In India they say, “Even a leaf of a tree moves only if God wants to move it.” So even the murderer is not really responsible, he is simply doing what God wants to do. That’s the whole teaching in the Gita of Krishna, and the Gita is worshipped by Hindus and even by non-Hindus, and one cannot believe…even people like Mahatma Gandhi, who pretend to be non-violent, call the Gita their mother. Gandhi used to say that Hindus and Mohammedans are one. I was not more than seventeen when I wrote him a letter and asked him, “If Hindus and Mohammedans are one, if the Gita is your mother, what about the holy Koran ? Is the holy Koran your father?” He was so angry – his son was my friend and he told me that he simply threw the letter out the window. Ramdas, his son, told him, “What he is asking is relevant. If you can call the Gita your mother, if you cannot call the Koran your father you can call it, step-father, uncle – but some relationship has to be there: otherwise how are Hindus and Mohammedans one?” I never received any letter. Ramdas informed me, “You will never receive any answer.”

I wrote Gandhi another letter: “On the one hand you say you are non-violent, and on the other hand you worship the Gita, which teaches simply violence and nothing else.” The whole book is a teaching for violence. Krishna, to his disciple, Arjuna, is teaching, “You go to the war, fight, because that’s what is the will of God, because without his will nothing happens. So if this big war is happening, it cannot happen without his will.” Krishna tries in every way to persuade Arjuna. Arjuna argues, but he is not a great logician; otherwise, it was so simple.

If I was in his place, I would have simply got out of the chariot and walked towards the forest, and told him, “This is what God wills. What can I do? I am simply following his will. Nobody can do anything against his will, so if I am going to the forest to meditate and not to fight, it is his responsibility.” There was no need for any argument. And the whole Gita is just an argument: Arjuna trying to argue or nonviolence and Krishna imposing violence because God wants it. His sole argument is, “You should surrender to God’s will and do whatever he wants.” Arjuna must have been stupid. I would have accepted in the very beginning – there would have been no need for the Gita – that “You are right, I surrender. And now I will do only that which God wants.” And I would have walked into the forest.

I was amazed that Gandhi was reading this Gita every morning, chanting, explaining to his disciples the meaning of it – and it is nothing but an argument of a very stupid kind. Then Adolf Hitler is not wrong: if God wants him to kill ten million people, what can the poor man do?

But if you have love for your master, don’t you then do what he wants you to do, especially in his presence?

If you love your master, you will certainly let him do what he wants to do. But if he is a master he will not make you do anything that goes against your freedom, that goes against your growth. And if he does anything like that, that simply proves that he is a hypocrite, not a master.