Gandhi In Political Theory: Truth, Law And Experiment 1472422848, 9781472422842, 1317130987, 9781317130987, 1472422856, 9781472422859, 1472422864, 9781472422866

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 6
Preface......Page 8
Glossary......Page 12
1 Introduction: Truth, Law and Experiment in Political Theory......Page 14
2 Presuppositions of War and Peace: The Mind, the World and the Law of Non-violence......Page 36
3 Sovereignty: Individual, Civil Society and the State......Page 62
4 Territory: Nationalism, Identity and Frontiers......Page 88
5 The Science of Peace: Industrialization and the Political Economy......Page 108
6 Presuppositions of Pluralism: Experiments in Unity, Equality, and Difference......Page 132
Index......Page 156

Citation preview

Gandhi in Political Theory

To the memory of Prof. K.J. Shah And to the future of the voices of swaraj.

Gandhi in Political Theory Truth, Law and Experiment

Anuradha Veeravalli University of Delhi, India

© Anuradha Veeravalli 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Anuradha Veeravalli has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company 110 Cherry Street Wey Court East Union Road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818 Surrey, GU9 7PT USA England www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Veeravalli, Anuradha. Gandhi in political theory : truth, law and experiment / by Anuradha Veeravalli. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-2284-2 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-2285-9 (ebook) -- ISBN 9781-4724-2286-6 (epub) 1. Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948--Political and social views. 2. Political science--Philosophy--History--20th century. 3. Civilization, Modern--20th century-Philosophy. I. Title. DS481.G3V37 2014 320.01--dc23 2014006156 ISBN 9781472422842 (hbk) ISBN 9781472422859 (ebk – PDF) ISBN 9781472422866 (ebk – ePUB)

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Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD

Contents Preface   Glossary  

vii xi

1

Introduction: Truth, Law and Experiment in Political Theory  

2

Presuppositions of War and Peace: The Mind, the World and the Law of Non-violence  

23

3

Sovereignty: Individual, Civil Society and the State  

49

4

Territory: Nationalism, Identity and Frontiers  

75

5

The Science of Peace: Industrialization and the Political Economy  

95

6

Presuppositions of Pluralism: Experiments in Unity, Equality, and Difference  

Index  

1

119 143

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Preface My claim that there is virtually no book that focuses on Gandhi’s theoretical presuppositions and method in a sustained and systematic way may have the unintended consequence of appearing to suggest that no one has worked on Gandhi’s theory/theories, or that other theories are incomplete or that they are not theoretical at all. I merely wish to argue that Gandhi’s theoretical presuppositions and method are not the focus of these works. What I have in mind, for instance, is that his insistence on the experiment as central to his theory and method, his focus on the laws of human existence as that which stand to be tested, and his clear insistence that his political vision is based on political method rather than on creed, and other such conscious engagement that Gandhi had with theoretical issues, have not been investigated. I believe and wish to argue that Gandhi not only has an incisive grasp of the foundational principles of post-Enlightenment political theory, the modern nation state and modern civilization but he also presents a systematic critique of and challenge to mainstream political theory on issues such as the nature of man, the relation between individual, society and the state, sovereignty, territory and technology. For those who think that there is no such overarching defining characteristic of post-Enlightenment thought I do believe that modernity as a point of view and method of classification, which differs fundamentally in its epistemological, metaphysical and cosmological presuppositions from medieval thought, began with the Enlightenment. The dominant mode of post-Enlightenment thought followed from the Cartesian dualism of mind and the world and mind and body. I have briefly explained why I think this is so and later drawn out the implications in terms of the dualism of private and public sphere, idealism and realism, universalism and relativism and most importantly, of means and ends. I consider Cartesian dualism as foundational to post-Enlightenment thought or its dominant mode. Viewed as a point of view of the dominant thought of post-Enlightenment age then, one can locate exceptions in what is characterised as modern Western philosophy, as indeed I have, in Leibniz and Hume. These are by no means intended to be exhaustive but help in understanding the genealogy of Gandhi’s epistemological position; more importantly, to see that their thought has met with a fate which, in many ways, is not very different from what Gandhi’s has. The discussion, in the Introduction, of how the readings of Gandhi fall short, in fact, demonstrates the significance of Gandhi’s intervention by showing how the positivist point of view that dominates much of post-Enlightenment methods of classification and analysis, including that of political theory, is ill equipped not

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only to understand Gandhi but also to bridge the gap between theory and practice and the normative and the descriptive. Their limitations spring from the very presuppositions that Gandhi attacks. Therefore they are blind to the experiment and see it as hyperbole or as another word for Gandhi’s activism. While they are appreciative of his politics, they cannot understand, for instance, what place his experiments in celibacy have in his scheme. This is not a crisis merely in understanding Gandhi but is symptomatic of a recognized problem within the social sciences, in general, and political theory, in particular. The point I am trying to make is that the reasons for the limitations in the readings of Gandhi, in a sense, themselves reveal the significance of Gandhi’s experiments when looked at in the context of apparently irresolvable questions that have bothered social science theory. The social sciences (especially Political theory) do not envisage the possibility of any clinching experiment to establish the veracity of a theory since there is the question whether theory in social sciences can be at all value or ideology neutral. However, this is to define neutrality and objectivity as necessarily arising only from a separation from the subject i.e. from matters of value. By this view, involvement with the subject necessarily contaminates truth with subjectivity. Social scientists have accepted this as a handicap with which they need to work vis-à-vis the standards of objectivity set by modern science. However, what follows from this is a separation or dualism of subject and object and a separation of means and ends, thereby laying the ground for vivisectionist science where the end justifies the means just as much as desirable means justify the end. It is here that Gandhi intervenes, insisting on the unity of means and ends, of following the law of non-violence as a necessary means to truth and its objectivity based on conscience. Therefore the extent of success or failure of an experiment lies only in determining how much we have perfected the law of non-violence, i.e. the means. It is primarily in this sense that the one who experiments is witness and not mere observer and in this lies at once its objective subjectivity and subjective objectivity. Gandhi’s intervention is not, as is generally supposed, an intuitive, unsystematic, crude or experiential one (Dhareshwar 2010 and Bilgrami 2012). Dhareshwar talks of Gandhi’s concern being with the experiential occlusion that colonial thought has created which has prevented us from direct experience of our own life, ethical thinking, and culture. Akeel Bilgrami finds in Gandhi’s critique of modernity a questioning of some of the deepest commitments of the Enlightenment from an approach influenced by his Vaishnav background. However, he finds Gandhi’s treatment of modernity ‘encapsulated’, ‘unsystematic’ and ‘instinctive’. He finds Gandhi’s remarks blaming modern science for the evils of modernity ‘crude’ and as ‘conflating’ modern science with the metaphysics that grew around it. Bilgrami therefore attempts to find a genealogy in the dissenting tradition of the ‘early radical enlightenment’ to render Gandhi’s remarks more systematic. Few want to grant Gandhi his own engagement with theory and method. Consequently, attempts to systematize him look at his thought or his practice as representing an alternative Indian way of looking at certain issues in political theory, or as being akin to certain approaches that have existed in political

Preface

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theory rather than as a systematic body of thought, presuppositions and method of analysis. My introduction and later chapters do refer to these readings and others as and when appropriate. However, the focus and thrust of the argument is towards understanding the theoretical context of the presuppositions of the counter perspective that Gandhi’s experiments provide from a reading of key and classic positions in modern thought with respect to the issues that the experiments raise. Absence of work in this area is then partly responsible for the glaring absence of Gandhi from mainstream political theory in particular and as a point of view to contend with in the university, in general. This book attempts to understand the point of view, presuppositions and method of Gandhi’s experiments with Truth with specific reference to political theory within a framework which I believe is crucial to understanding Gandhi, that of the necessary relation between science, religion and politics. From his analysis of modern civilization Gandhi concludes that it is built on presuppositions of war/violence, not simply that it is violent or materialistic in nature. His effort then is to work out the non-violent foundations, in other words, the very presuppositions of peace in society and in the political theory that would inform the institutions of society and governance, and to set before us some worked out illustrations in the form of his experiments. Since the Enlightenment, the course taken has been predominantly Aristotelian rather than Platonic. To my mind what was at stake in their disagreement over epistemology, metaphysics and politics was the opposition of the presuppositions of peace with the presuppositions of war. Post-Enlightenment, however, the debate is no longer between the presuppositions of war as opposed to presuppositions of peace but about restoring and sustaining peace in a society that presupposes war as a natural condition of man (Hobbes). I make this point to argue that in Gandhi we see a revival of this more fundamental question about the presuppositions of war, and peace and that for him it does not remain a question of policy as it does in Kant, or even in Rousseau. It is a matter of the law of non-violence as a necessary means to the Truth of existence. It seems to me that if we can characterize modernity and the dominant tradition of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought as following a point of view, as Gandhi did, then we are better able to understand Gandhi and what it is that he is opposing. The conviction underlying this effort is that this would present the possibility of the study of science religion and politics from a point of view of swaraj or self-rule, which lies at the heart of Gandhi’s life and thought. This is not an attempt then to recover from India’s colonial hangover, a thing of the past, something which many would argue is today, with her coming into her own, a needless exercise. Self-rule as Gandhi understood it is the very essence of human existence and civilization and is not confined to India or any moment in history. It places sovereignty in civil society and ultimately in the individual rather than the state. Each nation would however have to realize it in its own fashion suited to its custom, culture and political economy, in keeping with its own genius. Eschewing universalism, Gandhi envisages unity in difference. Each

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nation would come into its own, neither at the expense of another’s freedom nor with the view to exploit another but to live, and let live, in a relation of mutual dependence and independence with the other. The swaraj of each is contained in the swaraj of all. The problem of swaraj within this framework was as much India’s problem and Britain’s as it is of the world today. The presuppositions of peace and ironically, of freedom too, are lost to it. For what is freedom without self-rule? It is therefore the epistemological, ontological and political presuppositions of Gandhi’s experiments with Truth that we seek to recover in the hope that they will lay the foundations of a counter perspective to the presuppositions of war that underlie modernity and the modern nation state. I have many to thank who have made this journey with Swaraj and Gandhi possible. I had just finished school when my father gave me a copy of Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj. An innocuous gift as it seemed to a 16-year-old at the time, available for a princely sum of Rs 5 and published on subsidised paper by Navajivan publishing house (established by Gandhi in 1929), having read the book, one could not ignore what it said. It has stayed with me throughout as a point of view to contend with. J.P.S Uberoi’s work on the European Modernity and the very many discussions and arguments I had with him over the years have influenced me immensely. Profs Raghavendra Rao and Amrit Srinivasan have always readily discussed my work and egged me on. But for Punam Zutshi’s persitent insistence and encouragement, I would have dithered longer with this book. Having made this first mistake she has paid penalty by having to read and comment on parts of the work. Sandhya Srinivasan and Girish Srinivasan too met with a similar fate. I must especially thank Girish for his comments on the chapter on Political Economy. Nothing can take away from the immense strength and joy that teaching and students have brought to my work. Shriddha Shah read through parts of the manuscript and had helpful suggestions. She and Tarang Kapoor have been a cheerful presence and good to vent my thoughts with. Chetana Jagruti and Palak Mittal have pursued and provoked me with their own interests in Gandhi. I must thank the then Head, Prof. H.S. Prasad, the Department of Philosophy, other colleagues who supported me, Prof. Nirmalangshu Mukherji and Ravi Singh, and the University of Delhi for granting me study leave for a year to begin work on this book. Many thanks are due to Rob Sorsby for his quiet support and care, and his efficient, yet patient, team at Ashgate who have made publishing with them such a pleasant experience. Without Srinivas’s painstaking labour of love, or should I say, love of labour, with the manuscript and his and my daughter, Dhriti’s, understanding tolerance throughout, it would have been impossible to have persisted. Department of Philosophy University of Delhi January 2014

Glossary This glossary has been taken from the Gandhi (1969 p. vii). My additions are in square parentheses [ ]. Ahimsa Āshram Brahmacharya charkha Dharma Khādi Panchāyat Panchāyat Rāj Rājasik Rāmanāma

Non-violence; Love A hermitage; a place for disciplined community living Celibacy; pursuit in quest of God Spinning Wheel Duty; Religion Hand-spun and hand-woven cloth Village council consisting of five persons elected by the people Administration through the Panchayat i.e. by the people [Relating to the nature of passion and action] Name of Rama – [an] incarnation of God in Hindu religion; recitation of God’s name Rāmrājya Kingdom of Rama; [the Kingdom of God on earth] Rāshtra [State] Sarvodaya [The good of all] Satya Truth Sātvik [Relating to the nature of goodness and harmony] Satyāgraha Literally, holding on to the truth; truth-force; soul-force Swadeshi Literally, of one’s own country; insistence on the use of goods made in one’s own country Swarāj [Self-rule]; Self-government; home-rule; independence Varnāshrama [The system of social division of labour on the basis of vocation (varna), and stages of life (āshrama). The varnas are four – that of the priest (brahmin), warrior (kshatriya), trader (vaishya), and servant (sudra). The āshramas are also four – that of celibate/student (brahmacharya), householder (grihastha), recluse (vānaprastha) and renunciate (sannyāsa)] Védas Scriptures of the Hindus Yajna Sacrifice

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Truth, Law and Experiment in Political Theory I believe in absolute oneness of God and, therefore, also of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul. The rays of the sun are many through refraction. But they have the same source, I cannot therefore detach myself from the wickedest soul (nor may I be denied identity with the most virtuous). Whether, therefore, I will or not, I must involve in my experiment, the whole of my kind. Nor can I do without experiment. Life is but an endless series of experiments. Gandhi, Young India, 25–9–19241 I THINK that the word “saint” should be ruled out of present life. It is too sacred a word to be lightly applied to anybody, much less to one like myself who claims only to be a humble searcher after Truth, knows his limitations, makes mistakes, never hesitates to admit them when he makes them, and frankly confesses that he, like a scientist, is making experiments about some “of the eternal verities” of life, but cannot even claim to be a scientist because he can show no tangible proof of scientific accuracy in his methods or such tangible results of his experiments as modern science demands. Gandhi, Young India, 12–5–19202

There is a growing awareness of the significance and need for a Gandhian approach to crises that confront societies, political economies, and nation states the world over. It could be said that there was a sense of that even in Gandhi’s time. Witness to two World Wars, young men and women from the world over joined him in his Ashram, where the pilot tests of his experiments with Truth and non-violence were held. He had reinvented the traditional hermitage, with etymological precision and incisiveness, to mean ‘place of labour’ and to serve, like its etymological analogue ‘labor-atory’, in the cause of his experiments with Truth; he captured, on the one hand, the essence of the vernacular that viewed labour as a form of self-sacrifice. On the other hand, the Ashram contested the premise and methods of modern science and the modern laboratory. Gandhi’s unique experiment lay in his proposal of non-violence as a means to truth:

1 Gandhi (1963) p. 359 2 CW 20:96. The abbreviation CW has been used for ‘The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi’, electronic edition. CW 20:96 refers to article 96 of Volume 20 of the collected works.

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Gandhi in Political Theory In this age of wonders, no one will say that a thing or an idea is worthless because it is new. To say it is impossible because it is difficult, is again not in consonance with the spirit of the age. Things undreamt of are daily being seen, the impossible is ever becoming possible. We are constantly being astonished at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of non-violence. (Harijan, 25–8–1940, p. 260 from Gandhi 1969. p. 163)

What is it that constitutes Gandhi’s approach? His experiment was no ordinary phenomenon and cannot be explained away in terms of being uniquely Indian in theory, practice, or relevance. Nor can it, and must it, be explained away as being a moral or spiritual intervention with no epistemological or cognitive import. This is not to deny that he was influenced by Indian thought and traditions, neither is it to deny that his intervention was moral and influential. It is merely to point out that the crux of the matter lay in his precise and incisive understanding not only of modern civilization, but of its most fundamental presuppositions, epistemological, metaphysical and political. His experiments with Truth and non-violence not only present a critique of the presuppositions of modern civilization but bear testimony to the possibility of an alternative modernity. His analysis of the presuppositions of modern civilization and its inherently violent and self-destructive methods has gained prophetic overtones. Yet, surprisingly, few admit that Gandhi was a systematic thinker. Academia continues to be ambivalent about Gandhi and about attributing any systematic theory to him. Despite overwhelming scholarship and an ever-increasing body of work on his thought, his non-violent movements and his life, not much attention has been paid to the method and structure of his thought and the systematic nature of his intervention within a discipline. In fact, the overriding assumption has been that Gandhi did not possess or present a theory or a system; nor did he belong to a discipline, and therefore to look for any systematic intervention by Gandhi in any discipline would be misplaced.3 Without an appraisal of Gandhi’s systematic contribution to political theory, main stream theory will continue to treat him as falling outside its realm – a messiah, an exemplar, a ‘Mahatma’ maybe, but not a challenge to mainstream political theory. However, we argue that Gandhi’s intervention challenges the foundational principles of modern political theory, and, in fact, proposes an alternative theory and method. Thus the Gandhian alternative must be considered 3 More recently, however, Bilgrami (2002) has attempted to argue that Gandhi’s thought has integrity, a sort of coherence, and demonstrates an effort to teach by example. However here again it is the emphasis on the integrity of ‘moral experience’ as distinct from the cognitive that Bilgrami draws our attention to. Also see Bilgrami (2009) which situates Gandhi in the context of the intellectual genealogy of dissenting Enlightenment thought. Here, he sees Gandhi’s scepticism of modernity as the anxiety of an ‘essentially religious person’.

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a serious contender with mainstream political theory and with the institutions and principles that constitute the modern nation state. Since the foundational question underlying all theory, and especially so of political theory, is the question of the relation between man and the world, its presuppositions will involve, or imply, both epistemological and metaphysical questions. Indeed, Gandhi himself was wary of propounding a theory as such or a philosophy. That was not, at any rate, his immediate intention or purpose. However, he clearly had a theory as well as a systematic method of inquiry and experiment to test its truth. Gandhi was as wary of empty theory as he was of being carried away by theory-less activism which reduced action to a question of ethics or spirituality and ethics, in its turn, to dogma or a matter of prescription: The theory is there; our practice will have to approach it as much as possible. Living in the midst of the rush, we may not be able to shake ourselves free from all taint. Every time I get into a railway car or use a motor bus, I know I am doing violence to my sense of what is right. I do not fear the logical result of that basis. The visiting of England is bad, and my communication between South Africa and India by means of ocean greyhounds is also bad and so on. You and I can and may outgrow these things in our present bodies, but the chief thing is to put our theory right. (Gandhi 1957. p. 5)

The deceptive simplicity of Gandhi’s writings has the advantage, as he himself claimed, that they can be placed in the hands of a child and be understood. The disadvantage is that the simplicity hides the precision and depth of his analysis and the theoretical foundations of his attack against the fundamental epistemological presuppositions of modernity and the modern nation state. The contention of this book is that his critique of modern civilization and its presuppositions was comprehensive, and systematic. Therefore in every field that he cared to conduct experiments, even if they appeared preliminary, his intervention not only critiqued but also indicated a systematic alternative method, both institutional and technical, to counter the existing regime of modernity within the discipline: ‘I have been practicing with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political’ (Harijan, 6–7–1940, pp. 185–6 from Gandhi 1969, p. 163). Thus his entire attempt is to consider the presuppositions of peace in political theory and to establish institutions and methods of dissent following the method of non-violence in the context of the modern nation state. It is the logic of this method and the need to demonstrate its possibilities that made him assert himself and his point of view in the face of political opposition from fellow freedom fighters in the Congress. He is often accused of having been high-handed and arrogant in his dealings with other leaders such as Ambedkar and Subhas Chandra Bose and resolutely stubborn with his demands on the Congress. The presumption that Gandhi’s views have no theoretical foundation

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leads commentators to provide local and psychological explanations such as these. These allegations represent only the other half of those who focus on Gandhi’s ethical or saintly achievements. Both ignore the question of theory and method. Both assume there is none in Gandhi and that his disagreements, therefore, are personal rather than theoretical. Review: Theory and Practice in Gandhi As we have said, despite significant attempts at establishing Gandhi’s credentials within political theory, there is an overriding emphasis on the ethical impetus that he lent to political discourse rather than any fundamental challenge he posed to its structural, institutional or theoretical foundations. Literature on Gandhi’s political thought falls into two broad categories – one that discusses his political philosophy, and the other, that focuses on his non-violent action and modes of dissent and the influence they have had on other non-violent movements. Finally, there are biographical sketches that throw light on his political life, that discuss the propriety or impropriety of his personal life and his political decisions and relations, his treatment of family and others, and his experiments. Thus theory and practice/idealism and pragmatism, and his personal and political experiments are separated. This dualism is, in a sense, predictable given the modern postEnlightenment method of analysis which separates the private and the public spheres and political philosophy from political practice.4 Gandhi’s effort, however, lay in combining dissent with reform and in the establishment of institutions that could carry these experiments forward. Except for a few Gandhian followers, any intellectual interest or curiosity in the study of these institutions and carrying forward their experiments has been neglected. Political philosophers see Gandhi as intervening in the debate between East and West or tradition and modernity, and do not succeed in locating the pulse, the principle of motion, or method that allows Gandhi to forge an independent path that emerges from the dialectic, or one may call it ‘opposition’, of East and West, tradition and modernity, rather than following the one and rejecting 4 Apart from Gandhi’s own characterization of Modern civilization, modernity here is understood as characterized by a specific system of classification and positivist analysis that arose during the European Enlightenment and which has since been the dominant regime of understanding in the analysis and separation of science religion and politics. For a detailed study of the foundations of European Modernity see Uberoi (2002) where he argues amongst other things that ‘the coming of age of the European modernity occurred when its threefold separation of science religion and politics or of faith, knowledge and action was officially and formally established in the institutions of civil society, the church and the state’. He cites the ‘simultaneous separation of the new Christians, the Nonconformists, and the foundation of the Royal Society of England’ in 1662 as an instance of a defining event of this separation in Britain.

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the other. They then attempt to formulate Gandhi’s position, as presenting a non-Western or alternative perspective to modern Western political theory, in different ways. Parekh (1989) has argued that Gandhi addresses the universalistic paradigms of Western political theory from a unique perspective embedded in Indian experience and tradition. Terchek (2000) emphasizes the importance of the autonomy of the individual, a very liberal theme which nevertheless is formulated quite differently in Gandhi’s political theory. He points out that the individual, in Gandhi, is constituted in a relation of interdependence with community and cosmos and therefore is fundamentally different from the one of liberal theories of individualism. He holds, however, that Gandhi is no esoteric thinker and can be seen as engaging in a kind of comparative political theory, sharing the concerns of key thinkers such as Rousseau, Weber, Nietzche and Tocqueville in the West. Sorabjee (2012) traces the points of similarity and difference between the Stoics and Gandhi. Others have shown how Gandhi’s theory of swaraj, as sovereignty of the people, as opposed to that of the state, addresses, in crucial ways, the inherent contradictions between the goals of freedom of the individual and the power of the state, and the separation of private and public spheres in liberal theory (Nandy 2000, Pantham 1983). Then again, the need to place Gandhi within a framework of thought has led to various attempts to trace the lineage of certain concepts in Gandhi, or to locate him within the structure and influence of a specific tradition. Shah (1996) and Parel (2006) locate him in a non-sectarian, non-theological Hindu theory of Purusharthas. Shah (1996) argues that this not only helps one understand the unity of Gandhi’s thought but also establishes a criterion with which one may critically assess his thought and action. Chatterjee (1993) characterizes it as an intervention in nationalist discourse, Parekh (1989) as presenting an indigenous political theory born out of the Indian experience and with its own unique political vocabulary, as Hindu reformist discourse, or in terms of the discourse of tradition and modernity, and East and West (Parekh 1999). Others have attributed the centrality of ahimsa in his thought to the influence of Jainism (Hay 1970), his understanding of vicarious suffering as a mode of dissent, reform and self-transformation, to Christianity. Dalton (1999) argues that Gandhi makes a conscious attempt to establish continuity with the Indian tradition referring us to his use of terms such as Ram Raj, swaraj, swadeshi, satya, ahimsa, and satyagraha which have distinct resonances within the Indian tradition. More recently, Devji (2012), locates, compares and contrasts the inspiration for Gandhi’s movement in the 1857 sepoy mutiny/war of independence. The sheer force of his attack, the success and failure of his experiments at the altar of India’s swaraj, and the threat that they posed to the modern world, cannot be explained in terms merely of local and temporal factors, his Vaishnav and Jain background, the Gita, or his reading of Ruskin and Tolstoy. While there is no denying the influences, it would be evident to anyone who studies him that Gandhi transfigured everything about tradition, imbued terms with new meaning, potency and use, and critiqued tradition and its practices relentlessly, with the

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touchstones of reform, non-violence and experiments with Truth rather than with the principles of authority and authenticity imposed by orthodoxy and tradition. Therefore, while on the one hand he was wary of the principles on which modern civilization was built, on the other hand, he was equally wary of tradition and fundamentally differed from it. The key here lies in Gandhi’s acknowledgement, when he was looking for a new word to re-name ‘Passive resistance’, that it heralded the birth of a new idea: ‘I only knew that some new principle had come into being.’ And the newborn had to be given a new name: Satyagraha was chosen. Gandhi modified, his nephew, Maganlal’s suggestion of Sadagaraha, or good force to Satyagraha – truth force: Truth put to new use, brought out of its cloistered spiritual/metaphysical existence to forge a non-violent movement against British Imperialism, and the civilization it represented. In the process, a new word had been coined, and new meaning forged, not without purpose, since it fielded the non-dualism of truth and reality, in opposition to their dualism and the resulting definition of truth as correspondence with reality that forms the epistemological and metaphysical basis of modern civilization. Yet it had its resonance in the language of the people and provided them with the means to participate on equal ground in their fight against the state and their British rulers. To try to situate Gandhi in a tradition is to side-step the issue of method, and the systematic structure of his thought. Indeed, many have felt that Gandhi did not have any such systematic theory, and to attempt to fit him into one would be to confine him to the dogmatic. While others have simply emphasized the importance of his non-violent practice, suspicious perhaps that the quest for theory is ultimately an excuse for inaction. Even amongst those who have the deepest regard for his faith in non-violent dissent, there is, however, an element of scepticism about whether his non-violence would work elsewhere, with nations and races other than the British. Dalton (1999) asks, for instance, whether the principle of non-violence would work with totalitarian and unscrupulous opponents such as the Nazis. Cortright (2008) asks whether non-violence can have a role to play in this age of conflict, violence and economic crises. He traces Gandhi’s influence on nonviolent activist movements through a study of Martin Luther King Jr., and others. Others have criticized Gandhi’s critique of modern civilization as being a sweeping generalization, misguided, primitive, and as being, anti-science, antitechnology and anti-West. Earlier, Tagore the poet and littérateur of Bengal, reprimanded him for his advocacy of what appeared to be narrow parochialism, a closing of the mind vis-à-vis other cultures, and hatred of the West. Terchek (2000) is of the view that Gandhi’s rejection of modernity significantly erodes the autonomy of the person as constituted by liberalism with its emphasis on reason, productivity, progress and technology. Some argue that it represents an extreme form of idealism, impractical and sometimes inconsistent with Gandhi’s own use and appreciation of some of the amenities that modern technology had made possible such as the printing press and the railways (Hardiman 2003). Hardiman further argues that Gandhi’s critique of modernity was selective; he

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was fascinated by science as a subject of study but critical of the methods it adopted such as vivisection. He argues that Gandhi’s ‘overstated’ critique in Hind Swaraj served the purpose of warning us nevertheless of an uncritical acceptance of all invention and innovation as a sign of the progress of civilization. This is seen by some as a romanticization of the rural or as presenting an Arcadian perspective (Hardiman 2003), or presenting a just, economic, and ecologically viable alternative, based on a difference of scale in modes of production (Schumacher 1973). Gandhi, however, speaks of ‘rural mindedness’, indicating that the crux of the issue, for him, was a difference in world view and life world based on principles of non-violence, rather than any specific opinion about the rural, or the small-scale per se. His concern was with the very modes of production that represented and created the divide between the village and the city, the one representing a nonexploitative craft-based economy and the other, a factory based system of massproduction: You cannot build non-violence on a factory civilization, but it can be built on self-contained villages. Even if Hitler was so minded, he could not devastate seven hundred thousand non-violent villages. He would himself become nonviolent in the process. Rural economy as I have conceived it eschews exploitation altogether and exploitation is the essence of violence. You have therefore to be rural minded before you can be non-violent, and to be rural minded you have to have faith in the spinning wheel. (Harijan, 4–11–1939 from CW 77: 52)

The Question of Theory The positivist method that presupposes the dualism of theory and practice merely creates two Gandhis: Gandhi, the idealist philosopher whose idealism is formidable and has undeniably influenced many, and Gandhi, the activist/strategist who puts his idealism to good use, has faith in non-violent action, but no theory. The question asked then is, how far can we expect to go in practice with it? Thus the question is formulated in terms of his philosophy and its application or the limits of its application. The conclusion that follows from this formulation is that the idealism is good but untenable. This is to suggest or presume that non-violence remains a matter of policy, and strategy, or at best a personal creed and code of conduct, and not a matter of theory and method. The more significant point is that political scientists commenting on Gandhi’s political theory such as Parekh, Pantham, and Terchek use the term ‘theory’, loosely, to mean something more or less synonymous with political philosophy or the history of political thought, ignoring the important distinction between political philosophy and political theory. As Mantena (2012) points out, Terchek is perhaps the only one, along with her, who argues that Gandhi must be considered a political realist rather than a political idealist. The comparisons between modern

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Western political concepts and Gandhi’s take provide interesting insights into Gandhi’s mind, and the possibility of alternative formulations of key concepts in political thought, but go no further. It is true that modern Western political thought has underplayed the distinction between political philosophy and political theory. Protagonists of political theory, however, made a conscious effort in the early twentieth century to carve for it a problematic distinct from that of political philosophy and political science since they saw the latter two as ill-equipped to consider the relation between philosophy and history, or the practice of politics in consonance with changing social and political institutions (Miller and Siedentop 1983). This in turn gave rise to two basic questions: 1) The relation between the normative and descriptive functions of political theory i.e. the relation between fact and value, or subject and object of knowledge. The question here is set against the view that the function of social science is explanatory/descriptive, and is judged on the success or failure of prediction and accounting for observed phenomena i.e. through a method of value neutral assessment. It was contended however, that the framework of explanation, or analysis of data, itself could not be without an ideological slant, supportive of a particular definition of a political ideal over another (Plamenatz 1960, Charles Taylor 1967, referred to in Miller and Siedentop 1983). 2) The question of the possibility of establishing the truth of a particular theory, as we do in the case of scientific theory, i.e. a matter of proof or the relation between theory and practice. The difficulty of comparing social science theory with scientific theory was recognized since unlike the latter, the former witnesses contesting theories each with some element of truth in them, and no one theory disproves the other (MacIntyre 1983). Besides, in the case of social science theory, the normative factor inevitably influences our determination of truth. In contemporary political theory, this debate continues for instance with Cohen and Rawls disagreeing on the relation between facts and normative principles, with the latter arguing that they must be fact sensitive, and the former that they cannot be so, and indeed are not so (Cohen 2009). This brief recapitulation of the issues that arise from the problematic of political theory in the effort to get political philosophy to engage with history and changing social, cultural and political institutions shows that the limits of the discussion are again set by the same dualisms of theory and practice and fact and value that it seeks to overcome. While political philosophy remains complacent with respect to these problems and takes for granted the causal relation between philosophy and its application/practice, political theory produces, on the other hand, treatises on public and government policy, which depend on rational analyses of ‘objective’ data, thus pushing the conditions of the relation between theory and practice in the direction of Hobbesian prudence and expediency in public affairs. This latter is better known by the more general name and discipline, ‘Management’,

