is greater than the sum of its components, and that the “experience of the whole” comes not from accumulation of its components but from awareness of kinship in the integral whole. Native American wisdom says, “We are many selves looking at each other through the same eye with different lenses.”
Respecting Earth and her gifts, the Apache Indian deemed it man’s arrogance to leave his impression on her. How similar the reverence of the East Indian Bharatanatyam dancer, who begins every performance by touching her shoulders and then the ground, symbolically removing her vanity and then with humility bowing to touch Mother Earth in thanks for the privilege of dancing on her.
The American Indian’s aesthetics, like Gandhi’s, was marked by his perception of the world—its powers, properties, spiritual values and essences. Form, language, and imagination were powers by which relationships of the Great Spirit could be realized and conveyed, used for healing and strength.
To the Hopi, evergreens, seashells and furs symbolized their close spiritual ties with nature. Corn was of special significance: The Earth Spirit, it is believed, gave the Hopis corn when they entered this world long ago. “Maize” is mysteriously unique in its relationship with man as it is the only grain requiring his assistance in its regeneration. Because man must plant the seedgrain, its yield was much more to the Hopi than physical nourishment.
Prayer
Traveling through the countryside in India one sees here and there in the midst of a field or rice paddy or by the roadside, small stone altars. The small temples or altars are there out of respect for the Source of life and its place in the midst of man’s labors.
The American Indian, too, prepared a place for prayer in his fields. One could witness in the center of the Hopi’s cornfields prayer shrines made from a bower of evergreen branches from which fluttered prayer feathers—soft white eagle feathers carrying messages from this world to the spiritual one.
Prayer was central in the daily life of Mahatma Gandhi as well. Though he acknowledged the place of churches, mosques and temples containing images appropriate to the symbolic tendency and temperament of worship for many, he himself chose open-air prayers in the midst of the day’s work wherever he travelled, lived and worked.
For the congregational morning and evening prayers at his ashrams there were no images of any kind, only the “eternally renewed temple of worship under the vast blue canopy inviting every one of us to real worship.” Those who gathered, assembled sitting on the ground. Gandhi would speak of the healing and mothering power of the earth and of the feeling of being close to its soil which, according to Ayurvedic medicine, is strengthening, cleansing and healing.
Chief Standing Bear speaks of the Lakota, the tribal name of the western bands of Plains people now known as the Sioux, as worshippers on Earth’s lap, too:
“…the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.”
A Legacy
Philosophy took on life for Gandhi and the American Indian in a legacy that our futures must seek to emulate if we, like they, are to realize the fullness of life. A soul at peace, a balanced life, respect for leisure and shared enjoyment are all needed for a healthy life.
To Gandhi, the art of living meant pursuit of Truth, the cultivation of simplicity and high-mindedness as the secret of freedom and real happiness. The American Indian, too, found wealth not in his material possessions but in his spiritual well-being. He demonstrated to us an ability to find richness in being close to Nature.