Gandhi and the Contemporary World 9781138062382, 9780367408510, 9780367809447

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Notes on contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: understanding Gandhi – Why Gandhi matters today
Part I Gandhian philosophy
2 Philosophy and practice: a Gandhi-informed approach
3 A conceptual history of Gandhi’s Satyagraha
4 The scrutinised life: Gandhi and his interlocutors
Part II Gandhi and Swaraj
5 Swaraj in Gandhian perspective: some reflections
6 Gandhian Swaraj: a theory of self-knowledge
7 The different connotations of Swaraj: envisioning the postcolonial nation in Mahatma Gandhi, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray and Rabindranath Tagore
Part III Gandhi and social justice
8 Modernity, colonial injustice and individual responsibility: a study of Gandhi and Ambedkar
9 The Ambedkar–Gandhi debate (1931–1956): alternative approaches to memory and identity
10 Beyond ‘the Doctor and the Saint’ controversy: reassessing Gandhi as a social crusader
11 Gandhi and the ‘race’ question
Part IV Post-Gandhian legacy: issues and challenges
12 What can India learn from Gandhi today?
13 Waiting for the waves: India Against Corruption movement and the Aam Aadmi Party – post-Gandhian legacies
14 Gandhi’s dialogical truth force: applying Satyagraha models of practical rational inquiry to the crises of ecology, global governance and technology
15 Gandhi: an apostolic architect of humanism
Index

Citation preview

GANDHI AND THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

This book develops a critical understanding of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy and practice in the context of contemporary challenges and engages with some of his key work and ideas. It highlights the relevance of Gandhi’s legacy in the quest towards peace-building, equity and global justice. The volume examines diverse facets of Gandhi’s holistic view of human life – social, economic and political – for the creation of a just society. Bringing together expert analyses and reflections, the chapters here emphasise the philosophical and practical urgency of Gandhi’s thought and action. They explore the significance of his concepts of truth and nonviolence to address moral, spiritual and ethical issues, growing intolerance, conflict and violence, poverty and hunger, and environmental crisis for the present world. The volume serves as a platform for constructive dialogue for academics, researchers, policymakers and students to re-imagine Gandhi and his moral and political principles. It will be of great interest to those in philosophy, political studies, Gandhi studies, history, cultural studies, peace studies and sociology. Sanjeev Kumar is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi, India. His main teaching and research interests are in the areas of political theory, political sociology of disaster, Gandhian philosophy and peace studies. He has several publications in journals and books to his credit. His most recent edited book is Rajniti Siddhant Ki Samajh (Understanding Political Theory, 2019). He has been Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and Fellow at the Developing Countries Research Centre (DCRC), University of Delhi. Currently, he is also Senior Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Global Affairs, New Delhi, India.

‘Mahatma Gandhi has made a lasting contribution to political philosophy and this requires that succeeding generations of scholars interpret that contribution in ways that meet the needs of the changing times and intellectual trends. Gandhi and the Contemporary World meets this requirement very admirably: it presents Gandhi in a critical, lively and timely fashion. Enjoy this excellent addition to Gandhi literature’. Anthony J. Parel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Calgary, Canada ‘This riveting collection of essays included in the volume throws valuable light on Mahatma Gandhi’s activist political philosophy and on some of its legacies today. Comprehensively discussed and examined are his ideas of truth and non-violence in their bearing on his conception of satyagraha and on his approach to the postcolonial Indian nation’. Thomas Pantham, former Professor at M S University of Baroda, Baroda, India

GANDHI AND THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Edited by Sanjeev Kumar

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Sanjeev Kumar; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Sanjeev Kumar to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-06238-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-40851-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-80944-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Dedicated to the memory of Antony Copley

CONTENTS

Notes on contributors x Forewordxiii Bhikhu Parekh Acknowledgementsxvi   1 Introduction: understanding Gandhi – Why Gandhi matters today Sanjeev Kumar

1

PART I

Gandhian philosophy

25

  2 Philosophy and practice: a Gandhi-informed approach Douglas Allen

27

  3 A conceptual history of Gandhi’s Satyagraha Nishikant Kolge

44

  4 The scrutinised life: Gandhi and his interlocutors Sanghamitra Sadhu

55

viii Contents

PART II

Gandhi and Swaraj

69

 5 Swaraj in Gandhian perspective: some reflections Ramchandra Pradhan

71

  6 Gandhian Swaraj: a theory of self-knowledge Kumar Rahul

83

  7 The different connotations of Swaraj: envisioning the postcolonial nation in Mahatma Gandhi, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray and Rabindranath Tagore Biswanath Banerjee

98

PART III

Gandhi and social justice

111

  8 Modernity, colonial injustice and individual responsibility: a study of Gandhi and Ambedkar Vidhu Verma

113

  9 The Ambedkar–Gandhi debate (1931–1956): alternative approaches to memory and identity Bindu Puri

129

10 Beyond ‘the Doctor and the Saint’ controversy: reassessing Gandhi as a social crusader Mustakim Ansary

144

11 Gandhi and the ‘race’ question Hari Nair, Swaha Das and Krishna Akhil Kumar Adavi

157

PART IV

Post-Gandhian legacy: issues and challenges

169

12 What can India learn from Gandhi today? Antony Copley

171

13 Waiting for the waves: India Against Corruption movement and the Aam Aadmi Party – post-Gandhian legacies Mahendra Prasad Singh

184

Contents  ix

14 Gandhi’s dialogical truth force: applying Satyagraha models of practical rational inquiry to the crises of ecology, global governance and technology J. Gray Cox 15 Gandhi: an apostolic architect of humanism Anandita Biswas

200 216

Index231

CONTRIBUTORS

Krishna Akhil Kumar Adavi is a student at Ashoka University, Sonepat, Hary-

ana, India, where he is pursuing the Liberal Arts-focused Young India Fellowship (2018). He is a graduate from BITS Pilani (2016) and is interested in the intersection of science, technology and society. Douglas Allen is Professor of Philosophy at University of Maine, USA. A peace and

justice activist scholar, he is author/editor of 15 books, and has received Fulbright and Smithsonian grants to India. Among his books are Gandhi After 9/11: Creative Nonviolence and Sustainability (2019). Mustakim Ansary is Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) Project Research Associate at Kazi Nazrul University, West Bengal, India. His current area of research addresses contemporary Dalit and minority mobilizations in India. He has been assigned to contribute in journals such as Social Change, Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements, etc. Biswanath Banerjee is at the Department of English, Rammohan College, Uni-

versity of Calcutta, India. Previously he was Assistant Professor of English at R.L. Sanskrit College, Darbhanga, Bihar. He has been a UGC-UKIERI Fellow in the project ‘Scottish Orientalism and the Indian Renaissance, the Continuum of Ideas: Tagore and his Circle’, jointly coordinated by Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland, and Visva-Bharati University, India. Anandita Biswas is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Diamond Harbour Women’s University, West Bengal, India. Her research interests include Indian political thought, ethnicity and gender issues.

Contributors  xi

Antony Copley (1937–2016) was Honorary Professor of Modern European and

Indian History, University of Kent, UK. He was also a leading Gandhian scholar and one of his important works included Gandhi: Against the Tide (1996). J. Gray Cox is Professor of Philosophy and Peace Studies at College of the Atlan-

tic, Bar Harbor, Maine, USA, Clerk of the Quaker Institute for the Future, and a singer/songwriter. Swaha Das is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Indraprastha

College for Women, University of Delhi, India. Nishikant Kolge is Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, India. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. He is also the author of Gandhi against Caste (2017). He has been Sabarmati Fellow at The Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust (SAPMT), Ahmedabad (2017). Recently he has been selected for a Fulbright–Nehru Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, 2018–19. Hari Nair is Assistant Professor, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani,

India. Ramchandra Pradhan is currently affiliated with the Institute of Gandhian Studies,

Wardha, Maharashtra, India. A social activist and a Gandhian scholar, he taught at Ramjas College, University of Delhi, for several decades. He has been a recipient of the Senior Fulbright Fellowship (1979–80) and the Indo-Canadian Shastri Fellowship (1993). He is the author of several books including Raj to Swaraj (in English and Hindi, 2008), Reading and Reappraising Gandhi (2011) and Colonialism in India (2013). Bindu Puri is a Professor of contemporary Indian Philosophy at the Centre for

Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She is also currently the Chairperson of the Centre. She has been interested in issues in political philosophy, moral philosophy and contemporary Indian philosophy. She is a leading scholar on the thought and practice of Mahatma Gandhi. She has published extensively in edited anthologies and philosophical and interdisciplinary journals. Kumar Rahul teaches Political Science at the Department of Political Science, Ramjas College, University of Delhi, India. His areas of interest include political theory, Gandhian studies, issues in ethics and politics, and comparative political theory. He has been a Fellow at Developing Countries Research Centre (DCRC), University of Delhi, and a Nyaya Fellow at the University of Birmingham. His articles have appeared in journals such as Gandhi Marg, Dialogue Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Thought, and Economic and Political Weekly.

xii Contributors

Sanghamitra Sadhu is Assistant Professor of English at Cotton University, Guwa-

hati, Assam, India, and currently Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla. Mahendra Prasad Singh is former Head and Professor of Political Science, University of Delhi, India. Presently, he is National Fellow in Political Science, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre for Multilevel Federalism, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, India. Vidhu Verma is Professor, Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences,

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her areas of research include comparative political theory, feminist political theory, state and civil society, affirmative action policies and social justice in India. She has edited and contributed to a volume on Unequal Worlds: Discrimination and Social Inequality in Modern India (2015). She is the author of several books including Non-Discrimination and Equality in India: Contesting Boundaries of Social Justice (2012) besides articles in many journals.

FOREWORD

Gandhi had his intellectual limitations and some of his beliefs appear quaint and even bizarre. He also had his political limitations and was guilty of several misjudgements and ill-advised actions. In spite of all this he remains a deeply reflective thinker and a great political leader whose intellectual and political legacy is considerable and remains relevant today. Gandhi offers profound insights into several areas of life such as the nature of political power, the mechanism by which an unjust system maintains itself, the ways in which ordinary men and women can be complicit in their own oppression, the ethics of citizenship, how to fashion a personal and collective identity that is both open and embedded, and the nature of intercultural and interreligious dialogue. I shall briefly discuss some of these by way of illustration.1 In a globalising and rapidly changing world, the question of identity acquires considerable salience. Thanks to the constant flow of new ideas and currents of thought as well as the need to adjust to changing circumstances, the inherited ethnic, cultural religious and political identities come under pressure, and are unable to perform their traditional role of providing moral and emotional anchors. Their bearers feel disorientated, rootless, fragmented, and wonder who they are, what if anything they stand for, where they belong, and how they can lead whole and meaningful lives. Some panic, resist all change, and nostalgically yearn for nonexisting certainties. Others equally naively imagine that their identities are infinitely pliable and that they can make of themselves what they will. In their own different ways, both responses are incoherent and self-defeating. Gandhi offers a more sensible alternative. He sees other cultures neither as threats to be avoided nor as consumer goods to pick and choose as one pleases but rather as conversational partners. For him, every cultural community represents a particular vision of the good life and has its

xiv Foreword

characteristic strengths and weaknesses. Since one loves and cares for one’s community, one wants it to be the best it is capable of becoming and has a duty to criticise and reform its unacceptable beliefs and practices. Such a critical engagement with it is facilitated by a dialogue with other cultural communities whose different visions of the good life provide a critical perspective on one’s own. For Gandhi, other cultural communities do not represent ‘the other’; rather they are central to one’s critical interaction with one’s own. Gandhi expressed this idea by invoking the suggestive metaphor of living in a house with its windows wide open. The house provides a home, a sense of rootedness, and a familiar and stable framework. Its open windows locate it in and constantly remind its occupants of the wider world beyond it, and bring in new and vitalising currents of thought. For Gandhi, one has the confidence to welcome and experiment with the new when one is rooted and does not fear being overwhelmed by it. He sees religious diversity in similar terms and shows how to respond to it in a creative and constructive manner. Social change is another area where Gandhi makes a genuinely original contribution. His theory of satyagraha, the ‘surgery of the soul’ as he called it, was his alternative to the traditional theory of revolution. It was not so much a nonviolent method of achieving revolutionary ends as a novel way of defining the very idea of revolution. Like Trotsky’s permanent revolution, it was a form of gentle but sustained social pressure designed to break down the barriers that powerful groups built around themselves, to unfreeze the flow of social sympathy, and to enrich and deepen their consciousness of interdependence with subordinated groups. With all its limitations which I cannot here explore, Gandhi’s theory of satyagraha offered important insights into the nature of political praxis. Like the rationalists, he stressed the importance of rational discussion; but unlike them, he realised that what passed as rational discussion was often little more than alternative monologues or a public relations exercise, and that sticking to it under such circumstances was an act of irrationality. He knew that narrow rationalism and violence tended to feed off each other, and that the failure of rationality rendered violence morally respectable. Accordingly, he sought to break through the narrow straitjacket of the reason-violence dichotomy lying at the basis of traditional rationalism. He imaginatively explored the uncharted terrain between reason and violence, developed a richer view of reason, and arrived at novel forms of political praxis. His satyagraha was basically a new form of dialogue, a new conception of discussion, embedded in a richer and more realistic theory of rationality. Although not rational in the narrow sense of the term, it was not irrational either. It was a way of enabling human beings to realise their potential for rationality and goodness, and to reach and act on the basis of an inherently tentative and constantly deepening perception of consensual truth. This volume on Gandhi explores his strengths and limitations and helps us form a balanced estimate of his achievements. Contemporary times and the challenges

Foreword  xv

they pose invite a new perspective on him and it would be un-Gandhian not to take full advantage of this opportunity. Bhikhu Parekh Emeritus Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Westminster, UK

Note 1 For a fuller discussion, see my Debating India: Essays on Indian Political Discourse, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2015.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A deep desire to critically engage some of Gandhi’s key work and ideas in the context of contemporary global challenges provided the context for organising the International Conference on “Gandhi and the Contemporary World” in February 2016 at the University of Delhi in India. The articles that make up this edited book are based on the proceedings of this conference. Out of the 40 papers presented during the conference, a total of 15 papers were selected and thematically put together and subsequently revised for publication. Much of the support of this conference came from Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), University Grants Commission (UGC), Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR), and the University of Delhi. I am thankful to the contributors for their patience and support through the project. I dedicate this book to the memory of late Prof. Antony Copley whose love for and interest in Gandhi was great. Even while undergoing chemotherapy and in excruciating pain he managed to complete the chapter for this volume. My sincere gratitude to Bhikhu Parekh who in the midst of his busy schedule and demands agreed to write the foreword to this volume. I am indebted to my entire fraternity of mentors, scholars, colleagues and friends who were unfailing in their encouragement and support. Over the last few years I have learnt a lot about Gandhi from many scholars. Anthony Parel has been very helpful in sharing his experience about Gandhi. He provided a glimpse of his work through his introductory note which he wrote for the conference proceedings. I had the opportunity of meeting Douglas Allen ­during the conference and have learnt much from both his writings and conversation over the years. The M.A. course on ‘Gandhi and Autonomy’ that I taught at the University of Delhi in 2018 allowed me to develop a better understanding of Gandhi’s universe. Bidyut Chakrabarty was generous enough to offer me to share

Acknowledgements  xvii

this paper with him. I gained enormously from discussions and interactions with him and the students. My heartfelt thanks go to Ashok Acharya for his intellectual and professional generosity and friendship over the past many years. I would also like to acknowledge Balmiki Prasad Singh for his continued support and encouragement. To N. Radhakrishnan, I owe profound thanks for his reservoir of faith and encouragement. The three successive conferences that I organized from 2016–2018 on Gandhi helped me engage and learn from a wide range of scholars like Ashis Nandy, Thomas Pantham, Bindu Puri, Vinit Haksar, Ram Chandra Pradhan, K. Savitri, M.P. Singh, Kumar Prashant, Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee, Dipankar Shri Gyan, S.R. Bhatt, Dilip Simeon, and Ujjwal Kumar Singh. I have been very lucky to have found great colleagues and an exceptional intellectual environment in Zakir Husain Delhi College at the University of Delhi. I must thank Ashwin for suggesting me to contact Routledge for publication of this book. Kallol was gracious enough to look through some portions of the manuscript and gave me very useful suggestions. My heartfelt appreciation to Salvin, Gyan, Kumar Rahul, Simple Mohanty and Nishikant Kolge, who were generous with their time and friendship. Thanks are extended to all the members of the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Global Affairs and Global Justice Research Group, University of Delhi for providing stimulating space for discussion, collegiality and friendship. I remain thankful to the Ratan Tata Library, National Archives of India, and Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi for the facilities extended to me. Thanks are due to the team at Routledge for their help on seeing this project through to completion. I owe a deep sense of gratitude to Shashank Shekhar Sinha for his patience and humility in spite of my inability to meet deadlines. ­Greatest debt is to Antara Ray Chaudhury, Rimina Mohapatra and Kate Fornadel for their editorial assistance and guidance. I learnt much from their critical interventions. I also want to thank the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their perceptive comments and suggestions. I owe a huge debt to my family. My parents have enabled, supported and encouraged me all through my life. I can never thank enough my wife Anjali Roy. It is because of her unselfish love, support and encouragement that I could give ­undivided attention to this work. Lastly, I must mention my little son Parth who never complained about my long absence from home but was always curious to know more about the Mahatma and had questions more intriguing than I could ever fathom.

1 INTRODUCTION Understanding Gandhi – Why Gandhi matters today Sanjeev Kumar

“If my faith burns bright, as I hope it will even if I stand alone, I shall be alive in the grave, and what is more, speaking from it.” – M.K. Gandhi

The understanding of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) is complex. There exist not just one Gandhi, but hundreds of Gandhi’s variously understood and interpreted.1 Despite a rich source2 available for venturing into his life, philosophy and praxis, it is difficult to describe Gandhi with any degree of precision. In their varied accounts the scholarship on Gandhi tends to situate him in extreme contrasts from an ascetic puritan, mass revolutionary nationalist leader to a pacifist conservative, shrewd, tactical leader. ‘Who is Gandhi?’ therefore has no easy answer, leading to myriad readings of Mahatma often resulting in an inadequate, distorted and compartmentalised view of the man and his work. Very few works of Gandhi3 have, as Bhikhu Parekh observes, ‘been able to capture and illuminate the complexity, tensions, and apparent contradictions of his personality, or to elucidate the sources of his powerful emotional hold over so many of his associates as well as his countrymen in general’ (Parekh 1997, 2005: 131). The seeming incongruence in Gandhi’s own works furthers the ambiguity in the understanding of Gandhi. The confusion gathers momentum as Gandhi has not come up with any systematised blueprint, either of his theory or of an ideal social order. Bondurant admits Gandhi’s political philosophy is elusive. She writes: ‘To the scholar who seeks internally consistent, systematised bodies of thought, the study of Gandhi is unrewarding’. She attributes this to the ‘result of his thinking in public’ (Bondurant 1958: 147). To best understand Gandhi’s vision Judith Brown argues: ‘it is important to go back to our own understanding of himself and his life and to his fundamental goals’ (Brown 2011: 54–55).

2  Sanjeev Kumar

Venturing into Gandhi necessitates a comprehensive reading of distinct yet intertwined phases of Gandhi’s journey in search for ‘Truth’. Broadly, in Gandhi’s metamorphosis from a ‘Young Mohandas’ to the ‘Mature Mahatma’ four distinct historical phases can be discerned: •

•

• •

The Early Gandhi (1869–1893) which brings the journey of young Mohandas from Porbandar to his stints in Britain as student of law and his early ventures into politics, ethics and religion. Making of the ‘Mahatma’ (1893–1914) commencing with the eviction of Gandhi from Pietermaritzburg station to his final vow for Brahmacharya and the start of the Satyagraha struggle in 1906 in South Africa. Consolidation and crystallisation of the Mahatma (1915–1934) with Gandhi’s return to India and his entry into Indian politics for political swaraj. The Later (Mature) Gandhi (1934–1948) and his exit from active politics to pursue constructive goals of Swaraj.

The historical evolution of the Mahatma clearly shows his ideas and action never remained static. They evolved with time and gained a more mature meaning during the later phase of Gandhi’s life. To those antagonists who often questioned Gandhi on his “inconsistencies”, he pointed out in Harijan in 1939: ‘When anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the later of the two on the same subject. But before making the choice, they should try to see if there is not an underlying and abiding consistency between the two seeming inconsistencies’ (Harijan, 30-9-39: 288). Sadly, the attempts to comprehend Gandhi have come from different standpoints often following him for what he said or did at some point of time in his life without having a complete picture of the person and the underlining unity of his thoughts and action.

Gandhi’s ethics Gandhi had spent a lifetime struggling with certain fundamental moral precepts. Truth (Satya) and Non-Violence (ahimsa)4 arguably constitute the central pillars of Gandhi’s moral universe (See chapters 7 & 8, Iyer 1973). A better appraisal of Gandhi requires grasping these two intriguing ideas. The greater part of the book is devoted to unpacking these core principles of Gandhi. However, some preliminary thoughts on this topic have been laid out in the introduction. ‘Truth for Gandhi was a sovereign principle’. According to Gandhi, human destiny was a continuous search for Truth.5 “Truth” for Gandhi was not a purely transcendental principal, unrelated to life (Nadkarni 2011: 37). Thomas Weber points out that “Gandhi firmly believed that life could not be compartmentalised, that actions, and the reasons on which actions are based, whether they be political, economic or social, are interrelated, and that these actions have a direct bearing upon the achievement of the ultimate aim of life. Gandhi declared this aim as ‘Truth’ or

Introduction  3

Moksha, which in a Western perspective can be translated as self-realisation or the “manifestation of one’s potential to the greatest possible degree, and claimed that his life including his “ventures in the political field are directed to this same end” (Weber 1991: 134). Politics therefore for Gandhi was intrinsically a realm of truthseeking. Politics is to be guided by the ethical quest for Truth. For Gandhi the quest for ‘Truth’ largely depended upon the truth about the self. When Gandhi claimed that an individual’s “highest duty in life is to serve mankind and take his share in bettering its condition”, he added that this could not be done unless one understands and respects the self. True morality, that is, life based on following ethical rules, then, for Gandhi consists not in conformity but in discovering the subjectively true path and in fearlessly following it: ‘It is noble voluntarily to do what is good and right. The true sign of man’s nobility is the fact that, instead of being driven about like a cloud before the wind, he stands firm and can do, and in fact does, what he deems proper’ (Gandhi 1968: 16). Gandhi’s ethics, therefore, stems not from the intellectually deductive formula, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (or its variant, “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you”), but on the statement of faith that “what in fact you do to others, you also do to yourself ”. This belief in the possibility of changing and perfecting the self, a possibility open equally to all, means that for him the choice of an individual is choice for mankind because the self and mankind are ultimately one (Weber 1991: 138). The ideal of conscientious action which is conducive to the attainment of this aim must, in Gandhi’s moral philosophy, continually be borne in mind. According to him [Gandhi] there is no scope for vanity in it and the only means for reaching it is through ahimsa (CWMG 82: 39). Ahimsa for Gandhi unlike the orthodox Indian concept is not a negatively defined idea of non-injury or avoidance of physical violence. Gandhi conceived it in positive terms. ‘Ahimsa’ for Gandhi denotes the supreme moral principle within which all other virtues are contained. Gandhi’s ahimsa implies soul-force (atmabal) consisted of love-force (prembal), truth-force (satyabal), compassion-force ­(dayabal), suffering-force (tapbal) and justice-force (nitibal). Thus, Gandhi’s ahimsa was rooted in altruism and compassion towards fellow humans. Love, self-sacrifice and service were quintessential to the practice of ahimsa. The general thrust of Gandhi’s injunction was that ahimsa involved qualities of respect and sympathy for the opponent, freedom from hate and a desire for peace. He seeks to convert the opponent through sympathy, patience and truthfulness. In his seminal work ‘Hind Swaraj’, the idea of non-violence is clearly elucidated wherein Gandhi emphasized the relative moral superiority of non-violence over violence. Truth led him [Gandhi] to ahimsa at its practical or applied principle, not just because truth led to action and action had to be non-violent, but also because truth means ahimsa. At times, he said that Satya is basic and ahima followed from it, but he often felt that ahimsa was the means to attain satya (Weber 2011: 39). By combining nonviolence with truth Gandhi crafted a unique method of social change, the Satyagraha, which became the greatest force at the disposal of mankind in its

4  Sanjeev Kumar

struggle for human dignity and justice. This proved formidable for crusade both against social discrimination in South Africa and then against colonialism in India.

Debating Gandhi: revisiting the legacy In the 21st century Gandhi has emerged as a powerful transformative political and spiritual leader. Many revere him as a great soul, a messiah and saint who led an ascetic, moral life and guided India to attain freedom through non-violence. But it does not mean that Gandhi and his legacy have received universal acceptance. His ideas and methods have also been deeply contested. Many view Gandhi as a shrewd tactician, inconsistent philosopher, pro-bourgeois, puritanical, pacifist leader. Dalit and Maoist ideologues debase Gandhi, sometimes in extreme ways. Recently, Arundhati Roy the Indian activist and novelist, has brandished Gandhi as being a reactionary who bolstered the caste system. It has been alleged that during his early struggle in South Africa, Gandhi held derogatory views towards native communities in South Africa. Accusing Gandhi of racism, a large group of Academics and students at the University of Ghana began the ‘Gandhi Must Fall’ movement, which resulted in the removal of a Gandhi statue from the main campus in December 2018. Questions on Gandhi have not been anything new. His ideas and methods even when he was alive were continuously brought under the scanner. B.R. Nanda notes: ‘several of Gandhi’s ideas such as rejection of colonialism, militarism and ­materialism, when they were first propounded in the early years of the 20th ­century, were described at best as utopian and at worst as pre-modern, obscurantist and impracticable’ (Nanda 1995: XIV). Gandhi was unable to convince even his own political friends in the congress as to the soundness of his programmes. During the 1920s and 1930s Young radicals like Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose and Jayaprakesh Narayan fretted at the patient and peaceful methods of the Mahatma (Nanda 1997: X). Even Gokhale [Gandhi’s] political mentor laughed at some of the opinions expressed in the Hind Swaraj (1909), considered as the seminal manifesto of Gandhi and told him: ‘After you have stayed in India, your views will correct themselves’ (cited in Nanda 1995: 10–11). M.N. Roy and Jinnah were constantly at loggerheads with Gandhi. Rabindranath Tagore too disagreed and questioned him [Gandhi] for his understanding on modernity, non-cooperation and swadeshi. Babasaheb Ambedkar vehemently opposed him on the dalit question. The Indian communists dubbed him a charismatic but calculating leader who knew how to arouse the masses but deliberately contained and diverted their revolutionary ardour so as not to hurt the interests of British imperialists and Indian capitalists (Nanda 1997: 8 emphasis added). To Sardar Patel he appeared to be too pro-Muslim to be uncritically acceptable and the communal forces whether of Muslim League Variety or RSS and Hindu Mahasabha openly detested him and even hated him. A Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse ultimately shot him dead. Ambivalence about Gandhi looms large when we consider Gandhi’s approach towards certain aspects of caste, gender, economy or even health, diet and food

Introduction  5

habits.6 Critics have often questioned Gandhi’s unflinching commitment to Hindu Sanatan Dharma and the social order in the form of Varna.7 His minimalist approach to diet (consisting of nuts, fruits, jaggery and boiled vegetables, exclusion of cow milk, spices, and raw onions (Gandhi 2006: 193) and sex (he imposed a strict celibacy on himself and his followers) can hardly find favour in the context of the present. Not only did he reject birth control and recommend abstinence as a means of limiting population, but sex for him was needed only for procreation. Gandhi said: ‘A man, whose activities are wholly consecrated to the realization of Truth, which requires utter selflessness, can have no time for the selfish purpose of begetting children and running a household’ (Gandhi 1995: 219–220). Gandhi’s experiments in communal living at the Phoenix Settlement and at Tolstoy Farm raised further issues. He imposed strict injunctions regarding celibacy on the ashramites. Gandhi believed the young should conserve sex energy and use it for service of others. Both men and women in the ashram were segregated. Gandhi’s advice was that ‘husbands should not be alone with their wives, and when they felt passion, should take a cold bath’. In the Tolstoy Farm Gandhi had even forced the girls to tonsure their heads (cited in Rajmohan Gandhi 2006: 161). During the mid 1940s Mahatma’s experiment in testing his own self-control by sleeping naked with a few of his young consenting women ashramites shocked many of his followers. In the winter of 1946–47 the news that Gandhi was sleeping with his 19-year-old grand-niece Manu in the midst of mass killing in Noakhali incited huge public outcry. Gandhi’s stenographer and his Bengali translator eventually quit their job in protest but Gandhi remained relentless, believing he was performing yajna (supreme sacrifice) through his act of intensified Brahmacharya to contain violence that had engulfed India after partition (see Kulkarni 2012: 338–340). The reading of Autobiography and his own admissions makes clear that Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children on several occasions. Gandhi acted as a self-indulgent husband and father, placing undue expectations on them as he did to himself. The autobiography reveals facts of Gandhi being a possessive husband in his early married life. On many instances Kasturba had to struggle to contain his [Gandhi’s] desire to dominate her. At such moments, Rajmohan Gandhi recounts in his book, ‘Gandhi was a master, teacher, husband and she a servant, pupil, wife, indeed a piece of property’ (1995: 92). Gandhi narrates in his autobiography an incident when ‘he treated Ba with indignity and was ready to expel her from the ashram when she refused to clean up the chamber pot used by an untouchable guest. ‘She had to shame him in taking her back’ (Gandhi 2006: 255). In 1906 when Gandhi finally resolved to take a vow of Brahmacharya (to control his sexual urges and gain moral strength needed to serve the humanity), he did not bother to consult Kasturba. Though Gandhi stated in his autobiography that Ba ‘raised no objection’ on his avowed wish, but the wife Kasturba was informed of Gandhi’s decision only after he had made up his mind after years of contemplation (2006: 191). Both henceforth adopted selfrestraint as a rule of life and ceased to live as a conventional married couple. The

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incident such as this raises doubts if Gandhi was sensitive to Kasturba’s emotional life8 and cared much of her privacy while deciding upon to extend his services to the wider human fraternity. We have no sense of how Kasturba felt at having to share her home and husband, says Rajmohan Gandhi and learnt to ‘tolerate other women sharing the space and chores around Gandhi, and grew close her to some of them’9 (2006: 434). Gandhi also had a condescending attitude towards his children. David Hardiman observes: ‘It was hard for him to accept when a “daughter” or “son” real or adopted sought to assert their independence; there were acrimonious quarrels, leading in some cases to sharp and bitter breaks’ (Hardiman 2003: 94). Having himself been a beneficiary of Western education, Gandhi refused to offer colonial (English) education to his sons, ordered them as young men to abstain from sex and disowned the eldest son Harilal for marrying against his wish in 1911. Gandhi also was not quite happy when Harilal converted to Islam in 1938. In a 14-page letter written to Gandhi, embittered Harilal indicts the Mahatma of dealing with him and his family members ‘just as a ringmaster in a circus treats animals in his charge. The ringmaster may believe that he is ridding the animals of their beastly character because he has the welfare of animals in his heart’. Chandulal Dalal’s biography on Harilal gives a telling account of the eldest son Harilal’s correspondence with his father (Dalal 2007). Pramod Kapoor’s book, Gandhi: An Illustrated Biography (2016), also captures the ambivalence between the father and his son. In retrospect, Rajmohan Gandhi considers the acrimonious relationship arising ‘mainly from the inescapable demands of being the father of a nation and a father to his children’ (Rajmohan Gandhi 1995: ix). Mark Thomson similarly argues that ‘Gandhi’s sons were the victims of their father’s extraordinary role in contemporary history, rather than of his neglect’ (Thomson 1993: 86). Whatever the explanations, it can’t be denied that Gandhi’s commitment to public life came at a cost of comprising his family’s interest; the family unwittingly had to share the burden of his spiritual journey. Gandhi’s ambivalent attitude towards modern medicines presents another problem. He did not reject all medical treatment but his faith in traditional remedies and natural method of healing was paramount. ‘He was willing to let his wife or children be experimented with his fondness for conventional therapy like hydropathic and earth treatment at times risking their life’ (See Gandhi 1927: 226–229, 278–282). Gandhi refused Kasturba to be offered the animal food suggested by the doctor when she was recuperating after a surgical operation and had become extremely weak; for him it would be sin which he believed to be avoided at the cost of life: ‘I would never allow my wife to be given meat or beef, even if the denial meant her death, unless of course she desired to take it’ (Gandhi 1927: 297). Again when Kasturba was taken seriously ill by pneumonia in the Agakhan palace during detention in 1944, Gandhi trusting his indomitable faith in God preferred not to ‘experiment’ on her by administering penicillin which was a fairly new drug but perhaps the only medicine available to save her life at that point in

Introduction  7

time. Kasturba died on February 22 while the son Devadas was still pushing for the penicillin. The overarching questions in recent years have been directed at the sincerity and efficacy of Mahatma Gandhi’s belief in non-violence. Some have accused Gandhi of ‘bellicosity’ citing his alleged involvement in the Boer War, Zulu Rebellion and World War II.10 Others believe that Gandhi’s call for the Quit India movement in 1942 was proof of his purblind pacifism and pro-fascist sympathies in World War II. According to the Marxist critics Gandhi’s insistence on non-violence served as an instrument or an enabling condition to further the interests of the elite and of the state and prevented a radical revolution that could have made a difference to the downtrodden. Subaltern scholar Partha Chatterjee has described Gandhi’s intervention as a ‘moment of manoeuvre’. Gandhi, according to him, created the historical possibility of appropriating the peasantry into the national movement without granting to the peasantry any agency (See Chatterjee 1986). Many have questioned claiming that non-violence worked only under certain conditions. It has been pointed out that Gandhi’s non-violent campaigns could only succeed because of the benign and liberal British Government; and could have been easily crushed under a strong brutal regime like the Nazis. Einstein and Martin Buber who otherwise had great reverence for Gandhi raised serious doubt about its working against the totalitarian system (See Parekh 2015, Chapters 4&5). In his brilliant essay “Reflections on Gandhi” published in the Partisan Review in 1949, even George Orwell who deeply venerated Gandhi, questioned the strength of Gandhian beliefs and his failure to understand the nature of totalitarianism. He pointed out that: Gandhi believed in “arousing the world,” which is only possible if the world gets a chance to hear what you are doing. It is difficult to see how Gandhi’s methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary . . . Moreover the assumption, which served Gandhi so well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings are more or less approachable and will respond to a generous gesture, needs to be seriously questioned. It is not necessarily true, for example, when you are dealing with lunatics. Then the question becomes: Who is sane? Was Hitler sane?. (Orwell 1949: 529) By the end of the 1930s, Joseph Lelyveld writes, ‘Gandhi was freely doling out advice on how his techniques of nonviolent resistance, if adopted by a single Jew standing up and refusing to bow to Hitler’s decrees, might be enough to melt Hitler’s heart’ (2011: 312). Notwithstanding the Nazis’ brutality Gandhi remained optimistic that the world would rise up against Hitler’s violence if German Jews volunteered to commit collective suicide.

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Why Gandhi matters Some of the issues raised here require deep scholarly attention and can’t be brushed aside under the hagiographic readings of Gandhi. The imperfect Gandhi, just like any other human, indeed had flaws and erred at many moments in his life. One needs to remember Gandhi evolved with time from an immature lawyer towards a higher and nobler destiny. Perhaps he had set such high standards that it was difficult for any mortal to maintain that with any degree of precision. The eminence that Gandhi attained was not accidental. It did not come up by good fortune or through any mystical or divine intervention but by a determined and steady effort at self-discipline [(G. Ramachandran and T. K. Mahadevan 1967: 4 (emphasis added)], which Gandhi relentlessly pursued all through his life. The task entailed embracing ahimsa (non-violence), aparigraha (non-possession) and brahmacharya11 as the guiding virtues in his search for truth. Other practices such as vows, prayer and fasting also accounted for Gandhi’s pedagogy of transformation. A strict adherence to these principles allowed Gandhi to overcome his moral and spiritual limitations. In due time as Bhikhu Parekh writes: ‘he conquered his great love of food, easily aroused anger, arrogance, a strong streak of vanity, selfishness, possessiveness, jealousy, personal attachments, physical cowardice, personal ambition, and social conformity, and increasingly became spiritually lighter’ (Parekh 1997, 2005: 167). Gandhi was highly self-critical constantly learning from his experiences and experiments. Gandhi openly confides his faults, sporadic lapses of judgement and actions. Gandhi was a seeker of Truth. In Young India, he said, ‘I claim to have found a way to it. I claim to be making a ceaseless effort to find it. But I admit that I have not yet found it. To find “Truth” completely is to realize oneself and one’s destiny, i.e. to become perfect’ (Young India 1921: 2). In his quest for Truth,12 he discarded many ideas and learnt many new things: ‘Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dissolution of the flesh. What I am concerned with is my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from moment to moment’ (M. K. Gandhi, Harijan, 29-4-1933: 2). Ramashroy Roy aptly observes: Gandhi tried his best to organise his experience according to some dearly held ideas and modify his ideas in the light of experience. Dedicated as he was to the views that human existence is indivisible, that all aspects of human existence must be arrange such that they sub serve Dharma (right conduct), he devoted his entire active life in not only explicating what right conduct is but also in illuminating the way through which various aspects of individual and social life can be informed and undergirded by it. (Roy 1986: 4) In the words of Diwakar: Gandhi is eminently fitted to be a good guide to us because he is extremely human and does not interpose any distance between him and us by assuming

Introduction  9

an air of superiority or authority. He declared what he had done, or was doing, every other human being equally capable of doing. (G. Ramachandran and T. K. Mahadevan 1967: 4) Mahadev Desai attempted to explain Gandhi’s ability to do this by claiming that ‘what Gandhi thinks, what he feels and what he says, and what he does are all the same thing. He does not need notes. You and I, we think one thing, feel another, say a third, and do a fourth, so we need notes and files to keep track’ (as quoted in Weber 1991: 9). Years back in 1918, Professor Gilbert Murray wrote about Gandhi: Persons in power, should be very careful how they deal with a man who cares nothing for sensual pleasure, nothing for riches, nothing for comfort or praise, or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy because his body which you can always conquer gives you so little purchase upon his soul. (Murray 1918: 191) Ashis Nandy contends Gandhi’s significance lay in his willingness to engage and transform the “slum of politics”: It is that capacity to live in the slum of politics that identified Gandhi as a distinctive contributor to human civilization; one who expanded the horizons of human civilization. He did not live with only his values. He pushed them and worked on the basis of them in politics. That political self is absolutely vital; it is that which gave him his uniqueness and his strength. (Nandy 1987: 6) Speaking of Gandhi, Joseph Lelyveld also writes, while he may have ‘struggled with doubt and self until his last days, Gandhi made the predicament of the millions his own, whatever the tensions among them, as no other leader of modern times have and, for all his inconsistencies, his dream for India remained constant throughout his life. (2011: 424) When Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 Einstein issued the following statement for the memorial service held in Washington: ‘He died a victim of his own principle, the principle of non-violence. He died without any personal armed protection. It was his unshakable belief that the use of force is because in a time of disorder and general unrest in his country, he refused an evil in itself, to be shunned by those who strive for absolute justice, to this faith he devoted his whole life and with this faith in his heart and mind, he led a great nation to its liberation. He demonstrated that the allegiance of men can be won, not merely by the cunning game of political fraud and trickery, but through the living example of a morally exalted way of life’.

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Einstein’s words emphasise the depth of Gandhi’s moral conviction synergised by the deepest virtues of truth, courage and fearlessness. Gandhi radicalised politics through the purity of his moral force. Indeed humanity has gained much from his moral wisdom which was the basis of his action. Primacy of ethics and service was supreme to him. Gandhi wrote in his autobiography: ‘My life is one indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another, and they all have their rise in my insatiable love of mankind’ (Gandhi, Autobiography: 4). He summed up his philosophy of life with the words “My Life is my Message”, which he agreed was not easy to accept and follow.

Reclaiming Gandhi in the contemporary world The world has changed since the time of Gandhi. With the increased velocity of modern changes mankind has scaled unprecedented strides in different walks of life. At the same time developments such as the rise of global terrorism, mass exodus of people across the world, environmental imbalance, rapid decline of moral, spiritual and ethical considerations, growing intolerance and conflict, and violence all over the world have raised a mounting anxiety about the future of humanity in the coming years. Under the circumstances one is struck by the astonishing need to re-imagine Gandhi and apply his moral and political principles in dealing with the contemporary conundrums. At a time when Marxism is embattled and Market Liberalism with its extending tentacles of consumerism and materialism has gained credence, a return to Gandhi allows us the opportunity to introspect today’s beleaguered society with a different vantage point. Gandhi did not construct a utopia. Replete with complexities and contradictions the life of Mahatma reveals a road map offering an amicable navigation in dealing the myriad predicaments of human life. The journey of Gandhi reveals a story of a person built on truth and love, compassion, moral courage, simplicity and integrity. His philosophy is humanistic in nature and all embracing. Gandhi sought human happiness combined with full mental and moral growth and not merely material prosperity. Gandhi’s life was premised on few possessions and voluntary simplicity. He could foresee the dangers inherent in our mad rush after industrialisation and modernisation. His vision of truth and non-violence, enduring commitment to social justice, normative economics, religious pluralism, and relentless striving for harmony between nature and human beings have become excruciatingly important in the context of today and humanity can gain much from his moral wisdom which was the basis of his action. Gandhi leaves us with a legacy of hope for transforming ourselves and our world. It cannot be denied that Gandhi has emerged as one of the most revered public figures of the contemporary period. The popularity of Gandhi has reached a crescendo, much reflected through the advertisement of ‘Gandhigiri’ (Gandhian nonviolence) in films like the Munna Bhai, MBBS which first began with Richard Attenborough’s epic historical saga ‘Gandhi’ in 1982. He has been deified, put on currency notes, postal stamps, signposts and statues. Gandhi is invoked in clothes, stationery items and sports gadgets. A temple dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi has

Introduction  11

come up recently at the Kaparthy village of Nalgonda district in Telengana. Mont Blanc fountain pen – Apple’s ‘think different’ campaign, in 2009 (costing a whopping $25,000) – had the nib showing an image of Gandhi walking with a stick. The brand value of Gandhi is such that multinational companies, NGOs, government institutions and functionaries all are vying hard to encash on the popularity of iconic Gandhi today. The political class is not far behind. The ruling dispensation under Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in recent years has also been arduously trying to bring Mahatma Gandhi in to their discourse and narrative. In the policy framework, this is clearly apparent in the context of the launch of the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan (the movements for a clean India), which was inaugurated on 2 October 2014, the rural employment guarantee scheme (MNREGA) and various other schemes initiated by the Government related to the education of young girls and other reforms for removing socio-economic backwardness in India. While the shadow of Gandhi looms large in our lives, the recent invocation of Gandhi and the manner in which Gandhi is being appropriated widely is definitely not in the true spirit of Gandhi’s ethics. Mahatama Gandhi had summed up his philosophy of life in few words: “My Life is my Message”. The truth is that the canon of Gandhi and his message has not been extended beyond symbols and rituals. Frayed symbolism of Gandhi seems to have overtaken his ideals and praxis today. In the popular imagination, what we receive of Gandhi is only a mirror image of textual Gandhi that has to be preached in schools, colleges, institutions and other public spaces but seldom applied. The different political parties pay lip service to the “Father of the Nation” through their ritualistic parade to Raj Ghat, occasional prayer meetings, speeches and charkhas spinning programmes. Once considered a symbol of self-reliance, swadeshi and freedom, khadi has gradually made its entry into a luxury product accessible to the rich and elite masses. A budget of around 200 crore rupee was sanctioned by the central government in 2018 to celebrate Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary on a global scale. One wonders if someone like Gandhi, who believed in minimal living and abhorred wasteful expenditure, would have endorsed this. One can’t recall of any celebration of Gandhi during his own lifetime by himself or his family members or his close associates. It was Satyagraha that transformed Gandhi to Mahatma. But today the doctrine is indiscriminately used by politicians including the service class and student groups for forms of protest, which are a travesty of Gandhi’s methods. It may be noted Satyagraha for Gandhi was not just a political weapon but an ethical system withtruth and non-violence, love, compassion and self-suffering as its linchpin. With the exception of a few individuals like Sunderlal Bahuguna (Chipko movement), Medha Patkar (Narmada Bachao Andolan), Madhav Gadgil (people’s struggle for Jal, Jangal, Zameen), the idea finds today little resonance in true Gandhian spirit. Enmity and hatred is not completely ruled out in agitation and protests mostly which are self- driven with humility or empathy missing for the opponent. We know that an important part of Mahatma’s struggle was for attainment of Swaraj. The Swaraj that Gandhi wished was premised not on the attainment of political freedom alone but also on the socio-economic and spiritual liberation of individuals. This required a rigorous moulding of the self and a heavy sense of

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responsibility. In the pursuit of that mission Gandhi had suggested constructive programmes13 in true spirit of service. Unfortunately the free India embarked upon a journey of progress different from what Gandhi had envisioned. Few leaders such as Binobabhave and Jay Prakash Narayan could pursue this goal with some degree of success in the post-independent era. But today Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams look pale as we enter into an uncertain terrain of human destiny. Although India has not lost its fundamental belief in Democracy, the increasing threats of ‘majoritarianism’, homogenisation and religious bigotry loom larger than ever today. Secularism, the ideological mainstay of a multi-religious India, looks pale and exhausted today with spurts in the incidence of violence and contempt against India’s minorities and depressed classes in the last few years. India has been beset by a wave of cow vigilantism and gruesome lynching. The atrocities have steadily been mounting. Mob lynching has become such a recurrent phenomenon that the Supreme Court in July 2018 termed the incidents of lynching across the country as “horrendous acts of mobocracy”, and asked the parliament to enact a new law to deal with the offenses of mob violence and killing. Gandhi’s worldview in its pristine form represents an idea of an accommodative truth built not merely on mutual tolerance but also on acceptance of the other as equal and dignified souls. But the pluralistic vision of Gandhi has come to be seriously challenged today under the revival of right fundamentalism. What is disturbing and alarming is glorification of Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Gandhi, as a hero and patriot that is gaining strength in the country. Charged under UAPA for 2008 Malegaon terror blasts, Pragya Thakur’s open admission in the demolition of the Babri Masjid and her praise for Nathuram Godse as a patriot has barely been contested and today she finds her entry into parliament as an elected representative of masses. It may also be recalled in February 2018, members of the Hindu Mahasabha in Aligarh celebrated Gandhi’s death anniversary by shooting bullets into an effigy of Mahatma Gandhi. Certainly, in the ensuing battle between supporters of Gandhi’s (Inclusive) Hind Swaraj and Savarkar’s (Exclusivist) Hindutva,14 Gandhi’s power seems to be in the wane. But Gandhi cannot be expunged. In the current scenario of extraordinary crisis, Mahatma Gandhi acquires a greater significance than ever before. The idea of India if it has any future can’t be imagined by ignoring Gandhi or excluding him. Contemporary India will do well to remember that Gandhi gave patient consideration to all viewpoints. He was a seeker of truth whose ideas evolved through a perpetual process of deliberation, contestation and conversation. Undoubtedly his legacy of inclusiveness15 is much needed today not only in India but globally. His messages and his example can pave the way to rescue humanity from the pervading atmosphere of endemic violence, despondence and despair. The entire timeline of Gandhi was spent in the pursuance of Truth, commitment to non-violence, abolition of untouchability, essential unity and harmony of all religions and in the advocacy of primacy of dialogue as a means of resolving conflict in society. Gandhi’s legacy has inspired movements and leaders across the world to promote equality, dignity and justice for all. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

Introduction  13

Nelson Mandela, Abdul Gaffar Khan, Cesar Chavez, Desmond Tutu, Václav Havel, Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi are just a few examples of icons amongst many who walked the Gandhian way to create a democratic and just society.

I.  The plan of the book Gandhi presents us immense possibilities. It is unfortunate that Gandhi’s messages and examples have not struck deep roots. Gandhi’s positions on politics, religion, modern economy and democracy have largely been misunderstood by both his supporters and opponents in India and outside. At this crucial juncture a fresh look at Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas and work is essential to guide human destiny. The book does not claim to make any judgement on Gandhi. The book purportedly contains the validation of Gandhi’s central ideas of ‘Truth’ and ‘Non-Violence’ urgently required in the context of today. The chapters that constitute this edited volume are divided under four broad categories. Part I provides an exposition of some of Gandhi’s theoretical postulates (truth and non-violence, peace and morality, etc.) and their practical dimensions. Understanding of these fundamental Gandhian precepts would allow us to rethink our basic values and priorities and provide a much-needed new perspective on Gandhi. At the core of Gandhi’s thought was the concept of “Swaraj”, loosely translated as “Freedom”. The second section brings in the various contestations and debates on the question of Gandhi’s Swaraj. While many academics and activists have adopted this term in their understanding of discourse of freedom, ambiguity in its interpretation leaves open a lot of space for critical inquiry on this subject. Although Gandhi wrote no single treatise on social justice, Gandhi’s ceaseless effort of emancipating humanity from infinite misery stemming from social exclusion, political oppression, racism and non-inclusive cultural structure is central to the very idea of social justice. Any work on Gandhi will remain always incomplete without a proper investigation of this paradigm. The third section therefore takes up the question of social justice. A re-reading of Gandhi and Ambedkar on the questions of caste and untouchability race, human dignity and rights, etc. will come up for discussion in this section. The final section of the book attempts to study the Gandhian legacy in the light of current challenges of peace-building, equity and global justice.

II The first part of the book offers an exploration into the philosophical and epistemological foundations of Gandhi. Douglas Allen (Chapter 2) highlights Gandhi’s theoretical and practical philosophy. He contends that Gandhi is not interested in abstract theoretical or academic philosophical formulations, but rather in philosophy as practice. His focus is on living philosophy, on how we can live a life of satya (truth) and ahimsa (non-violence), with the focus on practice. This he argues not to endorse a common misconception that Gandhi is simply a practical person of no philosophical interest or significance. His practice is grounded in a profound,

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dynamic, moral and ontological theoretical framework. According to Allen Gandhi is primarily a moralist with his primary concern on developing moral character and practice and with ethics as first philosophy. This is different not only from the history of Western philosophy but also from traditional Indian philosophy with its emphasis on the primacy of epistemology and metaphysics. To him Gandhi’s greatest contribution is his moral and philosophical focus on ahimsa in how he greatly broadens and deepens our understanding of non-violence and its integral relations with truth. The integral relations of satya and ahimsa provide the theoretical basis for Gandhi’s philosophy and practice. They reveal the presuppositions, values and principles informing his approach to swaraj, satyagraha, swadeshi and other key concepts. Usually unappreciated is Gandhi’s invaluable analysis of the distinction and integral relations between relative truth and Absolute Truth. On the one hand, this challenges philosophical alternatives of essentialism and absolute foundationalism, and on the other hand, modern unlimited relativism. In our philosophical approach, we embrace absolute regulative ideals, but our philosophy and practice always involve the recognition of our human, situated, contextualised world of relative truth with the dynamic, imperfect, open-ended philosophical project of moving closer to the absolute ideal. Gandhi’s theoretical and practical philosophy challenges us with a qualitatively different philosophical view of freedom and human development. He critiques dominant modern models as based on egoistic desires and attachments to possessions, as reductionistically materialist and consumerist, amoral and immoral, violent and untruthful, and as resulting in our modern lack of human development that is economically, morally, politically, culturally and environmentally unsustainable. The objective of this chapter is to examine Gandhi’s alternative philosophical paradigm and approach. Nishikant Kolge (Chapter 3) attempts a comprehensive understanding of Gandhi’s Satyagraha. Kolge discusses different historical stages of the development through which Gandhi’s concept of Satyagraha evolved into a clear philosophy of action. Kolge contends that Gandhi’s Satyagraha is not a static dogma but a method of perpetual reform of both individual and society evolved through constructive programme. Satyagraha for Gandhi was something more than the doctrine of civil disobedience. Kolge believes Gandhi’s Satyagraha is a blend of spiritual and political, and principle and pragmatism, and therefore he argues that Satyagraha needs to be redefined in such a way that eliminates the false distinction between spiritual or religious aspects of Satyagraha and practical achievements of Satyagraha. This paper argues that Gandhi himself faced such dilemmas, and his views on these issues evolved over a period. Sanghamitra Sadhu (Chapter 4) attempts to understand the Gandhi phenomenon through the intellectual, philosophical and scholastic discourses built around Gandhi and his associates/interlocutors. The work critically scrutinises Gandhi’s interface with his interlocutors, which the author suggests can initiate a discourse on its own. Sadhu contends the perspective to understand Gandhi – his ideologies, agreements and disagreements among his interlocutors – may criss-cross at many levels but what remains is the one yet many-dimensional figure of Gandhi, which equally continues to allure and elude us. Although Gandhi’s life is self-explanatory with the affirmation “my life is my

Introduction  15

message”, the continuing engagements with Gandhi’s life and numerous reflections and afterthoughts about him after seven decades of his death raise some crucial questions: why is there a proliferation of writings/biographies on Gandhi? In what ways do the biographies/correspondences alter the perceptions of reading Gandhi today? What roles do these documents play in constructing and deconstructing the myth called Gandhi? All of these questions are addressed by the author in this chapter. From the biographers’ varied accounts it appears that it is the one and many Gandhis that are at work in the biographies. Similarly, the numerous exchanges, correspondences among his close associates and interlocutors like Mahadev Desai, J.C. Kumarrapa, Mirabehn, J. Nehru, C.F. Andrews, Verrier Elwin and Lanza Del Vasto according to Sanghamitra offer a new image of Gandhi, which can enrich our nuanced understanding of Gandhi – the man and his philosophy.

III In the second part of the book titled “Gandhi and Swaraj”, Ramchandra Pradhan (Chapter 5) attempts a deeper enquiry into the meaning of Swaraj. He argues that the major contribution to the concept of swaraj by Gandhi lay in the distinction that Gandhi made between ‘inner swaraj’ and the outer swaraj – making the quality of the latter contingent on the former. Subsequently, he enriched his concept of swaraj in the course of the freedom struggle giving it more concrete form in his enunciation of the concept of Purna Swaraj. However, in the process, his idea of inner swaraj was put on the backburner under the contingent demand of freedom struggle. He explains how the idea of swaraj enriched and expanded the political and cultural discourse during that period of freedom struggle. Kumar Rahul ­(Chapter 6) further expands the meaning of Swaraj from self-rule to autonomy attained through self-knowledge. In the chapter Rahul highlights the defining aspects of Gandhi’s cosmic framework in our quest to understand his notion of Swaraj and self-knowledge. According to Rahul a swarajist construction of selfknowledge and autonomy acquires urgency today because spectres of the modern civilisations, as Gandhi conceived, continue to make people victims of its fetishism, rather more gravely than ever. People are tempted to acquire insatiably more and more in a lesser span of time. This tendency leads to the path of self-indulgence, making human-autonomy its first casualty. In the chapter Rahul makes a case of the Gandhian idea of Swaraj as distinct both from the liberal/communitarian understating of the self. On the face of it, there are temptations to club Gandhi with the communitarian rank. However, his analysis of the self-other relationship rescues him from such a categorical placement. Biswanath Banerjee (Chapter 7) extends the discussion on Swaraj by comparing and contrasting the writings and correspondences between Gandhi, P.C. Ray and Tagore over the question of nation. Banerjee discusses the different ideas of the nation as envisaged by the three visionary thinkers of modern India. The discourse factors in the essential convergences between Gandhi and Ray which is in sharp contradiction with the ideas of Rabindranath Tagore. At the core of Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of nationalism laid his concept of

16  Sanjeev Kumar

Swaraj or self-rule or more particularly the control over the self. This idea of Swaraj, in Gandhi’s philosophy, was not only based on independent Indian economy, but was equally important in terms of its moral and spiritual connotation. To Gandhi, this could radiate out in Ahimsa, first to the village and community and later to the country at large. Gandhi believed that this controlled self would replace the impositions of colonial administration and would relieve India from Western material culture. He saw British industrial culture as having created limitless desire and corruption. From this perspective, his non-cooperation movement and his philosophies of the Charkha (the spinning wheel) and Khadi were a moral act of renunciation of this material culture, apart from the renunciation of English cloth. Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray was a great disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, for whom science and Swaraj were closely related to each other. To Ray, science was a site of colonial contestation and nation building. Ray strongly supported Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of non-cooperation, for he could realize the fact that it is through the formation of national industries and the promotion of rural self-sufficiency that one could resist the imperial economy. In spite of being a scientist and an ardent advocate of modern science, Ray readily espoused and propagated Gandhi’s philosophy of Charka and was a devoted supporter of his promotion of Khadi, which according to him could lead to the alienation of poverty by providing Indian farmers with a secondary source of income. Ray recurrently emphasised the economic viability of Charka within his nationalist enterprise and depicted it as a mode of resisting the economic hegemony of the West. For Rabindranath Tagore ‘the foundation of Swaraj cannot be based on any external conformity, but only on the internal union of hearts’. Tagore specifically had an acute distrust in the very idea of a postcolonial Indian nation that predicated itself on rejecting British administration and culture. In this respect, he strongly opposed Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement as well as Ray’s nationalist discourses, as according to the Poet, those could only generate an exclusivist and monolithic ideology, and would fail to draw its inspiration from a larger vision of humanity. Instead, Tagore had always imagined a commonwealth of nations which would be based on a sense of sympathy, generosity, mutuality, universality and reciprocal recognitions.

IV In the third section on “Gandhi and Social Justice”, Vidhu Verma (Chapter 8) maps out the different approaches of Gandhi and Ambedkar in addressing the question of social justice. In her work she maps out both the contestations and areas of convergence. Most works present Gandhi and Ambedkar often in binary terms invoking polemics. The author cautions against this approach. According to Vema, Gandhian and Ambedkar discourse despite their different approaches is fundamentally concerned with emancipation. She elaborates how both Gandhi and Ambedkar played a crucial role in shaping the public discourse on social justice in the Indian context. Both were involved in constructing India’s postcolonial legal and political structure. This chapter more specifically explores the way Gandhi rejected

Introduction  17

the historical use of violence as a means of securing justice in a postcolonial context. He opposed violence as being an ineffective strategy and also saw its limits as a deliberate means of social change. He rejected violence on ethical grounds, deconstructing the means/ends dichotomy that informs most theories of violence. He argued that to develop the peace-making potential citizens we should use their traditions, narratives and faith claims into terms comprehensible to other religious traditions reflecting a mutually agreed-upon set of shared concerns. For the Ambedkar on the other hand chiefly focused on providing a critical and comparative insight into one of the most pressing problems of our times – the everyday practices of caste. He also calls attention to the gross inequities of power, wealth, opportunity and access between political elites and majority of the people. Vidhu Verma ­deliberates on Ambedkar’s engagement on the questions of caste, caste domination and under-representation of dalits as not simply a national and personal question but rather in its aspect in time and space. Bindu Puri (Chapter 9) extends the debate exploring the conflict between Gandhi and Ambedkar centred around three central lines of divergence: differences in approach to the eradication of untouchability, different responses to modernity, and different reactions to political segregation and separate electorates for the depressed classes. Bindu Puri argues that these three lines of divergence can be read as coming from differences around one single issue – that of the relationship between memory and identity which she elaborates on deeply in the chapter. Mustakim Ansary (Chapter 10) sets his narrative against the backdrop of the recent debate emerging from Arundhati Roy’s introduction to Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste entitled, “The Doctor and the Saint” where Roy lambasts Gandhi on the question of caste. In Roy’s analysis Ambedkar emerges as the real social reformer or the Doctor who can purge Indian society from its real malaise of social stratification or caste system and Gandhi is only the product of exaggerated national hagiography and international hype that elevates him to the pedestal of a ‘Saint’. In the chapter Ansary contends that Roy has taken a biased approach to Gandhi and her argumentative vigour in debunking Gandhi is sledge-hammerly in nature as it does not take into account the enormous amount of papers and works that Gandhi wrote on the issue of caste and related forms of social discrimination and social justice. Roy has been largely selective and she failed to contextualise Gandhi’s comments and observations which she premised on to lampoon Gandhi. This chapter demonstrates how Roy embarked on her project of glorifying Ambedkar at the cost of Gandhi. According to the author Roy’s virulent opposition to Gandhi stems from what she claims is Gandhi’s subdued endorsement of racism in South Africa and castism in India. Roy portrays Gandhi as a status quoist who failed to go for a whole-hearted clarion call for structural change in Indian society. The chapter attempts to counter these serious allegations against Gandhi in a dispassionate argumentative manner through empirical substantiation. In analysing Roy’s diatribe against Gandhi, Ansary incorporates Rajmohan Gandhi’s recent rebuttal of Roy and also the counter-arguments of many other critics and observers who have commented on this controversy. Through painstaking analysis of Gandhi’s writings in the Harijan and in other resources, the chapter plans to

18  Sanjeev Kumar

restore the real Gandhi, the real social crusader who sacrificed his life for the ethos of social justice. Hari Nair (Chapter 11) responds specifically to Roy’s questions as well as other related questions emerging on the issues of caste, culture and race. Nair takes up Gandhi’s views on race, especially in relation to native Africans, while he was in South Africa between 1893 and 1914. This study is relevant because it hopes to provide evidence hitherto ignored or not considered in recent debates by Gandhi’s critics as well as those favourably disposed towards the Mahatma. Several scholars have over the last decade – and most prominently, Joseph Lelyveld in Great Soul – suggested that Gandhi might have disdained native African peoples because of his racist views. Other scholars have raised similar queries or expressed critical views though more nuanced. Patrick French however has bluntly stated his point: it was not that someone born in the 19th century should be expected to have 21st-century racial attitudes, but that Gandhi was regressive even by the reformist standards of his own time (The Guardian, 9 October 2013). The study by Nair suggests on the basis of evidence that Gandhi’s views on race were evolving as were those of contemporary scholars across Europe and America, since the high noon of pseudo-scientific racism began declining in the early years of the 20th century. Nair suggests that Gandhi was not merely a child of his context or a man of his times, but perhaps he was ahead of his times – in so far as his quest for understanding the relation among race, culture and civilization.

V In the final section dealing mainly with post-Gandhian legacy, Antony Copley (Chapter 12) examines the relevance and effectiveness of Gandhi’s ideas in contemporary India by looking at three broad areas (the politics of violence, politics of social protest and the politics of identity). Copley identifies the major challenges that besiege contemporary India. He laments at the way Shining India has responded to the challenge of globalisation with its own programme of neo-liberalism or authoritarian capitalism leading to deeper social inequality more than ever. He raises concern at the growing threat to India’s pluralism. Copley elaborates succinctly where Gandhism stands in relation to a search for a new form of personal morality, feminism, demand for gay rights and more importantly in the context of the resurgence of the Hindutva agenda. While admitting that the space denoting a Gandhian culture is shrinking Copley through his study shows the spirits of Gandhi’s Satyagraha remain alive and working in India as reflected in the Vinoba’s Bhoodan movement, J.P. Narayan’s civil disobedience movement, the Chipko movement, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and the Adivasi struggle in the Saranda forest all which have questioned gross inequalities of modern India. The politics of nonviolent resistance movement in Burma and the triumph of Aung San Sui Kyi and the National League for Democracy also extend Copley’s hope that Satyagraha can work. Mahendra Prasad Singh (Chapter 13) looks at the tension emerging between two streams reflected in the functioning of Indian Democracy – ­Ambedkar’s Constitutionalism and Gandhi’s non-violent Satyagraha. Reflecting

Introduction  19

this dual legacy, India has been ambivalent between representative democracy and direct democracy. Singh argues despite the contradictions both of these streams have equally contributed to the success, rather survival, of democracy in India. Along with Ambedkar’s constitutionalism, Gandhian civil disobedience has also continued to move in a parallel political stream in numerous popular mass movements led by Vinoba Bhave, Jayaprakash Narayan, Sundarlal Bahuguna, Anna Hazare, Medha Patkar, Mahendra Singh Tikait, Shankar Guha Niyogi and others. The major thrust of this chapter is to understand and examine the dynamics of some recent Gandhian modes of non-violent resistance in contemporary India. In this context Singh presents a case study of the ‘India Against Corruption’ movement (2011–2012) led by Anna Hazare and his cohorts as an illustration of a post-Gandhian legacy and its offshoot the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by Arvind Kejriwal, a flash party formation that has since become a regional party, with ups and downs, to reckon with in Delhi and some north Indian states since its founding in 2012. The Anna Hazare Movement and the AAP have raised some major issues that are not entirely new in modern Indian history and politics. Singh discusses these new developments in historical and comparative perspective. Singh contends that the Hazare Movement does not measure up to the anti-Indira Gandhi Movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan ( JP) in the mid1970s nor does the AAP compare to the Janata Party that emerged out of the JP Movement. However, both the Hazare Movement and Kejriwal’s AAP promise to usher in a corruption-free, ‘alternative’ politics. J. Gray Cox (Chapter 14) turns to Gandhi’s model of rational inquiry as a key to addressing the existential crises created by the dominant, current models of economic, political and technological reasoning. He discusses the defining features of the current models of reasoning and the problems associated with them. He argues they are monological and they presuppose a “value-free” or “neutral” conception of reason (and so are committed to a moral relativism). He sketches the principal features of Gandhi’s satyagraha showing it is a dialogical process of practical rational inquiry which can discover emergent objective moral truth and bear witness to it in ways that are effective in securing rational consent and enforcing rational, moral norms in non-violent ways. As such, it provides ways to solve the problems of the current dominant models. Anandita Biswas (Chapter 15) exhorts the importance of Gandhian humanism at a time when the world echoes the cult of violence, intolerance, hatred and jingoism. Her work highlights an analogical prognosis between two different and varied ideological standpoints that have been interpreting and re-interpreting the interaction between humanism and culture, tolerance and bigotry. Biswas argues that Gandhi based his ideological belief on an innocuous, humane, altruistic podium that highlighted the principles of ethics which needs to be foregrounded today. According to the author, the humanism of Mahatma demands an appreciable space in all cogent argumentation as it represents a moral force capable of pacifying and unifying love for all living beings.

20  Sanjeev Kumar

Notes 1 According to Ashis Nandy ‘there exist many variants of Gandhis just as Marxists or liberals’. Vinay Lal argues that ‘among the dozens of constituencies that have claimed him as their own: the political activists, nudists, vegetarians, environmentalists, prohibitionists, civil resisters and pacifists can be included as the forerunners’. 2 Much of the personal and political space of Gandhi lay bare through a prolific documentation of Gandhi’s own writings in the form of scribbled notes, letters, pamphlets, news articles, autobiography and several books. Gandhi’s seven books include Hind Swaraj, Satyagraha in South Africa, Autobiography, Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place, Discourses on the Gita, Ashram Observances in Action, and A Guide to Health, all published by Navajivan, Ahmadabad. One hundred volumes of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [hereafter, CWMG] have been published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Government of India. The weeklies that Gandhi edited includes Indian Opinion (South Africa), Young India, and Harijan. Gandhi is revealed also through his public engagements (speeches, interviews and conversations) which he conducted on a routine basis with wide-ranging audiences, from the ordinary masses to his friends and disciples, fellow politicians and to the journalists and even the government functionaries including the viceroys. The space of Gandhi is also exposed from the accounts/narratives shared through his close associates, personal secretaries and his key followers. Then there is a vast amount of literature emanating in the field of Gandhi scholarship as biographies, monographs by distinguished scholars beginning from as early as the 1930s exploring his moral/political universe. Further, there are scholars who don’t engage him directly but derive acquaintance of Gandhi while approaching their own predicaments on the varied questions related to class, caste, race, nation, religion or gender where Gandhi has made considerable interventions dealing with ‘life as a whole’. These multiple sources outlined here provide an interesting case for Gandhi’s hermeneutics but also add confusion regarding the true meaning of Gandhi. 3 Apart from the most important primary source materials for Gandhi’s life extending over 100 volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, published by Delhi’s Publications Division of the Government of India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the most insightful analysis into Gandhi’s life and philosophy includes Raghavan (ed.) Moral and Political Philosophy of Gandhi; Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969); George Orwell, Reflections on Gandhi. In A Collection of Essays (San Diego, CA: A Harvest Books, 1949); Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Harper, 1950); D.G. Tendulkar, Mahatma, 8 vols. (New Delhi: Government of India Publications Division, 1951-4); Judith Brown, Gandhi: A Prisoner of Hope (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, rev. ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969); Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. A. J. Parel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi (Gurgaon: Penguin, 1995); and Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas: The Story of a Man, His People and an Empire (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006). 4 “I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scales as I could. In doing so, I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors. Life and its problems have, thus, become to me so many experiments in the practice of truth and Non-violence. . . . In fact it was in the course of my pursuit of truth that I discovered Non-violence” (N. K. Bose, Selection From Gandhi [Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1948], p. 13). 5 Although Gandhi believed that there was a ‘Universal Truth’ that he equated with Brahma, Gandhi realised within the realm of worldly action, it was beyond the reach of human cognition and capacities. Relative truth – or what we might call “practical” truth – is the more accessible way of steering ourselves, rather than trying to find the Absolute or theoretical Truth. This is not to say that Gandhi disavows the search for Absolute Truth; he repeatedly emphasises that the final goal or ideal should always be Absolute truth.