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where everything, including human beings, is reduced to a ‘resource’ to be quantified, classified and managed/controlled. Miller and Siedentop (1983) cite a few who have in the twentieth century succeeded in producing more ‘ambitious and synthetic’ political theory such as Rawls, Oakeshott, Nozick and Dworkin. However, with the exception of Oakeshott, the combination of thought and practice in political theory is effectively only a treatise on state policy and public reason, committed to establishing a stable and orderly society, with ‘justice as fairness’, and ‘freedom within the bounds of prudential reason’, defining the precautious limits of Utopia (Rawls 1973, 2005, Nozick 1974).5 This is to reduce theory to a matter either of expediency, on the one hand or of prescription, on the other. The latter is represented in policy and the former in the advocacy of anarchy that puts the rights of individuals before all else, while critiquing an overriding faith in the state (Dworkin 1978). Or, in the event that neither option assures possible stability, historically, it is ideological solidarity that takes over in the form of violent revolutions, terrorism, ethnic and religious fundamentalism. The Foundations of Experiment None of these options really satisfy the requirements of theory and its fundamental difference from philosophy. Theory must involve a hypothesis that is verified through specific experiments which at once establish the truth of the theory and provide illustrations of it. This is what would describe a crucial scientific experiment, which does not simply attempt to describe/explain phenomena or compute and predict data but which seeks to establish a law. Different forms of application of the law would then be demonstrated/illustrated under different conditions. The latter, i.e., philosophy, refers however, to a general perspective, a body of propositions and a collection of key concepts that form the vocabulary of a person’s thought, which is not only opposed to practice, but also does not call for any proof of its truth, and therefore has no cognitive value; It is then said to be contingent on the ethical stance/prescription, ‘ideology’, background, or historical circumstance of the cognizer or proponent but not on a universal, objective theory whose proof can be established in specific experiments. This distinction between philosophy and theory is not always recognized in modern political thought since it is felt that, unlike scientific theory, political theory cannot be subjected to any test of its proof.6 The dualism of science and art, 5 Vincent (2004) remarks on the tendency of political theorists who forge a tenuous relation to practice through policy – ‘Many theorists have, nonetheless, still contended that some form of rigorous conceptualist approach tied loosely to public policy, is the only viable defense of the utility of the discipline. Consequently, any other way of approaching theory could be categorized as academic self-indulgence, or as simply false.’ 6 This is not altogether true of scientific theory either. It is by now well understood that verification is not an adequate validation of theory, since there is always the possibility

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subject and object and theory and practice leads to the implicit assumption that unlike in the case of science, in the case of social science, in general, and political theory, in particular, there can be experience, data, and rational explanation, but there is an impossibility of clinching experiments, and any method, therefore, by which we may have experimental proof to determine the truth of one theory against the other. The divorce of the truths of reason from the truths of experience, universalism and relativism, the normative and the descriptive, in post-Enlightenment thought, bring into question the very foundations of experiment, law and conscience.7 Hume is perhaps the only one in the history of modern western philosophy who focuses on the concepts of experiment and history as key epistemological concepts. The positivist framework of post-Enlightenment history of philosophy however misses the significance of this emphasis and focuses instead on the scepticism of Hume. In spite of Hume’s protestations that the Treatise (Hume 1888) was the work of a brash youth and must be set aside in favour of his later more mature work in the Enquiries (Hume 1902) what persists, and what is considered the more significant aspect of his philosophy, is the thoroughgoing scepticism. Thus it is that the Enquiries, where he argues against scepticism and draws attention to the fundamental importance of custom as the epistemological foundation of knowledge, continues to be set aside. According to Hume it is not reason but custom that is the basis of the law of society and of nature. History is constituted of experiments that validate theory. This presents a fundamentally different response to the problematic of theory. Unlike the method of deduction from formal axioms where a single instance allows one to derive all possible instances, a law based on experience cannot be based on a single instance. It requires an assumption of a principle of uniformity in Nature. How Hume’s understanding of custom is based on a definition of experience fundamentally different from the dominant positivist view in modern western philosophy is discussed in Chapter 2. Hume holds that history illustrates the universal principles of human nature and behaviour in different circumstances and situations and is a record of the that it may in future be falsified, with the emergence of new information, or a new experiment. Some phenomena simply operate with more than one theory, as in the standard example of Light being explained either by wave theory or by particle theory. Finally, a look at history of science would reveal that it comprises of unresolved debates where one theory supersedes the other because it works better rather than because its truth has been conclusively established over the other. 7 Note Feynman’s description of the process by which a fundamental law is arrived at. The role of theory or a thesis is reduced to guessing, and experience and experiment are treated as though they are synonymous. The role of a clinching experiment that tests theory and experience simultaneously is sidestepped in this description: ‘First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong’ (Feynman 1967, p. 156).

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political and moral experiments that enable the philosopher to determine the principles of his science just as the scientist determines the laws of nature through experiments with objects in the world. For Kant, on the other hand, reason is the basis of law in nature and human conduct. A formal principle such as the categorical imperative defines duty which is then universally and unconditionally applied to all instances of experience. Rather than being led by experience to see the variety of ways in which principles of human nature manifest themselves in history, Kant imposes a uniformity on human action by the application of rational principles universally and unconditionally on it. The epistemological ground for individual human experiments in history is thus removed. Similarly, the Laws of science are, for Kant, based on pure transcendental a priori concepts constituted by reason. His theory of ‘universal history’ is therefore one where nature conspires though a principle of antagonism between humans to bring home the need for a perfect state that will bring about ‘a universal cosmopolitan condition’ that would be conducive of the growth of all the original capacities of the human race. Such a state would further forge relations with other states to the achievement of this universal end (Kant 1784). First and foremost therefore were at stake the very epistemological conditions for experiment, the non-dualism of theory and practice, fact and value and subject and object. It may well be argued that the overwhelming consensus on the presuppositions of war that forms the culture of modernity and post-Enlightenment thought make it imperative for Hume’s position to be ignored by it. Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth It is in this context that the immense epistemological and methodological significance of Gandhi’s insistence on the term ‘experiment’ and emphasis on ‘experiments with Truth’ comes to light. Firstly, he draws attention to the axiomatic nature of the law of non-violence. He argues from the experience and progress of the history of civilizations that if violence were the law, then human beings would have been extinct long ago. Then he gives examples from history where violence did predominate like in the Roman civilization which did not survive the test of time. Each attempt to follow the law of non-violence is an experiment. The experiment here is sign of the necessary and critical conjunction of theory and practice, and subject and object where the abstract, absolute truth of theory, and theory of truth is confirmed and reaffirmed in specific practice (particular truths), in history, each instance in itself being a unique illustration of the truth. History thus bears testimony to the possibility of illustrating/realizing what is Absolute Truth in separate and different instances, i.e., in truths. It is in this way that a

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law is reaffirmed and illustrated.8 Thus for Gandhi, experiment establishes the truth of the law of non-violence as a law of the human species, a law which determines the relation between the mind and the world or the relation between God, man and nature, and not merely the moral nature of non-violent action. This understanding of non-violence challenges the epistemological, ontological, and political presuppositions of modern civilization which argues from experience (not experiment) that human nature is essentially violent in nature, and is therefore based on brute force. Not surprisingly, therefore, little, if nothing, is written on Gandhi’s notion of the experiment. Despite his distinct use of the term, and his description of his autobiography as ‘Experiments with Truth’, within a framework which attempts to connect philosophy with practice only in extraneous ways, it is liable to be dismissed as a metaphorical use of the term, or an exercise in hyperbole. However, the term ‘experiment’ is quite clearly used consciously, and precisely in the context of the role of ‘experiment’ in modern science and epistemology. With respect to political theory his contribution here is fundamental since he is able to steer clear of policy and discuss political method which presents the possibility of the active, conscientious participation of civil society in national affairs, rather than depend on State policy for peace and order in public affairs managed by ‘efficient’ governance. However, neither the term ‘experiment’ nor the fact that he is talking in terms of a law of non-violence, not merely non-violent action, has caught the dualist eye of Gandhian scholars so far. Some notable exceptions who escape being trapped in the dualist point of view are Srinivasan (1998) who investigates the significance of Gandhi’s ‘experiment’ as presenting a counter perspective to the notion of fieldwork as it is constituted in a positivist/dualist framework of post-Enlightenment social science, Joseph Alter (2000) who looks specifically at the body in Gandhi as the site of experiment and action, and Shambu Prasad (2001) who focuses on Gandhi’s Khadi experiments as an attempt to provide the structure of an alternative science rather than its economic, political, or symbolic significance. Barring these, Gandhi’s contribution has been understood to be singularly ethical or spiritual in nature, even while questioning the practicability of his wisdom then, and now. Alter argues that the overwhelming attention paid to Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and peace has, in fact, not only succeeded in drawing attention away from his experiments on the body as significant to his thought and practice but has also contributed to his being misunderstood. One of the chief reasons for this he locates in the fact that his experiments on himself are considered independently of their relation to 8 Michael Oakeshott (1975) makes a significant distinction between example and illustration. Each event in human discourse/intercourse is an illustration of the ethical for good or ill, and represents different stations of human life. There is no separate area of application of the ethical but it encompasses all human discourse, and is illustrated in and through it. An example, on the other hand, is meant to exemplify one or the other – the ethical or the a-ethical.

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the experiments in the body politic. Srinivasan, goes further and argues that it is this very reason, i.e. the fact that Gandhi through his ‘experiments with Truth’ challenges the post-Enlightenment positivist regime of the dualism of mind and the world, theory and practice, subject and object and self and the other, that a discussion of his experiments is summarily rejected, in fact, is anathema, in the University. N.K. Bose’s disapproval of Gandhi’s sexual experiments which he cited as the reason for his final break with Gandhi to return to the University bears ironic testimony to this fact. Srinivasan points out that Bose’s disagreement was with Gandhian science rather than his politics, and this remains, in the final analysis, the reason for the University’s continued discomfort, misunderstanding and rejection of Gandhi. It is, in fact, however, the non-dualism of science and politics that invokes incredulity and the wrath of all those conscious and unconscious followers of the positivist regime. As we have seen, it is assumed that there can be no experiment, definitely not a critical one that illustrates a law in political theory, even less so in determining the relation between celibacy and the political efficacy of the law of non-violence. We must remember, that Gandhi’s sexual experiments were not the only ones that caused righteous outrage then (and now!), and, as Srinivasan points out, the primary issue is a question of scientific method, rather than the impropriety of conducting ‘sexual’ experiments. Ascribing moral greatness, or as in this case, turpitude, remains somehow perhaps the easiest way to dismiss Gandhi, or absolve oneself of any debt we owe to him and to his experiments in the ‘science’9 of peace. On the other hand, however, despite all the adulation and recognition as ‘Mahatma’, and the ‘Father of the Nation’, his political experiments were neither understood nor acceptable in the context of the modern nation state. He was abandoned in his own time and by his own colleagues in the Congress as soon as India’s independence from British rule was in sight. The old man had fulfilled his job, and there was no use for what, the Congress alleged, were a matter of his personal whims and dreams, or at best, his religious beliefs in the new-born modern nation state. The establishment of a non-violent army for Independent India, and a united India built on the foundations of Hindu–Muslim unity, were for Gandhi an inherent part, and continuation, of the experiments with Truth and nonviolence in politics that he along with the Congress had been engaged in so far. For the Congress, his experiments turned out expedient in the fight for freedom, but it held that Independent India could no longer risk the political cost of his experiments. The reports of the Congress Bulletin clearly show, however, that it was differences on the issue of method, and the theoretical foundations that 9 In response to a reporter’s question regarding his teaching the West the art of peace, Gandhi simply, without ado, replaced the phrase ‘art of peace’ with ‘science of peace’, asserting that he could only hope to convey his message of a ‘science of peace’ by example. The change of phrase is significant affirming the view that it is not ethical doctrine but epistemology that characterizes the discourse of peace! (CW 86:409)

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defined freedom, that compelled Gandhi to finally give up the leadership of the Congress. Maulana Azad as the President of the Congress concluded his speech explaining the reasons for their rejection of Gandhi’s experiments for Independent India in the Congress resolution with the following statement: There is not a soul in the Congress who is not anxious to go the whole length with Mahatma Gandhi, if he can help it (if he can do so? – N.K. Bose); but we cannot close our eyes to hard facts. We know that the arms and ammunitions have not been able to save the freedom of France, Holland, Belgium and Norway, but we also know that human nature even after realizing the futility of armed resistance is not prepared to give up force. We had not the courage to declare that we shall organize a State in this country without an armed force. Mahatma Gandhi has to give the message of non-violence to the world, and therefore it is his duty to propagate it but we have to consider our position as representatives of the Indian Nation meeting in the Indian National Congress. The Indian National Congress is a political organization pledged to win the political independence of the country. It is not an institution for organizing world peace. (Congress Bulletin, 7–9–1940, p. 2, from Bose 1957, pp. 197–8)

Gandhi’s response delineates a clear criterion of distinction between non-violence as creed, as policy, and non-violence as at once the Law and method of truth, determined in experiment. In fact, as can be seen from a study of his discussions with the members of the Indian National Congress on the issue of whether they should use the occasion of Britain going to war to press for their demands (that is whether they should use it as an opportune moment to bargain for India’s freedom), he distinguishes method clearly from personal creed/religious belief on the one hand, and policy (read ‘political expediency’), on the other: Ahimsa with me is a creed, the breath of my life. But it is never as a creed that I placed it before India, or for the matter of fact before anyone except in casual informal talks. I placed it before the Congress as a political method, [emphasis mine] to be employed for the solution of political questions. It may be it is a novel method, but it does not on that account lose its political character … The various measures that I adopted there [referring to satyagraha in South Africa] were not the work of a visionary or a dreamer [emphasis mine]. They were the work of an essentially practical man dealing with practical political questions. As a political method it can always be changed, modified, altered, even given up in preference to another. If, therefore, I say to you that our policy should not be given up today, I am talking political wisdom. It is political insight. It has served in the past, it has enabled us to cover many stages towards Independence, and it is as a politician that I suggest to you that it is a grave mistake to contemplate its abandonment. If I have carried the Congress with me all these years, it is in my capacity as a politician. It is hardly fair to describe my method as religious because it is new.

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(Summary of Gandhi’s speech in Hindustani at Bardoli Resolution, Congress Bulletin, 5–2–1942, p. 16, from N.K. Bose 1957. pp. 191–2)

So, Gandhi is willing to grant that the Congress cannot be held to a creed which should be a voluntary and personal matter. However, the same law of non-violence governs both personal and political experiments. Therefore what appears to the Congress a practical solution in its opportune moment of strength with respect to the British rulers – to use Britain’s being at war to bargain for India’s freedom – would only reveal its underlying weakness, and failure to adhere to the principles of the political method it had adopted thus far. It would show that the Congress only adopted the policy of non-violence for purposes of expediency, and not sound political wisdom. This would weaken not its moral position as much as it would its political and strategic strength with respect to the British. If the Congress changes its course, the change will prove nothing save that nonviolence hitherto offered was of the weak, and that the Congress has no faith in State non-violence. (Harijan, 12–5–1946, p. 128, from Gandhi 1957. p. 51)

It is important to note that Gandhi is aware of the novelty of his method, that it neither follows tradition nor borrows from the modern West, neither votes for peace as a policy, nor war, but turns to experiment and method in politics. This further establishes the centrality of political theory within Gandhi’s framework which would be put to test, and be illustrated through continued experiments in the nation state. Gandhi is quite firm then on the question of theory, method and experiment and his vocabulary is specific to its discourse in a technical sense. There is no loose use of terminology, no metaphor, no hyperbole as one may ordinarily suppose, and he is intensely conscious of the fact that it opposes and contradicts the presuppositions and views of mainstream post-Enlightenment politics and epistemology. Gandhi and the Ideologies of Left and Right In recent times, there has been a sense of disillusionment about the possibilities of liberal thought, an awareness of its internal contradictions and the problems it raises in the modern nation state. This self-reflection and internal critique has not been without a consciousness of the limits/limitations of such a critique given the embeddedness of liberal traditions in the very epistemological principles and moral foundations of modernity and the Enlightenment (Connolly 1993, Shapiro 2003, and Agamben 2005). However, liberal thinkers have ignored the epistemological presuppositions and implications of industrialism, science and the accompanying technological development and the political economy for the nature of the nation state and its relations to other states and to the presuppositions of peace and civil society.

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Marx had already presented a powerful critique of modern industrialized society from the point of view of the political economy where he argued that the change in the processes of production inevitably embodied a change in class relations between capital and labour. He thus rejected the theory held by liberal thinkers such as Ricardo and Adam Smith that the antagonism of capital and labour was a result of a natural social antagonism between the classes. His theory of dialectical materialism sees capitalism as a phase in the natural process of the economic history of a nation, a process that can be made less painful, but that would take its inevitable course. For Gandhi, the question was of the structure of a society and state based on presuppositions of peace and the possibility of establishing it with non-violent experiments with Truth in every aspect of personal, social and national life whether it be science, religion, politics, or the political economy. This was not merely to be left to personal creed but involved the reform of existing institutions and the establishing of new ones in society which would uphold the sovereignty of every individual, but not without holding necessarily the good of all as sacrosanct. This goal required that there be complete unity of means and ends. Non-violence was not only a creed but it was the only means by which the goal of sarvodaya or the good of all could be achieved. Therefore Gandhi did not confine his experiments in non-violence to politics alone but spearheaded experiments in science, technology, medicine, diet reform, community living to which his constructive programme and the Ashrams he set up became a living testimony, even as the freedom struggle went on. East and West Did this mean for Gandhi a clear demarcation between East and West, and further, a rejection of Western science and culture? It was quite clearly not a matter of national identity or sovereignty for him. The matter was neither as straightforward as one that could be settled in terms of national territories, nor territories of tradition and religion, nor of East and West. The crux of the issue for Gandhi was ‘what constituted ‘true civilization?’. The difference was between a civilization based on the presuppositions of war/violence and one based on presuppositions of peace or non-violence. It was a question of the perennial condition for experiments with Truth and non-violence that each civilization, tradition, or religion occasions – not claims of authenticity or superiority, or jurisdiction and territory, but possibilities for experiment, and the breaking or bridging of boundaries that they afford. These experiments with Truth were not exclusivist and yet required a person, a community or a nation to bear testimony to its truth The universalist agenda of post-Enlightenment Western civilization with its professed celebration of human reason, freedom and creativity, science and technology was and in many ways still is the new civilizational model being thrust

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on the rest of the world. What went under the name of colonialism then, goes under the name of globalization, today. Gandhi argued that the ‘civilization’ that Britain had adopted and what it was inflicting on India through colonial rule was indeed not true civilization. So that in India’s fight for swaraj, or sovereignty, if the British were apprised of the true nature of the regime that they had come to accept as civilization, persuaded to overcome their dualist persuasion and join in the experiment that the Indian Swaraj movement was attempting, they could continue to stay in India: Not as rulers but as co-investigators in experiments with Truth! The experiments with Truth would be the basis of a civilizational dialogue – and nothing less, nothing that merely served narrow national or communal interest, nothing that purported to uphold sovereignty at the expense of truth, or nonviolence; nothing that confused the fight for swaraj with the fight for power, or domination of one nation over another, of man over man, or over nature other than one’s own. The power of the state was clearly not the issue for Gandhi; it was the sovereignty of the people. As to how this sovereignty was to be achieved, Tagore and Gandhi, clearly did not see eye to eye. Nor, for that matter, did Gandhi’s colleagues in the Congress ultimately agree as we have seen above. Nor, could he ultimately convince the British government of the significance of his attempt. So, for Gandhi, India’s freedom was gained at the expense of its swaraj. However, Gandhi was not to be beaten by this. It was only reason to push his investigations further. Tagore resented Gandhi’s call for the boycott of English education, and the burning of foreign mill cloth. He accused Gandhi of being exclusivist – ‘not letting the winds of other cultures blow freely through our minds’. Gandhi cautioned that while one must be open to all cultures, one must not be blown off one’s feet by them. In the context of his discussion on the notion of civilization in Hind Swaraj, his message is clear and simple – the modern civilization that English education was propagating was not something one could entertain unless one had the strength to assess it critically in the light of one’s experiments with Truth. Besides if English education meant undermining the vernaculars, it could only spell further erosion of India’s sense of self, and capacity for critical appraisal of all that they were exposed to by way of an English education, not to speak of the divide that would be created between the English speaking Indian elite and the vernacular educated Indian, the expert and the lay person. It was neither the love of his people, nor hatred for the other, nor fear of death that swayed his attention from the experiments with Truth. Therefore Gandhi’s own journey began in South Africa which he visited at first only on a job to fight a case for an Indian businessman, but which grew into a full-fledged movement against apartheid. It was here, as it were, that the preliminary trials for the experiments in non violent dissent that he would bring into force in the Indian swaraj movement, were conducted.

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Tradition and Modernity It was his conviction that the India that he saw and understood still had in it the ability to demonstrate the truth and possibilities of the law of non-violence that would transform the constitution of society and its culture. The spiritual and material culture embodied in the language, labour and liturgy of a civilization is a sign of the relation between God man and nature. It is that on which is determined the answer to the question whether a society rests on the presuppositions of peace, or of war, and must be understood and recognized as such: All society is held together by non-violence, even as the earth is held in her position by gravitation. But when the law of gravitation was discovered, the discovery yielded results of which our ancestors had no knowledge. Even so when society is deliberately constructed in accordance with the law of nonviolence, its structure will be different in material particulars from what it is today. What is happening today is disregard of the law of non-violence and enthronement of violence as if it were an eternal law. The democracies, therefore, that we see at work in England, America and France are only so called, because they are no less based on violence than Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy or even Soviet Russia. The only difference is that the violence of the last three is much better organised than that of the three democratic powers. (Harijan, 11–2–1939 from CW 75: 47)

Many have seen this as an indication that he was contrasting modernity with tradition, and therefore appealing for a return to it, and with it, to India’s own heritage and past. Gandhi’s emphasis is clear however from his formulation of the issue in the Hind Swaraj itself: The question, for him, is a matter of the distinction between modern civilization and true civilization, not between modernity and tradition. The former, according to him, is based on violence/brute force, and the latter on non-violence. As we have said above, Gandhi was no stickler for tradition, and definitely not for an authentic, or the ‘so-called’ authentic version of it that orthodoxy proposes. His martyrdom at the hands of a Hindu fundamentalist bears final testimony to this. Though he did not hesitate to say that he spoke as a Hindu first and foremost, his idea of what it meant, was definitely not a matter of falling in line with tradition. He claimed he was a Sanatani10 Hindu. He qualified each of his statements with a crucial clause, which was all his own, and which cut a path forward which was quite fundamentally unorthodox, and more essentially vernacular in character. Thus he argued:

10 Sanatana meaning ‘perennial’, thus referring to the primordial tradition or truth of Hinduism which can manifest itself in different forms in different ages, and which does not conform to any dogmatic version of Hinduism.

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i) That he believed in the Vedas, but not in the exclusive divinity of the Vedas. This meant that he would not be bound by any interpretation of the vedas that did not stand the test of truth and non-violence and brahmacharya. ii) That he believed in the institution of the Guru but this did not mean finding a guru or following him in the literal sense. iii) That cow protection was the guiding principle of Hinduism and Hinduism’s gift to the world. He argued that cow protection more than varnashrama11 distinguished Hinduism from all other religions. Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God: the way to protect the cow is to die for her. It would be a denial of Hinduism to kill a human being to protect a cow just as it would contradict Hinduism to be witness to the inhuman boycott of human beings perpetuated by untouchability. Thus it was his conviction that Hindu–Muslim unity constituted the essence of Hinduism and Untouchability its excrescence. It will now be understood why I am a sanatani Hindu. I yield to none in my regard for the cow. I have made the Khilafat cause my own, because I see that through its preservation full protection can be secured for the cow. I do not ask my Mussalman friends to save the cow in consideration of my service. My prayer ascends daily to God Almighty, that my service of a cause that I hold to be just may appear so dear to Him, that he may change the hearts of the Mussalmans, and fill them with pity for their Hindu neighbours and make them save the animal the latter hold dear as life itself. (Gandhi 1978. p. 14)

Thus going beyond the limits of the vernacular Bhakti movement, he succeeded in formulating for Hinduism, its theological, sociological and political response to modernity, and to the freedom struggle in India.12 Civil Society and the State The mark of true civilization is its foundation in principles of non-violence. Thus for Gandhi, self-reform comprising Hindu–Muslim unity, the rejection of Untouchability, and adoption of non-exploitative means of livelihood, symbolized by the charkha, were the three indispensable pillars of swaraj for India. This meant that the formation of a Hindu rashtra or state was anathema as was the idea of the Partition of India. Secondly, it meant the rejection of the principles of parliamentary 11 Varnashrama has usually been understood as synonymous with the caste system of India. Gandhi however made a distinction between them arguing that the former, unlike the latter, did not involve a hierarchy of professions, nor did it determine caste by birth, rather it followed the principles of ergonomics. 12 See Veeravalli, Indian Philosophies, for Gandhi in relation to vernacular traditions of India.

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democracy that presupposed the centrality of the state in defining justice in terms of rights involving separate electorates and rights for the untouchables, rather than community effort. Finally, it rejected the Marxist-Communist solution of State ownership to overcome the dialectical phase of capitalist materialism. The crux of the issue was the opposition of the state, whether secular or fundamentalist, with civil society. Gandhi’s incisive understanding of the modern nation state allowed him to see that the state was necessarily built on the presuppositions of war and, civil society on the presuppositions of peace. It was therefore not only absolutely necessary to maintain the fundamental difference and distance between civil society and the state but also to establish the sovereignty of civil society as against that of the state. Gandhi therefore set about systematically to refurbish and strengthen the institutions of selfgovernance in civil society. This involved self-reform, the constitution of nonexploitative modes of production and distribution in the political economy and the development of non-violent methods of dissent. The structure of these institutions and the means of their rejuvenation were presented by Gandhi in the constructive programme and his persistent engagement with issues that, for him, went far beyond the immediate circumstances and expediencies of the freedom movement. Indeed in the era preceding Gandhi, between 1500 and 1900, postEnlightenment Europe could very well be seen to have enthroned violence as an eternal law of man and nature, in its redefinition of the principles and experiments in science, religion, and politics of modernity: the dualism of mind and the world meant that the relation between them would for ever remain one of correspondence between the two, or one of reductionism, or of hegemony of one over the other. Language, labour and liturgy that represented the dialectic of subject and object, and mind and the world with respect to God, man and nature, would under this regime of dualism be reduced to relations of power and violence rather than of truth and non-violence: With the establishment of Darwin’s theory of evolution was defined not only the functioning of nature but its principles of growth and progress in terms of natural selection, and the survival of the fittest. William Harvey in the seventeenth century established vivisection as the definitive scientific method with the publication of his treatise, ‘The Circulation of Blood’. In politics the theory of social contract, based on an understanding of the rational nature of man as rooted in prudence, expediency and a perception of the conflict of interests between individuals in society, took centre stage. Hobbes who presented one version of the social contract theory described man’s life in the state of nature as being ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’, thus mirroring, in man, Darwin’s theory of nature. Gandhi’s call to use the Indian freedom movement as a critical experiment in history to establish the truth of the law of non-violence and to establish its possibilities would be to put India on the map of the world and make it a force to contend with in the history of civilizations.

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References Agamben, G. (2005) State of Exception, translated by Attell, K. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Alter, J.S. (2000) Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bilgrami, A. (2002) Gandhi’s Integrity: The Philosophy Behind the Politics. Postcolonial studies. 5 (1), pp. 79–93. Bilgrami, A. (2009) Value, Enchantment, and the Mentality of Democracy: Some distant perspectives from Gandhi, Economic & Political Weekly. XLIV (51), pp. 47–61. Bose, N.K. (1957) Selections from Gandhi. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Chatterjee, P. (1993) Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Cohen, G.A. (2009) Facts and Principles (abridged). In Christiano, T. and Christman, J. (eds), Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Connolly, W.E. (1993) The Augustinian Imperative: A Reflection on the Politics of Morality. Newbury Park: Sage. Cortright, D. (2008) Gandhi and Beyond: Non-Violence for a New Political Age. 2nd ed. Paradigm Books Dalton, D. (1999) Gandhi’s Power: Nonviolence in Action. New Delhi: Oxford Unviersity Press. Devji, F. (2012) The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dworkin, R. (1978) Taking Rights Seriously. London: Duckworth Feynman, R.P. (1967) The Character of Physical Law, paperback ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Gandhi, M.K. (1957) Economic and Industrial Life and Relations Vol. I. Kher, V.B. (compiled and ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1963) The Way to Communal Harmony, Rao, U.R. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1969) Voice of Truth, Narayan, S. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1978) Hindu Dharma. Delhi: Orient Paperbacks. Gandhi M.K. (1999) The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi: Publications Division. Government of India.13 Hardiman, D. (2003) Gandhi: In His Time and Ours. Delhi: Permanent Black. Hay, S. (1970) Jain influences on Gandhi’s early thought. In Ray, S. (ed.), Gandhi, India and the Word. Melbourne: The Hawthorne Press, pp. 29–37 13 This work has been abbreviated as CW in the main text. The version used here is the electronic book (98 volumes) downloadable from: http://www.gandhiserve.org/e/ cwmg/cwmg.htm (Accessed: 14 January 2014).

