What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals? War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler was “Great Britain’s sin”. Hitler is only an answer to British imperialism, and this I say in spite of the fact that I hate Hitlerism and its anti-Semitism. England, America and Russia have all of them got their hands dyed more or less red — not merely Germany and Japan. The Japanese have only proved themselves to be apt pupils of the West. They have learnt at the feet of the West and beaten it at its own game.

Share this quote

Source: Interview to Ralph Coniston (before 25 April 1945); Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 79, pp. 422-23.

About this quote

The provocation targets a comfortable habit: judging only the losing side of a war as guilty. The argument is that organized mass violence implicates everyone who orders and conducts it, so the label of criminal cannot stop at the enemy while sparing one's own leaders. It is a deliberately jarring wartime claim.

When to use it

  • A referee calls the same foul against the home team that they'd call against the visitors.
  • A parent who punishes one child for lying holds the favorite child to the exact same rule.
  • An auditor flags questionable spending in their own department, not only in rival teams.