“What I want you to understand is the message of Asia. It is not to be learnt through the Western spectacles or by imitating the atom bomb. If you want to give a message to the West, it must be the message of love and the message of truth,” wrote Mahatma Gandhi in Harijan on 20 April 1947. “In this age of democracy, in this age of awakening of the poorest of the poor, you can redeliver this message with the greatest emphasis. You will complete the conquest of the West not through vengeance because you have been exploited, but with real understanding…The West today is pining for wisdom.

It is despairing of a multiplication of the atom bombs, because atom bomb means utter destruction not merely of the West but of the whole world, as if the prophecy of the Bible is going to be fulfilled and there is to be a prefect deluge. It is up to you to tell the world of its wickedness and sin-that is the heritage your teachers and my teachers have taught Asia.” The Mahatma was categorical that “the weapon of violence, even if it is the atom bomb, becomes useless when it is matched against true non-violence.” When the Mahatma was writing the ‘message of Asia’ the sub-continent was in the throes of great turmoil, political and social.

Horrific communal violence in 1946 had seared the provinces, especially Bengal and Bihar. By February 1947 Prime Minister Clement Attlee made the dramatic announcement that the British would withdraw from India not later than June 1948. Attlee also announced that the Viceroy Lord Wavell would be replaced by Lord Louis Mountbatten. Unsparing in his criticism of the Western powers after World War II, Gandhiji wrote, “I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women and children as the most diabolical use of science.”

He questioned the wanton ruthless violence: “What is the antidote? Has it antiquated non-violence? No. On the contrary, non-violence is the only thing that is now left in the field. It is the only thing that the atom bomb cannot destroy. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, ‘unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind.’” From the pages of Harijan (September 1946), these words are prophetic, underlining the Mahatma’s understanding of world history as it was unfolding.

“I have no doubt, that unless big nations shed their desire of exploitation and the spirit of violence of which war is the natural expression and atom bomb........

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