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Hume, D. (1888) Treatise on Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hume, D. (1902) Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kant, I. (1784) Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, Beck L.W. (tr.). The Bobbs-Merrill Co. (Online) Available from: http://www. marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/universal-history.htm (Accessed: 6 December 2013). MacIntyre A. (1983) The Indispensability of Political Theory. In Miller, D. and Siedentop, L. (eds), The Nature of Political Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mantena, K. (2012) Another Realism: The Politics of Gandhian Nonviolence. American Political Science Review. 106 (2). Miller, D. and Siedentop, L. (eds) (1983) The Nature of Political Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nandy, A. (2000) Gandhi after Gandhi after Gandhi. The Little Magazine. 1 (1). Nozick, R. (1974) Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books. Oakeshott, M. (1975) On Human Conduct. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pantham, T. (1983) Thinking with Mahatma Gandhi: Beyond Liberal Democracy, Political Theory, 11 (2), pp. 165–88. Parekh, B. (1989), Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: Critical Examination. Notre Dame: Univiversity of Notre Dame Press. Parekh, B. (1999) Colonialism, Tradition, and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Parel, A. (2006) Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Prasad, S.C. (2001) Exploring Gandhian Science, A Case Study of the Khadi Movement, PhD Thesis, New Delhi: IIT Delhi. Rawls, J. (1973) A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford Unviersity Press. Rawls, J. (2005) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Schumacher, E.F. (1973) Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. London: Blond and Briggs. Shah, K.J. (1996) Purushartha and Gandhi. In Roy, R (ed.), Gandhi and the Present Global Crisis, Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, p. 155. Shapiro, E. (2003) The Moral Foundations of Politics. London: Yale University Press. Sorabji, R. (2012) Gandhi and the Stoics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Srinivasan, A. (1998) The Subject in Fieldwork: Malinowski and Gandhi. In M. Thapan, Anthropological Journeys: Reflections on Fieldwork. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Terchek, R.J. (2000) Gandhi: Struggling for Autonomy. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. Uberoi J.P.S. (2002) The European Modernity: Science, Truth and Method. New Delhi: Oxford Unviersity Press. Vincent, A. (2004) The Nature of Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford Unviersity Press.

Chapter 2

Presuppositions of War and Peace: The Mind, the World and the Law of Non-violence Somehow or other the wrong belief has taken possession of us that Ahimsa is preeminently a weapon for individuals, and its use should, therefore, be limited to that sphere. In fact, this is not the case. Ahimsa is definitely an attribute of society. To convince people of this truth is at once my effort and my experiment. (Gandhi, Harijan, 25–8–40)1 Non-violence is soul-force of the power of the Godhead within us. We become Godlike to the extent we realize non-violence. (Gandhi, Harijan, 12–11–)382

Unlike what is generally believed to be the case, Gandhi does not merely advocate non-violence and love where violence and hatred exist, either as a matter of expediency or as moral prescription. He insists that the law of non-violence is a law of human existence. This poses a challenge to a fundamental presupposition of modern political theory – that competition, conflict and violence comprise the law of nature and the law of man in the state of nature. Further, it attacks one of the most fundamental, if not the most fundamental, epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions of post-Enlightenment thought and practice, its theories of truth and knowledge, and ontology: the Cartesian dualism of the mind and the world. The Cartesian thesis is not merely that the mind and the world are distinct substances, the one constituted by thought and the other by matter or extension, as has been often emphasized but it is that they are separate and distinct. What follows is a discounting and erasure of an independent metaphysical and epistemological status for the body and with it, for pain, suffering and labour as signs of the mediation of mind and the world. This results in the reduction of the body to an object in the world and the establishment of a mechanistic conception both of the body and the world as independent of the mind, in its place. ‘Passions’, the term Descartes uses to describe the sensations of pain, hunger etc. that arise from the union of the mind and the body, are seen merely as a source of erroneous knowledge that clouds and hinders the judgement of the mind/soul. In this scheme there can be no theory of one who bears witness. 1 Gandhi (1957) p. 152. 2 Gandhi (1969) p. 153.

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Thus the Cartesian dualism of the mind and the world and of the mind and the body constitutes the nature of knowledge, in effect, as a science of vivisection, sundering, forever, the relation between subject and object, the ideal and the real, theory and practice, and means and ends for modern times. With the establishment of a transcendent benevolent God separate and distinct from the world, Descartes affirms the godless, soulless and mechanical nature of the world. With the insistence on the separation of the immortal, rational mind from the body, he establishes the autonomy of the mind and reason. The transcendence of God and the separation of the mind/soul from the body together, effectively remove from the modern world, the role and significance of not only the body in pain, but the role of labour in the cycle of production and reproduction, service and self- sacrifice that sustain and rejuvenate society. On the other hand, knowledge, according to Descartes is determined by a system of classification informed by ‘clear and distinct’ ideas of the mind such as number, figure and motion, thus reducing it to a science of control over a now godless world. What this accomplishes for modern times is the separation of God, man and nature and thus the separation of science, religion and politics. What is at stake with the establishment of the regime of dualism is then the very question of the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of violence vs. those of non-violence and the presuppositions of war and peace on which civilizations are founded. Descartes’ transcendent and distant God and alienated and immortal mind make the Passion of Christ unavailable to the modern mind. They render a theory of politics based on the presuppositions of non-violence, where sacrifice, vicarious suffering and service reaffirm and characterize the human being, society and its institutions, impossible and incomprehensible. What remains is a theory of power based on a system which in its very structure presupposes a separation of the rational order represented by the power of the state and the irrational, dark life of passions and conflict in nature. Therefore, the system sets in motion a process which itself perpetuates relations of power and empowerment, and subjugation and rights, necessarily generating the very problems from which society seeks redress and liberation. In so far as this dualism persists as a foundational presupposition that manifests itself in the various dominant structures of thought and practice, institutions of science, society and the state, it is an inevitable and formidable part of the regime of modernity that governs the world today. The different forms that this dualism takes and their implications with respect to specific issues are discussed in the following chapters of the book. Gandhi’s attempt was to set up the parameters of an experiment with the law of non-violence and truth that could be a sustained and comprehensive response to these institutions of violence and which would be almost completely in the hands of the people to make it work rather than be dependent on state patronage and power. Non-violence as a law of the human species presupposes the non-dualism of mind and the world, subject and object, theory and practice, fact and value and means and ends which are illustrated in experiments with Truth in science,

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religion and politics that constitute the history and culture of civilizations. Gandhi defines non-violence primarily in terms of self-suffering and self-sacrifice, nonexploitation and service, thus locating the proof or test of non-violence in the body and in this world. It is not determined by abstinence of the body alone from violence,without the conscious involvement and reflection of the mind – ‘nonviolence to be a potent force must begin with the mind’ (Bose 1957, p. 161). In the final analysis, according to Gandhi, it is the capacity for self- suffering that substantiates truth, rather than reason alone: The conviction has been growing upon me, that things of fundamental importance to the people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering. Suffering is the law of human beings: war is the law of the jungle. But suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears, which are otherwise shut to the voice of reason. (Gandhi 1969. p. 202)

This directly rejects Descartes’ thesis that the sensations and sentiments that emerge out of the union of mind and body are unreliable and pervert rather than affirm truth. On the other hand, it awakens one to the possibility that reason may turn a deaf ear to truth/reality as it presents itself in the body or the world – a possibility that Descartes actually systematized and established, through dualism, for the modern world. In contrast, for Gandhi, following the law of non-violence is a necessary means to truth. In the case of a law, its truth is established neither by experience alone nor reason alone, not by objective fact or by subjective value alone but as has been argued in the previous chapter, in their conjunction in the subject, i.e. in human nature and in history which is a record of human relation with the world. Gandhi argues that if the human species were violent by nature then man would be extinct by now. It is only because the basic human instinct is non-violent that the human species persists. Does the belief that man is nonviolent by nature not fly in the face of evidence to the contrary? The history of mankind is after all a history of wars, bloodshed and conflict. Gandhi responds that civilizations that have followed the law of violence have perished, and only others have survived. History as we know it is a history of the aberrations of the law of non-violence and he recognizes that in saying this he is going against the current view held by modern political theory and practice. Secondly, Gandhi’s insistence on human imperfection is such that the truth in question is not determined once and for all, but is to be reaffirmed by continued experiment by individuals, societies and civilizations; each experiment being a new and unique illustration of the truth/ application of the law. It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, i.e., hate ruled us, we should have become extinct long ago. And yet the tragedy of it is that the so called civilized men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence. (Merton 1965. p. 45)

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Theories of Human Nature A certain understanding of human nature has informed every discussion about the foundations of society and the state, the nature of the political economy and sovereignty.3 The liberal and socialist traditions that form the Right and the Left of post-Enlightenment politics have historically remained ideologically opposed; however, their common problematic can be characterized as the dualism of individualism and socialism. The predominant view in liberal theory holds that the individual is by nature solitary and in competition with other individuals in society. This is the basis of the theory of natural rights, and individualism, that form the ideological impetus of the liberal tradition. The assumption here is that war is a normal condition of society, and that peace must be constructed with measures taken by the state, or between states, to prevent war as well as to resolve it. In other words, peace is an artificial construct, an engineered solution to a problem, and not a stable or natural condition of society. It is, if at all, an attribute to be found in some individuals of unique disposition and moral calibre. Thus society itself in this view is an artificial construct. Though liberty and rights for the individual have always been fundamental goals of liberal political theory, the conditions that make possible such circumstances are based on the presumption of the rational nature of man as rooted in prudence, expediency and an instinct for self preservation. Whether it be Locke, Rousseau or Hobbes, their theories of social contract presume an understanding of human nature: i) that is individualistic with each person’s interests being potentially in competition with the other; ii) where violence is the primary means of resolving a conflict of interests, or ensuing retribution to serve the cause of justice and fairness, and most importantly; iii) that man is essentially not governed by conscience but driven by the rational faculties that prompt the individual to find expedient ways of negotiating society – a Leviathan, a disposition of good will, a conception of common interest, or general will, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, alongside a selfconsciousness about his/her individual rights. This involves making obedience to norms of society (religion) and the law (state), the use of coercion and the threat of punishment, in the event of disobedience, inevitable and essential conditions for the possibility of society. Thus the enthronement of violence as the law of nature, and coercion as a law of culture, establish the foundations of modern political theory, and its methods with respect to matters of God, man and nature, and the relationship between them. The inherent paradox of the modern nation state is that the coercive force of the state is a necessary condition for freedom. 3 ‘Indeed, the idioms of moral conduct which our civilization has displayed are distinguished in the first place, not in respect of their doctrines about how we ought to behave, but in respect of their interpretations of what in fact we are’ (Oakeshott (1962), p. 249).

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Within this framework, order and peace are based on a uniformity of wills, in other words, on principles of ‘congruence’4 and conformity. This, to say the least, leaves no room for fundamental difference and disagreement between the peoples of a nation and the state, nor is it conducive to an understanding of differences between states. Legitimacy is granted to actions that compel conformity while all dissidence is by definition illegitimate unless seemingly relegated to the private sphere. All individual freedom then is confined to the private space or the ‘politically correct’ in the public space.5 The private and the public, individual and the citizen, remain separate and distinct entities in the modern nation state. Marx and communitarian theories hold, on the other hand, that man is a social being. They emphasize the primacy of society in the very constitution of the individual thus envisaging the necessary curtailment of individual freedom, at least, till a time when the ideal state of socialism is achieved. Individualism within this framework is an ‘abstraction’, as is civil society within a framework of individualism. As can be seen in the 1844 manuscripts, for Marx ‘the individual is the social being’ (p. 99). According to him, it is only capitalism that alienates man from man, and man from his own, inner and external nature. He argues that ‘the direct, natural and necessary relation of person to person’ is man’s species being involving his relation to woman which is indicative of man’s relation to nature as also of nature’s relation to man in the cycle of production and reproduction that sustains all life. Therefore, this relation reveals, the extent to which the individual has become human. This is determined by the extent to which his relation to others is reciprocal, is a need, that is, the extent to which he as an individual is also a social being. Thus far, Gandhi and Marx would have no disagreement. Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism presents an analysis of human nature where the products of the political economy and the material culture of a society reveal the nature of man and his relationship with nature and society at that point in history. According to him capitalist society is a historical mode of complete alienation from the essence of man, or of man from himself. The modes of production in capitalist society are themselves instruments of the alienation of man from himself, from others and from nature within and without. Thus, he argues that the growth of the political economy in capitalism is directly proportional to the commodification of labour and therefore to his enslavement, rather than his emancipation. His scathing critique of capitalism may be said, therefore, to be made clearly from a point of view that rejects the dualism of mind and the world and mind and body.

4 For instance, Rawls (1973) formulates an understanding of goodness in terms of ‘congruence’ on commonly agreed upon notions of justice. 5 Rawls therefore has divided this problematic between his two books – the first, Theory of Justice is concerned with the principles of equality/uniformity, and the second Political Liberalism negotiates difference and pluralism.

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Liberal thought, however, has rarely, if ever, taken cognizance of the role of the modes of production and its implications for labour in capitalist society. Marx further argues that in this condition, religion takes the form of transcendent idealism and is yet another mode of alienation. The material culture of a society that includes its means and modes of production, its commodities and condition of labour reveals the nature of the relation between man and the world. However, according to him, until such a time that this relation of alienation in capitalism is transformed by the dialectical processes of history, justice demands that the state prevent the exploitation of one class by another. Thus capital and the means of production would be state owned and governed. Marx’s definition of socialism shows a clear recognition of the problem of the separation God, man and nature in modern civilization. It clearly attacks the Cartesian thesis of a transcendent God when it rejects the possibility of the existence of a God as a ‘third alien being’ that ‘denies the reality of nature and man’. Marx holds, therefore, that ‘Socialism is man’s positive self-consciousness, no longer mediated through the abolition of religion, just as real life is man’s positive reality, no longer mediated through the abolition of private property, through communism’ (Marx 1974, p. 108). In other words, the individual is a function of the material conditions that constitute society. Dialectical materialism seems, therefore, to retain the structure of dualism of mind and the world in so far as it does not see the body as witness to the truth of the relation of man and world but sees it merely as a consequence of the relation. Therefore it underestimates the power of non-violence. This was what Gandhi perceived as his fundamental difference with Marx: The Marxist regards thought, as it were, “a secretion of the brain”, and mind “a reflex of the material environment”. I cannot accept that. Above and beyond both matter and mind is He. If I have an awareness of that living principle within me, no one can fetter my mind. The body might be destroyed, the spirit will proclaim its freedom; This to me is not a theory; it is a fact of experience. (Gandhi 1969, p. 245)

Hobbes sums up the dominant post-enlightenment point of view when he holds that there can be no covenant between God, man and nature: a covenant between men in the state of nature is void, without a common power that would enforce the covenant, since nothing but fear motivates man, who is in a state of war in the state of nature, to abide by a covenant; a covenant with brute beasts is impossible since it depends on mutual consent, which beasts cannot give; similarly, no covenant with God is possible because one cannot speak with him without mediation, or know of his consent to the covenant. Further, only covenants extracted under threat, or in fear, are valid. Covenants not to defend oneself against force with retaliatory force are void as is the covenant to accuse oneself. This summary of Hobbes’ discourse on pacts and covenants concludes, as we have argued, that within the dominant framework of modern

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political theory, there is room only for the presuppositions of violence, and a theory of power. Gandhi then had gotten to the root of modern civilization. Unlike Hobbes, for Gandhi, non-violence is the covenant between God, man and nature without which humankind and the Universe cannot be sustained. Even the apparent reality of violence is sustained only in so far as its underlying truth is the law of nonviolence. The theory that human nature is basically non-violent contradicts the assumption in liberal theories that human nature is violent, or at least potentially so, since men in society are individuals in competition in respect of freedom, property and self-preservation. Further, it attacks the anthropocentricism of both liberal and socialist theories. It constitutes human nature in terms of the relation of man with himself, with other men, and with nature, and thus redefines the nature and limits of concepts regarding the relation of man and the world as being based on love rather than self-love, non-violence rather than violence, voluntary selfsuffering and sacrifice in service of the other, rather than a the principle of selfpreservation and acquisition. The dominant post-Enlightenment view is not without its detractors and opponents within mainstream history of modern western philosophy and political theory. Hume’s is perhaps the most well-known attack against the social contract theory and its presuppositions as held by as wide a variety of thinkers as Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke and Kant. The basis of the social contract lay in reason as the foundational principle on which the state comes into being. Hume points out that the natural instinct of man lies in the propensity, ‘independent of all ideas of obligation, and of all views either to public or private utility’ (Hume 1947, p. 227) towards dispositions such as ‘love of children, gratitude to benefactors, and pity to the unfortunate’ (Hume 1947, p. 227). Even while granting man’s natural inclination to self-preservation, Hume argues that experience and reflection make evident to man the effects of unrestrained acquisition of property, unlimited freedom and power over others, and the impossibility of sustaining society under the circumstances. This alone, according to him, is the source of allegiance, and the moral obligation attributed to it, and not the promise of allegiance that the social contract presumes. Hume argues that the myth that governments are built on consent determined by the autonomy of reason is perpetrated only to legitimize existing governments and the obligation to obey the laws instituted by them. Hume’s conclusion clearly goes against the grain of most of mainstream political theory in the liberal tradition. In fact, many have found it difficult to place the attack made in Hume’s pithy tract, ‘Of the Original Contract’ (Hume 1947). His focus on the concept of experiments in history, his understanding of experience and reflection, and finally, his institution of instinct, habit and custom as the source of conscience, the authority of law and the basis for allegiance to any contract

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have been for a large part ignored or misunderstood.6 Some have argued that he works out a ‘compromise’ between reason and experience. Some, that he is utilitarian with a difference. Others argue that he is anti-individualist, and others that he is also anti-statist. Yet others argue that the alternative theory he has in mind is based on natural jurisprudence, a combination of reason with a theory of historical evolution. The non-dualist perspective is demonstrably one that has had difficulty being acknowledged or granted legitimacy within the dominant dualist regime of postEnlightenment thought. In the case of Gandhi, it is even easier to dismiss him since he does not speak as a theoretician. The theoretical foundations of his thought nevertheless are undeniable, and have a legacy, though not a dominant one, both in Indian and Western traditions. Presuppositions of War and Peace In fact, Gandhi brings back into political theory a discourse on the presuppositions of war and peace which has gone missing in post-Enlightenment political theory. The problem of peace has, of course, been discussed in political theory and elsewhere but it remains, in the final analysis, a discussion at the level of policy rather than a matter of the structure and institutions of state and society. The dualistic method constitutes peace primarily as a matter of the relation between states rather than a condition of human society. There is an underlying assumption that war is a normal condition of nature, and of man in the state of nature. Therefore all discussions of peace exhibit an unresolved tension between the felt need for a strong state and the goals of individualism and human freedom. Foremost, amongst them are Rousseau and Kant on ‘Perpetual Peace’ (Kant 1970), the one advocating a strong central authority regulating the relation between states and the latter, a state that constitutionally institutes a policy of peace. Kant fully acknowledges the divide between the practitioner of politics and the political theorist, and the disagreement between morality of individuals and politics, and ventures to present what he calls ‘definitive articles of perpetual peace’ that would enable the ‘formal institution’ of peace, which he believes, like Hobbes, can only be enforced by the power of the State, given the diversity of 6 Oakeshott, in his classic essay ‘Rationalism in politics’ concludes that the rationalist can never be more than half right since he is necessarily always out of depth with his society. He cannot comprehend tradition, habit and custom: ‘Like a foreigner or a man out of his social class, he is bewildered by a tradition and a habit of behaviour of which he knows only the surface; a butler or an observant house-maid has the advantage of him. And he conceives a contempt for what he does not understand; habit and custom appear bad in themselves, a kind of nescience of behaviour. And by some strange self-deception, he attributes to tradition (which of course is pre-eminently fluid) the rigidity and fixity of character which in fact belongs to ideological politics’ (Oakeshott 1962, p. 31).

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individual wills. His essay, ‘The Perpetual Peace’ is therefore essentially a policy document for governments to maintain internal peace and to forge peaceful pacts with other nations. Utilitarians, like Mill, believe that war is merely a creation of the state which works to the detriment of individual human freedom; so also much that follows right up to the twentieth century when, ironically, nuclear deterrence becomes the final argument against war. Thorstein Veblen again recognizes the difficulty of following Kant’s approach. He sees that the problem is not of our duty towards advocating peace but to discuss the method of perpetuating peace ‘in terms of those known factors of human behaviour that can be shown by analysis of experience to control the conduct of nations in conjunctures of this kind’ Veblen (1945, Preface p. viii). Tolstoy’s novel and magnum opus War and Peace rises beyond the relation between states and state policy to consider questions of the human condition and its disposition to war and peace. Tolstoy’s own life of self-reform, sacrifice, and efforts at alleviating the poverty and destitution he saw around him in Russia at the turn of the nineteenth century bear testimony to his belief in the power and possibilities of love as the lasting human attribute. As far as I can see however, the previous instance when the distinction between a society based on presuppositions of peace and one based on presuppositions of war was the bone of contention in political theory dates back to the ‘Laws’ of Plato. As though anticipating opposition from the dualist, Plato asks the fundamental question: Is the function of law and a well constituted society to prepare itself for war, or it is it to legislate for peace? Aristotle’s critique of Plato rests precisely on this issue of the structure of society based on peace vs. one based on war. Aristotle finds Plato’s discussion of the structure of the polis inadequate since while it legislated on territory and citizenship, it does not address the question of the criterion and acquisition of adequate property, or of security and international relations. He argues that if Plato were to take account of these problems, he would have to make provision for institutions of war that could be used internally as well as externally. Plato, however, exposes the logical implications of making the criterion of a wellconstituted society one of being well-equipped for defence of territory and protection of property. He points out that a state that comes into being seemingly only for the purpose of defence or victory over its rivals, or acquisition of territory, cannot stop at that since such a state by the very logic of its constitution is built intrinsically on the presuppositions of war at all levels in society − town, village, household, man to man, and man with himself, and the world: Athenian: Well, possibly this is the right test in comparing cities with cities, but there may be a different test in comparison of village with village? Clinias: Not at all. Athenian: The same test holds good? Clinias: Certainly. Athenian: Well, and when we compare one household in our village with another, and one man with one other man? The same test still holds?

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Confronted with the realization that he has been compelled to reduce his general definition of a well constituted society to a first principle about human nature in its stark truth and reality, Clinias concludes that in a society well equipped for war, “Humanity is in a condition of public war of every man against every man, and private war of each man with himself” [emphasis mine] (Plato 1982. p. 1228). Thus Plato argues that it is inevitable that a society that considers preparedness for war to be the measure of a well-constituted society, by the same logic, to be bound to believe that man is by nature at war with himself. The proof of this offers itself in the uncanny echo of Plato’s conclusion heard in Hobbes’ discussion of human nature in the context of his discussion of the social contract theory almost 2000 years later. As though continuing to speak in the same breath Hobbes affirms Plato’s conclusion if only to argue for the establishment of a powerful state – To this war of every man against every man, [emphasis mine] this also is consequent that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues, justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body, nor the mind. They are qualities that relate to men in society not in solitude. (Hobbes 1985. p. 145)

Hobbes confirms Plato’s intuition that the individual in such a society would be at war with himself. The individual has no conscience outside the state. Peace and justice, law and order are a consequence of enforcement by the state or by established religion. This establishes straight away, another principle of postEnlightenment political theory, which is the dualism of the private sphere and the public sphere and of individual and citizen. It is the Aristotelian and Hobbesian legacy that the modern nation state follows. Considered in the historical backdrop of the discussions on peace, and the structure of society and the state, Gandhi’s experiments with Truth and nonviolence are, by far, the most systematic and thoroughgoing in the theory and practice of peace. His experiments with Truth and non-violence present concrete alternatives and institutions that evolve with ongoing experiments and research, rather than established and codified policy.

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Epistemological Foundations The dualism of mind and the world has also this consequence that it separates fact and value, or realism and idealism and therefore science and ethics/politics. Bilgrami (2003) has argued that Gandhi’s understanding of truth is not a cognitive notion at all but an experiential one. It does not pertain to the truth of propositions but to a person’s moral experience that is true or false.7 Thus, according to him, Gandhi’s position is not so much a stand against post-Enlightenment conceptions of reason or cognition, as it is a non-cognitive one. More recently, Perry Anderson (2012), in a scathing attack on Gandhi, questions the possibility of holding him to any coherent, consistent and objective notion of truth. He argues that given his belief that he was only an instrument of God’s will, he was not bound to any rules of human logic and had the ‘license’ to say whatever he pleased. He points to the occasions when Gandhi remained unrelenting when faced with the possibility of situations turning violent claiming that it was perhaps God’s will to use him as an instrument of violence. Thus it was not a matter of questioning his sincerity towards non-violence as much as it was the pointlessness of expecting any coherence or consistency from him. Anderson arrives at three significant conclusions about Gandhi’s notion of truth from this: i) ‘Truth was not an objective value – correspondence to reality, or even (in a weaker version) common agreement – but simply what he subjectively felt at any given time’; ii) The subtitle of his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth, indicates that for him it is ‘as if truth were material for alteration in a laboratory, or the plaything of a séance’; and iii) that ‘to real intellectual exchange, he was a stranger’. (Anderson explains that Gandhi was a barrister and, like barristers, was wont to change his arguments and his brief from day to day.) One may complain that Anderson’s is an exaggerated and unfair view of Gandhi. On the other hand, one may be mollified by the fact that, in the final analysis, he does not question Gandhi’s sincerity. And here Bilgrami’s analysis would lend credence to Gandhi’s integrity. Both succeed (and in this they are united) to let a discussion on Gandhi’s thought and practice slip with ease into a discussion of his personality or creed rather than of his theory, method and epistemology. However, as we have tried to argue, the post-Enlightenment regime of the dualism of mind and the world not only determines the way we look at the world but how we understand, and classify it in modern times. Those who remain entrenched in this point of view and method, like Bilgrami and Anderson, miss Gandhi’s insistence on non-violence as a law of human existence, on Truth and experiment, and reduce this understanding of Gandhi of the relation between non-violence and Truth to an article of faith rather than a consequence of 7 In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein has a similar, and perhaps stronger formulation of this view that Bilgrami attributes to Gandhi; He holds there that truth is not a matter of the truth or falsehood of a proposition, but a matter of being at home with the truth.

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cognitive method. It is the singular crisis of modern epistemology that it has been blind, even closed, to the possibilities of an alternative non-dualist consideration of epistemological issues. The dualism of the mind and the world posits: i) A theory of truth based on correspondence of the mind and the world. Truth comes to be defined as a relation either of correspondence between the mind and the world (thought/sentence and state of affairs), or the reduction of one to the other, or the hegemony of one over the other. Thus under the regime of dualism, truth corresponds to a state of affairs in the world/fact and is objective, or alternatively, it is subjective. This dualism of subject and object is the basis of Anderson’s first objection to Gandhi, that his truth has only subjective value. Under dualism, the study and discourses of the ideal and the ordinary, the formal/artificial and the natural are separate and distinct and each is governed by mutually exclusive laws, the one of universalism, and the other of relativism. When applied to the world, reason follows the dualism of theory and practice, and fact and value and therefore of means and ends resulting in prudence/expediency, where ends justify the means (as in Hobbes), on the one hand, and technicism or a principle of ‘duty for duty’s sake, where means justify the end (as in Kant), on the other.8 Thus, it is not surprising that Anderson can only conclude that Gandhi’s truth is either subjective or alternatively, is based on the expediency of the sort that governs a lawyer in his arguments from case to case. It is precisely this dualism of means and ends that governs modern thought that Gandhi explicitly rejects while emphasizing the unity of means and ends and the necessary relation between nonviolence as a means and truth as an end. ii) The separation of the private sphere from the public sphere, which creates an inherent contradiction between the person as individual and as citizen. While individual freedom involves a search for unique identity, idiosyncratic and subjective, the citizen seeks a rational basis for agreement and congruence with common interests, concerns and values of society and the state in his public and professional life as a necessary condition of security for life, property and freedom. It is this tension between the two spheres which defines the very nature, limits and scope of individual rights, the working of law, and the understanding of the ethical in the modern nation state. Issues of personal and ethnic identity, recognition and misrecognition paradoxically co-exist with the need for objective modes of identification of individuals and groups, and the compulsion to globalize in the modern nation state. iii) The impossibility of reconciling the relation between the One and the many resulting only in two mutually exclusive alternatives of uniformity and diversity/ relativism in understanding issues of equality and difference. This dualism is 8 The science of vivisection has been defined as the dualism of means and ends that yields expediency (ends justify the means), on the one hand, and technicism (means justify the end), on the other, the limits of which were reached in Hitler and the atom bomb, by the beginning of the twentieth century (Uberoi 2002).

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evident in the oppositions between thinkers as between the hedonism of Mill and the idealism of Kant, or within the disparate concerns of a single author, as in Rawls who first discusses equality and justice (Rawls 1973), and then liberalism and difference (Rawls 1993), or Nozick (1974), whose problematic assumes the form of a choice between the rule of State, and anarchy, with their possible mediation being an Utopia. The possibilities of unity in plurality and equality in difference that are reconciled in a theory of pluralism therefore are impossible within this framework. Language, labour, and liturgy that were the means of mediation between the self and other (whether God, man or nature) are now modes of separation and classification that divide subject and object, mind and the world and, body and spirit. The person as one who negotiates the separation of the personal and the political in and through language, labour and liturgy is now instead divided in his private and public roles as individual and citizen. The experiments with Truth and non-violence through which Gandhi reinstates the mediation of mind and the world, subject and object and body and spirit are then unfathomable to Anderson: to him they are of the stuff of alchemy or of séances. Non-violence is not only the principle but also the proof/sign of the nondualism of the mind and the world, body and spirit and self and other. Gandhi’s insistence on the unity of means and ends as necessary to the methodology of experiments with Truth constitutes non-violence as a necessary means to truth. This establishes the subject as witness in the experiment with Truth. The truth of the law of non-violence does not rest either on mere subjective moral intuition or on matter of fact i.e. in a theory of correspondence and contradiction but is premised on a theory of experiment and bearing witness to the experiment. This involves a realization of the limits and limitations of knowledge based merely on sense experience or on reason, or a combination of both (in the following passage one may read ‘God’ as meaning ‘Truth’ in Gandhi’s scheme of things): But he is no God who merely satisfies the intellect, if He ever does. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. He must express himself in every smallest act of His votary. This can only be done by a definite realization more real than the five senses can ever produce. Sense perceptions can be, often are, false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is a realization outside the senses it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within. Such testimony is to be found in the experiences of an unbroken line of prophets and sages in all countries and climes. To reject this evidence is to deny oneself. (Young India, 11–10–1928, pp. 340–41 from Gandhi 1969, pp. 104–5)

The key to understanding this passage rests in the term ‘testimony’ invoking the transformation of conduct and character as a sign of ‘bearing witness’ to the

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truth, which one may add, Gandhi has relentlessly insisted, cannot be had without non-violence. In effect, he is pointing to the fact that truth is not a matter merely of experience/appearance corresponding to a state of affairs in the world. His critique is significantly more pointed with regard to reason, given the legacy of the idealist tradition and the enthronement of reason as the universal criterion of truth, goodness and of all things orderly and logical in post-Enlightenment thought: Experience has humbled me enough to let me realize the specific limitations of Reason. Just as matter misplaced becomes dirt, Reason misused is lunacy. Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to Reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God …. I plead not for suppression of Reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies Reason itself. (Young India, 14–10–1926, p. 359 from Gandhi 1969, p. 106.)

