떠돌이 개들을 죽일 것인가/ 간디 전기

[화엄]

<떠돌이 개들을 죽일 것인가/ 간디 전기>

Anbalal Sarabhai, the textile magnate of Ahmedabad,

had odered the rounding up some sixty stray dogs

that frequented his sprawling industrial estates,

and in the absence of any quidance from the municipality had had them killed.

The distressed Sarabhai called on Gandhi the next morning

and asked his opionion about his action.

'What else could be done?' said Gandhi.

The Ahmedabad Humanitarian Society learned about this conversation,

and in a letter to Gandhi demanded

whether he had in fact said such a thing.

If so, What had he meant by it?

'When Hindusim forbids the taking of life of any living being,'

the letter continued,

'when it declares it to be a sin,

do you think it right to kill rabid dogs

for the reason that they would bite human beings

and by biting other dogs make them also rabid?'

Gandhi published the letter in Young India and appended his reply.

Yes, he has said, 'What else could be done?'

and he added that haveing thought over the matter

he felt that his reply was proper.

'Imperfect, erring mortals as we are,' he reasoned,

'there is no course open to us but the destruction of rabid dogs.

At times we may be faced with the unavoidable duty of killing a man

who is found in the act of killing people.'

He was no doubt turning away from the doctrine of absolute ahimsa [= nonviolence]

which he had imbibed from his religious background.

- Yogesh Chadha, Gandhi: a life, John Wiley & Sons (1997), p.275-276

(Gandhi-048)