Introduction  21

6 For comprehensive and elaborate discussion on some of these aspects, see B.R. Nanda, Gandhi and His Critics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); Harold Coward, ed. Indian Critiques of Gandhi (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003). Ambedkar’s work “What Gandhi and the Congress have done to the Untouchables” (1945) gives a substantial and balanced account of some of Gandhi’s shortcomings on the question of caste. 7 Ambedkar in his book What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables called Gandhi “a mad man with the genius of an elf ” who “can never grow up and grow out of caste ideology.” 8 Except for An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927) by M.K. Gandhi; Kasturba: Wife of Gandhi (1948) by Sushila Nayyar; Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (1990) by Judith Brown; The Forgotten Woman: The Untold Story of Kastur Gandhi, Wife of Mahatma Gandhi (1998) by Arun and Sunanda Gandhi; and Gandhi before India (2013) by Ramachandra Guha very little material is available to uncover the story of Ba and her understanding of Gandhi. 9 Gandhi had several female followers, ashramites and disciples like Mirabehn, Millie Polak, Amrit Kaur, Sushila Nayyar, and Prabhavati Narayan, Sarladevi Chaudhrani among others. The most contentitious is Gandhi’s association with Saraladebi Chowdhurani from 1919-20. The intimacy between Saraladevi and Gandhi reached a stage where he began to refer to her as his ‘spiritual wife’. 10 During initial years Gandhi had entertained faith in the fairness of the British and in Imperial principles. At the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War in 1899 he raised an ambulance corps of around 300 Indians to provide nursing assistance to the wounded British soldiers. During the First World War he volunteered himself to recruit Indian soldiers for the British army. Urging the farmers whom he had successfully mobilised against the non-payment of revenue in Kheda and Champaran Gandhi said: ‘Many men died of plague and cholera and so it would not be a hard thing to die in the war’. After his failure to secure recruits for the Army in Kheda, Gandhi underwent a psychological breakdown, writes Erik Erikson in his book Gandhi’s Truth, 1969. 11 For Gandhi, Brahmacharya was not just restricted to observance of chastity or sexual abstinence. It essentially meant living a spiritual life – having ‘complete control of the senses in thought, word and deed’ (See Autobiography: 314) (CWMG 30:235). Howard suggests that it was through renouncing his “private pleasures” that Gandhi ‘sought to extend his love to his fellow human beings’ (V. R. Howard, Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action [Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2013],  p. xi). 12 In the progress towards “Truth”, Gandhi identified four cardinal virtues: (ahimsa), nonviolence, (brahmacharya), celibacy, (aparigraha) non-possession and removal of untouchability (Gandhi 1947, vol. 33, p. 448). 13 The constructive programme enumerated by Gandhi in 1941 in its most elaborated form consisted of 18 items which together would bring about a thorough reformation of Indian Society at the local and national level. The core elements of the constructive program involved communal unity, removal of untouchability, prohibition, khadi, village industries, village sanitation, basic education, adult education, women, health and hygiene, provincial languages, national language, economic equality, kisans, labour, adivasis, lepers and students (M.K. Gandhi, Constructive Programme (Ahmadabad: Navajivan Press, 1941), pp. 1–28). 14 Savarkar was one of the prime ideologues of ‘Hindutva’, a term that was coined by him in his 1923 essay, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? The central thesis is shrouded by the contention that India as a nation (rashtra) belongs exclusively to Hindus. Hindu is categorically defined by Savarkar as those persons whose pitribhu (fatherland) and punyabhumi (holyland) belongs to India. The definition is problematic for those Indian citizens, particularly Muslims and Christians, whose faith of worship originates outside of India and are therefore declared as the other. The ideology as outlined by Savarkar attempts to strengthen and consolidate Hindu identity reflected in the growing assertion of militant Hindu nationalism in recent times.

22  Sanjeev Kumar

15 His philosophy can be described as a synthesis of both Indian and Western tradition. He drew inspiration as much from Tolstoy, Thoreau and John Ruskin as from Vivekananda and other spiritual and moral traditions of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism that originated in India. Besides the Bhagavad Gita, both the Sermon on the Mount and the Holy Quran deepened Gandhi’s philosophy and his outlook towards life world.

Bibliography Allen, Douglas. (2007). Mahatma Gandhi on Violence and Peace Education. Philosophy, East and West 57 (3): 290–310. Ambedkar, B. R. (1945). What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables? Bombay: Thacker & Co. Bondurant, Joan. (1958). Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bose, N. K. (ed.). (1948). Selections from Gandhi. Ahmadabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Brown, Judith M. (1972). Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics 1915–1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Judith M. (1980). Makers of the Twentieth Century: Gandhi, vol. 30, issue no. 5. London: History Today. Brown, Judith M. and Parel, Anthony (eds.). (2011). The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi. New York: Cambridge University Press. Chatterjee, Margaret. (1983). Gandhi’s Religious Thought. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Chatterjee, Partha. (1986). The Manoeuvre: Gandhi and the Critique of Civil Society. In Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 85–130. Dalal, Chandulal Bhagubhai. (2007). Harilal Gandhi: A Life, edited and translated from the original Gujarati by Tridip Suhrud. Chennai: Orient Longman. Dalton, Dennis. (1993). Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action. New York: Columbia University Press. Diwakar, R. R. (1964). The Spiritual Seeker. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Erikson, Erik H. (1969). Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Fischer, Louis. (1982, 1997). The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi: Harper-Collins. Gandhi, M. K. (1909). Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M. K. (1927, 2006). An Autobiography, or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated by Mahadev Desai. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M. K. (1932, 1968). From Yeravda Mandir, translated from Gujarati by Valji Govindji Desai. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Mudranalaya. Gandhi, M. K. (1933–40, 1942, 1946–48). Harijan. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press. Gandhi, M. K. (1955). Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), 100 vols. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing. www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL026.PDF. Gandhi, M. K. (1966). The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 22 (December 1921– March 1922). New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M. K. (1989, 1941). Constructive Programme. Ahmadabad: Navajivan Press. Gandhi, M. K. (1999). The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book). New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India. http:// www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL026.PDF. Gandhi, Rajmohan. (1995). The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi. Gurgaon: Penguin. Gandhi, Rajmohan. (2006). Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire. New Delhi: Penguin.

Introduction  23

Guha, Ramachandra. (2013). Gandhi Before India. New Delhi: Penguin. Hardiman, David. (2003). Gandhi in His Time and Ours: The Global Legacy of His Ideas. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Howard, V. R. (2013). Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action. Albany: State University of New York Press. Iyer, Raghavan. (1973). The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. New York: Oxford University Press. Kapoor, Pramod. (2016). Gandhi: An Illustrated Biography. New Delhi: Roli Books. Kulkarni, Sudheendra. (2012). Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi’s Manifesto for the Internet Age. New Delhi: Amaryllis. Lal, Vinay. (2008). The Gandhi Everyone Loves to Hate, vol. 43, issue no. 40. Mumbai: The Economic and Political Weekly. Lelyveld, Jospeh. (2011). Great Soul Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. New York: Random House. Murray, Gilbert. (1918). The Soul as It Is, and How to Deal with It. The Hibbert Journal 16 (2): 191–205. Nadkarni, M. V. (2011). Ethics for Our Times: Essays in Gandhian Perspective. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nanda, B. R. (1958, 1981). Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nanda, B. R. (ed.). (1995). Mahatma Gandhi 125 Years: Remembering Gandhi: Understanding Gandhi, Relevance of Gandhi. New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations. Nanda, B. R. (1997). Gandhi and His Critics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nandy, Ashis. (1987). From Outside the Imperium: Gandhi’s Cultural Critique of the West. In Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 127–162. Narayan, S. (ed.). (1995). The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vols. I–VI. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing. Orwell, George. (1949). Reflections on Gandhi. In A Collection of Essays. San Diego, CA: A Harvest Books. Parekh, Bhikhu. (1989). Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination. London: Macmillan. Parekh, Bhikhu. (1997, 2005). Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Parekh, Bhiku. (2015). Debating India: Essays on Indian Political Discourse. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Parel, Anthony J. (ed.). (2002). Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. Parel, Anthony J. (2006). Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, Parel, Anthony J. (ed.). (2009 reprinted). Hind Swaraj and Other Writings. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Parel, Anthony J. (2016). Pax Gandhiana: The Political Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. New York: Oxford University Press. Pyarelal, L. (1956, 1958). Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Ramachandran, G. and Mahadevan, T. K. (1967). His Relevance for Our Times. New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation. Rolland, Romain. (1924). Mahatma Gandhi. London: Allen & Unwin. Roy, Ramashray (ed.). (1986). Contemporary Crisis and Gandhi. New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House. Tendulkar, D. G. (1951). Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 8 vols., new end, 1963, 1st ed. New Delhi: Publication Division, Government of India. Weber, Thomas. (1991). Conflict Resolution and Gandhian Ethics. New Delhi: The Gandhi Peace Foundation.

PART I

Gandhian philosophy Theoretical basis and practical dimensions

2 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE A Gandhi-informed approach Douglas Allen

At the International Conference on Gandhi and the Contemporary World, organized by the Gandhi Study Circle of Zakir Husain Delhi College and held at the University of Delhi in February 2016, I was invited to give a presentation for a major Plenary Session that was entitled “Gandhian Philosophy: Theoretical Basis and Practical Dimensions.” After the conference, Dr. Sanjeev Kumar asked me to reformulate and submit my plenary lecture, “Gandhian Philosophy: Theoretical Basis with the Primacy on Practice,” for his edited book Gandhi and the Contemporary World to be published by Routledge.1 This essay is a revision of that postconference submission, upholding the importance of Gandhi’s philosophy, but with his emphasis on the primacy of theory-informed practice.

The primacy of practice in Gandhi’s philosophical approach Although Gandhi repeatedly makes clear that he is not a philosopher in any traditional scholarly or academic sense and he has little interest in abstract philosophy, one cannot understand how he lived his life without recognizing his profound underlying philosophy. Gandhi’s focus on philosophy is always on living philosophy. In terms of his major ethical, epistemological, and ontological concepts and values, how can one live a life of and practice Satya and ahimsa? When asked for his philosophy, Gandhi frequently responds that his life is his message. His philosophy is best expressed through practice, through how he lives his life. There is a common misconception that Gandhi is simply a practical person with no philosophical interest and no philosophical significance for our contemporary world. Although Gandhi often seems very simple in his practical self-transformative and world-transformative formulations and actions, his practice is actually grounded in a surprisingly complex, dynamic, open-ended, contextually relevant, moral and

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ontological theoretical framework. As Gandhi repeatedly claims, simple living is qualitatively high living and to live a value-informed practical life of simplicity is difficult, involves self-discipline and struggle and resistance, and provides alternatives for meaningful living. Many Gandhi admirers and Gandhi critics share a view that Gandhi is a practical person of no theoretical philosophy significance. In my Gandhi After 9/11: Creative Nonviolence and Creative Sustainability, I have illustrated this by citing my youthful formative experiences with professors in the Department of Philosophy at Banaras Hindu University (BHU). Gandhi acknowledges that he is not a philosopher in the usual technical, academic, or scholarly ways. In this regard, he distinguishes himself from S. Radhakrishnan and other twentieth-century Indian philosophers. In my own personal experiences, such a list of Indian philosophers includes my major teacher at Banaras Hindu University, T. R. V. Murti. The volume Contemporary Indian Philosophy was edited by Radhakrishnan and Muirhead and published in 1936. This volume is intended to present the state of Indian philosophy at that time. It consists of a collection of twenty-five essays by leading Indian academic and scholarly philosophers. It is surprising that the very first contribution is by the non-philosopher Gandhi. The history of Gandhi’s piece as the first contribution is revealing. We know from correspondence that Gandhi pleaded incompetence in philosophy. Finally, reluctantly, in response to three questions from Radhakrishnan, Gandhi wrote his untitled one-page “essay.”2 Gandhi recognizes the importance of philosophy. He also recognizes that he has ethical, religious, and philosophical principles; however, he indicates that he will leave it to scholars more competent in philosophy to formulate, interpret, and systematize the philosophy underlying his approach, his theory, and his practice.3 Gandhi’s writings usually lack systematic philosophical analysis, often seem to be philosophically naïve, and occasionally plead philosophical incompetence. These lend credence to the view that he is not philosophically significant. This has led to the misconception that one may admire or be critical of the ways Gandhi lives his life, his influences on India and the world, and his contemporary legacy, but Gandhi is certainly not a philosopher or he is irrelevant for philosophy today. In several writings, I have given some personal context for this misconception by referring to my postgraduate studies at BHU in 1963–1964. In the course on Advaita Vedanta taught by Professor Murti and the other advanced philosophy courses I attended, I do not recall Gandhi ever being mentioned. In a distinguished department dominated by proponents of Advaita Vedanta, we focused on the theoretical basis of Shankara’s philosophy and considered other Vedantic and classical Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophical analyses. As was usually the case in dominant traditional Hindu philosophy, the approaches of Indian philosophical materialism and skepticism were barely considered worthy of our attention. Revealing, for these distinguished Indian philosophers, Gandhi’s philosophy was not simply devalued or marginalized. It was completely nonexistent.

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To provide a more recent illustration, during my 2015–2016 sabbatical in India, I was invited to participate in the four-day International Vedanta Congress at Jawaharlal Nehru University in December 2015. It is true that most of the presenters were Sanskritists and scholars of Vedanta from disciplines other than philosophy, but most of their focus was on Vedic and Vedantic “philosophy.” In the entire conference program, my plenary presentation on “Is Mahatma Gandhi a Vedantist?” was the only offering that mentioned Gandhi in its title.4 While Gandhi was not featured at the Vedanta Congress, it is revealing how the situation has changed from my experiences with the philosophers of Advaita Vedanta at BHU in 1963–1964. In response to my presentation on “Is Gandhi a Vedantist?” at the Vedanta Congress in 2015, the overwhelming response of the Vedantists was that Gandhi’s philosophy was clearly grounded in Vedanta, and more specifically, was an expression of Advaita. Rather than devalue Gandhi and his philosophy, they were often eager to appropriate him and his philosophy within and promoting their Vedantic framework.5 Another major change is evidenced in the fact that “the Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi” has been incorporated in the course curriculum of many Departments of Philosophy and other university programs in recent decades. Students write Ph.D. dissertations on Gandhi philosophy topics. Indian scholars organize seminars and conferences on Gandhian philosophy. Nevertheless, the widespread misconception still persists that Gandhi’s thought and practice are not philosophical. In my view, Gandhi may not be a philosopher in some technical academic sense, but his theory and practice are of the greatest philosophical significance, challenging us to rethink our dominant philosophical approaches and how they are integrally related to a contemporary India and world of so much violence, war, exploitation, oppression, and unsustainable economic and environmental relations. My view is that Gandhi is much more philosophically significant than the overwhelming majority of what is being done by academic philosophers. As previously noted, Gandhi’s emphasis is on the primacy of practice. He is not interested in abstract, essentialized, contextually detached theoretical formulations. He rejects a common view that philosophy exists for the sake of philosophy, that humans simply have a desire to know, and that this is sufficient justification for doing philosophy. Gandhi submits that our philosophical analysis must arise from actual practice and then be applied and tested in terms of new practice. Philosophical theorizing is not devalued or dismissed per se. Grounded in the practice of our human mode of being in the world, our fragmentation and alienation, our lack of meaningful experiences of human situatedness as mind-body-heart beings, theoretical understanding is necessary for any knowledge and for any moral, philosophical, and spiritual transformative development. Philosophical theory is necessary to inform and guide our philosophical practice. In fact, theorizing is a form of practice, and we can only verify or falsify our theory through ongoing experiments with truth in which we assess the extent to which our new theorizing contributes to new, more adequate, moral and philosophical practice.

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Here one finds Gandhi’s focus on the primacy of ethical living. This emphasis on the primacy of practice and on how philosophical theory must be grounded in practice is seen in the view that Gandhi is primarily a moralist. His primary concern is with moral practice, with developing virtuous human beings of moral character and practice. In Gandhi’s emphasis, ethics is first philosophy and morality is first practice. This is different not only from the dominant ways of doing philosophy in the history of Western philosophy, but also from traditional Indian philosophy with its emphasis on the primacy of epistemology and metaphysics. This is not to deny that the Vedic texts, including sections of the Upanishads outlining the stages in the course of study, emphasize the moral prerequisites for qualifying as suitable and for being accepted as a worthy student.6 Without basic moral qualities, without moral character, one is not capable of understanding the sacred teachings. As evidenced in both Upanishadic and other Vedic texts and also in later philosophical and religious traditions, without moral character and development, one is not capable of developing the proper use of the intellect, of logical and rational thinking. Nevertheless, as has been emphasized by various twentieth-century philosophers, including influential Indians, India and Hinduism have tended not to develop the kind of emphasis on systematic ethics found in Western philosophy, as seen in Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy and Mill, Kant, and modern philosophy, and later philosophical developments. Traditional Indian philosophy has tended not only to lack this emphasis on developing systematic ethics, but it has also tended to embrace the view that the enlightened, highly developed philosophical and spiritual being renounces and transcends the ethical. By way of contrast, in his focus on the primacy of ethical living, Gandhi challenges us to broaden and deepen our philosophical understanding of moral practice and its theoretical basis.

Philosophy and practice of ahimsa Gandhi’s greatest contribution toward the theme of “Gandhi and the Contemporary World” is his moral and philosophical focus on ahimsa and how he greatly broadens and deepens our understanding of nonviolence and its integral relations with truth. Etymologically, himsa is derived from the Sanskrit root “to strike” with the meaning of to injure or to harm. Therefore, ahimsa has the opposite meaning: to cause no injury or harm in words, thoughts, or actions. Ahimsa is a key concept, principle, and value in Jainism, in much of Buddhism and Hinduism, and it is foundational to Gandhi’s philosophy and practice.7 The integral relations of satya and ahimsa provide the theoretical basis for Gandhi’s philosophy and practice.8 They reveal the presuppositions, values, and principles informing his approach to swaraj, satyagraha, swadeshi, his constructive programme, and other key concepts.9 In Gandhi’s philosophical approach integrating theory and practice, our contemporary world is characterized by so much violence. It is easy to agree with this in the usual approaches that view violence as overt physical violence. Our world

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is characterized by so much war and killing, Islamic State (IS, ISIS, ISIL) beheadings, bombings and other terrorism, torture and sexual trafficking and other blatant human rights violations, bullying by violent individuals and by political and economic leaders with great power, widespread acts of rape, acts of caste and class and gender violence, and acts of religious and communal violence. Gandhi, of course, addresses his concern about such overt physical violence. After all, there were physical violence attempts on his life, and he was finally assassinated on 30 January 1948. However, in his philosophical and transformative insights and contributions to our contemporary world, Gandhi submits that such shocking acts of physical violence are a small part of overall violence. In his broadened and deepened moral and philosophical approach, most of us who say that we are for nonviolence (peace, love, compassion, justice, etc.) are in reality very violent, either directly or indirectly in our passivity and complicity in perpetuating a world lacking in ahimsa. In my own work, I’ve tried to show at length how a Gandhi-informed philosophical approach bursts opens the limiting constructions of violence and nonviolence by challenging us to become aware of and act on two key concepts: the multidimensionality of violence (and nonviolence) and the structural violence (and nonviolence) of the status quo. In addition to overt physical experience, we experience hatred and other inner or psychological violence, linguistic violence that shapes our experiences and expressions of communication, political and economic and social violence, and cultural, religious, educational, and environmental violence. All of these dimensions of violence interact, mutually condition and reinforce each other, so that we become entrapped in endless causal and conditioning cycles of violence expressing how we view our self, our relations to others, and our relations to nature and the world. We are also socialized to accept the social, economic, political, religious, educational, and structural violence of the status quo as “normal,” as defining the “real world.” Especially when there is no extreme disruption and the dominant economic, political, religious, educational, and other structures and relations seem to be working efficiently, we, unlike Gandhi, normally do not recognize the extreme structural violence that perpetuates so much suffering, poverty, inequality, alienation, and lack of ahimsa. Gandhi repeatedly illustrates his ahimsa approach to multidimensional and structural violence by focusing on economic violence and this provides an insightful contemporary illustration. Unlike most other Western and Indian philosophical and religious or spiritual approaches that emphasize moral and spiritual development, Gandhi places a primary focus on economic violence. In upholding his philosophical view of the interrelatedness of all of life, Gandhi submits that the economic must be based on the moral, so that economic violence is immoral, but the moral must also value and privilege the economic as we work to overcome economic violence.10 In Gandhi’s extensive writings on violence, economic violence is equated with exploitation in which those with the finances, land, resources, and technology are able to establish hierarchical relations of domination in which they exploit the labor

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and limited resources of those lacking such economic power. That is why Gandhi repeatedly maintains that poverty, which is humanly caused and maintained, is extreme economic violence, and he sometimes asserts that it is the worst form of violence. Upholding one of his key concepts of aparigraha, non-possession, Gandhi claims that if I take something I do not need for my immediate use and I keep it, then I am a thief committing economic violence. Gandhi formulates many, interrelated levels and kinds of swaraj, including economic swaraj, and he submits that that swaraj is impossible without swadeshi. In dramatic terms, especially significant for contemporary India and the world, Gandhi maintains that hierarchical economic inequality is violence, and “economic equality is the master key to nonviolent independence.”11 Gandhi would certainly be alarmed by and would focus on what has been happening in recent decades in the U.S., India, and the world in terms of the unprecedented concentration of so much economic wealth and power in the hands of the relatively few. He would address how the rapidly growing inequality between the elite economic haves and the overwhelming majority of have-nots expresses extreme economic violence and prevents the realization of ahimsa. In many ways, this is not new. India and the West have had thousands of years of the concentration of wealth and power with the rulers and economic powerful establishing various hierarchical relations of domination and control over others. However, even during Gandhi’s lifetime, life for the majority of 300 million Indians, living in 600,000 or 700,000 rather isolated and self-contained villages, was still characterized for the most part by economic relations outside the top-down concentration of financial and industrial economic power of the British and Indian elite. This is not to deny that the outside centralized priorities and policies sometimes had devastating consequences for the decentralized peasants as in catastrophic times of flooding, famine, and starvation. Such traditional, decentralized, unequal but relatively more egalitarian, socioeconomic life has become increasingly unlivable and unsustainable. All of India is increasingly brought under the domination of concentrated, centralized, top-down values, relations, and structures of financial capital and big corporate economic structures and relations. These establish interlocking relations with politics and the state, the military and forces of coercion, advertising and endless consumption, the media, and the other interests of what Gandhi critiques as the model of “Modern Civilization.” For Gandhi, this contemporary unprecedented concentration of economic wealth and power necessarily leads to growing inequality, and this necessarily leads to growing multidimensional and structural violence.12 Gandhi’s theory and practice of ahimsa are directed at how we can educate ourselves and others to gain greater awareness of such dominant violence in the world. This necessarily involves becoming aware of how we can nonviolently resist such violence and how we can engage in the dynamic, contextually relevant, actionoriented project of deconditioning such violent assumptions, values, principles, and relations and replace them with the values and relations of a nonviolent way of being in the world. Gandhi’s dialectical theory-practice relational approach involves

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the integral deconstruction of violence that necessarily involves the construction of nonviolent alternatives. In this theory-practice moral, philosophical approach, I have focused elsewhere on the following five, Gandhi-informed insights and contributions. First, Gandhi offers a very nuanced and complex analysis of the relations of means and ends, often sharing features of the law of karma and the Buddha’s Doctrine of Dependent Origination, and presenting a radical critique of the dominant, modern, Western, instrumental approach of the ends justify the means as extremely violent. Second, we can reflect on the potential for developing Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of ahimsa and its significance for the contemporary world by focusing on preventative nonviolence. Especially in Gandhi’s major contribution for the need for long-term preventative ahimsa, we need to become more aware of the root causes and basic determinants of the vicious cycles of violence so that we can decondition and replace them with contextually relevant nonviolent causes and conditioning factors. Otherwise we’ll remain entrapped within and keep reproducing the contemporary cycles of violence that are morally, politically, economically, and environmentally unsustainable and threaten our future existence and other life on the planet earth. Third, informed by his understanding of the Upanishads, various other Indian and Western philosophical and spiritual sources, and especially his favorite text the Bhagavad-Gita, Gandhi’s ahimsa approach focuses on how we construct and fuel the separate, I-me ego, with its ego-desires, needs, attachments, possessiveness, defense mechanisms, and aggressiveness. As seen in Hind Swaraj and in hundreds of other writings, Gandhi maintains that such ego desires and attachments, which are central to modern civilization and our contemporary socio-economic and political world, express the untruthful, violent, illusory, immoral, and unspiritual Self and violent self-other relations. The only way for us to experience and live lives of ahimsa today is to decondition, control, and eliminate, as much as possible, the functioning of the modern ego at the heart of so much violence in the world.13 Fourth, in providing the integral relations of truth and nonviolence, Gandhi’s philosophical theory and practice not only challenges us with an insightful ethical approach, but it also reveals a valuable ontological orientation and framework. As is easily recognized, Gandhi, in his means-ends moral philosophy and practice, challenges dominant modern approaches. He repeatedly formulates why untruthful, immoral, violent means cannot lead to truthful, moral, nonviolent ends. For example, we cannot use terrorism today to overcome terrorism and expect to realize a goal of a world free from terror. What usually is not recognized is how Gandhi’s moral philosophy of ahimsa is grounded in an underlying organic, holistic, interconnected, ontological worldview and framework of moral and spiritual reality. Stated briefly, violence is based on the worldview and approach that what is the target of and separates me/us from the other – whether individual, social, or based on ethnic, caste, class, gender, religious, national, or other groups – is fundamentally different from me, my social or religious group, nation, and so on. Ahimsa, by way of contrast, is based on

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the worldview and approach that what unifies us is more fundamental than what divides, expressing our moral and spiritual interconnectedness, a primary realization of unity with a respect for differences. Ahimsa, as the active nonviolent force (love force, truth force, soul force), is not only the basis of Gandhi’s moral philosophy and practice, but it is at the same time the unifying moral and spiritual force that brings us together in meaningful, interconnected relations, allowing us to experience greater truth and reality.

Philosophy and practice of relative truth Fifth, essential to Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of ahimsa, satya, and other challenges for our contemporary world is his underappreciated analysis of the epistemological, moral, and ontological status of relative truth and its dynamic, contextually relevant, open-ended relations with Absolute Truth, Nonviolence, Morality, Religion, God, and Self. Many supporters and critics focus on various passages in Gandhi’s writings and turn him into some rigid absolutist, uncompromisingly insisting on Absolute Truth and Absolute Nonviolence, but this is not consistent with the overwhelming majority of Gandhi’s writings. His primary focus is on relative truth, which, unlike much of traditional Indian philosophy, is not simply devalued or even dismissed in terms of the Absolute Reality. Gandhi often affirms his belief in the ultimate reality of Absolute Truth and Nonviolence, Pure Ethics and Religion. His belief claim has an experiential basis. He has experienced Absolute Truth and Nonviolence. However, what is even more significant for his philosophy and practice, Gandhi repeatedly confesses that he at most has very imperfect, limited, temporary “glimpses” of such Absolutes. Gandhi’s ongoing formulations and experimental reformulations of his philosophy and practice consist of his moral, philosophical, action-oriented, transformative project of attempting to move from one relative truth to greater relative truth, closer to but never fully realizing the Absolute Truth as Absolute Reality. Much of human egoistic arrogance, violence, and untruth consists of claiming that our relative truths are Absolute, the exclusive Truth, the only true view of Reality, so that it follows that the truths of others are untruths, immoral, evil, irrational, threatening, and must be resisted and often destroyed by violence. In many ways, Gandhi’s approach to relative truth and Absolute Truth challenges frequent philosophical dichotomous alternatives of essentialism and absolute foundationalism, on the one hand, or modern unlimited relativism, on the other hand. In our Gandhi-informed philosophical approach, we embrace absolute regulative ideals of Truth and Nonviolence, but our philosophy and practice always involve the recognition of our human, situated, contextualized world of relative truth with the dynamic, imperfect, open-ended philosophical project of moving closer to the absolute ideal. In our creative reformulations of such a Gandhian approach that has contextual value for the contemporary world, we must recognize that Gandhi’s focus on relative truth and its relation to his Absolutes does not immediately resolve all

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serious philosophical questions and issues. What is the source for his claims about the ultimate reality of his absolutes? Gandhi gives different answers. Sometimes he appeals to his religious faith. Humans cannot know the absolute. Only God knows the absolute. What is most philosophically interesting is Gandhi’s responses asserting his experiential claim that he actually has such imperfect, partial, temporary glimpses of what is the permanent, eternal, ultimate reality. Can Gandhi provide an adequate analysis of how he can distinguish and justify or verify his claim from so many other experiential claims to the Truth, God, and Reality that Gandhi assesses as false expressions of untruth, violence, war, and injustice? How do Gandhi’s philosophical theory and practice relate to his claims about the status of relative truth, relative nonviolence, relative institutionalized religion, and relative situated morality? What are the complex, dynamic, open-ended, contextualized relations in his philosophy between the diverse relative truths and their integral relations with the imperfectly realized regulative absolute ideals? Gandhi’s frequent advice to others illustrates such serious philosophical questions and issues. He repeatedly advises each of us to follow our own paths to truth wherever they take us, just as he has done in his own life. What is experienced as true for him may not be the relative perspectival truth for you. Consistent with much of contemporary philosophy, anthropology, sociology, multiculturalism, postcolonial and racial and gender studies, and other disciplinary approaches, why does Gandhi’s position on the significant status of relative truth and nonviolence and his advice to others not lead to an unlimited facile relativism? Gandhi struggles with this, and he offers many formulations and reformulations during his life in responding to such a challenging question. He never accepts the modern relativist view that he may uphold a philosophy and practice of ahimsa as what is truthful and real for him, but you may with equal justification accept a philosophy and practice of war and violence as truthful and real for you, your social group, your religion, or your nation. This is why the usual liberal interpretation of Gandhi’s justification for his remarkable “tolerance,” based on a kind of modesty and humility and recognition of uncertainty, with the focus on relative perspective truth, is not completely accurate. Such an interpretation seems plausible since Gandhi repeatedly asserts that what is true for him may not be true for the other, that you should follow your own relative path to truth, and that he has often miscalculated even when he seemed certain about his relative experiments with truth, but his nonviolent errors and blunders do not have the devastating harmful consequences as do failed violent experiments with truth. This modern liberal justification for tolerance does not adequately describe Gandhi’s approach because, as seen earlier, Gandhi has no doubt, even in his approach to relative truth, that love is better than hate, that peace is better than war, that compassion is better than ego-driven selfishness, that violence cannot lead to nonviolence, that terror and terrorism cannot lead to a world free from terror, that ahimsa and satya are the only paths to Truth and Reality. Gandhi’s most creative philosophical responses to this challenge involve his claims about the status of his absolutes as regulative ideals, how they relate to

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relative truths, and how they are essential for a moral and ontological framework that is unifying and brings the diverse fragmented relative perspectives into integral, coherent, interconnected, meaningful, relational wholes. Such a moral and spiritual framework allows Gandhi to claim that what unites us is more fundamental than what divides us, that our relative truths must affirm this fundamental unity with a respect for diversity, and that our truthful, relative, moral, and spiritual approaches are all aiming at the same Absolutes of Truth, Peace, Nonviolence, and Morality. Such a creatively reformulated Gandhian philosophy and practice must consider the challenges to its responses. On the one hand, we have just seen the challenges by many expressions of contemporary relativism. On the other hand, Gandhi encountered and we must consider the many challenges by those absolutist and exclusivist religious and other positions that deny Gandhi’s unifying moral and spiritual framework, deny that their relative truth claims are relative, or deny that all of the relative truths are aiming at the same Absolute Truth and Reality. My attempt at a creatively reformulated proposal of Gandhi’s philosophy and practice that has value for the contemporary world includes the following. Our philosophical focus is on our existential mode of being in the world and how we are actually situated as mind-body-heart human beings, pre-reflectively and reflectively, emotionally and conceptually and imaginatively, to experience diverse relative truths and untruths. Our philosophical focus is also on our existential mode of being in the world in which we have imperfect, limited insights and realizations of Absolute Truth that transcend or go beyond our relative truth claims as spatial, temporal, conditioned beings. Such imaginative constituted ideals add to the relative truths that we know as spatial, temporal, conditioned beings. As relative, imperfect, conditioned, situated human beings, we have limited perspectival experiences of violence and nonviolence, war and peace, ego-driven hatred and greed and selfless action, untruth and truth. In our philosophy and practice, we are engaged in the self-transformative and world-transformative process of attempting to move from our realization of limited relative truth to greater relative truth. In this philosophical project, we reflect on our diverse and complex experiences of relative truth and nonviolence and imaginatively constitute moral, philosophical, political, economic, religious, and other ideals that we express as Absolutes of Perfect or Pure Truth, God, Nonviolence, Peace, Love, Morality, Religion, and Swaraj. This process of imaginative constitution of absolute ideals is analyzed in chapter 4 of my Gandhi After 9/11 on Gandhi’s controversial interpretation of his favorite text, the Bhagavad-Gita, as a gospel of nonviolence. Gandhi interprets the Gita’s Krishna as a symbolic creation of our imagination. We are inspired by moral and spiritual beings in this world to construct imaginatively the ideals of perfection, of the Krishna ideal of moral and spiritual perfection. We then attempt imperfectly to realize the Krishna within us. Gandhi grants that earlier authors, commentators, and devotees of the Gita did not regard it as a gospel of ahimsa. However, we today, embracing the profound teachings of the Gita as part of an open-ended process of constituting meaning, can use our imaginations to reread, purify, develop,

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reinterpret, and reapply the teachings of the Gita as expressing the highest ideals of moral and spiritual perfection as a gospel of nonviolence. As would be granted by Gandhi, this complex process of imaginative creation of the Absolute with ideals of perfection has throughout history involved repression, withdrawal, and illusory escapes from the actual experiential world of relative truths. It has often been used to justify so much suffering, violence, war, and injustice. Relevant in this regard are the powerful, modern critiques of such imaginary escapism offered by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. In several of their influential formulations, their critiques focus on a critique of dominant religion, but the form of the critique is extended to most aspects of modern civilization. If we cite only Marx, in his early Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction, he analyzes religion as a symptom of the human condition of powerlessness and alienation in this world. Religion is an imaginary projection, an “inverted world consciousness,” reflecting a real world of alienation, suffering, and oppression. Rather than dealing with the real causes of alienation, religious people create escapist illusions by an imaginary projection of what is lacking in their world, onto some imaginary supernatural world. God is perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, while we are imperfect, weak, ignorant, and evil. Rational, unalienated human beings must demystify and free themselves from these imaginary escapist illusions and address the real causes of exploitation, dehumanization, and injustice that afflict humanity. Then, in his Economic and Philosophy Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology, and Capital, volume I, Marx, who is not very interested in religion, extends this form of radical critique to secular forms of alienation and especially to modern Political Economy, capitalist economic alienation, the fetishism, reification, and imaginary construction and illusory imposition of value on money, commodities, and so on.14 Gandhi is certainly aware of the dangers of this imaginative escapism, as clearly seen in his critiques of much of traditional escapist religion, including dominant Hindu/Indian sannyasa world renunciation, and his radical critique of immoral and illusory cultural construction of much of modern civilization. Nevertheless, in Gandhi’s view, such imaginary construction is not necessarily escapist. Imaginative creativity and idealization are also essential to how we experience what is true and real, and to what gives us (and gave Gandhi) hope in times of despair when we are overwhelmed with so much war, violence, and untruths, and everything seems hopeless. Imaginative construction, idealization, and creativity are essential to what makes us human. In order to avoid illusory escapism, ideological justifications for war and violence and oppression, or renunciation of action with withdrawal from the relative world of untruths, our Gandhi-informed imaginative ideals must be brought into integral dynamic relations with our relative truths. Our imperfectly experienced and constructed absolute ideals do not have the status of abstracted, decontextualized claims to ultimate reality. They serve as our regulative ideals in our philosophy and practice and are experienced, developed, and expressed through our engaged

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selfless actions, real struggles, resistance to violence and war and injustice, and projects of nonviolent and truthful constructive alternatives. Such an approach can be formulated and contextually reformulated in addressing the most difficult counter-examples usually intended to refute Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa as naïve, utopian, unrealistic, or even complicit with forces of extreme violence, killing, and injustice in not resisting with violent force. One thinks of the most common large-scale challenges and dismissals: how would Gandhi’s approach to truth and nonviolence deal with a Hitler? How would it deal with the 2001 terrorists in New York or with the 2008 terrorists in Mumbai? How would it deal with the IS (Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL) and other forms of overt ruthless terrorism today or the dominating structural forms of multinational corporate terrorism? One also thinks of small-scale challenges and dismissals, such as how to deal with the rapist engaged in the violent act of rape or the violent individual with a gun engaged in the act of shooting people. In all such cases, it seems obvious that there is no opportunity or willingness to engage in Gandhian dialogue, and any Gandhian attempt to absorb the suffering, violence, or killing without inflicting violence on the other would be completely ineffective. In my own creative reformulations and applications, arising from many of Gandhi’s writings, I’ve proposed more complex, contextually relevant, open-ended responses that incorporate insights into the relations of relative and absolute truth. In almost all of our challenging situations of violence, war, class exploitation, caste and gender oppression, and other forms of hierarchical domination, we must educate ourselves and recognize how we humans have created the relative, relational, interconnected causes and conditions of untruth and violence. Therefore, we must focus our philosophy and practice on how we can decondition these causes and conditions and begin to replace them with truthful nonviolent causal and conditioning factors. Nevertheless, we must recognize that some relative contextualized situations in India and the world today have no short-term nonviolent options that can stop or deter the violence and have any possibility for nonviolent transformation. In the most challenging situations, such as those mentioned previously, we must recognize that a violent response, perhaps even involving killing, may be our most nonviolent, relative, contextually relevant option. If we do not use violent force to stop, say, the rapist or the Mumbai terrorist, we perpetuate and are complicit with the ongoing violence and killings. Gandhi has many writings in which he submits that responding to menacing monkeys or to the madman with a weapon may involve violence and sometimes killing that may even count as ahimsa. What distinguishes our reformulations of Gandhi’s philosophy and practice today from the normal justifications for violence, war, and nationalistic, ethnic, class, caste, gendered, and other violent actions is that we always uphold the Absolute Truth of Nonviolence as our regulative ideal and its integral relations with relative truths. This means that our imperfect open-ended philosophy and practice attempt to be as nonviolent as possible, but this occasionally involves the need to resort to violence.

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Therefore, in our philosophy, with its theoretical basis and primacy of practice, we should never glorify our individual, social group, national, or other appeals to violence. When we act violently, this is never glorious, moral, or spiritual, but is always tragic, revealing our human failure in creating the causes, conditions, values, structures, and constructive alternatives for nonviolent, moral, truthful living. Always upholding our regulative ideals of Nonviolence, Truth, Morality, and Swaraj, we should do everything in our power to limit the intensity and duration of our necessary relative violence and to change the basic economic, social, cultural, psychological, educational, and other root causes and basic determinants that created the violent situations that necessitated our violent responses.

A Gandhi-informed radical paradigm shift A contemporary, creative, and selective reappropriation, reformulation, and reapplication of a Gandhi-informed philosophy, with it theoretical basis and primacy of practice, requires a radical paradigm shift from the dominant, modern, philosophical, economic, political, cultural, and environmental values and orientations. It involves a qualitatively different way of being in the world, a focus on moral philosophy and development, the need to control modern egoistic desires and attachments, the inversion of modern self-other relations, and a hopeful and meaningful way of living philosophy through action-oriented nonviolent resistance and constructive engagement. Gandhi’s theoretical and practical philosophy challenges us with a qualitatively different philosophical view of freedom and human development. He critiques dominant modern models as based on egoistic desires and attachments to possessions, as reductionistically materialist and consumerist, amoral and immoral, violent and untruthful, and as resulting in our modern lack of human development that is economically, morally, politically, culturally, and environmentally unsustainable. Gandhis offers a radically different paradigm, view of our higher human nature and capacity and a holistic interconnected view of self and self-other relations. He acknowledges that human beings are often ego-motivated and dominated, selfish, hateful, cruel, fearful, violent, and untruthful. This expresses our lower nature, our “brute nature.” It results in so much relative contextualized violence, war, terrorism, oppression, exploitation, injustice, lack of unity and harmony, and unsustainable living. However, Gandhi also recognizes and emphasizes the need to develop our higher moral and spiritual nature in which we act with love, kindness, compassion, nonviolence, and truthful living. He focuses on nonegoistic selfless service, especially to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged, and on our integral sustainable relations with other beings and nature. He challenges modernity with a qualitatively different view of what it means to live a morally and spiritually developed life. Only a qualitatively different, radical paradigm shift, providing the philosophical framework for

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our creatively reformulated philosophy and practices, will allow for the nonviolent, truthful, sustainable, moral, and spiritual future of India and the world. In evaluating Gandhi’s philosophy and practices as contextually significant for the contemporary world, Gandhi does not have all of the answers or simple solutions in his critique of dominant “Modern Civilization,” as seen in his influential formulations in Hind Swaraj. Some of what Gandhi wrote was inadequate during his lifetime, sometimes lacking truth and even at times blatantly immoral. Some of his formulations were contextually of value at the time, but are no longer valuable for analyzing some of the changing contextual situations confronting India and the world and how we can develop our philosophy and practice today.15 Nevertheless, Gandhi serves as a catalyst, not unlike the role of Socrates as philosopher in many of the Platonic Dialogues, constantly challenging us to examine and rethink our dominant philosophy and practices. In that regard, the key assumptions, values, and principles of multidimensional and structural violence, exploitation, oppression, alienation, unsustainability, and false standards of development, success, and freedom that Gandhi critiqued seem much more widespread and dominant in our contemporary world. We will not be able to develop a reformulated philosophy today, with its theoretical basis and primacy of practice, unless we address his invaluable insights and alternative.

Notes 1 After completing this submission, I began working on my new Gandhi-informed book, Gandhi After 9/11: Creative Nonviolence and Sustainability, which was published by Oxford University Press in January 2019. I included a chapter, reformulating my “Gandhian Philosophy: Theoretical Basis with the Primacy on Practice,” and giving credit to Gandhi and the Contemporary World. Because of certain delays, the Routledge book will appear in print after my OUP book, so I have now attempted to revise my post-conference submission. I want to acknowledge that this essay is very similar to Chapter 2 in Gandhi After 9/11, not because it is based on that chapter, but the opposite: the chapter in my OUP book was based on my post-conference submission for Gandhi and the Contemporary World. 2 See S. Radhakrishnan and J. H. Muirhead, eds., Contemporary Indian Philosophy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936), p. 21. Gandhi’s letter of 23 January 1935 to Radhakrishnan, which is his contribution in Contemporary Indian Philosophy, is published in M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG; New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1974), vol. 60: 106–107. The following are the three questions Radhakrishnan sent to Gandhi: what is your religion? How are you led to it? What is its bearing on your social life? 3 See Gandhi’s letter of 16 September 1934 to Radhakrishnan, cited in S. Gopal, Radhakrishnan: A Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 138; Anthony J. Parel, in his Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 3–5, 104, correctly submits that Gandhi has an underlying philosophy. For Parel, the key to Gandhi’s underlying philosophy is the Indian theory of the purushastras (the four aims of life). I discuss Gandhi’s contribution to the volume Contemporary Indian Philosophy in “Mahatma Gandhi’s Philosophy of Violence, Nonviolence, and Education,” in The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Douglas Allen (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), pp. 33–62; The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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4 See chapter 3, “Is Gandhi a Vedantist?” in my Gandhi After 9/11. 5 As I submit in several chapters in Gandhi After 9/11, this appropriation of Gandhi by a variety of contemporary Indian Vedantists can be related to how Gandhi has now been appropriated, sometimes in radically non-Gandhian ways, by diverse Hindutva proponents, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and many others who previously ignored or attacked Gandhi, his philosophy, and his practices. 6 There are numerous passages outlining the Upanishadic path of realization, with the appropriate course of discipline and stages of development leading to the realization of truth and reality, in which the student must be morally qualified as a preliminary requisite. As expressed in “The Upanishads,” in Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, eds. S. Radhakrishnan and C. Moore (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957) and other versions of the Upanishads, goodness, character, and virtue are necessary for Vedic study; moral detachment from egoistic desires and attachments is necessary; the student must resist temptations of wealth and power (Katha Upanishad); honesty is extolled as when the student admits that he does not know who his father is (Chandogya Upanishads), etc. As with everything else, orthodox Hindu philosophers then debate which of these moral prerequisites is absolutely necessary to be accepted as a student and how to interpret and apply them. 7 I shall use the usual definition of ahimsa as “nonviolence,” while recognizing that it encompasses much more than the usual English-language meanings of nonviolence. Noteworthy here is another attempt to appropriate (misappropriate) Gandhi in the contexts of contemporary India and the West by Indian scholars, Hindu political figures, and Hindu religious leaders. Challenging the meaning of ahimsa as “nonviolence,” they reformulate Gandhi ideologically so as to embrace and justify all kinds of violence that Gandhi would reject. 8 Gandhi has thousands of pages of writing on his views of Truth (Satya, God, Self, Being, Reality), Nonviolence (Ahimsa, No-Harm, Love), and their integral relations. See, for example, the following key formulations: CWMG, vol. 37: 348–349; CWMG, vol. 48:404; CWMG, vol. 84: 229; M. K. Gandhi, From Yeravda Mandir: Ashram Observances, trans. V. G. Desai (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1933, 1957 edition), pp. 12–13. 9 For an attempt to formulate Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of Satya (Truth), Ahimsa (Nonviolence), and the integral relations between Truth and Nonviolence, see chapter 6 “Gandhi’s Philosophy: Truth and Nonviolence,” in Mahatma Gandhi, ed. D. Allen (London: Reaktion, 2011), pp. 105–130, which contains citations from Gandhi’s writings. This formulation is based on my previous writings, including “Gandhi, Contemporary Political Thinking, and Self-Other Relations,” in Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth, ed. Richard L. Johnson (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), pp. 303–329; “Mahatma Gandhi’s Philosophy of Violence, Nonviolence, and Education,” in The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 33–62. 10 For my attempt to formulate Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of economics and economic violence and my evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses in his approach, see Douglas Allen, “Gandhi and Socialism,” International Journal of Gandhian Studies, vol. 1 (2012): 109–137. This article was reformulated and greatly expanded in chapter 8 of Gandhi After 9/11. 11 See CWMG, vol. 30: 33; “Ashram Vows,” CWMG, vol. 13: 225–234, especially “vow of non-thieving,” 230–231; “Constructive Programme,” CWMG, vol. 75: 146–166, especially the section “economic equality,” 158–159; “Implications of the Constructive Programme,” CWMG, vol. 72: 378–381, with Gandhi’s conclusion that the “whole of this programme will, however, be a structure on sand if it is not built on the solid foundation of economic equality”; CWMG, vol. 25: 475, where Gandhi claims that economics disregarding moral values are untrue and that the introduction of nonviolent economics means the introduction of moral value to Indian and international economic relations. 12 There is an ongoing scholarly debate on the dynamic contextual relations in India between traditional, premodern, precapitalist economic variables and structures and

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modern, capitalist, economic developments. It is evident that maintaining some features of semi-feudal exploitative and oppressive relations of domination can be integral to the specific nature of capitalist development in India. One must contextualize one’s analysis, avoiding the uncritical, universal, theoretical imposition of a model of capitalism, its class relations, development, exploitation, domination, and globalization and being aware of the specific contextual variables necessary to analyze what is happening in India. 13 The need for self-purification is one of the major themes in Gandhi’s philosophy and practice. This involves understanding the physical, mental, and imaginary construction of the false, immoral, violent ego and the deconstruction, deconditioning, and overcoming of the ego with its ego-driven desires, needs, and attachments. In his Autobiography, pp. 504–505, he describes this difficult path of self-purification and how “I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.” In CWMG, vol. 33: 452, after affirming that “Truth and Love have jointly been the guiding principle of my life,” Gandhi writes the following: “It is impossible to reach Him (God), that is, Truth, except through Love. Love can only be expressed fully when man reduces himself to a cipher. This process of reduction to cipher is the highest effort man or woman is capable of making. It is the only effort worth making, and it is possible only through ever-increasing self-restraint.” Gandhi repeatedly shares that this self-purification, with the ideal or goal of eliminating the functioning of the ego-self, is an ongoing struggle, even for him. 14 Relevant sections from all of these works by Marx can be found in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972). The Contribution to the Critique begins with the influential critique of religion as imaginary projection; The 1844 Manuscripts contain the critique of the imaginary construction of capitalist political economy, the four structures of alienation (alienated labor), and the humanistic alternative of unalienated life; Capital, volume I, contains the basic analysis of capitalist production as based on exploitation of alienated labor-power and includes the section on the illusory imaginary construction of the “fetishism” of commodities. Sigmund Freud’s critique of religion can be found in The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott (New York: Liveright, 1961), chapter 8, and Freud extends this critique beyond religion in such works as Civilization and Its Discontents. 15 Gandhi’s radical critique of “Modern Civilization,” using the controversial example of Gandhi’s approach to technology, as well as his alternative of a radical cultural and civilizational paradigm shift with a swaraj technology, is presented at length in my chapter “Is Gandhi’s Approach to Technology Irrelevant in the Modern Age of Technology?” in Gandhi After 9/11.

Bibliography Allen, Douglas. 2005. “Gandhi, Contemporary Political Thinking, and Self-Other Relations,” in Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth: Essential Writings by and About Mahatma Gandhi, Richard L. Johnson (ed.) (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), pp. 303–329. ———. 2006. “Mahatma Gandhi After 9/11: Terrorism and Violence,” in Comparative Philosophy and Religion in Times of Terror, Douglas Allen (ed.) (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), pp. 19–39. ———. 2009. “Hind Swaraj: Hermeneutical Questions of Interpretation, Mythic Construction, and Contemporary Relevance,” Journal of Contemporary Thought, no. 30 (Winter): 5–32. ———. 2009. The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century, Douglas Allen (ed.) (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), pp. 33–62 and The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). ———. 2011. Mahatma Gandhi (London: Reaktion Books).

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———. 2012.“Gandhi and Socialism,” International Journal of Gandhian Studies, vol. 1: 109–137. ———. 2013. “The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi Today: Nonviolence, the Ego and he Transformed Life and World,” GITAM Journal of Gandhian Studies, vol. 2, no. 1: 1–23. Freud, Sigmund. 1961. The Future of an Illusion, W. D. Robson-Scott (trans.) (New York: Liveright). Gandhi, M. K. 1957. An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mahadev Desai (trans.) (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, first published in two volumes in 1927 and 1929; 1957 edition). ———. 1957. From Yerravda Mandir: Ashram Observances, V. G. Desai (trans.) (Ahmedabad: Navajivan). ———. 1958–1994. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 100 vols. (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India). ———. 1979. “Constructive Programme,” in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 75 (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India), pp. 146–166. ———. 1997. Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, Anthony J. Parel (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gopal, S. 1989. Radhakrishnan: A Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Parekh, Bhikhu. 1989. Gandhi’s Political Philosophy (London: Macmillan). Parel, Anthony J. 2006. Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Radhakrishnan, S. and C. Moore (eds.). 1957. Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Radhakrishnan, S. and J. H. Muirhead (eds.). 1936. Contemporary Indian Philosophy (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd). Tucker, Robert C. (ed.). 1972. The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W. W. Norton).

3 A CONCEPTUAL HISTORY OF GANDHI’S SATYAGRAHA Nishikant Kolge

While Gandhian Satyagraha has received considerable scholarly attention, the concept has not been historically analysed as fully as it deserved. A general problem with the existing scholarship on Satyagraha is that they are overly narrow and confuse Satyagraha with civil disobedience – a nonviolent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies. However, Satyagraha for Gandhi was something more than the doctrine of civil disobedience. For him it was also a method of inculcating love, nonviolence, fearlessness, courage and a method of seeking the conversion or change of heart of one’s oppressors or it was also ‘the art of defying oppression without becoming oppressors’. Above all, for him it was the method of perpetual reform of both individual and society through constructive programme. The present chapter argues that these different aspects of Satyagraha were not developed overnight. In addition, this comprehensive idea of Satyagraha grew into a clear philosophy of action as Gandhi was involved in various types of social and political campaigns. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate different historical stages of the development of the concept of Satyagraha into a clear philosophy of action in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of Gandhi’s Satyagraha.

Some clarifications From the very outset, the following three points need to be noted. First, it must be accepted that Gandhi’s Satyagraha is not a dogma. It is neither static nor substantial. For Gandhi, since Satyagraha is a technique of action, it is dynamic in nature. Gandhi throughout his life keeps experimenting with the concept of Satyagraha. He writes, “I am myself daily growing in the knowledge of Satyagraha. I have no textbook to consult in time of need, not even the Gita which I have called my dictionary. Satyagraha as conceived by me is a science in the making” (Gandhi,

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December 1976: 358). This chapter will explain different stages of progress through which Gandhi’s idea of Satyagraha evolved into a clear philosophy of action. Second, most of the scholars agree that Gandhi uses Satyagraha for two goals: one is personal or spiritual and the other is social or political. There are also some scholars who argue that Gandhi distinguishes Satyagraha as a spiritual goal from Satyagraha as a tool for social and political change. As Bondurant writes “it is essential rigorously to differentiate satyagraha as technique of action from those specific considerations of right-living with which Gandhi also concerned himself ” (Bondurant 1988: 12). Those scholars who perceive Gandhi as a religious man emphasise more on the spiritual aspects of Satyagraha and romanticise it as a spiritual method to realise God but neglect practical achievements of Satyagraha in their analysis. Those scholars who identify Gandhi as a political leader or master strategist emphasise more on practical achievements of Satyagraha and describe it as an important weapon to bring socio-economic and political changes but neglect spiritual aspect of Satyagraha in their analysis. This chapter, on the other hand, argues that such a distinction may not do justice to Gandhi’s overall philosophical position, because he did not believe in any boundaries between the different aspects of human life. It needs to be remembered that his numerous public prayers were part of his political struggle, and for him, political struggle was part of his search for God. Therefore, they argue Satyagraha needs to be redefined in such a way that eliminates the false distinction between spiritual or religious aspects of Satyagraha and practical achievements of Satyagraha. This chapter argues that Gandhi himself faces such a dilemma and his views on these issues evolved over a period. Third, scholars have produced a considerable amount of literature on Gandhian Satyagraha based on what Gandhi has said or written about it. However, most of them have missed the point that more than Gandhi wrote and talked about Satyagraha, he practised it. Therefore, while defining Gandhi’s Satyagraha, this chapter also takes references from his practices along with his writings and speeches.

Development of the concept of Satyagraha in South Africa The idea of Satyagraha as it is known today did not come to Gandhi overnight. It came to Gandhi from a variety of sources and at various stages of his life. In this section, we are not interested in tracing the variety of sources which played an important role in the process of developing different aspects of Gandhian Satyagraha. We are interested here in understanding the various stages of the development of the concept of Satyagraha. In the available literature, two scholars, J.T.F. Jordens and A.L. Herman, have demonstrated the different phases of the development of Gandhian Satyagraha in South Africa. Jordens is primarily interested in explaining when and how for Gandhi Satyagraha becomes ‘religious duty’ from ‘a tactical political manoeuvre against undesirable legislation’. Herman is also interested to trace the similar kind of development in Gandhian Satyagraha, but he is also interested in explaining the variety of sources which played an important role in the process of developing different aspects of Gandhian Satyagraha. The following

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subsections not only present a review of the work of both mentioned scholars but also add up new dimensions in them in order to have a comprehensive understanding of how the concept of Satyagraha evolved over time.

Place of religion in Satyagraha Jordens informs us that Gandhi in his autobiography and in his Satyagraha in South Africa tended to see that Satyagraha movement as an intensely religious phenomenon from its very inception. He adds, “However, that is a view strongly colored by later developments. The growth of the beginnings of passive resistance into the full doctrine of satyagraha as a religious movement was slow”( Jordens 1998: 40). Jordens explains the three stages of the development of Gandhian Satyagraha into a religious duty. According to him, for the first two years of passive resistance or Satyagraha, there is no evidence at all to say that Gandhi made any special religious significance to the movement; at this stage, Satyagraha was a ‘method of obtaining redress’ or ‘only effective way to oppose the law’. He writes that, in the middle of 1907, Gandhi adds two more ideas in explaining Satyagraha or passive resistance: first, now Satyagraha was also ‘a policy of communal suffering’ and ‘a religious duty’ because it called to prefer to obey God’s law rather than human law. He concludes his argument by saying that by January 1908 Gandhi had given a strong religious slant to the movement of passive resistance and a new name: Satyagraha. Herman explains four different phases of Gandhian Satyagraha. In the first phase Satyagraha is a doctrine of civil disobedience that means ‘determined opposition to anything unjust’. According to Herman, Gandhi enlarges the doctrine of Satyagraha in the beginning of 1908. He writes, during these phases Gandhi couples the description of the Satyagrahi’s inner attitude such as fearlessness, courage, love and nonviolence with the practical application of the civil disobedience mentioned in phase one. He writes, “The words are all inner-state predicates, as opposed to civil disobedience, which is an outer-state predicate. Phase II unites these two sets of predicates and attributes them to satyagraha” (Herman 1969: 130). Herman writes that during phase I and II, Gandhi never hints that there is anything religious or supernatural about Satyagraha. However, during phase III that starts from June 1908, Gandhi mentions that Satyagraha is based on spiritual force. Hence, it has a divine sanction. According to Herman, Satyagraha enters into phase IV in July 1908, when Gandhi amounted to the belief that “really successful Satyagraha always led to a change of heart or a conversion in one’s opponent” (Herman 1969: 131). Different purposes demand different degrees of elaboration in their analysis of any subject. For the purpose of both the mentioned papers, it was sufficient to elaborate how Gandhi’s Satyagraha acquire a strong religious slant by converting from a ‘method of obtaining redress’ into ‘a process of obeying God’s law rather than unjust manmade law’. But, there are some other aspects relating to the development of Satyagraha within South Africa which are not captured by both the scholars. For instance what is the role of nonviolence in Gandhi’s Satyagraha and how did it acquire new meaning over time? Now the following subsection attempts

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to understand in what circumstance and in which stage of India’s struggle in South Africa the idea of nonviolence was included in the concept of Satyagraha and how did the idea of nonviolence acquire new meanings and places in Satyagraha during the development of India’s struggle in South Africa.

Place of nonviolence in Satyagraha Just like Gandhi in his autobiography and in his Satyagraha in South Africa tended to see the Satyagraha movement as an intensely religious phenomenon from its very inception, in his later part of life, Gandhi was also inclined to believe that the Satyagraha movement was an intensely nonviolent movement from its very inception. However, the evidences hows that is a view strongly colored by later developments. The growth of the place of nonviolence in Gandhi’s Satyagraha from a political strategy into a creed was slow, and the very first statement in which Gandhi clearly stated that “Satyagraha is based on non-violence” (Gandhi, November 1964: 37) comes only in 1915 when he returned to India. During his South African days, Gandhi hardly writes anything which directly relates nonviolence to his Satyagraha. However, throughout his struggle in South Africa, he keeps writings that ‘violence must be absolutely eschewed’ for a variety of reasons. During the first two years from the beginning of Satyagraha in South Africa, Gandhi advocated that physical violence must be avoided not because he believes in nonviolence as a creed, which needs to be followed irrespective of its expediency, but because he advocated avoiding violence as a political strategy which needs to follow due to its expediency. He writes, “I have stated more than once in these columns that, if any violence is used by the community in this struggle, we shall find it difficult to win”(Gandhi, July 1962: 331). Almost till the middle of 1908, Gandhi keeps advocating for avoiding the use of physical violence in conducting Satyagraha due to its pragmatic value. However, from the middle of 1908, Gandhi started condemning violence, not because of its pragmatic values but now he finds it inherently evil. But almost all the references of condemning violence come from Gandhi’s writings where he is talking about revolutionary activities relating to the Indian national movement. While writing about the sentence of Tilak, he writes, “It will be harmful, even useless, to use force or violence for uprooting that rule. Freedom gained through violence would not endure” (Gandhi, July 1963: 419). He expresses similar views while writing about the assassinations of Sir Curzon Wyllie and Dr Lalkaka by Mr Madanlal Dhingra. And by the completion of Hind Swaraj Gandhi started equating modern civilisation with violence. In April 1910 he writes, “My countrymen, therefore, believe that they should adopt modern civilisation and modern methods of violence to drive out the English. Hind Swaraj has been written in order to show that they are following a suicidal policy” (Gandhi, September 1963: 189). In spite of expressing such firm commitment to nonviolence, what was missing in the writings of Gandhi till the end of his stay in South Africa was a clear and defined role of nonviolence in Satyagraha.

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On the other hand, from the beginning of the same period, we find that Gandhi started using a positive term in place of the negative term ‘avoiding violence’. But surprisingly he did not use a positive term ‘firmness on nonviolence’ as contrary to the negative term ‘avoiding violence’, on the other hand, he uses ‘personal suffering’ as a positive term contrary to/in place of the negative term ‘avoiding violence’. For instance, in October 1907 he writes, “Our aim in connection with the Asiatic Act has always been to secure redress by suffering ourselves, not by imposing suffering on others” (Gandhi, July 1962: 302). And he keeps using the same phrase till his stay in South Africa. Now he defines passive resistance or Satyagraha as a method of self-suffering and not as a ‘nonviolent method of obtaining redress’ or ‘nonviolent way to oppose the unjust law’ or a nonviolence method to change hearts or create a conversion in one’s opponent. For instance, he writes, “Most consider that violence is the only method for securing any reform. In the Transvaal, we are trying to show that violence is futile and that the proper method is self-suffering. i.e., passive resistance” (Gandhi, April 1963: 532). At another place he writes: We have eschewed resorting to violence in any shape or form, and we are simply trying to show the Government, by our personal sufferings, that we will not submit to a law which, we consider, wounds our consciences, and is otherwise objectionable. This is called “passive resistance” for want of a better term. (Gandhi, April 1963: 125) Even at the end of 1909 when Gandhi first wrote about the essential quality of being a Satyagrahi in an article entitled ‘Who can offer Satyagraha?’, he did not include nonviolence as one of the qualities to offer Satyagraha. In this article, he writes that anyone who wants to offer Satyagraha ‘should show a special regard for truth’, ‘must be indifferent to wealth’, ‘break away from family attachments’ and ‘has true faith in religion’, and there is no mention of nonviolence (Gandhi, April 1963: 224–227). However, it does not mean that during his twenty-one years of stay in South Africa Gandhi was not concerned about the issue of nonviolence. In his personal life, he was very much concerned about nonviolence as early as 1894, about a year after his arrival in South Africa. In June 1894, Gandhi sent Rajchand Bhai, whom he considered his spiritual Guru, a letter containing twenty-seven equations. These questions have unique importance because they reveal the issues, the uncertainties that troubled his mind in his formative years. The last question in which Gandhi asks, ‘if a snake approaches to bite me, should I let it bite me or should I kill it, supposing I have no other way of removing it?’, reveals that from the very beginning of his formative period, he was concerned about the issue of nonviolence. In fact, in his personal life, nonviolence would increasingly become a major preoccupation during Gandhi’s stay in South Africa. He started consciously putting more emphasis on the practice of nonviolence in his daily affairs. When Gandhi founded two ashrams at different times and different places in South Africa, nonviolence had

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always been the founding principle of his ashrams. Moreover, during this period only the issue of nonviolence gradually becomes the very centre of Gandhi’s religious endeavours – the search for the God. During this period he started practicing relentlessly nonviolence in every aspect of his life as a part of his search for God. However, what is missing in his writings and actions during his South African years is a clear connection between nonviolence and Satyagraha. It appears that during his South African days he could not comprehend any decisive role of nonviolence in Satyagraha, though he recognises the importance of nonviolence for the spiritual development. But it was also evident that during this period for Gandhi nonviolence was an experimental practice rather than a fixed or final doctrine. And he was passionately looking for different frontiers of life to experiment with his dynamic idea of nonviolence which opens up the possibility of articulating a very decisive role for nonviolence in Satyagraha in the near future. The same can be said about the relationship between religion and Satyagraha. Gandhi arrived in South Africa in June 1893 as a naive youth of twenty-four years. His religious baggage was very light then. Up to that period he had shown very little or no interest in religious issues, and he had shown no desire to take it very seriously. However, it became more apparent with the course of time that the place of religion was overpowering and becoming an integral part of Gandhi’s life. During his South African period, Gandhi became a very religious person in his personal life and he became preoccupied with issues of faith, God, Truth, and moral right and wrong. During this period, he could also realise the gleams of the relationship between religion and Satyagraha and articulates that to offer Satyagraha against an unjust law is a religious duty. However, at this stage, he could not comprehend the full potential of Satyagraha where for him Satyagraha itself becomes a religious act, which leads to a Moksha.

Development of the concept of Satyagraha in India It is argued in the prior sections that during his twenty-one years in South Africa Gandhi had given a strong religious slant to the movement of passive resistance. What he means by Satyagraha as a religious act is that Satyagraha has a divine sanction or it is a religious duty to obey God’s law rather than unjust manmade laws. It is also explained that during this period Gandhi realized that introducing nonviolence in Satyagraha could be a very effective political strategy. However, it is also argued that during this period Gandhi could not comprehend the place of nonviolence in his Satyagraha as a creed. But after coming back to India, Gandhi further developed the nature of the relationship between Satyagraha and religion, and Satyagraha and nonviolence. In the latter part of his life, he defines Satyagraha as a way to search for God or attain both political and spiritual Swaraj (Moksha), where nonviolence became the key method for the attainment of both political and spiritual Swaraj. It means that Gandhi’s experiment with the science of Satyagraha did not stop in South Africa; he keeps experimenting with it in India as well till his last breath. Therefore, now we will examine different aspects relating to the development of Satyagraha in India.

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A close examination of Gandhi’s writings in India reveals that during the first three years after his arrival from South Africa Gandhi rarely talks about the relationship between nonviolence and Satyagraha. However, we do find only a few statements where he speaks that ‘Satyagraha is based on non-violence’ (1915) or ‘Satyagraha is the way of non-violence’ (1917). The situation did not change even at the beginning or during the offering of the Rowlatt Satyagraha in the middle of 1919. We find only a few statements of Gandhi where he defines a definite role of nonviolence in Satyagraha. On 24 February 1919, he releases the Satyagraha pledge where he writes, “in this struggle we will faithfully follow truth and refrain from violence to life, person or property” (Gandhi, July 1965: 380). After two days, he releases the instructions to volunteers where for the first time he uses the impress ‘adhering to truth and ahimsa’. He writes, “Volunteers must urge upon people necessity of fully realizing the grave responsibility of adhering to truth and ahimsa before signing the Pledge” (Gandhi, March 1965: 119). However, we do not find much evidence to argue that Gandhi places much emphasis on nonviolence during his Rowlatt Satyagraha. The situation changes only after Gandhi’s suspension of Rowlatt Satyagraha due to some incidences of violence by Satyagrahies at different parts of India. While announcing the suspension of Rowlatt Satyagraha, Gandhi also started emphasising the importance of being nonviolent in conducting Satyagraha. In January 1920 while giving evidence before a disorders inquiry committee he acknowledges that he has a herculean task to spread the doctrine of satya and ahimsa to enable the masses to undertake mass Satyagraha. He writes: Satyagraha is like a banyan tree with innumerable branches. Civil disobedience is one such branch. Satya and ahimsa together make the parent trunk from which all innumerable branches shoot out. We have found by bitter experience that whilst in an atmosphere of lawlessness civil disobedience found ready acceptance, satya and ahimsa from which alone civil disobedience can worthily spring, have commanded little or no respect. Ours then is a Herculean task, but we may not shirk it. We must fearlessly spread the doctrine of satya and ahimsa and then, not till then, shall we be able to undertake mass satyagraha. (Gandhi, July 1965: 427) After realising the herculean task of spreading the doctrine of satya and ahimsa to enable the masses to undertake mass satyagraha, we find frequent occurrences of Gandhi’s statement where he repeatedly talks about the important role of nonviolence in Satyagraha. Gandhi himself explains the changes in his views. When he was questioned about being inconsistent in his views about Satyagraha, he writes, “I see no difference between the old Gandhi and the new, except that the new has a clearer conception of satyagraha and prizes the doctrine of ahimsa more than ever” (Gandhi, May 1966: vi). However, does it mean that at this moment Gandhi started

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realising the importance of nonviolence in Satyagraha as a creed of Satyagraha? Or does he introduce nonviolence in Satyagraha as ‘modalities of resistance’ as identified by Partha Chatterjee? Chatterjee writes: But it [ahimsa] was not so much about resistance as about the modalities of resistance, about organizational principles, rules of conduct, strategies, and tactics. Ahimsa was the necessary complement to the concept of satyagraha which both limited it and, at the same time, made it something more than ‘purely and simply civil disobedience’. Ahimsa was the rule for concretizing the ‘truth’ of satyagraha. ‘Truth is a positive value, while non-violence is a negative value. Truth affirms. Non-violence forbids something which is real enough. (Chatterjee 2011: 101) It is a fact that Gandhi realises the need of emphasising the importance of nonviolence in conducting Satyagraha to minimise the possibility of occurrences of violence, which can make an adversary effect on the growth of Satyagraha. In this respect, Chatterjee correctly identifies that at this stage ahimsa was the modality of resistance, about organisational principles, rules of conduct, strategies and tactics. However, we also find that during the same period, Gandhi gradually started to move away from defending the role of nonviolence in conducting Satyagraha for its pragmatic utility, and till 1921, he creates a firm philosophical justification for the adherence to nonviolence while offering the Satyagraha. In March 1921, he writes, “Satyagraha, then, is literally holding on to Truth and it means, therefore, Truth-force. Truth is soul or spirit. It is, therefore, known as soul-force. It excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and, therefore, not competent to punish” (Gandhi, March 1966: 466). A similar change also occurred in his views regarding the role of religion in Satyagraha. During his South African days, Gandhi used to argue that his Satyagraha is a religious duty or it has a divine section because it calls him to obey the higher law of God than the unjust law of any government. But, in his writings in India, especially after the suspension of Rowlatt Satyagraha, we hardly find such statement where Gandhi argues that Satyagraha has a divine section or it is a religious duty to disobey manmade unjust law in order to obey God’s law. It appears that Gandhi understood the danger of propagating such argument in a huge country like India where he may not have direct control of people’s actions. And therefore, some people may misunderstand the argument and might resort to violence as well. On the other hand, we find that now Gandhi introduces a new argument to justify his Satyagraha as essentially a religious movement. He argues, “Satyagraha, as I have endeavoured to explain at several meetings, is essentially a religious movement. It is a process of purification and penance” (Gandhi, March 1965: 145). Whereas the argument of religious duty to disobey unjust law demands active disobedience to the existing laws which may sometimes in some undesirable circumstances lead or

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encourage misguided or innocent masses to indulge in violent activities, the argument of purification and penance requires Satyagrahies or masses to channel their energy into some religious activities or some kinds of constructive programme designed by Gandhi during the same period. We find that now Gandhi introduces fasting, prayer and reading of the religious books as an essential part of his Satyagraha movement. After the suspension of Rowlatt Satyagraha, Gandhi called for a one-day hartal in Bombay on 6th April, when he asked people to fast, pray and read the religious books. Next year when he organised Satyagraha week, he requests people to do similar things. In this way by defining Satyagraha as a religious process of purification and penance, on the one hand Gandhi tries to minimise the possibility of occurrences of violence and on the other hand makes his Satyagraha something more than mere ‘passive resistance’ or ‘civil-disobedience’. During the same period, Gandhi keeps enlarging the spheres and scopes of Satyagraha. Once he says, “I have already said that, when satyagraha is going on, it does not consist merely in disobeying laws. In its universal form, it is so wide in meaning that it includes a great many things” (Gandhi, March 1965: 328). At another occasion we find him telling that “the spheres of satyagraha are swadeshi, social reforms and political reform” (Gandhi, July 1965: 260). Gradually for Gandhi vows of Swadeshi, Hindu-Muslim Unity, removal of untouchability and Charka or Khadi become an integral part of Satyagraha. He writes, “I have also made certain suggestions regarding the proposed swadeshi vow. Now, I commend them to your serious attention and will find that as yours ideas of satyagraha become matured, Hindu-Muslim unity becomes part of satyagraha” (Gandhi, March 1965: 208). As time and situation, demands and as he becomes aware of different social issues, he keeps including different items in his programme which he later labelled as a constructive programme. Till 1945, he added eighteen points in his constructive programme and called them ‘the truthful and non-violent way of winning Poorna Swaraj’. In 1945, he wrote a small booklet titled Constructive programme: its meaning and place. He writes that he has written the booklet for ‘showing the connection between the constructive programme and Civil Disobedience’. He writes, “Civil Disobedience without the constructive programme will be like a paralyzed hand attempting to lift a spoon” (Gandhi, January 1979: 166). Nonviolence and religion were the necessary complement to the concept of Satyagraha which had a negative value and plays an important role to impose limits on it and makes it something more than purely and simply civil disobedience. On the other hand, the constructive programme had a positive value and some of the founding values of Satyagraha find expression through it. In this way it is only the constructive programme which is capable enough of creating the positive conditions that makes Satyagraha really more than purely and simply civil disobedience. Gandhi insisted that to disobey unjust laws or changing the heart of one’s opponents is not enough; one must also engage in some forms of constructive work to reform himself or herself and the society. As Horsburgh writes, “the true satyagrahi does not become active in times of crisis and then lapse into silence and passivity in times of relative peace and stability: he is a perpetual reformer both of himself

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and of the community to which he belongs. For him, the struggle that results from nonviolent resistance is only a phase in a lifetime’s pursuit of truth . . .” (Horsburgh 1969: 176). Since Gandhi believes that God can be found through the service of others, including the constructive programme as an integral part of Satyagraha, Gandhi makes Satyagraha a method to attend inner Swaraj (Moksha, i.e. Spiritual goal of life), Swaraj (political independence) and Poorna Swaraj (social justice).

