Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler
As far as Gandhi's nonviolence goes, the moment Britain left India, nonviolence also disappeared. And a strange coincidence is, that Gandhi had been for forty years continuously forcing people not to be violent. He had no discipline, no method of meditation that could recreate a man's energy, could transform his being and make him nonviolent. He had only this ideology: don't be violent.
And violence is within you. It is man's inheritance of millions of years, it needs tremendous work to change it. Gandhi had not given any idea how it had to be changed. But "Don't be violent" meant repress it, go on repressing. For forty years he managed to force Indians to repress their violence. And his logic was appealing: "If you are violent, Britain is never going to leave India. If you are nonviolent, then sooner or later they will be ashamed of keeping an innocent, nonviolent country in slavery."
So people remained nonviolent for forty years, and as Britain left India, a tremendous violence exploded in India. And the coincidence is, just one million people were killed in that violence; riots between Hindus and Mohammedans killed one million people -- exactly the same number as Adolf Hitler killed in Germany!
Of course, they arrived from different directions, but both came to the same conclusion.
Who is responsible for one million people killed in India after independence? Gandhi has to accept that he was responsible for forty years' repression, and when the pressure was gone -- Britain had moved with her armies out of the country -- it erupted like a volcano.
In fact, Adolf Hitler's violence with the Jews was more peaceful, because he killed people in the most up-to-date gas chambers, where you don't take much time.
The chimneys of the factory start taking you, the smoke -- you can call it the holy smoke -- and this seems to be a direct way towards God. The smoke simply goes upwards.
But the violence that happened in India was really cruel, ugly, barbarous. Children were mutilated, killed; old men were mutilated, killed. Trains were burned, buses were burned, houses were burned. All over India there was freedom to kill. There was no rule, no government; nobody could prevent it.
But psychologists have not looked into why it happened, who is responsible for it. I make Mahatma Gandhi responsible for it. That's why I compare Mahatma Gandhi with Adolf Hitler.
I compare Adolf Hitler also with so-called saints living in the monasteries. That is not to praise Adolf Hitler – it is said to condemn the saints in the monasteries.
Adolf Hitler really lived like a monk. He was a vegetarian. To be a vegetarian in India is simple -- everybody is, but in Germany to be vegetarian.... He never ate any meat, any fish, he was absolutely a vegetarian.
He lived in the end of his life almost entirely in an underground cell; just the way monks live in their cells in the monastery, he lived in an underground cell. He was a bachelor almost his whole life, except for the last three hours when he got married.
Hitler never allowed any woman to sleep in his room. His reasons were different: the monks are afraid that they may get interested in the woman; Hitler was also afraid, but his fear was different: his fear was that the woman might kill him when he was asleep. Who knows if she is a spy? He never allowed anybody -- man or woman. He would lock the door from the inside, because in sleep anything can be done to you.
He never trusted anybody, he had no friends. He lived a very structured life. That's why I said he lived like a saint in the monasteries. Why do you praise the saints in the monasteries? -- because of their disciplined, structured life, ascetic life. But Adolf Hitler fulfills all these conditions.
He never tasted wine. On that point he scores better than your saints, particularly the Christian saints. They are not prohibited from drinking wine. In fact, you may be surprised that the best wineries were Christian monasteries. The best wine has come out of the monasteries. The monks were not only drinking, but making alcohol too. Great religious job!
I am condemning the monks when I compare them with Adolf Hitler. I am condemning Mahatma Gandhi when I compare him with Adolf Hitler. I am not praising Adolf Hitler. I use him as a comparison. The reasons that you respect a saint -- he fulfills them perfectly. The reasons Mahatma Gandhi is thought to be a great soul -- Adolf Hitler fulfills perfectly. And yet the man turned out to be the biggest monster in the whole history of humanity.
You can now see my standpoint. Neither vegetarianism, nor a structured life, nor celibacy, bachelorhood, is going to transform you. These things could not transform Adolf Hitler. How could these things transform Mahatma Gandhi? How could these things transform the thousands of saints and monks living in the monasteries? These things have no relevance as far as the transformation of man is concerned.