The critical conjunction of theory and practice, and subject and object in usage, that is, in continued practice of experiments in non-violence and truth in every aspect of personal, public and political life makes it possible for each person to be witness to Truth in the unique form that his conscience sees it. However, Gandhi insists that non-violence is of the essence to truth and that this involves a capacity for self-suffering and self-sacrifice, the centrality of the laws of bread labour and swadeshi, and therefore, reiterates the body and embodiment, of example and experiment as the locus of truth. The later chapters will attempt to demonstrate this in the context of specific issues and experiments of Gandhi. The experiment establishes the reality of Truth and the truth of reality in illustrating/being an expression of the laws that govern the relation between man and the world. Note that the experiment determines the truth of a law, and not a fact, nor merely an individual’s integrity, through a specific example. Thus establishing the truth is not based on a theory of correspondence. His ‘experiments with Truth’ dismiss the dualism of mind and the world, reason and experience, the transcendent and the this worldly, and knowing and being that plagues equally the foundations of modernity as well as tradition’s orthodoxy both of whom lay claim on having arrived at a definitive knowledge of the Truth and to the methods of arriving at it. The dominant positivist point of view of post-Enlightenment philosophy has been in fundamental disagreement with a non-dualistic point of view, even within its fold, in the history of modern western philosophy. Indeed Hume, as we have pointed out earlier, and Leibniz, the one, classified as a thoroughgoing empiricist and the other, as a rationalist, had insisted on the role of reflection in arriving at truth from experience and reason. They represent, however, a point of view that remains suppressed under the dualist regime which has either chosen to ignore, co-opt or misconstrue experiments in non-dualism. The point is that Gandhi is not the only one to fall prey to dualist analysis and criticism, though it is

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perhaps easier to dismiss his thought than it is Hume and Leibniz. So, the role of reflection in Hume and Leibniz is underplayed in the history of modern Western philosophy as it is taught and understood. Hume, for instance, holds that there can be no unmediated experience; human reflection transforms raw experience to discernment and knowledge founded in custom and conscience. History, according to him, therefore, consists of a series of experiments that bear witness to the truth of this theory. However, as we have said, Hume, has been co-opted into the positivist framework by simply emphasizing his scepticism and ignoring his reconciliation of experience and reason in conscience, custom and the laws of science, religion and politics through reflection. Hume’s scepticism is actually directed at the myth of the supremacy of reason and causality in human knowledge which he seeks to demolish. This is his fundamental disagreement with Kant. Firstly, he argues that reason is incapable of variation, or understanding variation. The conclusions it would draw from one circle are the same as it would draw from all circles in the universe. Hume points out that it is experience, on the other hand, that is capable of seeing unity (as opposed to uniformity) in variety. It is experience alone that can explain the difficulty why we need a thousand instances to draw an inference which could not be drawn from a single instance: ‘No conclusions can be more agreeable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of reason and its capacity’ (Hume 1902, p. 78). Again, it is experience that explains the workings of the human will: The command of the mind over itself is limited as well as its command over the body; and these limits are not known by reason, or any acquaintance with the nature of cause and effect, but only by experience and observation, as in all other natural events and in the operation of external objects. (Hume 1902, p. 68)

From the discussion on the role of human reason and causality Hume concludes that it is custom that determines the relation between mind and the world. ‘Custom then, is the great guide of human life’(Hume 1902, p. 44). Custom is the principle which through reflection on the course of nature and the succession of ideas in the mind, ‘effects a correspondence’ which is a necessary condition of human subsistence. Custom is what regulates and makes possible all human action and enables adjustment of means to ends in all aspects of human existence. It is custom then that allows one to learn from the experiments of history. In this, what Hume does, is to delineate the epistemological presuppositions of experiment. Further, he is able to demonstrate how it is impossible to provide the basis for experiment from a dependence on reason or causality alone. Finally, he is able to show how these epistemological presuppositions of reflection and custom establish the conditions for experiment as much for the sciences as for the social sciences, something which, we have argued, the dualist school has not been able to resolve:

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Leibniz too argues that there can be no knowledge without reflection on the principles that determine truth and falsity. According to him, these principles are the principle of contradiction and of sufficient reason. The principle of contradiction refers to necessary truths that cannot be denied or whose denial results in contradiction (what are generally known as ‘analytic truths’). The principle of sufficient reason however refers to facts but in a fundamentally different sense from the way in which empirical or synthetic truths are usually regarded in modern Western philosophy. It refers to the truth of why the facts are the way they are and not otherwise, and therefore, the principle of contradiction is ultimately subsumed under it. Thus Leibniz affirms the limitations of formal reason separated from the truths of the world. The truth revealed by the principle of sufficient reason, Leibniz argues, must necessarily lie outside the causal series that determines contingent things, i.e. in a necessary substance or God who is the source of all reality in possibility. Thus using Kantian terminology, it involves reflection on the conditions for the possibility of being itself, therefore of the being of subject and object and the relation between them: But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind. Further it is by the knowledge of necessary truths and by their abstractions that we are raised to acts of reflection, which make us think of what is called the self, and consider that this or that is within us. And it is thus that in thinking of ourselves that we think of being, of substance, of the simple and the compound, of the immaterial and God Himself, conceiving that what is limited in us, in him is limitless. And these acts of reflection provide the chief objects of our reasonings. (Leibniz 1934, pp. 8)

It is precisely this aspect of reflection in Leibniz’s understanding of truth and knowledge that Kant attacks in the Critique of Pure Reason, accusing him of ‘intellectualizing appearances’ by the amphiboly of the concepts of reflection, or the confusion of the objects of sensibility and of understanding. Kant argues that a clear distinction must be maintained between the objects of the two cognitive faculties i.e. of the mind and the body, thus reiterating their dualism. Later, he

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declares his own dualist theory of knowledge as ultimately one that is based on a correspondence between mind and the world:9 What makes this critique of conclusions based merely on acts of reflection so exceedingly useful is that it renders manifest the nullity of all conclusions about objects which are compared with each other solely in the understanding, and at the same time confirms our principal contention, namely, that although appearances are not included as things-in-themselves among the objects of pure understanding, they are yet the only objects in regard to which our knowledge can possess objective reality, that is, in respect of which there is an intuition corresponding to the concepts. (Kant 1933, p. 287)

This is Kant’s dismissal of Leibniz, or rather, the dualist dismissal of the very possibility of a non-dualist theory of knowledge. Kant’s complaint against Leibniz’s “intellectualizing appearances” is echoed in Anderson’s likening of Gandhi’s experiments with truth to a séance, though Anderson definitely is not as aware of what is at stake as Kant is when he attacks Leibniz. Therefore it is no surprise that many, including Anderson, have dismissed Gandhi’s understanding of the relation between non-violence and truth as an article of faith rather than a consequence of rational cognitive method. For Gandhi then, following Leibniz and Hume, the experiments with Truth present the possibility of ‘Truth’ (which is arguably a metaphysical or an absolute value) being illustrated through a variety of truths in this world, that is, in history, in the material and spiritual culture of the world: his is a theory of experiment, not experience, that requires reflection, not correspondence. It is a theory of truth based on the notion of a witness founded in a principle of reflection rather than mere observation. Finally, the objectivity of truth is derived here, not from a relation of his observation corresponding with the object and common agreement with the observations of other individuals (as Anderson would have it), but in each witness realizing the law that governs the relation between subject and object of knowledge, in the act of knowing itself. Whatever the form of this law in that specific instance, it must have its basis in the law of non-violence. Therefore Gandhi concludes above that ‘To reject the evidence is to deny oneself’. Ontological Foundations and the Law of Nature If non-violence is the law of human nature and the relation between the mind and the world, the law of nature establishes the necessary relation between microcosm and macrocosm. The first law is determined in the dialectic between man and the world or the subject and object of knowledge. The law of nature is determined in 9 The Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection a short but explosive appendix to Book II of the Transcendental Analytic in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

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the relations between the part and the whole, or microcosm and macrocosm, such that each is a reflection of the whole. The body, as the site/sign of the unity of matter and spirit establishes and reveals the nature of mediation between body, body-politic and the world. Therefore, self-suffering, bread labour, and love as the signs of non-violent, non-dualism perfected in the individual are a reflection of, and are reflected in the body politic and the world. Thus knowledge of the part is sign, symbol or symptom of the whole.10 Gandhi reiterates this principle: The body is the universe in miniature. That which cannot be found in the body is not to be found in the universe. Hence the philosopher’s formula, that the universe within reflects the universe without. (Gandhi 1948, p. 2)

From Gandhi’s non-dualist point of view then, the relation between physical events and spiritual events is not an arbitrary fact, or accident, but follows the law of nature which is not separated from, or independent of culture. Just as it is the union of mind and body in self suffering and reflection that make possible a knowledge of truth in the person, the non-dualism of matter and spirit are a necessary condition of the knowledge of the world. The results then of his experiments on himself are proof of a complementary law and effect on the universe. This view challenges the dualist method and epistemological presuppositions of modernity. It is in the light of this that Gandhi’s statement in the aftermath of the Bihar earthquake, that the earthquake was punishment for the sins of untouchability, must be understood. The statement drew scathing criticism from Rabindranath Tagore, and has been the subject of many a paper since then, attempting to either establish or question the epistemological basis of the thesis. Tagore accused Gandhi of using superstition to convey a political message. Gandhi, however, did not retract his statement. He was clear that he had only presented what he believed to be a universal law of nature, one whose workings he/we did not understand fully perhaps, but whose truth remained indubitable nevertheless: ‘I have long believed that physical phenomena produce results both physical and spiritual. The converse I hold to be equally true’ (Harijan, 16–2–1934, from Bhattacharya 1997, pp. 159). For him, the Law and the Lawgiver are one i.e. the Law is God. It means that He/it ruled him and the world in the tiniest detail of life. To Tagore’s belief that our sins, however enormous, did not have the force to drag down, the structure of creation, Gandhi said he had no such faith. He believed, on the contrary, that ‘… our own sins have more force to ruin that structure than any mere physical 10 See Uberoi (1978) for a detailed analysis of the structure of the semiological point of view that reunites the study of nature and culture as an alternative to the positivist regime which rules the common Western foundations of the science and modernity. He sees this semiological point of view as presenting a theory of truth and reality depending on the study of signs symbols and symptoms constituted by: i) the dialectical relation between subject and object; and ii) the variety of interrelations of the whole and the parts.

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phenomenon. There is an indissoluble marriage between matter and spirit. Our ignorance of the results of the union makes it a profound mystery and inspires awe in us, but it cannot undo them’ (Harijan, 16–2–1934, pp. 4–5 from Prabhu and Kelekar 1961, p. 120). The Failure of an Experiment In involving the active engagement of the subject in the experiments that demonstrate the law of non-violence, whether in relation to man or nature, the experiment at once draws on the normative and descriptive functions of theory, without affecting the validity of the experiment.11 The experiment with truth fails to the extent that non-violence is not perfected, and pursued even after the accomplishment of a particular objective at hand, that is, it cannot be used only as a matter of expediency. In such a case not only does it invalidate later experiments but those prior to it as well since these would be shown to have been taken up as a matter of expediency and weakness rather than as experiments in non-violence. Thus in no sense, and at no time, could the nature of non-violent action be arbitrary. It could be a mistake. It would in no way falsify the law itself. Just as, in a failed scientific experiment, the lack of precision in the factors constituting the experiment does not in any way reflect on the status of the truth of the law that is to be demonstrated. Gandhi argues that this is indeed the reason, ultimately, for the Congress being unable to sustain and succeed in its demand for an undivided India based on Hindu–Muslim unity. Their non-violence had in fact been a matter of expediency rather than method. The truth of the law of non-violence remains unaffected, but the experiment is rendered infructuous since the conditions of the experiment are not satisfied and the principle of the unity of means and ends is violated. Most commentators on Gandhi’s theory of non-violence have focused on it as a method of non-violent political action, civil disobedience, and argued that his seeing it as the only means to Truth raises concerns of how absolute such a principle could be in the face of totalitarian and unscrupulous opponents such as the Nazis (Dalton 1999). From Gandhi’s point of view, the principle, as we have seen is absolute. It is a law that fails only in so far as it is not perfected in us through experiments in history, not if its objective is not fulfilled. The fear of imperfection is pre-empted by faith in the law and persisting in our experiments with it. Gandhi is clear however that he is talking of non-violence as a law of the human race and a necessary means to truth. It persists in the midst of all contingencies. Where it doesn’t, civilizations have perished without trace. Hardiman’s, data on civilian resistance against the Nazis during the World Wars presents a crucial instance of such an experiment. He notes that German 11 See Introduction for discussion on the normative and descriptive in theory and experiment.

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officers in interviews given to Basil Liddel Hart, a military theorist, confessed to finding it harder to quell non-violent civilian resistance than the attacks from those trained in guerrilla warfare. He also recounts the case of non-Jew spouses (mostly women) of about 2,000 Jews who staged a non-violent protest outside the prison in which they were being held by the Gestapo in 1943. They persisted in reassembling each time they were dispersed, under attack from police who threatened to open fire, till finally the Gestapo had to relent and release their Jewish spouses. These are incredible accounts that appear to raise the power of non-violence to the level of the miraculous when seen in the context of the ‘industrial extermination’ of millions of Jews in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany. They serve as examples of successful experiments in non-violence establishing the truth of the law of nonviolence as the basis of civilization, even in the most trying of circumstances. The accounts of civil resistance in Nazi Germany recounted above must be understood as instances of experiments in the truth and reality of non-violence as a law of human nature. The centrality and significance of non-violence as a principle intrinsic to his ‘experiments with Truth’ whether they are related to science, religion, or politics must therefore not be underestimated. Its ontological, epistemological, political reach in the history of modern thought is such that it cannot be ignored. As we have argued, looked at in the context of Gandhi’s critique of modernity, his experiments cover every aspect of the relation between man and the world, subject and object of knowledge, and the microcosm and macrocosm. Gandhi speaks of one being able to avail oneself of this law only if one has a living faith in the God/Law of Love. Could one say then that his understanding of history is just a matter of faith, and not truth, not cognition? His argument from the fact that humans have not become extinct is adequate empirical testimony to the truth that non-violence overrules violence in history. It is also clear that Gandhi does not intend to say that his understanding of history is based on faith, but rather that it is based on a law that one may avail oneself of only if one has faith. In other words the law can be witnessed/‘availed of’ only through, and to the extent that each person follows it in his/her experiments with truth. Therefore it is a possibility realized/actualized in this world only to the extent, and in the manner and context that man is witness to its truth. Each witness to the truth of non-violence is subject of the experiment with it and manifests uniquely different modes of truth. This is important because the possibility of a variety of truths is established here, not in the principles of individualism or relativism but the unity in plurality of conscience based on the law of nature that determines the relation between microcosm and macrocosm. Faith here is based on the knowledge of the relation between man and the world, subject and object of knowledge, and part and whole in the Universe that, at once, form the metaphysical and epistemological foundationsof the knowledge of the self, the world and of God in this world: The sum total of all that lives is God. We may not be God but we are of God – even as a little drop of water is of the ocean. Imagine it torn away from the ocean

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and flung millions of miles away. It becomes helpless torn from its surroundings, and cannot feel the might and majesty of the ocean. But if someone could point out to it that it is of the ocean, its faith would revive, it would dance for joy and the whole of the might and majesty of the ocean would be reflected in it. Even so it is with all non-violent activities. (Harijan, 3–6–39, p. 151, from Gandhi 1969, p. 174)

The faith in, and truth of, non-violence, rests in this argument that resolves the problem of unity in plurality and plurality in unity that have long remained unresolved in the modern western tradition in the form of the dualism between universalism and relativism or the principles of equality and difference. Gandhi argues here that the relation between the one and the many is one of part and whole, where the part is a reflection of the whole. This is the relation between microcosm and macrocosm – that the individual reflects the all, and is of the whole. The Constructive Programme: The Structure of Non-Violent Society Gandhi saw the constructive programme as primary training in building and maintaining a non-violent army in continual preparedness for civil disobedience. Just as an army would require military training so also did non-violent civil disobedience. Thus the constructive programme laid the institutional foundation for the ‘construction’/reconstruction of an independent and sovereign nation built on the law of non-violence and the conviction that non-violence was the law of human existence: Civil Disobedience, mass or individual, is an aid to constructive effort and is a full substitute to armed revolt. Training is necessary as well for civil disobedience as for armed revolt. Only the ways are different. Action in either case takes place when occasion demands. Training for military revolt means learning the use of arms ending perhaps in the atomic bomb. For civil disobedience it means the Constructive Programme. (Gandhi 1945, p. 3–4)

True to his belief that non-violence was an attribute not merely of individuals but of society the constructive programme was intended to conduct experiments that would transfigure the very institutions, structure and culture of society into a civilizational experiment in non-violence. Civil disobedience therefore took the form not of a movement but of the establishment or reform of social institutions. The constructive programme was conceived to simultaneously be a mode of civil disobedience since it attacked the very principles on which the modern nation state, imperialism and modern civilization were founded. The pamphlet Constructive Programme includes, what appears to be, an innocuous list of programmes for village reconstruction. It contains an illustrative but not exhaustive discussion of the different aspects of the constructive

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programme, which would spearhead experiments in non-violence in areas extending from communal unity, removal of Untouchability, prohibition, Khadi and other village industries, education, hygiene and sanitation, national languages, and issues related to women, adivasis (aboriginals), persons afflicted by leprosy and students, apart from others. The same constructive effort would also serve in the opposition against violence, untruth and injustice. He clearly wants to put in place a programme of construction involving experiments in non-violence not only comprising every aspect and field of society, the political economy, and the nation state but also empowering every individual, group and community laying the ground for unity and equality in difference: Complete Independence through truth and non-violence means the independence of every unit, be it the humblest of the nation, without distinction of race, colour or creed. This independence is never exclusive. It is therefore wholly compatible with interdependence within or without. Practice will always fall short of theory, even as the drawn line falls short of the theoretical line of Euclid. Therefore, complete Independence will be complete only to the extent of our approach in practice to truth and non-violence. (Gandhi 1945, p. 7)

The devastation of the two world wars and the atom bomb could only be truly challenged by demonstrating the possibility of ‘weapons of mass construction’. The constructive programme was, according to Gandhi, the prime and necessary weapon of civil disobedience. He challenged the Indian National Congress with the choice to accept the necessity of the constructive programme or to reject him altogether. The one without the other would be powerless and directionless. ‘My handling of Civil Disobedience without the constructive programme will be like a paralyzed hand attempting to lift a spoon’ (Gandhi 1945, p. 31). How could something as inane as the constructive programme be such a powerful weapon? Gandhi’s thesis here is that the most innocuous of actions or duties performed with the consciousness of non-violence and independence would become powerful because it is the sense of office assigned to the action, and not the action itself, that makes it so. Many people do many things, big and small, without connecting them with nonviolence or Independence. They have then their limited value as expected. The same man appearing as a civilian may be of no consequence, but appearing in his capacity as General he is a big personage, holding the lives of millions at his mercy. Similarly, the charkha in the hands of a poor widow brings a paltry pice to her, in the hands of a Jawaharlal it is an instrument of India’s freedom. It is the office which gives the charkha its dignity. It is the office assigned to the constructive programme which gives it irresistible prestige and power. (Gandhi 1945, p. 31)

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This challenges firstly the separation of subject and object in the determination of truth and the meaning of a sign: what the constructive programme signifies is determined not merely by what it is objectively, but by what we perceive it to be, and the office we attach to it. Secondly, it addresses the divide between the public sphere and private sphere, universalism and individualism, the divorce between the role of the individual and that of the citizen that is the mainstay of the modern nation state. Habermas commenting on the coming into being of the public sphere as separate from the private in post-enlightenment Europe says: The representative public sphere yielded to the new sphere of “public authority” which came into being with national and territorial states. … Public authority consolidated into a concrete opposition for those who were merely subject to it and who at first found only a negative definition of themselves within it. These were “the private individuals” who were excluded from public authority because they held no office. (Habermas 1964)

This is evidence yet again, of Gandhi’s uncanny sense of what was missing, or amiss, with post-enlightenment political theory and life in the modern nation state. The assignment of office to the constructive programme lays the ground for each individual to contribute through his work to national reconstruction and civil disobedience. This bridges the divide between the private and the public in modern political theory and brings into being the concept of the ‘private citizen’, an office that Socrates sees himself holding in representing the voice of the people of Athens in his famous defence in ‘Apology’. It speaks of the possibility of someone having an office without holding a position of power in government and of power from a position of apparent weakness. More importantly, the grounding of civil dissent in the constructive programme and a notion of office lays the ground for the fundamental distinction between power and Truth on which the discourse of swaraj is based. Gandhi points out that civil disobedience must be offered necessarily in response to specific issues related to an individual or group’s work or condition, or to a specific law and should not be in response to a generalized call. For instance, he draws the Congressman’s attention to the fact that the farmer’s struggle in Champaran was a response to a specific and age-old grievance. He warns them against the dangers of turning their organization and power into an instrument of ‘power politics’, i.e. into an interest group, faction or lobby that is based on principles of solidarity and self-interest rather than on nonviolence. The spirit of this distinction between power and Truth is captured in the invocation of the office of the ‘private citizen’ by Socrates. … It is quite certain that, if I had attempted to take part in politics, I should have perished at once and long ago without doing any good either to you or myself. And do not be indignant with me for telling the truth. There is no man who will preserve his life for long, either in Athens or elsewhere, if he firmly opposes the multitude, and tries to prevent the commission of much injustice and illegality

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in the state. He who would really fight for justice must do so as a private citizen [emphasis mine], not as a political figure, if he is to preserve his life, even for a short while. (Plato 1948, p. 38)

This passage from Socrates’ defence rests the very foundations of civil society in the office of the private citizen. Gandhi’s innovation is in re-inventing the tyranny of the multitude of Socrates’ conception, into self governed, non-violent armies that finds articulation in people’s movements.12 Citing the examples of farmer’s struggles of Champaran, Kheda, Bardoli and Borsad, he reiterates the necessary relation between work, office and civil disobedience: The secret of success lies in a refusal to exploit the kisans (farmers) for political purpose outside their own personal and felt grievances. Organization round a specific wrong they understand. They need no sermons on non-violence. Let them learn to apply non-violence as an effective remedy which they can understand, and later when they are told that the method they were applying was non-violent, they readily recognize it as such. (Gandhi 1945. p. 24)

References Anderson, P. (2012) Gandhi Centre Stage. London Review of Books. 34 (13). Bhattacharya, S. (1997) The Mahatma and the Poet. Letters and Debates between Gandhi and Tagore 1915–1941. New Delhi: National Book Trust, India. Bilgrami, A. (2003) Gandhi, The Philosopher, Economic & Political Weekly, XXXVIII (39), pp. 4159–65. Bose, N.K. (1957) Selections from Gandhi. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1945) Constructive Programme. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1948) Key to Health. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1957) Economic and Industrial Life and Relations Vol. I. Kher, V.B. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1969) Voice of Truth, Narayan, S. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House Habermas, J. (2001). The public sphere: An encyclopedia article. In Durham M.G. and Kellner D.M., Media and Cultural Studies, pp. 73–8. Hardiman, D. (2003) Gandhi in his Time and Ours. Delhi: Permanent Black. Hobbes, T. (1985) Leviathan, Macpherson, C.B. (ed.). London: Penguin Books. Hume, D. (1902) Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding, Selby-Bigge, L.A. (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 12 Gandhi translated Plato’s Apology, an account of Socrates defence, into Gujarati and English. Recently, Sorabji (2012), has discussed the influence that Plato and the Stoics had on Gandhi.

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Hume, D. (1947) Of the Original Contract. In Social Contract: Essays by Locke Hume and Rousseau, Barker, E. (Introduction). London: Oxford Unviersity Press. Kant, I. (1933) Critique of Pure Reason, Smith N.K. (trans.). London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. Kant, I. (1970) Perpetual Peace in Kant: Political Writings, Reiss H. (ed.), H.B. Nisbet (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Leibniz, G.W. (1934) Philosophical Writings, Morris, M. (selected and trans.). London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Marx, K. (1974) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Milligan, M. (trans.). Moscow: Progress Publishers. Merton T. (ed.) (1965) Gandhi on Non-Violence. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation. Nozick, R. (1974) Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books. Oakeshott, M. (1962) Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd. Plato (1956) Euthyphro, Apology, Crito. 2nd ed., Church, F.J. (trans.). New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. Inc. Plato (1982) Laws. In Hamilton, E. and Huntington C. (eds), The Collected Dialogues, Taylor, A.E. (trans). Bollingen Series LXXI. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Prabhu, R.K. and Kelekar R. (1961) Truth Called Them Differently. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Rawls, J. (1973) A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford Unviersity Press. Rawls, J. (1993) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Sorabji, R. (2012) Gandhi and the Stoics: Modern Experiments on Ancient Values. Oxford: Oxford Unviersity Press. Uberoi, J.P.S. (1978) Science and Culture. Delhi: Oxford Unviersity Press Uberoi, J.P.S. (2002) The European Modernity: Science, Truth and Method. Delhi: Oxford Unviersity Press. Veblen, T. (1945) An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of its Perpetuation. New York: The Viking Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1980) Culture and Value, Winch, P. (trans.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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Chapter 3

Sovereignty: Individual, Civil Society and the State1 I hope to demonstrate that real Swaraj will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when abused. In other words, Swaraj is to be attained by educating the masses to a sense of their capacity to regulate and control authority. (Gandhi, Young India, 29–1–25)2 There is then a state of enlightened anarchy. In such a state everyone is his own ruler. He rules himself in such a manner that he is never a hindrance to his neighbour. (Gandhi, Young India, 2–7–31)3

The underlying assumption that humans are violent by nature compels postEnlightenment political theory to pose the problem of sovereignty as one of a choice between a condition of anarchy, conflict and chaos (as in the state of nature) and the institution and acknowledgement of the supreme authority of the state within a territory. In this framework, the state is seen, on the one hand, as representative of civil society and on the other, as a necessary instrument to keep society civil, thus not only blurring the fundamental distinction between civil society and the state but also between sovereignty and power. Under the circumstances, it is foreclosed that it is the state that is sovereign not only because civil society legitimizes it to be so but also because it alone is equipped to establish and maintain its sovereignty and power. Thus theories of sovereignty have predominantly been replaced by theories of power, on the one hand, and on the other, the state has come to be seen as the sole claimant to sovereignty, which is then defined without much contestation as ‘Supreme authority within a territory’. This further determines the position of the state vis-à-vis other states as essentially based on a conflict of interest, territorial, economic and political. In this matter, Hobbes confronts the implications of this framework with a clarity and directness that sees it as laying the ground for the unquestioned power of the State. Rousseau and Locke, on the other hand, would like us to believe that the state can ultimately be representative of civil society. It is in this context of the theory and practice of sovereignty in the modern nation-state that Gandhi’s discourse on swaraj intervenes. The thrust of Gandhi’s 1 Parts of the argument in this chapter have appeared in Veeravalli (2011). 2 Gandhi (1957) p. 35. 3 Gandhi (1969) p. 436.

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method is to maintain a clear separation between civil society and the state so that it is possible to affirm the sovereignty of society in opposition to the general presumption that sovereignty can pertain only to the state. For Gandhi, therefore, the problem and experiment with sovereignty is not to seek power or membership of the state but to seek the means to regulate and control the state from any abuse of its authority. In effect, he questions the very theory of representation underlying the constitution of the modern nation-state. ‘Swaraj’ is not, as is generally believed, either a principle that spiritualizes politics by advocating ‘Self’-rule nor is it merely a call for independence from foreign rule. It is a theory of substantive sovereignty of the masses of the nation and of the individual as opposed to the state as sovereign. Gandhi attempts to demonstrate the principles of the sovereignty of the people not only with experiments in civil disobedience or movements in response to specific demands and against unjust laws of the state but, more importantly, through the ‘constructive programme’ for the establishment, reform and rejuvenation of social, economic and political institutions of civil society. This then does not leave the issue of sovereignty only to individual conscience and initiative, such as that of Socrates, but establishes, at the same time, conditions that formulate public opinion and initiate voluntary, collective, civil and non-violent action constituted by a unity of individual consciences, that is, a plurality of sovereignties, rather than a solidarity of interests. Gandhi’s theory of swaraj then presents conditions for the possibility of the sovereignty of civil society as independent of state authority whether native or foreign. It is to this end that social reform, the constructive programme, village swaraj and the panchayat raj were directed. ‘Swadeshi’ which literally means ‘region/territory of the self’, is a necessary and constitutive factor of swaraj. According to Gandhi, it refers to a sacred law of our being which is that ‘A man’s first duty is to his neighbour’. This definition of swadeshi with decisive precision removes any possibility of exclusion of the other, man or nature, at any level, individual, local, national or international. Swadeshi then is not the fetish for indigenization that it is made out to be nor is it parochial, selfish and exploitative. As an economic principle it ‘restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote’ (Gandhi 1962, p. 40). Politically, the concept of the ‘neighbour’ intervenes between self and other, and is determined simultaneously by principles of proximity and distance, and similarity and difference rather than an emphasis on identity, boundaries or territoriality which are so crucial to modern and political theory’s definition of sovereignty. With swaraj and swadeshi therefore, the constitutive principles of the dominant and generally accepted definition of sovereignty: a) the supreme authority of the state; and b) territorial jurisdiction, are both brought into question.