Concluding remarks The chapter demonstrated different historical stages of the development of the concept of Satyagraha into a clear philosophy of action to attend inner Swaraj (Moksha, i.e. Spiritual goal of life), Swaraj (political independence) and Poorna Swaraj (Social Justice). It looked at the different trajectories of Satyagraha evolution in depth to explain that the growth of the beginnings of passive resistance into the full doctrine of Satyagraha as a religious movement for the attainment of Swaraj was slow. It argued that though during his South African years Gandhi became a very religious person committed to the concept of nonviolence; at the initial stage of his struggle in South Africa he articulated the role of religion and nonviolence in the Satyagraha struggle in a very limited sense – as a political strategy to discipline the Satyagrahies. It is also explained that back in India, Gandhi kept articulating a newer progressive role for religion and nonviolence in his concept of Satyagraha as he was involved in various types of social and political campaigns in India throughout his life. At the end of his life he comprehended Satyagraha as an intensely religious and nonviolent method of attaining different kinds of Swaraj. From this discussion it can also be argued that Gandhi’s concept of Satyagraha is not confined to the political aspects of his campaigns i. e. civil disobedience alone, but includes a genuine desire to know how highly the ethical and spiritual principles can be applied to the hard realities of political, economic and social relationships. On the other hand, it also includes a genuine effort to search for a method to attain Moksha (the spiritual goal of life) by actively and if needed, pragmatically responding to the different challenges that come from the social, economic, political and other aspects of human life. In this way, Gandhi’s Satyagraha is a blend of spiritual and political, and principle and pragmatism. Though there are some essential characteristics that make Gandhi’s Satyagraha different from another form of protests, it is dynamic and can be modified as time and circumstances demand.

Bibliography Bondurant, Joan Valérie. 1988. Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chatterjee, Partha. 2011. “The Moment of Manoeuvre: Gandhi and the Critique of Civil Society,” in Debating Gandhi, edited by Raghuramraju. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gandhi, M.K. December 1962. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi- Vol. 8. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.

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Gandhi, M.K. April 1963. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi- Vol. 9. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. July 1963. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi- Vol. 7. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. September 1963. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi- Vol. 12. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. November 1964. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi- Vol. 13. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. March 1965. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi-Vol. 15. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. July 1965. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi- Vol. 16. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. March 1966. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi-Vol. 16. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. May 1966. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi-Vol.20. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. December 1976. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi-Vol. 67. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. January 1979. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi-Vol. 75. New Delhi: Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Herman, A.L. 1969. “Satyagraha: A New Indian Word for Some Old Ways of Western Thinking,” Philosophy East and West 19(2): 123–142. Horsburgh, H.J.N. 1969. “The Distinctiveness of Satyagraha,” Philosophy East and West 19(2): 171–180. Jordens, J. 1998. Gandhi’s Religion: A Homespun Shawl. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

4 THE SCRUTINISED LIFE Gandhi and his interlocutors Sanghamitra Sadhu

The chapter understands the Gandhi phenomenon through the intellectual, philosophical and scholastic discourses built around Gandhi and his associates, interlocutors and critics. Although Gandhi’s life is self-explanatory with the affirmation “my life is my message”, the continuing engagements with Gandhi’s life and numerous reflections and afterthoughts about him seven decades after his death raise some crucial questions: why the proliferation of writings/biographies on Gandhi? In what ways do the biographies and correspondences alter the perceptions of reading Gandhi today? What roles do these documents play in constructing and deconstructing the myth called Gandhi? The numerous exchanges, correspondences among his close associates and interlocutors like Mahadev Desai, J.C. Kumarrapa, Mirabehn, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, C.F. Andrews, Verrier Elwin and others offer a nuanced understanding of Gandhi – the man and his philosophy. The chapter examines Gandhi’s interface with his critics, colleagues and biographers which can initiate a discourse on its own. For his critics and colleagues, the Gandhian mode of politics was a matter of critical scrutiny, while for the masses he was a saint above the fray. Speaking about the wide gap between the sections of people in understanding Gandhi, Judith Brown, author of In Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope, comments that such view generated: Misunderstanding and scepticism, hostility as well as love and loyalty. Few men have elicited such vitriolic opposition or such devoted service. Churchill’s ignorant jibe at Gandhi as a half-naked, seditious fakir, Muslim distrust of this Hindu holy man who purported to speak for an Indian nation, the fanatical anger of the young Hindu who killed him for “appeasing” Muslims, were paralleled by crowds who flocked to venerate this frail, toothless man in loincloth and steel-rimmed spectacles with a commanding presence and magnetic voice. (Brown 1989: 1)

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This chapter extends the scope of the word ‘interlocutor’ beyond its literal denotation to accommodate the hosts of people who came in close touch with Gandhi, or who understood him from a distance or proximity or those who tried to unravel the phenomenon called Gandhi from the debris of history. However, knowing or understanding Gandhi is contingent not only on the proximity of the subject or the knower to Gandhi but also on the orientation towards Gandhism - his philosophy, conviction and beliefs. The critical engagement with Gandhi particularly on the backdrop of British colonialism and the Indian Independence movement brought him into dialogue and conflict with some of the major figures in Indian history. Gandhi’s critical debate with his Indian colleagues (i.e., Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Savarkar, Aurobindo and Tagore) becomes intensified as some of his friends of British ancestry like C.F. Andrews, Verrier Elwin, Annie Besant express scepticism and doubt in his ideologies. Dialogue with Gandhi begins at the level of the individual and collective; his critics range from his ashramite friends to his critical colleagues to his ultimate detractors and assassin. Critique of Gandhi goes beyond the individual dialogues and encompasses critical exchange among the collective groups such as Hindu Mahasabha, the Christian community, the Sikhs and the Muslims. Evaluation of self in Gandhi’s case started in the form of numerous experiments which mostly veered on stringent self-regulations and self-denial, and the scrutiny or evaluation of his life has continued since then. The paper is in two parts: the first part deliberates on Gandhi’s critical engagement with his colleagues and friends, specially focussing on the issues and debates that diverged Gandhi and his associates, and the second part reflects on the tradition of biographising Gandhi – the heart-searching questions of his philosophy and meditative reflections on his life. It needs to be mentioned that the divergence between Gandhi and his colleagues was more on the ideational level, which sometimes centred on the varying interpretation of a text like the Bhagavad Gita or the interpolations of the varnashrama system. Ahimsa (non-violence), untouchability, fast, swadeshi and modernity remain among others the key issues which roused strong conflicting views between Gandhi and his colleagues.

(I)  Gandhi and his colleagues The ahimsa debate: The dialectic of violence and non-violence and the moral ambiguities underpinning it form a major point of bifurcation between Gandhi and his critics. Ahimsa or non-violence remains the most debated issue in Gandhi’s philosophy and praxis. He conceives non-violence as a necessary imperative to achieve brahmacharyya, eschews violence in thought, mind and deed; however, exceptions to his theory of non-violence corroborate the need to assess as to what extent ­Gandhian non-violence exists as a moral idea and, as some argue, whether violence is a tacit facet of Gandhian non-violence. Gandhi, for whom non-violence is a synonym for Truth, however, from a theoretical angle holds that violence is better than quietly withdrawing in the face of injustice. The interplay of harmony and conflict, as Anthony Parel argues, does not stand as two contrary poles in Gandhi.

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Ronald J. Terchek in his essay “Conflict and Non-violence” writes, “harmony comes with neither passivity nor blindness in a world beset by the domination and humiliation of the strong over the weak. Gandhian harmony stems from the free choices of autonomous individuals in the many realms of their lives” (Brown and Parel 2011: 117). However, what ought to be chosen independently mostly remains under the clutches of the powerful and Gandhi wants to bring change in those who are oppressed and humiliated through dialogue and non-violent means. Gandhi maintains that non-violence involves restraint on the individuals while dealing with their opponents while violence negates any such constraints. Verrier Elwin, the British anthropologist who became Gandhi’s godson found deep conviction in the Gandhian philosophy of ahimsa; he embraced India and started his missionary work in tribal India but gradually became disenchanted with the Gandhian views of non-violence which was intertwined with celibacy. He found Gandhi’s philosophy of sex relations irreconcilable with basic human desire and more so as regards the tribal life. Gandhi’s understanding of ahimsa vis-à-vis his experiments was challenged by Savarkar who dismissed Gandhian non-violence, stating that Gandhi’s program was founded on the principle of absolute non-violence which was immoral and antihuman as it did not have the capacity to confront violence with armed resistance. He accused Gandhi of “misinterpreting the ahimsa of the Buddhists and the Jains, of proposing a rabid ahimsa, an absolute ahimsa instead of the relative ahimsa that he believed had been proposed by Buddhists and Jains” (Hindu Rastra Darshan 152). At an individual-ideological level the ahimsa debate separated Gandhi from nationalists like Aurobindo, Tilak and Savarkar, an issue that culminated in an uncompromising divergence between him and his assassin. Sri Aurobindo, the Indian nationalist and Yogi offers a theory of the Hindu tradition contra Gandhi. Aurobindo never engaged in a public debate with Gandhi, rather he vehemently opposed the Gandhian methods, could never identify himself with the moderate politics under Congress leadership and further dismissed Gandhi’s ideas of satyagraha and non-violence which, he believed, were based on ‘limited truth’ and ‘one-sided reasoning’. In “The Doctrine of Passive Resistance” Aurobindo was extremely critical of the moderate politicians of the nineteenth century who were guided by the ‘English books’, ‘English liberal sympathisers’ and ‘friends of India’ and trained to believe in the English superiority and Indian inferiority and were unable to think independently for the swaraj of the subject nation. Speaking critically against the moderate politics such as Gandhi’s passive resistance, Aurobindo opines that “the slow, painful and ultra-cautious development, necessary in medieval conditions when no experience of a stable popular Government had been gained, need not be repeated in the days of the steamship, railway and telegraph, when stable democratic systems are part of the world’s secured and permanent heritage” (Aurobindo 1996: 129). He justifies the rationale for violent methods instead of passive resistance and even draws inspiration from armed warfare and bloodshed from the Bhagavad Gita, the text which Gandhi called his ‘prayer book’. Decades later when Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse justifies his rationale for killing Gandhi, it is again the Bhagavad Gita around which the assassin’s ninety-two-page

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defence in the court centred. While Gandhi interprets the battle in the Mahabharata at the spiritual and the symbolic level between the conflicting forces within the soul, Godse and others derived the imperative of the battle and the consequent carnage on the corporal level. The different interpretations of the text and the problematic of violence and non-violence are testimony to the mutually exclusive aspects that a text can bear in its literal-symbolic levels and the heresy of reading a text in absolutist terms. The untouchability debate: The debate on untouchability which later culminated in an agreement known as the Poona pact is the major point of departure between Gandhi and Ambedkar on the subject of caste. As in the ahimsa debate – where Gandhian violence and non-violence are seen paradoxically as both counter and parallel forces by his critics, untouchability, or the debate surrounding caste ­ andhi’s too, remains the most contentious issue among Gandhi and his detractors. G anti-untouchability campaign harks back to his South African days when he spoke against all types of discrimination. Gandhi chooses for himself the life of a Harijan, and his conscious involvement in the scavenging work in South Africa and later in India bears testimony to his unflinching conviction in the equality of men of all classes. His indictment against untouchability in South Africa becomes forceful at the domestic front reflected in the altercations with his wife, Kasturba, who refused to clean the chamber pots used by an untouchable clerk. Such divide, according to Gandhi was at the root of the class division, not caste. Decades later when Ambedkar launches his vigorous critique against Gandhi in Annihilation of Caste ­(Ambedkar 2014) for advocating the caste system and thereby untouchability for idealising varnashrama, Gandhi reinstates his deep belief in varnashrama: “Varna and ashrama are institutions which have nothing to do with caste. The law of varna teaches us that we have each one of us to earn our bread by following the ancestral calling. It defines not our rights but our duties” (Ambedkar 2014: 326). The varnashrama system, according to Gandhi, should not be conceived in the narrow sense as interpreted by Ambedkar and others, which is reasonably designed for the welfare of the humanity with each calling bearing equal status before God, i.e. the callings of a Brahmin or the spiritual teacher and the scavenger being identical in terms of their livelihood. Terming caste as a secular institution Gandhi often interchangeably uses it for varna and merits the institution of caste: “I am one of those who do not consider caste to be a harmful institution. In its origin, caste was a wholesome custom and promoted national wellbeing” (25 February 1920; CWMG 19: 417). Ambedkar accuses Gandhi of synonymising varna with caste, as “varna is based on the principle of each according to his worth, while caste is based on the principle of each according to his birth” (Ambedkar 2014: 350) and strongly criticises Gandhi’s idea of following one’s ancestral calling as “not only an impossible and impractical ideal, but also morally an indefensible idea” (Ambedkar 2014: 343). While for Ambedkar, “the outcaste is a by-product of the caste system” (CW: 53:260) and the destruction of the caste system will do away with untouchability, Gandhi views untouchability as the “product not of the caste system, but of the distinction of high and low . . . the attack on untouchability is thus an attack

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on this ‘high-and-low’ ness. The moment untouchability goes, the caste system will be purified” (CW53: 261). Rabindranath Tagore too found Gandhi’s defence of the varnashrama system divisive and completely inconceivable in a modern liberal world. In later writing “What Congress and Gandhi have done to the untouchables” (1945) Ambedkar vehemently attacks Gandhi’s idea of welfare to the untouchables, which according to Ambedkar, is driven by his political ambition for the Congress. However, Gandhi changes his view about caste later in his life following much contention with Ambedkar and becomes open in his criticism against the caste system. Addressing the problem of untouchability in traditional ways and typically Gandhian means through charity, compassion, sympathy, individual penance and fast for the injustice to outcastes who he called ‘harijans’ or the ‘children of God’, was totally incompatible with Ambedkar’s vision for uplifting the untouchables by giving them agency through education, political and legal rights, such as separate electorates. The Gandhi-Ambedkar debate around untouchability is plausible more on the hermeneutic level than on the ideological, as both in principle condemned untouchability and envisioned a just and equal society; the acrimony originated from the Vedic notion of varna and its various interpolations of caste appropriated by Gandhi and others vis-à-vis Ambedkar’s rejection of Hindu scriptures which he found deeply confounding in reorganising a society with the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. The Swadeshi debate: One fundamental principle that defines Gandhi’s philosophy is his refusal to separate spheres as diverse as economics and ethics, ­spirituality and politics, as each domain was intrinsically connected with the other in Gandhi’s pragmatics. The economic question which was linked with ethics of Swadeshi through the ‘cult of charkha’ brought ideological disagreement between Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, as the latter failed to find consensus between the philosophical and economic rationality in the political movement advocated by Gandhi through Swadeshi. The poet philosopher’s appeal for spontaneity, creativity of the human mind and intellect was mismatched with the monomaniacal zeal of spinning of charkha which Gandhi deemed necessary for swaraj. In a reflective and analogical essay “The Cult of Charkha” (1925) Tagore denounced charkha as the panacea for the economic swaraj of the nation. Tagore remained critical of the charkha which had caused ‘harm because of its undue prominence’, by stunting the comprehensive growth of the nation (Bhattacharya 1997: 110). Contra Gandhi whose idea of swadeshiwas mainly focussed on the economic and political spheres, Tagore, who was actively associated with the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, opined that it could not be attained simply by spinning threads, nor should it be based on “any external conformity, but only in the internal union of the hearts” (ibid 106). Tagore’s philosophy of humanism and freedom of the individual struck a discordant note with Gandhi’s movement of swadeshi, which had the propensity to reduce man to the ‘appendage of charkha’ (ibid 121). Tagore, who believed that swaraj would be incomplete without ‘the swaraj of the mind’ and gave supreme importance to the cultivation of the human mind in all its diversity, could not reconcile with the idea of human life driven by the machine-like repetition of

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the spinning wheel, entailing “undignified drudgery that man’s knowledge should stop dead and his doing go on forever” (ibid 104). In a rejoinder to Tagore’s essay, Gandhi in “The Poet and the Charkha” clearly projects the difference between him and Tagore as more on their divergent philosophical beliefs than on the individual level: “My Mahatmaship has no relation to the poet’s undisputed position. It is time to realise that our fields are absolutely different and at no point overlapping. The poet lives in a magnificent world of his own creation – his world of ideas. I am a slave of somebody else’s creation – the spinning wheel” (ibid 123). Gandhi’s rejoinder was aimed to amend the possible controversy caused by Tagore’s denouncement of the charkha and to reinforce once again his unchanged belief ascribed to the charkha: “The many things about the charkha which he (Tagore) has ridiculed I have never said. The merits I have claimed for the charkha remain undamaged by the Poet’s battery” (ibid 126). Tagore became more sceptical of the burning of the foreign clothes carried under Swadeshi and found Gandhi’s series of fasting for swaraj as a futile path of self-mortification. Nevertheless, the Mahatma and the Poet enjoyed a cordial relationship, and their disagreements served as complements to their disparate activities. Gandhi’s long-term associate C.F. Andrews opined Gandhi’s “fasts unto death” as “morally repulsive” (which was also the view of Tagore) and burning of foreign clothes that ‘swadeshi’ brought in its wake a reflection of a narrow version of nationalism. In a letter to Gandhi, Andrews reminds Gandhi that the act of burning of foreign cloth was contrary to the latter’s creed of ahimsa, further expressing his apprehension that such act may generate a sectarian image of India with a return to ‘an old bad selfish nationalism’. Verrier Elwin was also not in favour of Gandhi’s philosophy of spinning which the latter termed as a form of tapasya or ascetic discipline, because such practice was alien to the people in the parts of the country where cotton did not grow and hence not tenable: “I have always been a supporter of handloom weaving, but spinning, for very poor people where cotton did not grow, seemed to me artificial and uneconomic” (Elwin 1964: 85). Swadeshi as a debate was countered by his colleagues for the principles of exclusivity and homogeneity, and primacy to an imagined collective ideal over honour of the individual. The modernity debate: The terminological indeterminacy looms large while situating Gandhi in the ambit of modernity. While he has been branded as premodern, anti-modern, anti-modern yet modern following his strong lineage of traditional beliefs, practices and critique of Western civilisation, machinery, science and thereby modernity at large, he advocated modernity with a difference as he sensed Western modernity’s limit. Gandhi perhaps shared the most enduring bond with Nehru for whom Gandhi’s world was simple, anti-technological and pre-modern. In Nehru’s writings, it is frequently mentioned that Gandhi was not easily understood, that he was imprecise, and that he was overtly religious. Nehru’s modern worldview which was shaped by a scientific temper could not approve of Gandhi’s frequent invocation of religion in the political arena such as the latter’s nostalgia for a golden past in the form of Ram Rajya and recurrent reference to God in a political state of affairs. In Nehru’s assessment, Gandhi seldom reflected on goals with logical precision, and found his views on machinery and modern

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civilisation to be too utopian to be applicable to modern Indian conditions, particularly while advancing the cause for freedom and political independence, and more importantly nation-building. Although Gandhian modernity was asymptomatic of Western civilisation, Gandhi was not anti-modern; he proposed for an alternative modernity with the ethics as the underlying rationale. In his political pamphlet Hind Swaraj (1909) Gandhi condemned Western civilisation which he considered as ‘a disease’ following Edward Carpenter’s indictment of civilisation in Civilisation: Its Causes and Cure. Making a sharp contrast between ‘true’ civilisation, which pursues the ‘object of life’, or what in Indian philosophy is termed as purushartha vis-à-vis ‘modern’ civilisation, which concerns with ‘bodily welfare’, Gandhi argues in Hind Swaraj that real or full Swaraj transcends political Swaraj: his message was both for the colonisers and the colonised – that both Britain and India needed to completely liberate themselves from the impact of colonialism and modernity and “had to reintegrate whatever was humane in modern civilisation within their respective traditional religions” (Parel 2009: xlvi). The Swaraj that Gandhi envisaged necessitated a complete overhaul of India’s condition from within and outside, underlining that Swaraj can be achieved through internal self-transformation and self-reform that correspond to the external political sphere. Critiquing the modern institution of Parliament, which is devoid of self-reliance, and the symbols of civilisation such as Law courts, hospitals as being instrumental in propagating the evils of modernity with complete disregard to the spiritual and moral foundation of the self, Gandhi formulates the definition of true civilisation as a ‘good way of life’ that links “the notions of self-knowledge, duty, morality, mastery over the mind and senses” (Parel 2009: 65). Nehru’s scientific socialism, rationality and liberal humanism were inconceivable with Gandhi’s philosophical praxis, which was concerned with the annihilation of the individual sin rather than bringing change in to the social structure. Gandhi’s unscientific claim regarding the earthquake in Bihar in 1934 as the consequence of a divine justice for people’s sins exasperated Nehru, Tagore and others, who were baffled by Gandhi’s connection of the untouchability campaign with the calamity in Bihar. Despite their ideological divergence, Gandhi’s bond with Tagore and Nehru remained an enduring one; Gandhi’s appeal to the masses, as Nehru admitted, was extraordinary in the sense that it could draw people to his philosophy and intellectual conviction, in spite of the gap between their different worldviews. In fact, Gandhi occupies a central portion in Nehru’s Autobiography with an elaborate record of the coming of Gandhi – his leadership, the course of Satyagraha and so on, and how Gandhi’s intervention compelled India to think of the poor peasant in human terms, bridging the gap between ‘the English educated class’ and ‘masses’. In his autobiography and The Discovery of India, Nehru continues to unravel the phenomenon called Gandhi – the paradoxes and incomprehensibility of his ideas along with the indispensability of his presence in the nation.

(II)  Biographising Gandhi Biographising Gandhi has become a tradition. Biographies of Gandhi are copious – scholars from India and the West have engaged themselves with the life of mahatma

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and his philosophy, have written about his life in elaborate detail from his practice of diet, sex and hygiene to his death, with equal commendation and condemnation, further leaving enormous potential for the discourse of his life to continue in future. From the biographers’ varied accounts, it appears that one and many Gandhis are at work in the biographies. Rajmohan Gandhi, one of Gandhi’s biographers and grandsons, mentions the plural icons of the Gandhi figure, further submitting his own attempt to deliver the image of the ‘true’ Gandhi. In the preface to his biography of Gandhi, Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire, Rajmohan writes “it is also an attempt to identify the ‘true’ Gandhi – to convey the truth about him” and “to free Gandhi the person from his image or images, and to present his life fully and honestly” (Gandhi 2006: ix–x). In a recent biography of Gandhi, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, Joseph Lelyveld traces the many-faceted Gandhi – the numerous morphs that would justify as well as question his becoming of mahatma. The metamorphosis from the Gandhi at Kathiawad to the South African Gandhi to mahatma is quite conspicuous, as Lelyveld comments that Gandhi’s “transformation or self-invention – a process that’s as much inward as outward – takes years, but once it’s underway, he’s never again static or predictable” (Lelyveld 2011: 6). The biographer’s task, in Gandhi’s case, is to a degree to complete the discourse of life initiated by the autobiographer himself, for Gandhi gives a rationale for closing his autobiography as early as 1923: “My life from this point onward has been so public that there is hardly anything about it that people do not know” (1927–29: 452). For Gandhi, writing his autobiography might appear a redundant exercise, but it leaves the subsequent biographers and historians unsettled about some core issues like politics, diet, sex, truth, etc. that largely constituted Gandhi’s being. In Gandhi: Naked Ambition, Jad Adams writes about the biographer’s unease about putting together the ‘contradictory behaviour’ of Gandhi: (Gandhi) did not personally care about salt, and was trying to eliminate it from diet, but undertook the salt march, campaigned for the indigo workers when he did not approve of dyeing cloth, supported the mill workers when he was opposing the use of mill-produced cloth, wanted Indians to rule India but had no time for elections and assemblies and enjoyed full support of the rich while promoting the values of poverty. (Adams 2016: 6) Adams further voices the perplexities beset with writing Gandhi’s biography: Gandhi’s life is the ultimate challenge for a biographer: it was so multifaceted, and there is so much surviving contemporary information about it. . . . Gandhi’s political life, spiritual life, family life and sex life were all fascinating; his relationship to food could fill a volume in itself. (Adams 2010: 2) Adams’ account is brutally frank and strongly critical of the ‘iconic image’ of Gandhi, which he believes as “a fake, concoction of journalists, film makers and

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adulatory biographers” (Adams 2010: 1). Equally stripping away the saintly aura as well as illustrating the extraordinary qualities in Gandhi, Adams brings out certain inconsistencies in Gandhi and his experiments with truth: “a number of instances when Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth diverges from the truth as it is generally understood” (2011: 36). Nonetheless, each of Gandhi’s experiments like satyagraha and brahmacharya, although questioned and contested over the period, the numerous experiments he conducts in ‘the science of satyagraha’ provide the leverage to invent him self politically and spiritually. In fact, the subtitle of his autobiography “My Experiment with Truth” largely draws from his experiences in South Africa that became a laboratory for him to experiment with truth. In Satyagraha in South Africa, written along with his autobiography, which is a continued account of his self-invention, Gandhi explains in detail the philosophy of satyagraha that remains a shaping factor in his life as well as the nation’s. My object in writing the present volume is that the nation might know how satyagraha, for which I live, for which I desire to live and for which I believe I am equally prepared to die, originated and how it was practised on a large scale; and knowing this, it may understand and carry it out to the extent that it is willing and able to do so. (Gandhi 1928: 86) Satyagraha in South Africa enabled Gandhi to realise his ‘vocation in life’ became the key phenomenon in shaping his convictions to achieve the national goal. It is commonly viewed that the South African Gandhi as a lawyer and political activist prepared him for the role of the mahatma to emerge in future. In the prologue to his book “An Unwelcome Visitor”, Lelyveld registers Gandhi’s transformation from an ‘unwelcome visitor’ at the beginning of his South African sojourn to a saint at the end. Lelyveld records The Natal Advertiser’s news caption “An Unwelcome Visitor” after Gandhi’s arrival in Durban in 1893 and the continued antagonism for twenty-one years till his final departure in 1914, as Christian Smuts, Gandhi’s leading South African antagonist, sees the saint in him in saying: “The Saint has left our shores, I sincerely hope forever” (Lelyveld 2011: 27). If South Africa laid the foundation for Gandhi’s satyagraha, it also formally shaped brahmacharya as his vow of life in Phoenix settlement in 1906. For Gandhi, these principles did not exist in isolation, but they worked in tandem in making him self: As he says: “Satyagraha had not been a preconceived plan. It came on spontaneously, without my having willed it. But I could see that all my previous steps had led up to that goal. I had cut down my heavy household expenses at Johannesburg and gone to Phoenix to take, as it were, the brahmacharya vow” (1928: 197). Brahmacharya was one of the wilful events that amplified Gandhi’s extraordinary ability of self-creation, for embedded in it were his belief in non-violence and numerous experiments with dietetics, fasting, hygiene and sex that would lead to his self-­ realisation, or in other words, prepare him for satyagraha. As Gandhi notes, “what I want to achieve – what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years – is self-realisation, to see God face to face, to attain moksha (Gandhi 2001: 14).

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God and Truth being identical for Gandhi, he emphasised in his writings that brahmacharya was the key principle that contained Truth. In one of Gandhi’s recent biographies Gandhi Before India (2013), Ramachandra Guha spells out the magnitude of Gandhi’s South African years to such an extent that there was never a Gandhi before India in the sense but there was an India after him; the making of the mahatma as well as the political Gandhi was largely a by-product of the South African years. In a similar vein, Charles Di Salvo’s The Man Before Mahatma (2012) underlines the intellectual and political underpinnings of the South African years. Robert Payne’s biography The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (1969) portrays the many public and private masks that Gandhi wore, as he like others “mislaid the masks and showed himself naked” (1969: 13). The biographer is vocal about the seamy side of his nature as he details his many failings: “he was a bad father, a tyrant to his followers, and rarely made any effort to conceal the authoritarian streak he had inherited from his ancestors” (Payne 1969: 15). While writing about the prophet figure in Gandhi, Payne underlines the contradictions underlying Gandhi’s persona – the gap between his proclaimed humility and self-pride, his intolerance of self-criticism and so on. Payne’s biography, in an important way, brings out the discourse surrounding Gandhi’s death, as he suggests the assassin’s collaboration with the victim (Gandhi). Payne argues that any assassination is not an individual endeavour, but there are psychological and historical forces that connect the assassin and the victim. Ashis Nandy, in his essay “Final Encounter: The Politics of Assassination of Gandhi”, follows Payne’s argument and enquires into the cause of the ‘joint endeavour’. Nandy ascribes to Gandhi’s quintessential political style and the psychological and social conditions at the time of his death in 1948 as the sole reason for the collaboration in the drama of his death. The final severe blow of criticism against Gandhi and his ideology comes from his assassin in the form of death; in his detailed account of defence to the Court as to why he killed Gandhi, Gandhi’s assassin Godse deems his (Gandhi) entire nation-building project impracticable. As for his assassin and his detractors, Gandhi remains a completely misunderstood figure. The incapacity to understand him or not to understand him at all may suit as an ideological position, but at a deeper level it hints at the incompatibility between relative truth and absolute truth that Gandhi had envisaged for all. However, on the violent death of Gandhi, ‘the father of the nation’, the nation bears the guilt of committing parricide with a complete subversion of his philosophy of non-violence and causing the most violent act on the Apostle of Peace. In Gandhi each aspect of his life assumes such importance that even reflections surrounding his death and the final hours occupies a distinct space in the hands of the biographers and writers. A serious reflection on Gandhi’s death occurs in Speaking of Gandhi’s Death (2010) between a few Gandhi scholars at Sabarmati Ashram to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of his death in 2008 with many reflections on the meaning of as his assassination as well his absence in the new nation. In “Let’s Kill Gandhi”: A Chronicle of his Last Days, the Conspiracy, Murder, Investigation and Trial (2007), Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar Gandhi enquires into the perennial questions surrounding the murder of the mahatma and reflects on its implication for the new nation.

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The biographies no doubt bring out many silences to the foreground. Gandhi, for example, is reticent about his failed relationship with his son Harilal. In his ­biography, Jad Adams comments, “Gandhi’s troubled relationship with his family is one of the most difficult aspects of his already complex character” (2011: 114). Sushila Nayar, Gandhi’s close associate and physician, in her work Gandhi: India Awakened mentions about a ‘half-open’ letter by Harilal to his father, raising questions about Gandhi’s success as a family man. Harilal complains of his father’s neglect of his family, particularly in the matter of education and writes: You have treated us as a ring master would treat the beasts of the circus. . . . You have spoken to us never with love, always with anger. In argument you have always used us with humiliating language. . . . walking and moving, sleeping and sitting, reading and writing, you have kept us in constant fear of you. You have a heart of stone. (Nayar 1989: 243) The conflict between the father and the son becomes noteworthy in a recent film, Gandhi My Father (2007), which portrays Gandhi’s intricate, complex and strained relationship with Harilal Gandhi. Biographers and critics like Jad Adams, Joseph Lelyveld, Nirmal Kumar Bose et al. are very critical about Gandhi’s experiment with sex and his practice of celibacy. Although Gandhi adopts the vow of celibacy since his South African years and maintains a celibate life, but for his preoccupation and experiment with celibacy, he remains ‘highly sexed’, to use Jad Adam’s phrase. Adams interprets Gandhi’s numerous experiments with sex as a way of ‘maximising his sexual opportunities’ in his later phase of life through his daily naked massages, joint bathing and his intimate contact with young women. Gandhi remains for many of his biographers and critics a controversy. In his foreword to D.G. Tendulkar’s exhaustive eight-volume biography of Gandhi, Nehru writes: “No one can write a real life of Gandhi, unless he is as big as Gandhi. So we can expect to have no real and adequate life of this man” (Tendulkar 1951: 7). Gandhi’s life might be much written, but it still remains an unfinished project: Gandhi goes on to exude the sense of contemporaneity; enigma around his life continues to grapple the readers.

Conclusion Reading Gandhi is an open-ended exercise, where learning and unlearning happen simultaneously, underlining that human life is subject to constant evolution and revision. The categories of traditional, moral, spiritual and religious are discrete and slippery to be compatible with politics, economics and ethics, which Gandhi struggled to assimilate in his philosophical praxis. His vision was always for a holistic goal, and the different categories which he considered complementary for an inclusive totality for the nation proved to be inherently fragmentary and segmented, as his critics became relentlessly sceptical of his merger of economics and ethics,

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non-violence with ascetic life through celibacy, politics with spirituality. At one level, the bifurcation between Gandhi and his critics encompasses a larger debate; the inherent divide between collective and the individual, personal experiments and civic imperatives, intuition and rationality, idealism and pragmatism remain the quintessential issues in separating Gandhi and his critics. The perspective to understand Gandhi must surpass the semantic dualism, as the binary divides are too compartmentalised to accommodate the in-between nuances and essence of his philosophy. Gandhi and his philosophy, therefore, calls for a careful understanding, because the agreements and disagreements among his interlocutors criss-cross at many levels, generating a discourse around his life which demands close examination and further scrutiny; the aura of the one yet many-dimensional figure of Gandhi continues, which is ever alluring and eluding.

Bibliography Adams, Jad. 2010. Gandhi: Naked Ambition. London: Quercus. Ambedkar, B.R., (1945). What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables Bombay: Thacker & Co. Ambedkar, B.R. 2014. Annihilation of Caste. The Annotated Critical Edition. Edited and Annotated by S. Anand. Introduced with the Essay, the Doctor and the Saint by Arundhati Roy. New Delhi: Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd. Andrews, C.F. 1973. Representative Writings. Compiled and Edited by Marjorie Sykes. New Delhi National Book Trust. Aurobindo, Sri. 1996. On Nationalism. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust. Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi (ed. and compiled). 1997. The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore, 1915–1941. New Delhi: National Book Trust. Brown, Judith. 1989. Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Brown, Judith and Parel, Anthony. 2011. The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coward, Harold. 2003. Indian Critiques of Gandhi. Albany: State University of New York Press. Dev, Arjun. Ed. 2011. Gandhi-Nehru Correspondence: A Selection. New Delhi: National Book Trust. Di Salvo, Charles. 2012. The Man Before Mahatma: M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law. India: Random House Publishers. Elwin, Verrier. 1964. The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Erikson, H. Erik. 1969. Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company. Gandhi, M.K. 1920. Young India, 25 February. Gandhi, M.K. 1928. Satyagraha in South Africa. Translated by. Valji Govindji Desai. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. 1971. Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi. Vol. 19. New Delhi: Publication ­Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. ———. 2001. An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth. Translated by Mahadev Desai. Introduction by Sunil Khilnani (1927–29). London: Penguin. ———. 2009. Hind Swaraj: ‘Hind Swaraj’ and Other Writings. Edited by Anthony J. Parel. Centenary Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Gandhi, Rajmohan. 2006. Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Gandhi, Tushar. 2007. “Let’s Kill Gandhi”: A Chronicle of His Last Days, the Conspiracy, Murder, Investigation and Trial. New Delhi: Rupa & Co. Guha, Ramachandra. 2013. Gandhi Before India. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Lelyveld, Joseph. 2011. Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. New Delhi: Harper Collins & The India Today Group. Mehta, Ved. 1976. Mahatma and His Apostles. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Nehru, Jawaharlal. 1936. An Autobiography. New Delhi: Penguin Books. ———. 1946. The Discovery of India. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Nandy, Ashis. 2006. “Final Encounter: The Politics of Assassination of Gandhi”. Debating Gandhi. Edited by A. Raghuramaraju. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nayar, Sushila. 1989. Gandhi: India Awakened. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Parekh, Bhikhu. 1997. Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Parel, Anthony J. (ed.) (2009 reprinted). Hind Swaraj and Other Writings. New Delhi: ­Cambridge University Press. Payne, Robert. 1969. The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhian. New York: E.P. Duttan and Co. Raghuramaraju, A. Ed. 2006. Debating Gandhi. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sarkar, Sumit. 2010. The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Suhrud, Tridip and De Souza, Peter Ronald. Eds. 2010. Speaking of Gandhi’s Death. Shimla, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd and IIAS. Tagore, Gandhi. 1997. “The Cult of Charkha”. The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore 1915–1941. Compiled and Edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya. New Delhi: National Book Trust. Tendulkar, D.G. 1951. Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Vol. 1 (1869–1920). New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt of India. Tinker, Hugh. 1979. The Ordeal of Love: C.F Andrews and India. New York: Oxford ­University Press.

PART II

Gandhi and Swaraj

5 SWARAJ IN GANDHIAN PERSPECTIVE Some reflections Ramchandra Pradhan

Poorna Swaraj. ‘Poorna’ complete because it is as much for the prince as for the peasant, as much for the rich landowner as for the landless tiller of the soil, as much for the Hindus as for the Musalmans, as much for Parsis and Christians as for the Jains, Jews and Sikhs, irrespective of any distinction of caste or creed or status in life. – Mahatma Gandhi

The idea of Swaraj inspired Gandhi’s thinking and action all through his life. In fact, it played a dual role in his entire scheme of things. On the one hand, it worked as a load-star, a continuous source of inspiration for the Indian freedom fighters like him in their march towards the ultimate goal of independence. On the other hand, it also worked as the ‘measuring rod’ for the extent of the journey which the Indian people had covered towards independence. Moreover, swaraj provided a constant reminder to the Indian leadership to work out a blueprint for an independent India. In other words, the idea of swaraj continuously prompted the Indian leadership to visualize a picture of independent India with all its components and contours of socio-economical-political structure and cultural resurgence. At yet another level, its conceptualization, transcending the national boundaries, became a search for human freedom at the cosmic level. In one word, swaraj was such an emotive concept that it virtually touched the soul of India, taking the racial memories of the Indian people to the Vedic age. Here, in this chapter we discuss the idea of swaraj in the light of the following questions: how did Gandhi’s predecessors visualize swaraj? How did Gandhi arrive at the idea of swaraj? What new contents did Gandhi put in the idea of swaraj? How do we assess Gandhi’s concept of swaraj in the wider context of his philosophy of human liberty and liberation? How relevant is his idea of swaraj in the present context?

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The concept of Swaraj in the pre–Gandhian era The concept of swaraj per se was not a new discovery of Gandhi as per his own ­admission. It was an old Vedic concept. In fact, swaraj as a religious-spiritual term was to be found in the Vedic and Upanishadic scriptures including Chandogya Upanishad. Subsequently, the medieval Bhakta poets frequently used it in their lexicon. However, in all of this traditional religious literature, swaraj was being used in terms of self-rule – swa standing for self and raj for rule. Hence, swaraj stood for self-rule at the level of an individual. It was symbolic of an individual in full control of his baser passions (the tamsik and rajsik proclivities) and fully established in its satwikvriti. In other words, swaraj was a synonym of self-realization, which was hardly different from God-realization. For such an individual, the control by any external agency including ‘State’ was peripheral, if not irrelevant and meaningless. However, once India came under the sway of the British rule, the term swaraj became a part of our political lexicon. It started being used in the limited political sense of ‘self-government’ – swa for one’s own and raj for government. During that period, ‘self-rule’ and ‘self-government’ and ‘Home Rule’ were being used interchangeably. It was around the first decade of the twentieth century that swaraj became a popular political term and caught the imaginations of our people. Both wings of the Indian National Congress, the Moderates and the Extremists, started using it freely. In a way, it became a symbol of all that the Indian nation was demanding in the wake of the partition of Bengal in 1905. It is relevant to note that though both the Moderates and the Extremists did use the term swaraj, they did not use it in the same sense and with similar connotation. The Moderates used it in its narrow meaning of limited political freedom within the British Empire. They did not attach much significance to swaraj in the sense of individual self-rule, as they were engaged in a political discourse, totally marked by the British liberal tradition. Nor did they seek complete freedom from the British rule which they, in any case, considered ‘Providential’. For instance, when Dadabhai Naoroji talked of swaraj in the Calcutta Congress (1906), which was being held in the context of the partition of Bengal, all that he demanded was ‘self-government’ on the pattern of the other British colonies. However, the Extremists, the political cousins of the Moderates, took a much wider view of swaraj. There were divergent voices on swaraj even among the Extremist leadership; though broadly speaking, they did conceptualize swaraj not only in political and economic terms but also in spiritual terms. For instance, Bipin Chandra Pal, one of the leading light of the Extremists, described swaraj as ‘democratic and federal set-up comprising republican states (British Indian Provinces) and constitutional monarchy in the native states’ (Quoted in Chakravarty 2006: 44). Pal also underlined the economic aspect of swaraj as he looked upon the British capital as the ‘greatest hindrance’ to any real improvement in the economic condition of the Indian people. Of all the Extremist leaders, Aurobindo alone could visualize swaraj in the form of absolute political independence. Not only that, he also underlined the ‘spiritual dimension’ of swaraj. Not undermining its economic

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and political dimensions, he hastened to add that swaraj was essentially an intensely spiritual movement (2006: 44). For its primary aim was the ‘emancipation in every sense of the term of Indian nationhood and womanhood’ (2006: 44). Tilak further elaborated the concept of swaraj. He underlined the spiritual aspect of swaraj. For him ‘a life centered in the self and dependent upon self ’ (2006: 45) was indicative of real swaraj. But he tried to build up a strong bridge between the phenomenal world and the ‘other world’, when he said: ‘There is swarajya in this world as well as in the world hereinafter’ (2006: 45). Perhaps, taking karma yoga as the basic message of Gita, he underlined the centrality of the phenomenal world, when he said: ‘It is my conviction, it is my thesis, that swarajya in the life to come cannot be a reward of the people who have not enjoyed it in this life’ (2006: 45). But more than its spiritual aspect, Tilak emphasized the political aspect of swaraj. He stood for ‘a government constituted by the Indians’ themselves, which would rule ‘according to the wishes of the people or their representatives’ (2006: 44). Elaborating on his political aspect of swaraj, he averred that a government so constituted would decide on the policies, ‘impose’ and remove taxes and would determine the ‘allocation of public expenditure’ (2006: 44). Though Tilak did not specifically ask for absolute political independence for the country (purna swaraj), he preferred absolute autonomy in every walk of Indian life without any semblance of British rule. He made a strong plea for democratic government for India in every sense of the term. Another significant aspect of swaraj which Tilak underlined was his concept of what he called praja droha (the people’s anger). By praja droha, Tilak meant that a government loses its legitimacy when it turns tyrannical and forgets its obligations to the people. Then it is bound to be subjected to people’s anger. This was nothing but a plea for democratic rule since in his scheme of things people become the ultimate source of power. It is evident that Tilak used a new language of swaraj which combined the Western concept of nationalism and democracy with the Vedantic concept of individual spiritual freedom. But despite the fact that the Extremists moved ahead of the Moderates in conceptualizing and elucidating the concept of swaraj, the fact remained that neither of the two groups could transcend its basic weakness, both in conceptual and practical terms. They failed to take along the common masses of India, particularly weaker sections and minorities, in the struggle for swaraj.

Gandhi and the theory and practice of Swaraj The idea of swaraj was so basic to Gandhi’s thinking and action that the only book he ever wrote (the original was in Gujarati) and himself translated into English, he called Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule). It needs to be emphasized that the basic inspiration for writing Hind Swaraj was to conceptualize and clarify the idea of swaraj and to find an appropriate path leading to it. It is important to note that prior to writing ‘Hind Swaraj’, Gandhi had spent more than a decade and a half in South Africa struggling against its racial policy. During that period, there had been a major metamorphosis in his personality. In the process, he had founded the Phoenix settlement in 1904, embraced the vow of Brahmacharya and discovered the infallible

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weapon of satyagraha in 1906. Besides, he had gotten rooted in the cultural and religious tradition of India, which was reflected in a series of four lectures he delivered on Hinduism in Johannesburg in 1905. He had equally imbibed some of the major intellectual formulations of the other West represented by Ruskin, Thoreau and Tolstoy. His thought process had also been greatly influenced by his study of the Bhagwadgita and the Holy Bible. All of this provided the Background when he penned Hind Swaraj in 1909. With this brief background to Hind Swaraj, let us see how he conceptualized swaraj therein. Two chapters of Hind Swaraj (chapters IV and XIV) are specifically devoted to: (a) conceptualizing swaraj and (b) how it could be achieved for the Indian people (Gandhi 1909: 45). A close perusal of these chapters reveals that Gandhi is not out to offer a hackneyed definition of swaraj. In the chapter on ‘What is Swaraj’, he offers a critique of the prevailing notions of swaraj, propagated by the revolutionaries and the extremists. He rejects the revolutionary’s view that only physical expulsion of the British could suffice to serve the purpose of swaraj. Nor does he accept the Extremists’ view of swaraj, as they wanted the British to go but not to banish institutions created by them lock, stock and barrel. He does not even spare the Moderates’ views of swaraj. He raises a question mark against the liberal view of swaraj in terms of ‘self-­government’ patterned on the British colonies like Canada and others. Rounding up the discussion, he rejects one and all the prevailing notions of swaraj when he says: ‘we want English rule without the Englishman, you want the tiger’s nature, but not the tiger; that is to say, you would make India English, and when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englistan. This is not swaraj that I want’ 1909: 26). In chapter XIV of the Hind Swaraj, he moves a bit further in defining the swaraj of his conception. The primary unit of that swaraj would be the individual who has to experience that swaraj first within his own being. As he comments: If we (the individuals) become free, India is free . . . It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. It is, therefore, in the palm of your hands. Do not consider Swaraj to be like a dream. . . . The Swaraj that I wish to picture is such that, after we have once realised it, we shall endeavour to the end of our lifetime to persuade others to do likewise. But such Swaraj has to be experienced by each one for himself. (1909: 56) So far as the definition of swaraj is concerned, he leaves us at that, presumably because he takes it for granted that it subsumes the goal of political independence, which was to be founded on the self-rule of the individuals. The next question he takes up is how swaraj is to be attained. He rejects Garibaldi’s violent ways of bringing Italy from Austrian tutelage, as that has not solved the problems of the common Italians. In India the situation is much more unfavourable, as it is almost impossible to arm thousands of Indians for an armed struggle against the British. But even if it is made possible, India would lose its soul, as it would be europeanized

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in the process. Besides, in chapter XVI, he establishes a close and direct relationship between means and ends by pointing out that one cannot get a rose by planting a noxious weed. In other words, there is as much direct connection between ‘means’ and ‘ends’ as between the ‘seed’ and the tree. So, he rejects the ‘brute’ force as the basis of any just action, as nothing good would come out of it and pleads for the use of ‘soul force or love force’, at times also described as ‘passive resistance’. Subsequently, he goes on to define ‘passive resistance’ as a method of securing rights by personal sufferings. In the process, he makes a simple but profound statement: ‘If man will only realize that it is unmanly to obey laws that are unjust, no man’s tyranny will enslave him’. This is the key to self-rule or home rule. He further elucidates his basic formulation that passive resistance is the ‘weapon of strong’ as it requires greater courage than armed resistance. Hence, a man ‘devoid of courage and manhood’ could never be a satyagrahi. He likens passive resistance as a ‘many sided sword’ which neither rusts nor could be stolen. In addition, it blesses both the parties involved in a dispute. He also lays down the basic principles that a passive resister would have to follow: perfect chastity, voluntary poverty and truthfulness. Towards the end of the book, he makes it clear that real home rule is ‘self-rule’, and the real path leading to it is passive resistance; and that swadeshi is an integral part of the way. We have deliberately made a detailed presentation of the Gandhian view of swaraj and the royal road of passive resistance leading to it. It is these seed ideas on swaraj that he later elaborated and dedicated his life to bring swaraj to everybody’s doorstep. We also find a firm commitment on his part when towards the end of Hind Swaraj, he makes a solemn pledge to dedicate his life to that end. In the subsequent period of his life, he defined swaraj in more specific terms when he said, ‘Swaraj is a sacred word, a Vedic word, meaning self-rule and selfrestraint and freedom from all restraints which independence often means’ (Prabhu and Rao 1996: 317). However, he was equally insistent about national independence as he strongly believed that ‘every nation is to be fit to manage its own affairs, no matter how badly’. But it was this dialectical process of ‘self-government’, freedom from strong external control and self-rule, the freedom from baser passions at the individual level which he sought to integrate in his concept of swaraj. In fact, he strongly believed that ‘outward freedom would be in direct proportion to internal freedom’. Besides, he also underscored the point that ‘self-government’ would mean the continuous effort to be independent of government, whether it is foreign or national. In one word, Gandhian swaraj is just not a theory of government but a ‘self-rule’ of individuals with strong roots in his advaitic vision and symbiotic relationship among God, man and society (Brahma, Jiva and Jagat). After coming back to India in 1915 and taking stock of the Indian situation, he experimented with a local satyagraha movement in Champaran, Kheda and Ahmedabad. Subsequently, he launched Rowlatt Satyagraha at the national level. However, he had to take it back in the wake of some violent incidents in the course of the movement. A number of factors, including the political vaccum

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created by the outgoing leadership of the old generation, Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Khilafat movement and other developments, catapulted him as the most important leader of the national movement by 1920. However, as the leader of the national movement, he had to lay greater emphasis on the cause of Indian independence, putting the other task of ‘inner swaraj’ at the back burner. This was reflected in his Foreword to the new edition of the Hind Swaraj published in 1921. He made it clear that since the people of India did not seem to be ready for his conception of swaraj, he would work for parliamentary democracy for the Indian people. Thus, external swaraj became the dominant part of his political work. He supported the elections of 1937 and 1946 which were held under the 1935 Act, which the Congress had earlier rejected. Though personally he stuck to his view of Swaraj, which is quite clearly reflected in his work, Mangal Prabhat and his dialogue with Nehru in 1945. Demand for national independence became the most visible and concrete form which a Gandhian idea of swaraj could take. Starting with dominion status, it was turned into a demand for purna swaraj at the Lahore Congress (1929). The day of purna swaraj was celebrated on 26 January 1930. For that historic occasion, he drafted ‘The Declaration of Independence’, which was nothing short of a clarion call for national independence. Every citizen was supposed to take this pledge of independence, which made it clear that every government not only derives its legitimacy from the will of its people but also from its ability to uphold the dignity and rights of the people. That pledge of independence is worth quoting: We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities for growth. We also believe that the Government that deprives the people of their rights and oppresses them, the people have a further right to alter or abolish it. Demand for national independence became so dominant in his thinking that he launched and led three major national movements – Non-Cooperation ­Movement (1920–22), Civil Disobedience Movement (1932–32) and Quit India Movement (1942–45) – which ultimately forced the British to leave India 1947.

New dimensions to Swaraj As pledged towards the end of Hind Swaraj, Gandhi dedicated his entire life to the task of elucidating major dimensions of swaraj and actualizing it in his own life as well as in the life of his countrymen. There are several basic elements in Gandhi’s concept of swaraj which are of a permanent nature. One, in any given society ‘self-ruling’ individuals would constitute the foundation for freedom and independence. In other words, in the absence of inner swaraj, external/outer swaraj would lose its true spirit. Gandhi was right that a man endowed with inner swaraj could even face the mightiest power of the earth. Its other implication is that such a person would never seek to enslave even

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the weakest of the weak and the lowliest of the low. This is what Gandhi had meant by Ramrajya. Today one could really see the significance of the Gandhian idea of inner swaraj, particularly in respect of the ruling elite all over the world. Even in a democratically elected government, the table has been turned against the common masses. Only theoretically they remain as the primary source of the power. Their so-called representatives have became the source and dispensers of all powers. This is a problem which both liberal democracy and Marxism have failed to solve despite all their talks of participatory democracy and people’s democracy, respectively. What is more, Gandhi not only theoretically talked of ‘inner swaraj’ but also tried to given it a concrete shape through a regimen of self-discipline. Thus when he founded Satyagraha Aishram in 1915 at Ahmedabad, every inmate had to take eleven vows (Ekadasvrata). Out of them, five were from Patanjali Yoga Sutra. They were: truth, non-violence, non-stealing, Brahmacharya and non-possession. But the other six, viz. control of palate, bread labour, swadeshi, fearlessness, elimination of untouchability and equal respect for all religions, were his own contributions. They provided the royal road to inner swaraj. We know that the ruling elites all over the world have run amok, contributing greatly to the ‘unfreedom’ of the people. That underlines the relevance of ekadas vrata for all time to come. A second element in Gandhi’s concept of swaraj is also of eternal importance viz. his attempt to bring the common masses to the centre stage of the political process. We know that both liberal democracy and Marxism have been claiming to bring the man in the street to the centre of political power, but he remains at the periphery of the political process as much as ever. Gandhi through his concepts of Panchayati Raj and Gram swaraj tried to hand over the reins of power to the hands of the common masses. By suggesting that only residuary powers would go to the institutions of the upper echelons, he stood for real popular democracy, which has so far eluded people all over the world. The third element of permanent value in Gandhi’s concept of Swaraj is his conception of the composite nature of the India nationhood. He always asserted that Indian nationhood is constituted by all the people irrespective of their differences in terms of religion, region, language and caste. Both in his explanation of ‘Purna Swaraj’ and his speech at the Round Table Conference, he made it clear that India belongs to one and all.1 He was never in favour of majoritarian rule. One need not walk long to underline the relevance of his idea in today’s India. His idea of close linkage between religion and politics also appears to be of great value in today’s context. This is one of his most misunderstood ideas, as both Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists have tried to exploit and use the religious sensibility of the people for their political ends. It should be clearly understood that when Gandhi talked of religion, he was referring to what he called ‘the religion behind all religions’. In other words, he was underlining the moral and ethical side of religion and not its ritualistic side by which all organized religions have come to be identified. Similarly, he looked at politics not as a power game, but as a means to the service of the people. It was with such concepts of religion and politics that he wanted to bring about a close linkage between the two. Unfortunately, it could not be fully conveyed even to elite level, not to talk of a popular level. The Khilafat movement,

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workings of the Hindu fundamentalist groups, Muslim League and the partition of the country greatly contributed to such misunderstanding. But the need for putting a moral dimension to politics of the country and communal harmony greatly underline Gandhi’s plea for establishing a close linkage between religion and politics though his idea of Sarva dharmae Sama bhava. But despite his attempt to establish a close linkage between religion and politics, Gandhi continued to be a secularist in his own right, though he greatly differed from the Western concept of secularism where the main emphasis is on the separation of the functions of the Church and those of the State. In this connection, two of his major formulations need to be underlined. One, the ultimate purpose of both religion and politics is the service to the people. But it could not be achieved through their separation, as human life is an indivisible. Hence, he never favoured the Western version of secularism. Two, through his concept of sarva dharma Samahava he wanted to underline the moral and ethical side of all religions. Hence, he stood for equal respect to the followers of all religions. He was firmly of the opinion that State should never discriminate against people on the basis of religious persuasions. Such a principle of equality would have to be extended to the fields of education, business, employment, healthcare etc. State would have to ensure the protection and safety of all its citizens. He disfavoured the idea of the State supporting religious education. Nor did he favour religious education in the classrooms of the schools and colleges. He was all for the freedom of the people to pursue and practice their own religious belief. It was in that context that he made a joint appeal with Jinnah, pleading for communal harmony among different religious groups on the eve of Indian independence. In a word, swaraj became a synonym for the full independence for our people. But Gandhi, since his Hind Swaraj days, always insisted that mere withdrawal of the British from India was not the real swaraj. Unless every villager feels that he is the maker of his own destiny, the real swaraj would remain an elusive concept. He also conceptualised economic freedom in his own characteristic way, viz. freedom from poverty for the people. That is why after the Lahore Congress (1929) passed a resolution on purna swaraj, he defined it as ‘full economic freedom for the toiling masses’. This was followed by the Karachi Congress (1931), which in a way gave a concrete shape to the people’s economic freedom by passing a resolution on fundamental rights of the people in respect of their economic and other kinds of rights. The Karachi Resolution worked as a reference point when the provisions on Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles were being drafted by our Constituent Assembly. It is clear from this discussion that for Gandhi, swaraj was much more than freedom from colonial rule. He was much concerned with the cultural domination by the British and the mental slavery of the Indian elite. For him mental and cultural slavery was much worse than mere physical slavery. Last but not least was his attempts to bring about a reconciliation between the individual freedom and the commonweal of the community. He tried for such reconciliation through his concept of an ‘oceanic circle’2 (Harijan 28–7–1946: 236). Not only that, but he even tried to constitute a close relationship among individual,

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local, national and international communities. He was of the opinion that an individual could have more than one identity. But in his schema of things, the individual stood at the centre. Protection and promotion of his individuality, integrity and freedom was the basic purpose of all his activities. For any kind of violation would amount to nothing but violence. But at the same time, the commonweal of the community could not be set aside. He underlined the idea of interdependence at all levels going up to the cosmic level. Thus in Gandhi’s scheme of Swaraj everything from the individual to the world community is put in its proper place. In this connection, it is important to note that he underlined the importance of duties as much as the right, if not more. Thus he made it clear that people are responsible not only for their own actions but also for the State’s actions. For they are the real source behind State power. Every citizen is responsible for the State’s action. Thus if a bad law is made by the state, it would be the moral responsibility of the citizens to resist it and force it to take corrective actions. But he insisted on the purity of means in the course of such resistance, as the nature of the means would decide the nature of the end. Because of this, he insisted on self-rule of the individuals, which once achieved would not only successfully demolish political slavery but would work as the real foundation of the new social order, free from domination, oppression and exploitation. But he was not oblivious of the fact that for ‘self-rule’ to be conceived and practiced on a mass scale, it would need a congenial socio-political environment. Hence, the end of British rule was a prerequisite for the people to acquire and enjoy their freedom in its full dimensions. Not only that, but his concept of swaraj was closely linked with his concept of swadeshi. Swadeshi stood for empirical demonstration of what swaraj tried to conceptualise at the ideational level. Explaining the empirical side of swadeshi, Gandhi commented: Swadeshi is that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote. Thus, as for religion, . . . I must restrict myself to my ancestral religion. That is, the use of my immediate religious surroundings. If I find it defective, I should serve it by purging it of its defects. In the domain of politics, I should make use of the indigenous institutions and serve them by curing them of their proved defects. In that of economics, I should use only things that are produced by my immediate neighbours and serve those industries by making them efficient and complete where they might be found wanting. (Prabhu and Rao 1996: 410) The real strength of the Gandhian concept of swaraj lies in the fact that it successfully avoids both the extremes of localism on the one hand and total homogenization in the name of liberalization and globalization. Such a balanced and nuanced view might give a lead for a genuine universal culture without making individuals, groups, regions and nations lose their inner and local cultural moorings. This in itself is a major theoretical contribution.

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Road to Swaraj Transition toward a new and a desirable society had been one of the major problems faced by all the great thinkers. Marxism-Leninism tried to bring about such change through the vanguards’ movement led by a closed cadre-based Communist Party with its primary emphasis on the capture of the State Power through violent means, establishment of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the intermediate stage, finally leading to a State of ‘classless and Stateless’ society. Liberalism believed in gradualism, finally leading to a just and equitable society of its own conception. Gandhi was aware of all these ideological orientations and their pitfalls. Hence, he was quite keen to provide concrete, effective and viable means, which would lead the people to the final stage of his desirable, non-violent society. He also wanted to transcend the debate about whether such a journey should start from the level of the individual or the community. Broadly speaking, Marxism favoured the first step at the systemic level and had disfavoured all reformist agenda. Hence, they showered all their venomous contempt on all ‘reformists’ and ‘renegades.’ Gandhi tried to transcend all these fruitless ideological debates. He offered three major instruments of social change: Ekadashvrata (eleven vows), constructive programmes and satyagraha. Through ekadashvrata Gandhi sought to bring about a radical change in the thought process of the individual, prompting him to work for lokasangraha. Constructive programme was meant to sort out the problem of swaraj even in the absence of the State power. Satyagraha, of course, was offered as a sovereign measure to tackle the problems of injustices at all levels.

Gandhi’s Swaraj: a critical appreciation However, that does not mean that there are no problems with the Gandhian concept of swaraj. Firstly, Gandhi’s insistence on ‘self-ruling’ individuals presents a practical problem: how to judge whether any individual is ‘self-ruling’ or not. This being a part of one’s inner experience, no effective and objective criteria could be evolved to measure it. This leaves a large scope for hypocrisy and double speak – a big gap between the precept and practise. Secondly, the possibility of the external aspect of swaraj self-government combined with swadeshi could very well lead to a situation of extreme nationalism, jingoism, exploitation and domination, as it happened behind an ‘iron curtain’ and ‘bamboo curtain’ for a long time. Thirdly, scholars find a big contradiction between Gandhi as a high priest of swaraj and as a practitioner of real politik. For a long time he remained a British loyalist and even tried to extend help in their war games of the Boer War, the Zulu rebellion and even during the First World War. In all these operations, he was ever willing to risk his reputation and even his life. Not only that, but he was also for working out the 1919 Act and despite his own reservation, even the Act of 1935, both of which came as a cropper vis-à-vis Gandhian concept of swaraj. He was also a party to the Indian Independence Act 1947, which offered only dominion status, despite

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the Congress’ insistence on the purna swaraj, since the days of the Lahore Congress of 1929. So, one finds a big contradiction between his theoretical enunciation of swaraj and his practical acceptance of limited swaraj. In addition, the fact that his idea of swaraj, like many of his other ideas, was rejected by his own close followers speaks volumes for his concept of swaraj being an ethereal idea, which could not be implemented in a concrete way. Thirdly, his attempt to establish close linkage between religion and politics appears to have created more problems than it solved. His attempt to spiritualize also polities had turned out to be a fiasco even in his lifetime. Hindu-Muslim hostility was unleashed in the wake of the Khilafat movement. Instead of politics being spiritualized, religion got politicized, which ultimately led to the partition of the country despite his best effort to prevent such a catastrophe. Of course, in defense of Gandhi and his idea of swaraj, a number of things could still be said. One, Gandhi was fully aware of the danger of extreme nationalism. Hence, he always refused to make the British a symbol of the enemy, which is why he always said to hate the sin and not the sinner. So far as the human problem of hypocrisy and double speak is concerned, that is part of a larger human predicament. If no high ideas/ideals are set, then human striving for higher values would cease to be a part of our consciousness. But if, on the other hand, high ideas/ideals are set, the chances of double speak and hypocrisy could not be totally ruled out. However, Indian tradition suggested a remedy which Gandhi tried to follow, i.e. one should be a living exemplar rather than be a preacher. In other words, one should practise and demonstrate in his day-to-day living what he has been preaching. Gandhi was an exemplar and tried to raise an army of exemplars through his ashram living and other institutional set-ups. However, in human affairs there is no one-time solution and no final solution. Every generation would have to strive to integrate and approximate these high ideals afresh. Setting an ideal and living it through, and thus inspiring others to do likewise, is the only thing even a great man does. And this is what Gandhi did. So far the question of rejection of his ideas by his close followers is concerned, that happens with most of the prophets, including Jesus Christ. Perhaps, the ideals set by them are too high for human striving. And yet, these ideals continue to inspire the human race for all times to come. Extreme realism could always turn one into a ‘gutter inspector’ role. As already discussed, his concepts of swaraj and swadeshi might even lay a real foundation for a universal culture free from extreme localism, jingoistic nationalism and woolly cosmopolitanism. Gandhi rightly observed: The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man’s Swaraj. The necessaries of life should be enjoyed by you in common with those enjoyed by the princes and the moneyed men. But that does not mean that you should have palaces like theirs. They are not necessary for happiness. You or I would be lost in them. But you ought to get all the ordinary amenities of life that a rich man enjoys.

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I have not the slightest doubt that Swaraj is not Poorna Swaraj until these amenities are guaranteed to you under it. (Young India, 26–3–1931: 46)

Notes 1 “I am but a poor humble agent acting on behalf of the Indian National Congress. It represents no particular community, no particular class, no particular interest. It claims to represent all Indian interests and all classes. It is a matter of greatest pleasure to me to state that ot was first conceived in an English brain: Allan Octavius Hume we knew as the father of the Congress. It was nursed by two great Parsis, Pherozeshash Mehta and Dadabhai Naoroji, whom all India delighted to recognize as its Grand Old Man. From the very commencement the Congress had Mussalmans, Christians, Anglo-Indians. . above all, the Congress represnts, in its essence, the dumb, semi-starved millions scattered over the length and breadth of the land in its 700,000 villages.” See The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 53: 2 July 1931–12 October 1931, p. 361. 2 “In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever-widening, neverascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance, but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units.” Harijan, 28 July 1946, p. 236.

Bibliography Chakravarti, Bidyut. 2006. Social and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (London: ­Routledge, Harijan, July 28, 1946), p. 236. Gandhi, M. K. 1909. Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M. K. 1931.Young India. Gandhi, M. K. (1933–40, 1942, 1946–48) Harijan. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press. Iyer, Raghavan. 1973. The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. New York: Oxford University Press. National Archives, UK. Accessed on January 25, 2017, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ education/empire/transcript/g3cs3s2t.htm Parekh, Bhikhu. (1989) Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination. London: Macmillan. Parel, Anthony J. (ed.). (2002) Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. Parel, Anthony J. (ed.). (2009 reprinted) Hind Swaraj and Other Writings. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Prabhu, R. K. and U. R. Rao (eds.). (1996) The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi. Ahmedabad: Navajivan.

6 GANDHIAN SWARAJ A theory of self-knowledge Kumar Rahul

Gandhi conceptualized his idea of Swaraj in 1909 in his seminal work, Hind Swaraj. The text has evoked some serious scholarly works, with some of them showing academic intent to build a political theory of Swaraj. Gandhi’s other writings are also important and aid our understanding of his idea of Swaraj. However, ‘Hind Swaraj, in the main has been read and re-read, visited and re-visited, interpreted and re-interpreted. It has attracted global readership. The text is a promising venue for extending the meaning of Swaraj from self-rule to autonomy attained through selfknowledge. Given a recovery of interest in Gandhi, there is no dearth of secondary sources both in India and the West. However, works reflecting on self-knowledge and autonomy are minimal, which accounts for my interest in this theme. This chapter is in the nature of groundwork to ask Gandhi to have a view of self-knowledge derived from the project of Swaraj.

The idea of the self in Gandhi Gandhian writings are deeply immersed in the literature of the self. The prefixing of ‘self ’ is what we commonly find in Gandhi’s dictions. Self-rule, self-knowledge, self-disciplines, etc. are some of the examples. Thus, an inquiry into the idea of Swaraj should ideally begin with discerning Gandhi’s understanding of the self. This section locates some of the metaphysical and ontological sources of the self that Gandhi has dwelt on. Swaraj as self-rule rests on the double role prescribed to the self: it is simultaneously the ruler and the ruled. In other words, Swaraj is a kind of rulership where the self rules over itself. The problem therefore is to fathom truly the nature of the two selves: self the authority and self the subject. Are they hostile to each other? If yes, how to transform hostility into affability? The problem becomes more complex because two selves reside in the same human agency. Generally, the authority exercises coercive

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control over its subject/citizen. This option therefore cannot be called for. One would ordinarily refrain from exercising coercive power against oneself. Thus to lay out a framework that justifies the exercise of legitimate authority of the self over itself, bereft of coercive power, was one of Gandhi’s prime epistemic concerns. This philosophical task was huge. This paper intends to develop a systematic understanding of Gandhi’s framework, which shall be a vital guide to neating a theory of self-knowledge. It is worthwhile at this juncture to briefly illuminate some of the normative debates on the subject. This will enable us to fathom a fuller intelligibility of why the paper harps on Gandhian Swaraj to germinate a view of self-knowledge. In preceding decades, liberals and communitarians have fiercely debated the idea of the self and its role in defining morality. But then, there is not one form of liberalism; It takes many forms. There are the teleologists and the Kantians. Teleology reduces the role of the self to a mere experiencer of certain bundles of utility. The ‘telos’ explains the justifiability of a form of determinism in which the self is simply a follower. In this schema, the self is not allowed to acquire a sovereign virtue. This is the reason why utilitarians endorse the aggregation of selves of individuals for the pursuit of aggregate (maximum) utility. The discourse around the idea of the self acquired a great fillip with John Rawls. In 1971, he offered a powerful philosophical attack against those who had reduced the self to a conformist role. He invested the self with a sovereign role in terms of exercising ‘the power to reason to make choice’. By exercising this power one could accept, endorse, reject or revise a conception of the good life. This power is sometimes referred to as ‘autonomy’. Rawls is one of the representative philosophers of ‘rational autonomy’. Communitarians have questioned Rawls’ attempt to valorise the idea of autonomous self. They underscore the notion of ‘embedded self ’, the idea that the self is immersed in social, cultural and civilizational practices of the community, so much so that it cannot be detached. One yearns for the need of social confirmation of individual judgments made in absolute autonomy. On the face of it, there are temptations to club Gandhi with the communitarian rank. However, his analysis of the self-other relationship rescues him from such a categorical placement. It should be flagged at the onset that Gandhi draws on the metaphysics of the Bhagavad Gita. It had an immense impact in his moral landscaping and intellectual formation. He borrows from the Gita the two-fold formations of the selves: the higher self and the lower self. The latter is the sphere of illusion, the domain of attachments. Power and passion are the biggest vices in the inventory of the lower self. People ruled by the lower self are prone to be captivated by acquisitive vices, such as lust, greed, caprice, and an insatiable desire for materialistic pursuits. The lower self has a tendency for fetishism. It manifests in the form of fetishism of commodity, technology, and utility. This is one of the foundational reasons of Gandhi’s critique of Western modernity. The higher self is the zone where one connects with the whole of humanity. It is the sphere of ‘dharma’. For Gandhi, ‘dharma’ is not a specific religion. It is a quality of the soul, through which we know our duty in human life. It is through ‘dharma’

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that we understand our relationship with other selves. The biggest problem with the lower self is that the light of ‘dharma’ is eclipsed by our outwardly gaze (i.e. uncritical pursuit of materialistic desires). Thus, it closes the fundamental possibility of knowing ourselves, a point that will recur in this paper. Gandhi’s problem with modern civilization was precisely this: modernity presents a tormented picture of the self. So doing, it deprives us of the possibility of self-knowledge. Contrary to this, the higher self makes it a fundamental duty to know ourselves first before we venture into knowing other things.

