"A portrait of Mahatma Gandhi adorned the upper room of a two-storied house on 112 Mercer street, a side lane branching off from the main road leading to the Princeton University at Princeton, in the United States... Besides the picture of Gandhi, there were photographs of the physicists Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell." Writing on Einstein's fascination with Mahatma Gandhi, Sarojini Henry, Professor of Systematic Theology, briefly details this fascination with references to correspondence and excellent juxtapositions revealing how these enigmatic and world-transformative figures are in essential ways more alike than different.

Sarojini Henry started her teaching career, after completing the Master's degree, as a lecturer in Mathematics at Sarah Tucker College in South India. After taking her M.Phil degree, in Mathematics, she worked as Professor of Mathematics at St John's College, teaching graduate students. In 1981, Sarojini was invited by Union Theological Seminary, New York as their ecumenical fellow for a year. It was as a doctoral student at Union, that she received the P.E.O. Fellowship for Women and the Roothbert Fellowship. After completing her doctorate in ethics, (Thesis on Reinhold Niebuhr's Critique of Mahatma Gandhi's Non-Violence) at Union, Sarojini joined the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, Madurai, as professor in Systematic Theology. In 1990, she was invited by the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky as an adjunct professor for a semester. In 1992, she was awarded the Martin Buber Institute fellowship by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for a semester.

From 1992, Sarojini started giving lectures on science and religion at the Ecumenical Christian Center at Bangalore and still continues to do so. In 1994, she introduced a course on science and religion for the M.Th theology students at the United Theological Seminary, Bangalore where she was already a visiting professor. In 1997, she received the Templeton Religion and Science Course award for this Institution. In 1999, she received a second Religion and Science Course award for a liberal arts college, the American college at Madurai. In 2000, she was appointed Professor of Systematic Theology at Gurukul Lutheran Theological Seminary, and for this Institution, she received a Templeton Science -Religion Course award in 2001.

--Editor

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Albert Einstein's Fascination for the Indian Mahatma

By Sarojini Henry

A portrait of Mahatma Gandhi adorned the upper room of a two-storied house on 112 Mercer street, a side lane branching off from the main road leading to the Princeton University at Princeton, in the United States. Albert Einstein had bought the house in August 1935 after he had moved to America to join the faculty of the newly found Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. A wisteria vine made a graceful lavender frame for the front porch of Einstein's house. The upper room which Einstein used as his study overlooked the green luxurious garden at the backyard. Half of the wall on that side was replaced with a huge window which seemed to bring the green trees into the room Two walls had book shelves running from the bottom almost to the ceiling. Besides the picture of Gandhi, there were photographs of the physicists Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell.

Einstein's spectacular theories of general and special relativity has brought in a new paradigm in science. in the twentieth century. Besides his scientific ingenuity, his courageous struggle for peace and justice in the world has earned for him a unique place in human history. If a bold search for what is scientifically new stood first and foremost in Einstein's mind, his commitment and aspiration for peace and concord among nations occupied the second place.

Perhaps, it was in his quest for peace and harmony in the world that Einstein came to revere Mahatma Gandhi on the other side of the globe On 27th September,1931, Einstein sent a message to Gandhi who was in London at that time:

"You have shown by all you have done that we can achieve the ideal even without resorting to violence. We can conquer those votaries of violence by the nonviolent method. Your example will inspire and help humanity to put an end to a conflict based on violence with international help and cooperation guaranteeing peace to the world

"With this expression of my devotion and admiration I hope to be able to meet you face to face (1)."

By the year 1931, Gandhi became the world's foremost advocate and exemplar of non-violent methods in political action. Gandhi was then in London to attend the Second Round Table Conference as the sole representatives of the Indian National Congress. The Conference itself ended in a hopeless uncertainty about the British Government's intention towards India. But Gandhi made use of the visit to meet some distinguished British personalities-George Bernard Shaw, Lloyd George, Gilbert Murray among others. By the middle of October, Gandhi was a relaxed mood and on 18th October he replied to Einstein thus:

"I was delighted to have your beautiful letter sent through Sundaram. It is a great consolation to me that the work I am doing finds favour in your sight. I do indeed wish that we could meet face to face and that too in India , at my ashram." (2)

When Gandhi was assassinated on 30th January, Einstein, along with other several other world leaders, felt it as a personal tragedy. On 11th February1948, Einstein issued the following statement for the memorial service held in Washington.