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The Modern Nation State and Civil Society: Conditions for Dissent There are theories of sovereignty in the liberal tradition that argue in favour of, and seek to establish the foundations of the sovereignty of civil society within the nation state. While Hobbes’ theory of human nature and life, that it is ‘solitary, nasty, brutish and short’, for instance, necessitates a strong state and envisages a complete surrender of the right to self-governance of the individual, Rousseau argues that the right to self-governance of the individual and the general will of the people are sacrosanct. However, for Rousseau, the state becomes a necessity to protect the property of individuals and the territorial integrity of the state. Since, in the final analysis both Rousseau and Hobbes concede that the state is representative of the interests of civil society and see it, in its turn, as constitutive of the very legitimacy and authority of the state, they provide no theoretical ground for dissent against the state. Though they appear to differ fundamentally with respect to their theory of human nature, society and the nature of the social contract that establishes the state, both ultimately concede sovereignty to, and hold, the state truly representative of the general will of the people and the best interests of all. Further, the Sovereign, being formed only of the individuals who compose it, neither has, nor can have, any interest contrary to theirs; consequently, the sovereign power need give no guarantee to its subjects, because it is impossible that the body should seek to injure all its members; and we shall see presently that it can do no injury to any individual in particular. The Sovereign, by its nature, is always everything it ought to be. (Rousseau 1947, p. 17)

It appears then that there is not much to choose between Rousseau’s Sovereign and Hobbes’ Leviathan. But the rights, and consequences of Sovereignty, are the same in both. [Sovereignty by dominion, and by institution]. His power cannot, without his consent, be transferred to another: He cannot forfeit it: He cannot be accused by any of his subjects, of injury: He cannot be punished by them: He is judge of what is necessary for peace; and judge of doctrines: He is sole legislator; and supreme judge of controversies; and of the times, and occasions of war and peace … (Hobbes 1985, p. 252)

Both see no contradiction, or even possibility of contradiction, between the state and the people. The state cannot, by definition, injure its people because it represents the true will of the people. Hobbes makes the reciprocal point that the people cannot injure the state nor accuse the state of injuring them because it is supreme judge of all that is good or bad for them. It is their conscience and conscience keeper. This internal contradiction sets the necessary limits of freedom of the modern nation state and democracy.

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More recently, Agamben (2005) presents this as a problem of political theory being unable to provide a theory of the ‘state of exception’. He notes that it has become almost commonplace for states to use a political or juridical impasse to suspend the law and curtail the freedom of the individual/society in case of an emergency or security threat. This exception is explained as founded in a state of necessity, that is, expediencies of a state of siege, or a political emergency. Agamben argues that the reason for the inability to constitute a theory that would explain the juridical status of the state of exception rests precisely in the fact that the state of necessity is itself presumed to be the origin or basis of the law. Thus, limits on the freedom and individual rights of persons are recognized as a necessity since stability is seen as a value in the liberal democratic framework. So, differences must cohere within a common system of values agreed upon by rational members entering into a social contract, or under a given constitutional framework (Rawls 2005). Nozick (1974) goes further, and argues that it would well be within reason to coerce the few who may not consent to the principles of the social contract, to follow the will of the majority. An alternative to the rule of law of the sovereign state has been characterized as an anarchist Utopia whether it is a consequence of the anticipated withering away of the state in Marx or of the minimalist state of the liberals (Nozick). In the case of Marx and Engels, this condition is achieved when human beings are truly emancipated and are no longer alienated from themselves, that is, when they realize their species being which is social and not solitary. The resolution within liberalism is dependent on the role of reason in human knowledge which enables the individual to realize that one person’s freedom cannot interfere with a similar right of another. It is presumed that this understanding would prompt one to a realization that minimal interference from the state is the ideal condition of a free society. Therefore both liberal and Marxist conceptions of Utopia vacillate between the need for a strong state and the possible attainment of a stateless utopia. However, unlike for liberalism, for Marx, the solitariness of the individual human being is a condition of man in a state of alienation, which he can overcome. Liberalism presupposes that society is an artificial construct made up of individuals who are naturally in competition and who therefore seek protection for the rights to life, property and freedom under the social contract. The existence of the state is therefore inevitable and necessary for all times in liberalism while in Marxism, the state is only a passing phase. Ironically then, and contrary to common belief, it is in liberalism that the rational basis and need to limit the rights of individuals and establish the sovereignty of the state, is unquestionable. Public and Private Spheres In collapsing the distinction between society, the citizen, and the state, the individual and all that is private to him within the framework of the modern nation state – ideology, religion and conscience, necessarily represent the dark

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possibilities of the state of nature unless they cohere with, and are subject to, the common set of values that are agreed upon in the social contract. One cannot be sovereign nor have a conscience except one that coincides with citizenship and the state. In this, the state’s definition of its sovereignty colludes with the dogmatic orthodoxy of established religion and they are in crucial instances to be seen in complete conjunction in their disapproval of the voice of conscience, civil society and custom.4 Paradoxically, then, the individual is subject to the state, as citizen, and at the same time is constitutive of its sovereignty. Thus sovereignty, within the framework of the nation state, presupposes not only a state of man’s alienation from himself, his nature, but also that of the collective/civil society from its nature. Some have characterized this as a consequence of a contradiction in modern liberal states that separate the private sphere where individual freedom is guaranteed, from the public sphere, where it is curtailed. It is this division and separation of the private and the public, which is accepted as the norm that, in fact, brings the conditions for dissent under attack in modern times. Note for instance, Kant’s very description of the private use of reason, in his famous essay ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (Kant 1784). He describes the ‘private use’ of reason as ‘that use which a man makes of his reason in a civic post that has been entrusted to him’ which therefore would have to be restricted ‘in the larger interests of the community by the government’. He assures us that this restriction, however, would in no way hinder enlightenment. The public use of reason he defines, on the other hand, as ‘that use which a man, as scholar, makes of it before the reading public’, which must at all times be free to express its views though it may be used only outside of civic office. Thus the divide between private reason and public reason is clearly meant to separate the personal from the political, the expert from the layperson and free scholarly expression of public opinion from actual civil disobedience: The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes levied upon him; indeed, impertinent censure of such taxes could be punished as a scandal that might cause general disobedience. Nevertheless, this man does not violate the duties of a citizen if, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his objections to the impropriety or possible injustice of such levies. (Kant 1784)

Kant then sums up the quality of an enlightened ruler as one who creates conditions in the nation state where he can (fortified by a strong and orderly army) confidently say ‘Argue as much as you like, and about what you like, but obey!’ thus clearly not just setting the limits of reason within the bounds of the state but defining it accordingly! Civil disobedience within this framework is 4 Uberoi (1999): ‘The priest and the prince, whenever they rule together, either through a state-established religion or a religion-established state, are the enemies of civil society, its national autonomy, customs and morality.’

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necessarily criminal. Statutory law recognizes only criminal and civil cases, the former referring to cases involving the state and the individual, and the latter to cases between individuals. Further, there is a persistent effort to bring civil law under the purview of criminal law in consonance with the need to collapse the distinction between civil society and the state. Common law as a vestige of preEnlightenment systems of justice and governance is the last bastion of a civil society that is not identified with the state.5 Gandhi argues on the other hand, that civil disobedience against the state is a civil, not a criminal matter. There can be no separation of private and public in matters pertaining to civil society. The issue could either be personal (concerning oneself) or political (concerning others). The dualism of private and public, individual and citizen and nature and culture do not hold, neither does a theory of representation, in the ultimate analysis, describe the state in relation to civil society. He overturns the classification of law in the modern nation state which holds that any act of disobedience against the state is criminal and which in Kant’s view amounts to a wrongful use of private reason in the public sphere: ‘Civil Disobedience is civil (emphasis mine) breach of unmoral statutory enactments’ (Gandhi 1969, p. 181). Some have argued that it is indeed the dualism of individual and collective, private and public spheres, and the secular and the religious that Gandhi mediates (Nandy 2000). Pantham (1983), in an illuminating essay on Gandhi’s contribution to political theory, argues that his concept of satyagraha is a response to the problematic of liberal democracy that presupposes a dualism of individual liberty and social harmony. He sees Gandhi’s swaraj therefore as an experiment in the mediation of the public and the private spheres and participatory democracy. However, as we have seen Kant clearly lays down the limits of ‘participation’ with respect to the private and the public spheres; the two can appear to be mediated but only by congruence with each other. Therefore it is crucial for Gandhi to reject this classification in terms of private and public or individual and citizen. Satyagraha may be offered for personal or political reasons in the cause of truth and both have a public role and aspect to them. The rejection of the private-public classification establishes the possibility of the office of the ‘private citizen’ removing any barrier to opposing injustice by any member of civil society. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on oneself.

5 The PIL (Public Interest Litigation) can be seen modern India’s unique contribution in the attempt to break the overlap of state and civil society in the modern nation state. In 1980, after a period of national emergency, the Indian judiciary put this law in place, by which the judiciary or any individual (not necessarily being an affected party) can initiate litigation against the state/government in the public interest.

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But in the political field the struggle on behalf of the people mostly consists in opposing error in the shape of unjust laws. When you have failed to bring the error home to the lawgiver by way of petitions and the like, the only remedy open to you, if you do not wish to submit to error, is to compel him by physical force or by suffering in your own person by inviting the penalty for the breach of the law. Hence Satyagraha largely appears to the public as Civil Disobedience or Civil Resistance. It is civil in the sense that it is not criminal. (Gandhi 1969, p. 179)

This, latter understanding of sovereignty is not restricted merely to the purpose of dissent against unjust authority but includes self-reform and affirmation of civil society, which determines its relation internally with respect to the nation and its members, and externally, with respect to other states. Self Government means, continuous effort to be independent of government control, whether it is foreign government or whether it is national. Swaraj government will be a sorry affair if people look up to it for the regulation of every detail of life. (Young India, 6–8–25 p. 276 from Gandhi 1957, p. 35)

In contrast to the approach of post-Enlightenment political theory, Gandhi’s formulation is based entirely on the principle of the non-violent control and regulation of state authority by civil society asserting its supremacy over the state in questions concerning the principles that govern law, order and justice. He rejects the presupposition that the existence and survival of civil society is fundamentally premised on the sovereignty of the state or on a ‘state of necessity’. Rather, the ability to resist unjust state authority individually, or collectively, is a measure of the success of self-governance, true freedom and civil society. Therefore, for Gandhi the problem of sovereignty in the modern nation state is one of putting in place institutions that awaken ‘the masses to a sense of their capacity to regulate and control authority’. In other words, to provide space for dissent in the face of the abuse of authority rather than to advocate subjection to it is the principle that determines the relation between the individual and the state. It therefore intrinsically rejects any interpretation of sovereignty in terms of a theory of power or the capacity for enforcement. Internal and External Sovereignty: A Theory of Neighbour-hood6 (swadeshi) This understanding of sovereignty within the modern nation state, in conjunction with the condition of territoriality, separates one nation-state from another. Each with its secure territorial boundaries is an independent sovereignty, with 6 The term neighbour-hood (with a hyphen) has been adopted here to indicate it is being used in the same sense as brotherhood and does not merely indicate a place nearby.

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independent aspirations of freedom, and armies to protect these boundaries from the other. Thus each state takes on the nature of an individual, and the conditions of individuals in the state of nature are replayed with respect to the relations between nation-states until another contract comes into being in the creation of a system of sovereign states. The world wars witnessed in the past century reenacted the possibilities of the state of nature on the international stage. The UN and its council would have to follow the trajectory of the limits of sovereignty between state and society that we have discussed above: The state and its methods of law and order would prevail over that of civil society. The territoriality condition of sovereignty presupposes that the jurisdiction of a state and nation overlap, just as it presupposes that the person and citizen and civil society and the state, are co-extensive. That this understanding has always been contested is seen from the fact that border disputes abound in the world, where ethnic communities contest existing territorial boundaries of the state, and its sovereignty. Similarly the concept of the individual is internally in contradiction with citizenship. The increasing call for identification of national, cultural and religious identity with territory, and Gandhi’s response to this issue, will be discussed in the next chapter. The shift of emphasis from a theory of sovereignty of the state to a theory of sovereignty of civil society is seen in his insistence on self reform. It was his view that freedom from British rule could wait but not self-reform because the one without the other would merely mean that India had replaced the white sahib with the brown sahib. In other words, without self-reform there can be no swaraj. Thus it was Gandhi’s view that the three pillars of India’s freedom, and its strength for civil disobedience would come from self-reform with respect to the custom of untouchability, Hindu–Muslim relations, and khadi, a symbol of a non-violent, self-sufficient political economy. In spite of fears amongst other national leaders that this would make the Indian movement appear disunited, which it indeed did, Gandhi was resolute in his insistence that the programmes for reconciliation and reform of Indian society could not be put off even for a day. Nor could questions of national sanitation and hygiene, involving the maintenance of clean roads and environment be postponed.7 Acquisition and control of territory as a necessary element for determining sovereignty in the nation state is based on a principle of violence and exploitation of man and nature. With the introduction of the concept of the neighbour, Gandhi draws attention to the relation of interdependence, which is necessary if independence is based on a principle of non-violence – guided by a spirit of service to the other rather than of power and exploitation or servitude towards the other. Neither can patriotism be exclusive nor internationalism be achieved without 7 ‘I venture to submit that conservation of national sanitation is Swaraj work and may not be postponed for a single day on any consideration whatsoever. Indeed if Swaraj is to be had by peaceful methods it will only be attained by attention to every little detail of national life’ (Young India, 25 April 1929, from Gandhi 1967a, p. 33).

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nationalism. ‘Neighbour-hood’, whether involving individuals, communities or nations, requires that those involved must be independent and equal: ‘Our nationalism can be no peril to other nations, inasmuch as we will exploit none just as we will allow none to exploit us. Through Swaraj we would serve the whole world’ (Gandhi 1969, p. 247). Thus, he envisaged a state without an army or with a non-violent army like the one that had led the Dandi march. He raised the issue at the 1938 Congress working committee meeting at Delhi wanting them to declare that Free India would remain completely non-violent with respect both to internal and external affairs and not maintain an army. As has been discussed in the Introduction, Gandhi’s ultimate withdrawal from the leadership of the Congress in 1942 was due to their inability to come to an agreement on non-violence as a political method rather than a strategy adopted for gaining independence. The theory of sovereignty proposed by Gandhi is based on three presuppositions fundamentally different from the accepted definitions of sovereignty in the modern nation-state: (1) The necessary differentiation and separation of civil society from the state, in their origin and constitution; 2) The possibility of self-reform, rather than control over, or freedom from the other as a necessary condition of sovereignty. It is this that would bring about dependence and interdependence in right measure centred in notions of self-respect, conscience and bread labour; (3) Neighbour-hood rather than territoriality as that which defines the relation/frontier8 between different nations, and of self and other. Territory here is neither an object of control, nor of acquisition or exploitation but is based on the presupposition that the good of a country rests in the good of its neighbour. Satyagraha in Practice 1. Civil Disobedience: The Salt Satyagraha Satyagraha was Gandhi’s answer to the question as to what army would defend the sovereignty of civil society based on principles constitutive of civil society such as individual conscience, individual sovereignty and a plurality of sovereignties. The logic of the law of conscience, the sovereignty of the individual and civil society came to Gandhi almost by instinct. It is a necessary corollary of the concept of conscience that one may not ‘enforce’ it on another; each must see the truth as he perceives it. One may only try and persuade another by non-violent means which, according to Gandhi meant self-suffering as opposed to inflicting pain on another. While the world has known examples of an individual’s martyrdom in the face of the unjust power of the state and of established religion, Gandhi’s 8 The fundamental difference between a frontier and a boundary is explored in Chapter 4.

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innovation lay in seeing the form it could take in mass dissent, or civil disobedience. He had, of course, read Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience and made its truth his own. Gandhi’s Dandi march was a protest against the imposition of salt tax and laws by the British government banning common people from making salt from the sea. It would also demonstrate that a law of the state can have no power without due obedience from those on whom it was imposed. The protest involved a ‘non-violent army in the cause of truth’ marching to the sea to break the law and gather salt while accepting the blows of the lathi (staff) as well as imprisonment peacefully, without retaliation. This effectively took account of Thoreau’s criticism of the nature of the standing army of a standing government which was a feature of the modern nation state and which Kant had felt is essential, and to an enlightened one at that. Thoreau points out how the army is a sign of the numbing of the human conscience rather than of good citizenship and patriotism: A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, aye, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now what are they? Men at all? (Thoreau 1993, p. 2)

On 2 March 1930, as a corollary to the call for Poorna swaraj (complete swaraj), Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, informing him of the march that they had planned, to break the salt law. In the same letter, he listed 11 demands including the demand for reduction in Land revenue, the need to introduce taxation on imported goods, and the retraction of the tax on salt. He offered to call off the march if the demands were met. Irwin did not relent and in his report to London merely remarked that the he would lose no sleep over the prospect of a salt campaign! Gandhi’s fellow Congressmen were no less sceptical. Gandhi’s reasons for picking on the Salt law and taxation were simple as they were incisive: ‘Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life’ (Young India 27–2–1930 from CW 48: 366). Salt cut across all divisions – of rich and poor, Hindu and Muslim, North and South and rural and urban, as a common need with respect to which all were equal.9 There would and could be no division of rank and file amongst those who marched to the sea to make salt. There was no standing army to counter the forces of the state. Gandhi chose a small band of men and women volunteers from amongst his Ashram inmates who had been engaged in experiments with Truth and non-violence as part of the daily discipline of the Ashram, to march with him. On 12 March 1930, Gandhi 9 The tax was particularly harsh on the poor as it amounted to 2400% on the sale price!

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commenced his march from the Sabarmati Ashram along with a few chosen inmates. Volunteers were sent ahead to the villages that they would pass through to make arrangements for food, water and rest, and an opportunity for Gandhi to talk to the people in each village. They walked for 24 days and covered 340 miles before they reached the sea at Dandi, and many joined the march as they moved from village to village. An estimated 70,000 people had responded to Gandhi’s ‘call to arms’ (that would make salt!) by the time they reached the shores of Dandi. Gandhi gathered a fistful of salty soil from the sea at 6.30am on 6 April 1930 and made salt from it by boiling it in sea water. He called on the people to likewise make illegal salt from the sea wherever convenient, and only as much salt as was necessary. Thousands across the country made and sold illegal salt. Unlike the modern army formed by compulsory conscription, the civil dissenters joined forces in an informed and voluntary act of individual conscience and civil awareness. The British had been caught unawares by the potency of the Dandi march and had therefore offered no resistance to the motley band of non-violent soldiers of truth (satyagrahis) that grew in numbers as voluntary non-violent soldiers joined them on their way to Dandi. Continuing the civil disobedience with respect to the salt laws, Gandhi wrote again to the Viceroy on 2 May 1930 informing him of his intention to lead a non-violent raid of the Dharasana salt factory on 21 May. This time the British were prepared to subdue civil disobedience. Gandhi was arrested immediately and forces were sent to prevent satyagrahis from raiding the salt factory. Others from the Congress took charge and lead the raid of the Dharasana salt works. This was the ultimate test for a non-violent army. Webb Miller of the United Press who witnessed the events that followed on that fateful but victorious day reported the following: Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of watchers groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain at every blow. Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on until struck down. When every one of the first column was knocked down stretcher bearers rushed up unmolested by the police and carried off the injured to a thatched hut which had been arranged as a temporary hospital. There were not enough stretcher-bearers to carry off the wounded; I saw eighteen injured being carried off simultaneously, while forty-two still lay bleeding on the ground awaiting stretcher-bearers. The blankets used as stretchers were sodden with blood. At times the spectacle of unresisting men being methodically bashed into a bloody pulp sickened me so much I had to turn away … I felt an indefinable sense of helpless rage and loathing, almost as much against the men

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Gandhi had put a non-violent army of civil dissenters against the standing army of the state. One may ask, with Thoreau, ‘who, amongst them, would we call men?’ This question no longer remained a hypothetical one and the possibilities of civilian dissent were there for the whole world to see. The use of violence or terrorism is the other response to the question of conscience vs. the power of the State. The argument of the man of conscience is however, quite unlike that of the terrorist. Terrorism challenges both the principles of sovereignty of the state as well as that of political obligation. It does so however, within the logic and dynamics of the very framework of the nation state that it is fighting. It chooses to beat power with power, violence with violence, injustice with injustice, measure for measure, thus, in effect, mirroring the methods of the state rather than countering it. 2. Experiments in Pluralism: Equality and Difference Self-reform and conflict resolutions in society involved the establishing of new institutions and renewal and reform of existing institutions relevant to the issue at hand, creating modes of reconciliation and rejuvenation within civil society rather than a dependence on state policy and legislation. These experiments bring together, in crucial ways, the questions which have engaged social and political thought regarding issues of equality and difference with respect to the relation between the classes, castes, religious and ethnic communities and nations. Gandhi’s experiments with pluralism demonstrate the fundamental difference in method between experiments with power and experiments with Truth and the fact that the choice that one makes is of civilizational proportions – a matter of the presuppositions of peace vs. presuppositions of war. Post-Enlightenment political theory has dealt with pluralism as a problem of dealing with violence towards difference or the other, which is resolved through a politics of recognition that balances freedom and stability. Though avowedly professing the separation of the secular and the religious, upholding individualism and democracy against custom/tradition and totalitarian government the methods of classification and social organization of post-Enlightenment thought have failed to provide a theory of pluralism or in other words, conditions for the possibility of

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unity in plurality or plurality in unity.10 Its approach is one that leans heavily on universalism and the institutions of the state and its mechanisms to determine and appreciate difference and define pluralism. For instance, Connolly’s contribution to the discussion of pluralism has been hailed as ‘innovative’ and ‘new’. However, he too envisages a pluralism that is bound within these limits of the state and the citizen’s role in it. In an interview with Morton Schoolman and David Campbell, he sums up his overall position on pluralism thus: In one direction it involves citizens’ participation in shaping policies that govern them, accepting a presumptive responsibility to obey them. In the other, it involves the periodic politics of agitation, protest and new experiments by which hidden injuries in established norms, laws and practices are exposed, contested and sometimes changed. Democracy, to me, consists in the torsion between these two dimensions. This puts me at odds with the communitarian and individualist traditions. And it binds democracy and pluralism close together. (Campbell and Schoolman 2008, p. 314)

It is clear from Connolly’s own conclusion that he sees the implications of this understanding of pluralism as being ‘at odds with individualist and communitarian traditions’, which are constitutive elements of civil society as opposed to that of the state. 2.1 The Hindu–Muslim Problem Gandhi’s approach to the problem of difference on the other hand depended on reform and establishment of institutions of civil society. The case of the Hindu–Muslim conflict and his choice of Hindustani as the national language for India is significant here. Hindustani was the vernacular, arising from the dialectic of Urdu and Sanskrit (or Urduized Hindi and Sankritized Hindi) in the simple and spontaneous currency of spoken language of Hindus and Muslims. In 1942 Gandhiji along with other members including Shri Rajendra Prasad drew up the draft constitution of the Hindustani Prachar Sabha. It was to have a different focus and agenda from the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan (Hindi Literary Conference), which was involved with the propagation of sanskritized Hindi. The objective of the Hindustani Prachar Sabha, on the other hand, was to persuade people of the North and the South to use Hindustani as a national language, ‘as the medium of contact and intercourse between the various provinces with different provincial languages, which may come to be used throughout India for social, political, administrative and such other purposes of the nation’. This move emphasized the fact that it was not the Hindi vs. Urdu debate that was crucial but the Hindustani vs. English opposition that was crucial in deciding what the national language of India should come to be. It sent a message to the orthodoxy of both Hindus and Muslims who made a fetish about what they thought was ‘pure’ or ‘cultured’ Hindi. It made it 10 See Baghramian and Ingram (2000).

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easier for the non-Hindi speaking states to accept and learn a national language establishing a vernacular rather than the classical Sanskrit or English that would take its place as the language that spelt India’s unity. This involved a conscious break with Hindi Sahitya Sammelan of which Gandhi had been a member of since 1918. It had favoured sanskritized Hindi, the language of Brahminical Hinduism of Northern India as the national language; Gandhi however did persuade Purshottamdas Tandon and other members of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan to pass a resolution that they held Urdu, which represented the Arabic-Persian-Islamic influence, to be a form of Hindi, and that they were not against Urdu. The significant point here is that the solution does not lie in constitutional changes to be enforced by the state, of the like of a uniform civil code, or on the other hand, of legislation on religious freedom! It lay in strengthening the sign of the actual and possible dialect of communication of the people of both communities. Besides, for those trained in the discipline of philosophy, the positivist tradition brings home the difficulties of representing the ontological reality of general or abstract terms such as ‘society’, and therefore of the truth of their existence. Gandhi, a natural, with fundamental puzzles such as these, with brilliant simplicity and clarity proposes a vernacular language as the reality and truth of society, and the proof of its unity in variety, and change and evolution constituted by the dialectics of difference, contradiction and complementarity. Gandhi described the Partition, when first proposed by the Muslim League, as vivisection. For him, Hindu and Muslim communities constituted one living body, a common civilization, and communities who had worked for centuries to strengthen the bonds of unity between them, something that could not be defined by geographical boundaries. He made anguished and persistent pleas to the Muslim League and its leaders, as much as he pleaded of the leaders of the Indian National Congress, to consider whether they actually had the support of the Muslims of India in believing that there was nothing common between the two communities, their religion, language or customs. He was clear that the demand for partition on religious grounds was an untruth. It went against the grain of any religion: ‘Religion binds man to God and man to man. Does Islam bind Muslim only to a Muslim and antagonize the Hindu? Was the message of the Prophet peace only for and between Muslims and war against Hindus or nonMuslims?’ (Gandhi 1963 p. 294). In the event that the people actually felt the truth of the separate destinies of the nations, Gandhi was willing to go along with their wishes but not with the British as arbiters. He felt that India must gain peace and freedom from British rule, as one nation, and only then must the Hindus and Muslims decide to part. The Hindus and Muslims of India would then be able to decide their destinies in keeping with a principle of swaraj, without interference from the State and its theory of sovereignty. However, the irony of the demand on non-religious grounds, that is on political grounds of forming a nation-state on the presuppositions of postEnlightenment conceptions of sovereignty, was not lost on Gandhi:

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“Pakistan” according to him [Jinnah]11 “in a nutshell, is a demand for carving out of India a portion to be wholly treated as an independent and sovereign State”. This sovereign state can conceivably go to war against the one of which it was but yesterday a part. It can also equally conceivably make treaties with other States. All this can certainly be had, but surely not by the willing consent of the rest. (Gandhi 1963, p. 305)

2.2 The Problem of Untouchability With India’s freedom in sight, the other issue along with the Hindu–Muslim problem that remained unaffected and unresolved by Gandhi’s experiments with Truth was untouchability. The preparation of the draft constitution in anticipation of India’s freedom had thrown up the demand from Ambedkar, a leader of the Dalits, for separate electorates for them. Gandhi responded to Ambedkar’s call for separate electorates with a sense of foreboding. If Partition signalled the vivisection of India then separate electorates for the untouchables and scheduled castes signalled the vivisection of Hinduism. It would foreclose any possibility of reconciliation between the upper and depressed castes, and any room for atonement for the wrongs committed by the upper caste Hindus, only succeeding in perpetuating the caste divide by the creation of political factions along these lines in the modern Indian nation state. The crises of Hindu–Muslim unity and that of the upper and depressed caste Hindus represented then the two great challenges to the body politic as they did to Gandhi’s belief in the power of truth and non-violence and to his faith in the unity of means and ends. Neither the formation of two separate states for Hindus and Muslims, nor statutory arrangements to affirm equality for the untouchables and remove untouchability in the Hindu community or society at large were founded in presuppositions of peace or pluralism. It was dependent on state power rather than reform or a transformation of the minds of those involved whether of the touchables or the untouchables. If the vivisection of India and the resultant mutual self-destruction of Hindus and Muslims called for the supreme sacrifice of Gandhi’s life then so did the vivisection of Hinduism. Gandhi went on a fast unto death to protest against the provision of separate electorates for the depressed classes granted by Ramsay MacDonald in response to Ambedkar’s plea for political power for the depressed classes during the constitutional reform debates at the first and second Round Table conferences held in England. Treating the depressed castes of Hindus as any 11 Muhammad Ali Jinnah, originally member of the Indian National Congress during the struggle for freedom from British rule, broke away from it when he saw that freedom was in sight, to put forward the demand for a new and independent state for the Muslims of India. He succeeded in persuading the British to partition India and became the founding father, and first President of Pakistan, established on the eve of India’s freedom from British rule.

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other minority and granting separate electorates would once and for all divide the Hindus without hope of reconciliation. Each of these problems raises the question of equality and difference in a polity. It is however important to understand Gandhi’s position regarding the depressed classes and untouchability from the point of view of his method from Truth in opposition to the method from power that Ambedkar adopted. Firstly, Gandhi held that the caste system based on hierarchy was a custom of unknown origin that had nothing to do with religion. As we will see in the chapter on political economy, the caste system that did not presuppose hierarchy was in fact, Gandhi argued, a system of division of labour and social organization which had its basis in an immutable law of nature. Untouchability, however, was an excrescence of Hinduism and Gandhi recognized that this was a religious matter. It was this that Hindus needed to correct and atone for if Hinduism and civil society had to survive. They could not afford to put off the question till India attained freedom, since without the removal of untouchability there could be no freedom, no swaraj, in the sense that Gandhi understood it, based on complete non-violence and truth. Thus political expediency could not be subservient to social and religious reform. It is necessary to bear in mind that the question of removal of untouchability, though it has a political significance of the greatest importance, is essentially and predominantly a religious question to be solved by the Hindus and as such for them it overshadows even the political aspect. That is to say, the duty of touchables in respect of removal of untouchability can never be subordinated to any political exigencies, hence the present political situation must not in any way be allowed to postpone the endeavour to end untouchability. (Young India 14–1–1932 from CW 54: 213)

Ambedkar was unwilling to consider Gandhi’s arguments from the point of view of their theoretical foundations and was satisfied for the most with questioning Gandhi’s integrity rather than his method. It would seem that this disregard for method and theory was almost tactical on Ambedkar’s part because he minced no words when it came to articulating his own. He repeatedly insisted that the salvation of the depressed classes lay in gaining political power for them. In his view, both the caste system and untouchability could not be separated from Hinduism and the solution lay in breaking away from the Hindu community and ultimately the religion: … As far as we are concerned we have no immediate concern other than securing political power … and that alone is the solution of our problem … We want our social status raised in the eyes of the savarna Hindus. There is another point of view also. The object of this effort could be that you want the depressed classes to be retained in the Hindu religion, in which case I am inclined to believe that it is not sufficient in the present awakened state of the depressed classes … If I

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call myself a Hindu I am obliged to accept that by birth I belong to a low caste. Hence I think I must ask the Hindus to show me some sacred authority, which would rule out this feeling of lowliness. If it cannot be I should say goodbye to Hinduism … I am not going to be satisfied with measures, which would merely bring some relief … I don’t want to be crushed by your charity. (Mahadevbhaini Diary, Vol. III, pp. 117–22 from CW 59: Appendix X)

Gandhi acknowledged that the depressed classes should not need to depend on upper class largesse but he felt that the reformers should take the lead, especially those from the upper castes. However, what is fundamental to Gandhi’s position on reform is its basis in civil society rather than in legal affirmation and empowerment and enforcement by the state through the granting of rights to the depressed classes. His emphasis on the initiative of the touchables in the creation of public opinion and in leading the movement against untouchability relies on a change of heart in society. In my opinion, untouchables should not alone offer satyagraha. It should be led by touchable reformers. This is a matter of expedience. There may come a time when untouchables may offer satyagraha by them-selves. The idea behind the opinion here expressed is that public opinion amongst touchable Hindus should be sufficiently alive and active before satyagraha is taken up at all. It is a weapon whose use depends for success upon the gathering of public opinion. Therefore, its use is invariably preceded by all the known orthodox remedies. (Young India 14–1–1932 from CW 54: 213)

Therefore, he was against a legal and constitutional enforcement of separate electorates and rights of the untouchables. It would divide Hindus into two communities; it would neither bring home to the Hindus the great shame of the practice of untouchability, nor remove the perpetuation of untouchables as a separate class. This was a matter internal to Hinduism. Unless it took account of untouchability and performed penance for the ills of untouchability, it would have no swaraj. This was, therefore, a matter for self-reform and to be dealt with by a committee of Hindu reformers, and not a matter for the state. In fact, separate electorates would make the label and class of untouchables a permanent fixture: Let this Committee and let the whole world know that today there is a body of Hindu reformers who are pledged to remove this blot of untouchability. We do not want on our register and on our census untouchables classified as a separate class. Sikhs may remain as such in perpetuity, so may Muslims, so may Europeans. Will untouchables remain untouchables in perpetuity? I would prefer rather that Hinduism died than that untouchability lived. (From Gandhi’s speech at the last meeting of the Minorities Committee, at the Round Table Conference in London, 1931 taken from Gandhi (1967b) p. 315.)

