Written on
October 27, 2025

Abbas Tyabji tugged at his white beard and paced the dingy jail cell. He gathered his khadi robe about him and cursed the British for arresting him. At 75 and in failing health, he wondered if this prison term would be his last.

His friend and cellmate, Mahatma Gandhi, acted as if it were simply another day. Wearing only a loincloth, the leader of their resistance movement sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, calmly rubbing the top of his bald head.

Shining through a narrow window near the ceiling, a thin beam of sunlight did little to brighten the gloom. Tyabji went to the corner and peed into a bucket filled with urine and feces. He gagged and held his breath as angry flies swarmed around his feet. He quickly relieved himself and moved away. “When will they allow us to empty this bucket? The reek is too much.”

“A minor inconvenience,” Gandhi said matter-of-factly. “Things could be worse.”

Tyabji scowled. “Yes, they might have beaten us.”

“I doubt the police will hurt us,” Gandhi said.

Tyabji threw up his hands. “That’s because you are the famous Mahatma Gandhi. Unlike you, I am not so well known. In my experience, it’s only a matter of time before things get worse. Civil disobedience carries a heavy price.”

Gandhi uncrossed his legs and leaned back against the wall. “Come now, Abbas. Why so gloomy? This is not your first time in prison.”

“Though not as often as you, I’ve seen the inside of a jail more times than I care to remember. This time, however, something feels different.” Tyabji paused and tugged at his beard. “Did you see the way the magistrate glared at us when he read the charges? Perhaps we’ve crossed the line with our Salt March.”

Gandhi slapped his hands together and smiled the infectious smile that garnered the support of so many millions. “I knew salt was the key. Such a simple thing, but it has grabbed the imagination of our people. Thousands are making salt in defiance of the British law.”

“And they are suffering for it,” Tyabji said. “Your followers are being arrested and beaten. Some have been killed. Are you sure Ahimsa, non-violence, is the best way?”

Before Gandhi could answer, a shadowy presence stepped toward them from the darkness of the adjacent cell. “Non-violence is the wrong strategy,” the shadow man said. “As Lord Krishna tells us in the Bhagavad Gita, ‘If you do not fight this righteous battle, you will abandon your duty and honor and incur sin.’”

Gandhi stood and gripped the bars that separated the two men. “Jesus said to turn the other cheek. So, I will continue my nonviolent protest.”

“But even Jesus fought injustice by making whips and beating the money changers,” the man said. “You admire Jesus, and yet that great prophet said that he came not to bring peace but a sword.”

Gandhi’s knuckles turned white as he clenched his fists around the iron bars. “Who are you? Come into the light so I can see your face.”

The man remained in the shadows. Piercing yellow eyes stared back from a pitch-black aura. The man’s biting voice resonated against the bare walls. “Ahimsa is not the answer. Tyabji, you know that Allah commands you to fight for the oppressed. Don’t you follow your own book? Are you not a true Muslim?”

Abbas Tyabji hung his head and kicked at a dead cockroach, one of many that littered the floor.

“Don’t listen to him,” Gandhi said. “He is nothing but a British plant, put here to dissuade us from our purpose.” Gandhi peered into the gloom of the next cell. “Tell your bosses I will not turn from my satyagraha, my truth.”

“You betray your motherland by your inaction,” the shadow-man replied.

Tyabji faced Gandhi. “He may have a point. If the Prophet Muhammad had not taken up arms to fight the unbelievers, he would have been slain in the first battle.”

Gandhi pressed his face against the bars. “I have spent my whole life passively resisting oppression and have suffered greatly, first in South Africa and now here in my homeland. Ahimsa is the correct way. The only way.”

The man appealed to Tyabji. “Think about what your holy book says: ‘Fighting has been made obligatory upon you, though you dislike it. Perhaps you dislike something which is good for you and like something which is bad for you.’ If you do not take up arms, you are guilty of disliking something that is good for you.”

Tyabji removed his cloth cap, shook it out, and put it back on. “I must admit, this man has a point. Maybe our strategy is misguided.”

“But my satyagraha is working,” Gandhi said. “The world is waking up. British rule is being exposed for its injustice. We simply need to give it more time.”

The man in the next cell scoffed. “It is your dharma, your duty as citizens of India to fight the British oppressors.”

“The words of the Bhagavad Gita are not meant to be taken literally,” Gandhi said. “Krishna is talking about our inner struggle against evil. The language of warfare is only metaphorical.” Gandhi turned to Tyabji. “And that, my Muslim friend, is how you should interpret your own book.”

Tyabji resumed his pacing and tugged at his beard as if trying to retrieve an answer. “You may be right. Jihad can mean an inner, spiritual struggle. On the other hand, jihad also means physical struggle, as in armed conflict.”

“That is my point exactly,” the man in the adjacent cell said. “Read the holy books. In them, you will find that the righteous must defend the oppressed, even if it means going to war.”