Gandhi’s cosmic framework It is imperative to the highlight the defining aspect of Gandhi’s cosmic framework in our quest to understand his notion of Swaraj and self-knowledge. As Gandhi puts it, humankind is like a cosmos, where all bodies are connected with each other with some cosmic energy. Also, all humans are endowed with a soul. It is a repository of moral energy. It is the thread of moral energy or moral spirit through which the self of one is organically connected with the selves of others. Again, the source is the Gita. The Gita acclaimed the liberated sage as the man of discipline, who sees everyone with an equal eye. What is enthralling about him is that ‘he sees his self in all creatures, and all creatures in his self.’ This is how Gandhi radically transforms the self-other relationship, and invests it with an egalitarian and cosmic outlook. Gandhi uses this egalitarian vantage point to conceptualise Swaraj.

Toward understanding Swaraj It is imperative to say a few things about Gandhi’s conceptual tools. Dennis Dalton has noted rightly that the rejection of the Western conceptual categories is a necessary component of the Gandhian idea of Swaraj. Not only that, but Gandhi has reconceptualized protean Indian conceptual categories, too. He rejects liberal conceptions of the self because they consider a conception of the good to be morally valid as long as it is freely chosen. Given his preference for a cosmic framework of conceptualizing, Gandhi would have discomfitures with the Rawlsian position. Although he wants to reclaim the tradition, he would not have supported communitarians either, as they privilege and valorize community alone. Gandhi’s privileging of a cosmic unity among individuals and placing them at a higher moral echelon would have no takers in the communitarian rank. Taking a cue from Indian philosophy, Gandhi was eager to revisit Swaraj as ‘selfrule’. It is the rulership of the self over itself. But Gandhi departs from that tradition, which accentuates a dichotomy between the spiritual and the political. According to this tradition, Swaraj is purely apolitical, asocial, and otherworldly. It is the realm of the spiritual alone. Hence, rigors for the pursuit of Swaraj required a complete withdrawal from artha and kama, i.e. political, economic, and worldly activities. It is here that Gandhi breaks with this tradition. Gandhi’s Swaraj de-accentuates the dichotomy between the spiritual and the political. He conceptualizes Swaraj in a way that the very premise of it rests on a synthesis of the spiritual and the political.

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Doing so, he made the pursuit of Swaraj compatible with the political and economic activities. The spiritual, the key element of which is ‘dharma’, will supply morality to the political, which is the sphere of power, politics, and economics. This is the key to understanding Gandhi’s concept of Swaraj. By making Swaraj compatible with politics and economics, he has successfully provided spiritual freedom with a socio-economic profile. The idea is to moralize the individual first and the rest will follow. If an individual is moral, then the politics and economics undertaken by the individual will be moral ipso facto. Gandhi summarizes his idea of Swaraj in the following words: The root meaning of Swaraj is self-rule. Swaraj may therefore be rendered as disciplined rule from within. . . . independence has no such limitation. Independence may mean licence to do as you like. Swaraj is positive, independence is negative. The Swaraj is a sacred word, a Vedic word, meaning self-rule and self-restrain, and not freedom from all restrains. (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, hereafter CWMG: Vol 45: 263–64) For just as a free civilization demands mastery over mind and our passion, so freedom for an individual consists of each person establishing self-rule. If we become free, India is free. And in this thought you have a definition of Swaraj. It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. It is, therefore, in the palm of our hands. Do not consider this Swaraj to be like a dream. Here there is no idea of sitting still. The Swaraj that I wish to picture before you and me is such that, after we have once realized it, we will endeavour to the end of our lifetime to persuade others to do likewise. But such Swaraj has to be experienced, by each one for himself.’ (Parel 2006a: 12) This is the core of the Gandhian concept of Swaraj.

Swaraj and self-knowledge: some underpinnings Gandhi has used the term ‘Swaraj’ over a broad canvas to indicate a range of concepts. Without a doubt, Gandhi conceived of the concept of Swaraj in a way that goes beyond the binary of negative/positive, characteristic to the Western explanatory frameworks. For Gandhi, even independence is much more than physical absence of a foreign rule. Replacing the British rule by the Indian rulership would not yield Indians the kind of freedom Gandhi wanted for his people. ‘You want tiger’s nature, but not the tiger; that is to say you would make India English, and, when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englistan. This is not the Swaraj I want’ (Parel 2006a). It is imperative to re-emphasise Dalton’s point: rejection of the Western framework is a necessary component of understanding Gandhi’s Swaraj. It is fraught

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with danger to fathom Gandhi and the philosophy underlying his writings using Western categories. Western frameworks were evolved in altogether different conditions; their metaphysical sources are at variance; sources of law, jurisprudence, social, and cultural contexts that provide legitimacy to concepts were different. In contrast, Gandhi derived his metaphysics from the Advaita Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita; India’s civilizational ethos, Gandhi points out in Hind Swaraj, are different. Gandhi harps on that ethos. Thus, trying to fathom his concepts by subscribing to Western cognitive methods will not yield the quintessence. Doing so will amount to diminishing a fuller intelligibility of his philosophy. Swaraj as a concept is so comprehensive that it would bypass the negative/positive binary. Thus, it has to be rescued from falling prey to this dichotomous framing. Reference has also been made to the agential aspect of power. For Gandhi, this aspect of power is far more important than structural. Agency of a person is central to decision-making. Capacity for decision-making is key to the notion of the self. The will to rule the self, in turn, is the way to attain Swaraj. Thus, acquiring self-knowledge is the key to attain Swaraj. This paper discusses how vital it is to fathom Swaraj as an aspect of agential power for developing a conception of selfknowledge from its womb. Gandhi was aware that the politics of the liberal-making cannot bring about Swaraj, for the focus was too narrow and the lines it drew between various spheres of life were too sharp and compartmentalized. It was confined to political governance, while restraining to undertake moral reforms in the arena of the civil and the personal. In contrast, Swaraj promises ‘self-governance’ and ‘self-knowledge’ instead of political governance alone. It is as much civil as political. It does not hesitate a ‘principled mixing’ of religion and politics to the extent that the former supplies ethical vision to the latter. In the end, Swaraj is a kind of active emancipatory politics, where Gandhi lays emphasis on both: politicizing the civil and civilizing the politics.

The context of modern civilization and the urgency of self-knowledge Gandhi mentions R.C. Dutt’s and Dadabhai Naoroji’s works in the Appendix to Hind Swaraj. Poverty and Un-British Rule in India by Naoroji and Economic History of India by R.C. Dutt left a deep impact on Gandhi. Besides, John Ruskin’s Unto This Last and Political Economy of the Art moved him deeply. Colonialism was undoubtedly the reason behind India’s impoverishment; however, he was convinced that modern civilization was a bigger menace than colonialism, for colonialism itself was a product of modern civilization. Modern civilization was the home of ideas, such as utilitarianism and fetishism. Colonialism was sapping India and her people economically, but modern civilization was making her spiritually impoverished, too. It was not only causing economic poverty, but poverty of ideas too, for it prevented persons from knowing themselves, their true self, their moral purpose, and their duties toward the other. When he was asked to write a foreword to yet another new

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edition of Hind Swaraj, he was convinced of the unbroken continuity of thought contained in Hind Swaraj. The Reader may know that I could not revise a single idea. The key to understand that incredibly simple booklet is to realize that it is not an attempt to go back to the so-called ignorant and dark ages. But, it is an attempt to see beauty in voluntary simplicity, poverty and slowness. (CWMG: Vol 70) He further writes: The modern rage for variety and multiplicity of wants has no fascination for me. They deaden the inner being in us. The giddy heights, which man’s ingenuity is attempting, take us away from our Maker, who is nearer to us.’ (CWMG: Vol 70) These sources are illuminating in the sense that they facilitate fuller comprehension of what was intended when he talked about ‘voluntary poverty’. Gandhi was rightly estimating modern civilization as a bigger threat as it was bringing under its grip Indian people as well. Fascination for commodity, utility, and materiality was driving people towards a fierce, ugly, and unethical competition for resources, pushing the poor and the destitute towards involuntary poverty. The fact that even Indians too were falling prey to unbridled fetishism and thereby becoming structurally constrained to satisfy and multiply their wants by exploiting the poor pained him immensely. He addressed this issue in a three-pronged manner: 1) He glorified ‘voluntary poverty’ and ‘voluntary simplicity’, practiced them in person and exemplified before the world that he was serious about practicing the change he wanted to see in others. It was an incredible moral obligation and an act of courage. His message was loud and clear, especially for the rich and the wealthy, that practicing voluntary poverty was both an incredible moral act and a good economics. This message is more relevant today than it would have ever been. Nations are engaged in fierce economic competition. The gulf between the poor and the rich, both between nations and between groups within the nation, is endlessly increasing. 2) By practicing ‘voluntary poverty’, he empathized with millions of the poor. It was an act of selfpenance, self-suffering like millions were undergoing. It was also, as Parel remarks, a ‘spiritual protest’ (Parel 2006b: 3) against involuntary poverty of the Indian masses. 3) He invoked the metaphysics of Swaraj to tell people that self-restraint and selfknowledge is the key to spiritual life, which alone will bring them closer to God. These words of Gandhi expressed in his Autobiography are compelling: what I want to achieve, what I have been striving and pinning to achieve these thirty years-is self-realization, to see god face to face, to attain moksha. I live and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal. (Gandhi 1938)

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In various writings, prayer speeches, and interviews, he reaffirms this as his principal quest of life. On deeper understanding, this is evident; this quest informs most of his works, Hind Swaraj in the main. Although, contexts and contents have been different of his works, a search for self-knowledge and thereupon self-realization is perceptible, which constitutes a thematic unity among all his writings. Pursuit of self-knowledge leading to self-realization, enabling one to have the will to rule oneself, is how we can best capture Gandhi’s idea of Swaraj. Perhaps the best way to introduce the spiritual importance of Swaraj, or so to say to conceive of Swaraj as self-knowledge, is to ask oneself who am I? It is one of the most intense philosophical questions. Other questions that will set the tone: who is moral and why should I be moral? What is the underlying good if I succeed in knowing myself? What are hurdles on the path? The following section explores answers to these questions. Answers will suggest that Swaraj is a movement towards virtue, entailing a choice in favour of good and elimination of vices from selves. This active praxis of choice-enabling and ethic-enhancing possibility is what Gandhi means by Swaraj. We may recall the premises of Gandhi’s profound “critique of modern civilization”. One of the central aims of the text Hind Swaraj is to elaborate the meaning and purpose of civilization. The purpose of civilization is to facilitate individuals to ‘know themselves’. Civilization builds conditions where individuals can freely engage in capacity building to know themselves, before they bother to know their society and country. The individual is the unit recipient of knowledge. Knowing oneself is the central epistemic goal, which in turn would build a strong civil society. Civilization is that mode of conduct that points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and passions. So doing we know ourselves. (Gandhi 1909) These lines are pronouncing. Gandhi’s “critique of modern civilization” is perhaps the intellectual site where he lays out the groundwork for acquiring selfknowledge with a sense of urgency, which he links with a doctrine of duty. He is convinced that the ethos of modern civilization does not relate a duty with morality. It is not facilitative of self-knowledge. Obsession with materialistic pursuit is characteristic of modern civilization, he laments. Bodily pleasure becomes the ultimate purpose. It leaves an alienating effect. It presents a distorted picture of the self, alienating it from the whole, God, and the Cosmos. Modern civilization acquires an essentialist character in that it prohibits the fundamental possibility of knowing oneself. Such a civilization is self-destructive in that it takes one away from oneself. The self always yearns for unison with the Ultimate, but the course of unison is full of obstacles that lie both within and outside the domain of the self. Those who succeed in winning over obstacles are able to know themselves, realize their ‘dharma’, i.e. their moral duty in this world, and ultimately in the end they attain

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ultimate freedom. This is what we call spiritual freedom or moral freedom, the bliss of Swaraj. Who is moral and why should I be moral? We recall two lines quoted from Hind Swaraj: “Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and passions. So doing we know ourselves.” It is imperative here to understand the notion of ‘dharma’ to elaborate on this quote. Gandhi resurrected the ancient notion of dharma from where flow streams of morality. ‘Dharma’ is not a religious faith, and so there is no possibility of it turning dogmatic. It is a quality of the soul, which connects the self to its proper cosmos; it is a domain of the goodwill, because of which one relates with other selves in an empathic and egalitarian manner; it teaches persons lessons of duty toward the self, the other, and God; and finally and most importantly, it guides persons to rule, regulate, and govern the false self, which is the home of power, passion, greed, and caprice. Thus, to be moral is to perform duty in accordance with dharma. One should be moral because it is ‘dharmic’ to be moral. In other words, dharma enlightens us of our duty to be moral. It reminds us of our duty to govern the false self, which is lower in order, which is driven toward uncritical passion, unbridled greed, and unrestrained power. It is duty of the true self, which is higher in order, to see the entire humanity with a cosmic framework, and keep the lower self or false self under perpetual check. One is able to do all this if one acquires self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is therefore an enabling notion in Gandhi’s epistemic framework. Again, influence of the Gita metaphysics in his core formulations is quite perceptibly visible. ‘Sthitprajna’ is the end product of self-knowledge. It is a state of informed effort and guided spiritual quest to attain self-realization. He wrote: It is certainly the Bhagavad Gita’s intention that one should go on working without the attachment to the fruits of work. I deduced the principle of satyagraha from this. He who is free from such attachment will not kill the enemy but rather sacrifice himself. . . . As far back as 1889, when I had my first contact with the Gita, it gave me a hint of satyagraha, and as I read more and more, the hint developed into a full revelation of satyagrah. (CWMG: Vol. 20) A satyagrahi like the ‘sthitprajna’ has to know the self, he has to learn the art of purifying the self, transforming the self to the extent of considering the other as a part of oneself. This is the path of Swaraj. Critics find that there is a crisis of cogency in his moral and political thinking. This is far from reality. Gandhi was aware of a quintessential unity in all his writings and actions. There is an informed metaphysical basis behind all his writings, and together they form an organic streak or a canon, which intellectuals and researchers can subscribe to for building theories. This paper shows in part that self-knowledge and Swaraj have a strong metaphysical basis that forms a justificatory framework for his other ideas as well.

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For Gandhi, self-knowledge is not an end in itself. It is a continuous process. It is a transformative activity. It is an emancipatory exercise. The attainment of Swaraj begins with self-examination. It facilitates us with self-knowledge, which further enables us to know whether we are governed by our higher self or our lower self. If we are too much into self-indulgence, we need to control our lower self by our higher self. The logical next step is self-transformation in the light of knowledge acquired about the actual proclivities and involvements of our ‘self ’. Self-­transformation leads us to bask in the light of Swaraj. Thus, Swaraj is a journey beginning with self-examination to self-knowledge to self-transformation, finally culminating into self-rule. This is the sphere of freedom. For the attainment of such freedom, no dictatorship of the proletariat, no utilitarian, and no social contractarian methods are required. Gandhi radically reconceptualizes liberal conceptions of freedom, and it would appear that he rescues freedom from the monopoly of liberalism. Generally, liberalism defines freedom in terms of an absence of external constraints. Gandhi thought the sources of unfreedom or sources of constraints are very much internal. Such sources of unfreedom reside in the kingdom of the lower self. Thus, the solution lies in eliminating internal sources of constraints in the light of self-knowledge. It is a continuous process in that ‘After we have realized it (Swaraj), we will endeavour to the end our life time to persuade others to do like-wise’ (Parel 2006b).

Reflections on Swaraj, self-knowledge, and autonomy In this section, I discuss the question of self-knowledge, formulate a cognitive process for acquiring self-knowledge, and examine how important it is to realize a measure of autonomy. Taking a cue from Gandhi’s theory of Swaraj, let us take it as the starting point that Gandhi is an assiduous seeker of self-knowledge. I argue that because he is a passionate seeker of self-knowledge, he redefines two fundamental principles of liberalism: human individuality and human freedom. In the preceding sections, the sources of the self that Gandhi is believed to have come across and perused have been detailed. It is also discussed there as to which source(s) influenced him most profoundly. This point is important because one would like to know what Gandhi wants or intends to do by obtaining selfknowledge. One would also be interested in knowing the method of obtaining self-knowledge that Gandhi prescribes. The first task at hand is to delineate neatly whether Gandhi endorses a sociological or a philosophical account of the self. There are good chances that some of us may in haste conclude that he endorses the communitarian view of the self, because he sees tradition as a source of both modernity and morality. As underlined earlier, readers of Gandhi often find themselves confounded, given the purported lack of consistency in Gandhian writings, as to which view of the self Gandhi most profoundly endorses. The problem of this nature is understandable, given his experiments with ‘experimentalism’ as a method of proposing a viewpoint and chart out an action plan therefore. As a result Gandhi seems to have endorsed

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multiple accounts that reflect a dynamic relation between social, empirical, relational and spiritual conceptions of self. Unless the question of the self on Gandhi’s view is settled decisively, the nature and direction of the self-knowledge would not be known to us. Taking cue from Gandhi’s writings, my paper rests on the following premises: 1) that Gandhi draws on the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita, the premise of which will run like a thread throughout, even involving the risk of repetition, to privilege the moral view of the self, which yearns for its unison with the supreme; 2) that he keeps the individual and the community in tensional balance without subordinating either to the other. So he will concur with Joseph Raz that the nature of the self is shaped by shared social practices, but he will depart from him when he affirms that ‘the self ’ achieves its ultimacy only by knowing the Truth, in other words, by ‘knowing himself ’, because every person who has known himself would know the Truth. 3) That the second point is the seedbed of autonomy achieved through self-knowledge. That is, every individual becoming autonomous would come to know that all those, who he has been hitherto considering as ‘the other’ are actually part of themselves. Hence, individuals will be under a moral obligation to at least aspire to disengage from processes of ‘othering the other’. Respect for human individuality has a long philosophical pedigree. John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a pioneer work. Even before Locke, the idea of individuality had made a beginning in the Confessions of St. Augustine, and it travelled to Locke through Michel de Montaigne. Liberalism defined individuality in a distinctly unique way. It privileged to the centre-stage the idea that individual liberty perceived in terms of ‘non-interference’ and ‘right to privacy’ is the most sacrosanct and, therefore, inviolable. The career of ‘Individuality’ remained tied to ‘individual liberty’ for a long time until Kant formulated it in terms of autonomy, that is, the ability to be a law to oneself, to direct one’s life on the basis of guidance derived from within. In fact the quest for self-knowledge is to facilitate the person to explore his individuality. Gandhi’s notion of individuality transcends epistemological categories that have so far been dominating the landscape of political theory. The quest for self-knowledge will be undertaken on the basis of two premises. First, the individual-centric premise that each of us is uniquely constituted. It will be more a question of ‘who’ than ‘what’. Charles Taylor’s work Sources of the Self is instructive in this sense. He writes, ‘We seek self-knowledge, but this can no longer mean just impersonal lore about human nature as it could for Plato. Each of us has to discover his or her own form. We are not looking for the universal nature; we each look for our own being’ (Charles Taylor 1989) The second premise will be that of individual autonomy. The mainstay of the second premise is that each person is the author of his own life, shaper of his own destiny, and ruler of his own self, but this is made possible only when one knows oneself authentically. ­Autonomy theorists, such as Gary Watson, Harry Frankfurt, Gerald Dworkin, Feinberg, and others, are occupied with basically resolving the problem of authentication of selfknowledge. Gandhi will converse with them on the problem of authentication and suggest a more comprehensive idea of autonomy.

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The problem of self-knowledge Why have a passionate quest, in the first place, for obtaining self-knowledge? We ask this question to begin the inquiry. The search for self-knowledge predicates that our knowledge of the self is lost, or at least it is suffering from self-ignorance. Without having taken ourselves out of the state of self-ignorance, we cannot know the true nature of the self, what it exists for, who it is related with, and how it is associated with other selves. When we are able to know the true nature and purpose of the self, we shape our lives according to the evolved ‘will’. The moral and personal autonomy of the person, therefore, rests with the evolved will, which is moral, righteous, and intrinsic, which is why self-knowledge is a prerequisite for attaining autonomy. Gandhi’s project of Swaraj too begins with obtaining self-knowledge. A question often comes to our mind: why are we overpowered by the desire to escape the knowledge of the self? Psychologists, sociologists, and metaphysicians provide different accounts of the answer. For example, there is an account, according to which knowledge about human morality is more commonly known than knowledge about spiritual and righteous purpose of the self. People are tempted to acquire insatiably more and more in a lesser span of time. This tendency leads to the path of self-indulgence, making human autonomy its first casualty. Sociologists, such as Karl Marx, assign the spectre of the capital and the capitalist system as the basic cause of alienation in humans, which takes them away from the self. One is alienated from the labouring activity, from the products of the labour, which eventually alienates one from the self. Marxian sociologists find ‘fetishism of commodity’, which they think is genetic to capitalism, as one of the main reasons why humans are driven toward what we refer to as ‘competitive individualism’. On their analysis, ‘family’ is a capitalist institution, which engenders a corrupting tendency, a standpoint Plato espoused in ancient Greek political philosophy. On other accounts, family is a domain of the private and ordinary life. For example, Charles Taylor identifies family life as one of the constitutive elements of the ordinary, and it cannot be separated from the self. Moral philosophers, however, assign unbridled aspirations to power as a main source of corrupting the true nature and purpose of the self. Power, for them, is understood as a means to occupy political offices to administer rulership, statesmanship, and political governance. Bracketing Gandhi within any particular single account will be a methodological error. Instead, this paper argues that he appears to suggest his own methodology, a point that has been considered earlier. Given his metaphysical commitments, it will be a mistake to understand Gandhi in a reductionist manner, for a reductionist methodology will reduce considerably the scope of creative comprehensibility of Gandhi’s ideas. Although Gandhi claimed that he was not a philosopher, his writings problematize established categories of philosophical inquiry. Gandhi would agree with Marx to the extent that alienation leaves a jeopardizing effect on the person’s self. He emphasized the inevitability of manual labour for everyone, regardless of howsoever intellectual genius the person may be. One big reason he assigns for emphasizing manual labour is the liberating effect it leaves on the senses of the person. It is also very evident in Hind Swaraj and throughout his

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writings with unbroken continuity that his abhorrence for commodity fetishism is unequivocal. However, Gandhi and Marx recede from each other when it comes to ascertaining the most fundamental cause of self-indulgence, which is the obstacle to self-knowledge. The following passage is illustrative of what Gandhi has in mind about what the root cause of self-indulgence is: Literature, full of the virtues of self-indulgence, served out in attractive forms, is flooding this country from the West and there is the greatest need for our youth to be on their guard. (D. G. Tendulkar 1961) Thus, neither the family, nor capitalism, nor even colonialism was the fundamental cause of self-indulgence. Rather, it was the spectre of modern civilization, which was at the root of it. Colonialism and capitalism both were products of modern civilization, which created a creed and culture of self-indulgence. The biggest damage that it did was that it prohibited the fundamental possibility of the persons knowing themselves, for it produced, propagated, and domesticated a false notion of the self, engrossed an insatiable desire for multiplying wants, and derelicted persons from duties to the self and the God. It debased humans from the metaphysical roots of the self, therefore from self-knowledge. Thus, it will be fair to conclude that Gandhi’s quest for the self involves a liberation from the arbitrary identity imposed on persons by Western modernity and its nemesis, which we humans too often accept, because these identities appeal to our desire to escape from the real question of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What am I?’. A point has been forcefully restated in an earlier part of the paper that ­Gandhi’s quest for Swaraj did not entail complete withdrawal from the ‘world’ (worldly pursuits), in particular, political and economic affairs. Instead, drawing from the Bhagavad Gita, Gandhi’s pursuit of Swaraj recommended active engagement with the ‘world’ and ‘principled mixing’ of religion with politics. The project of mixing religion and politics is fraught with dangerous repercussions. Such advocacy is also prone to be misunderstood by critics. Just to guard against any possible misunderstanding, the argument is briefly stated here. The core of it is that while Gandhi does not allow the political apparatus to have any measure of control over persons’ unhindered right to religious freedom, he recommends purification of politics by deriving sanctity and universality of human welfare, which all religions of the world propagate. Also, at the individual level, he wanted individual persons to spiritualize his will, which is in an other form akin to Kant’s intellectual product, ‘the goodwill’, directing oneself toward the welfare of humankind. Those who are able to acquire this capacity of directing the self toward human welfare will be able to do good politics. The quintessence is to bring ‘religiosity’ to politics by this proposition. Thus, it will be concluded later that autonomy acquired through self-knowledge, for Gandhi, is a route to doing good politics. Politics is, thus, in constant search for a new definition. It has conventionally been understood as the pursuit of power, as liberal realists do. Theorizing Gandhi in this light enables us to redefine politics as the ‘pursuit of emancipatory power’, where the self of the person doing politics will be overwhelmed by the ‘religiosity’ to direct itself toward welfare and amelioration of all humankind generally and the ordinary and the ignored especially.

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The argument that knowing the self involves withdrawing from family, society, and politics is central to some schools of Indian philosophy and Christian philosophy for contemplative life. Though Gandhi imbibes a great deal of insight from Classical Indian philosophy, he makes a departure from this canon on this count.

Concluding remarks The problems of self-knowledge and the value of self-knowledge have been accounted for. Gandhi’s critique of modern civilization is once again called for to borrow a couple of precise points to support the standpoint that self-knowledge is a prerequisite for a theory of autonomy. First, the logic of Western modernity has overpowering universalizing impulses. Thus, it doubts the efficacy of the local, whether community, tradition, or culture, to evolve its own paradigms of modernity. It is dismissive of the fact that tradition can be a viable source of supplying morality by which individual persons would judge themselves on their progress of self-knowledge. Because, for the pursuit of self-knowledge, there has to be a standard by which to judge the progress of the pursuant of self-knowledge. This standard cannot be alien to one’s tradition and culture. Thus, Gandhi recommends tradition to be a good ally of persons questing for the pursuit of self-knowledge. Second, this point might give an impression that in the tussle between individual and community, Gandhi would perhaps give in to the community. Such a conclusion will be hasty and fallacious. One should not forget that Swaraj is the seminal concept in Gandhian philosophy. At every step of the pursuit of Swaraj, the self is the key unit and the key agency. Pursuit of Swaraj, as elaborated, begins with ‘selfexamination’, and self-examination enlightens one with ‘self-knowledge’, knowledge of the self, highlights the areas to work on leading to ‘self-transformation, and finally a transformed self experiences Swaraj, the ultimate state of inner and spiritual freedom, where it begins to treat ‘other selves’ as an organic constituent of one’s own self. This paper underscores two imports, which are derived from here, about the view of human individuality. One, Gandhi keeps the individual and the community in tensional balance. Swaraj is a predicate of a considered prefixing of the self at each step of its pursuit, indicating that individuality has to remain the non-negotiable value. So, the question of subordinating it to the community, which rank communitarians do, does not arise. Hence, individuality stands tall in Gandhian philosophy. Second, the nature and purpose of the liberal notion of individuality is entirely at variance with that of Gandhi’s. We should recall that in his critique of modern civilization, Gandhi considers utilitarianism as a Western morality, which glorifies the pursuit of happiness conceived broadly in terms of a hedonistic index of bodily pleasure. As against materialism and utilitarianism, Gandhi bases his propositions on a revised version of spiritualism that allows active engagement with worldly affairs. Kant and Rawls, although a product of western scholarship, have shown us that a teleological theory, such as utilitarianism, does not mind treating some individuals as a means to attending the telos of overall happiness. Such a philosophical theory is unacceptable, for both Gandhi and Rawls, hence worthy of rejection outright. The value of individuality has to be the same

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for everyone. Subjecting some to sacrifice their individualities, which entitles one to realize the worth of life, in the trade-off of happiness overall, is unethical, hence unjust. At least on this common place, Kantian ethics and Gandhian ethics share the same moral terrain. The last point that this paper aims to highlight: liberalism defines individuality in terms of entitlement to liberty and a right to self-realization, which is perceived, as Mill tells us, in terms of ‘self-development’ of intellectual and creative faculties. It is also perceived as a right to privacy and to preserve one’s identity. However, it lacks a vision of the self, as to where the person would derive morality from, what the person will do with their freedom and privacy. It has little to do with the community and the least with humanity. Thus conceived, it promotes a constricted vision of morality, limiting its scope to justifying an individually defined conception of the good, privacy, and a notion of identity which valorizes atomism. In sharp contrast, Gandhi’s individual is placed in a cosmos. There is a metaphysical system dwelling on the Gita that encourages the individual to attain self-knowledge, and liberate oneself from materialistic and egoistic constraints that prevent the individual from ethically relating oneself with the entire humankind. There is a craving for liberating the self and thereupon undertaking the emancipatory project. Thus, the very essence of individuality is spiritual, as against teleological. Mill and Rawls, perhaps the two greatest philosophers of individuality, though with antithetical justificatory frameworks, fall short of both Gandhi’s ethical framework, in which individuals are invested with moral purpose, and Gandhi’s methodological framework, for promoting and celebrating the value of individuality. Gandhi requires neither teleological nor contractarian methods. Gandhi laces himself with this notion of individuality, which this paper shows will be vital for autonomy. Pursuit of self-knowledge requires a cognitive process, which will make exercising autonomy possible. Once again it is imperative to harp on Gandhi’s non-dualist assumptions. In the Advaita, the fundamental reality of the universe is Brahman. The Upanishads tell us the Brahman is completely real. It is the basis of the empirical world, although it cannot be experienced itself. The Upanishads described the Brahman from two points of view: the higher knowledge (para vidya) and the lower knowledge (apara vidya). In other words, ‘para vidya’ means the world under the aspect of eternity and ‘apara vidya’ means the world viewed under the aspect of time. The Brahman of the higher form of knowing is the Brahman without attributes (Nirguna Brahman). The Brahman of the lower form of knowing is the Brahman with attributes (saguna Brahman). Nirguna Brhaman cannot be described as good or evil, just or unjust or loving or non-loving. All attributes are inadequate. Because all such attributes denote an order of reality but less than Absolute reality. Nirguna Brahman is sometimes described as satchitanand (being-consciousness-bliss). (Rahul 2015: 140) The Brahman is the transcendent unity behind all plurality. The Brahman is the essence of consciousness. It is not consciousness as minds can be conscious. It

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is the foundation of knowledge. So, if we cognate to know the Brahman, we cognate to know the ‘Truth’. Since the Brahman is the Absolute reality, which causes all plurality to exist, knowing the ‘Truth’ will amount to knowing the self in a direct manner. Thus, the cognitive process of self-knowledge will not prescribe separating subject and object. The Brahman is above all duality, both metaphysical duality and epistemological duality. Max Muller writes, Brahman is true, the world is false, and the soul is Brahman and nothing else. (Max Muller 1922) In Advaita metaphysics, thus we see that the Brahman is God. It is the Being of all existence, the Knower of all knowledge, Foundation of all bliss. Brahman is beyond space, time and causality. (Kumar Rahul 2015) These expositions cast Gandhi’s view in the web of relationality, from where one can understand the thread of connection and complementarity between the self and the other, the Absolute Truth and relative truth, unity and plurality, and above all, transcendental self and empirical self. This exposition also suggests what Gandhi has in mind for how he wants to execute and justify ‘self-rule’. As suggested earlier, this journey begins with ‘self-examination’, followed by ‘self-knowledge’, followed by ‘self-transformation’, leading to ‘self-rule’, i.e. Swaraj as autonomy. Thus, it is not the idea of Swaraj that by itself constitutes a notion of autonomy; rather, it is the cognitive process implicit in the pursuit and practice of Swaraj that makes it a good candidate for conceptualizing autonomy.

Bibliography Gandhi, M. K. 1971. CWMG, vol. 70, p. 242. https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org [accessed on 1 February 2015]. Gandhi, M. K. 1977. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), vol. 45, New Delhi, Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M. K. (1909). Hind Swaraj, vol. 20. Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M. K. (1938). An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth. Translator Mahadev Desai. Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House. Muller, Max. (1922). The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. London, Longmans, Green & Co. Parel, Anthony J., ed. (2006a). Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Parel, Anthony J., ed. (2006b). Gandhi, Freedom and Self-Rule. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Rahul, Kumar. (2015). Reconceiving Autonomy in the Light of Gandhian Idea of Swaraj. Ph.D. Dissertation. Taylor, Charles. (1989). Sources of the Self. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Tendulkar, D. G. (1961). Mahatma: The Life of M. K. Gandhi, vol. 2. New Delhi, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India.

7 THE DIFFERENT CONNOTATIONS OF SWARAJ Envisioning the postcolonial nation in Mahatma Gandhi, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray and Rabindranath Tagore Biswanath Banerjee Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861–1944) was a great disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, for whom science and Swaraj were closely related to each other. To Ray, science was a site of colonial contestation and nation-building. Ray strongly supported Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of non-cooperation, for he could realize the fact that one could resist the imperial economy through the formation of national industries and the promotion of rural self-sufficiency. In spite of being a scientist and an ardent advocate of modern science, Ray readily espoused and propagated Gandhi’s philosophy of Charkha and was a devoted supporter of his promotion of Khadi, which according to him could lead to the alienation of poverty by providing the Indian farmers with a secondary source of income. Ray recurrently emphasized the economic viability of Charkha within his nationalist enterprise, and depicted it as a mode of resisting the economic hegemony of the West. These nationalist discourses of Gandhi and Ray sharply contradicted with the nationalist ideas of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), as according to the latter, ‘the foundation of Swaraj cannot be based on any external conformity, but only on the internal union of hearts’. Tagore specifically had an acute distrust in the very idea of a postcolonial Indian nation that predicated itself on rejecting British administration and culture. In this respect, he strongly opposed Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement as well as Ray’s nationalist discourses, as according to the Poet, those could only generate an exclusivist and monolithic ideology, and would fail to draw its inspiration from a larger vision of humanity. Instead, Tagore had always imagined a commonwealth of nations which would be based on a sense of sympathy, generosity, mutuality, universality and reciprocal recognitions. Elaborating on his idea of swaraj, Mahatma Gandhi wrote: It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. It is therefore, in the palm of our hands. But such Swaraj has to be experienced, by each one for himself.

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One drowning man will never save another. . . . I will take the liberty of repeating: Real home-rule is self-rule or self-control. The way to it is passive resistance: that is soul-force or love force. In order to exert this force, Swadeshi in every sense is necessary. What we want to do should be done, not because we object to the English or because we want to retaliate but because it is our duty to do so. (Gandhi 1956: 46) To Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), swaraj never signified a mere political independence from the British colonial domination; rather, it carried a deep moral and spiritual connotation. In his book Hind Swaraj, Gandhi defined the term swaraj as self-control, which comes from self-realization. This self-realization originates from one’s firm faith in God, who symbolizes the ultimate Truth. This realization teaches man to respect human dignity, to sacrifice one’s own life for the well-being of others, and to believe in the doctrine of vasudhaiva kutumbakam – to conceive the whole earth as one family. Gandhi believed that every individual should have complete control over his senses, especially the baser instincts of life – selfishness, self-indulgence, greed for material success and prosperity, hunger for money, wealth and power. In this respect, the Mahatma had strongly condemned modern industrial civilization, which he depicted as an embodiment of vices and corruption. He called it regressive, satanic, kali yugi, a disease, an intoxicant (Misra 2007: 12). The principal reason behind Gandhi’s disapproval of modern civilization was its being devoid of moral and ethical principles. Thus, to him industrial development was illusory, as it had no relevance in man’s spiritual progress. Gandhi stated: It is not possible to conceive gods inhabiting a land which is made hideous by the smoke and the din of null chimneys and factories and whose roadways are traversed by rushing engines dragging numerous cars crowded with men mostly who know not what they are after, who are often absent-minded, and whose tempers do not improve by being uncomfortably packed like sardines in boxes and finding themselves in the midst of utter strangers who would oust them if they could and whom they would in their turn oust similarly. I refer to these things because they are held to be symbolical of material progress. But they add not an atom to our happiness. (Webber 2001: 135) To Gandhi, the Western countries had been completely engrossed with modern industrial civilization and capitalism. The West sought to dominate and exploit the entire world by its technological and industrial prowess. This Gandhi designated as the root of all evil. In a letter to a friend, the Mahatma wrote: “There is no such thing as Western or European civilization, but there is a modern civilization, which is purely material. . . . The people of Europe before they were touched by modern civilization, had much in common with the people of the East.” He further

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remarked: “It is not the British people who are ruling India, but it is modern civilization, through its railways, telegraph, telephone and almost every invention, which has been claimed to be a triumph of modern civilization. . . . Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth” (Misra 2007: 7–8). Gandhi depicted modern railways, courts and lawyers, hospitals and doctors, English education, and particularly modern technology as the necessary evils. Though these scientific and technological advancements had helped in the material growth and prosperity, they had degraded the moral and ethical values of the entire human civilization, and had killed the very humanity within the man. In 1921, twelve years after the publication of his monumental book Hind Swaraj, Gandhi wrote “A Word of Explanation”, where he stated: I am not aiming at destroying railways or hospitals though I would certainly welcome their natural destruction. Neither railways nor hospitals are test of a high and pure civilization. At best they are a necessary evil. Neither adds one inch to the moral stature of a nation. Nor am I aiming at permanent destruction of law courts, much as I regard it as a ‘consummation devoutly to be wished.’ Still less am I trying to destroy all machinery and mills. I require a higher simplicity and renunciation than the people are prepared today. (Misra 2007: 10) Gandhi strongly condemned Western civilization in terms of its economic and political monopolization. The British rulers in India, with the help of their own industrial enterprises, had severely exploited the indigenous economy for selfaggrandizement. Gandhi strongly disapproved of this misapplication of the knowledge of science, industry and technology by the West and the corrupting influences of modern capitalism. He wanted the basic necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter, health and education – to be equally accessible to all. Therefore, according to Gandhi, in order to establish itself as a morally civilized nation, India should look forward not only to the renunciation of the Western articles but also its aggressive materialist spirit and its unbridled passion for money, wealth and power. At the core of Gandhi’s nationalist programme lay his concept of ahimsa or nonviolence: “Non-violence is the law of the human race and is infinitely greater than and superior to brute force” (Misra 2007: 67). He sought to resist the corrupting influences of the modern Western civilization and the British colonial hegemony in India through ‘passive resistance’ or ‘soul force’: When I refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, I use soul force. . . . It involves sacrifice of self. . . . Those who believe that they are not bound to obey laws, which are repugnant to their consciences have only the remedy of passive resistance open to them. Any other must lead to disorder. (Misra 2007: 68)

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This spirit of non-violence acted as a major force in Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of swaraj. Gandhi understood that India, under the British rule, was trapped in a kind of situation where the entire society was engulfed in violence, and where people were only running after wealth and power. Thus, Gandhi urged every individual to discard material desire, which could only liberate him from an excessive acquisitive instinct and could consequently make the nation free of vices and corruption. Gandhi conceived India to be a spiritually civilized nation where people would live in small-scale, self-sustaining communities, where cooperation would replace competition, and where the community would prevail against dominance and exploitation. From this perspective, true swaraj for Gandhi would be a kind of society and polity which would be constructed by the Indians themselves and whose hallmarks “would be non-violence, harmony between people of different religious traditions, the abolition of untouchability, and the development of an economy based on simplicity and self-sufficiency” (Brown 2011: 57). Gandhi resisted the Western economic influences in India chiefly because of its being devoid of the moral and ethical principles. “True economics”, Gandhi argued, “never militates against the highest ethical standard just as all true ethics, to be worth its name, must at the same time be also good economics. . . . True economics stands for social justice; it promotes the good of all equally, including the weakest and is indispensable for decent life” (Weber 2011: 139). In this respect, Gandhi conceived the charkha or the spinning wheel as the symbol of an ideal Indian economy, the rural economy of India, which would be based on simplicity and self-sufficiency. Mahatma Gandhi’s economic model was not based on the destruction of the factories and industries; rather, he wanted a regulation of their excesses as it could lead to the exploitation of the masses. Gandhi knew that in order to achieve an indigenous economic self-sufficiency, decentralization of production and consumption would be most essential. Gandhi urged people, especially urban dwellers, to consume locally produced goods rather than imported ones, and more particularly those of the village industry instead of factory-produced materials. Gandhi’s promotion of rural economy does not merely convey his political struggle against British colonial domination, but it also projects his promotion of the ideal of neighbourliness among the indigenous population. Gandhi believed that this spirit of swadeshi could unite the people of India irrespective of their class, caste, religious and communal differences. In this respect, the charkha and khadi assumed a pivotal role in Mahatma Gandhi’s programme of swadeshi and swaraj. The charkha, for Gandhi, was a source of economic liberation, it could resist exploitation, could provide work; consequently the sameness of the work would foster a sense of oneness. Because it is self-disciplinary, it could resist the Western values of excess, and its self-control would become the basis of leaders who would then radiate to form village reorganization. The charkha for Gandhi was also a symbol of India’s spiritual uniqueness that would be translatable into a sense of nationalistic oneness: “The truth is that the Charkha is intended to realize the essential and living oneness of interest among India’s myriads. Behind the magnificent and kaleidoscopic variety, one discovers in

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nature a unity of purpose, design and form which is equally unmistakable” (Gandhi, “The Poet and the Charkha”, cited in Bhattacahrya 1997: 124). It is interesting to note how this oneness for the Mahatma blends seamlessly into the rhetoric of the spiritual: “The idea of sameness or oneness was carried by Shankara to its utmost logical and natural limit and he exclaimed that there was only one Truth, one God Brahman, and all form, namrupa was illusion, or illusory, evanescent” (Gandhi, “The Poet and the Charkha”, cited in Bhattacahrya 1997: 124). From this perspective, the charkha for Gandhi became a vital instrument through which he sought to create a cultural, communal and national integration among the people of India. On the other hand, in the spinning of the charkha Gandhi conceived a moral act of renunciation of the Western consumerist and material culture, through which India could attain true swaraj or self-rule. Gopal Krishna Gokhale first introduced Ray to Mahatma Gandhi when the latter paid his visit to Calcutta towards the end of 1901. Ray was impressed and touched by Gandhi’s simplicity and asceticism and saw in him a reflection of himself: “I was attracted to him from the very first by his magnetic personality and our common devotion to asceticism. My esteem for and intimacy with him have grown in intensity as the years have rolled on” (Ray 1932, 1935: 126; Lourdusamy 2004: 180). In January 1902, Ray arranged a public meeting at the Albert Hall in Calcutta where Gandhi spoke of the sufferings and travails of the Indian minority community in South Africa. During that speech, Ray could envisage with perspicacity that “the ideas of Satyagraha and Passive Resistance which were destined to be such potent factors after a generation had already germinated” (Ray 1932, 1935: 128; Lourdusamy 2004: 180). Ray was alert to the fact that “after all, India is an agricultural country and must ever remain so” (Ray 1932, 1935: 375). Thus, Gandhi’s programme of producing yarn by domestic hand-spinning was to Ray a means of small-scale employment to the poor peasants of rural India, who being “contended with cultivating just enough for their bare subsistence” and “sitting idle for several months in the year” were forced to live “in a chronic state of starvation or indebtedness,” committing “economic suicide” (Ray 1932, 1935: 368–372). Under these circumstances, Ray’s concern “to supplement the scanty income of the dwellers in the villages by the introduction and encouragement of a subsidiary occupation” was readily solved by Mahatma Gandhi’s promotion of the charkha, as Ray himself stated: “I hold that spinning and weaving are the two parts of the one cottage industry which admits of universal application in India” (Ray 1932, 1935: 375). Thus, in eradicating poverty in every rural household, the charkha would consequently help in the generation of national wealth, which was otherwise being wasted in the import of expensive foreign clothes. However, Gandhi and Ray’s promotion of the charkha as a means of swaraj met with challenges and criticisms from the indigenous intelligentsia and political economists of the country. In this context, Rabindranath Tagore’s arguments and disputes with Gandhi and Ray regarding the assumption of the charkha as an instrument of nation-building is worth mentioning. Tagore, unlike the latter, did not conceive the charkha as a potential tool of swaraj or a source of economic liberation

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that could resist colonial exploitation and foster a sense of oneness. Rather, Tagore argued: “swaraj is not concerned with our apparel only – it cannot be established on cheap clothing; its foundation is in the mind, which, with its diverse powers, and its confidence in those powers, goes on all the time creating swaraj for itself ” (Tagore, “The Call of Truth”, cited in Bhattacharya 1997: 82). Tagore had always been an avid advocate of inter-civilizational alliance and had always dreamt of a symbiosis of the East and the West. Despite the West’s contemptuous attitude towards the East, Tagore never lost hope for a union of these two cultures, through which a deep association among nations could be achieved. Tagore specifically had an acute distrust in the idea of a postcolonial Indian nation that predicated itself on rejecting British administration and culture. He saw nationalism as a discourse alien to India and artificial in the Indian context. In this respect, he strongly opposed Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement, as according to the former, it could only generate an exclusivist, monolithic and unipolar ideology, and would fail to draw its inspiration from a larger vision of humanity. Instead, Tagore had always imagined a commonwealth of nations which would be based on a sense of sympathy, generosity, mutuality, universality and reciprocal recognitions. This principle of love, sympathy and universal fellowship could be found embodied in Tagore’s establishment of Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan, which has become the symbol of a plural global space, a place of mutual love and tolerance, based on equality. Tagore also expressed his doubts about the economic viability of the charkha, advocated by Ray: The question of using or refusing cloth of a particular manufacture belongs mainly to economic science. The discussion of the matter by our countrymen should have been in the language of economics. . . . But far from this, we take the course of confirming ourselves in it by relying on the magical formula that foreign cloth is ‘impure’. Thus economics is bundled out and a fictitious moral dictum dragged into its place. (Tagore, “The Call of Truth”, cited in Bhattacharya 1997: 83) In spite of their deep admiration and respect for Tagore, this critique of swaraj by the latter led Ray and Gandhi to enter into a serious controversy with the Poet. They responded to the Poet’s vision as purely impractical and utopian. Indirectly referring to Tagore, Brajendranath Seal and others, Ray attacked the Poet as leading the people away from the true path of swaraj: My speeches and writings on Khaddar during the last seven or eight years, if put together, would fill a big volume. Yet it is necessary to harp on the subject because of the callous indifference of a section of our intelligentsia who would do nothing, create nothing, but simply live as parasites, and indulge in cheap sneers and gibes from their snug and comfortable easy chairs in the towns. (Ray 1932, 1935: 375)

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Tagore also swiftly responded to Ray’s attack in his essay “The Cult of the Charkha”, in Modern Review on September 1925: “Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray has marked me with his censure in printer’s ink, for that I have been unable to display enthusiasm in the turning of the charkha” (Tagore, “The Cult of the Charkha”, cited in Bhattacharya 1997: 99). The Poet added: “Acharya Ray, I also believe, has respect for independence of opinion, even when unpopular; so that, although when carried away by the fervour of his own propaganda he may now and then give me a scolding, I doubt not he retains for me a soft corner in his heart” (Tagore, “The Cult of the Charkha”, cited in Bhattacharya 1997: 112). Being a modern thinker, Tagore’s rational mind could realize the potency of technology to ease the problems of the broader world population. Therefore, retorting Ray’s criticism, he argued that instead of worshiping the charkha, it would have been far more important for India to keep pace with the progress of modern science rather than being insulated from the rest of the world: If the cultivation of science by Europe has any moral significance, it is in its rescue of man from outrage by nature, not its use of man as a machine but its use of the machine to harness the forces of nature in man’s service. One thing is certain, that the all-embracing poverty which has overwhelmed our country cannot be removed by working with our hands to the neglect of science. Nothing can be more undignified drudgery than that man’s knowing should stop dead and his doing go on forever. (Tagore, “The Cult of the Charkha”, cited in Bhattacharya 1997: 104) However, Ray had his own moral ground for his promotion of this instrument of nation-building. Beyond the limited sphere of his test tubes, Ray was “apparently guided by an inspirational force of idealism, which sensitized him to those immediate and overall realities.” At the height of the non-cooperation movement, Ray declared: “Science can afford to wait but Swaraj cannot” (Ray 1932, 1935: 228, 454; Lourdusamy 2004: 182). Thus, Ray’s promotion of the charkha and khadi and his ardent appeal to the indigenous intelligentsia for their support and initiative was not derived from the neglect of modernity or scientific progress but rather from his utmost concern for the immediate economic and social realities of his country. In his address at the opening ceremony of Khadi Exhbition at Coconada on 25 December 1923, Ray announced: I would now ask the educated men of India to consider if they would still stoop to be clothed at the hands of the same Lancashire in whose interest our country has been so far degraded and rendered destitute? Would not the fine pieces of foreign cotton goods hang heavily on our body? I utter not these in hatred to Lancashire but out of love to the millions who would get a morsel of food. (Ray 1923: 9)

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In addition to its being a source of economic liberation and a mode to resist colonial exploitation, Mahatma Gandhi also conceived the charkha as a symbol of national unity that fostered a sense of “oneness” by means of the sameness of the work practiced by the people. In December 1924, at the thirty-ninth annual convention of the Congress, Gandhi outlined his claim for the importance of the charkha: Boycott brought about anyhow of British cloth cannot yield the same results as such boycott brought about by hand-spinning and khaddar. . . . I know no other effective method for the attainment of swaraj if it is to be by ‘peaceful and legitimate means’ . . . the spinning wheel, Hindu-Muslim unity and removal of untouchability are only means to an end. (Congress Presidential Address 1934: 737). This metaphor of the charkha as an emblem of unity and co-operation was however questioned by Rabindranath Tagore, according to whom the charkha was imbued with a value that largely remained symbolic without true co-operation among the people of India. The very act of spinning, Tagore argued, could never bring co-operation among people, but would rather produce isolation, a mechanical blindness and ignorance that would kill the mind of a man, his rational, intellectual and creative faculty – the true means of attaining swaraj: “By doing the same thing day after day mechanical skill may be acquired; but the mind like a mill-turning bullock will be kept going round and round a narrow range of habit” (Tagore, “The Cult of the Charkha”, cited in Bhattacharya 1997: 103). Hence, Tagore’s fundamental complaint was that, “by the promulgation of this confusion between swaraj and charkha, the mind of the country is being distracted from swaraj” (Tagore, “Striving for Swaraj”, cited in Bhattacharya 1997: 118). This critique of the charkha by Rabindranath Tagore was answered by Gandhi in an article titled “The Poet and the Charkha”, published in the journal Young India of 5 November 1925, which was a rejoinder to Tagore’s “The Cult of the Charkha”. Defending his and Ray’s nationalist ideology, Gandhi wrote: “The criticism (Tagore’s criticism) is a sharp rebuke to Acharya Ray for his impatience of the Poet’s and Acharya Seal’s position regarding the charkha, and a gentle rebuke to me for my exclusive love of it” (Gandhi, “The Poet and the Charkha”, cited in Bhattacahrya 1997: 122). In a tone of mockery and irony, Gandhi depicted Tagore’s philosophy of swaraj as poetical and philosophical, devoid of practicality: The Poet lives in a magnificent world of his own creation – his world of ideas. I am a slave of somebody else’s creation – the spinning wheel. The Poet makes his gopis dance to the tune of his flute. I wander after my beloved Sita, the charkha and seek to deliver her from the ten-headed monster from Japan, Manchester, Paris etc. (Gandhi, “The Poet and the Charkha”, cited in Bhattacahrya 1997: 123)

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Whereas Rabindranath Tagore depicted the spinning of the charkha as an act of meaningless, irrational activity, to Gandhi it was sublimated into a symbol of national unity – that by engaging the million heterogeneous people, it could help them become part of the Indian spirit of renunciation that was to reject the West’s ethic of imperialism. Ray too was influenced by this notion of essential moral oneness that was imbued with Mahatma Gandhi’s promotion of charkha. In fact, Gandhi also believed that Ray’s mobilization programmes not merely promoted khadi per se, but communal harmony as well (Lourdusamy 2004: 184). It became clearly evident in Gandhi’s speech at the Khadi Centre at Taloda, where praising Ray’s efforts, the Mahatma addressed: Perhaps we do not know the sacrifices made by Dr Ray as much as I do, and when I heard that this was one of the many centres of his activities, I decided to make this pilgrimage once. Moreover, when I came here and saw that the greater number of those who had been helped by him were Muslims, my joy and regard for him rose immeasurably. For only when Hindus serve Muslims and Muslims serve Hindus will there be a spontaneous union of hearts between Muslims and Hindus. (Lourdusamy 2004: 184) The emergence of Gandhian nationalism, from this perspective, preached the message of universal brotherhood and fellowship among the people of India that aimed to unite all irrespective of their class, caste, religious or communal differences. In this respect, the charkha in Gandhian philosophy was assumed to be the most potential instrument through which the act of rural reorganization could also be generated. Ray’s meeting with Mahatma Gandhi was to a certain extent a turning point in his career as a scientist, as the latter presented before him certain moral and ethical dimensions that opened up some new vistas of nationalist and scientific discourses. Pratik Chakrabarti argues: “Gandhi had brought certain dilemmas and fresh notions into Indian nationalism. Machinery and industrialism were for Gandhi a great sin. He saw in large-scale industrialization the boundless increase of greed. Against this he articulated the cause of the charkha and khadi” (Chakrabarti 2004: 270). Having firmly rooted his faith to the Gandhian notion of asceticism and his moral and ethical principles, Ray too was apprehensive of “a new kind of imperialism,” brought forth by the tremendous scientific and industrial advancement, threatening man’s moral progress and the very ethics of humanity: The achievements of science are noble and great. It is removing ignorance and giving us increased power of manipulation. But science has not improved our ethics. . . . Science has given power to some to be wielded against others, enabled some to take away good things from others, enriched the scientific races at the expense of the unscientific ones. (Ray, “Industrial Development”, cited in Bhattacharya 2008: 524)

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Ray’s critique of the steady degeneration of the moral principles within a man was perhaps largely prompted by his disillusionment over the despotic and hegemonic colonial rule in India. Out of the hunger for power and material prosperity and driven by the very instinct of domination and exploitation, the British rulers in India had applied every means to ruin the subject race in every sphere of life – political, economic or social. Critiquing the selfish and harsh British colonial policy, Ray wrote: Indians were asking for bread but have got stones; instead of securing the good will and active co-operation of the people, instead of applying healing balm our rulers have kept the sore open and pestering. . . . Unfortunately, brute force and sordid instincts have triumphed over moral force. (Ray 1932, 1935: 422) Thus, Ray lamented: the baser and coarser elements in man, the instinctive desire of the strong to exploit the weak have pushed completely in the background such noble precepts as ‘love thy neighbour as thyself ’ or ‘do unto others as you wish others would do unto you’. . . . The result has been the advent of a new kind of imperialism. (Ray 1932, 1935: 249–250) As a modern scientist, though Ray recurrently emphasized the need to emulate the Western advancement of science and rationality, he never adhered to the Western capitalist spirit that sought to acquire wealth and material prosperity at the cost of humanity. This very principle of morality and ethics was also present in Rabindranath Tagore’s discourse of science and modernity. In spite of his many debates and disputes with Gandhi and Ray, Tagore shared an equal ground with them in respect to his critique of the excessive acquisitive and materialistic instinct of the West. Though receptive to the West for its modern, progressive civilization, Tagore nevertheless harshly criticized the Western belligerency, its singular passion for power and wealth, and its egoism and blind contempt for the East: I speak bitterly of Western civilization when I am conscious that it is betraying its trust and thwarting its own purpose. The West must not make herself a curse to the world by using her power for her own selfish needs . . . she must not make her materialism to be the final thing, but must realize that she is doing a service in freeing the spiritual being from the tyranny of matter. (Tagore 1970: 107)

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In his writings and addresses, Mahatma Gandhi had persistently put forward the issue of a modern man’s peril in an age of a new industrial imperialism. Quoting from Rene Fillop Miller’s Lenin and Gandhi, Ray wrote: The hatred of machinery, the hatred of capitalism which burns so strongly in Gandhi is the reflection of the hate of millions of Indian peasants and hand-workers whose traditional basis of existence was completely destroyed by capitalism and who were excluded from the possibility of existence on a capitalist basis as a factory proletariat. (quoted in Ray 1932, 1935: 387) How Gandhi conceived the modern scientific and industrial progress as a movement towards the end of the very humanity of man was illustrated by Ray, as the latter quoted: Gandhi also sees everywhere only the abuse of machinery and the enslaving of the masses in the interest of a few employers which industrialism has brought about. The machine wrecking of Gandhi, therefore like all his doctrines, is the result of this exploitation. In attacking machinery, Gandhi is protesting against its abuse. Thus Gandhi says, ‘I am not fighting machinery as such, but the madness of thinking that machinery saves labour. Men “save” labour until thousands of them are without work and die of hunger on the streets. I want to secure employment and livelihood not only to part of the human race but for all; I will not have the enrichment of the few at the expense of the community. At present the machine is helping a small minority to live on the exploitation of the masses. The motive force of this minority is not humanity and love of their kind, but greed and avarice. This state of things I am attacking with all my might.’ (quoted in Ray 1932, 1935: 387–88) In order to rescue mankind from the clutches of capitalism, Gandhi conceived the charkha and khadi as alternative means of self-sufficient, small-scale industry that could relieve the majority of the population from poverty and distress. Deeply concerned about the economic reality of the contemporary Indian society, Ray too was not oblivious to the fact that industrialism was intrinsically related to imperialism (Chakrabarti 2004: 270). Tagore’s interaction with modern science would be relevant to mention in this context. Tagore’s syncretic and international mind always revolted against the fact of India’s insulating itself from the advancement of modern science. However, Tagore was also quick to realize the human greed and exploitation that machines generated, and linked it to the spirit of nationalism and imperialism. Many of Tagore’s texts reveal his profound dilemma about the use of science and technology. His play The Waterfall (Muktadhara) is actually a dramatic enactment of this dilemma. In his essay “Crisis in Civilization”, we come across the Poet’s disillusionment with modern science as inevitably leading to exploitation, human greed and avarice. Tagore’s

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understanding of the tragedy of the man and the machine was perhaps the part of a broader understanding of Modern Europe struggling to negotiate with the spirit of destruction that it had unleashed. In an essay titled “Can Science be Humanized?”, Tagore expanded on this idea: There is no meaning in such words as spiritualizing the machine; we can spiritualize our own being which makes use of the machine, just as there is nothing good or bad about our bodily organs, but the moral qualities that are in our mind. (Tagore, “Can Science be Humanized”, cited in Das 1996: 666) Hence, in analyzing the nationalist discourses of Gandhi, Tagore and Ray, it becomes clear that these three visionary thinkers had different imaginations regarding the formation of a postcolonial India. Much as Ray was a disciple of Gandhi, he retained the latter’s asceticism, but urged for the generation of national wealth through the formation of small-scale industries, as swaraj for him meant a nation free from British imperialism and economic hegemony. For the Mahatma the meaning of swaraj carried a deeper significance. Through swaraj, Gandhi not only sought to decolonize India from British rule, but he also sought to make his nation independent as well as to sanctify it from the corrupting influences of the Western materialist culture. On the other hand, true swaraj, for Tagore, could only be achieved through the true bonding of Indians, which for him laid in the village co-operation that would seek economic reorganization and would simultaneously erase mutual distrust and antagonisms. Tagore’s syncretic and rational mind realized that, with the beginning of a global industrial economy, passive resistance to European products was utopian. Rather, he pleaded for a massive thrust towards the co-operative principle which only could establish an essential moral oneness. However, in spite of his differences of opinion with Gandhi and Ray, and his many debates and disputes on the concept of swaraj, Tagore, like the former, strongly disapproved of the very aspect of scientific hegemony and industrial imperialism of the West that was destined to acquire wealth and power by the exploitation of the other. Despite their ungrudging admiration for the progressive Western civilization and their ardent support for Western education and learning, all of the thinkers had trenchantly criticized the selfish, harsh and cruel exigencies of British colonial policy which was discriminatory towards the Indians. Condemning the misapplication of the knowledge of science by the West, they unhesitatingly appreciated the pursuit of science and technology as long as it would be applied to the welfare of the entire human civilization.

Bibliography Brown, Judith M., 2011, “Gandhi as Nationalist Leader, 1915–1948”, in Judith M. Brown and Anthony Parel (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi, pp. 51–68, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi.

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Chakrabarti, Pratik, 2004, “Science, Values, and Education”, in Western Science in Modern India, pp. 253–297, Permanent Black, New Delhi. Congress Presidential Addresses, Containing Full Text of the Presidential Addresses from 1911 to 1934, 1934, 2nd Series, G. A. Nateson, Madras. Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 1956, Complete Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. X, Publications Division, New Delhi. Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 1997, “The Poet and the Charkha”, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore 1915–1941, pp. 122–126, National Book Trust, New Delhi. Lourdusamy, J., 2004, “Sanctifying Science”, in Science and National Consciousness in Bengal (1870–1930), pp. 143–187, Orient Longman Private Limited, New Delhi. Misra, R.P., 2007, Hind Swaraj: Gandhi’s Challenge to Modern Civilization, vol. I, Concept Publishing Company, New Delhi. Ray, Prafulla Chandra, 1923, Message of Khaddar: Address at the Opening Ceremony of Khadi Exhibition, Coconada, 25th December, Calcutta. Ray, Prafulla Chandra, 1932, 1935, Life and Experiences of a Bengali Chemist, 2 vols., Chuckervertty, Chatterjee & Co., Kolkata. Ray, Prafulla Chandra, 2008, “The Industrial Development of India”, in Anil Bhattacharya (ed.), Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray: A Collection of Writings, vol. IA., pp. 498–529, Acharya Prafulla Chandra College, Kolkata. Tagore, Rabindranath, 1970, “Nationalism in India”, in Anthony X. Soares (ed.), Lectures and Addresses, Macmillan, London. Tagore, Rabindranath, 1996, “Can Science be Humanized”, in Sisir Kumar Das (ed.), The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, vol. III, pp. 665–666, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. Tagore, Rabindranath, 1997a, “The Call of Truth”, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore 1915–1941, pp. 68–87, National Book Trust, New Delhi. Tagore, Rabindranath, 1997b, “The Cult of the Charkha”, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore 1915–1941, pp. 99–112, National Book Trust, New Delhi. Tagore, Rabindranath, 1997c, “Striving for Swaraj”, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore 1915–1941, pp. 113– 121, National Book Trust, New Delhi. Webber, Thomas, 2011. “Gandhi’s Moral Economics: The Sins of Wealth Without Work and Commerce Without Morality”, in Judith M. Brown and Anthony Parel (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi, pp. 135–153, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi.

PART III

Gandhi and social justice

8 MODERNITY, COLONIAL INJUSTICE AND INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY A study of Gandhi and Ambedkar Vidhu Verma

In recent years a lot of interest has been generated on the strengths and limitations of modes of critical discourse found in Indian political thought. One of the daunting tasks of doing work of this kind is to analyze the socio-historical contexts in which ideas and theories emerge and the changes they intend to bring about. There are several dimensions along which a critique of the discipline as it has established itself might be developed. I have chosen, however, a few significant strands in this discussion to tease out the implications of bringing them to bear on the study of reading Gandhi and Ambedkar today. There is widespread agreement that a certain canon of Indian political thought is being taught in standard courses across Indian universities today. One of the most contesting figures is that of Gandhi, also spoken of as the father of the nation. Gandhi is worth serious attention because of his intrinsic importance as a major thinker and publicist on the meaning of Indian nationalism. He is more seriously recognized as a major practitioner of and thinker about non-violence as a form of managing conflict and resisting colonial injustice. Public interest in his career and thought has continued as numerous groups have drawn on this example to oppose multiple forms of political control. Some argue that it was the ‘language of nonviolent relationality in the public domain, of a moral internationalism based on the notion of compassion for and connecting with strangers, the language of soul-force based on truth and love’ (Ganguly and Docker 2007: 3). His love and admiration for his fellow human beings caused him to live a life devoted to bringing peace between the Hindu and Muslim communities in India, and his sense of justice compelled him to abhor the caste system which was deep-rooted in Hindu belief. He would go on to indict caste as a monster that has nothing to do with varnashramadharma that otherwise means ‘following on the part of us all the hereditary traditional calling of our forefathers, in so far as the traditional calling is not inconsistent with fundamental ethics, and this only for the purpose of earning

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one’s livelihood’ (Gandhi, Young India, 20 October 1927, in Varnashramadharma, p. 9 quoted Dalton 1967: 174). During the 1930s Gandhi’s resistance remained limited to non-cooperation with colonial government, and he always emphasized ‘lawful resistance’, but he did not extend the scope of satyagraha to caste-based inequality.1 A strong critique of Gandhi has emerged from Dalit perspectives that his efforts to address caste inequality seem to be efforts at evasion. He is viewed as leaving terms like ‘swaraj’ or ‘self-rule’ delightfully vague so that it was everything for everybody without disturbing anybody. The civil disobedience movements were ways of ruthlessly manipulating the less powerful sections of society to achieve goals specific to the bourgeoisie. The Harijan Seva Sangh, which worked for the upliftment of scheduled castes, were to propound upper-caste norms related to food, nutrition, hygiene and sanitation. Unlike Gandhi, one might well ask whether Ambedkar and his writings on social transformation are entering a period of  ‘legibility’ only in the past twenty-five years, when he has become for many an unavoidable reference in philosophical-political debates on caste discrimination and colonial injustice. John Dewey deeply influenced him, as did the ideals of Enlightenment and the French revolution, during the years he spent at Columbia University. Now both thinkers give prioritization of individualism, freedom and equality to rearticulate the starting points of modernity within their contexts and commitments to normative values. Ambedkar saw great promise in industrialization, urbanization and secularization and the development of the constitutional state with its constituents: representative democracy, public education and civil society. He demanded for Dalits’ entry into public spaces, use of public facilities and access to civil liberties. These mixed registers contain certain compositions that draw an uneasy parallel between their critique of discrimination, view of history and oppression. Scholars mention a serious incompatibility between Gandhi and Ambedkar and instead refer to the Nehruvian legacy in India that co-opted Gandhi and Ambedkar. They warn us against an impending danger in their thinking within the institutional prism of modernity in post-independence thinking. Hence in this chapter I argue that there is an urgent need to save and nourish the radical spirit of Indian political thought. The main objective of this chapter is to trace the trajectory of these ideas as they moved from the ‘margins’ of Indian society to get incorporated in public discourse. Given the history and diverse approaches in this school, it makes sense to drop the assumption of coherence that is central to more systematic and unified writings, and instead focus on tracing the development of specific arguments. Towards this aim, I will focus on selected themes in discourses on modernity, individual responsibility and historical injustice and the traditions of thought they were located in and assess the weakness and strength of some of their arguments. In analyzing their dialogue and hostility, R. Nagaraj argues that both viewed untouchability as a political problem, but they had divergent approaches to remove it. They were able to influence one another in questioning Western norms and their violence against the self, along with the estrangement of cultural communities due to colonial rule (2013: 360). Some of the fundamental components of their projects are attempts to discuss the many sites of power residing not only in the state but also social practices like untouchability, scavenging and temple entries.

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Ambedkar’s debate with Gandhi during the national movement can be read as a contestation of the history of Indian modernity. Much as Gandhi and Ambedkar admired aspects of Western modernity, they considered it inadequate for defining the fundamental norms of Indian society. For Gandhi Western modernity was a fundamentally violent and destructive form of life. He actively resisted the equation of modernization and westernization. By contrast, Ambedkar so persuasively expressed a desire for the Dalits to be full partners and participants in modernism in all its forms. Ambedkar did not reject modernity as such but suggested it could take other types that are unanticipated. That desire extended to his shaping of modernism uniquely, by his thoughts on law, constitution and the welfare state. He was intensely aware of the way the colonial system featured an economic structure that entailed the exploitation of the resources and labour of the colonized, even though he had disagreements with Gandhi about the best way to understand the dynamics characterizing colonial exploitation; he focused on the way colonialism created and upheld a political association based on dominative and oppressive political institutions. It is only later that he turned to a radical pronouncement of conversion when he became aware of the limited range and scope of the constitutional regime he had so ardently built up. Predictably no single definition of ‘modern’ sufficed for these thinkers, but we could surmise that for Ambedkar, Dalits could not remain behind in the semi-feudal past subject to subordinate social relations and deprived of agency. Through the lens of conversion, Ambedkar shakes the intellectual bases of colonial modernity. To what extent both of them provide an alternative and non-Western form of modernity that embodied a different set of values and ideals, which blended what they considered the best of both Indian tradition and modern, is highly debatable. Despite all their efforts, the modernity they questioned proves to be re-emerging in new and unexpected forms. A more specific objective of this chapter is to examine the indigenous ideas that lay behind some of these critiques of Western modernity. Were they in response to specific power structures? How did they challenge and change colonialist epistemologies? What were the philosophical issues that shed new light on the persistence of violence in the modern world? The legacy of violence, discrimination and historical injustice has been revealed through a range of mechanisms that seek to contribute to competing truths and accounts of reconciliation. My central focus of attention will be the sense in which the category of normativity becomes problematic in modernity, how it generates the problem of its self-assurance and creates what Gandhi terms the crisis in Western civilization.2 The starting point of this paper is the possibility of multiple modernities: the assumed equivalence between West and modernity is problematized through the themes of the plurality of civilizations, histories, modernizing agents and projects of modernity. The Indian colonial experience is part of modernity through which it cannot be read as a version of the Western model. The distinctive traits of Indian modernity are analyzed on several grounds. My first claim is that the idea of modernity which proceeds through universalizing constructions of humanity in many Western contexts is different from a basic moral order of modernity in many non-Western contexts. These are grounded in

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indigenous forms of knowledge and make a case for multiple modernities or preferably in the development of indigenous public and economic domains that emphasized the collective good. This path cannot be charted without clearing up some themes in Gandhi’s discussion with Ambedkar in which dominant conceptions of social change for comprehending a cultural dynamic were altered. To develop an ethic that shifts away from modern normativity is not to do away with norms like equality, freedom and autonomy, but to change the relationship between norms and the operation of power structures. Gayatri Spivak relies on the figure of the ‘lever’, which ‘to move into bits of vocabulary – can be perceived as a moment of transgression in the text or a moment of bafflement that discloses not only limits but also possibilities to a new politics of reading’ (Spivak 1990: 136). By intending to use this here, Ambedkar’s proclamations for conversion to Buddhism are the ‘lever’ to turn and to open the question of the nature of a civic community in modernity. The second claim is that these contextual and material conditions were producing alternative discourses of modernity as responses to colonial realities and were not entirely appropriations of ideas of Enlightenment universalism. You may then ask how one can evaluate concepts such as swaraj, dhamma, satya or karuna different from globalized versions of concepts linked to independence, truth or humanity implicated in hegemonic discourses of power? A partial answer to this question is that many of the indigenous constructs developed in these writings through which tradition and modernity are defined are not mere products of an encounter with the colonial rule or even self-evident in contextual forms of traditions or some idealist versions of humanity. One example of what was ‘alternative’ about the modernity to which these thinkers I consider aspired was that they were not averse to including a spiritual element in their framing of modernity. Thus, the tacit assumption that modernity and enlightenment would weaken the hold of religious morality is found to be deeply misguided by both Gandhi and Ambedkar, as many societies are guided by the authority of moral systems where both religion and individual morality coexist. Finally, there are epistemic breaks in defining the individual, community and institutions very different from those used by colonial administrators or the English-speaking nationalist elite in their societies. This effort has been directed to argue that ‘thick’ social norms of accommodation in their counter-narratives capture the complexity of indigenous societies by challenging modernity and differentiating the globalized discourses of power and empire. Contemporary scholarly literature mostly ignores all of these indigenous assertions of rationality in response to local cultures and power relations. By analyzing the ways colonized subjects appropriate European thought, any action carried out by non-Western subjects is seen as part of the same fabricated thought process and not as rejecting Western rationality to produce something new. Subaltern theorists alert us about the predominant influence of European thought in shaping ideals and philosophies in the Indian context so that reason, freedom, nationalism and such categories making up modernity can be attributed to the West.3 By overlooking a critical faculty that can be asserted in the indigenous context, however, the whole idea of rationality as a project is seen to emanate from a particular European historical moment.

