Archives: The Greatest Man in the World

We republish here a tribute by W.E.B. Du Bois to Mahatma Gandhi upon his death in 1948.

At his death, Mohandas Gandhi was the greatest man in the world. He was the Prince of Peace and stood among living leaders alone, because of that fact. For his color and his poverty he was despised and rejected by most of the world. He had no form nor comeliness that men should desire him and yet he stood for the one thing which the powerful Christian Church has been supposed to advocate for nearly two thousand years. 

It is singular that a man who was not a follower of the Christian religion should be in his day the best exemplification of the principles which that religion was supposed to lay down. While the Christian Church during its two thousand years of existence has been foremost in war and organized murder, Mohandas Gandhi was foremost in exemplifying peace as a method of political progress. 

I remember once sitting at a large dinner in a New York hotel where there were a number of Christian ministers, including a few from colored Harlem. Madame Pandit, the sister of Nehru, was one of the speakers and as this singularly beautiful woman rose and looked upon that audience, she said with a smile, “You know I am a heathen”; and as a heathen she represented something bigger and finer than those professed representatives of the Christian Church; the church which had defended slavery and is defending, with few exceptions, present color caste; and which was not only foremost in the promotion of the First and Second World Wars but is ready for a Third World War. 

Since the beginning of this era, the rise of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, the world has increasingly counted upon war as the chief method of social uplift. This is in direct contradiction to the ethics of the Christian religion. It is as far as one can conceive from the Christ doctrine of turning the other cheek, of self-sacrifice, of peace and good will. Yet we have not only insisted upon war as the chief weapon of civilization but our insistence has progressively increased, until today after a World War so total and costly that it well-nigh stopped civilization, we are doggedly preparing frantically for a Third World War and what must be looked upon as a final effort at suicide. Our greatest leaders, with few exceptions, seem to agree with this program. Winston Churchill, ever since he was disappointed at not maintaining control of the British Empire, has not only advocated war but persistently pushed and advised the United States to lead it. I know of very few great leaders who have taken their stand upon the Christian doctrine of peace. Mohandas Gandhi was the one magnificent exception. For years now he has been a leader in the peace movement and also a leader in the rise of the colored peoples. He has changed their attitude. Formerly there seemed absolutely no chance for the majority of people in the world to gain freedom and autonomy except by fighting and overcoming the dominant white race. This trend of thought Gandhi ended. 

How is it now that among civilized people this kind of contradiction can happen? That you can have an organization and a creed and personal profession standing for one thing and yet actions which entirely contradict them? It is of course because we accept hypocrisy and lying as part of our creed. We became used not only to saying one thing and meaning another, but of professing one belief and acting in contradiction to it, and then neither permitting criticism willingly, nor heeding it if the criticism is made.

When this kind of action characterizes an era, its fall and destruction is forecast. It is impossible to maintain integrity and logical balance in the midst of hypocrisy and lying. On the other hand, and no one knew this more than Mohandas Gandhi, the price of standing up against overwhelming world opinion is terrible. Gandhi began fighting for Indians and Negroes in South Africa and there, in the most reactionary and utterly debased of modern countries called civilized, he fought his battle for equality. Then when he went back to India he was faced by the inevitable difficulty when one finds power and wealth in high places, when one finds war and organized murder almost universally accepted as a method of progress. He must, as a result of this, find himself. And he did so gradually but determinedly. 

He tried at first to follow the faith which influenced so many of us in the First World War. He wanted India to take part in a “War to end all Wars”; in a war to stop the war psychosis. But he found out, as so many of us did, that the First World War was simply a prelude to the second; that it was not a war for freedom but for industrial profit. When Gandhi saw that its results in Asia included massacres like that of Amritsar, and the imprisoning and torture of liberal leadership, he turned to “Passive Resitance.” By inaction and refusal to cooperate in wrong, he tried to compel the governing powers of the British Empire to give India her freedom. He even tried to face and fight the great organization of industry based on the modern machine and accumulated capital. It was a hard and, for long years, a failing fight; but today we see that in the long run the Gandhi doctrine must triumph or modern civilization falls, as the cultures of Greece and Rome fell two thousand years ago. 

Much depends upon our attitude toward Gandhi and his doctrines. Is it not possible for the world to turn and say, “No more war!”; to reinstate the Prince of Peace as founder and guide of the Christian religion; to acknowledge that it took a heathen to show Christians the way of life, and to refuse to be carried further in this insane determination to commit suicide through a Third World War?

He knew, as all men with wisdom know, that peace cannot be obtained through war; that this psychosis of murder, which has gradually gripped the modern civilized world, means its utter suicide; and, therefore, in his great work of emancipating more than three hundred and fifty millions of human beings, Gandhi sought to find the path of peace, rather than the path of war. He carried it out to an extent which no other great group of people, not even the Quakers, had ever attempted before. He led hundreds of millions toward this program of peace and sacrifice. It was not as successful as he had hoped. Nevertheless, at his death he could see that his program was a greater and finer program than anything that the world had tried, certainly during the twenty centuries of Christian leadership. 

The impact of his magnificent courage and his stubborn standing by principle will not soon be forgotten. This is not to say that Gandhi was all-wise; that, for instance, his fight against capitalism and his laying down of great principles were always unassailable by criticism and logic; but with all of his mistakes, and there were many, his fundamental principles were unquestionable, his unselfishness and spirit of sacrifice were something that the modern world cannot properly evaluate or worship.

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