Mohandas K. Gandhi: Arms, Right to Keep and Bear

I used to issue leaflets asking people to enlist as recruits. One of the arguments I had used was distasteful to the Commissioner: 'Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look back upon the Act depriving the whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.'
-- Gandhi, Mohandas K. "Mahatma", An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, tr. Mahadev Desai, Part V., Ch. XXVII

This was during World War I. The "Arms Act" to which Gandhi refers was the Indian Arms Act of 1878, which, through its provisions granting the goverment unlimited arbitrary power to forbid possession of any and all arms by anyone or everyone, in practice meant nearly complete disarmament of the population.

This quotation should not be taken as a denial of Gandhi's lifelong emphasis on the paramount importance of Ahimsa (avoiding harm). It can however be taken as a clear statement that denying people the right to possess arms for their own defense is inconsistent with belief in Ahimsa, which permits the use of force, even deadly force, in defense of self or others. And this quotation cannot be taken to show that Gandhi liked arms or approved of their use -- he would view his personal feelings on such matters as utterly irrelevant to the question of whether the government should forbid their possession.

Gandhi's approach for redressing wrongs -- Satyagraha -- was based on treating people fairly, avoiding demonization, appealing to the good in mankind, and seeing things from the other person's point of view. The notion that he believed in "passive resistance" as that term is used in the U.S. today ("let's go lie down in the road in front of the power plant and shout epithets at the police and plant guards") is utter nonsense. Gandhi would call that passive violence.

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