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Discourses on modernity In this chapter, I define ‘modernity’ in a narrow sense as a descriptive word for any period of radical rupture and resistance against past norms and institutions. Furthermore, such challenges within colonial societies are deeply related to modern universal ideas and values that define Enlightenment humanism – equality, secular rationality and individual freedom. For a long time, it was assumed that it was possible to identify all societies in their economic dimensions as lying within one of the five categories: the traditional society, the preconditions for take-off, the takeoff, the drive to maturity, and the age of high mass-consumption (Rostow 1960). Modern society was viewed as a functionally specialized society in which ‘modernization’ was referred to as a change from relatively undifferentiated to increasingly differentiated social forms attended by more complex specialization and functional interdependence (Parsons 1964). In recent years the concept of multiple modernities has emerged to challenge the Eurocentrism and unilinearity of traditional theories of convergence and has led to renewed efforts to appreciate differing trajectories of political and economic development. The critical argument is that forms of modernity are so varied and contingent on cultural and historical circumstances that the term must be viewed in the plural. The theme of varieties of modernity has come to occupy centre stage in social sciences, when the primary interest is no longer in a transformation from tradition to modernity; instead there is the talk of postmodernity, late modernity, high modernity, liquid modernity etc. Communitarian theorists like Charles Taylor make a distinction between cultural and acultural theories of modernity. By a ‘culture’ Taylor defines a set of practices expressing specific understandings of personhood, social relations and virtues and vices. He acknowledges a marginalization is inherent as the cultural approach has been one-sided in their identification of what is constitutive of modern culture. The cultural conceptions of modernity have failed to do justice to the rich variety of and inner tensions between societies. No appeal is made to a non-culturally specific and thus seemingly non-culturally relative ground for critical assessment of practices informed by different trajectories. According to ‘acultural’ theories, modernity is defined in terms of some rational or social operation, or it is theorized in some performance of common operation independently of culture. In his previous work, Taylor’s account of modernity also distinguished pre-modern moral orders, which were hierarchical, rooted in sacred time and in which personal dependence on others mediated relation of each to the whole. For this reason, these pre-modern moral orders can be seen as relations of hierarchical complementarity, whereas the modern moral order is one of impersonal equality (Taylor 2004: 15). Subaltern critiques of modernity have argued that Enlightenment ideas were appropriated in India to produce alternative modernity that was just as Indian as it was European (Chakrabarty 2000). Many recent inquiries reverse the question in which tradition and modernity are no longer contrasted dichotomously, and many writers insist on coming to terms with tradition. Some argue that many of the

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subaltern classes shape their ideas about modernity by taking and rejecting from models of other groups within the same context.4 I think Susan Friedman’s work on ‘Planetory Modernisms’ is more useful as it relies on the cultural dimensions of ‘multiple, polycentric and recurrent modernities’ (2015: 11). As she explains, modernity. need no longer reside solely in a specific set of institutional, ideological or aesthetic characteristics emergent in the post-Renaissance West, radiating globally along the pathways of empire and post-coloniality, and appearing as pale copies of western genius. Instead, a particularized modernity located in space and time could potentially emerge wherever there was rapid change or a consciousness of newness. (ibid) Along with this understanding, I propose that critical voices like Gandhi and Ambedkar formulate an alternative to liberal democracies by viewing the violence in modernity. Gandhi’s vision of participatory non-violent democracy and Ambedkar’s notion of associative democracy are rarely mentioned in contemporary discussions on politics. I follow Arne Naess’s suggestion to consider ‘violence’ in its root sense of violation, referring not only to open, physical forms of violence but also to emotional injury and terror, such as those present when people are subjugated, repressed and exploited (Naess 1974). Manfred Steger argues that as a result the naturalness of violence is perpetuated through the institutions of liberal democracy by assuming that violence is inevitable. As a result. liberal democracies perpetuate the assumption of the “naturalness” of violence, and a new generation of citizens resigns itself to the fact that the maintenance of our individual liberties as well as our political institutions of representative democracy inevitably involves some forms of violence. (Steger 2006: 333)

Tradition, social reform and individual responsibility Critics have faulted Gandhi’s affiliation with universal humanism for its weak foundations. One of the most popular critiques have been of the role of colonialist universal humanism and their impact on the postcolonial state. Any critical engagement with Gandhi must grapple with these critiques. Gayatri Spivak points out how universalizing humanist modernities have been implicated in imperial civilizing missions and in remaking of histories. Some of the Enlightenment ideas get misused, as is evident in the ambivalent mode of resistance by national movements and violent shaping of indigenous epistemologies; colonial discourses of modernity sought to civilize the ‘savages’ while the nationalist discourse sought to assert their right to ‘universality’ in order to remake themselves in the guise of European modernity.

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The second attack is on colonial manifestations of rational thought, which are seen as profoundly implicated in Enlightenment reason, which is based upon absolute and universal standards. Within these sharp critiques of caste, oppressions of women, lack of rights for working classes in India and the very critique of colonialism are viewed as unthinkable except as a legacy of how Enlightenment Europe was appropriated in the subcontinent. The Indian constitution, for example, is viewed as repeating certain universal Enlightenment themes, and the most trenchant debates on untouchability in the public domain, documented and scripted are seen as emanating from the European tradition (it is another matter that what is called European tradition is itself fabricated). Article 17 of the constitution, which abolishes untouchability, acknowledges the discrimination and violence associated with practices related to it and accepts the need to confront this in independent India. It might be useful as a starting point to unpack the concept of ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’ in Gandhi to locate the context of some of his writings. Any tacit move from the critique of Westernization from his standpoint to restoring other sets of considerations does not lead to easy categorizations. The origins of the Gandhian ideology as far as its ‘social’ aspects are concerned are to be found in the intellectual socio-religious movements which developed during the nineteenth century within the Hindu community. The social reform movement borrowed much from the West with boldness and assurance, which went on to form new organizations while reviewing old ones. For these reasons, Dennis Dalton’s work points out two influences in Gandhi’s approach to the caste system. Situated within the social reform tradition, Gandhi was comparable to co-religionists like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Swami Vivekananda, who devoted their lives to the moral and material transformation of Hinduism and worked for its social unity. Both viewed caste as a social institution that had weakened Hindu society and its ability to face the Western challenge. Similarly, Gandhi spoke of a cohesive Hindu social order just as he attacked those distinctions of caste and sect within Hinduism which undermined its capacity to act as a unified social entity (Dalton 1967). The second is a reinterpretation of Indian tradition employed by social reformers in the past, to meet the attack on caste, more specifically the ideal of varnashramadharma (Dalton 1967: 165). Influenced by this perspective of social equality, Gandhi combined a sharp criticism of untouchability with an insistence that India’s salvation ‘could come only through a reconstruction of her own traditional foundations’ (Dalton 1967: 167). Thus, for many scholars the nationalist discourse on social justice had its origin in the ‘socio-religious movements which arose as a reaction to the ‘proselytisation of Christian missionaries and the criticism of Indian society by the British’ ( Jaffrelot 2003: 13). But much before social reformers arrived on the political stage, hierarchical principles of the caste system had already been contested in the pre-British period, though in an uneven manner throughout the country. Protests against rituals and distinctions based on birth came from diverse sources such as Buddhism, Jainism and the bhakti movement, along with regional sects of Shaivism, Sikhism and Kabirpants. Unlike the social reformers, they were chiefly from the lower orders

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of society – tailors, carpenters, potters, gardeners, shopkeepers and barbers. Many of the abhangs (religious poems) sought to unite religious and social concerns and expressed injustices suffered by lower castes. A limited reach of this movement is traced to the fact that bhakti’s symbolic incorporation in many temples built in praise of individual gods show that the priestly class might not have found the anti-brahman stance very threatening after all. These kinds of criticisms never burgeoned into a self-conscious intellectual attempt to confront and refute religious values that emphasized caste hierarchy and spiritual pre-eminence of the brahmans. In the late nineteenth century, many intellectual developments contributed in shaping modern understandings of equality and social justice. A generation of social reformers called for new social consciousness to reconsider Hindu traditions and religious practices. The involvement with social justice came to be defining ‘weak points in the social organization of Hindu society’ (Ambedkar 1989: 38). One of the most influential voices against caste injustice was that of the progressive reformers, mostly ‘privileged male upper-caste western educated intellectuals who were fearless in condemnation of what they considered culturally decadent (Sarkar and Sarkar 2008: 1–2). They recognized the ‘indigenous as well as the extraneous sources of Indian degeneration’ that included religious ritualism, idolatry, Brahmanic elitism and social discrimination (Pantham and Deutsch 1986: 14). The overwhelming message of social reformers was a call for Indians to take ‘individual responsibility’ for the political world in which they found themselves. Faith could not be created or instilled by an external agency, as it was mostly an inward disposition of the individual including himself toward God. Despite their misgivings, the Hindu socio-religious reformers tried to legitimize hierarchical principles of the caste system rather than thoroughly question them. Later, several strands of social reform appeared as different streams of the nationalist discourse approached the problem of inequality, discrimination and unfair treatment. Apart from similar social and religious origins of the elite in Indian National Congress, the material interests of high-caste educated groups cohered in their acquisition of English education. With the emergence of English education that fostered a liberal impulse, they soon discovered a gap between the theory and practice of British rule in India. The objective was not the destruction of caste distinctions but the abolition of privileges and establishment of equality of opportunities. Implicit in these objectives were some novel and far-reaching implications. Social reformers that initiated a renaissance in political thinking raised critical questions about the essentials of Hindu tradition, the status of different kind of scriptures, the source of religious authority and the applicability of human reason to religious matters. Most striking is the ‘humanism’ of this discourse, by which I mean faith in humankind, a sense of individual responsibility and that of benevolence for fellow beings. The ethics of forgiveness, humility and universal tolerance should influence action. Although prey to sufferings of the discriminated groups in society, they never lost themselves to the horrors of radical politics. In this respect, they reflected the more anxious mood of Mahatma Gandhi who would, in a couple of decades, be able to influence

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the constituent assembly to accept some degree of responsibility for the discrimination toward lower castes. The distance of reformers from popular, low-caste religious movements was seen as limiting their social agenda. Subsequently, this was also to be a weakness of a liberal secularist response, which was woven out of these strands to remain confined to a small class or to a small group of the intelligentsia which came from the middle classes (Pannikar 1962). The consistency of Gandhi’s political and religious thinking was evidenced in his reflections on Hinduism. Several elements in Gandhi’s theory are viewed as making him a conservative anti-modernist or as a proto-post-modernist before this time. For example, J. N. Mohanty argues that philosophers like Tagore and Gandhi have managed a synthesis of the traditional and modern while remaining rooted in tradition. In Gandhi’s case, this is evident in the way he engages and gives innovative interpretations of the Gita, Vedas, shastras, puranas and the devotional ideas of medieval Hindu saints to defend the Hindu social order. The result of these labours was not only to impart to Hinduism a depth of political understanding but also to make it more congenial to the requirements of civil society. When we view him in this light, we can see how eminently suited were his techniques and doctrines to creating and encouraging popular action. For these reasons, Steger argues that Gandhi’s practice of non-violently resisting British colonialism was ‘directly linked to the constructive task of building satyagrahis (adherents to truth power)’ in which masses ‘developed their own theoretical understanding of nonviolent political power’ through concrete experiences of domination and resistance at the level of everyday existence. Deeply influenced by the philosophy of ‘anekantavada’ (many-sidedness of all phenomena), Gandhi ‘defended the importance of an ethical and spiritual pluralism rooted in the fragmentariness of our understanding of satya’ (Steger ibid). From the brief discussion, we can surmise that Gandhi’s conception of religion and civil society taken together marked the rediscovery of the idea of a cohesive cultural community. Even as he remained profoundly influenced by the social reform tradition I mentioned earlier, Gandhi reckons with modernity as being plagued by a malaise, of which I focus on three components to complete the rest of my argument: instrumental reason, loss of freedom and dominance of individual by state. For Gandhi, European modernity’s emphasis on technology and machinery and panacea for all human ills was misplaced. Indeed this critique was long misunderstood as part of Gandhi’s traditionalism. Ashis Nandy explains that modernity does not know how to deal with those ‘using plural concepts of science and technology’ (Nandy 1992: 137). For these reasons, he thinks that disenfranchisement of select populations has taken place by the ‘complete disorganization of their social formations by modern technology’ (ibid). Gandhi displayed a great sensitivity in the way modern civilization had not understood the nature and limits of reason. The modern economic life, he warned, reduced human beings to passive spectators; he worried that ‘Indian were seduced by the glitter of modern civilization that they became a subject people. And what keeps them in subjection is the acceptance

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by leading sections of Indians of the supposed benefits of civilization’ (Chatterjee 1986: 86). It is precisely because modern civilization looks at man ‘as a limitless consumer’ and thus sets out to open the ‘floodgates of industrial production that it also becomes the source of inequality, oppression and violence on a scale hitherto unknown in human history’ (ibid 87). While none of these critiques of modernity work to dislodge either the primacy of the religious aspects of Gandhi’s thought or the priority held by spiritual values, they did signify the complexity of his political critique of a modern state. He wrote that the state represents violence in an organized form: the individual has a soul, but the state is a soulless machine, and he felt that ‘it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence’. He was also critical of the concentration of power in the modern state. Gandhi’s practice of non-violence, according to Akeel Bilgrami, was part of the national mobilization against the British but also situated in ‘an essentially religious temperament as well as in a thorough going critique of ideas and ideologies of the enlightenment’ (Bilgrami 2002: 249). Anthony Parel’s argument is similar, as he also claims that for Gandhi, it is civilization ‘whose humanism misrepresents the human reality of the unity of body and soul’. Further Parel is of the view that the critique of modernity requires a ‘re-evaluation of the concept of coercive political power both in its reason of state form and in its absolute sovereignty form’ (Parel 2003: 179). Two immediate queries follow. The first question is: does Gandhi still recognize the modern state as a legitimate institution? According to Parel, Gandhi would accept it as long as the state can be seen as subject to the principles of satya and ahimsa and so long as it seeks sarvodaya as its true end. The second question is whether the state may legitimately employ coercive force in such specified areas as self-defence and in the interest of domestic justice to remove untouchability? Indeed Parel asserts that the state in Gandhi’s thought is not a purely voluntary organization; it may under certain conditions use coercive force. The value of this theory of ahimsa, when applied to the modern state lies in this: as much as possible the state should leave to voluntary agencies the task of settling disputes; it should encourage a system of education that will promote development of character, and the spirit of ahimsa, but where voluntary achievement of social peace fails, the state has to intervene. (Parel 2003: 180) I find Parel’s explanation cogent and persuasive, but then a dilemma for justice arises as Gandhi viewed spiritual strength and forgiveness as playing a crucial role in addressing the problem of untouchability. The idea that modern individuals bear duties of apology as a result of historic actions led Gandhi to devise ingenious solutions which linked present-day individuals with the actions of their predecessors within Hindu society. Historically these claims played a crucial role in the justification of the caste system, and some of the rituals and practices could not have been

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sustained without the advocacy of the nationalist elites during the anti-colonial struggle. The term ‘Harijan’ was adopted in a series of writings during the 1930s, and Gandhi explains what it means to him in a speech to inaugurate the opening of a temple for ‘untouchables’ in Ahmedabad: the ‘untouchable’ to me, is compared to us, really a ‘Harijana’ – a man of God, and we are ‘Durjana’ (men of evil). For whilst the ‘untouchable’ has toiled and moiled and dirtied all his hand so that we may live in comfort and cleanliness; we have delighted in suppressing him’. He elaborates that ‘we are solely responsible’ for all the ‘shortcomings and faults that we lay at the door of these Harijans’ but he is of the view that ‘it is still open to us to be Harijana ourselves, but we can only do so by heartily repenting of our sin against them. (cited in Shukla-Bhatt 2015: 198) Deep within Gandhi’s point of view is the idea that by forgiving we achieve some sort of spiritual good. The wrongdoer on this viewpoint bears a moral obligation to seek to undo the effects of his community. Based on his encounters with Ambedkar, Gandhi’s thinking is based upon a contradiction between his determination to reconcile politics and ethics and his belief that they irrefutably contradict each other. I hope my argument clarifies that throughout his career Gandhi’s concerns never diverged from his attempt to reach an agreement between two concepts he regarded as incompatible: justice and (swaraj) self-rule. Gandhi held that violence is state power and that state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. This aporia led Gandhi to an original view of the human condition as part of the harmonious village republics. But the exit from the problem that Gandhi struggled to escape from became impossible in its own terms. As I argued earlier, this way of thinking about justice along the relationship of those living in the present with the past wrongdoing proposed by Gandhi is found to be unacceptable by Ambedkar. He would have asked: can justice be anything other than a capacity to render judgment? Can we have justice without looking at equality, liberty and fraternity? A discriminatory denial or disavowal of Dalits who may not conform to the practices of Hindu society can never be citizens in the true sense of the term.

Modernity and alternative epistemologies The modernism which admits the loss of unity and predicts an eternal conflict dominated the intellectual atmosphere in the Indian political discourse of that time. Many writers in the early nineteenth century, and later Gandhi, mourned the absence of unity of Hindu society and culture. What is interesting about Ambedkar’s writings is that he develops the double consciousness of certain groups living within a colonial structure; one that negotiates with modernity and one which is

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experienced in civil society with non-Dalit groups. What distinguishes thinkers like Ambedkar from earlier philosophers is that they turn away from the study of god to a significant association with human affairs, and begin what has become a long tradition of reflection on oppression and disadvantage of groups in our society. Unlike the bhakti saints that attempt to purify Hinduism but essentially crystallize as Hindu sects, they endeavor to create an independent and emergent Dalit perspective of Indian society, which demonstrates that Hinduism was based on social discrimination. While the bhakti tradition pays heed to individual salvation, personal responsibility is the focus on social reform discourse; for the dalitbahujan tradition, there is a need to interpret the intellectual and moral basis for liberation from caste system itself. The Dalit discourse articulated in Ambedkar’s writings drew out ideological contradictions within modernity by analyzing the latter’s relation to a series of key moral and political concepts and practices: namely, equality, freedom, justice and self-respect. In what follows I argue that Ambedkar’s theories reveal new answers to questions about modernity, new paths to social justice, about the colonial roots of violence and marginalization. The aim is to show not just how Ambedkar’s approach to justice remains philosophically relevant but that it is relevant to a range of philosophical issues. Going beyond confirming insights on colonial injustice by earlier theorists like Jotiba Phule, Ambedkar expands, strengthens and offers correctives to the emancipatory dimensions of modernity. In the early writings, we have come to expect from Ambedkar a triumphalist account of the development of modernity. He suggests at first that modes of social life or organization which emerge with distinctive characteristics in modernity create vastly greater opportunities for human beings to enjoy a secure and rewarding existence of self-respect. Later he rejects the peaceful village communities as they are but as a ‘sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism’. In developing a fresh characterization of the nature of modernity, he starts arguing that it has a somber side that leads to frequently degrading nature of modern industrial growth and alarming development of military and weapons. In ‘What Gandhi and the Congress have done to the Untouchables’ (Ambedkar 1991). Ambedkar critiques Gandhism as ‘it treats man as an animal and no more. It is true that man shares the constitution and functions of animals, nutritive, reproductive, etc. But there are not distinctively human functions. The distinctively human function is reason, the purpose of which is to enable man to observe, meditate, cogitate, study and discover the beauties of the Universe and enrich his life’ (152). This is of course a key question raised in Marx’s writings too, especially that emphasize the production process. Although Ambedkar’s remarks about Marxism reject the materialist determination of the social imaginary and ill-fated attempts to rely on economic explanations, his analysis cannot avoid the conclusion made by Marx: the ‘goal of man’s existence is not reached unless and until he has fully cultivated his mind. . . .(142). How then can a life of culture be made possible? It is not possible unless there is sufficient leisure. . . . (252). The problem of all problems which human society has to face is how to provide leisure to every individual. For

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all the reasons to abandon Marxism, this point should not be lost in his critique of assessment of modernity when Ambedkar goes on to explain that leisure ‘means lessening of the toil and effort necessary for satisfying the physical wants of life’. He wants machinery to eventually emancipate man from ‘leading the life of a brute’. Unlike Gandhi he argues that the slogan of a democratic society must be more machinery so that we can overcome ignorance, poverty and misery.5 In Ambedkar’s view, political processes in modernity are closely related not only to transmission of knowledge but also to the scope where cultural values through ‘leisure’ are reproduced. In the caste system, the normative model legitimizes the roles within a rigid social structure and defines criteria for distribution of various social positions and resources in society. The uncritical acceptance by those within the scheme of ‘graded inequality’ is possible as they perceive themselves as part of a legitimately recognized social order. Modernity under the British rule, for Ambedkar, did not break this down. Indeed participation and representation become deeply problematic as equality of formal rights and equality of opportunity are now contested with experience of disadvantage and exclusion being redefined. What does his critique of normativity offer to think about ethics after colonialism? Ambedkar’s analysis asks us to consider the ways in which production of unequal social relations, religious differences and caste domination are implicated in the power structures that make up for modern normativity in liberal political orders. Ambedkar’s critique of normativity asks us to consider the way Hinduism contributes to the construction and defence of caste hierarchies; conversion to Buddhism and belief in the philosophy of non-violence then also becomes about individual freedom and civic communities. How do norms of liberal democracy define who is part of an egalitarian order or not? The issues raised by him are manifold, and I have addressed them elsewhere. Here I only focus on Ambedkar’s understanding that what is distinctively wrong about Hinduism and its associations is that the wrong exhibited by them denies their members equality and reciprocity and makes them vulnerable to domination, exploitation and exclusion. For him to see the disadvantages of Dalits as unjust, it must imply that their circumstances are grounded in institutions and in social processes they generate. A decisive break takes place in the discourse of social justice found in Gandhi that focused on the idea of individual responsibility – a central feature also of the social reform movement. This break leads to reinterpretation of certain key political concepts, notably equality and self-respect, that raise the question of how groups that experience oppression can relate to one another. In his speech before the conversion, Ambedkar drew on the Buddha’s famous words to underscore his argument: that it must be a deliberate choice and not one that a person makes in haste or blindly. Quoting the Buddha’s message to Ananda, Dr Ambedkar concluded his address on this note: ‘I also take your leave in the words of the Buddha. “Be your own guide. Take refuge in reason. Do not listen to the advice of others. Do not succumb to others. Be truthful. Take refuge in truth. Never surrender to anybody! If you keep in mind this message of Lord Buddha at this juncture, I am sure your decision will not be wrong’.

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Ambedkar quotes Buddha and relies on ‘traditional’ critique of the caste system and the socio-moral codes (including its views on rights, freedom and justice) on which it is based. The compelling quality of Ambedkar’s conceptions, however, are that they have much to do with a radically new articulation that Buddhism should be and originally was about engagement with the world apart from the practice of truth and compassion. I argue that by proclaiming conversion he develops a critique aimed at freeing the subject from domination and violence of coercive traditions. It is a central feature of Ambedkar’s political vision that for power to be chastened, political institutions must redress social inequities in civil society. In championing a conception of politics which embraces diverse activities, he makes politics coextensive with concerns in the social, cultural and economic life and opens these domains to public scrutiny, which is not the same as conflating the political and social.6 In this context, Ambedkar’s claims arising out of historical recollection of injustices have to do with identity and contingency. It must be clarified that these claims were not to only make up for the loss of opportunity, dignity and status in society that Dalits suffered at the hands of their fellow citizens, but were in order to recognize that this injustice had occurred in Hindu society and that these people were among the victims. Hence for Ambedkar these were not in order to repair harms; these claims were not only about substantial transfers to land, wealth and resources in order to rectify the past wrongs; they were about implementing a public policy on reservations that would give opportunities for these groups to be part of public institutions in independent India. They were about public recognition of past injustices that would help reconstruct a political community based on the ideal of equality. Gandhi’s arguments state that society is responsible for making amends through love to those who had been victims in the past of social discrimination. Since society participated in wrongful actions with harmful effects, society was obligated to remedy some of these harms. However, Gandhi’s approaches to social inequalities were contradictory; he did not separate Ambedkar’s attack on ascriptive social hierarchy in Hindu society from the challenge to inequalities arising from the lack of leisure and the overcoming of physical wants. Gandhi’s account of individual responsibility does not work well to conceptualize responsibility in relation to structural injustices and practices which Ambedkar was discussing. Gandhi’s conception requires that we trace a direct connection between the action of a person or group and a harm; assigning responsibility derives from reasoning to find guilt or fault for a harm. But he also spoke of actions that can be shown to be involuntary and performed without adequate knowledge of the situation. If agents of responsibility are shown that their actions were not voluntary or that they were ignorant, then their responsibility is mitigated. When these conditions exist, it is inappropriate to blame the individual agents as their actions are involuntary. The other problem is regarding social injuries that are the subject of demands for social justice. These injuries are not so easily put in the past as they are constantly re-experienced due to the material conditions that persist. Thus Gandhi’s device

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of splitting questions of historic injustice from questions of distributive justice are problematic; individual responsibility does not address the victim as a subject as the idea is of recreating a good person who has recognized and coped with hatred of the past embodied in the caste system. In a different context, Iris Young in her critique of Hannah Arendt examines the concept of guilt that applies strictly to individual deeds as ‘guilt loses its meaning if applied to a whole group or community related by association to a wrong’. Arendt had argued that where all are guilty, nobody in the last analysis can be judged, to which Young explains that ‘it is a mystification to say that people bear responsibility simply because they are members of a political community’ (Young 2013: 79–80). Though our terminological usage varies, some of these arguments developed by Young in a social connection model of responsibility are pertinent to my discussion. I think this distinction is relevant to see different approaches in Gandhi and Ambedkar towards social justice. Ambedkar claimed a political responsibility that is not only about historic injustice and events in the past, but also about awareness that is forward-looking and about the fate of all the people in civil society in the future. It is close to a duty for individuals to take public stands about actions and events that affect people and to prevent harm and foster institutional change. Ambedkar’s argument articulates a crisis in modernity with its own trust in progress and growth and challenges a liberal understanding that justifies ongoing injustices in the name of development and democracy.

Notes 1 For more on lawful resistance and civil disobedience, see the author’s unpublished paper ‘Authority, obligation and moral action in Gandhi’. 2 For more, see J. Habermas (1985) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge: MIT Press. 3 See Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Colonial Difference. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 4 Ciotti demonstrates that Chamars got politically aware through education but as a group excluded Brahman priests from their own religious practices. thus creating conditions for cultural integration with the Ambedkar’s ideology. Her work calls into question how Dalits have engaged in worlds by creating new forms of political, economic and religious practices. 5 B. R. Ambedkar (1991) What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, 1945, vol. 9: 1–387. Edited by Vasant Moon. Maharashtra: Education Department, henceforth WS. 6 B. R. Ambedkar (1992) Buddha and His Dhamma. WS, vol. 2.

Bibliography Ambedkar, B. R. (1989) Annihilation of Caste, with a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi, 1936, WS, vol. 1, 23–96. Maharashtra: Education Department. Ambedkar, B. R. (1991) What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. Maharashtra: Education Department, 1945, WS vol. 9, 1–387. Ambedkar, B. R. (1992) Buddha and His Dhamma, vol. 2.

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Bilgrami, Akeel (2002) ‘Gandhi’s Integrity: The Philosophy Behind the Politics’, Postcolonial Studies, Maharashtra: Education Department, vol. 5, issue 1. Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Colonial Difference. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Chatterjee, Partha (1986) Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ciotti, Manuella (2010) Retro-Modern India: Forging the Low-Caste Self. New Delhi and London: Routledge. Dalton, Denis (1967) ‘The Gandhian View of Caste and Caste After Gandhi’, in Philip Mason (ed) India and Ceylon: Unity and Diversity. London and New York: Oxford University Press. Ganguly, Debjany and John Docker (eds) (2007) Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent ­Rationality. Routledge. Habermas, J. (1985) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge: MIT Press. Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003) India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. London: Hurst and Company. Naess, Arne (1974) Gandhi and Group Conflict: An Exploration of Satyagraha. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Nagaraj, D.R. (2013) ‘Self Purification Versus Self-Respect: On the Roots of the Dalit Movement’, in R. Raghuramaraju (ed) Debating Gandhi: A Reader. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 360. Nandy, Ashis (1992) ‘From Outside the Imperium: Gandhi’s Cultural Critique of the West’, in Traditions (ed) Tyranny and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Panikkar, K.M. (1962) In Defence of Liberalism. New York: Asia Publishing House. Pantham, Thomas and Kenneth L. Deutsch. (eds) (1986) Political Thought in Modern India. New Delhi: Sage. Parel, Anthony (2003) ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s Critique of Modernity’, in Anthony J. Parel and Ronald C. Keith (eds) Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies under the Upas Tree. New York: Lexington Books. Parsons, Talcott (1964) ‘Evolutionary Universals in Society’, American Sociological Review, June 29, 339–357. Rostow, W.W. (1960) The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarkar, Tanika and Sumit Sarkar (2008) Women and Social Reform in Modern India. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Shukla–Bhatt, Neelima (2015) Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat: A Legacy of Bhakti in Songs and Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1990) The Post-colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. London: Routledge. Stanford Friedman, Susan (2015) Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time. New York: Columbia University Press. Steger, Manfred B. (2006) ‘Searching for Satya Through Ahimsa, Gandhi’s Challenge to Western Discourses of Power’, Constellations, vol. 13, issue 3. Steger, Manfred B. and Nancy S. Lind (eds) (1999) Violence and Its Alternatives. New York: St Martin’s Press. Taylor, Charles (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Verma, Vidhu (1999) ‘Colonialism and Liberation: Ambedkar’s Quest for Distributive Justice’, Economic and Political Weekly, 25 September–1 October, vol. 34, no. 39, 2804–2810. Young, Iris Marion (2013) Responsibility for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

9 THE AMBEDKAR–GANDHI DEBATE (1931–1956) Alternative approaches to memory and identity Bindu Puri

The debate The Gandhi–Ambedkar debate was one of a trilogy of three significant debates in Gandhi’s life. Gandhi’s first debate was with Savarkar. This debate raised conflicting understandings about Indian identity, Nationalism and Hinduism (see Puri 2001). Gandhi’s second debate was with Tagore, and it started about the time they met in Santiniketan in March 1915. This debate was primarily about the nature of individual/collective freedom and the proper means to attain such freedom (Puri 2015). The third Gandhian debate was with Ambedkar in the 1930s. It was a debate about conflicting interpretations of caste and varna and of the proper means to eradicate untouchability and secure justice for the depressed classes. Ambedkar’s first public comment on Gandhi’s methods to eradicate untouchability was in 1925. Commenting on the Vaikkom satyagraha (at a Conference of the depressed classes at Belgaum), Ambedkar expressed his appreciation of Gandhi’s anti-untouchability work. Though the debate between them, properly speaking, commenced from about 1931 (the Second Round Table Conference in London), it is apparent that even in 1925 Ambedkar had the clear sense that Gandhi was not doing as much as he could, and indeed should have done, for the abolition of untouchability: “Before Mahatma Gandhi, no politician in this country maintained that it is necessary to remove social injustice here in order to do away with tension and conflict, and that every Indian should consider it his sacred duty to do so. . . . However, if we look closely, one finds there is a slight disharmony. . . . for he does not insist on the removal of untouchability as much as he insists on the propagation of Khaddar or the Hindu Muslim unity. If he had he would have made the removal of untouchability a precondition of voting, in

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the party. Well, be that as it may, when one is spurned by everyone, even the sympathy shown by Mahatma Gandhi is of no little importance.” (Ambedkar quoted in Pantham 2013: 187) Gandhi first met Ambedkar on 14 August 1931 at Malabar Hill in Bombay. This was immediately before their travel to London for the Second Round Table Conference. Giving an account of the meeting, Ambedkar’s biographer Dhananjay Keer writes: “The interview sounded the beginning of a war between Gandhi and Ambedkar”(Keer 2009: 168). The conflict between them became public barely a month and a half later (on 8th October 1931 during a meeting of the Minorities Committee) at the Second Round Table Conference in London. One can argue that the debate started at this time that is, in October 1931, and it continued till long after Gandhi died, ending only with Ambedkar’s own death in 1956. Note for instance Ambedkar’s comments about Gandhi in an interview to BBC radio in December 1955: “He was never a Mahatma. I refused to call him a Mahatma. . . . He doesn’t deserve that title. Not even from the point of view of his morality.”1 There were several issues on which Gandhi and Ambedkar came into conflict. Interestingly, recent commentators on this debate have focussed on the possibilities of reconciliation (despite differences) between the approaches of Gandhi and Ambedkar. In this context Ram Guha (2010) specifies three issues that divided them: Gandhi wanted to save Hinduism by abolishing untouchability while Ambedkar wanted a solution to inequality “outside the fold”(Guha 2010: 33) of Hinduism. Gandhi was a “rural romantic” (Ibid) while Ambedkar was an admirer of city life and modern technology. Gandhi was a “crypto-anarchist” and Ambedkar a “steadfast constitutionalist” (Ibid). However, Guha believes that they can and should be reconciled in the light of history. On a similar note, Thomas Pantham (2013) concludes that, sometimes together and sometimes separately, both Gandhi and Ambedkar made contributions to the movement for the freedom of untouchables: “Recognizing the compatibility, if not a mutual supplementarity, between their emancipatory legacies in the religious and political spheres may perhaps be needed today for a co-operative revitalization of our unfinished moral-political movement against untouchability” (Pantham 2013: 206). The Kannada critic D.R. Nagraj (Nagraj 2010), in his influential and philosophically provocative interpretation of the conflict, argued that the debate revolved around an opposition between self-purification and self-respect. The Gandhian campaign against untouchability initiated the “self-conscious Hindu reformer into the sacred issue of confrontation against the orthodoxy” (Nagraj 2010: 47). This tended to transform the caste Hindu reformer into a hero, and as Nagraj puts it: “Ambedkar could never settle for the roles of Hanumantha and Sugreeva” (Ibid). Nagraj argues that the positions of Gandhi and Ambedkar can and should

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be reconciled. Though they had deep differences, their encounter considerably transformed them both. This transformation lead Gandhi to an understanding of the place of economic rights in securing equality for the depressed classes. Ambedkar, in turn, transformed his position on the importance of belonging to a religious community. Along similar lines, Ananya Vajpeyi (2012) argues more recently that “in the final analysis he (Ambedkar) wanted the Untouchables to reconstitute themselves as a religious community in a more traditional sense of religion” (Vajpeyi 2012: 222). This was what drove Ambedkar to the act of conversion and “paradoxically” brought him close to Gandhi (Ibid). As against these approaches to the debate, it may be noted that this paper makes no effort to reconcile the positions of Gandhi and Ambedkar. It argues instead that the differences between them were based on more fundamental issues than might appear from the immediate terms of the exchange. The paper will argue that the debate arose on account of the fact that Gandhi and Ambedkar had very different understandings of self-identity and of the relationship between an individual’s sense of self and the structure of her memories. The next section of the paper will examine the points of difference between Gandhi and Ambedkar. Section 3 will bring out the more important philosophical divergences between them.

Three main lines of divergence This section will briefly recapitulate the central differences between Ambedkar and Gandhi. Though Gandhi and Ambedkar argued about many things, they can be summed up under three main points. These will be philosophically unpacked in three brief sub-sections.

Rival approaches to the abolition of untouchability The first point of conflict came from the differences in their approaches to the eradication of untouchability in India. The distinguishing characteristic of Gandhi’s approach to untouchability was that he treated it as an internal religious affair of the Hindus. Consequently, he argued that the onus was on the upper-caste Hindus to purge Hinduism of this evil by performing penance on behalf of themselves and the community. Ambedkar and other dalits gradually felt deeply alienated because Gandhi did not link untouchability with the caste system and continued to support the caste system till the 1920s. As late as 1934 he defended an idealized version of the varna system. It was only much later in the 1940s that he changed his position and decided to challenge caste directly, by accepting and proposing intercaste marriages. There were two primary and interconnected lines of divergence between Ambedkar and Gandhi on the abolition of untouchability and the movement thereof. The first related to how untouchability was to be understood vis a vis Hinduism, and the second concerned the issue of allocating responsibility for its eradication.

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Gandhi held on to the belief that untouchability was an internal religious affair of the Hindus while Ambedkar gradually came to insist that it was primarily a civil matter – one of protecting the civil, political and economic rights of the depressed classes. There were two phases in the method that Ambedkar followed: till about 1934 he sought equality within Hinduism, and after this time he redefined the primary objective as liberation from Hinduism. In the first phase, Ambedkar had been supportive of some of the temple entry satyagrahas – he took an interest in the Viakkom movement in 1924, the Mahar temple entry movement into the temple at Amraoti in 1927, the satyagraha at the Parvati temple at Poona in 1929 and the movement at Nasik in 1930. However, by 1934 Ambedkar finally dissociated himself from the issue of temple entry. In 1935 at Yeola he announced his decision to convert, and in 1935 and 1936 he considered conversion to Christianity, Islam and Sikhism. In 1948 he published Untouchables, in which he argued that the untouchables were former Buddhists. In 1956 he formally converted to Buddhism. The second basic difference between Gandhi and Ambedkar’s methods for the eradication of untouchability concerned the issue of leadership and agency. Gandhi spoke of the movement in terms of self-purification of caste Hindus through penance and atonement. He believed that this would lead to a conversion of heart of upper-caste Hindus and thereafter to openness in Hindu society. The change would be signified by the opening of formerly enclosed spaces such as temples, wells, schools and roads to the depressed classes. This (as Nagraj has famously argued) placed the agency for the Gandhian movement firmly in the hands of the uppercaste Hindu self. Ambedkar rejected this and argued that leadership of the movement to eradicate untouchability and the self-respect of the depressed classes were interconnected issues.

Gandhi: untouchability inwardness and swadeshi To my mind one can best understand Gandhi’s approach to securing equality for the depressed classes in terms of two conceptions: inwardness and swadeshi. These two conceptions firmly distanced his approach from the one adopted by Ambedkar. To look closely at the inwardness in the Gandhian approach to untouchability, one can say that though Gandhi recognized the need for equal civil, economic and political rights, he emphasized religious equality within Hinduism before everything else. This is why the Gandhian approach to securing equality of social relations was essentially concerned with invoking the conscience of the uppercaste Hindu self into self-reflection and self-purification. Though this inwardness in Gandhi’s position on untouchability can and has been interpreted as radical conservatism in the guise of reform (see Skaria 2016: 23), it could also be seen as inwardness associated with the spiritual/moral life as an essential constituent of religious engagement. One may argue, for instance, that one way in which spirituality can be understood is as a movement inwards, so that an individual removes layers of self-deception and comes to the truth of herself and relates that with her

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moral and religious life. The moral life has also been associated with an inwardness that comes from self-reflection. Gandhi certainly wanted to achieve equality within Hindu society for the depressed classes. However, he wanted an equality that came from the reflective consciousness of Hindus (both individually and as a collective body) and the realization that the necessity which they found in their role in the social system was itself a product of that social system. The inwardness in Gandhi’s approach to the eradication of untouchability is perhaps best signified by the difference between Gandhi’s two fasts over untouchability. While the first fast (in September 1932) was over the communal award and the issue of political representation, the second fast (over untouchability in May 1933) was a retreat within himself in order to search for the truth. As Nagraj comments:  “in the first one, Gandhiji wanted to win, but in the second he was seeking truth. . . . The transformation of the external conflict into an internal one was complete” (Nagraj 2010: 51). Perhaps Gandhi’s understanding of the conflict had not been transformed between the two fasts, and in his understanding the conflict had always been internal. The second conception that could be useful in re-interpreting Gandhi’s position on untouchability was the conception of swadeshi as a religious principle. This was directly linked to the inwardness in the Gandhian approach to securing equality for the depressed classes. That swadeshi had the character of a religious duty can be made apparent from the leading place Gandhi gives to it in the ashram vows. Swadeshi appears in an expanded list of yamas and niyamas, what Gandhi calls “the cardinal and casual virtues” (Gandhi, eCWMG, Vol. 33: 447–448), some of which were taken from the traditional vows listed in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: Swadeshi is that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote. (Prabhu and Rao 2007: 410) When applied to religion, Gandhi argues, Thus in the matter of religion I must restrict myself to my ancestral religion. If I find my religion defective I should serve it by purging it of its defects. (Ibid) Gandhi took the route of the religious believer and a religious insider to the eradication of untouchability. This committed him to a critical engagement with the religion of his ancestors. Gandhian swadeshi did not commit the religious devout to uncritical obedience to her traditional religion. On the other hand, it meant that the devout had a duty to critically engage with and reform her traditional religion, rather than abandon it for another faith that appeared better. As is apparent, this commitment to ancestral religion and rejection of conversion firmly distanced Gandhi from Ambedkar.

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Issue of separate electorates The differences between Ambedkar and Gandhi crystallized in 1932 over the issue of separate electorates. The communal award (1932) gave the depressed classes two votes: one in a primary election to choose from among the depressed class candidates who were to stand in the districts reserved for them and one in a general electorate. On the eve of his epic fast against the award, Gandhi made it clear that he would accept reserved seats for the untouchables as long as separate electorates were replaced by joint electorates for the general election. The Poona Pact brought the fast to a close, and Gandhi traded a separate electorate for an increase in the number of seats reserved for the depressed classes. Ironically, this conflict and the Poona Pact left both the upper castes and the depressed classes equally unhappy with Gandhi’s role in the conflict. In 1928 (in the speech before a Pune session of the Simon Commission) Ambedkar had argued that a joint or common electorate was better than separate electorates with reserved seats. However, at the time of the Second Round Table Conference, Ambedkar pressed for separate electorates. This change reflected his growing rejection of the Hindu community and increasing realization that the depressed classes needed a distinct political identity in order to bring about a material improvement in their position. Gandhi’s opposition to separate electorates brought Ambedkar into sharp conflict with Gandhi. Gandhi had made several arguments against separate electorates “Muslims and Sikhs are all well organized. The ‘Untouchables’ are not. There is very little political consciousness among them and they are so horribly treated. . . . If they had separate electorates their lives would be miserable in villages that are the strongholds of Hindu orthodoxy. It is the superior class of Hindus who have to do penance. . . . Separate electorates to the ‘Untouchables’ will ensure them bondage in perpetuity. The Musalmans will never cease to be Musalmans by having separate electorates. Do you want the ‘Untouchables ‘to remain ‘Untouchables’ for ever? Well, the separate electorates would perpetuate the stigma. What is needed is destruction of untouchability, and when you have done it, the bar-sinister which has been imposed by an insolent ‘superior’ class . . . will be destroyed. . . . With adult franchise, you give the ‘Untouchables’ complete security. Even the orthodox would have to approach them for votes. (Gandhi, eCWMG, Vol. 54: 83–84) Gandhi wrote to the British Prime Minister on 9 September 1932 informing him that he was determined to fast unto death against separate electorates: I affirm that for me this matter is one of pure religion. The mere fact of the depressed Classes having double votes does not protect them or Hindu society in general from being disrupted. In the establishment of separate electorates at all I sense the injection of poison that is calculated to destroy

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Hinduism and do no good whatever to the Depressed Classes. . . . I should not be against even over-representation of the Depressed Classes. What I am against is their statutory separation even in a limited form from the Hindu fold, so long as they choose to belong to it. (Gandhi, eCWMG, Vol. 57: 8) On the eve of the fast, Ambedkar voiced his opposition to Gandhi’s position in a public address: I hope that the Mahatma will desist from carrying out the extreme step contemplated by him. We mean no harm to the Hindu society when we demand separate electorates. If we choose separate electorates, we do so in order to avoid the total dependence on the sweet will of the Caste Hindus in matters affecting our destiny. . . . The Mahatma is . . . fostering the spirit of hatred between the Hindu Community and the Depressed Classes by resorting to this method and thereby widening the existing gulf between the two. (quoted in Aakash Singh, 6) Ambedkar argued that Gandhi had opposed separate electorates on account of the fact that he (Gandhi) was very much afraid that the scheduled castes would be sort of as independent a body as the Sikhs and Muslims were. And that the Hindus would be left alone, to fight a battle against as combination of these three sections. That was what was at the back of his mind, and he didn’t want the Hindus to be left without any allies. (Ambedkar interview on BBC Radio in New Delhi on December 31, 1955) Even if one were to accept Ambedkar’s argument that Gandhi’s primary reason to oppose the separate electorates was political, it would be difficult to entirely overlook Gandhi’s own arguments against political separatism. These can be briefly put together as follows: 1 Gandhi had argued that the separate electorates would put the majority of depressed classes living in village India at risk from the upper castes. Gandhi had experience of the sort of economic, material and physical power that the upper castes enjoyed in the villages. He stated this clearly: “It will create a division in Hinduism which I cannot look forward to with any satisfaction. Those who speak of political rights of Untouchables do not know . . . how Indian society is today constructed” (Gandhi, eCWMG, Vol. 54: 158–159). Gandhi believed that adult franchise would work better to improve the conditions of the depressed classes, as every upper-caste member would feel a sense of dependence on the depressed-class voter.

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2 Gandhi seemed clear that since the upper castes had committed the wrong, the most effective step at redress could come from their acceptance of a sense of shame. To Ambedkar this argument appeared naive, ill-founded and an act of bad faith. In Gandhi’s defence one could look at this argument in the wider context of his moral faith in the inherent possibilities of goodness in every human being. It may be remembered that it was on the basis of such a moral faith that Gandhi had conceived satyagraha or a ‘non-violent resistance to untruth’ as the appropriate means for redressing injustice. 3 Gandhi was clear that untouchability was primarily a religious problem. As such, he argued that it would not be solved by a purely political solution. 4 Gandhi could not accept the claim that the case of the untouchables ought to be treated as similar to that of the case of representation for the Muslims, Sikhs and other religious minorities. He argued that separate electorates for Muslims and other minorities were intended to safeguard their religio-social-cultural identity and retain their distinct presence in Indian politics and society. However, on his view, to do the same with the untouchables would be to perpetuate their distinct identity as untouchables. This would be detrimental to both untouchables and the Hindu community. 5 Lastly, Gandhi argued that so long as the depressed classes chose to belong to the Hindu community, they could not be separated from it for purposes of political representation, as that would seriously disrupt the integrity of that community. He said: “I do not mind Untouchables, if they so desire, being converted to Islam or Christianity, I should tolerate that, but I cannot possibly tolerate what is in store for Hinduism if there are two divisions set forth in the villages” (Ibid). This argument expressed Gandhi’s insight into what it meant to belong to a community. On his view, creating two different political entities would mean the disruption of Hindu society. On the one hand, this would involve the two broken halves in a serious and possibly violent internal conflict. On the other hand, if the depressed classes chose to stay within Hinduism and at the same time insisted on an independent political identity (similar to that of the religious minorities), it would be difficult to make sense of what it meant for them to choose to remain within Hinduism. Given these set of reasons, Gandhi and Ambedkar saw the issue of political separatism very differently from each other. The third and last section of the paper will attempt to unpack the fundamental philosophical divergences that underlay Gandhi’s arguments against separate electorates and consequent differences from Ambedkar.

Different approaches to modernity The differences between Gandhi and Ambedkar have often been seen along the lines of a conflict between tradition and modernity. Ambedkar was the arch modernist while Gandhi has been read as a conservative supporter of orthodoxy and a traditionalist. This section will look at some significant ways in which the

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tradition-modernity divide lead to serious conflicts between Gandhi and Ambedkar. There were three significant ways in which the tradition-modernity divide estranged Gandhi and Ambedkar. Firstly, they had different approaches to the premodern communities of India and the way people organized the space in which they lived – villages versus modern cities. Secondly, they had different approaches towards industrialization and co-relatively towards the indigenous pre-modern technologies of India such as spinning and weaving. Thirdly, and most importantly, they had fundamentally different understandings of the meaning of religion and of its role in an individual’s and community’s life. To begin at the level of the external/outer life of Indians, for Ambedkar the Indian village was “a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindednessness, and communalism” (Ambedkar cited in Rudolph and Rudolph 2006: 29). He argued that Gandhi’s idea of the village republic ignored the fact that villages represented a “kind of colonialism of the Hindus designed to exploit the Untouchables. . . . They have no rights because they are outside the village republic and because they are outside the so-called republic, they are outside the Hindu fold. This is a vicious circle” (Ambedkar in Rodrigues 2002: 330–331). In sharp contrast, Gandhi spoke of an India built around village republics: In (my picture of Independence), the unit is the village community. The superstructure of independence is not to be built at the village unit, so that the top weighs down on and crushes the forty crores of people who constitute the base. (Prabhu and Rao 2007: 364) Gandhi spoke of a “return to the villages” (Ibid, 362) while Ambedkar thought of cities as providing safer and friendlier environments. Such differences were reflected in their individual approaches to the place of industries and indigenous technologies in the economy of free India. Gandhi was a champion of village industries and placed great emphasis on spinning and weaving in the movement for swaraj/freedom for India. The best statement of his rejection of industrialization and machinery is found in the Hind Swaraj. As Nagraj points out, Ambedkar and other dalit leaders “were accurate and insightful in laying bare the strategies of oppression practised by traditional society, but they were naive in their optimistic support to the agents and practises of modernity” (Nagraj 2010: 159). Such support prevented Ambedkar from recognizing the fact that in traditional societies the lower and the artisan castes had been in possession of indigenous technologies, while in modern urban industrialization such control was taken over by upper-caste entrepreneurs, thereby presenting a “civilizational blow to the subaltern classes of this country” (Ibid, 160). Gandhi had an intuitive understanding of this phenomenon, and in this he was closer to the interests of a large number of artisans belonging to the depressed classes. The third difference stemming from the modernity-tradition divide was centered around the proper understanding of religion. As a modern, Ambedkar thought about religion in very different terms than Gandhi. Ambedkar’s thoughts about religion become apparent in two texts: his essay concerning conversion and his book

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The Buddha and His Dhamma. It is possible to argue that Ambedkar’s turn towards religion and his conversion to Buddhism was not an expression of a belief in the importance of religion. It can be understood as a modernist’s effort to deal with conscious and wilful amnesia about the Hindu past, by inventing and claiming a new past. It is also possible to argue that in creating a new past Ambedkar was not affirming the value of being bound by the constitutive rules of an established tradition. On the contrary, his was the act of a modern who critiqued all religious traditions in the light of liberal values. In this context it is important to note that Ambedkar did not enter into Buddhism uncritically but radically reinterpreted it along the lines suggested by post-Enlightenment modernity and the need for social reform.

Gandhi and Ambedkar: on identity and memory The more fundamental differences between Gandhi and Ambedkar could emerge from an examination of the possible reasons Gandhi could have had for insisting that untouchability ought to be treated as a religious problem internal to the Hindu society. This section will argue that Gandhi treated untouchability in the manner that he did because he had a certain understanding of the self of time and of the past. This understanding lead him to believe that religious-cultural-social memories played a constitutive role in forming a sense of the self in a variety of ways. Even when primarily painful, the past was also a resource for memories of cultural, religious and linguistic practices that formed a part of one’s self and influenced one’s engagement with the present. Such an understanding of the relationship between the past and the present meant that Gandhi could not accept Ambedkar’s recourse to forgetting a painful past. In Gandhi’s view the act of forgetting also required a ‘self ’ who was to forget. Yet the self was essentially conscious of itself in continuity with memories of the same past that it was to forget. The act of erasure then would be quite literally ‘self ’ dissembling. It could also involve the self so impoverished in inauthenticity and consequent inability to overcome the anger associated with memories of the humiliation suffered in the past. It is in this context that it becomes interesting to look at Nagraj’s argument about self-closure and denial of the past involved in the dalit movement and Ambedkar’s understanding of it. Nagraj argues that there were two issues with the dalit movement. The first that of  “wilful amnesia” (Ibid, 31) about one’s past, which meant a firm riveting of the dalit movement to the present and ensuring that it “reflected only the aspirations of city based groups” (Ibid, 33). A second theme that was a natural consequence of collective amnesia (and was taken up by Ambedkar) was the problem of defining alternative values not only for an individual dalit but for the entire movement. This (as Nagraj argues) landed Ambedkar in some difficulty “while defining the relationship between a movement and the structure of its memories” (Ibid). This was also one of the reasons that Ambedkar clashed with Gandhi over the use of mainstream Hindu symbols. Paradoxically, such use made Gandhi relevant to

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a large number of dalits to whom Gandhi’s continuity with the past and with values held through Hinduism remained important resources for a sense of self-identity. However, it is also important to note that Gandhi was not uncritical of the Hindu tradition and had a dialectical method with Hinduism: Gandhiji’s method of using Hinduism required a very profound kind of inwardness in relation to a very imaginative way of expressing dissent against it. (Ibid,34) Gandhi also spoke and related simultaneously to different parts of Hindu society using a dualist mode of engaging with the dalit movement as a specific form of disengaging with the Hindu society. As part of this dualist mode, Gandhi identified simultaneously with both the caste Hindu society and with the depressed classes. The fundamental difference between Gandhi and Ambedkar lay in their conceptions of the relationship between the past/cultural memory and self-identity. Gandhi thought that the individual and collective past was terribly relevant to who one was and to self-knowledge. It was in light of this emphasis on the importance of the cultural religious past and its memories that one needs to place Gandhi’s arguments against conversion. It was also in light of this central insight that one needs to understand his arguments against modern civilization and its sweeping rejection of pre-modern institutions, values and forms of life.

The Gandhian self: memory and time Two Gandhian insights can throw some light on his appreciation of the role of the past in defining one’s sense of self in the present. The first comes from Gandhi’s rejection of a certain conception of the self that had been made popular by modern Western, primarily liberal, philosophy. The second insight was related to Gandhi’s belief in the importance of swadharma/one’s individual set of duties in a properly human life. While it is important to say a little about both of these points here, one can begin with the first. Gandhi rejected a certain tradition of thinking about the self that has been influential in post-Enlightenment Western philosophy. This way of thinking about the individual self is perhaps best represented by the Kantian-Rawlsian idea of the rational self, who can make purely disinterested choices uninfluenced by religious and cultural encumbrances. A different but related way of thinking about the unencumbered self is to stress upon the radical freedom of making choices that characterize the human being. This idea finds expression in philosophies like existentialism, which are concerned with individual freedom as freedom of choice. For Gandhi the idea of an individual or a group making choices from a completely disinterested position (what Thomas Nagel has characterized as a view from nowhere) would be incoherent and self-deceptive. He would also find it difficult to accept the position that an individual is radically free to make choices unencumbered by the past or her constitutive attachments. This also brings home the point that Gandhi’s

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opposition to modernity was much deeper than the rejection of the outward signs of modernity. Gandhi would not be able to accept the essentially modern experience of radical freedom of choice to reject one’s past and choose a new self. Gandhi’s understanding of the self as essentially encumbered was closely associated with his conception of community and of time. Gandhi had a deep sense of the importance of being part of a religious, social, cultural, linguistic and even neighbourhood community. Note, for instance, the commitment to the community involved in the idea of restricting oneself to the use of things produced in one’s immediate physical environment. Gandhi did not believe that one could become a part of community by a free act of choice. He believed that the self was constituted by the various communities she had inherited from the past. For Gandhi the past was also important to the present because of the nature of time. Gandhi thought of time in the sense that traditional religious worldviews thought of it – as having a sacred and eternal character. The term sanatan was expressive of this understanding of time. Gandhi rejected the more modern concept of time as secular, homogenous and empty. An important implication of seeing time in religious terms was the sense of continuity with the past and future. For Gandhi an individual’s sense of self necessarily involved a placement in time and continuity with the religious, social, linguistic communities of one’s ancestors coming down from the immemorial past. Gandhi argued about the importance of being in continuity with one’s past at many places and in many ways: Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from his ancestors. (Bose 1948: 263) The relationship between memory and self-identity in Gandhi was also involved with Gandhi’s concept of personal duty/swadharma. For Gandhi an individual could not have a proper sense of her rights or live a proper life without the performance of her personal duties. In fact, Gandhi argued that legitimate rights could only follow once one had duly performed one’s own duties to all others. Gandhi followed the Bhagavad Gita in emphasizing the duties that became obligatory for each individual from her station and social role. However, he also emphasized that each individual had a unique set of duties that came from her unique situation. For instance, he had argued that though household duties were obligatory for most individuals, his unique swadharma as leader of the Indian struggle made the renunciation of the life of the householder his unique swadhrama. In Gandhi’s understanding of it, one’s unique swadharma remained primarily defined by the unconditional commitment to the community into which one had been born. This meant that though a person’s swadharma or personal set of duties was uniquely obligatory for that particular individual, it could only be properly understood against the background of the set of duties she had acquired by being born into a particular country, religion, region and family. It is significant that Gandhi argued that an individual who did not perform her duties to all others had no legitimate rights. In a Gandhian framework, a person could reject but not erase her swadharma and obligations. However, once they were

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rejected, she would need to discover a new swadharma since there would be no past to serve as a resource for her knowledge of her duties. Without knowledge of her unique set of duties/swadharma, there would be no legitimate rights and no sense of entitlement as to what was due to herself. This would leave very little resource for a sense of self-worth or self-respect. For Gandhi a self without a past would have too thin (in Charles Taylor’s sense of this term) a concept of the self to provide resources for any self-reflection or sense of self-identity. These Gandhian insights were further complicated by the fact that part of one’s swadharma was to take the vow to practise swadeshi. In the matter of religion, swadeshi translated into an obligation to reform the defects of the religion inherited from one’s ancestors. Since Gandhi thought of individual and collective self-identity in terms of the past, memory and tradition, he thought that it would be self-dissembling for depressed classes to erase their memories of a Hindu past. For the upper-caste self, individual swadharma would involve coming face to face with their shame and accepting responsibility for the same memories.

Gandhi and Ambedkar: on the need to work through the past For Gandhi the Hindu past could not be exhausted by feelings of rage or (in the upper-caste context) shame. For the past was more than the memories of humiliation and shame. It included a sense of relationship with the Divine expressed through myth and ritual, cultural symbols and traditional indigenous ways of life. As opposed to this understanding the Ambedkarite paradigm at the heart of the dalit movement had characterized “the entire history of the dalits as a task in humiliation” (Nagraj 2010: 105). I would argue that Gandhi had a fairly obvious moral argument for allocating responsibility for the eradication of untouchability on the upper-caste Hindus. It was clear to him that the primary perpetrators were the upper-caste Hindus, and they ought to accept moral responsibility for the crime and respond to their own shame and guilt by cleansing their hearts and making amends to the victims. This in Gandhi’s view was the only way that both the victims and the perpetrators could “work through” (Nandy 2013: 45) their past and overcome their respective feelings of rage or guilt towards that past. Untouchability will not be removed removed by the force even of law. It can only be removed when the majority of Hindus realize that it is a crime against God and man and are ashamed of it. In other words, it is a process of conversion, i.e., purification of the Hindu heart. (Gandhi, CWMG Vol 76, 335) In this context it would be useful to look at Ashis Nandy’s point about the attempts made by “American Blacks” to change the name of the community. Nandy argues that what he resents the most is the “tacit admission in such renaming that the memories of slavery and racism are more shameful for the Blacks than the Whites. As if the Blacks had to more carefully and diligently erase their past

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than the whites who practised slavery” (Nandy 2013: 45). While it would be correct to locate all humiliation, pain and suffering in the memories and experience of the victims, guilt and, more importantly, shame properly belonged to the memory of the perpetrators. Gandhi recognized that coming to terms with the past was important for both the victim and the perpetrators to be able to work through it, and that this process was difficult. As Nandy argues, even from the point of the victim when one has located the oppressor, it remains difficult to work through the past for: One cannot forget or overcome the past and move on, because one has, in the meanwhile redefined oneself and given a central place in one’s self to the repeated attempts to re-invoke and undo the past through violence; these attempts become the means of holding together one’s fragile self-definition. (Ibid, 54) The authenticity of Gandhi’s arguments rest on the fact that Gandhi had also dealt with a humiliating, oppressive past. His arguments about untouchability and his emphasis on overcoming the memory of hatred associated with it should be located against his own manner of dealing with his experiences of racial humiliation. As Nandy argues, Gandhi drew out “creative possibilities” (Ibid, 52) from his own humiliating experiences: The humiliating encounter in a lonely, south African, railway station turned out to be a boon not only to the world but also to Gandhi himself. (Ibid) Making such creative self-transformations available to the oppressed was perhaps the point of all Gandhi’s arguments about untouchability. Their very different understandings of the relationship between memory and identity underlay all the other differences between Gandhi and Ambedkar. For unlike Gandhi, Ambedkar did not believe that the cultural-religious memory of the past was important to the present. Therefore, Ambedkar did not share Gandhi’s insistence on the need to “work through” rather than reject a past that formed the basis of a set of oppressive memories in the present.

Note 1 Ambedkar interview on BBC Radio in New Delhi on 31 December 1955. See http:// roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?Option=com_content&view=article&id=3797:drambedkar-remembers-the-poona-pact-in-an-interview-on-the-bbc-&catid=116:drambedkar&Itemid=128 (accessed May 13, 2013).

Bibliography Ambedkar, B. R. 2014. “What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables” in Vasant Moon (ed.) Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches, Vol. 9 (set of 17

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Volumes). Dr Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, New Delhi. Bose, N. K. (ed.). 1948. Selections from Gandhi. The Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad. Gandhi, M. K. 1999a. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 33, electronic edition (eCWMG). Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, GoI, New Delhi, accessible online at http://gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html. Gandhi, M. K. 1999b. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 54, electronic edition (eCWMG). Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, GoI, New Delhi, accessible online at http://gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html. Gandhi, M. K. 1999c. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 57, electronic edition (eCWMG). Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, GoI, New Delhi, accessible online at http://gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html. Gandhi, M. K. 1999d. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 76, electronic edition (eCWMG). Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, GoI, New Delhi, accessible online at http://gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html. Guha, Ram. 2010. “Gandhi’s Ambedkar” in Aakash Singh Rathore and Silika Mohapatra (eds.) Indian Political Thought: A Reader, pp. 33–38. Routledge, London. Keer, Dhananjay. 2009. Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Popular Prakashan, Mumbai. Nagraj, D. R. 2010. The Flaming Feet and Other Essays. Edited by Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, pp. 21–60. Permanent Black, Ranikhet. Nandy, Ashis. 2013. “Humiliation Politics and the Cultural Psychology of the Limits of Human Degradation” in Gopal Guru (ed.) Humiliation Claims and Context, pp. 41–57. Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Pantham, Thomas. 2013. “Against Untouchability: The Discourses of Gandhi and Ambedkar” in Gopal Guru (ed.) Humiliation Claims and Context, pp. 179–208. Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Prabhu, R. K. and Rao, U. R. (eds.). 2007. The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi. Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad. Puri, Bindu. 2001. “Savarkar and Gandhi” in Bindu Puri (ed.) Mahatma Gandhi and His Contemporaries. Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Puri, Bindu. 2015. The Gandhi Tagore Debate: On Matters of Truth and Untruth. Sophia Studies in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, Volume 9. Springer. Rodrigues, Valerian. (ed.). 2002. The Essential Writings of B R Ambedkar. Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Rudolph, L. and Rudolph, S. H. 2006. Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays: Gandhi in the World and at Home. Singh, Aakash. 2013. “Gandhi and Ambedkar: Irreconcilable Differences?” International Journal of Gandhi Studies, Volume 2. Skaria, Ajay. 2016. Unconditional Equality: Gandhi’s Religion of Resistance. Permanent Black Ranikhet. Vajpayee, A. 2012. Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

10 BEYOND ‘THE DOCTOR AND THE SAINT’ CONTROVERSY Reassessing Gandhi as a social crusader Mustakim Ansary

Why do they shun your touch, my friend, and call you unclean Whom cleanliness follows every step, making the earth every step, making the earth and air sweat for our dwelling, and ever luring us back from return to the wild? You help us, like a mother her child, into freshness, and uphold the truth, that disgust is never for man. The holy stream of your ministry carries pollutions away and ever remains pure. Once Lord Shiva had saved the world from a deluge of poison by taking it himself, And you save it every day from filth with the same divine sufferance. Come friend, come my hero, give us courage to serve man, even while bearing the brand of infamy from him. (Gandhi quoted from The cleanser by Rabindranath Tagore in The Harijan, Feb 11, 1933)

The present excursus engages with the controversy in the aftermath of Arundhati Roy’s recent critical introduction to Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste entitled, The Doctor and the Saint. Roy lambasts Gandhi as the product of exaggerated national hagiography and international hype that elevated him to the unquestionable pedestal of a ‘Saint’, and Ambedkar is projected as the ‘Doctor’, who though less highlighted or less venerated emerges in Roy’s analysis as the real social reformer or the Doctor who can purge Indian society from its real malaise of social stratification or the caste system. This paper does not seek to vilify anyone or does not intend to resort to a partisan approach; rather, it attempts to take an objective analysis of Gandhi’s unique role as a social crusader. I would argue that we need to transcend the Doctor and the Saint controversy, because although the Gandhi – Ambedkar debate has huge theoretical relevance for Indian politics and social policy planning

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future, the best approach would be a reconciliatory one between Gandhi and Ambedkar. I therefore argue that Roy has perhaps taken a hasty conclusive position against Gandhi, and her argumentative vigour in debunking G ­ andhi can be accused as sledge-hammerly in nature as it does not take into account the enormous amount of papers and works that Gandhi wrote on the issue of caste and related forms of social discrimination and social justice. This, however, does not take away some of the points raised by the D ­ octor and the Saint controversy. Rajmohan Gandhi, in his essay “Independence and Social Justice: The Ambedkar Gandhi Debate, (Gandhi 2015), alleged that Roy has been largely selective, and she failed to contextualise Gandhi’s comments and observations which she premised on to lampoon Gandhi. It appears that her primary objective is to deify Ambedkar, which she has every right to do, but she has allegedly embarked on her project of glorifying Ambedkar at the cost of Gandhi. Roy’s virulent opposition to Gandhi stems from what she claims is Gandhi’s subdued endorsement of racism in South Africa and castism in India. In other words, Roy portrays Gandhi as a status quoist who failed to go for a whole-hearted clarion call for structural change in Indian society. The present paper attempts to evaluate these serious allegations against Gandhi in a dispassionate argumentative manner through empirical substantiation. In analysing Roy’s diatribe against Gandhi, we would be incorporating Rajmohan Gandhi’s recent rebuttal of Roy and also the counter-arguments of many other critics and observers who have commented on this controversy. The primary objective of this paper is not to intensify the Roy – Gandhi controversy but to arrive at a better fact-finding exercise through which greater service can be done to both Gandhi and Ambedkar. In matters of historical evaluation and social reform, prejudiced perspectival approaches would do the biggest disservice to history itself, and Roy in her bid to foreground Ambedkar has perhaps missed the real Gandhi. While it is true that Gandhi is not above criticism, and we believe that even the most savage critique of Gandhi would not diminish the real worth of Gandhi, therefore the Doctor and the Saint controversy should be taken in the right perspective. It is high time that both sides, the detractors and followers of Gandhi, realise that Gandhi is more and above what he appears, and Gandhi studies must welcome fair and open debates on various aspects of Gandhi’s ideology and political practice. So neither a no-holds-barred attack nor a hagiographic stance would do proper service to Gandhi. This paper attempts such a balancing approach, and it engages with Roy’s critique along with the counterviews provided by Rajmohan Gandhi and tries hard to maintain an equi-distance from both, as we believe a proper study of Gandhi would require a comprehensive study of his works and life and at the same time it should be open and non-hostile to serious criticism. Through painstaking analysis of Gandhi’s writings in the Harijan and in other resources, this paper plans to restore the real Gandhi, the real social crusader who sacrificed his life for the ethos of social justice. In what follows, we would first dwell on the Doctor and the Saint controversy as initiated by Arundhati Roy in her introduction, would trace its central points, and then would counter that subsequently with counter-narratives as provided by Rajmohan Gandhi in his recent

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articles. After that, Gandhi’s own writings would be taken up primarily from the Harijan to argue against Roy.

Was Gandhi a racist in his South Africa years?: truth and misreading In recent years we have witnessed a renewal of interest in Gandhi’s life in South Africa starting from Nagindas Sanghavi’s The Agony of Arrival, Gandhi: The South Africa Years1 published in 2006 to Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed’s The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire. Arundhati Roy’s essay is to be set in this context, as she too has primarily premised her critique of Gandhi through an examination of his South Africa days. Nishikant Kolge, in his essay “Was Gandhi a Racist?: His Writings in South Africa” (EPW, 30 January 2016), has brilliantly raised these points where he maintained that while Gandhi’s role as an iconic figure is to be re-examined and reviewed, slovenly dismissal of Gandhi on de-contextualised references to some of his statements in South Africa cannot be employed as authentic tools to characterise him as a racist. Roy has done exactly that, as she has documented Gandhi’s letters and statements without historicising him. Before we go into Roy’s argumentative loopholes, let us first know what exactly are her objections against Gandhi. Roy, in her book, makes some scathing observations on Gandhi and decided to remove Gandhi from his pedestal. Her agenda in her critical introduction seems to be to lionise Ambedkar and to deconstruct Gandhi. She primarily singles out Gandhi’s South Africa phase to establish Gandhi’s “racist” nature. This may sound outrageous to many Gandhi scholars, but the fact remains that she has brought in some empirical facts to minimise the aura that we associate with Gandhi. She says at the beginning of her introduction that her objective is to help rearrange the stars in our political firmament. That said, she went on piling up invectives against Gandhi and argued that the real hero is Ambedkar, who really sought for the restructuring of Indian society, whereas Gandhi veered for the status quo. While Roy has every right to critique Gandhi, her manner of criticism opens it up to greater criticism because she appears slovenly and at times blatantly schematic. Real critique suffers in such a prejudiced overture, and the real Gandhi gets lost, but still for the sake of debate we need to know what exactly Roy has to say.