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The distinction between sovereignty and power, a frontier or a medium of communication and a territorial boundary, whether national, religious or linguistic, is fundamental to Gandhi. Sovereignty is not a matter of power over another but of bearing witness to the dialectic of self and other; a frontier is not a boundary between territories but a point of their meeting, and a condition for possible dialogue. Thus independence did not mean isolation or vivisection, as he would put it, but a relation of mutual, non-exploitative interdependence. Institutions of Non-Violent Democracy: Ram Raj and Panchayat Raj If the problematic of the presuppositions of peace involves the evolution of institutions and methods that enable experiments in the truth of non-violence as an attribute of society and not merely of individuals, the problematic of sovereignty for Gandhi is to establish each individual as sovereign, so that it is a plurality of sovereignties, and not their solidarity, that forms the substance of civil society. Plurality presupposes unity in difference, and therefore the possibility of the uniqueness of each individual’s voice of conscience being heard in constituting the unity. Solidarity, in contrast, presupposes erasure of difference in the uniform pursuit of a common cause or goal, or alternatively, the positing of a universal criterion such as, for instance, a condition of rationality that determines the justness or acceptability of different goals. Solidarity is founded in the principles of power and conformity rather than truth. It depends on congruence rather than conscience and therefore necessarily presupposes enforcement while the latter necessarily disallows it. Therefore in envisaging the possibility of a plurality of sovereignties, alone, can the sovereignty of civil society be constituted independently of the state, and be in fundamental opposition to it. Some have argued that for Gandhi the form that non-violence took was dialogue which further laid the ground for democracy (Hardiman 2003). One may say, however, that it is, necessarily, not a democracy built on liberal principles of free representation and majority will that Gandhi was proposing; rather, it is a democracy based on the rule of conscience, and the plurality of sovereignties, even if it is from a position of weakness, or a view held by a few. Thus not only is non-violence a necessary condition for Gandhi’s democracy, its foundation rests on the possibility of even the lone voice of conscience being representative of the good of all rather than on representative government: A votary of Ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the greatest good of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest good of all and die in the attempt to realize the ideal. He will, therefore, be willing to die, so that others may live. He will serve himself with the rest, by himself dying. The greatest good of all inevitably includes the good of the greatest number, and therefore, he and the utilitarian will converge in many points in their career, but there does come a time when they must part company, and even work in

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opposite directions. The utilitarian, to be logical will never sacrifice himself. The absolutist will even sacrifice himself. (Young India, 9–12–1926, p. 432 from Gandhi 1966, p. 90)

In other words, in this alternate democracy, institutions of non-violence and selfreform, and not of ‘justice and order’, form the structure and problematic of a state. Citizenship is then not defined merely by the terms of obedience to the law and allegiance to the state, rather, it is based necessarily on the principle of non-violent and conscientious opposition to it. The satyagrahi (the wielder of truth force) is conceived as a foot-soldier of non-violent opposition to all aggression or use of power, internal or external, in the cause of the vindication of truth or justice. He is neither blindly subject to the law of the state, nor party to its executive powers, as member of the state, as the individual citizen is in the modern nation state. This means that each individual is the final unit of swaraj/sovereignty. By the logic of sovereignty in terms of swaraj or the sovereignty of civil society, neither the institutions of parliamentary democracy or rule by the majority community of Hindus could be commissioned for the working of non-violent democracy. Neither the secularist, liberal point of view of the leaders of the Indian National Congress nor the fundamentalist view of the Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha could provide the foundations of India’s sovereignty. Unlike Marx who visualized a strong state that ‘withered away’ when the people overcame their alienation from themselves, Gandhi’s democracy had to be visualized as a work in progress, an on-going experiment in non-violent governance ever approaching an ideal of ‘enlightened anarchy’. By political independence I do not mean an imitation of the British House of Commons or the Soviet rule of Russia or the Fascist rule of Italy, or the Nazi rule of Germany. They have systems suited to their genius. We must have ours suited to ours. What that can be is more than I can tell. I have described it as Ramaraj, i.e., sovereignty of the people based on pure moral authority. (Harijan, 2–1–1937 p. 374, Gandhi 1969, p. 444)

The principle of non-violent democracy requires that the voice of conscience of the weakest can be heard, and that each one speaks taking cognizance of an equal right of the other to voice his/her conscience. The state is in its turn duty bound to take cognizance of the voice of conscience of the weakest and the poorest even if they were in an absolute minority. Gandhi argued it was possible that just as each state, England, Germany, Russia, and so on, had systems that suited their genius, India must forge one that suited hers. ‘Conscience’ is a term whose ontological and epistemological moorings have been lost under the post-Enlightenment regime of the dualism of mind and the world which permits logically only of the possibility of the exclusive alternatives of consciousness and the external world, the universalism of idealism and the anarchy/freewill of relativism, of private reason and public reason. Therefore

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attempts to understand ‘conscience’ characterize it as a moral sense arising either from the appetites, for example, approval or repugnance (Shaftesbury 1699 and Hutcheson 1725 quoted in Baylis 1967), or from reason/understanding that helps distinguish right from wrong (Clarke 1706 and Price 1758 quoted in Baylis 1967). Objectively, that is, when it is spoken of more specifically as the ‘voice’ of conscience, it is seen to be guided either by the authority of custom, established religion, or the state, which operate on a principle of universality of ethical principles (as in the case of Kant’s Categorical Imperative) which may be enforced where they are found lacking. In so far as the voice of conscience is a matter of a person being ‘called’, it is an act of free will to bear witness to the Truth, whatever the price, or sacrifice, in the service of Truth, and in doing so, of the other. Further, it necessarily implies the use of non-violent means in thought word and deed, both in offering resistance to wrong doing, as well as in invoking reconciliation through self-suffering and love of the other. It precludes by definition, any use of force, and any imposition of one’s conscience on another. The very nature of conscience is constituted therefore in the non-dualism of self and other and this is the basis of its objectivity. In the history of civilizations, it is the discourse of the community of saints and martyrs that has constituted the genealogy of witnesses to the call of conscience. Gandhi’s attempt through swaraj and swadeshi is to make the social and political experiment in the affirmation of conscience possible. The Rama (King Rama of the epic Ramayana), that Gandhi so revered, symbolized the possibility of the rule of Rama/conscience (Ram Raj) even when in exile, without territory, and out of power. It is not the appropriation or renunciation of territory, but sustaining the separation of, and dialectic between the state and civil society even while remaining in exile from the seat of power that presents the true test of sovereignty. It becomes quite clear then why Gandhi was of the view that the Congress must be dissolved on the eve of independence. It had come into existence for the specific purpose of achieving freedom from British rule. Since its purpose had been served, Gandhi argued that it must be dissolved and Congressmen must in their independent capacities, not as party-men, continue to serve the people and represent their voice, if the people so deem fit, in the opposition benches. The logic of his understanding of sovereignty told him that the Congress’s rightful role would be as the opposition rather than as ruling party – a party in exile from the seat of power. In fact, there would be no ‘party’ in opposition, but only independent community workers whom the people knew from their work in the community, and who therefore truly represented them in parliament. Only then would the separation between civil society and the state, their method and goal be clear and distinct. Only then would it be possible to govern without the power of the state. The alternative to a powerful state would not be anarchy, as is believed within a liberal democratic framework:

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Under a Free Government, the real power will be held by the people … The mightiest Government will be rendered absolutely impotent if the people realizing power use it in a disciplined manner and for the common good … It must be remembered that only an infinitesimal proportion of the people can hold positions of responsibility and power in a country’s government. Experience all the world over shows that the real power and wealth are possessed by people outside the group that holds the rein of Government. (Young India 24–4–1930 from Gandhi 1969, p. 457)

This would enable the realization of the kingdom of God within and on earth. Thus at the core of Gandhi’s democracy is the individual man of conscience who is free from fear of death and want of power and therefore sovereign. However, unlike the individualism of liberal theory centred on the principle of selfpreservation, or the socialism of Marxism that focuses on the species being of the individual, Gandhi’s individual lives for the service of society, and therefore will sacrifice himself for the other, whether God, man, or nature. Under the circumstances he could be subject and citizen and yet not be bound to obey the state in the face of an unjust law. He is sovereign, and not the state: I cannot pretend to speak for Tolstoy, but my reading of his works has never led me to consider that, in spite of his merciless analysis of institutions organized and based upon force, that is governments, he in any way anticipates or contemplates that the whole world will be able to live in a state of philosophical anarchy. What he has preached, as, in my opinion, have all world teachers, is that every man has to obey the voice of his own conscience, and be his own master, and seek the Kingdom of God from within. For him there is no government that can control him without his sanction. Such a man is superior to all government. (Indian Opinion, 21–5–1910 from Gandhi 1969, p. 438)

If Ram Raj is the core of non-violent democracy, the principle and means of realization of this goal is decentralization and public opinion. ‘Rama’ stands, on the one hand, for each person’s conscience and, on the other, for public opinion. Gandhi sought to establish this through a rejuvenation of the institution of Panchayat Raj which meant the establishment of village republics, independent and self-sustaining in a relation of interdependence with other village republics and extending in concentric circles to the world based on the principle of neighbourhood/swadeshi. The establishment of the institution of Panchayat Raj in the villages of India was a necessary foundation to establish the sovereignty of civil society and the condition for the possibility of the voice of the weakest in the land, not only to be heard, but also to constitute their sovereignty against an unjust state through nonviolent civil disobedience. ‘Independence must begin at the bottom.’ Panchayat Raj would involve a community based village republic governed by an assembly of five elected members from within each village, whose authority was moral rather

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than political or legal. This alone would provide the ground for sovereignty of the individual. Each village, in its turn, would be self-sustaining and its sovereignty vis-à-vis the state and the world outside would be complete. This would form the basis of real independence of the people, of civil society. Gandhi saw that in the success of village self-rule lay the ultimate sovereignty of the individual and the people of a nation, since it is here that the individual could be ‘architect of his own government’. The law of non-violence that bound him and his government would preclude the threat of anarchy and yet would be powerful enough to ‘defy the might of the world’ (see Gandhi 1959, p. 8 and p. 12). Modern policy makers have characterized this as a scheme for decentralization. In Gandhian terms, however, it is not a matter of a distribution of power, or delegation of responsibilities supervised by the central agency of government. It envisages institutions of government and political economy that will give ear to the weakest and loneliest voice, and is founded in the recognition that ‘Centralization as a system is inconsistent with non-violent structure of society’ (Harijan, 18–1–1942, p. 5 from Gandhi 1969, p. 449). It defies the coercive majoritarianism of today’s parliamentary democracies as much as it does the coercion of a ‘bureaucratic minority’.12 The principle is clear: ‘In matters of conscience the law of majority has no place’ (Young India, 4–8–1920, Gandhi 1969, p. 462). As we have said before, some have seen this emphasis on village swaraj as Gandhi’s romantic image of village or an Arcadian life. Gandhi had no illusions about the Indian village. They had been reduced to dung heaps or perhaps had always been like that. There was strife and poverty, petty rivalries and shabby life with basic necessities of health, hygiene and education not provided for. However, the significant contribution here is Gandhi’s insistence that the foundation of swaraj/sovereignty both of the individual and of civil society depended on village swaraj. This insight demonstrates the immense depth of Gandhi’s grasp not merely of the concept of rural-mindedness, as we have discussed earlier, but also of the changing role and condition of the village in the history of post-Enlightenment political economy and the growth of industrialization and of the power of the modern nation state. I regard the growth of cities as an evil thing, unfortunate for mankind and the world, unfortunate for England and certainly unfortunate for India. The British have exploited India through its cities. The latter have exploited the villages. The blood of the villages is the cement with which the edifice of the cities is built. I want the blood that is today inflating the arteries of the cities to run once again in the blood vessels of the villages. (Harijan, 23–6–1946, p. 198 from Gandhi 1962, p. 25)

The process that led to the growth of the modern city and the devastation of the political economy of the village is borne out by Marx’s analysis in the Capital. 12 Young India, 26–1–22, p. 54 from Gandhi (1969) p. 461.

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Marx describes them as emerging from two ‘essentially’ different periods of economic history, the manufacturing period and the industrial period, that proceed inevitably, despite legislation, from ‘the laws of economic motion’ of modern society. In the first volume of Capital, Marx records the devastation of the village economy that begins by the end of the fifteenth century in Europe by the ‘expropriation’ of labour from the old feudal system, which laid the foundation for the creation of the primitive accumulation of wealth and surplus value for capitalist society. Citing the case of England, he remarks how even in the feudal system there had continued up to the fifteenth century a large number of free peasant proprietors who existed as ‘subfeudatories’. The few wage labourers who did exist were either free farmers who worked during their spare time or who practically became free farmers due to land allotments made to them. In addition they had access to use of the produce of the commons. He describes how things changed forever, however, when the process of instatement of the capitalist regime started with the forcible removal of peasants and disbanding feudal retainers in the late fifteenth Century, in which King, Parliament and feudal Lords had an equal part to play and which resulted in the creation of ‘free proletariats’ who were ‘hurled’ into the labour market. Lands left untended were turned into pastures, a series of legislations and acts of Parliament for enclosure of Commons allowed usurpation of common lands and Church lands by turning them into private property, completed the expropriation of labour to feed the growing manufacturing industry as well as the growing army needed to protect the ‘wealth of nations’. Thus the conditions for independent bread labour, the individual’s control over the means of production were removed once and for all. Labour could only form work for another and could only add surplus value or reproduce capital. And, this, as Marx notes in his commentary on the English case, was followed by legislation regulating the wages of expropriated labour, and vagabondage, dealing the final blow to the displaced mass of peasants, agricultural labour and craftsmen. He notes wryly, the final transformation of pastures into deer parks that dot the modern city. This inevitability Gandhi saw as well, but, with the determination to counter the laws of economics that industrialization had set in motion with the weapons of village swaraj, Panchayat Raj and the transformation of the economy of the village by establishing the charkha or the spinning wheel at the centre of its economy. That was indeed the immediate provocation and task but his ambition extended to emancipating the British themselves and the world from ‘city civilization’ through India’s experiment and example. Only rural economy, based on principles of independence and interdependence could eschew exploitation and therefore violence. In the ultimate analysis, therefore, village swaraj alone could lay the conditions for the possibility of the sovereignty of each individual and the sovereignty of all: While he saw that for India, this was the surest way to ensure both political and economic swaraj, his analysis of decentralization based on rural minded village republics was by no means restricted to India’s situation at the time and did not arise merely from the condition of India as a colonized country,

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nor from the need to liberate an economically, technologically and politically illequipped India from the grip of British exploitation. It was the considered view of a political theorist with a deep understanding of political economy combined with the skilful insight of a great experimentalist: There are two schools of thought current in the world. One wants to divide the world into cities and the other into villages. The village civilization and the city civilization are totally different things. One depends on machinery and industrialization, and the other on handicrafts. We have given preference to the latter. (Gandhi 1962, p. 22)

Rejuvenating the village economy, its possibilities of research and intelligent bread labour alone would establish conditions that countered the forces of the modern nation state, industrialization and the political economy. It is this emphasis on the conditions of labour and the modes of production that would provide strength to institutions of self-governance and ensure non-violent democracy and not a charter on the rights of man, or mere alleviation of poverty. He recognized India’s unique role and position in history, the opportune time at which it stood at crossroads, and wanted to capture the moment for an experiment that had the power to transform India and the world through its example. In such a state alone would rest the possibility of establishing the individual as sovereign. The logic of this possibility was unimpeachable as it was simple in Gandhi’s mind: Every man has an equal right to the necessaries of life even as birds and beasts have. And since every right carries with it a corresponding duty and the corresponding remedy for resisting any attack upon it, it is merely a matter of finding out the corresponding duties and remedies to vindicate the elementary fundamental equality. The corresponding duty is to labour with my limbs and corresponding remedy is to non-co-operate with him who deprives me of the fruit of my labour. (Young India, 26–3–31, p. 49 from Gandhi 1962, pp. 35–6)

The charkha as a symbol of this power which could match the power of the atom bomb as a weapon of non-violent dissidence, in Gandhi’s view, became the centre of the constructive programme. The presuppositions of this experiment will be the subject of Chapter 5. References: Agamben, G. (2005) The State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Baghramian M. and Ingram A. (eds) (2000) Pluralism: The Philosophy and Politics of Diversity. London: Routledge

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Baylis, C.A. (1967) Conscience. In Edwards, P. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. & The Free Press, pp. 189–91. Campbell D. and Schoolman M. (eds) (2008) The New Pluralism: William Connolly and the Contemporary Global Condition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chatterjee, P. (1993) Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Dalton, D. (1995) Mahatma Gandhi: Non-violent Power in Action. New York: Columbia University Press. Gandhi, M.K. (1956) Thoughts on National Language. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1959) Panchayat Raj. Prabhu, R.K. (compiled). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House Gandhi, M.K. (1962) Village Swaraj. Vyas, H.M. (compiled). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1963) The Way to Communal Harmony. Rao, U.R. (compiled and ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1966) Industrialize – and Perish! Prabhu, R.K. (compiled). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1967a) Political and National Life and Affairs Vol. I. Kher, V.B. (compiled and ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1967b) Political and National Life and Affairs Vol. II. Kher, V.B. (compiled and ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1969) The Voice of Truth. Narayan S. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Hardiman D. (2003) Gandhi in His Time and Ours. Delhi: Permanent Black. Hobbes, T. (1985) Leviathan. Macpherson, C.B. (ed.). London: Penguin. Kant, I. (1784) An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (online) Smith, M.C. (trans.). Available from: www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/ etscc/kant.html (Accessed: 10 December 2013). Miller, W. (1930) Extract from the News Report on the Darasana Satyagraha. (online) Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March#cite_note62 (Accessed: 11 December 2013) Nandy, A. (2000) Gandhi after Gandhi after Gandhi. The Little Magazine, 1 (1). Nozick, R. (1974) Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books. Pantham, T. (1983) Thinking with Mahatma Gandhi: Beyond Liberal Democracy in Political Theory. Political Theory. 11 (2) pp. 165–88. Parekh, B. (1999) Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse. New Delhi: Sage publications. Parel, A. (1992) Mahatma Gandhi’s Critique of Modernity. In Parel, A.J. and Keith, R.C. (eds), Comparative Political Philosophy; Studies Under the Upas Tree. New Delhi: Sage publications. Rawls, J. (2005) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press

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Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1947. The Social Contract, anonymous trans. (1791), Frankel, C. (ed. and revised). New York, Hafner Publishing Co. Thoreau, H.D. (1993) Civil Disobedience and Other Essays, Smith, P. (ed.). Mineola: Dover Publications. Uberoi, J.P.S. 1999. Religion Civil Society and the State: A Study of Sikhism. New Delhi: Oxford India Paperbacks, Oxford Unviersity Press. Veeravalli, A. (2011) Swaraj and Sovereignty. Economic and Political Weekly. XLVI (5), pp. 65–9.

Chapter 4

Territory: Nationalism, Identity and Frontiers My religion has no geographical limits. If I have a living faith in it, it will transcend my love for India herself. (Gandhi, Young India 11–8–20)1 Isolated independence is not the goal of world States. It is voluntary interdependence. (Gandhi, Young India 17–7–24)2

The inclusion of territory as a necessary element in the definition of the concept of sovereignty marks the establishment of the State as the definitive embodiment of sovereignty in post-Enlightenment political theory.3 The ‘private citizen’ and civil society are evidently no longer seen as serious contenders to sovereignty in the modern nation state with the systematic legitimization of the state through theories of people’s representation identifying the interests of the state with that of civil society and the separation of private reason and public reason. As we have argued in the discussion on sovereignty, Gandhi was quick to see this and his entire experiment was directed at reinstating the sovereignty of civil society and the individual as fundamentally separate from and opposed to the methods and presuppositions of the state. The modern nation-state establishes jurisdiction of control over a given territory, its people and their cultural and natural resources involving the identification of the territorial identity of the state with national, cultural and religious identity. This jurisdiction of control of the state is not confined merely to the defence of boundaries from external aggression but to the consolidation of national identity and control of cultural and natural resources within.4 Imperialism has established its status quo of a proxy power of the world, in general, and in Asia, specifically, with the imposition and perpetuation of this view of territory in disputes ranging from the Palestinian issue, to the Iraq-Iran 1 Bose (1957) p. 42 2 Ibid. 3 Philpott (2010) identifies territoriality as a feature of Sovereignty in modern times. He, however, sees the locus of sovereignty shifting over the ages from kings to dictators to peoples ruling through constitutions. This misses the fundamental distinction sought to be made here between state and civil society on the one hand, and between individuals who hold office in the state and ‘private citizens’ who are sovereign. 4 See Anderson (1997).

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war and in the case of the specific focus of this chapter, the Partition of India. Of course, as Gandhi pointed out, in the case of India, this was not without the willing support of the warring parties, or factions within them. This is evidence then, of the overpowering sway of the point of view of modernity and its understanding of territory, rather than of the peculiarities of local players involved or any particular turn of events. It is the dualism of the secular and the religious of post-Enlightenment culture that simultaneously produces the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism, and the secular scientific state, each a mirror image of the other in their belief in the use of power and their opposition to civil society and human conscience. The universalism of the state and fundamentalism of religion together challenge the very presuppositions of pluralism. Proof of this lies in the fact that, though opposed internally, established religion and state have always joined hands in the persecution of the voice of conscience from times immemorial – as in the case of Socrates, Christ, Joan of Arc, and finally in the case of Gandhi himself who was disowned by Congress aspirants to state power and martyred at the hands of a fundamentalist Hindu. In India, this dualism played out in terms of both the secular Congress faction and the fundamentalists, Hindu and Muslim alike, favouring the Partition of India in the establishment of an independent sovereign nation state. Gandhi had a sense of the enormous significance of the issues confronting India’s freedom struggle and the problem of Partition portending the impossibility of there being a common destiny between Hindus and Muslims. He was even more conscious that if his method of non-violence could prevent Partition, India’s experiment would have great consequences for a world be-riddled with fights for power, territory, nation and identity: My ambition is much higher than independence. Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation in which England is the greatest partner. If India converts, as it can convert, Englishmen, it can become the predominant partner in a world commonwealth of which England can have the privilege of becoming a partner if she chooses. India has the right, if she only knew, of becoming the predominant partner by reason of her numbers, geographical position and culture inherited for ages. This is a big talk I know. For a fallen India to aspire to move the world and protect weaker races is seemingly an impertinence. But in explaining my strong opposition to this cry for Independence, I can no longer hide the light under a bushel. Mine is an ambition worth living for and worth dying for. In no case do I want to reconcile myself to a state lower than the best for fear of consequences. It is therefore not out of expedience that I oppose independence as my goal. I want India to come to her own and that state cannot be better defined by any single word than Swaraj. Its content will vary with the action that the nation is able to put forth at a given moment. India’s coming to her own will mean every nation doing likewise. (Young India, 12–1–28, p. 12 from Gandhi 1967, p. 47)

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This is what he had to say, in 1928, when he was willing to let the British stay on provided they were willing to be ‘converted’. Yet the distinction between swaraj and independence as it is generally understood is clear and categorical, as is the realization of what its significance and impact on the world would be. The ambition that India may come into her own, it must be noted, is not that she becomes a political power to reckon with but that she may be witness to the truth of the possibility of non-violent nationhood. It is in this context that we consider Gandhi’s discourse on territory with respect to the issue of the Partition on the one hand, and the issue of the British staying on in India, on the other. Territory and Panopticism Foucault (1980) has recognized the relation between power and knowledge. His geopolitical concepts capture the essence of the panoptic programme. He uses terms such as territory and domain as expressive of the relation between power and knowledge. This, according to Foucault, involves a process of knowing that uses mechanisms of surveillance put in place at the local level of schools and hospitals, and in the army in the form of dossiers, systems of classification, and other documentation.5 He further argues that these mechanisms are necessary for the very survival of the state: And should any part of this universal gaze chance to slacken, the collapse of the state itself would be imminent. The Panoptic system was not so much confiscated by the state apparatuses; rather it was these state apparatuses which rested on the basis of small scale, regional, dispersed Panoptisms. In consequence one cannot confine oneself to analyzing the State’s apparatus alone if one wants to grasp the mechanisms of power in their detail of complexity. (Foucault 1980, p. 72)

Further, Foucault concedes that this approach may be applied to Geography itself. Therefore, cartography and geographical terms such as territory, domain and displacement, are juridico-political in nature, and the reference to power is the common strand underlying them. Thus the subjective and objective principles of control over culture and territory are established by the system of knowledge itself. That Gandhi is well aware of the relation between knowledge and power in the presuppositions of post-Enlightenment political theory is seen by the fact that he made a clear distinction between the territorial conquest of India by the Muslims and its colonization by the British. Therefore he held on the one hand, that Hindu–Muslim unity was of the essence to India’s swaraj but on the other hand, became convinced that unless the British rulers were by some miracle converted to 5 The compulsory national ID card project, sought to be implemented in India and other countries, is a blatant and openly panoptic project perpetuated in the name of social and national security that consolidates and economizes on multiple documentation.

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the swaraj programme, they would have to leave. Despite a sometimes violent history of conversions of Hindus by Muslim kings, there was no resulting destruction of the culture of the people. In fact, it could be argued that the intermingling of different religious traditions enriched rather than weakened it. Gandhi rejected the theory, therefore, that cultural identity was synonymous with religious identity. With British rule, however, came the imposition of modern civilization and its presuppositions, insidious in their penetration through the spread of English education, industrialization, systems of medicine through hospitals and doctors, the least of the problems being the spread of Evangelical Christianity. What differentiated the two conquests was that the latter was panoptic and the former was not. If India’s independence were to be had on principles of swaraj, then it would have to free itself of the internal hegemony of the presuppositions of modern western civilization and externally from the hegemony of modern notions of sovereignty to reject the Partition. The territorial boundary as a legal entity that defines the state’s sovereignty as well as national and cultural identity came into existence only after the French Revolution and the establishment of the modern nation state. Before this, boundaries were less rigid and more porous allowing for forays in and out of neighbouring territories (Anderson 1997).6 The identification of territorial boundaries with cultural boundaries, or nation with state has been problematic ever since the establishment of the modern nation state. This can be seen by the fact that based on this principle there are few borders that are undisputed. The reasons are complex involving issues both of cultural identity and its relation to territory but more importantly to economic, political and security interests of the state. Complete identification of the culture of specific communities, race, or creed on the basis of either of their historical roots, or on the basis of their numbers being in the majority have caused endless disputes and a tendency to enforce monolithic cultures. Paradoxically, the same theory works as an impetus for imperialism, and the imposition of the universalizing regime of modern civilization. Kolers (2009) sees territory as the very act of making geographical spaces through a strategy of bounding and control. It goes with a corresponding right to territoriality which is seen to be necessary to constitute a cultural space. He thus defines a territorial right as a ‘right to make viable one’s ethnography by controlling a juridical territory, particularly through legal, political and economic institutions’ (Kolers 2009, p. 4). In fact, he goes further and argues that the community’s territorial rights are determined by a principle of plenitude. Plenitude includes two aspects: the empirical, involving existing natural resources and territorial diversity and difference from other territories, and the intentional, involving 6 Malcolm Anderson uses the term frontier as synonymous with boundary. As there is a fundamental difference in the use of these terms (cf. Prescott 1967). Therefore, in explaining Anderson’s position, I use the term ‘boundary’ and not ‘frontier’ which is the original usage.

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the prospects of territory which are indicated by the extent of knowledge and the anticipated effort and success in increasing productivity that a community promises. In what appears to be an unabashed legitimization of colonization, one may argue here, that Kolers extends Locke’s theory of property to questions of territorial disputes between states, and the rights to statehood and territorial jurisdiction: ‘We should begin to resolve territorial disputes not by asking who believes the place to be sacred, but by asking what is there, and seeing who knows’ (Kolers 2009, p. 5). The core thesis then of his book is the following: ‘A territorial right exists if and only if an ethnographic community demonstrably achieves plenitude in a juridical territory; this right grounds independent statehood only if there is no competing right and the territory is a country’(Kolers 2009, p. 5). What then was Gandhi’s argument against the British staying on in India? Though Gandhi believed, in the initial phase of the freedom movement, that India could have her swaraj while the British continued to stay in India, it became increasingly clear to him that as long as they remained entrapped in the thralls of ‘modern civilization’, it would be impossible for India to come into her own. The three pillars of swaraj according to Gandhi, as we have said, were Hindu–Muslim unity, the removal of untouchability, and khadi. It would be impossible to achieve these within the framework of the presuppositions of modern civilization. For the same reason, mere independence from British rule without self-reform with respect to these goals would mean empty freedom and not true sovereignty for India. Gandhi challenges the very presuppositions that transform the act of knowing into an act of acquisition and power over another in his understanding of what constituted freedom from British rule. He maintained that swaraj was a matter of independence from the epistemological, metaphysical and political underpinnings of modern civilization rather than from British rule. The post-Enlightenment regime of modernity that had already engulfed Europe and Great Britain had quickly taken root in India as a result of British rule. Systematic documentation, initiated with the combined effort of British administrators, and missionaries resulted in the creation of ‘panoptic’ institutions. They were commissioned to collect and maintain data regarding land, population, history and language, in the form of land records, geological surveys, the census, the writing of histories, and compilations of dictionaries and translations of classical and vernacular texts. This completed the project of comprehensive dominion of modernity over both territory and culture. The documentation itself used a system of classification that erased the categories of understanding and classification, epistemological, social and political, that had existed prior to British rule in India7 and thus in a ‘bloodless coup’ brought her body and soul under the regime of modern civilization and 7 See Smith (1996) for a detailed analysis of land records in The Punjab which succeeded in changing the socio-political structure, man-nature relations and culture of the region.

