Gandhi
by Sarah Hudspith

A brainstorm in our Gandhi class about "GOD"

15 people came together from April to June every day to talk and learn about India, Gandhi and English. All students had English as a foreign language. Karuna, Adrian, Elvira, Muriel, Andrea, Kathrin, Raphael, Naoko, Yumiko, Marie-Anne, Lenka, Matijn, Miriajam, Isabelle - aged 15 - 50 yers old from Switzerland, Japan, Holland, Czech, Korea. Some had had English for just one year, others for three years or more. Our text was «My story of Experiments with Truth» Gandhi. This was a special Ecole group - so many strong sensitive people together, there was a richness in depth of understanding, creative detail, constructive interaction. How can I convey this through "Internet"? Our beginning was through pictures. Everyone drew their own of India - come to my classroom and see them. Brilliant colours, emptiness, a holy river, a God meditating, fertile forest, brown drought, intuitively many found their way to a truth they hardly knew consciously. And then we did creative work on photos from India:

I'm so small
Karuna Richard

The room big and empty, I'm happy in it. It's a place full of peace and freedom. Well I'm not quite sure about freedom; I think more security. It's a place that I can hide in, when the streets are crowded with hectic, sadness, happiness and heat. When I'm in the market I'm squeezed by everybody. I am so small nobody notices me, I'm just a little black dot on a huge piece of paper. It makes me feel sad, but how could I expect everybody to notice me. In the room I feel small as well. The largeness even makes me a bit scared. If I look at the ceiling or at the walls they seem so far away, but yet so near. The floor is cold, I'm barefoot and the cold is creeping up my legs and into my bones. But my father keeps me fascinated. He is taking away the hair on his face, I think it's called a beard. He's using a metal thing. It must be very sharp because it takes away the hair so smoothly.- I feel small compared with him, as well. He's big and powerful, I really respect him. I love to watch him live. I could just sit and look at him for hours. My mother is cleaning, she does nearly all the work. I think it's unfair but they love each other dearly. Sometimes I want to tell him but I'm a bit, a big bit scared. Well actually I don't think he would be angry, but how could such a small person tell such a big person what to do. Again I get this feeling of being small, I don't like it.

I love my mother, she's warm and loving. If I were to give my parents a colour, my mother would be orange and my father blue.

And I would be red. Red is beautiful, strong, warm and compassionte. Actually I have something strong and big inside me and it's growing.

Gandhi said: "For me nothing in the political world is more important than the spinning wheel. Spend an hour a day at the wheel. Britain holds India because it is a fine market for Lancashire.

So as part of the course we all learned to spin. Wool in Switzerland is burned, Australian sheep give us better, cheaper wool apparently! So far a small token of gratitude to the shearer, we collected several potatoes sacks of wonderful, greasy, smelly Hasliberg wool - Two months later, washed, carded, spun, knitted or woven, it has became hats and little bags. While talking we often sat and spun.

Man and his deed are two distinct things
Hate the sin and not the sinner

..was a guiding idea of Gandhi's private and political life. We wrote essays on how we deal with it in our lives, discussed its value, its possibility for us.

Man and his deed are two distinct things. Hate the sin and not the sinner.
Raphael Sacher

So, what I think about that you can look at it in a good and in bad way. First you'll see the good about it, that all people are good. And that's what I already wrote in one of my essays. They only can do bad things because they are influenced by someone or something. I mean this sentence is also my opinion but maybe because I didn't experience that much. Okay, all people are good. But how can that be, I mean that somebody kills someone else? How can that be that it was just a sin? How can't you hate the sinner when he did it on purpose. But if you hate, then that's a sin, and you aren't better. so hate the sin, isn't a sin. So, if everybody respected this sentence, there would be peace all over the world . Unfortunately it's impossible, it's too hard. Even if I know it would be the solution of many problems, I can't live like that. But I can try it. I don't think this sentence is enough because if it were a rule, clever people would take it as an excuse to sin. That's why I don't like the first sentence that much. Man and his deed are two different things. So, you can sin and say "I'm sorry that wasn't me". Oh no, it doesn't work because every sin you learned sometime and you decide if you want to take it with you or not. So, it's right, actually, it's true. What I wanted to say at the end is that you never judge the person. You only judge the things they are doing. They, and only they know how they are and you never know if the things they are doing are true. That means you can't hate the people because you don't know them. You only can hate their deeds. So, maybe this sentence "Hate the sin and not the sinner" is true. I really don't know yet.

Gandhi's autobiography is not easy, it's also long. Finally we found the best way to make the text intelligible was each week to divide up sections, which small groups would present to the whole group in the form of sketches. It was creative funny, thought-provoking work to create these scenes, it was also fascinating to watch them. Every week all of us became once not ourselves in front of others, became a person in Gandhi's story. Text, individual and group grew nearer.

Ahimsa: non-violent resistance
Satyagraha: Insisting on truth through non-co-operation.

The above are Gandhi's most important messages, they became his political tools for elicting the independence of India. How do they touch our life in the Ecole? We spent one evening in a Schulgemeinde talking about the problem of stealing: Two hours discussion whether we should solve it by the violent but possibly effective means of a room search. At 21:30 the Schulgemeinde was stopped, but the Vertrauensrat and Interventionsgruppe continued it the next day for another two hours. There was finally no room search. Many people were angry, frustated by all this talk. However within the next week, nearly all the stolen things came back!!We looked at this form of Ahimsa and Satyagraha in our lives. This huge energy of talking, wrestling with each other all together had produced something amazing. A freely given "setting-in-order" of what had been disturbed. Those who returned these stolen Ecole things did this anonymously, there was no punishment. Those who refound their possessions were full relief, but it was not just they who benefitted from this process. It seemed that the whole Schulgemeinde felt responsible for this wonderful fruit. There was a special joy, a pride, a rediscovered trust for us all. So, Gandhi's ideas, their reality, their effects are still part of our contemporary choice of action.