The Doctor and the Saint controversy: fallacy and merits of the central points Gandhi and Ambedkar, Roy proposes, belong to completely different worldviews right from the beginning in their activities for the formation of the new nation, and while Gandhi brought in a spiritual overtone in Indian politics, it was Ambedkar, Roy asserts, who demonstrates greater radicality. Therefore, a close confrontation continues in their views and ideologies. Roy’s thesis in her The Doctor and the Saint addresses Ambedkar as Doctor for his endeavour in the annihilation of caste, which

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he believed is the exact panacea to obliterate the menacing regime of the caste system and also to uplift the nation in a greater democratic position. But the sad reality is that Ambedkar was severely opposed by the caste Hindus right from the beginning, because Ambedkar was a real and threatening challenge to the Hindu religion, against which Ambedkar uttered: “If the fundamental rights are opposed by the community, no law, no parliament, no judiciary can generate them in the real sense of word.” Because of this, an attitude of hatred continues to prevail against the Blacks in America, against the Jews in Germany and against the dalits or untouchables in India. India is suffering with such malevolent practices of social stratifications because caste is fused with the discriminatory orientations of the foundational tenets of Hinduism. Ambedkar, Roy claims, always tried to go against these foundational doxa of discrimination as enshrined in Hinduism. While Ambedkar launched such virulent opposition against Hinduism, what Gandhi did, according to Roy, is that he always managed to escape the real scrutiny of the caste system and observed that it would be mere chaos and anarchy to destroy the system. He also added that caste represented the genius of Indian society, and with the help of this structure, the Indian villagers managed their internal affairs. From this point of view we get a clear idea of the polar opposition between Gandhi and Ambedkar, where Ambedkar addressed the caste system as cruel, deadening, or paralysing that degrades the social organisation, and Gandhi has a fascination to the system. Gandhi believed caste was an indigenous cultural power, where Ambedkar defined it as an endogamous unit, an “enclosed class”. Anthropologists have long debates about the origin of the caste, and what today we understand as Caste in the founding texts of Hinduism, is inscribed as Varnashrama Dharma or Chaturvarna, the systems of four Varnas: Brahmins (priests), Kshtriyas (soldiers), Vaisyas (traders) and Shudras (servants). It was formed in such a pyramidical structure that the group located at the top of the social ladder was known as ‘pure’ who exploits all the advantages, whereas the bottom belongs to the lowercaste people who are regarded by the caste system as polluted and uncivilized. So this system is cruel right from the beginning. Gandhi, like a saint, predicted or dreamt of a utopia, a society which will be rooted with democracy. Ambedkar actualized this dream into action because he is a man of action, and he believed in the principles of executing the ideologies. Ambedkar, along with the Bhakti poets of the fourteenth century – Ravidas, Kabir, Tukaram, Mira, were renowned as the poets of the anti-caste tradition. He drew his inspiration in his endeavour to annihilate caste from his association with stalwarts and radical activists such as Jotiba Phule, Satyashodhak Saman, etc. Gandhi and Ambedkar both were represented differently to each other in their principles and in their activities that cast an immense influence on contemporary politics. Ambedkar was a complete adversary of Gandhi, and he opposed or challenged him not only in the domain of intellect or politics but also in the domain of morality. History,

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Roy complains, has been unduly kind to Gandhi, who was embraced during his lifetime by millions because he was the role model for all people. Ambedkar’s criticism on Gandhi on the other hand, gives a different perspective to mould Gandhi as a Mahatma. In order to give a different perspective, Ambedkar himself translated Gandhi’s endorsement of the caste system in 1921: “ These being my views I am opposed to all those who out to destroy the caste system.” But what is ambiguous is that his description of an arcadian paradise in “The Pyramid vs. The Oceanic Circle” (1946) is the very antithesis of his previous caste endorsement in 1921. From this point of view, certain question has arisen: does it mean that Gandhi has reformed himself? That he changed his views on caste? Again, it is Ambedkar’s argument on Gandhi’s varna system which is addressed as an absurd idea, because people’s worth cannot be bifurcated from their birth. Gandhi manifested his favour to untouchables just to keep his popularity, and as the real struggle for freedom came, he distanced himself from them. His fight for democracy includes not the democracy of the whole people, because he was only absorbed about the task of the congress, not for the dalits for which Ambedkar rebuked him for his Struggle for Homeland. On the other hand, Roy observes for Ambedkar the people were not a homogeneous category and, therefore, he had taken note of every dalit and untouchable. Ambedkar’s chief concern was to privilege and legalise constitutional morality over the traditional and social morality of the caste system. So, Ambedkar in Roy’s projection is a man of action who exposed undemocratic practices perpetrated in the name of democracy. Ambedkar resigned the post of Law Minister when his introduction to mould the Hindu Code Bill was turned down by saying: To leave inequality between class and class, between sex and sex, which is the soul of Hindu Society. Roy’s opposition to Gandhi stems from this unaddressed question of reform of Hindu society, and she believes that such indifference of Gandhi to social reform of Hindu practices of stratification is not surprising, as Gandhi had been nurturing such core discriminatory ideas for a long time, and this gets evident when we look in his South Africa phase. Gandhi, Roy complains, always distinguished himself and Indians from the Blacks of South Africa, and in the Phoenix settlement he showed this manifestation of discrimination by including the Europeans and nonindentured Indians as the members of the commune but no black Africans. Again, he had an experience to share in a prison cell with Kaffirs whom he addressed as the most uncivilised, troublesome, dirty and almost animal-like creatures. Now with such abhorring distaste for blacks as projected by Roy cannot stand an image of a Gandhi who wants to do good for the dalits or untouchables. Roy traces Gandhi’s racist orientations from such stray comments and attitudinal points, and she connects

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these “racist” proclivities with what she calls Gandhi’s underlying love for Hindu faith in social starification. What Roy forgets is that such a sweeping generalisation on her part fails to consider Gandhi’s enormous amount of writings in Harijan on caste and other such nefarious practices. Roy again cites Gandhi’s opposition against the suggestion of Jawaharlal Nehru, who suggested the fusion of Indians with the Black Africans in order to go against the regime of British power. Roy cites such cases once again to corroborate her repeated point of Gandhi’s racism against blacks that leads her to connect his hidden favour for caste Hindus. Roy piles her invectives against Gandhi only to malign him in a sledge-hammerly fashion without caring for a moment to resort to dispassionate, historical analysis of Gandhi’s stance in South Africa. Gandhi’s strong stance for segregation of the provision of education for Indians and Africans is also referred to by Roy that allows him to be questioned and makes him, she argues, unbecoming of a Mahatma. Roy retorts throughout the book that although Gandhi was continuously talking about the poor or untouchability, the irony is that while he was performing the rituals of poverty in Tolstoy Farm, he was not questioning the accumulation of capital or the unequal distribution of wealth. The harsh reality is, Roy claims, he was not fighting for the poor, but rather he always tried to take refuge or hobnobbed with the association of the upper-caste rich Hindus. Roy is of the opinion that before Gandhi there were many rishis and yogis in India who practised similar kinds of penance to attain sainthood, but the difference is that they did it alone, where Gandhi did it with the fusion of otherworldly matters. He, in his age of seventies, used to sleep with young girls to experiment the Mahatmahood, which according to Roy was nothing but horrifying and also shameful acts in the name of penance. The problem with Roy is again evident here, as she targets Gandhi in a brazen and slovenly manner without realising the subtleties and philosophic nature of Gandhi. Any recourse to available Gandhi scholarship would testify that Gandhi was way ahead in his conceptualisation of life and living, and his actions cannot be explained through conventional registers. Roy did not have these understandings because her sole object here seems to be to deflate Gandhi, and in this way she stoops to generalised views on Gandhi which are non-contextualised and closed in nature. Enough has been written on Gandhi and his sexual experimentations, and while there can be a healthy debate on his ways, a summary dismissal of whatever he did as demonic is absolutely unacceptable as that smacks of bigotry and a narrowly partisan outlook. Subsequently Roy takes up Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, which was published in 1909 and which is often referred to as his major testament on his vision for the coming Indian nation. Roy accused Gandhi once again of Hinduising his blueprint of an India, as he did not say anything in Hind Swaraj on the caste system. While his diatribe against the mechanical ideology of  Western colonialism is praiseworthy, his silence on caste in Hindu society is taken up by Roy as his complicity with the prevalent ideology of caste. Now this is again the problem with Roy. She completely misses the larger point that Gandhi wanted to make in his Hind Swaraj. The problem with Roy is she is trying to read everything in Gandhi from the casteist optic, which is grossly unfair. To say that Hind Swaraj is a mere corroboration of

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the caste system, which was very much in the Shastras of Hindu religion, is to completely miss the point that Gandhi was making, and therefore it is wrong on Roy’s part to believe that Gandhi has again sown the seed of caste in his Hind Swaraj. So caste might be absent in his Hind Swaraj the way Gandhi is looking for, but that does not mean that Gandhi is casteist. Gandhi has always insisted that untouchability troubled him from his childhood, and there is a huge body of Gandhi literature that contains Gandhi’s hatred about caste. Gandhi has done more than enough to initiate discussion on caste at a time when the entire nation was mired in casterelated problems. The enormous amount of Gandhi’s writings in the Harijan and many portions of his selected letters are completely ignored by Roy to score her point, and that shows her intent of singling out selected writings and remarks of Gandhi to establish her point of Gandhi as a casteist. If we read the Harijan carefully, then even a single close reading would make us realise how concerned Gandhi was about the caste system and how singlehandedly did he try to annihilate caste in India. The approach of Gandhi vis á vis caste did differ from Ambedkar, but that does not mean that we bracket Gandhi with the caste followers. Any debate on the Gandhi–Ambedkar stance on caste and analysis on their differences are welcome and should come up for the healthy progress of ideas, but to call somebody names in a biased and acrimonious fashion in the name of debate is grossly unjust. Even a mere expression of a fact of British colonialism by Gandhi is taken out by Roy to prove his endorsement of British empire. The following line is referred to by Roy to prove her point: “We are in Natal by virtue of British Power. Our very existence depends on it.” This is mere absurdity because we cannot conclude on Gandhi’s empire love from this statement. Apart from his stance on empire in South Africa, Gandhi’s philosophy of self-work and the Charkha too has come under severe attack. Ambedkar made a strong allegation on his khadi and wooden charka mission, because all these were allegedly sponsored by a mill owner. Roy lampooned Gandhi as Gandhi who raged against the machine was kept afloat by industrialists, and his fascination for the British Government was intrinsic. Roy again points out that his first satyagraha was in Champaran, Bihar, in 1917, which was specially meant for the well-being of the peasants, but he was not against the zamindari system, which is primarily responsible for the sufferings of the peasants. Now this is old staff because we are already familiar with these points against Gandhi, and the allegations totally miss the deeper implications of Gandhi’s philosophy of action and political vision. Roy quotes Gandhi about what he advised to the peasants: “The kisans must be advised scrupulously to abide by the terms of their agreement with the zamindars.” Are we to believe that Gandhi had only this much to say to the peasants, and a person who devoted his entire life for the poor and who merged his life with the

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poor would be sided with the elite on the ground of this single statement? Should we not see to it that perhaps this statement was made in a context, and to decontextualise a remark is completely unfair? Gandhi, Roy accuses, believed in the pro-industry class because though he spoke of poverty and inequality, at no point in his political career, Roy says, did he ever seriously confront or criticise an Indian industrialist or the landed aristocracy. This is not acceptable because anyone who is familiar with Gandhi’s work would completely disagree with Roy on this point. In fact Hind Swaraj is an indictment against capitalism, and therefore to project Gandhi as a pro-capitalist is a total misrepresentation of facts. Roy’s whole exercise in debunking Gandhi therefore smacks of non-objectivity. Gandhi the social crusader, Gandhi the social reformer, Gandhi the philosopher, Gandhi the political visionary never come to her mind, and that shows her fragmented approach. Ambedkar’s life was full of persecutions, because from early childhood he had to encounter the humiliations and injustice of caste, and perhaps all these experiences moulded him to weave his Annihilation of Caste. Gandhi did not have that direct experience of caste discrimination, but he empathised with the outcastes. Ambedkar was separated from his classmates and not allowed to learn Sanskrit, which was regarded as the knowledge of the upper caste. In his paper on “Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development”, he scrutinized the caste system and argued about many issues as it gives the untouchables a stigma and makes segregation and turns them into a generation of bonded labour. All these are really unfortunate, and the only leader in colonial India who really thought hard about these problems was Gandhi. Roy in this regards asks some serious questions, such as why are the murders of subordinate Dalits even today never simply murders but ritual slaughter, or why are they always burnt alive, raped, dismembered and paraded naked? Ambedkar replied to all these queries and observed that unlike other countries, India never had any social revolution because of the conformity and the blind supporter of the establishment with the caste system that divides the populace. Ambedkar observed that Hindu reformers cleverly narrowed the question of caste. Gandhi, Roy alleges, narrowed it even further than them. Roy’s selective reading becomes evident once again when she said, all through his life Gandhi wrote a great deal about the untouchables, but while delivering the presidential address at the Kathiawar Political Conference in Bhavnagar on 8 January 1925, Gandhi said: “I have personally no objection to sharing my meal with him, but I am not asking you to inter-dine or inter-marry him.” This is again a classic case of selective and de-contextualised reading of Gandhi that deliberately paints Gandhi in a poor light without considering to put him in the right perspective. Roy’s observation on Gandhi’s way of living is as expensive and exclusive, which also misleads as she intentionally avoids Gandhi’s lifelong austerity. Therefore, when she says, “He did not take any food from the dalits and if they offered he fed them to the goat by telling that he would eat them later, in the goat’s

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milk. It was reported that most of his food were provided by Birla House who explained: “We have cared for Gandhiji’s comfort for the last twenty years.” This too is an example of Roy’s blinkered vision and dishonest portrayal of facts.

Gandhi and separate electorate for the dalits Ambedkar believed that the caste system will be demolished only when the untouchables were organized and become a political constituency with their own representatives. Because, reserved seats for untouchables within the fold of Hinduism is nothing but an act of the relation between master and servant and, therefore, it is necessary to develop an idea of a separate electorate for untouchables. Gandhi had a different opinion on this, and the Gandhi-Ambedkar differences on this question are already well known in Indian history. Any debate on the Poona Pact and on the Gandhi–Ambedkar difference of opinion on the question of separate electorate for the dalits is a part of heated discussion in Indian history, and such debates must continue even today, but that does not mean we categorise Gandhi as casteist. Gandhi did have deep concerns for the dalits, but he simply had a different way for solution, so to lambast Gandhi solely for that would be wrong. In the First Round Table Conference in 1930–1931, Gandhi was nominated as its representative to form a new constitution for self-rule, and many minority communities were there except the Adivasis, who were invited separately to form another constitution. Here, Gandhi showcased his genius as a political organiser. Roy referred to Gandhi’s comment on the Bihar earthquake where Gandhi ­commented that the earthquake was god’s punishment to the people for the sin of practising untouchability, and Roy used this to deflate Gandhi as a superstitious bigot. Even a renowned Gandhi scholar like Akeel Bilgrami has said that this stray comment of Gandhi should not be taken out of context, and we should not make too much of this single sentence, because it certainly does not reflect Gandhi and his philosophy. Therefore to premise a whole edifice of argumentative schema against Gandhi on the basis of this single sentence would be foolish. It’s not true that Gandhi contradicted himself, and throughout his life he was consistent in his refusal to allow the working class and the untouchables to form their own political organisations. On the contrary, Gandhi stood by the poor throughout his life. In fact it was he who emerged as the first mass leader in India. Gandhi might nurture some faith in the Hindu religion, but that does not mean he was in favour of Hindu fundamentalism or religious bigotry. Ambedkar did portray Hinduism as a hegemonic narrative that spreads the caste system widely, but Gandhi wanted to get back to the real Hindu core philosophy, purging it of its dross. Ambedkar believed the necessity to deconstruct the very system of Hinduism, and he alleged that for Gandhi the most important thing was not to defend swaraj but to defend Hindus under swaraj. This is completely mistaken, and Ambedkar should be critiqued because he judged

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the religion on its worst specimen, but the religion has to be judged by the best it might have produced. In the subsequent parts, I would recount counter-arguments against Roy as provided by scholars such as Rajmohan Gandhi.

Counter-arguments Arundhati Roy’s book The Doctor and the Saint bears an indirect and questionable connection to the historical debate between Gandhi and Ambedkar. As we know that Ambedkar had first met Gandhi in the Second Roundtable Conference, and before that he fully appreciated and also warmly welcomed his concern for the plight of dalits and the method of the satyagraha. But his close connection to Gandhi made him subsequent to a different view. This very contradiction between these two figures not only helps us to understand them but also helps us to study the complex issues of Indian reality that can help us in understanding Indian society and Indian politics. So any deliberation on the Gandhi–Ambedkar differences is welcome, and in that way Roy’s critique of Gandhi can be taken as an approach of debate, but the reality is Roy moved beyond the format of a debate and resorted to biased observations on Gandhi. Rajmohan Gandhi, after reading The Doctor and the Saint, asserts that Roy’s chief purpose was not to focus the Gandhi-Ambedkar relationship, nor to the GandhiAmbedkar debate, but on a sole and fierce indictment of the Mahatma, and there are indications here and there that the demolition of Gandhi is its true aim. Roy has used Ambedkar to attack Gandhi. We have to acknowledge and appreciate Roy’s critique on Gandhi, but there are such serious flaws in Roy’s points and serious distortion of the real Gandhi. And the omissions of facts in The Doctor and the Saint constitute the text’s serious weakness. Roy has framed Gandhi without any complete scholarship on him, and that is why it casts a bad impression on Gandhi after reading the book. Therefore, Rajmohan Gandhi’s reply to the text gives the complete picture that Roy has painted. Roy’s allegations that Gandhi was more interested in the nation-building activities by avoiding the dalits, untouchables and the South African Blacks are mere falsehoods because most of her allegations are not quite sure, and there are no sufficient arguments in them. Her attack on Gandhi not only distorts the real facts of the Mahatma, but it also violates the principles of the historical debate on Gandhi and Ambedkar. Roy argues in her text that Gandhi has always allied himself with the big industry houses such as the Birlas, and on the question of building the Tata’s and Mulshi dam, respectively: “Gandhi advised the villagers who were displaced for this fact, to give up their protest.” But in reality Roy is either not aware of or perhaps she tries to conceal that three years before the construction of the Mulshi dam, he had his imprisonment; when he was released, almost half of the dam was built. At this moment Gandhi advised the villagers consciously to commit the non-violence satyagraha movement, and also the vast majority of the displaced villagers had accepted the compensation. Therefore, it is purely a false allegation that Gandhi was soft with the Tatas or the big dams. Roy has made one allegation after another on the Mahatma but does not provide any

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sources for the assertion. Roy said that Gandhi had a very close connection with G.D. Birla, who provided a monthly stipend to him. Gandhi, in a grand reception in Kolkata, denied this stipend by saying: “Does this mean I have to come to you with a begging bowl every month?” All the accounts of Roy on Gandhi’s attitude to the untouchables are equally wrong. Gandhi has been called by Roy as the lover of the upper or the orthodox caste, but in the Mahad Satyagraha when untouchables were allowed to drink and used the water of the tank, the orthodox protested with beating.Then Gandhi said that the orthodox had used ‘sheer brute force’, and in an article in Young India on 28 April 1927, he wrote: [Was] fully justified in putting to the test the resolution of the Bombay Legislative Council and the Mahad Municipality by advising the so called untouchables to go to the tank to quench their thirst. (Rajmohan Gandhi 2015) Roy perhaps tries to hide these facts to fulfill her aim of painting Gandhi in black. She deliberately conceals the fact of Gandhi’s proposal to his satyagrahis that the untouchables must not be hated by them. These are only a few examples of the numerous concealments in The Doctor and the Saint regarding Gandhi and Dalit rights. She also avoids mentioning that Gandhi had played a principal role in the drafting of the Indian National Congress’s Karachi resolution of 1931 on equal rights for all, a forerunner of the equality pledged in India’s 1950 constitution. This was a valuable and enlightened document. Roy names the beloved Bhakti poets of the anti-caste tradition: Cokhamela, Ravidas, Kabir, Tukaram, Mira. (Her spelling of the Mahar poet Chokhamela’s name is incorrect.) But here she would deliberately not inform her readers that several of these poets were among Gandhi’s favourite poets too, or that their songs were frequently sung in his ashrams or in the prayer meetings. Another similar omission is also in her poking fun at Gandhi’s position on the Ideal Bhangi. Roy is silent on what Gandhi said two years later, after the Non-Cooperation Movement was launched. Gandhi said through his article in Young India in November 1920, “We shall be unfit to gain swaraj so long as we keep in bondage a fifth of the population.” It was because of these facts that Gandhi ensured the dalits or untouchables to be an integral part of the Indian National Congress (INC). So, Gandhi was never in the part of his life away from the dalits. And he mentioned it clearly in one of his writings that when he was asked to keep a distance by his mother from the untouchable servants, Gandhi told her that physical contact is not at all the part of the sin. He also admitted that the thought of the untouchables troubled him greatly. Gandhi was never rubbing shoulders with the upper castes, and it is evident in the fact that when the Non-Cooperation Movement for swaraj was launched, Gandhi was warned by his orthodox foes that unless he abandoned the interest of the untouchables, they

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would support Raj instead of the formation of the Swaraj. They alleged that he got this fascination for the dalits from Christians. It was true that there are some omissions of caste and untouchability in Hind Swaraj, but it is also true that Gandhi was conscious of the fact that swaraj would give the upper caste political power, and he attached the Dalits alongside it. Gandhi also clearly mentioned before the Minorities Committee of the RTC that he would not sell the vital interests of the untouchables even for the sake of winning the freedom of India. Gandhi had also contributed hugely for the South Africans, and here also Roy has missed a good chunk of information related to this point. Gandhi said it again and again that the Blacks are the very race of Africa, and it would be impossible to think of Africans without the African races. Gandhi strongly supported the Zulu rebellion with John Dube, who was one of the founders of African National Congress (ANC). There are certain events in which it appears that Gandhi tried to withdraw himself from his favour on untouchables. Because in 1976, another founding member of the ANC, Selby Msimang, also thought that the African Leadership of Gandhi’s time “would, in any case, have found Indian politics too radical to countenance an alliance”. Such acknowledgements would belie the picture that Roy wishes to present of Gandhi.

Conclusion: biased critique of Roy and Gandhi on untouchability and the Harijan Gandhi, in the Harijan, had provided important documents on what is untouchability. He detailed how it is different from the Varnashrama and, most importantly, in which way it would be possible to remove the caste system. Curiously enough, Roy is silent on all these points. Though there are differences between Ambedkar and Gandhi on their views on untouchability, Gandhi defined it as the greatest blot of Hinduism. It is against the Shastras, against the fundamental principles of humanity and significantly against the dictates of reason that a man should be discriminated on caste lines. But, there is abundant authority in the Shastras that manifests against the fundamental principles of humanity or morality. One of the most important issues on the Harijan was on the struggle against the prohibition of the untouchables to enter into the Hindu temples, which was made by the British a punishable offence. Therefore, Gandhi believed, untouchability is not the product of the caste system but of the distinction of high and low that has crept into Hinduism and is corroding it. Hence, if it is possible to remove untouchability, then the caste system will be reformed and Gandhi tried to do exactly that. Gandhi had a deep corner in his heart for the untouchables, and these reflections are very clear in many of his articles published in the Harijan newspaper. On 11 February 1933, he had cited a poem of Rabindranath Tagore on untouchables in the very introductory portion of the newspaper. Had he been a pro-casteist as he has been alleged by Roy, then he would not have done all these things. Roy’s diatribe against Gandhi failed to elevate itself to a healthy debate, but rather it degenerated into personal attacks, and Gandhi emerged more glorious as the real social crusader.

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Bibliography Ambedkar, B. R., Annihilation of Caste, The New Critical Edition, with an introduction, The Doctor and the Saint by Arundhati Roy, Navayana, New Delhi, 2014. Duncan, Ronald, Selected Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Faber and Faber Limited 24 Russel Square, London, available at http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/SWMGandhi.pdf. Gandhi, M. K., “The Harijan Papers”, downloaded from the Gandhi Ashrama at Sabarmati, 1993, available at https://gandhiashramsabarmati.org/en/. Gandhi, Rajmohan, “Response to Arundhati Roy”, Economic and Political Weekly, July 25, 2015, vol. l, no. 30. Kolge, Nishikant,“Was Gandhi a Racist? His Writings in South Africa”, Economic and Political Weekly, January 30, 2016, vol. LI, no. 5. Murthy, B. Srinivas, ed. 1987. Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy Letters, USA: Long Beach Publication. Raju, Prof. M. Lakshmipati and Raju, Dr. B. S. N., “Ethical Values of Social Work Profession and Gandhism”, International Journal of Research and Social Sciences, May 2012, vol. 2, no. 2. Tripathi, Ambikesh Kumsar, “Concept of Social Justice in Political Thought with Special Focus on Gandhi and Ambedkar”, Shodh Dristhi, October–December 2012, vol. 3, no. 7.

11 GANDHI AND THE ‘RACE’ QUESTION Hari Nair, Swaha Das and Krishna Akhil Kumar Adavi

The aim of this study is to explain the changes in Gandhi’s utterances on native Africans between ca. 1894 and 1925. Several scholars have, over the last decade, drawn our attention to Gandhi’s racial remarks against native Africans while he was in South Africa between 1894 and 1914. One oft-cited passage that exemplified Gandhi’s racism is in his petition, which discussed the Indian question in Natal. That petition, dated 19 December 1894, was addressed to the Legislative Council and Assembly at Durban. Therein Gandhi writes: A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir. (CWMG 1: 193) Some scholars have argued that such and other racist remarks of varying intensity were astutely substituted by Gandhi for favourable descriptions of native Africans in his book Satyagraha in South Africa written between 1923 and 1925. For these scholars, Gandhi’s later descriptions of native Africans were attempts at ‘tidying up his own history’ of past racist remarks against them. There is at least one defect with such analyses. If Gandhi’s description of native Africans was more favourable in 1925 than in 1894, it was because the discourses on race had transformed in the intervening decades. Therefore, Gandhi’s favourable descriptions of native Africans were probably not an act of tidying up his past racist remarks. Rather, his later descriptions reflected the corresponding changes in contemporary global discourses on race. As the discourses on race were evolving, the ascription of the motive of  ‘tidying up his past’ may not be borne out by available evidence.

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This study focuses on the changes in race discourses between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century towards locating Gandhi’s later utterances on native Africans. We begin by summarizing the critiques of the South African Gandhi by Claude Markovits, Joseph Lelyveld and Arundhati Roy because our research question emerged from their critiques. We then proceed towards critically reading Gandhi’s favourable description of the Zulus in his Satyagraha in South Africa. That section is followed by an outline of the paradigm of pseudo-scientific racism within which Gandhi’s earlier racial remarks could be located. The next section titled “Metamorphosis of the race discourse” sketches the decline of pseudo-scientific racism and the consequent transformation of Gandhi’s mental world of empirical beliefs about race and culture. As the Indian Opinion carried articles, especially during the year 1911, which reflected the changes in Gandhi’s mental world, the views expressed in select articles are paraphrased as evidence of this transformation. The final section pulls together the key arguments of this study and hints at the methodology employed for locating Gandhi’s utterances on native Africans between 1894 and 1925.

Deconstructing the South African Gandhi The historian Claude Markovits’ book The Un-Gandhian Gandhi (original French edition was published in 2000 and the English translation in 2007) contributed to Gandhi Studies in at least two ways. First, it avoided hagiography and demonstrated the necessity of deconstructing the South African Gandhi. Second, its mode of deconstruction of the South African Gandhi was extended by Joseph Lelyveld (2011) and Arundhati Roy (2014). Markovits argued that our understanding of the South African Gandhi is based largely on his own writings, especially Satyagraha in South Africa and The story of my experiments with truth. But as he wrote both these works in the latter half of the 1920s without notes and entirely from memory, “serious doubts exist as to the reliability of such personal memories uncorroborated by other testimonies” especially because there were no “independent sources from Indians in South Africa” (Markovits 2007: 46). Markovits believed that for a systematic deconstruction of Gandhi’s life, his Ur text – the autobiography – must be deconstructed. During the course of that deconstruction, Markovits noted that biographies have tended towards propagating the Gandhian myth, which was initiated by Gandhi himself. In other words, the Mahatma was the author of his own legend because he “pre-empted criticism directed at the factual aspects of the narrative” and thus “managed to establish his text as the main factual source for all his later biographies [. . .]” (Markovits 2007: 44–55). Through his deconstruction, Markovits arrived at the assessment that Gandhi was keen to “control his own legend” and that he was “trying to cover his tracks so as to discourage all attempts at reading his trajectory in worldly terms”. Markovits’ deconstruction of the South African Gandhi was pursued by other writers. One particular criticism postulated by Markovits - of Gandhi ‘covering his tracks’ - was retrieved by Joseph Lelyveld in his book Great

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Soul (2011) and reiterated by Arundhati Roy in her study “The doctor and the saint” (2014). Lelyveld anecdotally alluded to a conversation between Gandhi and a visiting African-American delegation. During their discussion on the question of the colour line in America, Gandhi was asked whether he considered allying with the native Africans during his South African phase for achieving civic rights. Gandhi’s response was that he deliberately chose not to because it would have endangered the cause of the native Africans. Lelyveld picked on these remarks and judged that ‘great soul’ thus: “This Gandhi, the full-blown Mahatma of 1939, is doing some retrospective tidying up” (Lelyveld 2011: 71). But, what might Gandhi have been tidying up in retrospective – according to Lelyveld? Lelyveld believed that Gandhi disdained the native Africans, for which he cited evidence. He alluded to passages written by Gandhi, ranging from 1894 to 1904, as being “condescending to Africans, [that] sound, frankly, racist” (Lelyveld 2011: 57). Lelyveld then read Gandhi literally between the lines: “Between the lines, he [Gandhi] seems to be expressing his doubts that blacks would hew to nonviolent principles” (Lelyveld 2011: 75). Lelyveld concluded that as Gandhi disdained native Africans and as he was doubtful of their ability to sustain non-violent methods of political struggle, he did not envisage a common struggle by Africans and Indians for civic rights. So, Gandhi’s remarks on native Africans in the 1930s were intended to cover up his disdain for them and his doubts about their ability. Arundhati Roy ventured further and argued that “in order for Gandhi to be a South African hero, it became necessary to rescue him from his past, and rewrite it. Gandhi himself began that project. Some writers of history completed it” (Roy 2014: 88). However, there was a significant difference between the assessments by Roy and Markovits of Gandhi. While deconstructing Gandhi’s autobiography, Markovits believed that its author was not deliberately misleading the reader.1 Roy, on the other hand, emphatically insisted that Gandhi wilfully sought to alter the rendering of his South African past (Roy 2014: 66–94). That alteration was by rewriting history, which occurs in Satyagraha in South Africa, wherein Gandhi favourably portrayed native Africans.

Reading Satyagraha in South Africa While it is true that Gandhi favourably portrayed native Africans in his Satyagraha in South Africa, he was doing something more than the obvious. Gandhi was also simultaneously challenging the prevailing perceptions of race and civilization. He questioned the dominant aesthetic paradigm of human beauty, which was restricted to having a “fair complexion and a pointed nose” and he “deliberately” used the expression “handsome” for describing Africans, who were tall and broadchested, with muscular calves and arms, with skin shining like ebony, and whose large and thick lips were in perfect symmetry with the entire physique.2 This was a thought-through attack on the concept of ‘race’, when defined in strictly physical terms.

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Gandhi’s ethnological narrative of the Zulus of South Africa then moved from an aesthetic appreciation of their physical characteristics to culture - their lifestyles through a description of their manners, mores and morals to the “sweetness” of the Zulu language, and concluded by referring to their indigenous religious practices. This narrative was not framed with reference to other cultures, whether European or Asian, but was a study of the Zulus on their own terms. It was a work in comparative ethnology, and it also critiqued how established conventions determined cultural values – or how a certain human characteristic was construed to be aesthetically more appealing than another; or why an ethnic community was described as civilized as opposed to another that was referred to as primitive or barbarian; and why a certain culture claimed superiority while others degenerated into depths of inferiority. These favourable references to native Africans that appeared in Satyagraha in South Africa were written when Gandhi was in prison between 1922 and 1924 for seditious activities against the British Empire.3 Prior to this period, Gandhi genuinely believed that “the British Empire existed for the welfare of the world”.4 Between 1919 and his trial in March 1922, Gandhi gained the conviction that the British Empire was evil. He arrived at this conclusion through a radical yet responsible analysis of the functioning of the imperial system. Gandhi realized how even an aesthetic appreciation of other races and cultures were influenced by political power. That change or the churning in the process of perceiving other races and cultures began when he encountered Jean Finot’s Racial Prejudice in 1907. It was further accentuated by Gandhi’s own engagement with the swirl of ideas generated by the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911. It was this churning that resulted in a change of views rather than the alleged devious motive of tidying up his own history of racist remarks against native Africans. In Gandhi’s mental world of empirical beliefs, there appeared a link between political power and knowledge and between power and cultural values. As Gandhi’s faith in the benevolence of the British Empire evaporated, so did his trust in the knowledge paradigm of pseudoscientific racism that partly sustained the imperial system.

The paradigm of pseudo-scientific racism The paradigm of pseudo-scientific racism classified human beings into races according to their physical characteristics. The physical characteristics were skin colour, density of hair on the body, hair texture, cranial measurements and so forth. The races were then hierarchically graded from superior to inferior ones. Each race was considered as the author of the culture or civilization in which it was immersed. It was believed that a superior race produced an advanced civilization, while inferior races lived in primitive societies. On the basis of this parameter of judging cultures ranging from primitive to advanced, European imperial governments awarded rights to their colonized peoples in a calibrated fashion. The more advanced a colonized society, the more rights it deserved from the empire. Within

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this logic, each colonized race of people competed for securing rights from the imperial government by outdoing its competitors. Gandhi’s disparaging utterances against native Africans must therefore be located within the colonial logic of subjugated groups competing for rights within the Empire (Bhana and Vahed 2005: 46). As the struggle for rights was based on the extant paradigm of pseudo-scientific racism, it is imperative that we look at its emergence into authority. According to Philip Curtin, one of the leading historians of Africa, the period between 1880 and 1920 was dominated by the “high tide” of pseudo-scientific racism (Curtin et al. 1995: 403–406). The rise to dominance of pseudo-scientific racism has a pre-history though. The biologists of the eighteenth century had classified human beings as the highest animal. Similarly, human beings were classified amongst themselves from the highest to the lowest types. As skin colour and other external physical features of human beings were the most obvious material available for classification, and as the classifiers were themselves Europeans, it may be expected that physical attributes of Europeans would be located at the top of the hierarchy. This classification also reflected the extant global political structure as well. As Europe had begun the process of colonizing Africa anew since 1885, and this colonization required a justification, the physical features of their most recently colonized people, especially those of tropical Africa, were located at the bottom of the classificatory hierarchy. The detailed and explicit theories of pseudo-scientific racism, which were put forward in the middle decades of the nineteenth century (1840–1850), were then linked up with Darwinian evolution, and these theories became popular amongst the learned circles of Europe after the 1860s. By the 1880s, physical characteristics of human beings understood as race became the most significant element for determining culture and the consequent, hierarchical ordering of cultures. The dominance of these theories coincided not only with the European partition of Africa and its colonization but also xenophobic immigration policies in the United States of America and the disenfranchisement of subjected races in Africa. Curtin’s case is validated by the representative scholarly authority of the period – the tenth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1902). A perusal of the entry by Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) under the heading “Anthropology” in the tenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1902) reveals how race was understood at that time. It reflects, at least in good measure, the state-of-knowledge at the turn of the century. The term “race” encompassed physical characteristics of the human being, but “race” was not entirely delinked from language. The classification of humankind into permanent varieties, or races, rested principally on one piece of obvious evidence – the physical characteristics of human beings. The colour of the skin, eyes and hair along with the structure and location of hair on the human body were considered to be the best marks of race. The conformation of the human skull was considered to be second only to the colour of the skin as a characteristic of race. The note by Tylor claimed that although language failed conspicuously as a test of race, “under proper conditions, speech [afforded] information as to the affinities of races only second in value to

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those derived from physical characteristics”. The ethnologist “may use language as partial evidence of race”. Though the linkage between race and culture (civilization) was not explicitly made, a progressive/evolutionary classification of culture from savagery to civilization was graphed on the basis of the material conditions of society. The presence of metallurgy, agriculture, industrial arts, high social and political order, but above all, writing – written history of past records and written constitutions – were the marks of an advanced civilization. Thus, the existence of high and low cultures was the assured certainty propagated by these tomes, which summed up all knowledge at least for the educated commoners – or so claimed an advertisement for the encyclopaedia. Although the entry by Tylor on anthropology confessed that the science of culture was still rudimentary and imperfect, the concept of cultural evolution was nonetheless an indispensable method for the study of human arts and institutions. Tylor’s note also reflected contemporary linguistic usage. The word “Kaffir” appears not less than five times in this entry denoting that it was part of scholarly usage, though it is entirely unacceptable today. The term kaffir comes from Arabic and originally referred to a farmer hiding/burying his seeds under the ground. After the birth of Islam, Arab traders used the same word to refer to non-Muslim Blacks they encountered along the Swahili coast. Through migration, the original ‘non-believer’ kaffir now came to be applied to all Blacks living in South Africa. It was used extensively by the Dutch and the British and by Gandhi in some of his writings from Indian Opinion. This explains the recurrence of the term “Kaffir” in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi - 456 times between the vols. 1-13 (Adavi 2015: 40). The last appearance of the term “Kaffir” in the CWMG is on 25 October 1913 (CWMG 13:384), symptomatic of the changes in Gandhi’s mental world. These changes in Gandhi’s mental world altered the manner in which he perceived other ‘races’ and cultures. These altered perceptions were synchronous with the metamorphosis of the race discourse. That metamorphosis was propelled by Finot’s singular book, which critiqued racial prejudice, and an academic conference in London that brought together scholars and activists researching on race.

Metamorphosis of the race discourse: Finot’s Race Prejudice (1906) and the Universal Races Congress, London (1911) According to Curtin, about the year 1910, scientists were pointing out that culture was learnt and acquired rather than inherited, but the impact of these attacks was perceptible only by the 1920s. One could antedate the origins of the critique of the paradigm of pseudo-scientific racism to Jean Finot’s work titled Race Prejudice (original French edition published in 1905). Jean Finot, a little-known French scholar and an opponent of ‘social darwinism’, critiqued the concept of race as pseudo-scientific in his work Race Prejudice. According to Finot, the word ‘race’ was once benign because it was merely synonymous with type or kind or variety. But soon it gained currency as a concept that classified human beings into superior and inferior peoples. Finot concluded

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that physical characteristics of human beings were due to the accidents of climate and occupations, or in other words, the milieu. Therefore, the concept of race as an irreducible category was an invented fiction, which will not survive impartial scientific scrutiny. The study of human beings so far has been a science of inequality. In this process, true scientific study of human beings was violated from its object and converted into “depreciated and adulterated merchandise”. Finot’s critique of the role of subjectivity in this pseudo-scientific study of human beings deserves to be cited in extenso towards highlighting the nature of his own scientific critique against the extant paradigm of pseudo-scientific racism. When we go through the list of external differences which appear to divide men, we find literally nothing which can authorize their division into superior and inferior beings, into masters and pariahs. If this division exists in our thought, it only came there as the result of inexact observations and false opinions drawn from them. The science of inequality is emphatically a science of White people. It is they who have invented it and set it going, who have maintained, cherished, and propagated it, thanks to their observations and their deductions. Deeming themselves greater than men of other colours, they have elevated into superior qualities all the traits which are peculiar to themselves, commencing with the whiteness of the skin and the pliancy of the hair. But nothing proves that these vaunted traits are traits of real ­superiority. Human varieties have not been studied like those of animals and plants, that is to say, without conventional prejudices as to their respective values and as to those which are superior and inferior. Facts have often yielded to sentiments. We have been persuaded, with the help of our feelings, to accept our own preferences rather than impartial observations, and our own prejudices rather than scientific laws. In pursuing this course the elementary commandments of experimental science are transgressed. The majority of the anthropologists, faithful in this respect to the scholastic [scholarly?] teachings, have begun by assuming the inequality of human beings as an axiom. On this preliminary basis they have built an imposing edifice, but really one of fictitious solidity. (Finot 1906: 310–311) Finot’s work was translated into English in 1906 and it was reviewed in the Indian Opinion. Chessell Piquet’s review of Finot’s Race Prejudice titled “Conventional lies – a review special to the Indian Opinion” was published in the Indian Opinion dated 7 September 1907. The reviewer noted Finot’s despair at not being able to answer the question “what is race?”. After having exhausted all avenues of information, Finot concluded that the alleged ‘race characteristics’ were the products of the place, time and thought, and that ‘race’ was a figment of imagination. However, this imagination led to real beliefs in race superiority, from which were derived sentiments of nationalism and patriotism. The belief of race superiority led to a megalomania that led to war, rapine, hatred and imperialism. The reviewer thus noted the

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close connection between the belief in race theories, which were actually pseudo-­ scientific, and the reality of imperial domination leading to oppression of peoples. Chessell Piquet,5 the reviewer of Finot’s book, also covered the proceedings of the Universal Races Congress for the Indian Opinion. Jean Finot, the author of Race Prejudice, was also one of the supporters and participants at the Universal Races Congress, often described as the World Parliament of Man, held 26–29 July 1911 at the University of London. One of its principal purported aims was to discuss the relations between ‘White’ and ‘Coloured’ peoples, for which a questionnaire was circulated prior to the Congress with around twentyfive questions that comprehensively broached numerous issues related to race. The central purpose, however, was to define the term “race” (Weatherly 1911: 315–328). Some of the resolutions of the Congress included the recognition of the irreconcilability of the contention that certain peoples were superior to others, although some participants did forcefully challenge the doctrine of racial equality; an assertion of cultural relativism; and the rejection of the extant meaning of the term “race” altogether, which was arguably the most important work of the Congress (Pennybacker 2005: 103–117; Gregg and Kale 2005: 133–152). Although the perils of race contact and the description of the European civilizing mission as a project for converting ‘primitive’ peoples into markets for the goods of ‘civilized’ States were discussed, the Universal Races Congress provided the “prestige of scientific authority to the question of race egalitarianism” (Rudwick 1911: 372–378). The significance of the Congress as a challenge to the dominant pseudo-­ scientific paradigm of race may be gleaned from the number of papers presented at the Congress and their corresponding rigour, the number of participants as well as the distinguished promoters of the Congress, which included amongst numerous other luminaries the likes of Edward Blyden, Miguel Covarrubias, W.E.B. Du Bois, Emile Durkheim, M.K. Gandhi, G.K. Gokhale, Henry Polak, Olive Schreiner, Max Weber and Franz Boas. Although Boas was not present personally, his study was communicated to the Congress. In that study titled “The instability of human types” (1911), Boas argued on the basis of empirical observations that ‘races’ were not stable groups. This was so because individuals purportedly belonging to the same race could have different physical characteristics, which were influenced by both geographical and social environs. The conclusion of Boas was far-reaching. If races were not stable groups of people, then the belief in the innate superiority or inferiority of races must be surrendered. These radical anthropological views were reflected in Gandhi’s Indian Opinion, which Isabel Hofmeyr described as the “great intellectual archives of the world” because it paraphrased or reproduced views from across the globe on topical issues (Hofmeyr 2013: 72).

Indian Opinion: archiving global intellectual history Although there are references to Finot’s Race Prejudice and the Universal Races Congress in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, certain pieces of writing on race-related matters are not located in the CWMG but within the folds of the Indian Opinion. The themes, in certain select articles,6 included the meaning of the

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term ‘race’, the issue of racial antipathy, the Universal Races Congress, the problem of racial discrimination, which was perceived as a struggle between civilizations, but above all, the relationship between racism and imperialism. Reportage in the Indian Opinion on the Universal Races Congress argued that the conference had thoroughly examined the race question with an encyclopedic scope, and consequently many anthropologists at the Congress demonstrated that the word ‘race’ had lost its ordinary meaning. The conclusion therefore was that there were no innately superior races. Other articles alluding to racial antipathy insisted that it was unscientific and irrational, and those harbouring the sentiment of racial antipathy were either uncertain of the alleged superiority of their own race or because oppressed races were increasingly acquiring wealth, and thus, posing a challenge to the dominant races. Two observations in these articles are particularly noteworthy: first, the struggle against racial discrimination was portrayed as a struggle between two kinds of civilizations; and second, if governments accepted the findings of the Congress, these would break the foundations of modern imperialism. These views expressed in the columns of the Indian Opinion reflected the newly emerging scholarship that would mark the beginning of a paradigm shift within race studies. These columns suggest that Gandhi was more than a “child of the context”. He was indeed at the forefront of the changing paradigm on race. Gandhi was actively involved with the Universal Races Congress. His name appears in the list of those “officers, council and supporters” representing India. Besides, one of his closest associates, H.S.L. Polak, participated and spoke at the Congress. Most importantly, Indian Opinion reported the ground-breaking studies on race. What was published in the journal reflected Gandhi’s own archive of ideas, as he had a determining role in the editorial functioning of the Indian Opinion. In The story of my experiments with truth, Gandhi writes: The Indians and Europeans both knew that, though I was not avowedly the editor of the Indian Opinion, I was virtually responsible for its conduct. . . . Indian Opinion in those days was, like Young India and Navjivan today, a mirror of [a] part of my life. . . . During ten years, that is, until 1914, excepting the intervals of my enforced rest in prison, there was hardly an issue of Indian Opinion without an article from me. I cannot recall a word in those articles set down without thought or deliberation, or a word of conscious exaggeration, or anything merely to please. Indeed the journal became for me a training in self-restraint, and for friends a medium through which to keep in touch with my thoughts. The critic found very little to which he could object. (Gandhi 1927: 263)

Conclusion Gandhi’s utterances on native Africans ranged from explicitly racist remarks (1894) to favourable ones on the Zulus (1923–1925). This move from one end to the other passed through two phases of transformation in Gandhi’s mental world of

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empirical beliefs. The first phase was between his earliest acquaintance with Jean Finot’s critique of the concept of race (1907) and Gandhi’s engagement with the scholarly proceedings of the Universal Races Congress (1911). The second phase was between 1919 and 1922, when Gandhi began recognizing the ill effects of the British imperial system. The transformation of Gandhi from being a stretcher-bearer of Empire into an individual without any affection for the imperial system was slow but reasoned, measured and irreversible. The South African Gandhi believed that by bearing the stretcher – for the English in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902 as well as during the Zulu revolt of 1906 – and through other services for the Empire, he was gaining for his countrymen the status of full equality. But Gandhi’s faith in the Empire was belied by the events that unfolded in India between 1919 and 1922 – the Rowlatt Act, the imposition of martial law in Punjab, the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, and indescribable humiliations of Indians were the prominent ones amongst other broken promises of the British government. For these reasons, it was sinful to bear any affection at all for the British imperial system – or so Gandhi read out to the trial court judge. Gandhi’s own transformative experience – from being a staunch imperialist to an anti-imperialist – unpacked before himself the intimate connection between imperialism and racism. This connection was already articulated, though in theory, in the Indian Opinion reportage on the Universal Races Congress, but the event of 1922, when Gandhi broke away from Empire, altered his aesthetic and cultural perception of native Africans. In so far as the ideals of beauty were concerned, the Indian yearning for a fair skin complexion and a pointed nose was, for Gandhi, an inheritance from imperial aesthetics – “a superstition” in his own words. For the Gandhi of 1923–1924, native Africans were neither savages nor barbarians but imagined so by the vanity of the observer. Before concluding, we must in the passing note an observation on the South African Gandhi by Patrick French in his review of Ram Guha’s book India before Gandhi. French bluntly stated his point thus: it was not that someone born in the nineteenth century should be expected to have twenty-first-century racial attitudes, but that Gandhi was regressive even by the reformist standards of his own time (The Guardian 9 October 2013). This observation is anachronistic because Gandhi’s utterances on native Africans – whether racist or favourable – were in consonance with the reigning conventions that governed discourses on race and civilization at the moment of his utterance. The racist remarks against native Africans coincided with the period when pseudo-scientific racism was dominant. His favourable description of native Africans corresponded to a period when ‘race’ as a scientific concept was declining and cultural relativism was gaining credibility. Gandhi’s alleged motive of retrospectively tidying up his past racist remarks against native Africans is therefore not borne out by evidence, if his utterances were to be located within their historical contexts. The key historical context was linguistic, or the prevailing conventions governing the treatment of race (Skinner 1972: 406).

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Notes 1 “By writing the Autobiography, Gandhi sought to take charge of all subsequent representations of his own life, and to impose an interpretation in terms of spiritual quest which ought not to be seriously questioned afterwards. This was not a deliberate attempt by Gandhi to mislead the public. On the contrary, by insisting that he did not write an account of his life, but only of his spiritual itinerary, Gandhi pre-empted criticism directed at factual aspects of his narrative. There remains the lingering feeling that this caveat was of a mostly rhetorical nature.” Markovits 2007: 55. 2 See especially the chapter titled “History” in Satyagraha in South Africa. 3 CN Patel, Mahatma Gandhi in his Gujarati writings, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1981, p. 64. 4 Please see “The Zulu rebellion” chapter xxiv of Part IV of The story of my experiments with truth. 5 Was A. Chessell Piquet the nom de plume of Henry Polak? (Nauriya 2012: 283; Hofmeyr 2013: 195). 6 “Race Prejudice” 28 August 1909; “A parliament of man: The great Universal Races Congress . . .”; “Dr Du Bois on race prejudice”; “The crime of colour” 26 August 1911; “The first Universal Races Congress” 2 November 1911; “Coloured man in arts and letters” 21 October 1911.

Bibliography Adavi, Krishna Akhil Kumar, 2015, Gandhi in South Africa and the Question of Race, Bachelor’s Degree Thesis Submitted to the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani. Bhana, Surendra, and Goolam Vahed, 2005, The Making of a Political Reformer, New Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Boas, Franz, 1911, “The Instability of Human Types” in A Record of the Proceedings of the First Universal Races Congress Held at the University of London 26 to 29 July 1911, edited by G. Spiller, London: P.S. King & Son https://archive.org/stream/papersoninterrac00uni viala/papersoninterrac00univiala_djvu.txt Accessed 5 July 2016. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG) http://www.gandhiserve.org/e/cwmg/cwmg. htm Accessed 30 January 2016. Curtin, Philip, Steven Feierman, Leonard Thompson, and Jan Vansina, 1995, African History: From Earliest Times to Independence, London: Pearson Education. Finot, Jean, 1906/7, Race Prejudice, translated by Florence Wade-Evans, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Publishers. French, Patrick, “Review of Ram Guha’s Gandhi Before India” http://www.theguardian.com/ books/2013/oct/09/gandhi-before-india-ramachandra-guha-review Accessed 30 January 2016. Gandhi, M. K., 1927, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Ahmedabad: Navajivan. ———, 1968, Satyagraha in South Africa, Ahmedabad: Navajivan. Gregg, Robert, and Madhavi Kale, 2005, “The Negro and the Dark Princess: Two Legacies of the Universal Races Congress” Radical History Review, Issue 92, pp. 133–152. Hofmeyr, Isabel, 2013, Gandhi’s Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Indian Opinion https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/journals-by-gandhiji/indian-opinion Accessed 30 January 2016. Lelyveld, Joseph, 2011, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, New Delhi: Harper Collins.

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Markovits, Claude, 2007, The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: The Life and After Life of the Mahatma, New Delhi: Permanent Black. Nauriya, Anil, 2012, “Freedom, Race, Francophonie: Gandhi and the Construction of Peoplehood” www.codesria.org/IMG/pdf/Anil_Nauriya.pdf Accessed 30 January 2016. Pennybacker, Susan D., 2005, “The Universal Races Congress, London Political Culture, and Imperial Dissent 1900–1939” Radical History Review, Issue 92 (Spring), pp. 103–117. Roy, A. 2014, “The Doctor and the Saint” introductory essay to Annihilation of Caste, annotated critical edition by S. Anand, New Delhi: Navayana, pp. 16–179. Rudwick, Elliott, 1911, “WEB Dubois and the Universal Races Congress of 1911” The Phylon Quarterly, Volume 20, Issue 4, pp. 372–328. Skinner, Quentin, 1972, “Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts” New Literary History, Volume 3, Issue 2 (Winter), pp. 393–408. Tylor, E. B., 1902, “Anthropology” Encyclopedia Britannica http://www.1902encyclopedia. com/A/ANT/anthropology-03.html Accessed 30 November 2015. Weatherly, Ulysses, 1911, “The First Universal Races Congress” American Journal of Sociology, Volume 17, Issue 3, pp. 315–328.

PART IV

Post-Gandhian legacy Issues and challenges

12 WHAT CAN INDIA LEARN FROM GANDHI TODAY? Antony Copley

I last visited India in 1999, undertaking field work on Indian spirituality for the book later published as A Spiritual Bloomsbury. I have not witnessed the extraordinary transformation opened up by Shining India. How a Gandhian outlook might impinge at all on this new India is surely the theme of this chapter. I am told if I visit India now I would not recognise cities such as Delhi and Bangalore, much the same for Kolkata and Chennai, the cities I know best. Intuitively I feel I would have a sense of loss, because the India I knew and loved from the 1970s onwards has been all but eclipsed by Shining India. The black humour of Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger captured a new vulgarity and harshness in India’s contemporary economic climate. Amit Chaudhuri, in a recent piece from Kolkata, and mainly in terms of Hindutva, writes: ‘For the first time since Independence, India feels unliveable in, not just for minorities under assault, but for large swathes of the population’ (LRB 17 December 2015: 42). Bhikhu Parekh has, however, witnessed the transformation, and I am using his recently published collection of essays Debating India: Essays on Indian Political Discourse (OUP 2015) as a catalyst for my chapter. India is seen as divided between an affluent one-fifth, another one-fifth aspiring to join its ranks, and two-fifths barely able to survive, with another one-fifth threatened with falling into this poverty: these two sides of India, the affluent or what was misguidedly called “shining India” live next to each other in a deeply asymmetrical relationship. The former is loud and unmistakeable with its impact felt in almost all spheres of life. The latter leads a shadowy existence and is largely noticed only when it turns dangerous. He further argues: The deep and growing disparity in income, life chances, political expectations, world views, and hopes for the future between the two sides threaten

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to undermine the moral and political consensus that has sustained Indian democracy so far. (Parekh: 215–216) Maybe the poor do not rebel, Parekh interprets, just because with ‘their institutionalised humiliation, they are in no position to challenge their poverty band and can but struggle to survive.’ The terms of Indian life have altered: ‘wealth and political power are replacing caste as the basis of a new hierarchy. The quest for domination trumps the need to address common problems in a cooperative spirit’ (Parekh: 207). He writes of  ‘an insidious seduction of the Indian mind’ (Parekh: 204). Ramachandra Guha tried to redress when we met in Canterbury my own pessimism by observing that the problem is worse in the former zamindari areas of North and East, but less serious in the former ryotwari areas of South and West. Of course, there is nothing unique in the way India has responded to the challenge of globalisation with its own programme of neo-liberalism or authoritarian capitalism. Parallels could be drawn with Egypt, which embarked on a similar structural adjustment programme – ‘stabilise, privatise, liberalise’ – under Mubarak, government officials hand in glove with private enterprise, winning praise from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, but of course there was to be one fundamental difference. In the Arab Spring there was a rebellion by Egypt’s marginalised, ‘ordinary Egyptians fighting for autonomy and attempting to dismantle the constellation of power that enables such supremacy in the first place.’ That catchphrase of our age, “there is no alternative”, was confronted by myriad tiny irrepressible political grenades that detonated deep inside countless imaginations: a psychological shift that upended traditional notions of what legitimate power consisted of. ‘Sadly counter-revolution was to prevail’ (See Shenker 2016). Could India go along this same route? Incidentally, India also uses the mantra, there is no alternative. We need though to recognise that this relentless rise of neoliberalism dates back to the late 1970s and early 1980s. Together with this authoritarian capitalism, India has set out to imitate China and rebalance its current population from a 70% rural population and 30% urban to 50/50%, a huge structural change. It is a reflection of the corruption of the Indian media that the suicide of Indian farmers in their thousands, to quote Parekh, ‘has received far less coverage than the Fashion week’ (Parekh 2015). Centre stage of this new situation is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government under Narendra Modi’s leadership, and in Parekh’s view the BJP might have developed along the lines of the Christian Democrat parties. I feel at best it echoes the new conservative nationalism of the Polish Law and Justice party, ‘but instead it became a culturally shallow, politically intolerant and narrowly Hindu party’ (Parekh: 195). Congress fares no better in his estimate, having had the possibility of becoming a Social Democratic party but already under Nehru, ‘little more than a family owned recruiting ground for careerists and sycophants’ (Parekh: 166). Neither party is seen as having any positive future programmes for India. For once with the visit of Modi to Great Britain, the British press stopped writing about mere human interest

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stories in India and actually confronted its national politics. Pankaj Mishra wrote a blistering piece (The Guardian 10 October 2015). He reminded us of the nature of Modi’s remorse at the pogrom against Muslims during his time as Chief Minister of Gujarat,‘no more than the regrets of a puppy being run over by a car’ (The Guardian 9 November 2015). He collaborated with top Indian industrialists, Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambadi, he attracted disaffected intellectuals, ‘the embittered pedantocrats and wannabes who traditionally serve in the intellectual rearguard of illiberal movements,’ as well as the so-called Modi toadies of non-resident Indians. He is seen as distracting ‘a fearful and atomised citizenry with the demonization of minorities, scapegoating of ostensibly liberal, cosmopolitan “rootless” people, and promises of development, while facilitating crony capitalism,’ all the while posing as the common man with his background as a chai wallah. He is every bit as despairing of India’s future as Parekh: Modi and his Toadies with ‘their assaults on the authorised idea of India are creating a fissure in the unfeeling monolith through which a humane politics and culture might flow.’ The alternative is ‘a post-human India.’ To be fair to Modi, he has launched various modernising programmes, attacking corruption, seeking greater work discipline in the civil service and implementing measures of public hygiene. He has a strong democratic mandate. He has become a figure of international repute, playing a significant role at the Paris Climate Change Conference, addressing the UN. He has overseen India’s joining space exploration. He has made overtures of peace to Pakistan, though these as usual – as Christophe Jaffrelot reminds us – have been filibustered by the Pakistan army. And if there is cause for concern in about some of India’s current policy, Pankaj Mishra dates the rot from much earlier in the 1980s, with the pogrom against the Sikhs in 1984, the banning of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and the atrocities in Kashmir. So is there any space here for a Gandhian culture? At least Gandhi would have approved of a nationwide practice of yoga. The biggest challenge India faces, along with the rest of the world, is climate change. Here I’ll be brief, for others will be far better informed. Modi at Paris resurrected the drain theory to bully the developed nations into taking the greater share of the costs of managing climate change, and here he is at one with a largerscale endeavour to redeem the colonial past. (See the attack on the Rhodes statues in the Universities of Cape Town and Oxford. David Olosuga, ‘Topple Rhodes? Better to rebrand him a war criminal’ (The Guardian 8 January 2016.) One wonders if India will show any restraint in its drive for coal-fired power stations. Some have argued India is in a strong position to set an example for the use of low-carbon technology to accelerate its own energy transition and so bridge the gap between the developed and developing worlds (Kevin Rudd and Hank Paulson, ‘Three nations can change our climate,’ The Guardian 1 December 2015). Should we take hope from a recent advertisement in The Times on 18 January 2016 for Vedanta: ‘Vedanta is committed to PM’s vision of Made in India leading to sustainable and inclusive growth’? India has initiated the International Agency for Solar Technology and Applications. If India is not in danger of the Himalayan glaciers drying up as once feared, then recent floods in Chennai and the air pollution in its cities is

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warning enough: the High Court of Delhi has described living in the capital as ‘living in a gas chamber’ ( John Vidal, ‘Air pollution: a dark cloud of filth poisons the world’s cities,’ The Observer 17 January 2016). India according to the World Health Organisation database has 16 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities with ultra-fine particles, eight out of the 30 with the less serious PM10 particles. Six Indian cities, Gwalior, Allahabad, Patna, Raipur, Ludhiana and Delh, exposing its citizens to serious cardiac and respiratory diseases. Gandhi is of course hugely relevant in the battle against climate change. He was a natural environmentalist. Even so, Parekh says of both Tagore and Gandhi: ‘neither of them explained how the unity of human beings with their environment was possible in an industrial, mobile and increasingly globalised world’ (Parekh: 71). I now want to address the current very buoyant state of play of writing on Gandhi himself. We are now much anticipating Volume 2 of Ramachandra Guha’s outstanding biography of Gandhi, with its bold attempt to write his life entirely in terms of contemporary records. He and S.R. Mehrotra have finally done justice to the role that Dr Mehta played in his life, no longer just the Indian lawyer who met Gandhi on his arrival 29 September 1888 in London to educate him in the ways of that city and whose top hat Gandhi fluffed up the wrong way, but the indispensable patron of Gandhi’s ashrams in South Africa and the Sabarmati ashram, as well as being his closest Indian friend.1 Another invaluable source is the ongoing publication of Selected Writings of C. Rajagopalachari. It is fascinating to be reminded of the way an Indian so steeped in India’s Vedantist culture and a Tilakite was drawn to the moral strength of Gandhi’s South African satyagrahas. At the time he saw the future moral health of the nation lying with primary school teachers, and this would have been his favoured career over being a lawyer. I wonder what Guha will make of the National Schools set up during the Non-Cooperation campaign in 1920–1922. With Gandhi himself in jail, it was left to lead Congress, with the civil disobedience movement currently suspended by Gandhi, and it is again fascinating in Volume 2 to see how C. Rajagopalachari fought for the khadi programme against CR Das’s attempt to infiltrate the legislative councils through his Swaraj party. As C. Rajagopalachari saw it, the collective experience of the constructive programme was the best way of preparing Indians for a renewal of civil disobedience. I was disappointed on reviewing The Collected Essays of the late Sarvepalli Gopal (my review forthcoming in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society) to see how hostile he was to CR. Admittedly, CR’s tract The Way Out (OUP 1944) anticipated the final terms of partition, so it just possibly may have made it more likely, and his setting up of the Gandhi -Jinnah Bombay talks of 1944 probably gave equal status to Jinnah in future constitutional talks, but you could argue by focussing on the possible division CR alerted the powers that be to take far stronger measures to monitor partition than was fatally to be the case. I now want to interpret the current state of India under three headings and link Gandhi to this discussion: the politics of violence, the politics of social ­protest and the politics of identity. This is an exploration of Gandhism, more to be seen as a corpus of ideas than an ideology. Gandhi’s ideas were always flexible and experimental.

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He was more the pragmatist than the utopian. Gandhi was ‘but an initiator of a conversation’ (Parekh: 249). Violence is ubiquitous and India is no exception. In Parekh’s analysis, Gandhi saw the roots of violence in fear of death: ‘violence worked because people were deeply attached to life and afraid of death . . . this fear led them to seek security in the state’s apparatus of violence and wars’ (Parekh: 265). Personally I still favour Freud’s account that a thin crust of civilisation protects us from the violent forces in the unconscious or the id. I sense there has to be some ambiguous relationship between violence and non-violence if the latter is to have any hope of exorcising its influence. Maybe it is like homeopathy. You need to absorb a trace element of the virus to produce an antidote and vaccination likewise. It was Gandhi’s exposure to the violence of Savarkarin London that led to his writing Hind Swaraj on his return journey to South Africa. I found support for this idea in Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland’s view that the current populism of the right can only be answered by a populism of the left: ‘think of it as vaccine, a small dose of right wingery that can inoculate the rest’ (‘We need a populist left able to fight fire with fire’ The Guardian 12 December 2015). I also have in mind Freud’s belief that the tyrannical superego annexes destructive forces from the id to enforce its moral agenda. ­Gandhi, it has to be said, subjected his close followers to severe moral pressure. I think we underestimate what Gandhi was up against. Clearly he faced the violent racism of emergent apartheid and the latent violence of the Raj, betrayed in 1857, Amritsar, the suppression of the Quit India movement, as well as in numerous other small ways. But the threat of violence stretched into the wider world. At the time Gandhi took the decision to oppose the Transvaal pass law in 1906, Europe was about to be convulsed by violence. In the late 19th century, many dangerous ideas were feeding a climate of violence: Dostoevsky’s on the criminal above the law, Nietzsche’s admittedly much misunderstood but seductive idea of the superman and his contempt for democracy, George Sorel’s Reflections on Violence, that only the threat of a proletarian revolution and even better the challenge of world war would cure the bourgeoisie of its decadence. All these nefarious ideas were taken up by the Italian writer and proto-fascist, Gabriele D’Annunzio. Here I am indebted to Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War, paperback edition 2013). His was a philosophy of violence, blood and martyrdom, a rhetoric which did much to lead Italy into the war in 1915 and to inspire his extraordinary seizure of Fiume, the role model for Mussolini’s later rise to power. D’Annunzio saw the Risorgimento as a time when Italy was irrigated with the blood of brave Italians. In his writings, ‘the politics of beauty is beginning to reveal itself as a politics of blood’ (p. 338). He saw Italy as but a mess in 1914: ‘violence on a massive scale was the only remedy’ (p. 353). He saw war in these terms: ‘killing and being killed, pouring out blood of myriads of young men, only by doing these things could a race demonstrate its right to respect’ (p. 364). He sought to recapture both the former Venetian empire in the Adriatic and throw off Austrian rule in the North: ‘territory obtained peacefully could never become a true part of Italy. Unless it was watered with our own blood it would remain an

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alien limb, subject to its gangrene’ (p. 444).Violence had become a drug and so to Fiume: ‘the conflict was a fire in which all the filth and corruption of peacetime would be utterly destroyed, leaving a world cauterised and pure’ (Hallett 2013). In fact. D’Annunzio was clever enough to recognise the horrors of war, but always the rhetoric took over. The Easter uprising of 1916 in Dublin was likewise saturated with the language of blood, sacrifice and violence. And indeed Europe went willingly to war, and out of war came the fascist and Nazi dictatorships as well as the Bolshevik revolution and the gulag. Einstein wrote to Gandhi: ‘we can conquer the votaries of violence by the non-violent method. Your example will inspire and help humanity to put an end to a conflict based on violence with international help and co-operation guaranteeing peace of the world’ (in October 1931, quoted Parekh, p. 234). He later wrote of Gandhi: ‘a man who has confronted the brutality of Europe with the dignity of the simple human being and thus at all times risen superior’ (quoted Parekh: 236). All this may seem a digression from the Indian story, but Indian nationalists had always followed closely the Risorgimento and Italian nationalism and likewise the nationalist struggle in Ireland. But there is a more immediately topical anology. In his fictional account of a pogrom against the dalitsina Patna election, Sanjeev Sahota has the Hindutva Maheshwar Senachant. Bharat is for the pure of blood and blood we will shed to keep it pure. . . . They spoke of the need to gain control. That their religion was being polluted, the gods were being angered. The land was increasingly infested by achuts, cherehs, chamaars, dalits, adivasis, backwards, scheduleds,-whatever new name they decided to try and hide behind.’ Their speaker ranted: ‘we will fight to keep our country pure. We will shed blood. We will not back down. Let’s put it even more plainly: we will kill.‘And horrifically they do so? (Sahota 2016: 54–55) But how does non-violence work? It is a familiar story made unfamiliar in Howard Caygill’s provocative text, On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance (Bloomsbury paperback edition 2013). He has a wonderfully original reading of Clausewitz’s On War. Usually Clausewitz is seen as the apologist for the Napoleonic and Prussian authoritarian states. Caygill shows he was even more concerned with the emergence of resistance to those states, drawing heavily on the Spanish guerrilla resistance of 1808–1813. He suggested that guerrilla resistance worked best when it was local and sporadic, a slow process of wearing down the enemy: it was always bound to fail if it faced the militarised state full on. Many were to take up this strategy, including Rosa Luxemburg, Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. But Lenin rejected it in favour of raising consciousness through the leadership of a revolutionary elite, almost Nietzschean in outlook. It raises the possibility that Gandhi might have been wiser to rely on localised and individualised acts of resistance than the full-scale confrontation with the Raj in his non-cooperation movements. But apart from a shared charisma, it is hard to think of two such different leaders as Gandhi and Lenin.