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its presuppositions of violence and exploitation. Gandhi realized that under the circumstances, it would be impossible for Indians and British to live as equals inhabiting common territory: East and West can really meet when the West has thrown overboard modern civilization, almost in its entirety. They can also seemingly meet when East had also adopted modern civilization, but that meeting would be an armed truce, even as it is between, say Germany and England, both of which nations are living in the Hall of Death in order to avoid being devoured, the one by the other. (Gandhi 1957, p. 4)

The territorial imperialism and the science and culture of modern civilization that the British brought with them, was what Gandhi feared rather than the British themselves. If he could convince the British and India of the harmful nature of modern civilization he would have gained swaraj for both. Therefore, according to him, it was English education, laws that destroyed the fabric of civil society, infrastructure and industries that led to the destruction of indigenous crafts, and exploitation of men and natural resources, that enslaved India. All those things that the liberal minded Indian, and the fundamentalists equally saw as civilizing gifts of British rule in India, were precisely what came under Gandhi’s scathing attack in Hind Swaraj (Gandhi 1939). While the body and soul of the Indian peoples were systematically overwhelmed by English schools (education) and modern medicine (doctors) the body and soul of the Indian body politic were systematically overpowered by new laws (lawyers) and modes of exploitation (railways and machinery). His attack against the professions of doctors and lawyers and against the railways and English education are a telling comment on the depth of his understanding of the mechanisms of enslavement of modern civilization which the British put to use in India. Colonization was only the least of its crimes by this measure. In fact, Gandhi was convinced that India alone was responsible for its enslavement by unquestioningly accepting these as gifts of British rule in India. The tragic irony, in the final analysis, lies in the fact that the gifts of modernity that Independent India accepted, and still accepts as some of the valued vestiges of British rule, without discussion, continue to colonize long after the British are gone. The course and discourse of development did not take cognizance of Gandhi then, nor does it do so today except in terms of a token socialism. Ironically, then, these are the very arguments, that is, of modernity and development, that support and are found necessary for the entry of a global order, which see the emergence of theories of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism in recent times.

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The Demand for Pakistan What the British ruler, the liberal-minded Congressman and the fundamentalists of Hindu and Muslim camps had in common against Gandhi was a belief in the advances of modern civilization and in this instance, the two-nation theory being the only solution to the Hindu–Muslim problem. The British would want nothing better, and ‘know’ nothing better than to go ahead with the Partition: the regime of modernity and imperialism required the identification of cultural identity, religious identity and territory. The immediate and local reasons for the demand for Pakistan have been seen by some as the brewing enmity and distrust between Hindus and Muslims at the time, by others as Jinnah’s sense of isolation and hurt at being left out of the Congress leadership. This is to ignore, again, the theoretical underpinnings of the issue. Whatever the apparent truth in the personal matter, the crux of the issue politically was the two nation theory which spearheaded the perceived need for a separate territory for the self-determination, sovereignty and identity of the Muslims. This was the source just as much of the Muslim League’s call for Pakistan, as it was of the Hindu Mahasabha’s call for a Hindurashtra. Both based their claim on a minority-majority argument; both held the view that cultural identity, religious identity and territory must go hand in hand. Finally, both held that their identity and interests could only be looked after by a strong state. The Muslims felt they were in the minority in India, and the Hindus argued that they were the majority. While they would respect the rights of the minorities of India, they could not but assert their claim to being the majority. The demand for a separate state made by Muhammed Ali Jinnah as leader of the Muslim League on the eve of Indian independence therefore brought home with force the possible danger of being trapped by the very presuppositions of modern civilization and the modern nation state that Gandhi sought to free India from. Jinnah’s plea for a separate state drew inspiration from these very principles of the modern nation-state just as they were seen as the most practical solution within the liberal, English educated wing of the Congress. The proposal to vivisect India is a contribution to imperialistic growth. For, vivisection can only be made by the aid of the British bayonet or a deadly civil war. I hope the Congress will be party to neither game. (Harijan, 11 November 1939 from Gandhi 1963, p. 308)

Gandhi saw it as a lapse in the Congress’s observance of the law of nonviolence. If they had observed it in its true spirit, and not merely as political expediency, such a situation could have been averted. It was as early as 1929 that the claim for a separate state for the Muslims of India was first articulated by Muhammad Ali Jinnah as the leader of the Muslim League. Hindu–Muslim relations had not been without their share of conflict in India’s past. Jinnah argued that the Hindus did not understand the real difference

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between Hinduism and Islam which according to him were not religions as much as they were different social orders and cultures. Their religious philosophy, social customs, literatures and history were different. They were, in effect, two nations under one state. Besides, the Muslims were a minority in a Hindu majority state. Thus far, the argument could well apply as a case for multiculturalism. Jinnah, however, contended that to continue as one state would only lead to further discontent and destruction as the Hindus and Muslims had no common destiny. This is what constituted the crux of the arguments in favour of the two-nation theory that demanded the partition of India along religious lines. Gandhi not only vehemently opposed it but argued that only an India built on the foundations of Hindu–Muslim unity could attain to true swaraj. Gandhi was of the firm opinion that the perception that the enmity between Hindus and Muslims had been, and was, inevitable and irrevocable, was a creation of the British rulers and British (re-)writing of the history of India.8 Gandhi took strong exception to Jinnah’s claim that Hindus and Muslims have nothing in common. This could only be a gross misunderstanding of the message not only of Islam but of all human society which was based on the law of mutual forbearance and love. Gandhi agreed with Jinnah however, in so far as it was not a matter of building Hindu–Muslim unity on the basis of a communal pact. None of the methods of the modern nation state, neither coercion nor prudence of its citizens, could form the basis of united India: ‘To undo Pakistan by force will be to undo Swaraj.’ And again, … Communal pacts, whilst they are good if they can be had, are valueless unless they are backed by the union of hearts. Without it there can be no peace in the land. Even Pakistan can bring no peace, if there is no union of hearts. This union can come only by mutual service and co-operative work. (Harijan, 25 January 1942, p. 13 from Gandhi 1963, p. 26)

With respect to the relation between religious identity and national identity Gandhi had two arguments, one based on the history of civilizations, and the other specific to India. Firstly, he argued, ‘I have never heard it said that there are as many nations as there are religions on earth’ (Gandhi 1963, p. 296). That would mean that a change in religion would involve a change of Nation! Secondly, he rejected the belief that India had been divided by Muslim dynasties in two. Neither did he buy the usual example made of Akbar as indicating the possibility of the two religious communities living in harmony since there was clearly a distinction to be made between an attempt to fuse two religions (as had been Akbar’s effort) and the question of the relation between religion and nation. Gandhi instead pointed out that it was the other Muslim emperors of India who 8 ‘This quarrel is not old; this quarrel is coeval with the British advent.’ Excerpt from the speech at plenary session of the Round Table Conference in London (Young India, 24 December 1931, p. 413 from Gandhi 1963, p. 7).

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had regarded it as ‘one indivisible whole’. Partition, therefore was an untruth. It neither bore witness to the history of nations nor centuries of Hindu–Muslim relations in India. Gandhi did not use the word ‘Partition’; it was indeed ‘Vivisection’, and it is this term he persisted in using every time he spoke of the demand. As we have been trying to argue, this was not mere sentimental heart-tugging nor idealistic dream spinning but a theory of geopolitics that formed the basis of his arguments. He pointed out that the British and Jinnah had managed to do what even the Mughals had not done by insisting that the Hindus and Muslims had nothing common between them, or that their cultures, and therefore they, would be better off with two separate and sovereign states. That Gandhi was conscious of the theoretical foundations of the demand for Partition, and was not merely arguing from a mistaken sense of the ethical in political matters is clear from his understanding: i) that India would not achieve swaraj without Hindu–Muslim unity; ii) that the demand that India grant Pakistan its sovereignty was basically flawed since it went against the logic of a modern state that it must carve out a portion of itself and grant it sovereignty knowing full well, that this would only set up a state which would challenge one’s own sovereignty. Therefore Gandhi argued that Pakistan could only be taken away from India by force, and it was politically meaningless to expect to be given its sovereignty. Either one is sovereign or one becomes it; iii) finally, Gandhi’s insistence that if they did decide to part, it must be without British interference or arbitration, which would have the effect that both Pakistan and India would be ‘dependent’ on the British rather than Independent of them; Swaraj would escape them once more, and would not be regained until Hindu–Muslim unity was restored in India . Events in modern India and its continuing feud with Pakistan are a telling testimony to the truth of Gandhi’s prediction. The Frontier Experiment It is a little spoken of fact that Gandhi’s only definitive and immediate demand at the Round Table Conference held in London on 30 November 1931 was a demand for autonomy for the North West Frontier Province. After over 300 years of colonial rule, freedom for India was near at sight. However, it was not the demand for India’s freedom and her rights over what was duly hers, nor the problem of the impending Partition of India that preoccupied Gandhi. He was willing to accept any outcome of the demand for the Partition of India, but it was autonomy for the Frontier Province that he wanted immediately: Let India get what she is entitled to and what she can really take, but whatever she gets, and whenever she gets it, let the Frontier Province get complete autonomy today. That Frontier will then be a standing demonstration to the whole of India, and therefore, the whole vote of the Congress will be given

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While Nehru/the Congress and Jinnah, with the British duly presiding over their deliberations, negotiated the Partition of India and statehood of Pakistan Gandhi’s attention was held by the possibility of the NWFP, a territorial frontier, being the site of an experiment in Hindu–Muslim unity. The impending Partition and lack of support within the Congress or from the British did not stop Gandhi from his resolve to establish the possibility of cultural unity beyond boundaries of religion, and territory. The experiment that would proceed in the NWFP under the stewardship of Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgars, would demonstrate to India, Pakistan and the world, the possibility of Hindu–Muslim unity in a territorial frontier, thus laying the foundations of the future friendship and swaraj of these twin nations. The crucial point here is Gandhi’s theory of territory. Firstly, once given autonomy, NWFP would be an independent province neither belonging to India nor Pakistan. Post-partition, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) would be a region separated from India by Pakistan and flanked on the other side by Afghanistan. It would no longer share any of its borders with India. The Pashthuns of the NWFP (now, Khyber Pakhthunakhwa) were in favour of an undivided India. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgars (Servants of God) had taken an independent stand from the Muslim League, led by Jinnah and the Indian National Congress. NWFP, was home to the fiery Pakhthunakhwa or Pashthun tribes. The skirmishes between tribes in the region and the Pashthun disregard of state authority had given them a reputation for being unruly, lawless and violent. The Khudai Khidmatgars who were sworn to non-violence had worked hard to bring peace to the region, transform relations between the warring tribes of the region, and between Hindus and Muslims. While the North West Province was a Muslim dominated region, its population also comprised Hindus, Christians, Parsees and Buddhists who lived in harmony with one another. The region was therefore ripe for Gandhi’s plan to make it the site for an experiment in Hindu–Muslim unity. It was to be the microcosmic example reflecting the truth of Indian civilization.9 Gandhi’s insistence that Jinnah hold talks with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and members of his party, the Khudai Khidmatgars, who had been working in 9 See Uberoi (1978) where he argues that the nature of a true frontier as an autonomous region which represents the unity and opposition of two or more regions such that they form a whole, also changing in time from a meeting point to its opposite, thus renewing itself and those on either side.

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the Frontier Provinces, fell on deaf ears. It was only right that they be consulted on the question of the Partition and what they would want in the event. Gandhi argued that a referendum in the Frontier province had become impossible due to the sensitivity of the issue, and the fear of possible persecution as a consequence of people making a choice, one way or the other. Jinnah however was bent on a separate territory and sovereign state for the Muslims. He therefore went ahead with a referendum in the NWFP on the issue of Pakistan. The Khudai Khidmatgars boycotted the referendum and the vote in favour of Pakistan became a foregone conclusion. Gandhi sought, through his demand of autonomy for NWFP at the Round Table Conference, to question the very notion that separate territory defines national, cultural or religious identity. The Frontier province – where there was a confluence of cultures – had been transformed by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and his movement based on presuppositions of peace and non-violence. Thus it would be the site beyond borders of a continuous and ongoing experiment in nonviolence and the possibility of Hindu–Muslim unity. In this formulation, Gandhi not only keeps the spirit of Hindu–Muslim unity, and therefore of undivided India alive, but reiterates the significance of the frontier and its fundamental difference from the definition of territorial boundaries. This, in effect, removed the Indian experiment outside its territory, beyond its boundaries, to a Muslim dominated geopolitical frontier. Finally, with the relocation of the experiment to the NWFP, the frontier, which the modern nation state construes as synonymous with a border or peripheral region, would become the centre. Both the fundamentalists and the secularists rejected Gandhi’s advocacy of a fundamentally different definition of sovereignty, identity and territory And of course, the British found it unimaginable that the Frontier be granted autonomy and left at the mercy of the unruly and incorrigible Afghan tribes. Geopolitically, the term ‘frontier’ has been defined as a zone, either between two nations or between two terrains (inhabited and uninhabited), within a nation. It has also sometimes been characterized as a buffer/neutral zone between colonial territories held by two different rulers. Some have distinguished between frontiers of contact and frontiers of separation, where in the case of the latter, a concerted effort is made to maintain and foster separation (East 1937 in Prescott 1978), perhaps by way of locating it in uninhabited and difficult terrain or by a sealing of borders. Prescott concludes however that whatever the context or articulation of the frontier, geographers must maintain the distinction between ‘frontier’ and ‘boundary’.10 Frontiers have, however, been characterized as culturally fluid, or as comprising an amalgamation of the cultures of the regions of either sides of the border and 10 ‘In each sense (internally, or with respect to other nation states) the frontier is considered to be a zone. There is no excuse for geographers who use the term “boundary” and “frontier” as synonymous although it is not difficult to find geographers making this elementary error’ (Prescott (1978), p. 33).

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of traders, without any original cultural roots or history of their own. However the grounds for Gandhi’s NWFP experiment are borne out by Uberoi (1978) who rejects this accepted notion of a frontier. With the help of a structural analysis of the Asian frontier as represented in the history and culture of the Hindu Kush region where the NWFP is located, he argues that ‘Asian Frontier history is the history of mutuality, reciprocity and the logic of interrelations’. He argues further that this frontier not merely ‘divided the Oxus and the Indus, Central Asia and South Asia but also simultaneously interconnected the two parts of inner Asia and outer Asia into a system of interrelations’ that nurtured through its history of encounter and exchange, ‘a life and thought of its own’. The final conclusion he draws on the basis of this analysis of the frontier is significant to our purpose of understanding Gandhi’s plan for the NWFP: ‘We should never forget that a frontier culture is autonomous and not dependent or inferior. It has a life and a message of its own, without which the civilizations on either side of it could neither be separately constituted nor interrelated.’ It appears then that the strategic geopolitical as well as cultural importance of the NWFP for the future of India and Pakistan was not lost on Gandhi. His understanding therefore of the contribution of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgars to the Indian freedom struggle also differed from the rest of the Congress and the British. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s staunch adherence to Truth and non-violence had earned him the name Frontier Gandhi assuming, perhaps, that he got his lessons in non-violence from Gandhi and not from the cultural roots of the NWFP. Banerjee (2001) has argued, however, that the Khudai Khidmatgars were a purely Frontier movement who had grown quite independently of the influence of Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement. Their effort had been to rediscover the non-violent roots of Islam and their philosophy and method were founded as much in Islam as in the Pashthun code of honour and conduct. They had already worked hard in bringing peace amongst the warring tribes of the NWFP before they saw their soul-mate in Gandhi. Both the British and members of the Indian National Congress treated the NWFP as an area that needed taming and control. The Congress did not believe that the Pathans of the NWFP could accept non-violence. Nehru, who visited the NWFP in the late 1930s, was convinced from his experience that Gandhi had been mistaken in accepting the Khudai Khidmatgar’s into the Congress. He saw Badshah Khan (as Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan was known to his people) as an exception amongst the Frontier Muslims and a leader without much following amongst his people. In other words, one could argue that in the final analysis, the Congress remained cynical of the Khudai Khidmatgar experiment with tradition. On the other hand, it was confident that only the rule of law and the strong hand of the state could establish order amongst the lawless Pashthuns. From this modern liberal point of view, the Khudai Khidmatgars appeared to be ‘outsiders’ who should not have been admitted into the Congress in the first place. Therefore, both the Congress and Jinnah felt no responsibility to take account of their view on Partition despite Gandhi’s pleadings to the contrary.

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From Gandhi’s point of view, however, the Khudai Khidmatgars held the promise of brotherhood between neighbours in the event of the Partition, thus reaffirming the role of the NWFP’s strategic position as a frontier. He pointed out on more than one occasion that while the Congress had betrayed the cause of nonviolence and merely used it as a strategy to win freedom, it was only Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgars for whom it was a creed. When Partition was irrevocable Gandhi reassured Badshah Khan who was shattered and disillusioned by the news, that they would pursue the experiment in the NWFP even if it acceded to Pakistan. India would share no part of the territorial boundaries with the NWFP. Yet Gandhi proposed to cross the borders of Pakistan with Badshah Khan and his grand-daughter, Manu, to continue his struggle for Hindu–Muslim unity and the constructive programme, which he considered essential to any lasting, non-violent peace process. GHAFFAR KHAN: So, Mahatmaji, you will now regard us as Pakistanis? … A terrible situation faces the Frontier Province and Baluchistan. We do not know what to do. GANDHIJI: Have you read what I have been saying during the past two or three days? One who has faith in non-violence should not yield to despair in this manner. You and your Khudai Khidmatgars are going to be tested now. You can say that you do not accept Pakistan and then submit to whatever is inflicted on you. We have, as you know, adopted the motto of “do or die”. It does not befit one who professes such a motto to give way to despair. And whatever happens I am going to visit the Frontier Province, for I don’t believe in these divisions of the country. I am not going to ask anybody’s permission. If they kill me for my defiance, I will embrace death with a smiling face. That is, if Pakistan comes into existence, I intend to tour it, live there and see what they do to me. This girl will of course be with me, so that we two old men and this girl will tour together. Will that be all right? GHAFFAR KHAN: I understand. I won’t take any more of your time. (Bihar Pachhi Dilhi, pp. 45–6 (in Gujarathi) from CW 95:165)

The experiment was not to be because Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, barely five months after India won independence. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgars had to join Pakistan though they had bid for an autonomous Pakhthunistan, not motivated by the desire for an independent nation state as by the desire for a space to choose the life he and his people would like to live by. They were treated as traitors by fellow Muslims and countrymen because of their allegiance to an undivided India before the Partition and their continued belief in the law of non-violence. The experiment in whatever form it continued in Independent Pakistan remained suppressed with Khan Abdul Khan spending much of his time in Pakistani jails before he died. However, what is crucial is Gandhi’s promise to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan that he will go to the NWFP with him after

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Partition. He is dismissive of territorial boundaries of the state, an obstacle that would not stop him from entering Pakistan. The Argument from Multiculturalism vs. Pluralism Some have argued that the modern nation state no longer exhibits the earlier correspondence between territory, sovereignty and cultural identity. In fact, due to factors such as globalization, technological development, multi-national corporations, and interlocked economies the modern nation state is confronted with the problem of populations constituted by multicultural identities where the question of coincidence of national, cultural and territorial identity has ceased to be of great relevance. Therefore it is argued that there is a need for reformulating the very nature and role of the modern nation state in the light of multiculturalism (Parekh 2002). Benedict Anderson (1991), in his path breaking ‘Imagined Communities’ argues that, paradoxically, the growth of nationalism accompanies the growth of communities, which he describes as ‘horizontalsecular and transverse time’, that owe their impetus to market economies, the growth of capitalism and above all, print capitalism. This, according to him, makes possible a universal general culture across states, and therefore an imagined community based on a fundamentally different premise from those of the old world where centralization took place around religion and a classical language, and dynastic realms. In this latter case, Anderson points out that sovereignties were not identified with fixed and universal jurisdiction but rather blended with neighbouring sovereignties through borders which remained porous and indistinct and populations which were ‘immensely heterogeneous’ and ‘not even contiguous’. However, Anderson’s ‘imagined community’ is built on the dualism of spiritual and material cultures which are internally in conflict while they are united externally in a ‘universal general culture’ of the whole hearted pursuit of modernity and competition for the fruits of industrialization and globalization that have come to define growth, development and power. Multiculturalism is, in fact, a consolidation of nationhood based on fixed territory, while the sovereign state colludes with multinational global business equipped with the technology of power, and the power of technology to exploit the common people of their own nations, other nations and nature. This is the compelling force underlying the solidarity of Anderson’s new ‘imagined communities’. These imagined communities involve a collusion of people with different ethnic or religious or linguistic identities with no more than common economic aspirations and individual advancement in the globalization process to bind them. They remain individualistic and secular in the public sphere and culturally tethered only in the private sphere in their country of immigration. It is a matter then of preserving a sense of one’s roots to sustain difference and competition with ethnic solidarity, admittedly within an otherwise universal culture of modernity. This comprises, in fact, the quixotic new community of mercenaries.

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Thus if the call for multiculturalism is one half of the globalization process, the growth of fundamentalism, and the aggressive consolidation of ethnic, and religious identity are the other half, and neither hesitate to use violence to facilitate their cause. It is in fact, the panoptism of imperialism that extends its domain across modern nation states under the garb of globalization and its attendant discourse of multiculturalism side by side with ethnic and religious fundamentalism. It is no surprise then that multiculturalism has been seen as one that does not emphasize the assimilation of different cultures, as long as it does not affect the public life of the nation-state which is based on universal principles of citizenship, while retaining one’s ethnic identity in the private sphere. Anderson (1991) explains the decrease in number of territorial disputes, and the phenomenon of greater stability in the global political map, in terms of the debates between the global integration and global interdependence arguments. According to him, globalization, or what he calls global integration, ‘Abolishes the significance of geographical distance, and makes all frontiers permeable; this eventually has the indirect effect of diminishing the interest of rich and powerful countries in changing the location of frontiers’. Anderson sees this as a positive effect of globalization, at least with respect to territorial disputes. However, this shows dim recognition of the fact that with technology the turf wars have shifted to new territories or virtual territories organized technologically rather than geographically. What we are confronted with is the problem of redefining the concept of territory itself. Multiculturalism as an outcome of globalization, therefore, is fundamentally different from pluralism. Pushing the panoptic gaze to include the instrumentality of documentation in the effort to exploit resources, ‘permeable frontiers’ are merely a new form of imperialism operated through international laws of trade and commerce, market economies and economic and political sanctions, if not by a mechanism of strategic wars. This takes the form also of the migration of recruits and followers of the Enlightenment whether as intellectual elite partaking first hand of its cumulative universal wisdom or as immigrant cheap labour looking for lands of opportunity, and lastly, and more recently, as the outsourced supplier of cheap labour or documenter of ethnic-data-sans-theory, in the newly evolved two-way, two-desk system of the globalized intellectual world. These could be seen as three stages of the growth of imperialism while global economies combine aspects of each of these modes of territorial conquest.11 Thus unlike what Anderson believes it is an intended effect and method of ‘civilized’ countries to sell Enlightenment and to spread it with the altruistic motive of civilizing others, while creating an illusion of respecting the sovereignty of nation states, in order to capture their cultural and political economies and markets. It is panoptism with a twist. However, as Gandhi argues and demonstrates, they have a willing and captive, or shall one say, ‘captivated’, audience. Multiculturalism is an outcome of ‘global 11 One may add that the ‘panoptic documentation’ extends beyond human records to territorial records scanning natural resources and the possibility of accessing them.

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integration’ rather than ‘global interdependence’. It would classify as fostering a relation of violence and exploitation both between and within countries of origin, and of migration. Thus Gandhi’s final word on the matter above is that unity between communities can be forged only through ‘mutual service and cooperative work’, that is, on principles of non-violence; it is not an empty spiritual message but one that contradicts the very dualism of matter and spirit, work and worship, that fosters the establishing of modern markets and industrialization that survive on exploitation and competition. One may see then that Rabindranath Tagore’s Internationalism, or the arguments for multiculturalism or global integration today are only the other half of separatism, and the demand for separate nation states. As Gandhi had pointed out, it would suit the arbiters, to maintain this status quo. To the argument of the internationalist, who feels that to be nationalist is to be narrow-minded, that to accept the best of what other nations have to offer is the sign of a liberal outlook, Gandhi argued that there can be no internationalism without nationalism since only then would it be possible for all nations to act as one man, without one exploiting the other. The Durand Line: Disputed Border or Silver Lining? The Durand line is the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan which runs across Pakhthunistan with the Pashthun tribes occupying areas on either side of the boundary. Pakhthunistan is the Pashthun name for the erstwhile NWFP of India. The Durand line was initially drawn, by the British for reasons of colonial administration. The resilient Pashtun tribes of Afghanistan and Pakistan show an irreverence for stateist trappings of sovereignty, borders and security, which the international community, led by America and Britain, has been unable to contain. The Pashthun tribes on either side of the border have resolutely refused to recognize the Durand Line, maintaining that it was a vestige of the British Empire which had no legitimacy after both countries had gained independence. In spite of continual pressure from the international community, the borders remain porous. A recent document on the Durand Line (2007) notes that ‘the most radical objection’ of Afghanistan to the legitimacy of the border has been ‘That the Pashthun regions should not have had to choose between joining India or Pakistan, but should have been offered the additional options of becoming an independent state or joining Afghanistan’. This demand clearly harks back to Gandhi’s demand at the Round Table Conference Unlike in the case of multiculturalism which is founded in a ‘universal general culture’ spearheaded by the process of globalization, the porous border is due most importantly to the belief, amongst the tribes of the region, in the principle of selfgovernance and the primacy of civil society over the state. The document notes that despite skirmishes among themselves and despite an absence of a strong and stable state, the Afghans even today exhibit a strong sense of national unity. There

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has been no fear that the nation would disintegrate into smaller states, rather each tribe looks to a more dominant role within the Afghan nation. A report on the Durand Line issue based on the proceedings of an international conference thus notes the following: The local disregard toward the Durand Line is only one aspect of the region’s resistance to state penetration of all types. Although this is the most pronounced in the FATA.12 such resistance also characterizes the Pasthun tribes on the Afghan side of the frontier as well. Pashthuns in the region take great pride in asserting their autonomy and declare that their Pashthunwali tradition and tribal jirgas supersede state laws and codes and courts. Pashthunwali is both a code of honour and a code of conduct that structures individual and group behaviour in a way that allows communities to govern themselves in the absence of formal government. In political terms they see themselves as stateless societies that owe little or nothing to the national governments that now declare sovereignty over them. (Barfield: 2007)

This conclusion of the report clearly establishes the existence of the conditions of swaraj or the sovereignty of civil society based on custom and conscience over the state, amongst the Pashthuns. The Durand Line document notes that the FATA region in Pakistan is ‘a territory over which a state claims de jure title but does not exert de facto authority over the people who live here’. In the era of the sovereign nation state the porous borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan are today used instead for smuggling of drugs and opium and this region has become a hotbed for terrorists who find easy sanctuary in an area where the state wields little authority. It is evident that the site is ripe for experiments in self-governance even today: the question of the sovereignty of civil society vs. the sovereignty of state is still vibrant in this frontier although it has turned unwieldy and violent. It is this frontier that the world has come to fear the most, since no fear of state authority, nor of international power and aggression seems to affect the resilience of its people. The Durand Line document notes: ‘As a haven for Islamist non-state actors keen to disrupt the international political order through terrorism, the frontier region has become a centre of instability with worldwide consequences.’ However, the same document acknowledges that this boundary issue is not really a border dispute as much as it is ‘a gloss for a core set of unresolved social, economic and political relationships that affect domestic politics in each country as well as the bilateral relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan’. Therefore, unlike in other cases, neither international powers and players, nor their method and point of view have been able to gain enough foothold to legislate and enforce their will on the Pashthuns even after repeated and extended invasions into Afghanistan. 12 Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan.

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It is this frontier that Gandhi had chosen for his post-Partition experiment in non-violence and Hindu–Muslim unity with the incisive clarity that it would have far-reaching consequences not only for India and Pakistan but for the world. He was not far from the truth as history and events have testified, sadly for altogether different reasons. If Gandhi had had his way, the Frontier would be an example of an ‘imagined community’ in an altogether different sense of ‘experimental’ community, not committed to the globalization and multicultural projects of liberal capitalism or democratic socialism nor to international drug trails and terrorism but to the establishment of social, economic and political institutions on the presuppositions of non-violence and swaraj. The frontier then, still holds the promise to make the joint dream of Badshah Khan and Gandhi, to establish this region as a frontier for experiments in the science of non-violence, pluralism and swaraj beyond borders, a reality. References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities. New York: Verso. Anderson, M. (1997) Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Banerjee, M. (2001) The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier Province Oxford: James Currey. Barfield, T. (2007) The Durand Line: History, Consequences and Future, in Hawthorne, A. (ed.), Report of Conference organized by the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies and the Hollings Center in Istanbul, Turkey. Bose, N.K. (1957) Selections from Gandhi. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Foucault, M. (1980) Questions of Geography, in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, Gordon, C. (ed.). London: Harvester Press. Gandhi, M.K. (1939) Hind Swaraj. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1945) Constructive Programme. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust. Gandhi, M.K. (1957) Economic and Industrial Life and Relations Vol. I. Kher, V.B. (compiled and ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1963) The Way to Communal Harmony, Rao, U.R. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1967) Political and National Life and Affairs Vol. I, Kher, V.B. (compiled and ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1969) Voice of Truth, Narayan, S. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1978) Hindu Dharma. Delhi: Orient Paperbacks.

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Gandhi M.K. (1999) The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi: Publications Division. Government of India.13 Kolers, A. (2009) Land, Conflict and Justice: A Political Theory of Territory. Cambridge: Oxford Unviersity Press. Parekh, B. (2002) Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Philpott, D. (2010) Sovereignty, in Zalta, E.N., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer 2010 Edition. (Online). Available from: http:// stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/archives/sum2010/entries/sovereignty/ (Accessed 9 December 2013). Prescott, J.R.V. (1978) Boundaries and Frontiers. New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield. Smith, R.S. (1996) Rule by Records: Land Registration and Village Custom in Early British Punjab. Delhi: Oxford Unviersity Press. Uberoi, J.P.S. (1978) The Structural Concept of the Asian Frontier, in History and Society: Essays in Honour of Niharranjan Ray, Chattopadhyay, B. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Company.