"Everyone concerned with a better future for mankind must be deeply moved by the tragic death of Gandhi. He died a victim of his own principle, the principle of non-violence. He died because in a time of disorder and general unrest in his country, he refused any personal armed protection. It was his unshakable belief that the use of force is an evil in itself, to be shunned by those who strive for absolute peace

"To this faith he devoted his whole life and with this faith in his heart and mind, he led a great nation to its liberation. He demonstrated that the allegiance of men can be won, not merely by the cunning game of political fraud and trickery, but through the living example of a morally exalted way of life

"The veneration in which Gandhi had been held throughout the world rests on the recognition, for the most part unconscious, that in our age of moral decay he was the only statesman who represented that higher conception of human relations in the political sphere to which we must aspire with all our powers. We must learn the difficult lesson that the future of mankind will only be tolerable when our course, in world affairs as in all other matters, is based upon justice and law rather than the threat of naked power as has been true so far." (3)

At the end of the year 1948, on 2nd November, Einstein sent the following message to the Indian Peace Congress, referring to Gandhi's teaching and message:

"The initiative of India, which finds such a vivid expression in this Congress, is a new and welcome proof that Gandhi's great original idea had deeply affected the thinking of his people; brutal force cannot be met successfully for any length of time with similar brutal force but only with non-cooperation towards those who have undertaken to use brutal force . Gandhi recognized that this is the only solution of the vicious circle in which the nations of the world have become caught.

"Let us do whatever is within our power so that all people of the world may accept Gandhi's gospel as their basic policy before it is too late." (4)

Again in the year 1949 Einstein sent the following message appraising Gandhi's work for India's independence.

"We can all be thankful to be able to experience that Mahatma Gandhi's work for the liberation of India has now come to completion. Liberation itself is already an event of world historic significance. But even more so the fact that this goal has been achieved without the use of violence. For the first time, it was shown to humanity what can be achieved through a strong will and consequential action without the force of arms. When the world will succeed in grasping the full implication of this event and will adjust their behaviour accordingly, then the permanent overcoming of the current dangerous situation will not meet with great difficulties." (5)

There is no historical evidence that Gandhi and Einstein ever met. Einstein, however, continued to commend Gandhi as the greatest political genius of the time. It is possible that Einstein identified the quality of a rare courage in the Indian Gandhi, a trait that Einstein himself possessed although in a different field. Both Gandhi and Einstein endeared themselves to all around the world probably because they had the courage to stand alone.

The Courage to Stand Alone: Gandhi and Einstein

If Einstein had the courage to think about the universe in revolutionary ways, Gandhi developed the courage to act in the field of politics in a way that was completely unprecedented. If Einstein altered the way we understand the universe, Gandhi altered the course of political history, by starting the process of dismantling the structure of colonialism in the Asian context. And both had the courage in following their own truth, even to the point of ridicule or rejection.

If Einstein revolutionized theoretical physics by his profound intellectual brilliance, Gandhi radicalized politics through the purity of his moral force. Whereas a bold search into the secrets of the universe was the hallmark of Einstein, a daring venture into the dubious field of politics armed with simple ethical principles was the distinctive feature of Gandhi. The year 1905 was Einstein's "annus mirabilis" with the publication of his relativity theory which would change the face of physics for the rest of the century. For Gandhi, the miracle year was 1908; for, it was in that year that he coined the term Satyagraha, his life's gospel. Einstein was ever alert to the scientific mystery of the intelligibility of the natural order, whereas Gandhi's whole life had been a quest for and a series of experiments with truth. Einstein in his scientific adventure was motivated by a profound artistic conviction that beauty was there in the cosmos waiting to be discovered. Gandhi knew that in his search for soul force, there will be found an inner beauty in the human heart.

Banesh Hoffman, who was Einstein's assistant in 1937 attests that Einstein's "early suspicion of authority, which never wholly left him, was to prove of decisive importance, For without it he would not have been able to develop the powerful independence of mind that gave him the courage to challenge established scientific beliefs and thereby revolutionize physics" (6).

What is remarkable about Einstein was his belief in the power of thought. Einstein's discovery was not just a matter of mere accumulation of facts, but involved a measure of intuition, a leap into the unknown, a flash of penetration. Perhaps, it was the toy compass, which his father gave him at age six, that inspired young Albert's first thought-experiment. How could the isolated needle have the constant impulse to point to the north? As Einstein grew up, it made him reflect on the mysterious properties of the empty space.