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But Clausewitz was appalled at the risk of an increasing escalation of violence in the conflict. He was no Hegelian and could see no dialectical end in sight. (Well not quite, he did believe the state would in time bring resistance under control.) He saw in Goya’s Disasters of War expression of this violence. Interestingly, the artist Jake Chapman, whose macabre work is inspired by these etchings, sees Goya as complicit with the violence, both in the fractured forms of the work and their content. Rene Girard was to be even more pessimistic, seeing the escalation in apocalyptic terms, the destruction of the world: ‘Satan is another name for escalation’ (quoted p. 87). Yet Caygill points to ‘a deeper resistance, that is a resistance to the logic of escalation (p. 59). The way out of this vicious escalation is of course Gandhi’s non-violence. Caygill sees him as showing ‘modest theoretical aspirations,’ oriented towards the practice of resistance’ (p. 71). Caygill is happy to compare Mao and Gandhi: ‘both shared an implacable commitment to struggle, motivated in Mao by the pursuit of victory and in Gandhi by the moral certainty of a just cause supported by the truth’ (pp. 72–73). Both saw resistance in terms of the longue duree. The answer to escalation lay in the Gandhian pursuit of truth, self-suffering and an appeal to the moral conscience of one’s opponent. He stood for an entirely new ‘resistant subjectivity,’ driven not by Mao’s violence but ‘information, example, provocation and non-violence’ (p. 71). In Parekh’s words: non-violence is ‘a way of being in the world, a mode of discovery and leading the life of truth’ (Parekh: 253). Rather by chance Gandhi struck in 1906 on fashioning satyagraha on ‘an ascetic renunciatory vow,’ based on chastity and poverty, and ‘a pledge unto death.’ Gandhi was fearless at the prospect of death: ‘for many years I have accorded intellectual assent to the proposition that death is only a big change in life and nothing more and would be welcome whenever it arrives’ (quoted p. 214). Here is the link with Parekh’s insight between violence and the fear of death. I was fascinated to discover in Caygill’s text an account of Pasolini’s deep engagement with India and Gandhi: it opens up the possibility that the striking figure of the peasant revolutionary in his film The Gospel According to St Matthew owes as much to Gandhi as to Christ. Yet his last film Salo could be read as despair at the irresistible corruption of violence. So are there forms of violence beyond the reach non-violence? It was always felt that Gandhi had unreasonable expectations of Jewish passive resistance in the face of Nazi violence. Rather surprisingly, Parekh believes resistance in the early years of the Nazi regime were feasible: ‘it would be wrong to rule out the possibility of effective non-violent resistance altogether’ (Parekh: 261.) And it is true the regime could back down in the face of moral intimidation: it withdrew the euthanasia of handicapped children faced by the outrage of Christian churches. And what of Al Qaeda and Isis? Here again Parekh insists on the need for dialogue: ‘in denying their humanity we risk losing our own’ (Parekh: 271). He has an imaginary debate between Gandhi and Osama bin Laden. The imagined bin Laden sees violence as instrumental rather than inherently evil and tartly observes that Indian independence owed as much to violence as non-violence. The first intifada, he notes, was non-violent and got nowhere. Jonathan Powell, a major player of the Blair

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administration in the Good Friday agreement, believes in just the same way, as talks with Sinn Fein/the Irish Republican Army were crucial for the peace process, so it will have to be with Isis: ‘open a quiet channel that will allow us to begin negotiations once both sides have come to the realisation that there is no military solution . . . talking to terrorists is not the same as agreeing with them’ (Powell, The Guardian 1 December 2105). Is this too optimistic? Can it not be argued that some radical transformation has occurred in the jihadist imagination? No longer is this just anti-imperialist but ‘an inchoate identity driven rage . . . a yearning for God given lines.’ In Kenan Malik’s analysis, the West for Isis has become ‘some almost mythical all encompassing monster, the modern version of the chimera or basilisk, the source of all manner of horror and dread. And against such a monster almost any action becomes possible’ (Kevin Malik, The Observer 22 November 2015). No doubt the first principle of satyagraha, a readiness for dialogue, is acceptable, but the second of passive resistance would be suicidal, but then Gandhi had taken ‘a pledge unto death.’ And how does this relate to jihadist groups in India and the current rise of violence? Before turning to the politics of social protest, it will be relevant to make comparisons with ‘an international model of creative resistance,’ the non-violent resistance in neighbouring Burma. Delphine Schrank in admittedly lurid and journalistic prose (The Rebel of Rangoon: A Tale of Defiance and Deliverance in Burma, Nation Books 2015) has got inside the mind and practice of the movement from the Junta’s crippling of the landslide victory of the National Liberation for Democracy (NLD) in 1990 to the present. Presiding over this struggle is the rather shadowy figure through being under house arrest for most of the time, and surely the most inspiring contemporary Gandhian political figure, Aung San Sui Kyi, familiarly known as Auntie or the Lady, seen by many as a spirit or nat, or as a female Bodhisattva. Schrank follows two activists of the NLD, Ngay and Nigel (a pseudonym), in constant fear of the secret police as they distribute party literature, give talks on the movement, and visit the student movement exiled over the border with Thailand in Mae Sot (and the student movement has in fact abandoned non-violence). Sadly, Nigel suspects Ngay of corruption and they fall out: he does not know that Ngay is having secretly to launder foreign donations for the party. It was the Saffron uprising of 2007 that galvanised resistance. The Junta’s brutal suppression of the monasteries changed the context of resistance: ‘no longer could the Junta hide behind Asian values,’ this was ‘an assault on the very cosmos’ (p. 140). The greatest success of the Junta had been to keep separate the Burmese nonviolent movement from the militant opposition of the ethnic minorities, the Karen and the Kachin. The party was to be placed in an impossible quandary over participating in the elections in 2010, for to do so would be to invalidate the 1990 victory, quite apart from all kinds of exclusionary clauses for the franchise. A splinter group was to stand, believing economic change would hasten political change. In the end the NLD changed tactics in 2012 and successfully won by elections, Nigel being elected in the capital. But at this point, disarmingly, Shrank breaks off the political narrative down to 2015 and focuses on the anti-Muslim pogroms, and here there

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is a huge paradox. So much of resistance has been fortified by vipassana meditation, yet it is just the same Buddhism, led by a fanatical monk from Mandalay, Ashin Wirathu, that turned Buddhist communal violence against the Muslims. There are obvious parallels here with India. (See my essay ‘Burmese Days: Past and Present’ Gandhi Marg Vol. 34 January-March 2013 for the background to this resistance movement.) But I am told these are often pseudo – monks in the riots who put on Buddhist clothing and then retreat back into civilian life. Gandhians worldwide will look with trepidation to see how Aung San Suu Kyi can take advantage of her election victory. The Junta still denied her the role of president yet she has taken on the special role of State Counsellor and is close to the new president Hitin Kyaw. Her party hold the ministerial offices of foreign affairs, president’s office, education and energy, but they are eclipsed by the powers the army still exercises. How she handles the Muslim crisis and the continuing civil wars will be a serious test of her political skills. It is claimed with independent India in democracy there is no further occasion for satyagrahas. But this has not stopped the Bhoodan movement, J.P. Narayan’s civil disobedience movement, the Chipko movement, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement), and no doubt many more. Surely the gross ­inequalities of modern India cry out for protest. There is a harrowing indepth account of Naxalite resistance in the 1970s in Neel Mukherjee’s extraordinary novel The Lives of Others, but this of course was a violent struggle. The recent suicide of Hyderabad university strudent Rohith Chakravarti Verula is a reminder of the continuing plight of the Dalit community. But all I want to address here is the Adivasi struggle and their fight to protect their traditional way of life against the inroads of Indian and global capitalism. It is an ancient struggle, both under colonialism and early Congress government, but first attracted wider attention in the Gandhian-inspired protest at the threat from the Narmada dams, flooding the adivasi lands along the river, with its wonderfully named monsoon satyagrahas, but, in the end, governed by the Gandhian belief in being open to dialogue, it was left to the Supreme Court to legislate, and it decided in the national interest that the dam should be raised.2 Here I want to discuss the adivasi struggle in Eastern and Central India, a community caught between the Indian army, Indian mining companies and the Maoist rebellion, the biggest internal unrest the government currently faces, and pay special attention to the conflict in the Saranda forest, the subject of a detailed and passionate study by investigative journalist and Adivasi activist, Gladson Dungung, Mission Saranda: A War for Natural Resources in India (Deshaj Prakashan 2015). He says he is often mistaken either for a Congress supporter or a Maoist. The Saranda forest, land of the seven hills and home to the Sal tree, is some 860 square miles in Jharkand, on the borders of Chattisgarh and Odisha. It fulfils the same function as the Amazon rain forest as one of the lungs of the planet. Here are Ho and Munda communities living in symbiotic relationship with the forest, a vital example of how to save the environment, still ruled by traditional leaders, separatist in outlook. Simplifying the story, the government has made promises of

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protection and public works to the adivasi in the Saranda Action Plan but, in fact, little development has occurred, and it is seen as a smoke screen to open up the forest to mining companies, SAIL and Arcelot Mittal prominent. Jairam Ramesh, the Minister of Forest and Environment behind this duplicitous policy, once admitted, ‘mining is not essentially a boon but a curse’ (quoted p. 192). On the other side are the Communist party of India (Maoist), formed 21 September 2004. It ‘liberated’ the Saranda forest and set up some improvements, though it was just as likely to burn down schools as build them. Gladson has proved that in fact they collude with the industrialisation of the forest by Mafia-like protection rackets with the mining companies. Here is a resistance movement pursuing a classic Clausewitzstyle guerrilla war, in no way siding with the adivasi people, but using them as a stepping stone to seize revolutionary power. All this has put the adivasi in an impossible position. Initially they did a deal through a local leader Mora Mundi with the Maoists. More sinisterly, they collaborated with the Army in the Salva Judim (Peace March), though this was in Chattisgarh, a private adivasi militia, which was eventually outlawed by the Supreme Court. But a considerable number of young adivasis in Jharkand have been recruited as SPOs (Caygill 2013). Whichever way they turn, the forest communities see their lands polluted, trees felled, rivers poisoned, sacred sites vandalised so they can no longer worship their gods. The Indian army runs all over the area, committing all kinds of human rights abuses. Allegedly it is there to clear the Red Corridor. But a peculiarly troubling interpretation of its Operation Green Hunt is opened up through the writing of Gregoire Chamayou: this sees such government counter-insurgency as a revival of the hunt for renegade slaves. In Caygill’s words, ‘dedicated to the physical elimination of the Indian tribal people’s capacity to revolt and its recent expression in Maoist insurgency’ (p. 159). Still, there is the possible reversal of roles and the hunted becomes the hunter. It is important to see the Indian struggle as part of a worldwide protest by threatened indigenous peoples, inspired by the Zapatista resistance in Mexico, expressed in the Cochabanda Declaration in Bolivia in April 2010. A terrible reminder of this international dimension is the assassination on 2 March 2016 of the Honduran Berta Caceres. She fought on behalf of her Lenca people against the dam that would pollute the Gualcarque river. Hers was a battle between the Civic Council of Popular amd Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH) and the Honduras company Desarallos Energeticas SA (Desa). So is there a possibility of a Gandhian presence in this conflict? Gladson makes no mention of such. When the Gandhi Foundation UK offered its annual International peace prize to Binayak Sen for his humanitarian work amongst the Adivasi and his defence of human rights, there was outrage from Gladsun, accusing us of privileging a Gandhian at the expense of the Adivasi leadership. It was a quarrel we patched up, but it was an uncomfortable reminder of that ancient divide between Ambedkar and Gandhi. Arundhati Roy has ridiculed the very idea of satyagraha in such circumstances. Gandhi would surely have been as hostile to the mining interests as to the Maoists. Would he have sorted out the differences which have opened

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up between the traditional leadership and the panchayats? A Gandhian movement would be wholly sympathetic to adivasi environmental concerns. The politics of identity raises more familiar issues and can be dealt with more briefly. There is a feminist identity to address. It is promising that there has been such vigorous protest at the 2012 Delhi bus rape. Indian writer Somini Sengupta sees this as a watershed moment. Modi told parents not just to keep an eye on their daughters but goaded them to keep an eye on their sons. (See an interview, ‘Tales of Hope from India’s Young Dreamers’ The Observer 24 April 2016.) Gandhi of course invited women to join the freedom struggle in large numbers and as equal to men, but that does not make him a feminist. His insistence on celibacy in his close followers caused much moral anguish. Where would he have stood in the abortion debate? India’s gay community have been betrayed by the revision by the Supreme Court of the Delhi High Court’s withdrawal of the colonial legislation, the source of the problem. Gandhi is unlikely to be much of an ally here. Same-sex relationships in the Phoenix Farm ashram were the occasion for his first fast. Rather sadly, Ramchandra Guha has sidestepped Joseph Lelyveld’s speculation that there was a homoerotic content to Gandhi’s friendship with bodybuilder Kallenbach in favour of a reverse colonial relationship in which the Indian dictates terms on lifestyle to the European. I see Gandhi on matters of personal morality rather akin to those progressive popes who advocate radical ideas on economic and political issues but are bleakly conservative when it comes to questions as to how we live: at best, forgive the sinner but not the sin. At least India has so far been spared such homophobic murders in Bangladesh of gay activists, Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy (‘No place to be an atheist or gay: wave of Islamist killings terrifies Bangladesh’ The Observer, 1 May 2016). Surely India will come into line with modern thinking on sexuality? But the dominant issue in the politics of identity is the revival of the Hindutva agenda. Here Parekh is rather bland. He sees this as Hindutva Mark 11: ‘a strong cultural ethos within the limits of the Indian constitution and relative distancing from the RSS’ (Parekh: 226). Amit Chaudhuri is far more alarmed. He reminds us of the murder of M. Kalmurgi, a Kannada literary critic and Sahita Akademi prize winner, by a Hindu fanatic. He points to ‘the acrimony, intimidation and violence that now accompany Indian debate – all of which are a part of the ethos of BJP-led governance and its attempt to redefine through intervention or abetment India’s inheritance.’ In his view, ‘the BJP has been busy supressing Hindu pluralism – the legacy of the bhakti movement – just as Wahabi Islam has suppressed heterodox forms such as Sufism.’ He continues: ‘You could call the BJP’s project a kind of Wahabi Hinduism: it is intent on defining a single power centre, where before there was none, and one interpretation, where before there were many.’ And the real intent ‘is the suppression of political dissent.’3 The terms of Indian public discourse, so attractively described by Parekh, is in danger of being warped by narrowmindedness and Hindu sectarianism. Gandhi of course was inherently a pluralist and wholly opposed to this Hindutva project.

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I fear the general tenor of this chapter has been pessimistic. Maybe this is the view of an outsider who has seen an India he has loved being transformed and is nostalgic for an India that is past. Somini Sengupta sees India’s inability to address child hunger as its most shocking failure. An alternative voice is Jason Burke’s, retiring after six years as Observer South Asia correspondent: he ‘leaves more optimistic about the region and about our world than when I arrived. In this region you are witness to a story that is opening, growing, developing in a multitude of inspiring ways.’ But his final appraisal is ambiguous: ‘this is a region where the good and the bad, the uplifting and the ugly, do not just exist alongside each other, but are so enmeshed as to be indivisible’ ( Jason Burke, The Observer 31 January 2016).

Notes 1 See my review of S. R. Mehrotra, The Mahatma and the Doctor: The Untold Story of Dr Pranjivan Mehta: Gandhi’s Greatest Friend and Benefactor 1864–1932. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 23, October 2015, pp. 731–733. 2 I have reviewed two relevant studies, Alf Gunvald Nilsen’s Dispossession and Resistance in India: The River and the Race. JRAS, vol. 21, October 2011, pp. 521–523 and J. Rycoft and Sangeeta Dasgupta’s, The Politics of Belonging in India: Becoming Adivasi. JRAS, July and October 2012, pp. 613–615. 3 See Amit Chaudhuri, The Guardian, 26 December 2015 and Diary LRB17 December 2015.

Bibliography Adiga, Aravind. 2008. The White Tiger. New York: Free Press. Burke, Jason. 2016. Farewell to south Asia: boisterous, sometimes brutal, always extraordinary. The Observer, 31 January. Caygill, Howard. 2013. On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance. London: Bloomsbury. Copley, Antony. 1978. The Political Career of C Rajagopalachari, 1937–1954. London: Macmillan. Copley, Antony. 1986. C Rajagopalachari: Gandhi’s Southern Commander. Madras: Indo-British Historical Society. Copley, Antony. 1997a. Gandhi: Against the Tide. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Copley, Antony. 1997b. Religions in Conflict: Ideology, Cultural Contact and Conversion in Late Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Copley, Antony. (ed). 2000. Gurus and Their Followers: New Religious Reform Movements in Colonial India. New York: Oxford University Press. Copley, Antony, and George Paxton (eds.). 1997. Gandhi and the Contemporary World. Chennai: Indo-British Historical Society. Dungung, Gladson. 2015. Mission Saranda: A War for Natural Resources in India. Bihar, Jharkhand: Deshaj Prakashan. Freedland, Jonathan. 2015. We Need a Populist Left Able to Fight Fire with Fire. The Guardian, 12 December. Guha, Ramachandra. 2013. Gandhi Before India Allen Lane. Hughes, Lucy-Hallett. 2013. The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War. Fourth Estate. Lelyveld, Jospeh. 2011. Great Soul Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. New York: Random House. Malik, Kenan. 2015. Why Has Political Rage Against the West Taken Such a Barbaric Form? The Guardian, 22 November.

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Mehrotra, S. R. 2014. The Mahatma and the Doctor: The Untold Story of Dr Pranjivan Mehta: Gandhi’s Greatest Friend and Benefactor 1864–1932. Vakils: Feffer and Simons PVT Ltd. Mishra, Pankaj. 2015. The Ascent of Modi. The Guardian, Supplement, 10 November. Mukherjee, Neel. 2015. The Lives of Others. London: Vintage Books. Olosuga, David. 2016. Topple Rhodes? Better to Rebrand Him a War Criminal. The Guardian, 8 January. Parekh, Bhikhu. 2015. Debating India: Essays on Indian Political Discourse. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Powell, Jonathan. 2015. Bombing Isis Is Not Enough-We’ll Need to Talk to Them Too. The Guardian, 1 December. Raghavan, Srinath, and Sarvepalli Gopal (eds). 2013. Imperialists, Nationalists, Democrats, The Collected Essays. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Rangarajan, Mahesh N. Balakrishnan, and Deepa Bhatnagar (eds). 2014. Selected Works of C Rajagopalcahari Vol 1. 1907–21 Vol. 11 1921–22. Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan. Rudd, Kevin, and Hank Poulson. 2015. Three Nations Can Change Our Climate. The Guardian, 1 December. Saad, Hammadi. 2016. No Place to Be an Atheist or Gay: Wave of Islamist Killings Terrifies Bangladesh. The Observer, 1 May. Sahota, Sunjeev. 2016. The Year of the Runaways. London: Picador. Shenker, Jack. 2016. We Always Shouted but Now We Roar. The Guardian, 16 January.

13 WAITING FOR THE WAVES India Against Corruption movement and the Aam Aadmi Party – post-Gandhian legacies Mahendra Prasad Singh

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) is a different and complex political leader and thinker to interpret. He came on the Indian political stage at a time when the prevailing descriptive and explanatory categories of political action had run out of steam. On the one hand, Congress Moderates had been proved to be irrelevant and ineffective. On the other, Congress Extremists had been reduced to the margins of politics by the powerful repressive imperial and colonial state apparatus on charges of preaching violence and sedition. Gandhi appeared as a frail, flickering flame of political thought and action in the enveloping darkness and loss of hope with his courageous and innovative strategy of nonviolent political action, satyagraha, and the goals of swaraj and swadeshi. No wonder, Gandhi has been differently, or simultaneously, interpreted as a traditionalist (e.g. his defence of varnashrama dharma minus caste system; his trenchant critique of modernity), modernist (e.g. anti-colonial nationalism), and postmodernist (e.g. his belief in aparigraha; contextual truth and cultural relativism). His 1909 text, the Hind Swaraj: Indian Home Rule, is open to hermeneutic understanding that may sound partly conservative, partly liberal, and partly radical – all rolled into one. This line of interpretation is unconventional but clearly suggested by historian John R. McLane (McLane 1970) and political scientists Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (Rudolph 1967). As Eric H. Erikson (Erikson 1969) in his psycho-historical interpretation of Gandhi postulates, Gandhi’s identity crisis and his mode of resolving it offered an example, and it turned out to be a model for an entire generation of Indians during the phase of anti-colonial freedom struggle during the first half of the twentieth century. Erikson’s interpretation of the phenomena of a mass movement and charismatic political leadership is predicated on the juxtaposition of a Man and a Moment, a biography and history, in producing a mass movement of heroic historical significance.

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In his last major speech in the Constituent Assembly of India, B. R. Ambedkar, the chairman of the drafting committee of the Assembly, when he rose to reply to the debate and defend the draft constitution, surmised that now that we had made our own Constitution, we must put the past behind; abide by it and forget about civil disobedience and satyagraha and the breaking of laws, which are indeed ‘the Grammar of Anarchy.’1 Fine sentiments at the great historic moment of the Indian republic by a leading legal luminary in the forum, which was, to borrow a term from Carl J. Friedrich, the ‘constituent group’ (Friedrich 1950) that made our national Constitution. Nevertheless, along with Ambedkar’s constitutionalism, our national ideological heritage of Gandhian civil disobedience has also continued to move in a parallel political stream in numerous popular mass movements led by Vinoba Bhave, Jayaprakash Narayan, Sundarlal Bahuguna, Anna Hazare, Medha Patkar, Mahendra Singh Tikait, Shankar Guha-Niyogi, and others. It is difficult not to feel that both these streams have significantly contributed to the success, rather survival, of democracy in India. This chapter presents a case study of  ‘India Against Corruption’ (2011–2012) led by Anna Hazare and his cohorts as an illustration of a post-Gandhian legacy and its offshoot the Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal, a flash party formation that has since become a regional party to reckon with in Delhi and some north Indian states since its founding in 2012.

I Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption (IAC) was launched in the spring of 2011 in the wake of the heady Arab Spring of the same year, marked by a wave of democratic movements throughout much of West Asia. The non-party, extra-parliamentary IAC campaign mounted a significant crusade against political, bureaucratic, and economic corruption and made a case for electoral and party system reforms, besides making a plea for incorporation of a strong dose of direct democratic devices into the model of parliamentary-federal democracy under the Indian Constitution operating since 1950. The movement subsequently got split into (a) the parent non-party movement under Anna Hazare and (b) its progeny Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) (Common Man’s Party) led by his principal lieutenant Arvind Kejriwal and his cohorts. The elders led by Anna wished to keep the non-partypolitical character of the movement intact, while his younger lots led by Kejriwal parted company to form a new political party as a harbinger of  ‘alternative politics’ turning its back to the prevailing features of corrupt, criminalised, and non-participatory ‘high command’ power politics.

II The purpose of this paper is to discuss these new developments promising to usher in a new form of politics, put it in historical and comparative perspectives, and assess

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its impact and significance. The Anna Hazare Movement and the AAP have raised some major issues that are not entirely new in modern Indian history and politics. Neither the Hazare Movement measures up to the anti-Indira Gandhi Movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan ( JP) in the mid-1970s nor does the AAP compare to the Janata Party that emerging out of the JP Movement briefly rose like a meteoric historic alternative to the Indian National Congress in the late 1970s. However, both the Hazare Movement2 and Kejriwal’s AAP have acquired a great deal of topical importance recently in the context of the crusade against corruption in the backdrop of India’s accelerated political federalisation and economic globalisation since the early 1990s and an endemic corruption during the Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government (2009–2014). The immediate issue highlighted by the IAC and AAP was the campaign against corruption and criminalisation of politics and governance. It also provides us an opportunity to reflect on India’s dilemma between constitutional or agitational politics, evolutionary or revolutionary change, and representative or direct democracy. The anti-colonial freedom struggle in India led predominantly by the Indian National Congress (INC or Congress) towards the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century was deeply ambivalent among groups of nationalists variously called Moderates, Extremists, Revolutionaries, and Gandhians committed to the strategy of militant nonviolence (Bandyopadhyay 2009; Erikson 1969). Even in contemporary Indian politics, the generally democratic mode of political discourse and action is ambivalently marked by radical Maoist class violence in the central tribal belt and secessionist insurgencies in the Northwest and Northeast. Anna Hazare is, however, wont to wear his heart on his sleeves in terms of his commitment to the Gandhian nonviolent techniques of political action in the movements led by him for decades in his home state of Maharashtra ( Jenkins 2004: 219–252) and since 2011 at the national level. The IAC got formed impromptu in the run-up to the 2011 anti-corruption campaign with the demand for the passage of a Lokpal Bill as its main plank. The idea was first recommended by the first Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC-I) appointed by the Lal Bahadur Shastri Congress government in 1966 that succeeded Prime Minister Nehru in its multiple-volume reports. Since then successive governments introduced bills for instituting the Lokpal which were repeatedly short-circuited. The proposal was repeated in the report of the second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC-II) appointed in 2005 by the UPA-I government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and stewarded by Congress President Sonia Gandhi (Singh 2013: 144–148). The IAC made the Lokpal the central issue of its movement. The IAC maintained that it had no organisation in place beyond its 24-member core committee).3 Arvind Kejriwal, a product of the elite Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, a Right to Information movement activist, and a Rayman Magasasay awardee, persuaded Anna Hazare, an Indian army veteran and a celebrated crusader against political corruption in Maharashtra, to lead a national team comprising

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others like Shanti Bhushan, Law Minister in the Morarji Desai Janata Party government (1977–1979); his son Prashant Bhushan, a senior Supreme Court Advocate; Kiran Bedi, India’s first woman Indian Police Service (IPS) officer now retired; Justice Santosh Hegde, a former Supreme Court judge; and Manish Sisodia, a journalist; Somnath Bharati, an advocate; Medha Patkar, a social activist, etc. They campaigned for an unusually powerful institution of Janlokpal (People’s Ombudsman going beyond the ARC-I and ARC-II) empowered to look into charges of corruption against the political and bureaucratic classes, including the Prime Minister as well as judges. The movement presented a big spectacle of public protest conducted through direct public meetings in metro cities and more widely through internet social networking sites and backed by Anna Hazare’s public fast unto death in the midst of media hype in New Delhi. The UPA government incrementally yielded under its pressure. It allowed an unprecedented instance of the direct participation of the civil society in drafting a Lokpal-Lokayukta (Ombudsman) bill by a government-appointed joint panel co-chaired by a Union minister (Pranab Mukherjee) and a civil society nominee (Shanti Bhushan). When the process was stalemated, the government and Team Anna proceeded to draft their respective bills unilaterally, but the government was pressurised to refer the IAC’s Janlokpal bill along with the government’s Lokpal bill to a parliamentary standing committee. The reconciled constitutional amendment bill failed to muster the requisite two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha and was roundly thrashed in the Rajya Sabha before it was abruptly adjourned sine die on the last day of the winter session of 2011 at midnight on December 31. When the Parliament resumed its session in the Spring of 2012, the bill was referred back to the select committee for a relook. The government went on record saying it was a one-off instance, but then a precedent was set which might not, of course, settle into a convention. This kind of government-civil society participation was witnessed in drafting the Right to Information Bill and National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill by the National Advisory Council (NAC), comprising largely social and policy activists from the civil society. It was appointed by the UPA government during its terms in power from 2004–2009 and 2009–2014 and was chaired by the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. After the grand success of the Hazare Movement in Delhi in the spring and monsoon of 2011, the hope of a repeat public mobilisation in December 2011 in Mumbai was a fiasco. Lower public turnout and health problems forced Anna to call off the fast on medical advice, ending the spectacle. However, despite government’s attempt to scuttle the mass movement and critical comments by the leaders of the Muslim minorities and Dalits, the Anna Team tried to regain the lost public space by forging ties with Baba Ramdev’s Bharat Swabhiman Andolan (India’s Pride Movement) for bringing back the huge black money of Indian politico-­ administrative and economic elites stashed away in foreign banks, on the one hand, and by announcing and initiating new plans for agitations beginning in the new year, on the other. The IAC subsequently released a list of 15 tainted ministers in the Congressled UPA government. They contended that these vested interests were causing the

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stalling of the Janlokpal Bill. They demanded the setting up of a special investigative team against them and fast courts to prosecute them along with Members of Parliament with criminal and corrupt antecedents. To press this demand, Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, and Gopal Rai sat on an indefinite fast at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, beginning on 25 July 2012. Anna Hazare was scheduled to join them later, which he did on the fourth day. There was wide but less than enthusiastic popular participation this time. The crowds swelled somewhat by the solidarity arrival on the scene by Baba Ramdev and his followers for a day in the afternoon, making some to observe that the movement was likely to gather momentum on the support of various sections of the middle classes represented in the two leading organisations. Ten days of public fasts left the government unmoved. A group of 23 eminent citizens, including some former army and navy chiefs, a former Supreme Court Chief Justice, and some retired civil servants persuaded the fasting leaders to break their fasts to keep their fight on against the insensitive government. In the months that followed, cracks appeared in what had popularly come to be known as Team Anna by the autumn of 2012, mainly on the issue of Arvind Kejrival, Prashant Bhushan, and Manish Sisodia floating the idea of forming a political party and campaigning their cause electorally, and Anna Hazare and Kiran Bedi rooting for the earlier non-party approach of the movement. The breach was more or less complete by the autumn of 2012, with Hazare having formally dissolved Team Anna and formed a new Team Anna with such members of the earlier team as Justice Santosh Hegde, Kiran Bedi, social activists Medha Patkar and Akhil Gogoi, and others. The former Army Chief General V. K. Singh was named a special invitee. Anna asked the dissidents led by Kejriwal not to use his name or photographs in their political activities.4 In the third week of November 2012, Kejriwal announced the formation of a new party, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and adopted a constitution committed to the ideology of decentralised democracy, development, and justice. The party would aim at securing people’s right to initiative in lawmaking, referendum on needed revision in law, and recall. The Gram Sabha and Mohalla Sabha would have power to decide on their development needs. All this spelled a vague challenge to the existing constitutional architecture of the Indian republic. The nitty-gritty of reconciling these new features with the existing parliamentary-federal Constitution of India, or else posing a frontal challenge to it, were all left in a state of splendid ambiguity. The party would only have a collegial power structure consisting of a 23-member National Executive elected by a National Council, with Kejriwal acting as the Convenor. The Kejriwal group since its separation from the Anna group organised a series of exposés in the autumn of 2012 relating to the alleged corrupt practices indulged in by Congress and BJP ministers during their terms in power and by top party functionaries. These exposés came in the wake of the scams related to 2G telecom spectrum allocations and coal block allocations by the UPA governments led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh brought to notice of the Parliament, media, and public by the constitutionally entrenched Comptroller and Auditor General of India, to say nothing of the numerous other scandals concerning the

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2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society in Mumbai meant for war widows involving the political leaders, and administrative and army officers, etc. All these led to important cases and stern judicial action by the Supreme Court or High Courts. The Lokayuktas in Karnataka (ruled by BJP) and in Uttar Pradesh (ruled by Bahujan Samaj Party) also caused several cases to be filed in courts against the corrupt BJP Chief Minister of Karnataka, and ministers and civil servants there and in UP. Intermittently, the Aam Aadmi Party kept organising agitations against the allegedly highly inflated water bills of the Delhi Jal (Water) Board, a government undertaking, and the electricity bills of private ‘discoms’ (distribution companies) in collusion with the Congress government of Delhi State headed by Sheila Dikshit.

Movement-party interface Political parties and political movements in Indian and comparative politics have had mutually exploitative relationships. Parties without movements and movements without parties find it difficult to make themselves sustainable propositions. The INC, Janata Party/Dal, Socialist and Communist parties, and BJP, to name some important national parties in India, illustrate this point. These parties were born in or brought to the fore by the movements associated with them. The INC was the product of the anti-British freedom movement, and its earlier phenomenal political success was derived from that symbiotic relationship. And its subsequent decline is also attributable to the loss of its association with any new movement in contemporary India. The Janata Party/Dal was born in the Jayaprakash Narayan ( JP) Movement, and it tried to sustain itself by implementing the Mandal Reservation policy for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), which is inherently incapable of turning into a major mass movement for its divisive potential of antagonism from the upper castes, Schedule Castes (SCs) and Schedule Tribes (STs). The gradual disappearance of the Socialist parties earlier during the 1970s was attributable to their absorption by other centrist parties and movements. The Communist parties’ decline since the 2010s is at least partly due to the weakening of the trade union movements in the present phase of neo-liberal economic reforms and globalisation. The BJP was brought from the margins to the mainstream of politics through the Ayodhya Ram Mandir Movement during the 1990s, which again suffers from some inherent limitations in secular and multicultural India. In this backdrop, Anna’s preference for the non-party movement option and Kejriwal’s inclination to form a political party has probably weakened both in isolation. This has been particularly unfortunate in view of the fact that the cause of fighting against corruption today is much more difficult than at the time of the JP Movement in the 1970s. Then it was the JP Movement and non-Congress/ non-Communist opposition parties versus the Congress in power plus a marginal Communist Party of India (not the Communist Party of India-Marxist). Today, the fledgling and divided Anna Movement and Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party are up against the vested interests in undemocratic control of the entire established party

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system and special interest groups, including the big corporate capitalist class, which has grown considerably stronger in economic power and political influence since the neo-liberal economic reforms (1991 onwards). The anti-corruption crusaders stand to gain by a combined assault on the system, but that is not on the cards at present.

Ideologies of IAC and AAP Anna’s ideology has taken shape in the course of his movements and lacks any formal exposition at any length in a tract like Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909) and Jayaprakash’s Swaraj for the People (1961). Kejriwal authored the Swaraj (2012) when he was a part of the Hazare Movement, which bears an epistle by Anna on its cover page saying, ‘This book is the manifesto of our movement for political transformation and against corruption as well as offers an effective model of the real Swaraj in the country.’5 It is more elaborate than the Hind Swaraj and the Swaraj for the People but very similar in spirit, tone, and temper with both these classics in modern Indian political thought, which are reminiscent of Rousseau’s doctrine of popular sovereignty. Kejriwal first puts forward the rationale for his tract as a remedy for the current travesties of Indian democracy reflected in the endemic corruption cases, back-breaking inflation, allocation of natural resources to private corporate national and multinational companies by the Union and state governments in disregard of public interest and protests, cash for parliamentary questions and votes for money paid by the corporate sector or by the governments, passage of nuclear liability bill by the Parliament heavily loaded against the public security and in favour of foreign companies or governments, lack of public control and accountability of derelict and corrupt bureaucrats and political leaders in matters of governance and service delivery, so on and so forth. As a way out, Kejriwal suggests a radical political restructuring ensuring grassroots democracy, whereby local councils (Gram Sabhas and Nagar Sabhas representing every adult citizen in a village or urban habitat directly) would decide issues of allocation of jal, jangal, jamin, and khanij (water, forest, land, and minerals) for industrial and infrastructural developments. He also envisages a tripartite federal division of powers between the Union, State, and local governments on a constitutional (rather than devolutionary) basis. At present this division is entrenched in the Constitution between the federal and state governments only and is devolutionary between the State and local governments in State legislative enactments. In Kejriwal’s version of Swaraj, the Pradhans (heads) of all the village panchayats in a Block will constitute a Block Panchayat, and the heads of the Block Panhayats will make the District or Zila Panchayat. These Panchayts will have a final decisive power over the subjects falling within their respective jurisdictions. The Union and State governments would not normally be under obligation to consult the Gram, Block, and Zila Panchayats on the subjects under their jurisdictions before taking a decision. However, if more than 5 percent of Gram Sabhas pass a resolution on any subject under any jurisdiction, the matter concerned must be sent to all the Gram Sabhas in the State, and if more than

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50 percent of Gram Sabhas endorse the issue, the State government must legislate accordingly, even if a prevalent law has to be changed. In Kejriwal’s scheme of local government reforms, there is an inexplicable ruralurban asymmetry between the power of Gram Sabhas and Mohalla Sabhas vis-à-vis State and National governments. As the foregoing discussion shows, the former can force the State governments under specified conditions to make a law. They can also bind their Member of Parliament (MPs) and Member of Legslative Assemblies (MLAs) to articulate their views in parliamentary or legislative debates. The latter are not empowered in a similar way. This silence or omission is puzzling. The Vision Document of the Aam Aadmi Party, Our Dream of Political Revolution,6 clearly reflects the ideology of the Swaraj which, as already stated, was declared as the manifesto of the IAC movement by Anna Hazare. Needless to point out, we find here all the panaceas of Indian neo-conservatism and political populism given classic formulations in Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj and JP’s Swaraj for the People with a more contemporary gloss and adaptations and illustrations. The Vision Document, for example, writes in answer to the question ‘Why this party?’: For the past two years, millions of people came out on the streets to fight corruption and demand Janlokpal. This two-year anti-corruption movement has exposed all our political parties and has made us all realize that we cannot expect any political party to work for corruption-free India.7 It goes on to align itself with the invocation of the principle of popular sovereignty in the opening line of the Preamble to the Constitution of India, starting with ‘We, the people of India . . .’ as the source of all political power. It pledges to transform the existing nature of the party system by innovating a party with populist authority structure sans the ‘high command’ culture and ‘to tear down the power conclaves and pass on the power directly to the people.’8 The party will select its candidates for parliamentary and Assembly elections on the basis of public or selfnomination, their scrutiny by a screening committee at each level for positive or negative inputs from the public about them, and by a convention of party delegates for the constituency concerned.9 It subscribes to the Indian constitutional vision of a secular, multicultural India.10

The alternative politics in historical and comparative perspectives In this section, I seek to discuss the deeper issues relating to direct democracy raised by the IAC and APP in the context of modern Indian history and political culture and Indian and comparative constitutionalism. Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement of the early 1920s and its withdrawal in the event of outbreak of violence in Chaurichaura in the United Provinces of Awadh and Agra and his Civil Disobedience Movement in the early 1930s and his subsequent retreat into what he called ‘constructive politics’ clearly reflect a difficult

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attempt to resolve the dilemma between democratic or revolutionary methods of struggle. The 1942 Quit India Movement backed by Gandhi’s call for ‘do or die’ and eventually led by Jayaprakash Narayan from the underground when the entire top Congress leadership was peremptorily arrested was the only revolutionary struggle that resulted in direct seizure of power by the people in some isolated local areas in some provinces. But it was soon suppressed, and the Congress leadership was back to the negotiation table, leading to the final transfer of power to the two successor states of India and Pakistan by the British government. The details need not detain us here. What is pertinent to the argument presented in this paper is that, unlike some Western liberal democracies that resulted from the womb of a war or revolution, Indian Independence was gained through a legal transfer of power from the British Parliament to the Constituent Assembly of India under the Independence of India Act, 1947. Unlike those countries where the established governments were overthrown and the people took power in their own hands and established new regimes, India experienced a constitutional change of regime at the time of Independence. To expand the ambit of comparison wider, India’s transition to modernity as a nation-state stands midway between the foregoing category of the revolutionary USA, France, and Switzerland, on the one hand, and the British colonies of the Commonwealth – Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – whose transition from the colonial status to independent nation-states was entirely evolutionary and legalconstitutional. The latter White Commonwealth countries did not go through a revolutionary rupture, not even a nationalist movement like India’s, which was marked by professedly nonviolent mass agitations and struggles but was capped by a legal transfer of power by an Act of the British Parliament. It might well be argued that India did not experience a bourgeois revolution like the USA, France, and Switzerland, nor a socialist revolution like Russia and China. India’s case in some ways may arguably be similar to the Gramscian interpretation of national unification of Italy and the role of ‘organic intellectuals’ in ‘the way in which the new nation-state was the result of a “passive revolution,” in which mass of the peasantry gave at the most a passive consent to the new political order.’11 In the formulation of the theoretical statement of subaltern historiography of the nationalist movement in British India, Ranajit Guha underscores the historic failure of the nation to come to its own, a failure due to the inadequacy of the bourgeoisie as well as of the working class to lead it into the decisive victory over colonialism and a bourgeois-democratic revolution of either the classic nineteenth-century type under the hegemony of the bourgeoisie or a more modern type under the hegemony of workers and peasants, that is, a New Democracy. (Guha 1982: 1–8, emphasis in the source itself ) In an interesting comparative historical study of democracy and dictatorship, Barrington Moore, Jr. (1967) has postulated three routes to the modern world as it emerged from the medieval society: (i) bourgeois revolution that produced

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capitalism and democracy (e.g. the UK, the USA, and France), (ii) conservative revolution that also led to capitalism but in combination with reactionary fascism (e.g. Germany and Japan), and (iii) peasant revolution that resulted in communism (e.g. Russia and China). The case of India, in his opinion, does not fall in to any of the three foregoing categories. India, says he: had experienced neither a bourgeois revolution from above, nor so far a communist one. Whether India will be able to avoid the appalling costs of these three forms to discover some new variant, as it was trying to do under Nehru, or succumb in some way to the equally appalling costs of stagnation, remains the ghastly problem faced by Nehru’s successors. (Moore Jr [1966] 1967: 413) Gandhi had demanded as early as in 1922 that the Constitution of India would be framed by a Constituent Assembly directly elected by the people. Instead, under the British Cabinet Mission Plan, the Constituent Assembly came to be indirectly elected in 1946 by the provincial legislatures, which were themselves elected by a limited franchise based on educational qualifications and property ownership, and weightage for minorities extended to 28.5 percent of the Indian adult population under the Government of India Act, 1935. The Preambles to the constitutions of both the USA and India begin with the ringing declarations of popular sovereignty proclaiming ‘We, the people of . . .’ as the source of all political power. However, the difference between the revolutionary birth of the US (and Swiss) federal Constitution(s) and evolutionary birth of the Indian parliamentary federal Constitution have left their imprints on their respective constitutional principles and practices and laws. For example, the Constitution and laws of India do not give any quarters to institutions of direct democracy, such as formal people’s initiative in law-making, referendum, and recall of elected representatives. The Constitution of Switzerland provides for all of these, in exceptionally fuller measures, though recall is provided for in only 3 of 26 cantons (20 full canons and 6 half cantons), and even in these three it has not been used in fact for a very long time. Switzerland is also the only federal country in the world where federal, cantonal, and commune-level governments equally share grossly one-third of the total national revenue. In the United States referendum is provided for in the federal Constitution only for ratification of constitutional amendments in some states. In the trail of the American War of Independence, a strong strain of plebiscitary democracy persisted, but James Madison acted as a restraining influence and reflected the sober view of many of the framers of the US Constitution when he wrote in The Federalist [1787], jointly authored with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay: ‘Such democracies [as those of ancient Greece and Rome] . . . have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.’ Madison was apprehensive that direct democracy might be dangerous to freedom, minorities, and property and breed violence by one group against another. However, some State Constitutions in the USA, e.g. in Texas and in the ‘Wild West,’ allow greater use of referendum in many matters (Hamilton et al. [1787] 1987: 45).

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In Canada too, referendum has been a part of the political experience, especially in the Western provinces contiguous to the Western United States, and to an extent in the French Canadian province of Quebec. Australia also uses referendum for ratification of constitutional amendments after their passage by the two houses of the Parliament. Referendums are also used at state level in Australia. France with its revolutionary past also employs some of these devices of direct democracy. Germany, which also experienced a revolution in 1918 and the Federal Republic of Germany which was born in 1949 in the wake of the World War II, provides for referendum in State Constitutions mainly; in the national Constitution referendum finds a place only in the context of territorial reorganisation of federating units. All of these political systems combine representative democracy with certain measures of direct democracy, Switzerland exceeding and excelling all (Steinberg 1996: Chapters 2 and 3). The Indian Constitution (1950) basically contains a scheme of republican or representative democracy with a periodic renewal of electoral mandate at a normal interval of five years. This is despite the fact that the interim President of the Constituent Assembly and a leading light of the Patna Bar, Sachhidan and Sinha, in his inaugural address had broached all the leading models of comparative constitutionalism, including the Swiss model, to the attention of the makers.12 However, the Legal Advisor to the Assembly, Sir B.N. Rau, and the Chairman of the drafting committee, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, had in their notes and addresses focused mainly on the Anglo-American and White Commonwealth models in Canada and Australia (Rau 1967: 217–234). The Constituent Assembly clearly and repeatedly rejected any major concession to direct democracy beyond its limited acceptance at the level of village panchayat (far from the Gandhian vision) under the towering structure of parliamentary federal government at the Union and State levels in the representative mode.13 Moreover, direct election was rejected in favour of an electoral college of State Legislative Assemblies for the election of the President of India.14 Referendum was, furthermore, rejected in the context of ratification of federally relevant constitutional amendments, instead opting for their ratification by Legislative Assemblies of at least half of the States of the Indian Union.15 It is also interesting to note here what Ambedkar remarked in his last major speech in the Constituent Assembly: If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgment we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the disobedience, non-cooperation and Satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.16

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Nevertheless, it is not easy to gainsay here that, notwithstanding this statement, Gandhian heritage of Swaraj and Satyagraha have become part and parcel of Indian political culture and ideology. The two elements exist with a certain degree of contradiction, but so it is. However, even in the post-Independence politics, attempts to entrench direct democracy devices in the Constitution have failed in the past. In the first half of the 1970s, India was rocked by a chain of extra-parliamentary mass protests in Gujarat led by Morarji Desai and in Bihar initiated by students and non-Congress and non-communist opposition parties that came finally to be led by Jayaprakash Narayan ( JP), the Gandhian socialist leader who was drawn out of virtual political retirement. The JP Movement spread like a prairie fire across north India down to Bangalore. These movements demanded the resignation of Congress governments of Indira Gandhi at the Centre and in States and the dissolution of the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas for a fresh electoral mandate on the plea that the people had lost trust in these corrupt and authoritarian governments. JP rhetorically advocated his vision of what he called the ‘Total Revolution,’ which included the popular right to recall the elected representatives mid-term in a genuine participatory democracy. While the Gujarat Movement succeeded in getting the State Assembly dissolved under Article 356 of the Constitution (dealing with emergency in a State) under the pressure of fast unto death by the rebel Congress Gandhian Morarji Desai, the JP Movement was superseded by the imposition of internal emergency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian National Congress in June 1975 under Article 352 of the Constitution (dealing with national emergency), pleading that Congress governments as duly elected representatives of the people had the valid democratic mandate to rule for the five-year term. The Emergency as well as the JP Movement appeared to be fraught with the danger of lapsing into authoritarianism of the elite or the masses, but they were fortuitously checked on their tracks (Chandra 2003). The post-Emergency Janata Party government born out of the JP Movement did not institute recall in the representative-legislative system of the country. It did, however, seek to introduce referendum through the 44th Amendment (1978) to be held prior to a ‘Change in the Constitution which would have the effect of impairing its secular or democratic character, abridging or taking away fundamental rights, prejudicing or impeding free and fair elections on the basis of adult suffrage, and compromising the independence of judiciary.’ According to the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the 44th Amendment, such changes ‘can be made only if they are approved by the people of India by a majority of votes at a referendum in which at least fifty-one percent the electorate participate.’ It also said ‘Article 368 is being amended to ensure this.’ Paradoxically, however, Article 368 was left untouched by the amendment. The Statement of Objects and Reasons also remains unaltered in the Constitution (Forty-Fourth Amendment) Act, 1978 (Pylee 206– 222; Bakshi 2003: 329–330). This was probably because of the fact that the Janata Party government’s majority in the Lok Sabha was countervailed by the majority of the Congress party in opposition in the Rajya Sabha, which did not agree to any alteration in Article 368

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but allowed the Statement of Objects and Reasons to stay as it was. But it does not have any effect in law, only an ideological value of some sort. It is notable that the campaign for a New Wave of Alternative Politics in India mounted by the IAC and AAP must be seen in the context of endemic corruption and criminalisation that have come to pervade the electoral and political processes. The IAC chose the path of what Rajni Kothari has theorised in terms of decline of parties and rise of grassroots movements and non-party political processes.17 The AAP has opted for the party political processes but claiming to chart out a course different from the beaten and discredited track of the run-of-the-mill parties. However, with the waxing and waning of its electoral fortunes, a massive gap between its profession and practice has gradually set in, and AAP is increasingly no longer seen as a party with a difference, which earlier on it was. Charges of corruption and criminality have not been entirely lacking in the AAP leadership and candidates for legislative elections, even though with lesser frequency as compared to other political parties. Transparency of party finances earlier flaunted by public online uploading of information was subsequently discontinued. Personality cult around the party Convenor Kejriwal and intolerance of collective leadership and democratic debate and dissent surfaced as blatantly in this party by early 2015 after its spectacular success in the Delhi State Assembly as in most other parties in the country – national or regional (Tripathi 2015). In candidate selection for biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha in January 2018, it failed to elicit consent of some impeccable personalities like Raghuram Rajan, former governor of Reserve Bank of India; T.S. Thakur, former Chief Justice of India; Yashwant Sinha, former Union Finance Minister; and Arun Shourie, former journalist and Union Disinvestment Minister. It subsequently cynically recruited two monied persons – a chartered accountant and a businessman who runs a group of educational institutions for profit.18

Halting steps to participatory democracy in India As to the long-term effects of the Anna Hazare Movement and AAP, the foregoing discussion shows that strong and pervasive institutions of direct democracy are a feature of republics born in moderate bourgeois revolutions or wars, as in Switzerland and the USA. In the Indian case, the transfer of power from the colonial rulers to the Indian nationalists was legal-constitutional, but independence was won after a long freedom struggle in which extra-constitutional methods of political agitation were used. Reflecting this dual legacy, India has been ambivalent between representative democracy and direct democracy. There is some tension between Indian constitutionalism and India’s national political ideological heritage of the Gandhian vision of Swaraj and nonviolent Satyagraha. This tension is also reflected in the Preamble to the Constitution, which invokes the doctrine of popular sovereignty and the rest of the Constitution that outlines an essentially representative version of democracy. This ambivalence and tension in Indian political culture and ideology may well continue.

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I do not mean to suggest there is a strong determinism inherent in Indian and comparative constitutional history presented here. Even in political systems without revolutionary origins, a greater degree of direct democratic or strongly participatory recourse has indeed come about, and India may not be an exception in this regard. Such developments have happened in Canada, for instance, in the wake of the Progressive Movement in the early decades of the twentieth century. The national parties there in the wake of this movement adopted the institution of national conventions to choose the parliamentary party leaders instead of electing them in the Parliament. Also relevant in this context is the populist Reform Party of Western Canada in the 1990s. It subsequently merged with the Canadian Alliance, which eventually led to the re-emergence of the Conservative Party of Canada combining progressivism and neo-liberalism. The AAP, despite it regression to older patterns of party politics in India, wants to address the precipitous decline of governance by greater attention to curbing corruption, public utilities, school and higher education, and public health than other parties (Anando 2019). It wants to strengthen representative democracy by making it more participatory, where governments are accountable to people, parties are democratic in their functioning such as in choosing candidates and keeping transparency in decision-making and encouraging people’s initiative. The wages of the multiplying breed of patrimonial parties and their ill effects on governance and development will have to be seriously addressed sooner or later. It is difficult not to entirely disagree with Pratap Bhanu Mehta: ‘Its [AAP’s] performance may define the future of Indian politics far more profoundly than the gladiatorial contest of the two main parties [INC and BJP]’ (Mehta 2013: 10). Mehta goes on to say that its mere presence is transformative, perhaps more in terms of issues than the institutional landscape. However, I must add that the actual discursive performance of the AAP has tended to belie the early optimism engendered by it. Nevertheless, in the flock of the Indian political parties, the AAP is relatively more promising.

Notes 1 Quoted from India, Republic. Constituent Assembly Debates, Book 5, p. 978, New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2003, 4th reprint. 2 On Hazare, see a perceptive piece, Ramchandra Guha, “A Patriarch for the Nation? The Nation’s Problems Cannot Be Solved by a Supercop,” The Telegraph, Calcutta, https:// www.telegraphindia.com/1110827/jsp/opinion//story_14423092.jsp. (Accessed on 11.5.2017). 3 See The Indian Express, New Delhi, December 29, 2011, archive. Indianexpress.com/ news/shifting-stir-to-mumbai-a-mistake-iac/893269/0 (a signed dispatch by Abantika Ghosh. (Accessed on 1.5.2017). 4 India Today, New Delhi, indiatoday.indiatoday.in/story/team-anna-split-anna-hazarearvind-kejriwal-part-ways/1/217947.html. (Accessed on 1.5.2017). 5 The Hindi version; quotes translated into English by me. 6 For details, see https://aamaadmiparty.org/vision/. 7 Aam Admi Party, Vision Document, p. 2. https://app.box.com/s/ls7ft1xi1h4316468wg2. Accessed on 1.5.2017. 8 Ibid., pp. 1, 9.

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9 Ibid., pp. 20–22. 10 Ibid., p. 7. 11 Tom Bottomore, Lawrence Harris, V.G. Keirman, and Ralph Miliband (eds.) 1991, A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Oxford: Blackwell Reference, 2nd edition; Neelam Srivastava and Baidik Bhattacharya (eds.) 2012, The Postcolonial Gramsci, New York: Routledge, 2012; reviewed by Arun K. Patnaik in the Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLVII, No. 37, September 14, 2013, pp. 25–27. 12 Constituent Assembly Debates, Book No. 1, 2003, pp. 2–7. 13 Constituent Assembly Debates, Book. No. 2, 2003, pp. 520–527. 14 Ibid., pp. 1001–1018. 15 Ibid., Book No. 4, pp. 1648–1667. 16 Ibid., Book No. 5, p. 978. 17 Rajni Kothari, Decline of Parties and Rise of Grassroots Movements, in his State Against Democracy: In Search of Humane Governance, New Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1988, ch. 3; Rajni Kothari, ‘The Non-Party Political Processes,’ Economic& Political Weekly, vol. 19, no. 5, February 4, 1985, pp. 216–224. 18 AAP’s Rajya Sabha choices prove it’s no different from other political parties . . .’ Hindustan Times, www.hindustantimes.com/editorials/ (Accessed 17.5.2019).

Bibliography Bakshi, P.M. (2003). The Constitution of India, New Delhi: Universal Law Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., pp. 329–330. Bandyopadhyay, Shekhar (2009). Nationalist Movement: A Reader, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bhakto, Anando (2019). Frontline: Education, New Delhi: The Delhi Difference, April 12, https://frontline.the hindu.com/cover-story/article (Accessed on 17.5.2019). Chandra, Bipan (2003). In the Name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency, New Delhi: “Penguin Books.” Constituent Assembly Debates (2003). Book No. 1, New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, pp. 2–7. Constituent Assembly Debates (2003). Book No. 2, New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, pp. 520–527. Constituent Assembly Debates (2003). Book No. 5, New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat. 4th reprint, p. 978. Erikson, Eric H. (1969). Gandhi’s Truth: The Origins of Militant Non Violence, New York: W.W. Norton. Friedrich, Carl J. (1950). Constitutional Government and Democracy: Theory and Practices in Europe and America, Boston: Ginn’s Co. Guha, Ramchandra (2011). A Patriarch for the Nation? The Nation’s Problems Cannot Be Solved by a Supercop, 27 August. The Telegraph, Calcutta, https://www.telegraphindia. com/1110827/jsp/opinion//story_14423092.jsp. (Accessed on 11.5.2017). Guha, Ranajit (ed.) (1982). On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India, in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay (eds). (1787, 1987). The Federalist, 2nd ed., with Notes by Max Beloff, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, p. 45. The Hindu, November 25, 2012, p. 1. Hindustan Times, www.hindustantimes.com/editorials/ (Accessed on 17.5.2019). India Today, New Delhi, indiatoday.indiatoday.in/story/team-anna-split-anna-hazare-arvindkejriwal-part-ways/1/217947.html (Accessed on 1.5.2017). The Indian Express (2011). New Delhi, December 29, archive, indianexpress.com/news/ shifting-stir-to-mumbai-a-mistake-iac/893269/0 (a signed dispatch by Abantika Ghosh, Accessed on 1.5.2017).

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Jenkins, Rob (2004). In Varying States of Decay: Anti-Corruption Politics in Maharashtra and Rajasthan, in Rob Jenkins (ed.), Regional Reflections: Comparing Politics Across India’s States, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 219–252. Kejriwal, Arvind (2012). Swaraj, New Delhi: Harper Collins. Kothari, Rajni (1985). The Non-Party Political Processes. Economic & Political Weekly, vol. 19, no. 5, February 4. Kothari, Rajni (1988). Decline of Parties and Rise of Grassroots Movements, in State Against Democracy: In Search of Humane Governance, New Delhi: Ajanta Publications. McLane, John R. (eds.) (1970). The Political Awakening in India, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Mehta, Pratap Bhanu (2013). AAP and Them: A New Party Is Beginning to Open Up New Spaces of Conversation. The Indian Express, New Delhi, October 8, p. 10. Moore, Barrington, Jr. (1966, 1967). Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, New York, Boston: Beacon Press. Narayan, Jayaprakash. (1961). Swaraj for the People, Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh. Parel, Anthony (ed.) (1997a). Gandhi: Hind Swaraj’ and Other Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, https://heritageportal.org (Accessed on 19.2.2016). Parel, Anthony (1997b). Hind Swaraj and Other Writings of M.K. Gandhi, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays: Gandhi in the World and at Home (2006). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pylee, M. V. (2003). Constitutional Amendments in India, New Delhi: University Law Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., 4th ed., pp. 206–222. Rau, Shiva et al. (eds.) (1967). The Framing of India’s Constitution, Select Document, Vol. III, New Delhi: Indian Institute of Public Administration, pp. 217–234. Rudolph, Susanne, and Lloyd Rudolph (1967). The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Singh, Mahendra Prasad (2013). Administrative Reforms in India, in Meghna Sabharwal and Evan M. Berman (eds.), Public Administration in South Asia: India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, New York: CRC Press, pp. 144, 148. Steinberg, Jonathan (1996). Why Switzerland? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tripathi, Purnima S. (2015). Politics: AAP Crisis: The Real Kejriwal, Frontline, May 1, https://frontline.thehindu.com. (Accessed on 17.5.2019).

14 GANDHI’S DIALOGICAL TRUTH FORCE Applying Satyagraha models of practical rational inquiry to the crises of ecology, global governance and technology J. Gray Cox The central thesis of this chapter is that Gandhi’s model of rational inquiry provides the key to addressing the existential crises that are being created by the dominant, current models of economic, political and technological reasoning. Part one sketches defining features of the current models of reasoning and the problems they have. It argues that: a) they are monological (and so exclude data and voices that are essential to understanding reality) and b) they presuppose a “value-free” or “neutral” conception of reason (and so are committed to a moral relativism which means bribe, coercion and violence are the only ultimate sanctions to secure agreement in practical affairs). Part two sketches the principal features of Gandhi’s satyagraha, showing it is a dialogical process of practical rational inquiry which can discover emergent objective moral truth and bear witness to it in ways that are effective in securing rational consent and enforcing rational, moral norms in non-violent ways. As such, it provides ways to solve the problems of the current dominant models. Part three develops some examples of the ways in which satyagraha can and should be applied to the three existential crises focused on in this paper. It offers general sketches of the Gandhian alternatives to our current “civilized” forms of economic, political and technological rationality. It also offers some specific proposals for initiatives that might be undertaken to develop and institutionalize these in systematic ways at the global level as part of a genuinely civilized global culture of peace. The proposals include resource allocation initiatives that could fund the change, legal strategies that could provide a basis for institutionalizing principles of moral truth as the foundations for an international system of justice, and legislative strategies for incarnating morality in the artificial intelligence systems and corporations that increasingly dominate our planet.

Introduction Three existential problems pose fundamental questions about our rationality as a species. First, we are profoundly altering our climate and causing a sixth great

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extinction. Second, we are amassing weapons and using them in cycles of violence that threaten to escalate to mass destruction. Third, we are building ever “smarter” artificial intelligence systems that may soon surpass us in intellectual power and their control of our life systems – but with no safeguards to ensure they will be friendly to our interests or wise in the ways they manage a sustainable Earth. What could we be thinking?1 Gandhi, of course, would note it is not so much “what” as “how” we are thinking that is the problem. We are deeply and ever more afflicted with the disease of a “civilization” dominated by Western modes of rationality. Central to his proposal for a cure that would ease our condition is the disciplined set of methods he developed for seeking and advocating moral truth in rational ways that could bring it into effect in governing behaviour in our world. The practice of these methods, “satyagraha”, is best understood as a model of rational inquiry – comparable to, though distinct from, the models of rationality found in mathematical logic, experimental science or Anglo-Saxon law. The central thesis of this paper is that his model of rational inquiry provides the key to addressing the existential crises that are being created by the dominant, current models of economic, political and technological reasoning.2 Part One sketches defining features of the current models of reasoning and the problems they have. It argues: a) they are monological (and exclude data and voices that are essential to understanding reality) and b) they presuppose a “value-free” or “neutral” conception of reason (and so are committed to a moral relativism that leaves bribe, coercion and violence as the only ultimate sanctions to secure agreement). Part Two sketches the principal features of Gandhi’s satyagraha, showing it is a dialogical process of practical rational inquiry which can discover emergent objective moral truth and bear witness to it in ways that are effective in securing rational consent and enforcing rational, moral norms in non-violent ways. As such, it provides ways to solve the problems of the current dominant models. Part Three explores ways satyagraha might offer alternatives to our current “civilized” forms of economic, political and technological rationality and advance a genuinely civilized global culture of peace.

Part one: our current rationality and three existential threats that follow from its logic Dominant Western modes of rationality that exercise a kind of hegemony in our global “civilization” include: a) the neoclassical economic model of rationality, b) the realpolitik model of rationality, and c) the instrumentalist technological model of science pursued in corporate and military research. All three grow out of a tradition of epistemology and metaphysics formed by the post-renaissance scientific revolution in which: 1 It is assumed that rational inquiry can be modelled, ideally, by a logico-­ mathematical system of statements which represent general hypotheses, axioms or laws and specific observations or data which, when combined, enable one

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to infer all the truths of the parts or aspects of the world about which one is rationally thinking. 2 Such a model of rationality is monological precisely in the sense that it enables “one” to infer truths in this way. Rational thought can be modelled by a computer programmed in the manner of top-down “good old-fashioned Artificial Intelligence”, precisely because it only requires, in principle, one thinking agency to draw the inference relationships between the statements in the system of rational thinking. Multiple persons or parties may be assumed to be actors in the system, but the principles governing their thinking can be specified and modelled by a single thinker. 3 Such monological rationality is also potentially disembodied in the sense that the system of statements can be modelled by a program of algorithms thought through by a detached, scientific inquirer or “run” by a computer disengaged from the world except for the inputs of its programmer and its output. 4 As MacIntyre and others have shown, these economic, political and technological models of rationality also share a conception of objectivity that makes it impossible for them to avoid moral relativism (MacIntyre 2007; Abney 2014). They share metaphysical commitments to mechanical notions of efficient causality, eschewing pre-Newtonian and pre-Darwinian appeals to teleology. They further presume that “objective” truths about the natural world are grounded in universal laws that can be made mathematically explicit and “exact” and that are unchanging. With such a metaphysical framework, the problem of finding ways to ground or justify prescriptive claims in ethics becomes acute. The Logical Positivists dismissed ethical statements as non-cognitive utterances because they were neither analytic nor empirical – and no third form of truth valued statement seemed available. Attempts since then to ground ethical truths in “intuitions” and develop them in some process of inference or “reflective equilibrium” have been unsuccessful. This is because intuitions continue to differ, often dramatically, and there seems to be no objective way to decide between them. To say that the notion of objectivity in this tradition of reasoning is “value-neutral” or “value-free” does not mean that the people pursuing or funding the research do not have values. It simply means that they would claim that the research itself is, by nature, merely instrumental. Its results simply specify the ways the world works. They can be used to manipulate the world in the direction of any value one might prefer – and they leave that preference to be determined by the subjective choices of the Rational Economic Man and his utility preference curves. 5 The flip side of this moral relativism is the fact that when values differ among people, the only rational ways for them to settle those differences are, fundamentally, non-rational – by coercive bribes or threats, with the ultimate sanction remaining that of violence. In economics, a grand bargain has been struck to deal with this last difficulty. It is assumed that everyone’s utility preference curves are equally legitimate and that the

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satisfaction of them can be measured by consumer choice as expressed by purchases. The challenge for running the economy well then becomes one of measuring and promoting growth of such purchases for all members of a society. Policies promoting the maximum sustained growth of a measure of Net National Product become the only rational agenda for a government – and the management of GNP is taken as its best approximate formulation. This economic rationale leads without detour to the aspiration for endless exponential growth and the resulting ecological collapses and crises that inevitably causes. In politics, since the seventeenth-century Treaty of Westphalia and the development of the bureaucratic institutions for managing such economics, the nation-state has been the central functional unit of political agency and rationality. It is a unit defined by sovereign control over territory which is grounded, ultimately, in violence as deployed by police which enforce laws and the military which extend and defend its territory. The realpolitik which characterizes its rationality is grounded in the same moral relativism that characterizes economic thinking. The central agenda of the national security state that results has a compelling and over-riding logic, which pushes the growth of its national economy as its primary goal and sees government’s central role as managing the system for doing this. As a result, captains of the ship of state frame the world as a set of resources for appropriation which are controlled by competing nations. The only rational policy is one that maximizes national control over such resources, making them part of the nationstate’s “treasure”. A key consequence is that the skies, the oceans and all the other common legacies of humankind cannot be rationally conceptualized as commons to be shared collectively in a moral way; they are simply assets each nation competes to control. Pursuit of arms races and cycles of violence are the logical consequence of this model of political rationality and are only checked when escalation provides a compelling “MAD” threat of Mutually Assured Destruction. In the dominant Western tradition, the aim of technology is to increase the intelligence with which natural and social systems are managed. Such “intelligence” is understood as the power to maintain and advance some one or more values in increasingly efficient, “smarter” ways – for instance, to make food systems more productive, transportation systems faster, and communication systems cheaper. We should contrast mere intelligence of this sort with wisdom, taking wisdom to be a balanced pursuit of all the relevant values for living a good life. One can pursue one or a few values extremely efficiently in ways that lead in the end to catastrophes of all kinds. It is possible to be extremely intelligent or “smart” in this sense without being at all wise. It is also possible to be extremely intelligent in this sense without being at all good – or friendly to those who pursue the good. As IBM, Ray Kurzweil and others have noted, the systems of artificial intelligence (AI) which are being developed to pursue a “smarter planet” are growing in power at exponential rates (Kurzweil 2005). These systems may soon match and then dramatically exceed human beings in intellectual power and control over our planet’s life systems. But, as Nick Bostrom and others have argued, there is nothing to guarantee that they will be wise or friendly (Bostrom 2016). As Stephen

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Hawking and others have noted, we face here an existential threat comparable to the invasion of an extremely advanced, alien race or set of races from other planets but we are watching it unfold before our very eyes and ears, on our screens and smart phones (Hawking 2014).

Part two: Gandhi’s innovation: “truth force” or Satyagraha as an alternative model of rational inquiry Gandhi’s practice of satyagraha is intended to be a form of collaborative rational inquiry for the discovery of objective moral truths and the effective witness to them in ways that persuade opponents of the truth and motivate them to abide by it (Gandhi swaraj 2009; Bondurant 1988). Defining features included humility, non-violence and the willingness to suffer as part of the process of witnessing to the truth as one could best perceive it. The inquiry started from a position of possible ignorance, and since we might be wrong, we should remain humble and not impose our views on others coercively and test our own understanding of and commitment to the truth by putting our own bodies and lives on the line. In doing so, to the extent that we are witnessing to a genuine, objective moral truth, we will be able to demonstrate it to ourselves and to others who witness it in our actions. Gandhi’s term satyagraha (“clinging to truth” or “truth force”) refers to a practice which at its core has this activity of non-violent self-suffering which can bear witness to moral truth and “melt the heart” of the opponent. Natural science provides a tradition of experimental methods to seek truth. For Gandhi, satyagraha likewise included a wide variety of specific techniques which he tried and revised in what, in his autobiography, he called his “experiments with truth”. As Joan Bondurant noted, these included, for example, petitioning, protesting, arbitration, public hearings, negotiation, self-examination, fasting, sit-ins, boycotts, economic non-cooperation and parallel government.3 But these all were understood as parts of a process that seeks truth of a distinctive type and in a distinctive way. It involves a process of dealing with differences which can take many forms, which have been experimented with and developed further since Gandhi’s day. These include, for example: group problem solving, mediation, alternative dispute resolution, conflict resolution, conflict transformation, peacemaking and non-violent direct action.4 In contrast to the models described in Part One, this tradition of rational inquiry has the following characteristics: 1

2

The pursuit of moral truth is carried out in context, in encounters with others in the real world. It does not consist merely in the inference to statements that are correct but the choice of truths that are agreed to and lived out, embodied in actions and institutions. It is dialogical in the sense that it cannot be performed by a single person, alone. It involves the back-and-forth sharing of perspectives, concerns and proposals in which each participant may begin with a different language, worldview and set of practices. The process is one in which they must negotiate the meanings

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of their terms, multiplying and redefining their options, and innovating in a variety of ways to try to advance their understanding of the truth. 3 Such dialogue can only be pursued by embodied agents who live in the natural and social context, which gives meaning in a host of implicit ways to their language and practice. For example, a case in which two people disagree about whether a particular comment about a woman’s appearance is objectifying her as a sex object or respecting and admiring her as a person. The truth about this will depend inevitably on the context of who makes the comments, when, how, where and why. The objective truth about the issue can only be clarified and cultivated by getting it to emerge from the physical, biological and historical realities providing its context. 4 The truth here is understood as objective in the sense that it is independent of any individual will and is grounded in reality. But truth here is not absolute, universal or unchanging. Rather, the truths discovered are always partial and relative to context, and emergent. a

b

c

Such truths are grounded in dialogue that is understood as a purposive activity seeking truth. This activity presupposes a relationship between the participants in which each views the other as a person and they are in what Martin Buber called an “I/Thou” relationship – in contrast to an “I/it” relationship (Buber 1971). In one sense, the I/Thou relationship cannot be neatly defined. As Buber noted, defining it with an Aristotelian definition by genus and difference, for example, treats it as an “It” – the “I/Thou” immediately eludes such attempts. However, in dialogue, I/Thou relations of mutual respect can be experienced and lived. The community of beings included as persons with whom rational moral agents inquire in dialogue was once very restricted. As Aldo Leopold pointed out, in the days of Odysseus, it included only the princes and warriors of a common tribe who took part in battle (Leopold 1986). Since then it has come to include women, slaves, members of alien groups and others. Gandhi claimed we should extend it to everyone for, he argued, “all men are brothers”. The meaning of personhood has also been explored, enriched and developed over time. The Golden Rule offers one way to interpret it: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. As reformulated by Kant in the Categorical Imperative, this has been a key source of inspiration for the modern struggle for universal human rights (Kant et al. 2012). It is, however, a formulation that is limited and in need of revision. When my community is homogenous and like me, it is appropriate to do unto the others as I would have them do unto me. It provides a good rule for respecting others on the playground as a child or at work amongst peers. But when dealing with people who have very different traditions and life circumstances, this Golden Rule leads to the kinds of ethical imperialism and colonialism that afflicted many Christian missionaries in the past

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d

and makes many efforts to advance universal human rights problematic. A better formulation would be what we might call the Rainbow Rule: “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them”. This is what Gandhi asked of the British, that they treat Indians as Indians wanted to be treated, rather than the way the British would want to be treated if they happened to have been born into what they viewed as a pagan and uncivilized, backward society. Of course, in dealing with multiple others who want to be treated in multiple ways, it can be challenging to find creative solutions or “third ways” that take into account how all of them would want to be treated. But that is the challenge that we face. And in the modern era in which we live in an interconnected ecological system, it is clear that these “third ways” we seek cannot afford to be shortsighted. They must be sustainable. So we might further revise the Rainbow Rule thus: “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them as parts of a sustainable system for living”. This Rainbow Rule captures more closely the heart of the moral truth in the New Testament that so arrested Gandhi when he was reading through the Bible: “Love your enemies” (McLean and Matthew 1995). This goes well beyond asking us to love our neighbours who are like ourselves (and who may typically love us back). It involves loving those who are fundamentally different in values, views, language and practice. It requires us to open ourselves to radically rethinking what we do and why and being open to treating others in ways that they want us to even though it is difficult for us to imagine ourselves ever wanting to be treated in that way.

5 Gandhi’s practice of satyagraha is designed to provide a non-violent way to resolve practical differences and so provides a direct response and solution to the violent impasses reached through moral relativism. a

b

Satyagraha does this by providing a way of testing moral intuitions through the practices of self-critical open dialogue and self-suffering and through bearing witness to others aiming to “melt their hearts”. It persuades others by embodying and illustrating the moral truth at issue. The colonized person who is being treated as a mere means of production may, for instance, insist on acting in ways that assert her personhood and self-respect by suffering voluntarily in ways that the oppressor can’t make sense of using his prior mental framework. How could this “thing” be so brave and so creative and so persistent in advocating for what “it” thinks are “its” rights? The mental framework is changed when the oppressor starts seeing the oppressed “as” a person instead of a thing. This process of rational demonstration is analogous, in many ways, to the sort of demonstration of geometric truths that Wittgenstein referred to in speaking of the reasoning style of an “Indian mathematician” who could imagine proving things by saying: “Look here. Now here. Notice this? Now, do you see?” (Wittgenstein et al. 1970). In such a way he might demonstrate

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c

the truth found in Plato’s Meno that the diagonal of a square provides the side of a new square exactly twice the area of the first (Plato 1980). Gandhi’s core practice of self-suffering witness in satyagraha serves to provide an “Indian ethicist’s” demonstration of objective moral truths in an analogous way. A further crucial feature of the practice of satyagraha in this context is that it does not just invite the opponent to see the world differently, to see others as persons. If that was all it did, then it would leave us in a world in which bullies could rule and ignore morality at their pleasure. But satyagraha can also provide a kind of non-violent force to motivate such rational agreement and overpower the bully as part of a process of establishing rational, moral institutions and governance of our collective behaviour. One key to this, as Gene Sharp has noted, is the way in which manipulation of people by oppressors requires at least a minimal level of obedience (Sharp et al. 2005). If the oppressed refuse to obey and practice disciplined, systematic non-cooperation, they can overthrow violent, brutal, racist regimes as in South Africa or oppressive, totalitarian systems armed with nuclear weapons as in Eastern Europe. Embodied participants in dialogue can not only provide statements of reasons to persuade each other, but they can and do act in ways that “give each other reasons” to agree with emergent objective moral truths.

