Mahatma Gandhi and the Crisis Conversion of a Nation
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Mahatma Gandhi and the Crisis Conversion of a Nation Reggie Abraham 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
This article is written in honor of Lewis Rambo. It is as an expression of gratitude for his years of service to the field of pastoral theology and, at a more personal level, his many acts of kindness to me over the last few years. Inspired by Lewis Rambo’s Understanding Religious Conversion (1993), this article attempts to apply his idea of a “crisis conversion” to national and political crises in the history of India. Three moments of crisis are considered here. The first is related to the populist agitation for swaraj (self-rule) and the satyagraha (force of truth) movement. The second is the partition of British India into two new nations, India and Pakistan, that resulted in the displacement of millions of people. The third is a current and ongoing crisis, the advance of Hindutva—the fundamentalist Hindu state—and the abuse of minority religious groups. Mohandas K. Gandhi attempted to turn Indians away from the path of himsa (violence) and lead them to the path of ahimsa (non-violence). It is suggested here that Indian conversion to the way of Gandhi was sincere but incomplete, as evidenced by the events following partition as well as the current climate of religious intolerance. Indians need to periodically reconvert to the Gandhian path of ahimsa by responding to his call for acceptance and respect of “others.” Keywords Lewis Rambo . Crisisconversion . Mohandas K.Gandhi . Satyagraha . Himsa . Ahimsa . Swaraj . British Raj . Partition . India . Pakistan “A fall from compassion is always a moral fall. Just as an elephant’s footprints engulfs the footprints of all other animals, compassion engulfs all forms of religion. Immoral thought, word and deed make a person fall from Dharma; therefore a return to Dharma is to be pure again in thought, pure again in word and family, pure again in deed… Ahimsa is the highest religion, Ahimsa is the highest discipline.
* Reggie Abraham [email protected]
1
Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA
Pastoral Psychology
Ahimsa is the highest penance, Ahimsa is the highest sacrifice, Ahimsa is the highest happiness, Ahimsa is the highest truth, Gift, ritual, ablution, holy merit—. None is greater than Ahimsa. Bhishma in the Mahabharata. In Understanding Religious Conversion, Lewis Rambo describes conversion as the result of “multilayered processes” spiraling back and forth between a variety of stages (1993, pp. 16– 17). In order to organize the complex data related to conversion, he posits seven stages of conversion—context, crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment, and consequences— and notes that each stage has “a cluster of themes, patterns, and processes that characterize it” (p. 44). I found myself particularly drawn to the “crisis” stage because Rambo’s work on crisis conversion reminds me of some fascinating conversion stories I have heard over the years. The most memorable of these stor
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