76 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
like the coils of a serpent out of which one cannot slip whatever one tries. I desire,
therefore, to wrestle with the serpent.... I have experimented with myself and my
friends in order to introduce religion into politics.” In this simile, Gandhi is the
representative of religion, and he wrestles with the serpent of politics. Yet Gandhi’s
goal is not simply the victory of religion, a mass conversion. He seeks Swaraj, the
independence of India. Can these two be linked? “Does religion allow itself,” Buber
asks, “to be introduced into politics in such a way that a political success can be
obtained?” Gandhi seems to see the two goals as linked; in 1920 he had written that
if the Indian people conducted themselves with virtue and discipline then Swaraj
could be obtained in a year. Buber, in contrast, in line with his position that God’s
love is not measured by success, worries: “One may be certain of the truthfulness
and non-violence of the love of God, but not of the attainment of Swaraj in one year.
‘In one year’ is a political word; the religious watchword must read: Some time, per-
haps today, perhaps in a century. In religious reality there is no stipulation of time,
and victory comes, at times, just when one no longer expects it.”^58
Gandhi thus risks failing to introduce religion into politics, instead merely
allying his religion with the politics of others. “He cannot wrestle uninterrupt-
edly with the serpent; he must at times get along with it because he is directed
to work in the kingdom of the serpent that he set out to destroy.... The serpent
is, indeed, not only powerful outside, but also within, in the souls of those who
long for political success.”^59 How can one guard against this risk? Buber’s an-
swer relates, as we have seen, to the question of success in time. “Religion means
goal [Ziel] and way [Weg]; politics implies end [Zweck] and means [Mittel].”^60
The latter is achievable in time and measurable according to success, the former
provides direction but does not seek historical consummation. But what does
this mean for Buber’s contention that God intended not to give Israel a religion
but to found a kingdom? Wasn’t the taking seriously of God’s political rule the
measure of Israel’s religious seriousness? Can it now be that the realization of
this kingdom becomes a “religious” goal, not to see fulfillment in historical time?
Did the ancient Israelite achievement of direct theocracy in fact constitute not
religion but “politics of religion, that is, the opposite of what Gandhi proclaimed:
the introduction of politics into religion”?
Buber’s argument snakes back and forth like the serpent Gandhi wrestles.
To read “Gandhi, Politics, and Us” is to watch Buber’s struggle take place on the
page. He strives for the elimination of the autonomous spheres of religion and
politics, but, as he already admitted in 1923, they do have a certain provisional
autonomy. “Only in the great polis of God,” he writes, “will religion and politics
be blended into a life of world community, in an eternity wherein neither reli-
gion nor politics will any longer exist.”^61 What, then, is theopolitics, and who is
the theopolitician? “The most natural of all questions, the question concerning
success, is religion’s ordeal by fire. If religion withdraws from the sphere where
this question is asked, it evades its task, despite all hosts and sacraments of in-