Part three: carrying on Gandhi’s innovations Gandhi was deeply critical of the modes of economic, political and technological rationality associated with “civilization” in his day and sought alternatives through swadeshi, gram raja and other innovative methods. In our own time, those “civilized” modes of rationality and thought have created unthinkably irrational ways of acting collectively, which are pushing us to the brink of ecological collapse, mutually assured destruction and obliteration as a species by an unwise and unfriendly system of Artificial Super Intelligences. We need to take up the challenge of carrying Gandhi’s practice of satyagraha into the twenty-first century through further innovations in its application to reasoning in economics, politics and technology. With regard to economic thought, the Gandhian tradition of satyagraha would argue that, as individuals, the rational way to live is not by individually maximizing our net utility but rather by collaboratively engaging in dialogue to find increasingly more moral truth to inform our actions and make meaningful contributions with them so that our lives become increasingly wise and good. If we assume happiness is the goal of life, then as traditional economics implicitly claims, we must note that empirical studies have demonstrated increased material consumption, beyond a reasonable minimum, does not in fact significantly increase happiness. For us as individuals, there is no wisdom or real goodness in an endlessly ever-growing personal consumption. In fact, we know that beyond a reasonable minimum, our consumption contributes to carbon footprints and ecological impacts that are

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hastening dramatic climate change and landscape transformation as well as the sixth great extinction of species on this planet. The implication is familiar: those of us with incomes dramatically above the reasonable minimum need to cut our consumption drastically if we are to allow the just and fair increase in material consumption of the rest of the human race. This surely includes everyone at the average level of income in first world nations. Otherwise, when the others catch up to our level, the planet will face severe ecological collapse. We would need the equivalent of four or more extra planets in that case – and yet, in the popular phrase, “There is no planet B”. In the future, on ­average, humans will consume much less than half of what the well-off first worlders consume now. But in response a justification is often given for the continued high consumption: our economy is driven by consumer command, and if significant numbers of people significantly cut their consumption, it would spiral the global economy into an economic collapse, which itself would cause catastrophic ecological and political chaos. What then should we do? Note first that as individuals we can continue to work and spend our income while also cutting our material consumption in half. We can, if we choose, spend the other half on charity to those in real need, on ecologically responsible investments in the technology and institutions of a sustainable future economy, and on political action and social change. As responsible philanthropists, investors or change agents, our money would continue to circulate in the macro economy, but our personal material consumption would be dramatically cut. Many of us might, of course, find it difficult and disruptive to make this shift in a single year, but in five increments of 10% a year over five years it could be relatively easily done by most people with a mind to do it. Obviously cases would differ. People whose children have grown up and flown the nest may find it especially easy to cut the percentage of their income they consume either by raising income through renting rooms or reducing child expenses. Newlywed couples with newborn children may be in the opposite situation. But what remains true is that for the average person, roughly half the people you know spend more than you on consumption and half spend less. By looking for examples from those who spend less, we can each find ways to reduce consumption in any given year by 10%. And at the end of that year, we will probably have some new friends with different consumption patterns who can show us the way to even greater reductions.5 The shift I propose here is, in some sense, inevitable . . . in the future at some point, on average, the unsustainability of our current lifestyles will force us to dramatically reduce our material consumption. The proposal here is to simply begin by meeting the future halfway. This would, in some ways, function like our equivalent of spinning with the charka. Instead of Rational Economic Actors whose lives end in fleeting pleasures and dissipation, we will be Rational Moral Actors whose lives grow in meaning through projects of service that continue on even after our individual deaths. The consumption that we sacrifice will provide various opportunities for self-purification that may free us of addictions and irrational habits.

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Further, it may provide opportunities for bearing witness both to our friends and political opponents. If rich people in the US or Europe want people in India living on 2 dollars a day to have their government consider reducing their production of coal plants for the sake of avoiding climate change, would not the folks who are well off be better able to make a convincing claim to be reasoning in an equitable and moral way, sharing a concern for the commons, if substantial numbers of them were already “meeting the future halfway”? The same kind of point can be put in a negative way in a second case to illustrate its force. Consider young Moslems who become deeply concerned about the lives of fellow Moslems living under oppression that are supported with aid from the United States and Europe. In trying to engage them in dialogue and persuade them to be non-violent, the moral standing and seriousness of Westerners is seriously undermined if they are not willing to make personal sacrifices to give charitably, invest in a sustainable future, and work ardently for political change that will reform their governments. The processes of individuals and their communities “meeting the future halfway” could, as they scale up, result in dramatic shifts in the directions of economic growth and change in countries all around the world. It will be necessary for national governments to respond in ways that will shift the nature of the nationstate government. They will include ending the use of GNP as the primary measure of policy success, shifting instead to a balanced array of indicators that will be used to measure and guide the national economy with the aim of achieving some form of “human development”, “sustainable development”, “living well/Vivir Bien” or other set of indicators of a society successfully promoting the life of citizens who seek to thrive as Rational Moral Actors. As a national project this would, of course, require a transformation of the national security state. It would thus support efforts to address the second great crisis we face, that of global governance. The crisis in global governance requires a new model of rationality in international affairs. The monological calculations of realpolitik and its moral relativism must be replaced with dialogues employing satyagraha to discover moral truth, bear witness to it, and institutionalize it in effective systems of sanctions that transform collective behaviour. Despite many valiant efforts by good people who were graced with leadership opportunities since the end of World War II, the global governance system has resisted any fundamental transformation because its primary vehicles, which are associated with the United Nations, remain grounded upon the support and sanctions of the national security states which fund it and control its key voting procedures and treaty-making processes. Hence despite many good efforts, “might” based in military violence and economic coercion still predominates in making “right” at the global level. This is why, for example, the efforts at a genuinely meaningful climate change treaty have been so laboured, slow and largely meaningless. National security states cannot see past their sovereign interests in the territorial control of resources to envision and respond to the moral demands for responsible stewardship of the shared commons.

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The good news, however, is that cities, NGOs, religious groups, indigenous p­ eoples and a wide variety of other communities around the world have a fundamentally different view of the world. They see themselves as neighbours with others who share resources like water, air and landscape as well as public health and universal literacy. Their very lack of sovereign power makes them view these resources not as territories to be controlled but as commons to be shared and cared for. They form the fabric of a vast global civil society amongst whom an alternative mode of reasoning is emerging as dominant. It is a dialogical form of reasoning grounded in the common search for meaningful ways to live together respectfully and in stewardship of the commons. It is a process of rational inquiry aiming at emergent truths that will serve as truths to live by. Approaching this phenomenon as Gandhians, it is natural to ask: how might this civil society practice satyagraha in ways that would lead to a new form of global governance – through parallel government. The clue to this lies in Gandhi’s approach to Hind Swaraj, which aimed not to displace British rulers with Indian rulers but to displace rule by military force with rule by love force through the establishment of alternative institutions. At the planetary level, what we need is a kind of parallel “Earth Swaraj” based on the power of non-violence and truth force. What might such institutions look like? Figuring this out is one of the major challenges of our time and it will take a mighty, collective effort. But a few key principles may provide one useful starting point for the dialogues needed. First, we should perhaps begin our experiments in developing the central institutional structures with what we might think of as the “judicial” rather than the “executive” or “legislative” functions of global governance. The transformation away from realpolitik can only take place if some ways are found for establishing moral truths about climate justice, indigenous rights, refugee status and other issues. Such things cannot be simply laid down as positive law in a peremptory way by legislators. They need to be clarified and established through rational inquiry, through hearings that permit all of the relevant voices to be heard in full and fair ways. We might think of these hearings as something like “People’s Courts” in which representative members of global civil society could have hearings in which the different views could be shared and discernment could occur. As findings are made, they can then be implemented in decisions that are sanctioned through the many different non-violent methods available to civil society. One key principle for these “courts” should be that they remain open to all, including those labelled as “terrorists”. What counts as terrorism instead of an act of “self-defence” or “just warfare” is often precisely one of the things that needs to be determined in negotiations. It is, of course, appropriate to try to avoid encouraging further terrorism by rewarding it through providing negotiation forums for people who practice terror. But the appropriate way to do this is by making a point of providing visible, attractive negotiating forums for people who practice non-violence. Saying we should negotiate with enemies means here, minimally, that we should enter dialogue. In the end, we need to be open to negotiate with anyone regardless of what kinds of aggression they practice – peace is made between enemies.

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To develop models for this we could, for instance, look to communities in conflict who have had to develop effective alternative dispute resolution systems outside the reach of national security states. Many indigenous communities and marginalized peasant communities around the world have significant experience with this and have developed a wide range of methods worth considering that include, for instance, using women’s networks for communication, councils of elders, s­torytelling and methods of restorative justice. Futures imaging, utopian writing and high-tech/low-tech methods of internet communities open up a wealth of other hybrid and convergent ideas. Further, the case of climate change provides a suggestive illustration of the potential of civil society for establishing a parallel world government practicing satyagraha. At the official Rio+20 meeting of governments, the nation-states gathered were able to muster only the most pitiful of commitments to reduce their carbon footprints and fund climate adaptation and amelioration – on the order of a few billions. But downtown, in the People’s Summit, tens of thousands of representatives from civil society from all around the world were meeting in dialogues and making commitments at every scale of action and in a wide array of creative and effective ways (Cox 2012). For instance, a coalition of banks and cities in Asia marshalled several hundred billion dollars’ worth of loan guarantees for climate adaption infrastructure in urban areas. When it comes to climate change, there is an enormous amount of very successful work being done to form shared visions and agreements and act on them; it just isn’t being done by nation-states which lack a vision of the world as a shared commons. Let us turn now to consider how a Gandhian might deal with the third great crisis we face – the technological crisis presented by the exponential growth of ever “smarter” systems and, perhaps, in the not very distant future, superintelligences which may prove intelligent and sophisticated but either unwise or unfriendly or both. From a Gandhian point of view, the central problem results from the forms of reasoning that guide technological development and the structures that institutionalize them. The problem is that such reasoning is monological and instrumentalist in character, and it is institutionalized by corporations that are themselves virtual entities incapable of passion and compassion. Without dialogue and compassion, satyagraha is not possible – it is not possible to find moral truth or cling to it. The modern, transnational, limited liability corporation is defined by its charter which makes it, in essence, an algorithm for maximizing profit. Its employees and shareholders may come and go. What endures and provides its fundamental constitution is a charter of instructions for its operations. In this sense it is an algorithmic entity, a kind of software. It is, in that sense, an example of the kind of AI that corporations are creating to make the planet’s economic processes “smarter” at exponentially increasing rates. As an AI guided by a profit-maximizing algorithm, such a corporation is, by definition, neither wise nor friendly. It is required by the laws that institute it to sacrifice ecological and social values for profit and to disregard the long-term welfare of the human race in its decision procedures.

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How might the capacities for dialogue and compassion be restored to such institutions? One simple process would be to change their charters to remove the limited liability feature so that stockholders could be sued, fined or jailed in cases in which the company they own committed unethical and/or illegal actions. This would be a very significant change in the algorithm because a key controlling part of the algorithm – the decisions of the stockholders as to who to vote in for board and management – would include considerations of suffering they (or others) might receive as a result of immoral or unsustainable policies. In the United States, much of the current work to reform corporations is focused on denying them “personhood” so that they cannot be guaranteed unlimited free speech rights for electoral campaigning and political lobbying. But from a Gandhian perspective, instead of depriving them of rights as persons, it would make more sense to focus on developing their capacities for responsibilities as “persons” by altering their algorithms so that the controlling elements include individuals and groups with bodies that can witness suffering and engage in moral inquiry through dialogical reasoning and satyagraha. The specific forms of such embodiment could take many managerial forms and be enhanced in a variety of ways. For instance, if the stockholders are by law not only subject to liability but also required to be residents of the community in which the corporation acts, then they become more accessible to persuasive dialogue and non-violent direct action that can motivate them to be morally rational. The algorithms that allow absentee ownership invite anonymity and the tendency to make selfish, immoral choices. Likewise, if legal restrictions on capital flows prevent a corporation from exporting its profits, then its algorithm changes in a decisive way in favour of considering the sustainability and health of the economic community in which its capital is committed to remain. These core insights would apply as well to other algorithms which are the software coding of the artificial intelligences being developed to manage ever “smarter” systems to manage our planet. To make them wise and friendly, we need to structure them and institutionalize their development in ways that assure that they are capable of dialogical reasoning and that their coding is controlled by components capable of passion and compassion that enable them to witness suffering in others and bear witness, themselves, in rational inquiry discovering emerging moral truths. One way to do this is to have human beings remain in key controlling positions in the algorithm. This is the strategy, for instance, in the case of military drones, of keeping the decision to fire in the hands of a human “pilot”.6 A second strategy that might complement building human components into the code of the system would be to build robotic elements with features like humans. For example, a military ground drone used to manage crowds in riots might be built to have not only facial recognition abilities but also facial expression reading abilities. And its code might include operations in which it assesses the pain, pleasure, sadness, joy, disdain, respect and other passions felt and feel some degree of compassion for them – as well as the ability to respond in ways that acknowledge those feelings and help reduce the negative ones. Whether through the inclusion of actual humans or devices that

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accurately embody human feeling, the essential principle is to find ways of ensuring that the algorithms “em-body” or “in-carnate” morality by “in-corporating” a suffering self in their decision procedures. In closing, one further point is worth stressing: the kinds of initiatives proposed for addressing each of the three existential crises can and should be undertaken in ways that will be mutually reinforcing. For instance, the resources liberated by cuts in consumption can help fund hearings and non-violent campaigns that form part of an emerging global governance based in civil society institutions. The strategies of “meeting the future halfway”, “Earth swaraj” and “incarnating morality” offer a synergistic path to a viable future.

Conclusion The challenges of reforming our economy, our global governance and our technological systems are daunting. The key to them lies in institutionalizing modes of reasoning in each which commits them to rational moral inquiry of the kind practiced in Gandhian satyagraha. Such reasoning is dialogical rather than monological. It is carried on by embodied participants who are embedded in a context in which they can feel passion and compassion and can witness – and bear witness to – ­emergent moral truths. Such witness, through self-suffering and non-violent actions, can demonstrate the objective truth of moral claims and provide reasons for others to agree with them in principle and non-violent but effective motivations for them to conform with them in practice. To address the existential threats posed by ecological collapse, mass violence and artificial intelligence, we will need to innovate in a host of ways. This will need to begin with changing the modes of reasoning that govern our own lives as individuals and communities – becoming Rational Moral Actors instead of Rational Economic Consumers. And for many if not most readers, this will likely mean taking steps to “meet the future halfway” by dramatically shifting the expenditure of their income from personal material consumption to morally responsible philanthropy, investment and political/social change. To change the dominant mode of rationality at the level of global governance, it will be necessary to practice an “Earth swaraj” that institutionalizes the collective search for moral truth in the courts of public opinion as understood by civil society and empower that system of “courts” or “tribunals” to call for effective non-violent sanctions through the actions of global civil society. To increase the odds that the artificial intelligences that manage our global systems will become wise and friendly, we need to work to ensure their algorithms “incarnate morality” by being controlled by agents (whether human or robotic) that can suffer passion and feel compassion and engage in dialogue as part of the practice of satyagraha and rational moral inquiry. One key step in this direction will surely be the reform of the algorithms of that specific form of artificial intelligence that is the transnational, limited liability, for-profit corporation. Rather than try to take away their rights as “persons”, we need to build their capacities for responsibilities.

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Notes 1 These problems, especially the first two, are familiar. For articulations of them see, for instance, Brown et al. 2009; Cox 1986; Bostrom 2016. 2 For an elaboration of some of the metaphysical and epistemological ideas underlying the notion of dialogical reasoning used here to explicate Gandhi’s practice of satyagraha, see Cox 2014 for applications relevant to community discernment processes and see Cox 2015 for analysis of them as they relate to the existential threat posed by AI. 3 See Bondurant 1988. 4 For examples of these traditions, descriptions of their practices and elaborations of their underlying philosophical assumptions assumptions see, for instance, Chew 2000; Cox 1986; Cox 2014; Fisher and Ury 2011; Lederach 1996; Nan 2011; Ramsbotham et al. 2016. 5 For a more detailed developments of practical aspects of this proposal, see Cox 2005; Cox 2013. 6 There is interesting work that has been done to try to include program ethics into military drones. However, the focus has been on monological approaches to applying principles of Bentham, Kant or just war theory. At the current stage in the development to AI monological models dominate. See, for instance, Arkin 2009. But it is important to begin the research now to develop dialogical models of ethics that can be incorporated and cultivated in the learning programs of AI.

Bibliography Abney, K. (2014) ‘Robotics, ethical theory and metaethics: A guide for the perplexed’, in Lin, P., Abney, K. and Bekey, G.A. (eds.) Robot ethics: The ethical and social implications of robotics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Arkin, R.C. (2009) Governing lethal behavior in autonomous robots. Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall, CRC. Bondurant, J.V. and Boudurant, J.V. (1988) Conquest of violence: The Gandhian philosophy of conflict: With a new epilogue by the author. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bostrom, N. (2016) Superintelligence: Paths, dangers, strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, P.G., Garver, G., Helmuth, K., Howell, R. and Szeghi, S. (2009) Right relationship: Building a whole earth economy. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Buber, M. and Kaufmann, W. (1971) I and thou. New York: Simon & Schuster, Adult Publishing Group. Chew, P.K. (ed.) (2000) The conflict and culture reader. New York: New York University Press. Cox, G. (1986) The ways of peace: A philosophy of peace as action. New York: Paulist Press International. Cox, G. (2005) ‘Meeting God Halfway’, Friends Journal. Cox, G. (2012) Rio is dead – Long Live Rio!! Available at: http://breathonthewater.com/ 2012/06/22/rio-is-dead-long-live-rio/ (Accessed: 2 December 2016). Cox, G. (2013) A proposal to cut US citizen’s consumption in half. Available at: http://breath onthewater.com/2013/04/23/a-proposal-to-cut-us-citizens-consumption-in-half/ (Accessed: 2 December 2016). Cox, G. (2014) A quaker approach to research: Collaborative practice and communal discernment. Produccicones de La Hamaca. Cox, G. (2015) ‘Reframing ethical theory, pedagogy, and legislation to bias open source AGI towards friendliness and wisdom’, Journal of Evolution and Technology. Fisher, R.D. and Ury, W.L. (2011) Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. Edited by Bruce Patton. 3rd edn. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 25: 2 New York: Penguin Group.

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Gandhi, M. (2009) Gandhi: ‘Hind Swaraj’ and other writings: Centenary edition. Edited by Anthony J. Parel. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gandhi, M., Gujarati, M.D. and Bok, S. (1993) An autobiography: The story of my experiments with truth. 13th edn. Boston: Beacon Press. Gandhi, M, Gujarati, M.D. and Desai, V.G. (1995) Satyagraha in South Africa. 2nd edn. India: Navajivan Publishing House, Navajivan Trust. Gandhi, M. K. (1959). An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth (2nd ed., M. Desai, Trans.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan. (Original work published 1927 in Gujarati). Gandhi, M. K. (1961). Satyagraha in South Africa (2nd ed., V. G. Desai, Trans.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan. (Original work published 1928 in Gujarati). Goertzel, B. and Pitt, J. (2012) ‘Nine Ways to Bias Open-Source AGI Towards Friendliness’, Journal of Evolution and Technology, 22(1), pp. 116–131. Hawking, S. (2014) Transcending complacency on superintelligent machines. Available at: http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/artificial-intelligence_b_5174265.html?section=india (Accessed: 2 December 2016). Kant, I., Korsgaard, C.M., Gregor, M. and Timmermann, J. (2012) Kant: Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kurzweil, R. (2005) The singularity is near when humans transcend biology. New York: Viking. Lederach, J.P.P. (1996) Preparing for peace: Conflict transformation across cultures. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Leopold, A. (1986) A sand county almanac: With essays on conservation from round river. 29th edn. New York: Random House Publishing Group. MacIntyre, A.C. (2007) After virtue: A study in moral theory. 3rd edn. University of Notre Dame Press. McLean, M. (1995) Bible Gateway.Com: A searchable online bible in over 150 versions and 50 languages. Available at: http://www.biblegateway.com (Accessed: 2 December 2016). Nan, S.A. (2011) Peacemaking: From practice to theory. Edited by Susan Allen Nan, Zachariah Cherian Mampilly and Andrea Bartoli. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Publishers. Parel, Anthony. J. (2009) Gandhi: ‘Hind Swaraj’ and other writings: Centenary edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plato and Grube, G.M.A. (1980) Plato’s Meno. 2nd edn. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co. Ramsbotham, O., Woodhouse, T. and Miall, H. (2016) Contemporary conflict resolution. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rawls, J. and Scanlon, T.M. (2005) A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Sharp, G., Paulson, J., Miller, C.A. and Merriman, H. (2005) Waging nonviolent struggle: 20th century practice and 21st century potential. Boston, MA: Extending Horizons Books. Wittgenstein, L., Anscombe, G.E.M. and von Wright, G.H. (1970) Zettel. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

15 GANDHI An apostolic architect of humanism Anandita Biswas

I Mahatma Gandhi belongs to that rare providence on earth who deserves a continuous cogitation on his own elocution and exhortation and demands at the same time reformation and revivification of the ideals and ideologies perceived by him. To try to study and write something about this towering personality is to put oneself in the midst of an ocean. But inquisitiveness and astonishment that Gandhi instills still, is in itself a matter of phenomenal amazement. In this chapter I delve into the Gandhian labyrinthine involution to acquire at least a droplet of the prodigious ideals and to re-evaluate how and to what extent the pertinence of Gandhian ideology disseminates and circumfuses itself into this conflict-ridden world. In the age of economic, cultural and political globalization, violence and hatred have also acquired a global apparition. Terrorism, atrocities against women, massacre of minorities, ethnic cleansing, religious abomination, communal violence, extermination and slaughter of prudent voice postulates a dreadful specter on world survival. Since the onset of the twenty-first century, the global atmosphere remained charged and polluted with impatience, violence and intolerance. We are no doubt proceeding towards the doomsday, the apocalypse and humanitarian immolation. Nine-Eleven, Beslan Tragedy, Seven-Seven, Twenty-Six Eleven, Peshawar Killings, and Thirteen-Eleven are now history. But all these events had an insurmountable eventuation on world politics and the cultural paradigm. These portrayed the importance of culture – a culture that is engulfed within religion. This culture is ever-ready to gobble up human existence along with all the ethics and moral virtues of human survival ripping apart a civilization. It’s time we solemnly take sanctuary beneath the ideas and preaching of the Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi lived and died in a world when it was appropriate to appreciate the ideal of non-violence, though it failed to implement it. Now, the world echoes

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the cult of violence, intolerance, hatred and jingoism. In today’s conflict-ridden world, the message of Mahatma demands an appreciable space in cogent argumentation. Here, he comes alive to save the world from tremendous atrocities and heinous acts of barbarity, to secure and shield the human civilization through his humanitarian agenda. This chapter intends to portray and vivify the importance and significance of the gospel preached by a Prophetic Messiah, the religious rejuvenator and the spiritual emancipator personified in none other than Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi categorically stated that “an eye for an eye” would ultimately make the whole world blind. This chapter, therefore, most emphatically highlights an analogical prognosis between two different and varied ideological standpoints that have been interpreting and re-interpreting the interaction between humanism and culture, tolerance and bigotry. Gandhi based his ideological belief on an innocuous, humane, altruistic podium that highlighted the principles of ethics and elevated it to a moral force that provided the impulse for the creation of a compassionate man and pacifying and unifying love for all living beings.

II Characterizing the Indian culture is a Herculean task for any researcher and academician. Elucidation of the Indian culture demands delving into the unfathomable abyss. To understand Gandhi, one needs to have a glance of what Indian culture and religion to portray. The oxford Dictionary of Philosophy defines culture as “the way of life of the people, including their attitudes, beliefs, arts, sciences, modes of perception, and habits of thought and activity”. Thus culture denotes how people think and act in that light (Vinod and Deshpande 2013: 358). Sir Edward Burnett Taylor states: culture is a “complex whole of knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as member of society” (Taylor 1920, 1871). It becomes amply clear that culture is not naturally given, but rather it is an artificial creation that takes place in society. Thus, culture can be understood as a “social construct” that enriches the life of people through diverse modes. But Mahatma Gandhi stated that “a nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of the people”. He emphatically referred to the abstract nature of culture (Vinod and Deshpande 2013: 358). Bhikhu Parekh, in his most acclaimed book Rethinking Multiculturalism, provides us a comprehensive view of culture. He writes: Every culture is internally plural and reflects a continuing conversation between its different traditions and strands of thought. This does not mean that it is devoid of coherence and identity, but that its identity is plural, fluid and open. Cultures grow out of conscious and unconscious interactions with each other . . . every culture is internally plural and differentiated. (emphasis added) (Parekh 1999)

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He extends this by saying: cultures are not the achievements of the relevant communities alone but also of others who provide their context, shape some of their beliefs and practices, and remain their points of reference. In this sense, almost all cultures are multiculturally constituted. (emphasis added) (Parekh 2000: 163) From these two vital comments it can be deciphered that culture is historically evolved precepts of meaning and visions of the good life. Culture also shapes and structures moral life, and morality is culturally embedded. Beliefs and practices of culture are closely related, being autonomous in their existence, and lastly the very nature of culture is plural, fluid and open (Vinod and Deshpande 2013: 360). Culture, therefore, is a mode of life of a group of people. This mode is reflected in its implementation that consequently regulates the individual and collective lives. Cultures, however, bears diverse manifestation particularly aesthetic, moral, literary, social and spiritual. The underlying belief system of cultural practices represents a particular way of looking at the world and provides meaning and significance to people’s activities and relations. Habits of the mind, views on sexuality, women’s status, attitudes to life and death, relations with parents and elders, behavior with children and others – are all derived from the particular way of looking at the world. The meaning and significance that a particular culture assigns to truth and virtue or wealth and power regulate the ways and means of their pursuit by the people (Sen and Sen 2011: 6). The root of the Indian culture can be traced in the indigenous civilization of the Indus (Sindh) Valley that was multi-lingual and multi-ethnic. Elementary signifiers of the period, through its synthesis with the Vedic culture, continue until date. Radhakrishnan observed: The cults of Shiva and Shakti may have come down from the Indus people. Worship of trees, animals, and rivers, and other cults associated with fertility ritual, may have had the same origin. The Upanishadic thought constitute the primary essence of the belief system of Indian culture that has firmly stabilized its foundation and renders an affirm support to its superstructure at times of crisis. (Sen and Sen 2011: 6) Indian culture can never be properly understood without comprehending its relational metamorphosis with religion. Man does not live by bread alone. Emotional sustenance that comes from religion is an essential part of human existence ( Jhunjhunwala 2014: 6). Religion is primarily concerned within the meaning and significance of human survival and thus, intricately associated with culture. According to Bhikhu Parekh, “religion shapes a culture’s system of beliefs and practices; culture influences how a religion is interpreted”. In fact, the Dharmasastras of the Hindu tradition emphasized the necessity for harmonious integration of one’s rights with his responsibilities to others. The Hindu Dharma with hundreds of

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religious festivals centering on innumerable deities bears more significance in the realm of culture than do religions. The Dharmasastras, by introducing the “common code of conduct” binding on all sections of the society, propagated ethical practices which have nothing to do with religion. They aim at individual perfection by reconciling the conflicting claims of one’s personality to achieve harmony in his “lifein-society” (Sen and Sen 2011: 6). Religion is for spiritual guidance and growth. It is a major resource for promoting peace, liberty and justice (Raj 2007: 6). God is spirit. He is beyond form, space, time, sex, caste, color, religion and so on. The word “spirit” is to do with wind, the air we breathe in and therefore life. Spirit is life and so God is life. Spirituality unfolds life that calls for transcendence-experience, awareness and appreciation of life beyond self. It assists a person to realize God as truth, love and peace. It raises a person beyond his or her egocentric nature and fills the mind with the other-centric attitude. It is what Saint Augustine called “restlessness”. It is a path to God and to become gradually God-like. It is that which pertains to self or soul (atman) (Roy 2004: 6).

III For Gandhi, religion does not simply imply a philosophical prognostication that fastens within its juridical fold all beliefs and practices in a rigid, structured, logical prism; neither is it an authoritative, suffocating cluster of orthodox dogmas. For him, religion is a body of perception, a vision informed by a particular conception of God. Its truth lies in its vision, its governing spirit, its essential message, not in its rituals and detailed scriptural utterances. Thus, to belong to it is to commit oneself to its vision and live to the best of one’s ability (Parekh 2008: 6). The general observation regarding Gandhi that exists among the masses is that Gandhi was a religious man and religion formed an inseparable component in his life. However, no one can deny the fact that he was averse to the traditional, orthodox, institutionalized form of religion. Rather, he was a valiant critic of the orthodox genre of traditional dominant forms of religion. Gandhi rather preferred impersonification of the Almighty by showering qualities like ‘Reality’, ‘Truth’, ‘God’ and ‘Self ’ or ‘Soul’. However, there lies enough room for dubious debates regarding the meaning and significance of these terms. According to Gandhi, the cosmic reality of the universe is somewhere and somehow being controlled by some ultimate reality or a supreme intelligence, or God or what Gandhi preferred to refer to as ‘Absolute Truth’. Gandhi also believed that the existence of this Supreme Being is also substantiated by human experience. Sages and spiritual seekers down the ages have claimed to ‘see’, ‘hear’ or ‘feel the presence’ of a divine power. No doubt individuals of ordinary caliber making such claims were outrightly rejected as having hallucinations or psycho-somatic disorders. But when people of all ages belonging to all societies claim such occurrences, the fact can never be dismissed outrightly. In crucial juncture, ordinary masses have also experienced unexpected interventions, which has in layman’s terminology been described as nothing less than a miracle. These miracles occur to those who are worthy of experiencing such miraculous happenings. They come to those who become worthy of them by cultivating deep humility, eliminating all traces of egoism, restraining

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the ceaseless flow of distracting desires, acquiring profound inner peace, and surrendering themselves to a power beyond them (Parekh 2008: 4). Henry Pollock quotes Gandhi as remarking in South Africa: “Men say I am a saint losing myself in politics. The fact is I am a politician trying my hardest to be a saint”. Undoubtedly, Gandhi’s politics are indistinguishable from his religion. He said his patriotism was subservient to his religion. In politics, he cleaved to moral considerations, and as a saint he thought his place was not in a cave or cloister but in the hurly-burly of the popular struggle for rights and the right. Gandhi’s religion made him political, and his politics were religious (Fischer 2010: 35). But for Gandhi, the trust in the divinity gets enhanced through reason and experience, which is a plausible “hypothesis” (Iyer 1987: 504). For Gandhi, as religion is grounded on reason and experience, it assists to face the hurdles and tragedies of life in an easier way, it shields one against ill feelings like meanness, ingratitude and wickedness of other fellow human beings. It provides the rational basis for love and care for one another and instills the feeling of heroism within oneself for undertaking bold steps for the good of all. Thus, he says, “I reject everything that contradicts the fundamental principles of morality” (Gandhi 2014: 24). Just like Swami Vivekananda, Gandhi outrightly defied Hindu orthodoxy and even questioned the validity of some century-old dogma and practice. Throughout his life, Gandhi preferred to call himself a Hindu and defended the faith into which he was born. Even though Gandhi was born and brought up in a devout Hindu household steeped in Vaishnavism and was also exposed to dominant Jain influences, his acquaintance with religion – even with the religion of his birth – was insignificant. He came to understand his own religion as late as 1888 when he arrived in London at the age of nineteen. In fact, how Gandhi struggled to acquire knowledge of all the major religions of the world is in itself a fascinating story. Gandhi proclaimed that no book, however sacred, could be confined to a single interpretation, irrespective of time and place. “Every living faith”, he insisted, “must have within itself the power of rejuvenation”. Religious instructions must be subjected to the acid test of reason: no scriptural sanction was valid if it resulted in unjust or inhuman practices: “that which conflicts with reason must be rejected” ( Josh 2002: 7). He supported Varnashrama from a logical point of view but despised the creation of innumerable castes that were created as a mechanism for privileging one against the other. Gandhi emphatically states: “Varnashrama is inherent in human nature and Hinduism has simply reduced it to a science. The divisions define duties, they confirm no privileges. A Hindu who refuses to dine with another from a sense of superiority misrepresents his dharma” (Hinduism 2014: 16–17). When it comes to the practice of idol worship, Gandhi projects a practical dilemma: “An idol does not excite any feeling of veneration in me. But I think that idol worship is part of human nature. We hanker after symbolism” (Gandhi 2015: 19). Gandhi perceived that it is difficult for human beings to conceptualize a formless and quality-less transcendental reality. Anthropomorphization, therefore, becomes a natural analogy for perceiving the Supreme Being. The entity is attributed human qualities. Gandhi calls such a personalized God “relative truth”, truth as it is available to or

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grasped by the limited human mind. Fundamentally, God is indescribable in words (Parekh 2008: 5). Thus, it is pertinent to mention what God was for Gandhi in his own visualization as well as conviction: To me God is truth and love: God is ethics and morality; God is fearlessness. God is the source of light and life and yet He is above and beyond all these. God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist. Further he says: He is one yet many; He is smaller than an atom, and bigger than the Himalayas; He is contained even in a drop of the ocean, and yet not even the seven seas can compass Him. Reason is powerless to know Him. He is beyond the reach or grasp of reason. (Gandhi 2014: 78) Every religion varies in its conceptions of God and the religious paraphernalia regarding beliefs, practices and customs. Different religions evolved different ways of worshipping and adoring Him, different notions of heaven, hell, afterlife and salvation. Therefore, every religion bears a distinct moral ethos. The emphasis on love is central to Christianity in a way that it is not to other religions, and so too are the related ideas of forgiveness, suffering, loving father and human brotherhood. Rigorous monotheism, rejection of intermediaries between God and human beings, God’s merciful nature, and the idea of human equality are uniquely and “most beautifully articulated in Islam. The ideas of the unity of all life, nonviolence and the distinction between the impersonal and personal conceptions of God are fully developed in Hinduism and personal enlightenment and compassion in Buddhism” (Parekh 2008: 5). But above every realization that Gandhi gained through his experiments with truth was that Hinduism is the most tolerant of all religions. According to Gandhi, true Hinduism is nothing but spiritual secularism. As the Gita puts it: “Seeing the same God equally present in everything, one does not injure self by self; and goes to the highest goal” (Bhagavad Gita 13: 28). In fact, the battlefield of Kurukshetra is essentially the one inside the human body which is the Dharmakshetra. The battle is within ourselves, the battle between the good and the bad, between ethics and dogmatism, between morality and immorality, between truth and deception. Gandhi describes Shri Krishna as the atman in us, who is our charioteer. This charioteer, we can decipher, therefore, as nothing but truth and morality driven by soul-force. In Hinduism, Gandhi saw a unique quality: in it there is room for the worship of all the prophets of the world. “It is not a missionary religion in the ordinary sense” ( Jagmohan 2000: 6). Faith does not admit of telling. It has to be lived and then it becomes self-propagating (Hinduism 2014: 12). Gandhi underlined: “God is not encased in a safe to be approached only through a little whole in it, but He is open to be approached only through billions of openings by those who are humble and pure at heart” ( Jagmohan 2005: 6).

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IV Now the question is where is Gandhi’s Hinduism today? Has Hinduism failed? Have Gandhian ideals failed? Or have we failed Hinduism? We have failed Gandhian preaching! In his The Lost Symbol, novelist Dan Brown opines: “since the beginning of time, the ignorant had always screamed the loudest, herding unsuspecting masses and forcing them to do their bidding. They defended their worldly desires by citing scriptures they did not understand” (Brown 2010: 327). The mobs that attacked the Muslim family on the night of 28 September 2015 at Bisara village near Dadri in Uttar Pradesh were driven by impulse and irrationality that took the life of the 52-year-old Mohammad Alklaq Saifi. The crime was motivated by some paranoid, sick mobs. They accused the family for consuming beef. Allegations and counter-allegations are still going on regarding the character of the flesh. What happened at the Godhra railway station on 27 February 2002 when the train stopped at the signal at 7.30am and caught fire, killing fifty-seven karsevaks in a reserved compartment S-6, including twenty-five women and fourteen children? The question is not who set fire to the train or how it caught fire but that it caught fire and the passengers had to die, burning with doors and windows closed when the train was stationary – the irony being it was surrounded by the mob of thousands! Had the mob been neutral, the passengers could have been saved (Roy 2004: 6). Sensibility and ethics have withered away from the Gandhian soil. In the infamous Naroda Patiya case, one perpetrator Suresh confessed: If fruits (saying for girls) were lying, the hungry would eat it. In any case, she (the Muslim girl) was to be burnt hence somebody might have ate (eaten) the fruit. . . . Even I had raped one girl – named Nasimo. . . . I raped on roof and then thrown (threw) her from there. I smashed her, cut her to pieces like achar (pickle). (Narain 2014: 38–41) This is the real picture of Gandhi’s independent India: I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country, in whose making they have an effective voice, an India in which there shall be no high class and no class of people, an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony. There would be no room in such India for the curse of untouchability or the curse of intoxicating drinks or drugs. Women will enjoy the same rights as men. (Ramamoorthy 2006: 9) This was Gandhi’s dream of India. However, it is this India now where a woman is being dragged, beaten within an iron rod and assaulted with a rusted wheel jack handle! Gandhi in his lifetime fought giant evils of racism, colonialism, the caste system, economic exploitation, degradation of women, religious and ethnic supremacy and fought for popular democratic participation and socio-cultural

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rejuvenation. In contemporary times when the world is ripped apart by violence and hatred, why do we study Gandhi? The answer lies in that so long as there is intolerance, hostility and strife, religious hostilities and ethnic cleansing, Gandhi will be referred to with all dedication. Gandhi is not just relevant for today. He was relevant when he was alive but became more indispensable after his mortal death. While the last century was dominated by a prolonged conflict of ideologies, the world today is in grip of what has been called a “clash of civilizations” fuelled by a religious fanaticism. Till yesterday the debate centered on the choice between democracy and totalitarianism. But today the need for reconciliation between religious faiths has come to be inscribed on the agenda of history as a matter of major importance for the survival of humankind. Undoubtedly, in recent Indian history, social and political configurations and conflicts have often been enunciated in terms of religious communities. After the Nine-Eleven attacks on the twin towers at the World Trade Centre, Muslims came to be viewed with suspicion and were tarred with terrorism. Particularly, those wearing skullcaps and beards fared even worse. Shah Rukh Khan (the famous Indian film star) was not even spared. He was detained for questioning at the airport in New Jersey. Institutionalized religion when it gets politicized warps the human mind so much that human senses simply vanish. Religious intolerance charges the atmosphere to such an extent that every phenomenon comes to be viewed through a religious prism. Communal hatred masks all social identities under the cloak of religion. Religion cradles a riddle which is at the root of the religious fanaticism that consumed Graham Steins and his two sons. Dara Singh is perhaps not a rare monster. He is simply the agent victim of a depraved understanding of God and religion. Like hordes of ignorant sheep, the blind-folded followers of influential fanatics pay a heavy price. But like stubborn moss, we never feel the necessity to listen to the voice of the wise because the wise do not yell and howl to imprint their ideas. Their voice is gentle and they speak the language of love and tolerance – that retrieve the sensibility of the mind and soul. Thus, it is imperative to pay a patient and attentive hearing to such language and teachings that possesses the potentiality of transforming the insensible and orthodox mode of cultural imposition. We listened to a few “leaders”, one a psychological case, another a deeply frustrated soul, the third a megalomaniac, the fourth a tyrant. They howled and we listened. They howled and we turned violent – we killed our own people. We tormented millions; we left millions on the streets to fester and die, helpless and weeping. All these things happened because we did not listen to the sane voice. That voice echoed not in some remote, hidden place in a forest, but in the open and warned us gently (Sunirmalananda 2011: 6). Gandhi emphasized that “you have to be prepared to lay down your lives when you pursue the path of violent resistance. If you are ready to lay down lives in resisting injustice and oppression through non-violent resistance, you will find that this method works more effectively than the method of violent resistance”. Gandhi believed that a spirit of God is in every human being (Das 2014: 177).

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The paranoid phobia that exists in the Islamic world is at present the most horrendous threat to human civilization. No doubt, Islam as a religion is a highly charged ideology to which the Muslims respond instinctively to portray their loyalties. In fact, there appears to be an uncontrollable fervor in the Muslim faith that brings down all potential obstacle and opposition to it. Islam promises to offer a fierce resistance to non-Islamic culture and civilization by throwing challenges to the liberal, democratic world of the West, shorn off all the notions and values of modernity upon which Western civilization is predicated. The most important concern is, however, the intrinsically emotional nature of the Islamic revival and the sprouting of terrorist outfits that mushroom the globe. The world is witnessing the emergence of innumerable terrorist and militant outfits who have all become spokespersons and apostles of Islam. Moreover, those who have been made to believe that death by means of suicide bombing is a passport to paradise and constitutes the glory of Islam do not necessarily require a specific dictum from a central command. They could act on their own. Like flocks of sheep, the dormant masses are aroused and transformed into frenzied psychopaths ever ready to slam whoever comes in the way of their “targeted goal” prescribed by their enchanting leader. The Holy Quran, however, warns that taking one innocent life is akin to targeting the whole of humanity. Yet, those believing in God find nothing wrong and no irony in targeting His creation. Islam preaches that all humanity is Allah’s family. And it is targeted again and again, with impunity in His name (Syed 2014: 6). According to the Mahatma, the point of brotherhood is manifested in no other religion as clearly as in Islam. The reading of the Holy Quran convinced Gandhi that the basis of Islam is not violence (Mishra 2012: 109). Gandhi had always perceived fanatical Muslim violence as a “corrupt understanding of Islam, just as Hindu violence was a corrupt understanding of Hinduism”. Gandhi had proposed a grassroots approach that sought to generate goodwill and “heart unity” between different communities. He rather reminded his fellow workers that “Islam is not a false religion. Let Hindu study it reverently and they will love it even as I do . . . if Hindus set their house in order, I have not a shadow of doubt Islam will respond in a manner of its liberal traditions”. During his last fasting, he once again elucidated before the assembled associates that “they should understand the meaning of what they read and have equal regard for all religions”. Throughout his life, he practiced what he preached. According to him, by reading and understanding each others’ religions, everybody would be able to learn from all and hence forget the communal differences and live together in peace and amity (Dallmayr 2008: 157). Gandhi insisted that there can never be any lasting peace unless we ingrain in ourselves the message and mindset to tolerate and to respect other faiths as our own, and interfaith trust and relevance depends not just on information and procurement of knowledge but also on modes of participation in the self-realization and spiritual strivings and aspirations of diverse faiths. It is through such reverential participation that an ethical and spiritual Umma or a Ramrajya be established (Dallmayr 2008: 155). For Gandhi, human reason attained through our novel and supreme comprehensible intellect assists us to view every phenomenon rationally.

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Self-assessment is vital for moral and spiritual upliftment that in course leads to harmonious co-relations with the unique whole. Today, the question that haunts us is whether the war on terrorism is an answer to root out terrorism? For Gandhi, violent counter-terrorism is itself terrorism. In his lifetime he had seen much exodus, mass killing of Hindus and Muslims. And now had he been alive, he would have witnessed the fleeing of millions of Syrians, lifeless bodies of innocent children like Alan Kurdi or the bloody, bullet-infested body of 162 innocent lives at Peshawar! For Gandhi, the conception of violence was not just limited to overt violation of bodily integrity. For Gandhi, psychological violence, ego-driven hatred, hatred for others also constituted violence. When the question of sacrifice came, he clearly uttered: “maybe our motive behind sacrificing an animal is one of achieving public good, for instance, ensuring rainfall. While the motive may be that of public good but it is not a true sacrifice in which we kill other creatures”. For Gandhi, Hinduism was true and at the same time non-violent as all human beings are creatures of the Almighty, so also animals are his creatures and therefore a part of the family of God. Gandhi had equal affection even for the mud on which he walked, for the leaves and also the trees, because every matter of this universe is a part of the Almighty.

V What is the essence of Gandhi’s message? Gandhi was asked this question, and he answered with a smile, “my life is my message”. For him, non-violence was a comprehensive concept. Non-violence was an idol for the whole life. Gandhi rejected an intolerant and hate-filled opposition to the other, whether it was white British, the Indian collaborator, the Muslim or the assertive subordinate (Hardiman 2003). Gandhian non-violence does not aim at destroying the tyrant. Contrarily, it seeks to convert the tyrant. Its success or failure is not to be judged in terms of victory or defeat, but rather it should be viewed in terms of a change of heart of both. Hence, the essence of the non-violent technique is that it seeks to liquidate antagonism but not the antagonists. He categorically stated that “an eye for an eye” would ultimately make the whole world blind. He believed if sufficient sense of non-violence developed in any single person, he would be able to discover the means of combating violence within his capacity and jurisdiction. Gandhi introduced to the world a new philosophy – the philosophy of altruism. When our world is afflicted by violence and bloodshed, his theory of Sarvodaya would at least show up the light for emancipation – emancipation from violence, emancipation from intolerance, emancipation from prejudice and most importantly emancipation of soul. The fundamentals of Sarvodaya entail every individual to be a contributor to the community, the community to the society, the society to the nation, and the nation to the world. Professor V.K.R.V. Rao stated that ­Sarvodaya – the welfare of all – is a classless society, based on the destruction of classes, a system of production that does not fail to make use of science and technology for creating an economy of abundance but does not in the process kill individual initiative or

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freedom from development or create a psychology of ceaseless striving for more and more material goals, a system of distribution that will ensure a reasonable minimum income for all, and while not aiming at a universal equality of an arithmetical kind, will nevertheless ensure that all private property or talent beyond the ­minimum will be used as a trust for the public good and not for individual aggrandizement, a social order where all will work but there is no inequality, either in status or in opportunity for any individual, and a political system where change is the result of persuasion, differences are resolved by discussion, and conflict by love and recognition of mutuality of interests and a life spent in dedication of God and cultivation of spirit (Rao 1981). From the socio-aesthetic point of view, Gandhi’s philosophy of Sarvodaya emphasizes some essential tenets of life. According to it, the first principle that we must follow is to hold strictly to “truth” even under adverse situations and be ever ready to dedicate oneself to the cause of truth for anyone, anytime and anywhere. Secondly, we must be honest and sincere in activating ourselves with the aesthetic spirit of goodness and beauty in every endeavor, however insignificant it might appear. Third, we must eliminate and sacrifice our narrow interest and temptations, desires and missions, and strive ceaselessly for higher thoughts and nobler visions that augment and enrich the inherent worth of every individual. Fourth, we must stimulate ourselves to be able to introspect in every matter closely related to inwardness. Fifth, we must strive to bring about a healthy climate of understanding among all irrespective of being rich or poor, advantaged or disadvantaged, affluent or downtrodden. Sixth, we must baptize ourselves with the eternal longing for ascent and excellence, notwithstanding innumerable constraints. For Gandhi, Sarvodaya is the finest and the surest means of realizing and translating the inner voice. It is a preparation for self-dedication and self-sacrifice in the course of arduous and sustained training of the mind. Evolving from truth to truth, which is the ultimate aim of Sarvodaya, represents the ascent of man. It also generates the holistic approach to man in terms of the ten-fold avenue of excellence. These are i) abhaya (fearlessness), ii) ahimsa (non-violence), iii) nyaya ( justice), iv) brahmachariya (celibacy), v) sparsabhavana (thought of nearness), vi) sarvadharmasambhavana (thought of equality of all religions), vii) swadeshi (the spirit of true nationalism), viii) sharirshram (bread labour), ix) pararthabhavana (thought of doing good to others) and x) satyagraha (non-violence and non-cooperation). For Gandhi, maintaining a right balance between the secular ideology and spiritual ideas is the greatest challenge the contemporary world will be facing. The secularists hold the belief that there should be no relational configuration between the ‘secular’ and the ‘spiritual’ state of being. On the other hand, the Islamists hold the view that politics and religion are the inseparable part of human existence, and violent politics is certainly an instrument for achieving spiritual ends. However, for Gandhi, the secular and religious realms should not be outrightly separated from one another nor should be coalesced either. They should maintain their unique features, nourishing and supporting each other. Gandhi comprehended that reconciliation between the secular and the spiritual would demand a total reconceptualization of the basics of modern politics. According to Gandhi, modern politics drives its essence primarily from the Western

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thoughts and gets revolved within its ambit. The ideological foundation of the modern politics had been provided by Thomas Hobbes. From the very inception of the theory, the concept of ‘insecurity’ occupied the realm of a modern view of politics. By their very nature, human beings are a-sociable and therefore enemies to one another. Here, the ‘other’ is the ‘enemy’. This ultimately gave birth to the concept of antagonism and thereby violence. But for Gandhi, sociability and not insecurity should be the guiding principles of politics. According to him, soul-force should be given primacy over body-force; i.e soul-force or moral force should operate and control physical force. Gandhi emphasized that people themselves formed the wealth of a nation, “not gold and silver”. We must search for wealth not the bowels of the earth, but in the hearts of men . . . the true law of economies is that men should be maintained in the best possible health, both of the body and mind, and in the highest honour (Parel 2008: 19–28). Gandhi in his interpretation of Bhagawad Gita proclaims that “the Gita is very much concerned with practical life. A dharma which does not serve practical needs is not dharma, it is adharma” (Bhagawad Gita 2015: 79). Gandhi draws his main inspiration from the Bhagawad Gita that developed the idea of purity of intentions. The ‘purity of intentions’ primarily exhibits a self-controlled life with self-restraint and inhibited self-interest, egotism, possessive individualism, the desire to dominate others. The Gita had portrayed the picture of a self-disciplined person, the sthita-prajna, in Chapter II verses 54–72. Gandhi read it first in 1889 and continued to study and recite these nineteen verses till the last days of his life. According to these verses, the essential evils of a person’s life evolve from an undisciplined state of certain passion, particularly anger, lust, possessive individualism and egotism. If one gains control over the vices, one’s intentions consequently becomes pure. Thus, self-restraint and finding out the best means to control passions are the key to Gandhi’s conception of self-disciplined moral being (Parel 2008: 19–28). Gandhi personified purity and piety in politics. He believed “politics bereft of principles are death-traps; they kill the soul of the nation” ( Jagmohan 2007: 6). Once the British scholar G.D.H. Cole said that Gandhi “stands as a great example of spiritual strength which should help to guide us – as well as his own people- in the difficult years that lie ahead”. Gandhi said in 1926 that war will only be stopped when the conscience of humankind has become sufficiently elevated to recognize the undisputed supremacy of the law of love in works of life (Dasgupta 2002: 6). According to Gandhi, non-violence is common to all religions, but it has found the highest expression and application in Hinduism. Hinduism believes in the oneness not of merely all human life but in the oneness of all that lives. He also accepted the fact that Hinduism as a living entity was subjected to growth and decay and subject to the laws of nature (Gandhi 2014: 12). Gandhi very pertinently came to the conclusion that 1) all religions are true, 2) all religions have some error in them, and 3) all religions are almost as dear to him as was Hinduism in as much as all human beings should be as dear to one another as one’s own close relatives. “My own veneration for other faiths is the same as that for my own faith; therefore no thought of conversion is possible. The aim of the fellowship should be to help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Mussalman to become a better Mussalman and a Christian a better Christian” (Chakrabarti 2003: 6).

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VI Any great character infuses within its intrinsic core a certain amount of controversial and inconsistent conjecture. Gandhi portrayed many personalities to many people. He is sometimes equaled with Mother Teresa, St. Francis of Assisi, Jesus Christ or Martin Luther King Jr. and even Nelson Mandela. It is a well-known fact that in the last issue of the twentieth century, Time magazine had selected him as joint runner-up (with Franklin Roosevelt) to Albert Einstein as the ‘person of the twentieth century’. Gandhi himself, along with the Gandhian philosophy, undoubtedly is the most controversial figure India has ever produced. Gandhi is still an enigma. On the one hand he is idolized and on the other hand he is severely criticized as a philosophical anarchist, a capitalist congressman, a believer in agrarian primitiveness and antitechnologist and so on. Gandhi is somehow responsible for the rise of controversies surrounding him. Every statement he made seemed to contain partial truth. It was a deliberate attempt in order to reach towards some larger truth. He had remarked: “I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent”. He conceptualized an integral view of life and analyzed every aspect of human activity in a scale of values and ethical norms. He never engaged in an attempt to provide a strongly systematized theory or ideology. He worked out his theories as habits and developed it constantly in relation to his and other people’s experience. Gandhi’s own life is perhaps the reason for his inconsistencies. He lived two lives. One is the life of a congressman engrossed in politics and fighting for Indian emancipation and the other he lived the life in the ashram. No doubt he was very ‘religious’ and religion played a vital role in his life. He said “I could not live for a single second without religion”. Most of the Gandhian analyses have focused on the politician Gandhi instead of the religious one. This assessment is utterly erroneous. It was his abiding faith in religion that impelled him to take to politics. In response to a question of Wedgewood Benn, the then British Secretary of State for India, Gandhi said “I am a man of religion; but you cannot say that I have strayed into politics. A man of religion has to fight the irreligious wherever found, and in the present age, the irreligious have made politics its greatest stronghold. I must, therefore, enter politics to fight irreligion” ( Jana 2016). The contemporary world scenario brings forth a picture that reflects an absolute contrasting feature. Self-confidence is subjugated by an inferiority complex, self-restraint challenged by a never-ending competitive pugnacity, peace of mind suppressed by an over-empowering frustration. Always and in every stratum of individual life and society, a kind of insecurity, frustration, competition and jealousy have crawled in, consequently gripping human mind and soul. Hindus in India are insecure because of a probable futuristic prediction of population imbalance in favour of the Muslims. On the other hand, Muslims face an uncomfortable situation whenever there occurs a terrorist attack. They portray their overt self-assertion in defending their stand and their religion. Frustration breeds through prejudice. Prejudices by themselves do not play a part in the political process, but as a psychic

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factor they do influence political and social behavior. Communal, racial, sectarian and ethnic intolerance are all psychic phenomenon, though their roots definitely can be found in economy as well. Prejudice is specifically conflicts between groups categorized by strong in-group and out-group features. Its essential aspect consists in giving and applying a stereotyped name or level of differences to members of a given group which is not supported by sound reasoning or scientific facts. The members of the in-group have a somewhat exalted opinion of themselves and display a selfish, callous attitude or one of aggressive ruthlessness towards members of an out-group. There exists incessant conflict, which is sometimes overt and sometimes covert. It is a negative attitude towards the members of another community even before getting interaction with that community. Prejudices have never been based on historical evidence but on a separate view of history and belief on myth and history. Myths exist at the very base of human society. This is humankind’s substitute for instincts. Myths are based on faith rather than on fact. For example, the myth of infiltration and the fear of supposed submergence of local religious groups operate at the perceptional level, assuming imminent breakdown at the system. Such phobia is fanned to titillate dastardly instincts for material advantages and privileges. And the driving force for such intolerance is prejudice, which is transmitted from generation to generation. The present-day situation in Hindu society is in fact a struggle between Gandhian Hinduism and the Savarkar-inspired version of Hinduism. Today, the Hindu religion in particular has been dragged and brought down to the marketplace. To the Hindus, Ram is a national hero – a unifying symbol; to the Muslims he is a Hindu God in whose name a number of Muslims have been killed. Swami Vivekananda once said the Hindu religion does not consist of struggles and attempts to believe in certain dogmas but in ­realizing – not in believing but in being and becoming. India was perhaps the one nation in the ancient world which recognized cultural democracy whereby it is held that all religions are true, that the roads to God are many but the goal is one, because God is one and the same. Thus, in juxtaposition to this terror-ridden world, Gandhi’s ideas emphasize the upliftment of the soul, purification of mind, exaltation of the inner self, incessant search for truth, and humanity founded on ahimsa. Humanity can learn much from the great man of history who illuminated this admirably in his journey of life.

Bibliography Gandhi, M. K. 2015.The Bhagawad Gita According to Gandhi. Delhi: Orient Publishing. Brown, Dan. 2010. The Lost Symbol, New York: Doubleday. Chakrabarti, Mohit. 2003. ‘Gandhi and Sarvodaya’, The Statesman, Kolkata, January 30. Dallmayr, Fred. 2008. ‘Gandhi and Islam: A Heart and Mind Unity’, in Douglas Allen (ed.) The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty First Century, Lanham: Lexington. Das, Shyamal. 2014. Gandhi in Contemporary World Order, Jaipur: ABD Publishers. Dasgupta, R.K. 2002. ‘Where Is Gandhi Today’, The Statesman, Kolkata, October 2. Fischer, Louis. 2010. Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World, Signet Classics.

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Gandhi, M. K. 2014. Hinduism According to Gandhi: Thoughts, Writings and Critical Interpretation New Delhi: Orient Blackswan Publishing. Gandhi, Mahatma. 2015. The Story of My Experiments with Truth, New Delhi: Rajput &Sons. Hardiman, David. 2003. Gandhi in His Time and Ours, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan. Hinduism According to Gandhi. 2014, New Delhi: Orient Publishing. Iyer, Raghuvan. 1987. The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jagmohan. 2005. ‘Hinduism and Gandhi’, The Statesman, Kolkata, October 2. ———. 2007. ‘Gandhi and Politics’, The Statesman, Kolkata, October 2. Jana, Jaidev. 2016. ‘Misunderstood Hero’, The Statesman, Kolkata, June 29. Jhunjhunwala, Bharat. 2014. ‘True Secularism’, The Statesman, Kolkata, June 6. Josh, Bhagawan. 2002.‘Gandhi, Religion and Terrorists’, The Statesman, Kolkata, December 6. Mishra, Anil Dutta. 2012. Reading Gandhi, New Delhi: Pearson. Narain, Arvind. 2014. ‘Sexual Violence and Death Penalty’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 49, Issue No. 3, January 18. Parekh, Bhikhu. 1999. “What Is Multiculturalism?” www.india-seminar.com accessed on December 16, 2015. ———. 2000. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and political Theory, London: Macmillan Press. ———. 2005. Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2008. ‘Gandhi and Interreligious Dialogue’, in Douglas Allen (ed.) The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty First Century, Lanham: Lexington. Parel, Anthony. 2008. ‘Bridging the Secular and the Spiritual’, in Douglas Allen (ed.) The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty First Century, Lanham: Lexington. Prasad, A. 2014. Gandhi’s Views on Non-Violence, New Delhi: Cyber Tech Publications. Raj, Felix J. 2007. ‘Secularists All’, The Statesman, Kolkata, December 31. Rao, V.K.R.V. 1981. The Gandhian Alternative to Western Socialism, Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Ramamoorthy, D. 2006. ‘He Dreamt for Others’, The Statesman, Kolkata, November 3. Rolland, Romain. 2002. Mahatma Gandhi: The Man Who Became One with the Universal Being, New Delhi: Srishti Publishers & Distributors. Roy, A.K. 2004. ‘Godhra and After I’, The Statesman, Kolkata, September 23. Sen, Arati and Sen, Indrajit. 2011. ‘Oneness of Beings-I: The Indian Perspective of Culture and Religion’, The Statesman, Kolkata, August 28. Sunirmalananda, Swami. 2011. ‘Voice of Sanity-I: Continuing Relevance of Swami Vivekananda’, The Statesman, Kolkata, October 9. Syed, Aijaz Zaha. 2014. ‘A Fatal disconnect: The Islamic World’, The Statesman, Kolkata, December 26. Taylor, Edward. 1920, 1871. Primitive Culture, New York: J.P. Putnam’s Son. Vinod, M.J. and Deshpande, M. 2013. Contemporary Political Theory, New Delhi: PHI Learning Private Limited.

INDEX

Aam Aadmi Party 184 – 198; alternative politics 191 – 196; halting steps to participatory democracy 196 – 197; ideologies 190 – 191 accommodative truth 12 Adams, Jad 62, 65 Advaita Vedanta 28, 29, 87, 92, 173 ahimsa 3, 8, 27, 50 56, 57, 58, 60, 100, 122, 226; philosophy and practice of 30 – 38; ahimsa debate 56 – 58 altruism 3 Ambedkar, B.R. 4, 58, 113 – 127, 130 Ambedkar–Gandhi debate (1931–1956) 129 – 142 Andrews, C.F. 60 Anglo-Boer War 166 Annihilation of Caste 58, 144, 151 aparigraha 8, 32 apostolic architect, humanism 216 – 229 Arab Spring 172, 184 Arendt, Hannah 127 Attenborough, Richard 10 avoiding violence 48 Benn, Wedgewood 228 Bhagavad Gita 33, 36, 56, 84, 92, 227 Bhai, Rajchand 48 Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) 11, 181, 188, 189, 197 Boer War 7, 80, 166, Bolshevik revolution 176 Bondurant, Joan Valérie 1, 45, 204 brahmacharya 2, 5, 63, 64, 73, 77, 8 Brown, Dan 222

Brown, Judith 1, 55 Buber, Martin 7 Buddha 33, 125, 126, 138 “Can Science be Humanized?” 109 capitalism 94 Chatterjee, Partha 7, 51 Chaudhuri, Amit 171, 181 Chipko movement 179 civil disobedience movement 76, 179 clash of civilizations 223 colonial injustice 113 – 127 colonialism 94 Constructive programme 12, 14, 30, 44, 52 consumerism 10 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction 37 corruption movement 184 – 198 cosmic framework 85 crises of ecology 200 – 214 “Crisis in Civilization” 109 “Cult of Charkha, The” (1925) 59 culture 16, 18, 81, 94, 218 Dalal, Chandulal 6 dalits 115, 125 Debating India:Essays on Indian Political Discourse 171 Declaration of Independence, The 76 Desai, Mahadev 9 Devadas 7 remove this Dewey, John 114 dialogical truth force 200 – 214

232 Index

Di Salvo, Charles 64 Disasters of War 177 Discovery of India,The 61 divergence 131 – 138; abolition of untouchability, rival approaches 131 – 132; modernity approaches 136 – 138; separate electorates, issue 134 – 136; untouchability inwardness and swadeshi 132 – 133 Diwakar, R. R. 8 doctor and saint controversy 144 – 155 Doctor and the Saint controversy, The 144 – 155; counter-arguments 153 – 155; fallacy and merits 146 – 152; Gandhi a racist, South Africa 146; separate electorate, dalits 152 – 153; untouchability and Harijan 155 “Doctrine of Passive Resistance, The” 57 Economic and Philosophy Manuscripts of 1844 37 economic model 101 Edward Carpenter 61 Einstein 7, 9, 176 Elwin,Verrier 60 embedded self 84 English education 120 enlightenment humanism 117 Erikson, Eric H. 184 Essay Concerning Human Understanding 92 ethical living 30 fetishism 93 Finot, Jean 160, 162 – 164 Frayed symbolism 11 Freud, Sigmund 37 Friedman, Susan 118 Gandhi: charkha and khadi 101, 102, 105; Indian Opinion 158, 163 – 165; learning from 171 – 182; and ‘race’ question 157 – 167; Satyagraha in South Africa 157 – 160; social crusader 144 – 155; “A Word of Explanation” 100 Gandhi After 9/11: Creative Nonviolence and Creative Sustainability 28, 36 Gandhi and the Contemporary World 27 Gandhi: An Illustrated Biography 6 Gandhian nationalism 106 Gandhian swaraj 83 – 97 Gandhi Before India (2013) 64 Gandhi, Harilal 65 Gandhi: India Awakened 65 Gandhi-informed approach 27 – 42 Gandhi-informed radical paradigm shift 39 – 40

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand: autobiography 5; biographising 61 – 65; consolidation and crystallisation (1915– 1934) 2; debating 4 – 7; early Gandhi (1869–1893) 2; ethics 2 – 4; later (mature) Gandhi (1934–1948) 2; legacy, revisiting 4 – 7; making of ‘Mahatma’ (1893–1914) 2; metamorphosis 2; “My Life is my Message” 11; reclaiming, contemporary world 10 – 13 ‘Gandhi Must Fall’ movement 4 Gandhi My Father (2007) 65 Gandhi: Naked Ambition 62 Gandhi, Rajmohan 6, 145 Gandhi’s philosophical approach: primacy of practice 27 – 30 global intellectual history 164 – 165 Godse, Nathuram 4, 12, 57 Gokhale, Gopal Krishna 102 Good Friday agreement 178 Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India 62 Guha, Ramachandra 64, 166 Hardiman, David 6 harijans 2, 59 Harijan Seva Sangh 114 Hazare, Anna 184 Herman, A.L. 45, 46 Hind Swaraj 3, 4, 33, 40, 47, 61, 73, 74, 78, 83, 87 – 89, 93, 151, 175 Hinduism 121, 147, 221, 229 Hindu-Muslim unity 52 home-rule 99 homogenisation 12 horrendous acts of mobocracy 12 Horsburgh, H.J.N. 52 Humanism 19, 59, 61, 117, 118, 120, 122, 217 idea of self 83 – 85 identity and memory 138 – 142; Gandhi and Ambedkar 141 – 142; Gandhian self, memory and time 139 – 141 Independence and Social Justice 145 India Against Corruption (IAC) 184, 186; alternative politics 191 – 196; ideologies 190 – 191 India before Gandhi 166 Indian Independence Act 80 Indian nationalism 113 individuality 92 individual responsibility 113 – 127 In Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope 55 innovations 204 – 213 interlocutors 55 – 66

Index  233

Janlokpal Bill 188 Jinnah 4 Jordens, J.T.F. 45 Kant, I. 95 Kapoor, Pramod 6 Karachi Resolution 78 Kasturba 6 Keer, Dhananjay 130 Khilafat movement 76, 77, 81 Lahore Congress 81 Lelyveld, Joseph 7, 9, 62, 63 Lenin and Gandhi 108 “Let’s Kill Gandhi”: A Chronicle of his Last Days, the Conspiracy, Murder, Investigation and Trial (2007) 64 liberalism 80, 91, 92, 96 Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi,The (1969) 64 Lives of Others,The 179 Locke, John 92 Lost Symbol,The 222 majoritarianism 12 Man Before Mahatma,The (2012) 64 market liberalism 10 Marxism 10, 80 Marxism-Leninism 80 Marx, Karl 37 materialism 10 Miller, Rene Fillop 108 modern civilization 40, 87, 89, 94, 122 modernity 113 – 127; and alternative epistemologies 123 – 127; debate 60 – 61; discourses on 117 – 118 Mohandas:A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire 62 Mohanty, J. N. 121 movement-party interface 189 – 190 Mukherjee, Neel 179 Muller, Max 97 Murray, Gilbert 9 Nagaraj, R. 114 Nagraj, D.R. 130 Nanda, B.R. 4 Nandy, Ashis 9, 121, 142 Natal Advertiser,The 63 Nayar, Sushila 65 Nehru, Jawaharlal 60, 61, 149 Nehruvian legacy 114 Nietzsche, Friedrich 37 Nirguna Brahman 96 non-cooperation movement 76, 103

non-violence 3, 7, 12, 47, 49, 52, 58, 100 Non-Violence (ahimsa) 2, 47, 50, 51, 56 – 58, 63 – 64, 66, 77, 100 – 101, 113, 122, 125, 153, 175 – 175 – 178, 204, 210, 216, 225, 226 – 227, On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance 176 Orwell, George 7 Parekh, Bhikhu 1, 8, 218 Parel, Anthony 56, 122 Partisan Review 7 passive resistance 46, 48 – 49, 52, 57, 75, 99, 100, 102, 109, 177 – 178 Patanjali Yoga Sutra 77 Patel, Sardar 4 Patiya, Naroda 222 Payne, Robert 64 philosophy and practice: of ahimsa 30 – 34; of relative truth 34 – 39 Phoenix settlement 73 Phule, Jotiba 124 political philosophy 1 Pollock, Henry 220 Poona pact 58 Poorna Swaraj 53 post-Gandhian legacies 184 – 198 practical rational inquiry 200 – 214 pseudo-scientific racism paradigm 160 – 162 purna swaraj 76, 81 purushartha vis-à-vis ‘modern civilisation 61 “Pyramid vs. The Oceanic Circle, The” (1946) 148 Quit India movement 7, 76 race discourse metamorphosis 162 – 164 Race Prejudice 160, 162 – 164 Radhakrishnan, S. 28, 218 Rainbow Rule 206 Raj Ghat 11 Rao,V.K.R.V. 225 rationality 201 – 204 Rawls 84 Ray, Acharya Prafulla Chandra 98, 102 – 104, 106 – 109 Raz, Joseph 92 religion 229 religious bigotry 12 Rowlatt Satyagraha 50, 75 Roy, Arundhati 4, 144, 146, 149, 159 Roy, M.N. 4

234 Index

Roy, Ramashroy 8 rural employment guarantee scheme (MNREGA) 11 Rushdie, Salman 173 Sanatan Dharma 5 Sarva dharmae Sama bhava 78 Sarvodaya 226 satyagraha 3, 11; alternative model of rational inquiry 204 – 207; clarifications 44 – 45; conceptual history of 44 – 53; India, concept development 49 – 53; place of nonviolence in 47 – 49; place of religion in 46 – 47; South Africa, concept development 45 – 46 scrutinised life 55 – 66 Seal, Brajendranath 104 secularism 12 Selected Writings of C. Rajagopalachari 174 self-confidence 228 self-discipline 8 self-indulgence 93 self-knowledge: modern civilization and urgency 87 – 91; problem of 93 – 95; and swaraj 86 – 87, 91 – 92; theory 83 – 97 self-realization 99 self-rule 79 self-transformation 91 slum of politics 9 small-scale employment 102 social order 1, 5 social reform 118 – 123 Sources of the Self 92 South African Gandhi, deconstructing 158 – 159 sovereign principle 2 Speaking of Gandhi’s Death (2010) 64 Spiritual Bloomsbury, A 171 Spivak, Gayatri 116 Steger, Manfred B. 118, 121 swadeshi 32, 52, 79 swadeshi debate 59 – 60 swadharma 141

swaraj 11, 32; autonomy and 91 – 92; concept in pre–Gandhian era 72 – 73; connotations of 98 – 110; critical appreciation 80 – 82; In Gandhian perspective 71 – 82; new dimensions to 76 – 79; and self-knowledge 86 – 87, 91 – 92; theory and practice of 73 – 76; understanding 85 – 86 Tagore, Rabindranath 4, 59, 98, 103 – 106, 109 Taylor, Charles 92 Taylor, Sir Edward Burnett 217 Terchek, Ronald J. 57 Thakur, Pragya 12 Thomson, Mark 6 totalitarian system 7 traditional indian philosophy 30 true morality 3 truth 101 truth force 204 – 207 Truth (Satya) 2 Universal Races Congress, London 162 – 164 untouchability debate 58 – 59 Vaikkom satyagraha 129 Vajpeyi, Ananya 131 varnashrama system 56, 58 vasudhaiva kutumbakam doctrine 99 Vedanta Congress 29 violence 33 voluntary poverty 88 Waterfall,The 109 Weber, Thomas 2 Western modernity 115 Young India 8, 105 Zulu rebellion 7, 80 Zulu revolt of 1906 166