One of the free creations of the mind which made Einstein famous was his general theory of relativity. The key idea of the general theory of relativity, called the Equivalence Principle, is that the effects of accelerated motion and of gravity can be considered equivalent. While working on this at the Bern office, a new thought experiment suddenly struck him. He described with some excitement the portentous moment with these words "All of a sudden a thought occurred to me; if a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight. I was startled. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation" (7). This meant that during the fall, there exists for the person no gravitational field. This was the basis of the equivalence principle and Einstein described the revelation to his friend Besso as "the happiest thought of my life." .Many physicists believe that without Einstein, it could have been another few decades or more before another scientist worked out the concepts and the mathematics of general relativity.

What aided him in his thought -experiments was the sense of wonder at the beauty and intricacies of the universe. Einstein had a deep conviction about the rationality of the world. He described his religious feeling as a "rapturous amazement" at the laws of nature and believed that this amazement leads one to experience the universe as one single significant whole. It is to this experience that he gave the name cosmic religiousness.

Raghavan Iyer rightly observes that "Gandhi tended to assimilate all the virtues to that of moral courage" (8). Gandhi's courage to stand alone can be seen in his political creativity, just as Einstein's courage was evident in his application of creative imagination in science. Gandhi's innovation was first to bring the masses into the mainstream of politics. In his political struggle, with every stage the tempo was quickened and the involvement of the masses became more intense and wide-spread. Gandhi surely did it with a determination, a charisma, creative courage and with the aesthetic sensibilities of dramatist..

Of the many civil disobedience movements that Gandhi had organized none was so dramatic and creative as the famous Salt March, India's Via Dolorosa to freedom, which eventually loosened the British grip on India and united the nation. When Gandhi walked to the sea at Dandi and scooped out a handful of salt, it was a signal to the whole country. And all over India people began to march to the nearest seashore to distill salt from sea water. Writing on the drama at the seashore, Gandhi's biographer Louis Fischer would remark that "to pick up a pinch of salt in publicized defiance of the mighty Government, required imagination, dignity and the sense of showmanship of a great artist" (9).

His influence has expanded both geographically and theoretically and this can be seen in the non-violent struggles of diverse political and religious ethnic groups. In America, the fellowship of Reconciliation and the War Resister's League were formed, only with the inspiration derived from Gandhian ideals. Above all, it was Martin Luther King, who helped propagate Gandhi's method of non-violence in his protest marches against the racist oppression in America. Gandhian non-violence has indeed become the most revolutionary idea of the twentieth century.

Thus while Einstein stepped out of his private world to search boldly for what was new in science, Gandhi emerged out of his shy nature to enter into politics and to seek ways of confrontation in which neither party will come out as the victor- Einstein's work provided a new description of the universe, a world-view so radical that its implications are still percolating the scientific world. Gandhi's Satyagraha has given a new insight into the drama of conflict that its significance is for ever resonating in the hearts of people. While Einstein has come to symbolise the human quest for understanding the laws which govern the universe, Gandhi designates the human quest for liberation from all types of oppression. Gandhi's nonviolence has caused a ripple of hope in a world torn by hatred and injustice. Einstein's discoveries have stimulated scientific urge in human beings in the hope that the laws of the universe can be fathomed. For Gandhi, Satyagraha was a way of life, a religious creed, and a doctrine of suffering. For Einstein, understanding the universe was an exquisite joy and the acquisition of scientific knowledge, a prerequisite for life.

Notes and References

1. Record 32. 589.1. Albert Einstein Archives (the Jewish National University Library, Givat Ram, Jerusalem. Through the courtesy of Mr Ze'ev Rosenkranz Bern Dibner Curator, Albert Einstein Archives

2. ibid Both Einstein's letter to Gandhi and Gandhi's letter to Einstein are given in The collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, 90 volumes, (Delhi: The Publication Division, Ministry of information and broadcasting Government of India, 1958-84)

3. Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden eds Einstein On Peace. (New York: Schocken Books, 1968) pp467-68

4.Record 32. 609 Albert Einstein Archives

5. Record 32. 610. Albert Einstein Archives. The original letter written in German, was translated by Dr Paul R Mendes-Flohr, The Hebrew university of Jerusalem, Jerusalem

6. Banesh Hoffmann p24

7. Quoted in Amir D Aczel, God's Equations: Einstein, Relativity and the Expanding Universe (New York: Four Walls and Eight Windows, 1999) p. 28

8. Raghavan Iyer The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi .(New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) p 69

9. Louis Fischer. The Life of Mahatma Gandhi ( Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1953) p.343

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Published   2005.02.04