Wednesday 27 June 2012

'Go know thyself!'- Gandhi & the Bible.

In the Bible, Lot offers his daughters to the men of his City so they might sate their lust upon them rather than sodomize the two strangers to whom he had given shelter.

Gandhi, however, said  that true Non-Violence involves killing your daughter if you think she might be about to be raped, but then to cheerfully offer yourself to the rapist so he may do with you as he wishes.
To quote Ronald Terchek's book on Gandhi-
In a

How are we to reconcile the example of Lot with this teachings of Gandhi?

Lot protected strangers, not knowing they were angels, by offering up his daughters to be raped. Gandhi would kill the daughters before they could be raped and then offer himself up as a substitute
Taking the most difficult part of each we get the rule- offer your near and dear ones up for rape before killing them and then offering yourself up to the unslaked lust of the potential rapist.
However- in accordance with the maxim Vasudhaiva kutumbakam- since you must treat everybody as your own family, what you have to do is kill everybody. regardless of age and gender,  before offering yourself up as a substitute to potential rapists.

But...what if you yourself are a potential rapist? Clearly, it would be very wrong not to suspect yourself of being a potential rapist while constantly jumping to that sort of conclusion regarding your fellow human beings.

It therefore indubitably follows that you must cheerfully offer yourself to yourself to be raped after killing every potential rape victim- that is all sentient beings- with the singe exception of yourself.
This is becasue you can't compensate yourself, as rapist, for depriving yourself  of a victim if you actually slit your own throat.

To summarize, the glorious synthesis of Gandhian and Christian thought consists of admitting that true non-violence, true Religion, means killing everybody while continually raping yourself.  

So no change there then.

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