“Enough!” Gandhi shouted. “No more talk of war. The only thing war can accomplish is death.”

“We will all die,” the man said. “The question is, will we make our lives count for something worthwhile?”

“Enough!” Gandhi shouted again.

The man, whose face they had yet to see, stepped back into the shadows, leaving Tyabji and Gandhi alone.

The small streak of sunlight from their window grew dim as the sun sank behind the Sahyadri mountain range. As the shadows stole the last glimmer of daylight, Tyabji thought about his wife, Amina, and their daughter, Sohaila. With a heavy heart, he hoped they would find comfort despite his absence. He gathered his robe around his shoulders and sat against the stone wall. He tried to ignore the mice that scratched in the darkness and closed his eyes.

 Gandhi aimed his rifle and picked off the nearest Afrikaner. The white man fell in a heap next to a dozen others who had fallen victim to Gandhi’s Martini-Henry rifle.

Bolstered by Gandhi’s tactic of armed revolution, tens of thousands of black South Africans took up weapons to fight their white oppressors. In a Xhosa village, a South African policeman stormed the home of a royal official and killed the entire Mandela family, including a baby boy named Rolihlahla. Across Africa, subjects of the British colonies joined the conflict. Civil war swept the continent. Hundreds of thousands were killed.

In the United States, a middle-aged journalist named Cyril Briggs followed Gandhi’s example and led an armed militia of blacks from Harlem into New York City’s police station on West 37th Street and killed the police. Inspired by their example, thousands of blacks marched on City Hall, killing, looting, and burning along the way.

The General Secretary of the Communist Party, Joseph Stalin, sent a delegation to the leaders of Briggs’ revolt, offering support for their cause. Battles raged in New York and spread along the eastern seaboard. The new masters raised red flags bearing the hammer and sickle.

Gandhi’s armed revolt spread to India. Tyabji watched as policemen shot and killed his wife and daughter as they cowered in a corner. Chaos engulfed Hindustan. The leaders of Gandhi’s revolution followed the example of Stalin’s Great Purge. They rounded up the Europeans, held mock trials, and executed them all.

Communists in Indonesia took advantage of the surge in anti-colonial sentiment and took over the government in a bloody civil war. Hundreds of thousands died in the archipelago. Similar uprisings happened in the Philippines and Indochina, where Muslims and communists vied for power.

The Great Depression woke from its brief slumber, plunging the world into irreversible economic collapse. Japan sank back into feudalism. Civil war in China became one bloodbath after another. The Nazis in Germany and the Soviets in Russia marshalled their forces, obliterating each other with weapons of war.

The world burned. Millions died.

Tyabji woke in a sweat.

“What’s wrong?” Gandhi said. “You shouted out in your sleep.”

Tyabji gasped as he struggled to control his breathing. Gandhi crawled to him in the darkness. “Are you in pain?”

“Not physical pain,” he said between breaths. “I had the worst nightmare of my life.”

“Dreams can be a sign,” Gandhi said. “What did you see?”

“You had become an armed revolutionary. People around the world followed your example. Millions died in civil wars and Soviet-style pogroms.”

“He Bhagwān, My God, what a nightmare,” Gandhi said.

“I even saw my beloved Amina and Sohaila gunned down,” Tyabji said as he held his head and moaned.

A dim light outside the window told them the sun was rising. Tyabji turned to face east, gathered dust from the floor, and rubbed it over his hands.

“What are you doing?” Gandhi asked.

“Preparing for morning prayers.”

“But you are not a praying man. Why pray now?”

“Perhaps my nightmare was a dream from Allah to warn us to stay on the path of non-violent resistance.” Tyabji blew the dust from his hands, rubbed his face, and knelt for morning prayers, surprising even himself that after all the years, he still recalled the words of the fajr. He spoke each phrase sincerely and concluded by facing to the right and to the left while repeating, “Peace be upon you and God’s blessings.”

In the meantime, Gandhi performed his morning meditation, pacing back and forth and repeating the words Ram Naam. After his hour-long ritual, he turned to Tyabji. “I’ve given your dream some thought. I believe it’s connected to our conversation with the man in the next cell.”

“I think he is a devil,” Tyabji whispered.

“We all have devils within us,” Gandhi said. “Perhaps his are too strong for him.”

A loud clang of metal echoed in the hallway as someone opened the door leading to their block of cells. A guard, carrying their breakfast, stopped outside their cell and passed them their food. When the guard turned to go, Tyabji called after him. “What about the man in the next cell? Doesn’t he get breakfast?”

The guard stared at them inquisitively. “You must be losing your mind. There is no one in this section but you two troublemakers.”

Tyabji jumped up and scanned the adjacent cell. “He’s right. There is no one there. He must have been a jinn, perhaps Shaytan himself.”

Gandhi smiled. “Or it may have been Saguna Brahman, come to keep us on the right path.”