13 This work has been abbreviated as CW in the main text. The version used here is the electronic book (98 volumes) downloadable from: http://www.gandhiserve.org/e/ cwmg/cwmg.htm (Accessed: 14 January 2014)

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Chapter 5

The Science of Peace: Industrialization and the Political Economy There is a philosophy about everything, that is, there are certain laws and certain methods for doing everything. Even a small thing like the charkha has a philosophy. We did not know it before but now a theory has been evolved, and we have come to realize the power of the charkha. I go so far as to say that the whole world will gain its freedom through the charkha. The world will not be freed through the atom bomb. There are two kinds of Shastras in the world – one satvik and the other rajasik, one conforming to dharma, the other not conforming to dharma. The shastra of the atom bomb does not conform to dharma. It does not show faith in God. It usurps the place of God. (Gandhi, CW 95: 270)

The separation of science, religion and politics established by the positivist regime of the European Enlightenment unleashed a surge of scientific discoveries and technological inventions spearheaded by a new sense of power vested in human knowledge to gain control over the other whether it be man or nature or other nations. Imperialism and Industrialism together, infused with a thirst for new territories to colonize, were necessary corollaries. Thus science and politics, though inwardly separated by the regime of dualism, colluded outwardly in the godless consolidation of power over the world culminating in the two devastating world wars. Gandhi saw that Hitlerism and the Bomb were two faces of the same regime of dualism the one perpetrated in the name of the science of power (politics) and the other an expression of the power of science (technology): Whatever Hitler may ultimately prove to be, we know what Hitlerism has come to mean. It means naked, ruthless force reduced to an exact science and worked with scientific precision. In its effect it becomes almost irresistible. (Harijan, 2–6–1940, p. 172 from Bose 1957, p. 171) I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women and children as the most diabolical use of science. (Harijan, 22–9–1946, p. 335 from Gandhi 1969, p. 255)

However, the presupposition of the dualism of science and politics, that they are separate and unrelated, allowed the scientific world to disown responsibility for the Bomb while it celebrated the power of science to overcome and transform the

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world. The consequence is evident from the testimony of no less a person than Einstein who prided himself on being a pacifist: The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. One would say that it has affected us quantitatively, not qualitatively. So long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable. That is not an attempt to say when it will come, only that it is sure to come. That was true before the atomic bomb was made. What has been changed is the destructiveness of war. I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atom bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth might be killed. But enough men capable of thinking would be left to start again, and civilization would be restored. (Einstein 1954, p. 118)

With little regard for the ethical issues that can be raised about the nature and role of the science and technology that had made the bombs possible, Einstein’s conclusion clearly separates the ‘quantitative’ from the ‘qualitative’ effects i.e., the scientific from the political results of the experiment. This, having been accomplished, with the quintessential Enlightenment faith in human intelligence and reason, he assures us that ‘civilization’ could be reconstructed by a few intelligent men. This begs the question ‘Is this, what one would call civilization?’ Gandhi saw that the root of violence lay in industrialism spearheaded by a scientific method that had little if no concern for its practical, political or ethical implications. The technology of violence and the violence of technology were only a sign of this epistemic separation of science and politics which gave it, that is, technology, its legitimacy and power of destruction. In other words, there was a method and philosophy to this violence which had little to do with the moral stature of any of the individual players whether scientist or politician; It was Hitlerism and not Hitler that was the problem. Similarly, it was the dualism of science and politics/ethics and not Einstein that was the problem.1 Gandhi understood this well and saw clearly that technology was the sign or symptom of the relation (or lack of it) between science and politics. He made a distinction between industrialism and industrialization. The former involved a craze for labour-saving machinery which emaciated the labourer, empowered 1 Adams (2010) whose liberal positivist point of view, as unabashed as it is unselfconscious, and ignorant of alternative epistemological perspectives, assesses Gandhi’s contribution from a point of view of realism (as opposed and separate from idealism). In a patronizing tone he excuses Gandhi from having anything of value to say about the nuclear arms race since it had hardly begun before his death and goes on to point to a ‘recurrent failing’ in him. He alleges that ‘his moral vision was profound, but it was about individual fulfilment. He could conceive of personal animosity, but genocidal destruction was beyond his understanding’. Nothing could be farther from the truth and reality of Gandhi’s life and thought than this.

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the exploitation of many by a few and resulted in the indiscriminate exploitation of non-human nature. It is the former that he rejects. His charkha experiments were meant to hit at the root of industrialism, attacking the dualism of science and politics that the atom bomb signified with the non-dualism that the spinning wheel signified. Industrialization, on the other hand, involved the discriminate invention and use of machinery to help each individual with his work rather than cause the displacement of human labour by machinery. The charkha itself was a machine which symbolized a non-violent means of production and distribution. What Gandhi was proposing was a craft based economy with non- exploitative machinery that each craftsman could understand and use without being rendered helpless by it and without the power to render others helpless with it: … It [the spinning wheel] is a symbol not of commercial war but of commercial peace. It bears not a message of ill-will towards the nations of the earth but of goodwill and self-help. It will not need the protection of a navy threatening a world’s peace and exploiting its resources, but it needs the religious determination of millions to spin their yarn in their homes as today they cook their food in their own homes. (Young India 8–12–1921 from Gandhi 1969, p. 391)

It was therefore imperative to change the very basis of the political economy, and the means and modes of production it adopted rather than address war alone which was only the product of industrialism. In a society that accepts industrialism, peace time is used in preparation for war, if not in running a proxy war; Gandhi was bent on changing this. He instituted a constructive programme of non-violent community living that experimented with systems of production and reproduction as war time non-violent dissidence and as preparation in anticipation of peace time conditions of stability. Experiments in the science of peace2 would involve a systemic and systematic transformation of the nexus between science, the capitalist mode of production, the state and its military, and the distance between the expert and the lay person that they presupposed. This meant a re-definition of science and technology, and their relation to society that went beyond the mere moral and political advocacy of peace. Gandhi saw the spinning wheel as a weapon of non-violent civil disobedience, an instrument of economic and social rejuvenation, and a mantra for the unity of rich and poor, the urban and rural, Hindus and Muslims and men and women. Most importantly, however, it represented the possibility of an alternative understanding of science, technology and the relation between expert and layman. This was the key to his constructive programme which was to become the power of a non-violent nation. The role he envisaged for the spinning wheel shows his close and comprehensive understanding of the role of machinery in the changing modes of 2 For a discussion of presuppositions of experiments in the science of peace see Veeravalli (1999).

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production in the history of the Industrial Revolution, one perhaps matched in its insight only by Marx’s discussion in Das Capital. Therefore his experiments in the crafts and the transformation of the material culture and political economy of India were directed not merely at politically defying the British with the boycott of foreign cloth or of English education but, more fundamentally, at industrialism and its scientific/epistemological presuppositions, of which the former were only symptoms/representations. The attack on imperialism lay not in driving the British out but in driving out any illusions one had about modern civilization and the apparent merits of industrialism and the political economy of the modern nation state. The question for the Indian people, according to Gandhi then, was to consider where their freedom lay. Both colonized and colonizer had had a taste of the power of technology, and the possibilities it opened for harnessing resources and fostering the ‘wealth of nations’. India stood politically and spiritually at a point in history where she had the freedom to choose to build a nation and its institutions on modes of production that were non-exploitative in nature, or on the other hand, succumb to the temptation to go the way her colonizers had gone. Thus, for Gandhi, it was a matter of the very foundations of civilization, social organization, division of labour and ecology. How would it help to fight for freedom, enslaved by the very presuppositions of violence and aspirations of exploitation and development that the colonizer used to colonize a people? Would it give India the freedom it wanted, or would it merely lead to enslavement, albeit this time, at India’s own hands, and worse, to the power to enslave other nations? On the other hand, it had the unique opportunity to present to the world the possibility of experiments in non-violent political economy and nation state. Sadly, it was a question that went unheeded by a nation of new recruits to modernity, who, equipped with equal measures of idealism, and pragmatism, remained trapped under the debris of post-Enlightenment dualism, unwilling and unready for Gandhi’s experiments. While Nehru believed that the evils of capitalism could be avoided if industrialization was socialized, Gandhi held that these evils were ‘inherent in industrialism, and no amount of socialization can eradicate them’.3 The national flag that rose at the ramparts of the Red Fort on the eve of independence spoke eloquently of the possibilities of non-violent dissent but tragically too of the discarded experiments in the political economy of peace: The centre piece of the Tri-colour flag was not the charkha that Gandhi had hoped would lead India and the world but was replaced by the Ashoka Chakra, a relic of peace in a war-torn world.4 3 Harijan, 29–9–1940 p. 299 from Gandhi (1969) p. 378. 4 Gandhi felt that the national flag of Independent India should reflect the true spirit of Swaraj and the ideal that it aspired for. Discussions on the national flag started in 1921 and continued right up to 1947. Gandhi’s interest in the design was first kindled by the suggestion of LalaHansraj of Jullunder that the charkha must be represented on the national flag. Gandhi conception of it included the idea that there would be stripes of

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Industrialization, Theory of Labour and the charkha Gandhi’s obsession with the charkha is not without foundation. His recommendation that the whole nation should find time to spin for at least an hour a day to rid the country of all its ills and problems would appear incongruent with the times and at best, a patriotic gesture, if it were not put in the context of a theory and history of Industrialization. Marx notes that Industrialization (‘industrialism’, in Gandhi’s words) progresses by the systematic enslavement of labour through the separation of the means of production from labour and mechanization of the modes of production. He describes the peculiar nature of innovation in the machinery that constituted the essence of industrialization as one that firstly, separated the operative power/skill of the worker from the motive/motor power, and secondly, replicated the former. Thus, he argues that, unlike what is usually assumed to be the case, mechanization did not involve the introduction of a new source of motor power as fundamentally as it meant the removal of skill and intelligence from the hands and head of the workman. Who or what ran the machine then became irrelevant. Thus, Marx points out, when John Wyatt introduced his Spinning machine at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 1735, he described it as a machine ‘to spin without fingers’ and made no mention of the fact that an ass moved the machine instead of a man. He argues, therefore, that it was not the invention of the steam engine that began the industrial revolution but the invention of the machine. However, the search for co-ordinated motive power to replace manpower led to the use of energy that was not only completely under human control, but portable so that industry could shift from rural to urban locations, and power was of universal technical application, such that one source of motive power was applicable in several industries. Liberalism has, however, never acknowledged the role of technology in the alienation and division of labour. It has instead focused on ownership and right to property as the basis of distributive justice and social organization under the capitalist mode of production. Marx himself has often been read as critiquing the social structure rather than industrialization. The story of the transformation from the handicrafts mode of production to manufacture and finally to industry, according to Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations therefore, is a positive one that demonstrates the advantages of division of labour as the great increase in

an ‘Islamic’ colour, green, a Hindu colour, red, and a colour which stood for the purity and represented all other faiths, white, as the background to the charkha. ‘But India as a nation can live and die only for the spinning wheel’ (Young India 13–4–1921 CW 23: 35). Thus it would stand for the equality of all, rich and poor, Hindu and Muslim and men and women. With the discussions that followed over the years up to 1947, it became increasingly evident that the charkha would have no role to play in the national flag or, for that matter, in India’s future!

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productivity achieved through dividing different stages of manufacture into peculiar trades.5 This last, according to him, contributed … first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a large number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many. (Smith 1957, p. 5)

The first of these advantages, Marx dismisses, citing several medical and public health reports ranging from 1713 to 1868, as heralding, in fact, the beginning of ‘industrial pathology’. Elsewhere, he describes it as a process which ‘converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts’ (Marx 1887, p. 340). As to machinery ‘abridging’ labour, Marx argues that it abridges labour required for subsistence so that it can extend in proportion the labour that can be contributed to the capitalist in the form of surplus value. For Adam Smith, however, this is simply the prize that nations must pay for civilization and development. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must [emphasis mine] necessarily fall. (Smith quoted in Marx 1887, p. 342)

So, Adam Smith, underlining the presuppositions of the economics of free enterprise and the accumulation of the wealth of nations with ‘scientific objectivity’, identifies the division of labour as the single most important factor in the increase of productivity in the capitalist mode of production. Both Adam Smith and Marx agree, however, that the progressive decomposition of the process of production into detail functions was reflected in the fracturing of labour power into partial functions that were progressively replaced by the machine in modern industry. Thus the workman is rendered helpless in everyway. His skill in producing a commodity is systematically destroyed and replaced with mechanical, nonspecialized, detail work which debilitates both mind and body and further creates 5 Adam Smith describes without comment, the division of labour effected in pinmaking – ‘One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations, to put it on is a peculiar business …’ (Smith 1957, p. 2). To cut a long tragic-comic story of the assembly line short, it drew the soul out of labour. Charlie Chaplin’s classic, ‘Modern Times’ captures the comic in the pathology of the factory regime, in its demand for obsessive, compulsive (dis)order.

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the demand for a steady stock of human resources of unskilled labour. He then has no means of livelihood except to sell his labour-power to the capitalist to work in the creation of further surplus value that accrues to capital, binding him in a vicious cycle of enslavement. The limits of production and division of labour are both determined by exchange value rather than the use value of a commodity. The hierarchy between skilled and unskilled labour, intellectual and physical labour, male and female labour, the expert and the layperson, and the urban and the rural then are necessary to the very structure of capitalism. Despite his extensive critique of the factory system, in Das Capital Marx also failed to address the root cause of alienation – the nature of the mode of production itself and few in contemporary political theory and practice of the Left have taken note of these insights of Marx. For Marx, it was a matter for the state to take over the ownership of the means of production in the transitional phase of dialectical materialism that industry represented, till the time that the alienation of labour was overcome. Gandhi’s choice of the charkha as the ‘queen’ of his constructive programme and as his non-violent weapon against the regime of modernity and industrialization, it would seem then, was no accident. Just as with making salt on the banks of Dandi he dared to ‘shake the foundations of the British Empire’, with the spinning wheel, he made bold to shake the very foundations of industrialization and the modern nation state. Gandhi saw this as a unique opportunity for India which was at this juncture in a stronger position than any other nation to re-establish the place of the spinning wheel’s significance in the political economy. It signified decentralization in production and distribution of basic goods and therefore the ‘the beginning of economic freedom and equality of all in the country’. It would put the village and city on par in relation to production and employment. Most importantly, it would address the core of the problem of industrialization and the nature of its machinery and labour by focussing on the development of human skill and intelligence: ‘In our country there has been a divorce between labour and intelligence. The result has been stagnation. If there is an indissoluble marriage between the two, and in the manner here suggested, the resultant good will be inestimable’ (Gandhi 1941, pp. 14–15). Could one turn back the clock of history? Never one to be held back from the challenge of an experiment, he planned every aspect of the charkha experiments. The idea was to make history rather than be a passive witness to it. Every aspect of the experiment, political, economic and scientific, including a people’s institution for research and development of ‘Khadi science’ were planned meticulously. It started with the hunt for a charkha which was extinct since India’s colonization and the establishment of mills by the British. It must be noted that spinning was traditionally women’s work. When Gandhi met Gangabehn Mazumdar, a community worker working for the cause of untouchables in 1917, he charged her with the task of not resting till she had found one. The charkha was eventually located in Vijapur, Gujarat. Keeping

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in mind the need to experiment with the charkha, Satyagraha Ashram had been set up in 1915 at Ahmedabad, Gujarat, which was an established handloom weaving centre. Gangabehn herself found women spinners in Vijapur by 1918 and started initiating them and other unemployed women into spinning. The experiment to use the vows to wear Khadi (Pure vow) or handwoven cloth (mixed vow) as Satyagraha pledges for the movement against the Rowlatt Acts began in 1919. The All India Spinners association was founded in 1925 for training and research in Khadi work. Maganlal Gandhi, Gandhi’s nephew who had shown an aptitude for technical work and research had been given charge of the experiments based in the Satyagraha Ashram which was conceived as a resource centre for all Khadi workers and researchers in the country. Finally, the charkha experiments saw the establishment of a scientific journal ‘Ambar’ in the vernacular language Hindustani.6 The charkha represented the common human necessity for bread labour. It demonstrated the advantages of the unity of labour and means of production, and both independence and interdependence in the division of labour between producers of commodities based on their use, rather than exchange value. Thus the emphasis on spinning and the charkha directly countered the science of political economy of the modern nation state and capitalism, making the local economy resilient and independent of the state and capitalist. Above all, as Gandhi pointed out it re-united labour and intelligence in the processes of non-violent production and reproduction, enabling a powerful resistance to the presuppositions of industrialism and its divorce of science from politics. The mechanical unity of labour required by the factory as part of an assembly line of detail work had effectively broken the system comprising the cyclical yearly calendar, in which different craftsman contributed seasonally, in a system of mutual cooperation, co-ordination, and exchange of commodities based on use value in the village/community economy. In a call which simultaneously addressed itself to the mechanical co-operation of factory labour and to the need to register united non-violent dissent against a exploitative political economy as well as against the British colonizers who sought to exploit India with its imposition, Gandhi advocated the voluntary, sacrificial, intelligent spinning on the charkha for an hour everyday by all – men and women, rich and poor, factory worker and farmer, urban and rural, Hindu and Muslim, whatsoever their regular profession may be. He recognized the fact that the key to understanding poverty and the gap between the rich and poor is the separation of distribution from production that industrialization brings with the alienation of means of production from the labourer. Gandhi argued that they cannot be separated, and were united not by the imposition of governmental policy, taxation and restriction, but in the very choice of the mode of production. Therefore the solution for him does 6 See Prasad (2001) for a detailed history and lucid analysis of the development of Khadi science by Gandhi.

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not lie in putting in place a system of distributive justice but in decentralizing production, and making it local. And this lies foremost in the choice of the mode of production being suited to the needs of the people and the specific conditions of the nation, but in a way that ‘the divorce between intelligence and labour’, which ‘has resulted in criminal negligence of the villages’ is necessarily addressed (Gandhi 1941, p. 15). This would put an end to the rural urban divide. Universal spinning involving millions across the country offering an hour of sacrificial spinning would achieve this, and simultaneously also fulfil the countries yarn requirements. The operative skills of each spinner would be self-tested locally, with localized individual and community work, and experiments. The city dweller would contribute his bit to the villages by supplying the much needed yarn, instead of being only the consumer of rural resources. The organization that the different stages of spinning required would serve as the core for organizing all other activities and crafts in the village bringing about a system of mutual interdependence, and use of idle time, apart from the much needed extra earning for the poor. Above all it would restore man’s supremacy over the machine. The focus on the spinning wheel, as central to the constructive programme, arose from incisive prognosis, and engagement with the fundamental presuppositions of modern epistemology, technology, and political economy. ‘Through Khadi, we were struggling to establish the supremacy of man in the place of power-driven machine over him’ (Harijan, 21–12–1947, p. 476 from Gandhi (1969) p. 323). For the striking mill workers of Ahmedabad, he started what he considered a ‘great experiment’. The trade unions were to train mill workers in supplementary occupations that they could practice during their leisure hours in addition to the primary occupation in the mills. The Ahmedabad labour union started a training programme in spinning and other occupations such as carding, ginning, soap making and typesetting among others. Thus even while on strike, the mill worker would not be idle. This would keep his morale high, his self respect and most importantly, he would not be left helpless without any alternative means of livelihood during the strike. This is indeed insightful in the light of the helpless state that the capitalist mode of production leaves a detail worker who is rendered unfit for any other occupation. Gandhi argues that ‘a working knowledge of a variety of occupations is to the working class what metal is to the capitalist. A labourer’s skill is his capital’ (Gandhi 1951, p. 85). Khadi Science Perhaps, the most significant contribution of Gandhi, however, was his determined effort to develop a public culture of decentralized scientific and technological research through the charkha and what he called ‘Khadi Science’. This was not a matter of just making research people-oriented but was also one of making people research-oriented. By centring it in the crafts it would be in the hands

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of the people to experiment and innovate for and by themselves in the course of their work. In fact, it envisaged a situation where the person at work was himself principle investigator in experiments regarding his instruments of labour, and all other conditions related to production such as the study of cotton types, and of the various stages of the ginning and seeding of cotton undertaken by the users of the charkha all over the country.7 The need was to lay the foundation for intelligent sacrificial spinning that would help develop a Khadi science with the possibility of individual or collective experiments being conducted, throughout the country. The material costs required was such that the experiments could easily be sustained by individuals. Prasad (2001) records how no time was wasted before the Satyagraha Ashram was turned into a laboratory and resource centre, how Maganlal Gandhi who had given himself to the cause of Khadi science wrote regularly in Young India, reporting his findings and requesting technical inputs from all over the country, and how reports started coming in of different experiments, inventions and innovations. Maganlal and Gandhi even instituted prizes for different categories of invention. The criteria and limits for innovation that Gandhi evolves show a minute understanding of the role of machinery in the alienation and division or decomposition of labour in the work place. While commenting on particular innovations, and discussing criteria for prize winning entries Gandhi shows a keen awareness of the need to distinguish between a tool and a machine, before proceeding with any change: Your model of the spinning wheel follows the model in use at present, that is, it is not purely a machine. A machine is that which requires no intelligence or dexterity. Plying the spinning wheel is an art and it can, therefore, be mastered only by one who has the required skill. (Letter to Prabhudas Gandhi, 11–8–1930 from CW 49: 491)

Again elsewhere, he emphasizes the need to retain the role that skill and intelligence of the worker play in the act of production. Commenting on an entry by Biharilal Kantawala, he says – ‘the element of intelligence that the old style spinning wheel requires on the part of the spinner should remain in the improved model’ (Young India 2–11–20 from Prasad 2001, p. 122). His sustained and conscious focus on the nature of the innovation, the implications it had for the use of skill and intelligence of the labourer, are a clear indication that his was a studied response to the problems of industrialization. As seen in our discussion of Marx and Adam Smith, the presuppositions of the invention and innovation of machinery had been understood and well recorded both by its advocates and its critics. However, even the critics affirmed its inevitability which indicates that they lacked, not merely the faith but the 7 See Prasad (2001).

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theoretical basis for pursuing a determined defence based on principles of truth and non-violence against industrialization. Gandhi turned around the concept of peace time preparation for war that kept the industrialized countries busy, into his very own war-time preparation for peace in using the constructive programme for civil disobedience, executing another master stroke in the non-dualism of science and politics. The spinning wheel envisaged a science that did not grow by the ‘trickle down’ effect or by a mere reduction in the scale of production as Schumacher (1973) suggests but rather where the layperson trains himself to be the expert on the field through intelligent engagement and experiment with the materials and implements of his work. Did people’s experiments have the substance and strength to sustain growth and development? These questions perhaps gain a different significance today when the impossibility of sustaining the exploitation of the world’s resources, its peoples, the planet and, the war of nations, loom large. Social Organization, the Social Division of Labour and the Caste Problem Gandhi then understood well the implications of industrialization, the capitalist political economy and liberalism on India’s independence. He saw even more clearly how it would interfere with the urgent reform required with respect to the caste system and the removal of Untouchability. Sociologists have engaged in discussions on the structure of the caste system and debated whether relations between castes are founded on principles of hierarchy, purity and impurity (Dumont 1959)8 or on reciprocity and complementarity (Das and Uberoi 1971), on whether there exist rigid divisions between the castes, or mobility, and whether and how colonialism affected the original form of the caste system (Dirks 2003). On the other hand, social reformers such as Raja Ram Mohun Roy, Dayanand Saraswati, Jyotiba Phule and Ambedkar, fought against the ills of the caste system and the custom of Untouchability. Gandhi’s response to the problem is in many ways distinctive. Firstly, he drew a clear distinction between the problem of Untouchability and the caste system. Untouchability was a religious issue. It was an excrescence and a custom which was a blot on Hinduism and it had to go. If Hinduism had to survive, it would have to remove Untouchability from its very roots. However the caste system was a social division of labour and formed the civilizational foundations of society. He made a fervent plea to the Congress and to Ambedkar, to Hindus and the communities who had come to be regarded as untouchables that they sift the excrescence from the essence before they rejected either the caste system or Hinduism in their totality. He argued that there was nothing wrong with the social division of labour that the caste system signified but what was wrong was the assumption of a hierarchy between the castes that beleaguered Hinduism of the 8 See Das and Uberoi (1971).

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day; It failed all comprehension that one should consider someone untouchable due to his calling. In fact, he argued, determination of profession by heredity saved a person from cut-throat competition and assured each a means of subsistence which would lay the foundations of a non-violent society. According to him, the varna system which constituted the original Indian system of social division of labour was fundamentally different from the caste system and was based on two principles: There was no division of high and low and each was entitled only to a living wage. Thus learning/skill was not a trade to be used to get rich and powerful since the restriction of earning only a living wage applied to all professions. Though at face value, Gandhi’s arguments in favour of the varnashrama system appear deceptively simple and idealistic, and are viewed by some, to dangerously reaffirm the caste system and its hierarchy, they demonstrate a profound understanding of the role of labour and the nature of division of labour in a theory of society and social organization. His insistence on ‘living wage’ for all as that which would save people from the temptation of determining their profession and choice of education for pecuniary considerations or status clearly reflects an awareness of the role of exchange value in determining the value of labour – power in the political economy of capitalist society. He had already had a lot to say in Hind Swaraj (written in 1908) on the modern professions of the lawyer and the doctor that necessarily flourished on the ills of society and sickness and suffering of its people. He was indeed wary of reformers being swayed by the ideologies of liberal democracy and the so-called benefits of the capitalist mode of production into a hasty rejection and dismissal of the very principles of the social division of labour on which civilizations had survived. Thus Gandhi’s analysis went beyond just an interpretation of tradition and beyond a mere reaction to the inequalities generated by the caste system and its rejection, to questions of its relation to industrialization and the- political economy on the one hand and to social reform in the true spirit of swaraj on the other:9 Historically speaking caste may be regarded as man’s experiment of social adjustment in the laboratory of Indian society. If we can prove it to be a success, it can be offered to the world as a leaven and as the best remedy against heartless competition and social disintegration born of avarice and greed. (Young India 5–1–21 from Bose 1957, p. 264)

Marx has pointed out the fact that while, under the garb of liberalism, capitalism advocates anarchy in the social division of labour, i.e. a freedom of choice and opportunity to follow any trade or calling, it is a unique feature of the capitalist mode of production alone that it maintains a rigid delineation and hierarchy in the division of labour in the work place, i.e. in the factory and economy. Thus the divide between skilled and unskilled labour only widens with capitalism. Further, 9 For the question of reform from a swaraj point of view see Srinivasan (1987).

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he argued, it was a unique feature of capitalist society that the exchange value of specific partial labour power determined its place in the hierarchy. It is essential for capitalism, therefore, to maintain the various labourers in a state of competition (i.e. anarchy in social division of labour), maintaining the aspiration and incentive of upward mobility in the hierarchy, to keep a steady supply of labour power for his system to work. The more the subjugation to Capital, the greater the upward mobility of labour, is the law of capitalism. Therefore Marx points out that the higher the wages, the greater you are a slave of the system. He notes that in earlier forms of society, on the other hand, there exists a social division of labour along the spontaneous separation of trades in a society which crystallizes in social organization and law (like the caste system)10 while a division of labour in the work place was almost entirely absent. The separation was between master and apprentice or journeyman rather than the expert and the layperson. Marx notes that the question of the exchange value of labour did not arise since in this system ‘A merchant could buy every kind of commodity, but labour as commodity, he could not buy. He existed on sufferance, as a dealer of the products of the handicrafts’ (Marx 1887, p. 339). Similarly Gandhi remarks about the nature of work that all members of the Satyagraha Ashram were expected to do and know: ‘Everyone in the Ashram is a labourer; none is a wage-slave’ (Gandhi 1955, p. 35). One may argue, from this point of view, that Gandhi did not miss the woods for the trees. He attempted to free all classes of Indian society from the slavery intrinsic to capitalist society by retaining the principles of social division of labour presupposed by the caste system of the handicraft mode of production which had already been put in place with his insistence on the charkha and the constructive programme for swaraj. If the enforced hierarchy were removed from the caste system, then the depressed classes, as would be the case with the others, would pursue their calling, without depending on political power or a demand for their rights, for self-affirmation. Dr. Ambedkar, leader of the Dalits in the Indian national movement disagreed on several counts with Gandhi’s analysis of the problem of Untouchability and the caste system. His specific response to Gandhi’s thesis that varna represented a social division of labour was clearly from a liberal point of view. While he recognized that within the caste system the division of labour corresponded with a social division of labour, he believed it was not spontaneous since each caste had innumerable sub divisions. Gandhi would have had no dispute on this matter with Ambedkar and was himself actively attempting to restrict divisions to that suited to the principles of social organization, i.e. the four basic varnas.11 However, Ambedkar, like his liberal counterparts, showed little appreciation for the changing 10 Marx himself talks of the Indian caste system as an example. 11 The customary division of varna is not unlike the division that Plato uses in The Republic, they comprise: i) the Brahmin or priestly class; ii) the Kshastriya or warrior class; iii) The Vaishya or trader class and iv) the Sudra or the service class.

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face of the division of labour in modern industry, and for the underpinnings of the apparent freedom with respect to choice of profession that capitalist society enabled and encouraged. He therefore strongly believed that the variety of professions that industry opened up could be a boon that granted each the freedom to choose his/ her own profession, if only one could destroy the caste system. How much, or what of Marx, Gandhi knew, is not so much of consequence here. What is significant is Gandhi’s ability, when confronted with the immediate problem of Untouchability and the caste system, to separate the religious question from matters of political economy and see that the solution in modern India neither lay in the revival of the caste system nor in simple conformity to the norms of liberalism. He did not see this as a uniquely Indian problem, a result of age old customs and traditions of Indian society which needed to be swept away to usher in the new, modern liberal form of life. Instead he drew attention to the system of varnashrama dharma which he believed to be the true form of the social organization of Hinduism. While ashrama classification was a unique feature of Hinduism, the varna system had parallels in other civilizations: ‘Four varnas and four ashramas are an arrangement not peculiar to Hinduism but capable of world-wide application, and a universal rule, the breach of which has involved humanity in numerous disasters’ (Gandhi 1955 p. 46). In this system social division of labour merely defines the specific duties of a person in society. Such a system would create conditions where knowledge would only be pursued for one’s salvation, or service of the other, on principles of reciprocity and not for upward mobility encouraged by the divide between skilled and unskilled labour that capitalist modes of production made necessary. In effect, this system prevented an economic division of labour on the basis of exchange value which was the inherent basis of exploitation and competition within the capitalist system. According to Gandhi this absence of a spirit of service from the social institutions of the Hindus was a consequence of the ashrama aspect of the caste system being discarded in modern times. Brahmacharya and sannyasa had lost their significance and all but disappeared from the ashrama system.12 With the conspicuous absence, or more precisely, the complete separation of brahmacharya and sannyasa ashramas from the life of the householder, the latter had become a life of ‘unregulated self-indulgence’ and was without a principle of service and reciprocity. Thus the caste system had broken down, making way for an inhuman and hierarchical social structure. The concluding chapter of this book discusses the Brahmacharya experiments of Gandhi where his crucial disagreement with the orthodoxy on its practice rests on his insistence that it is not a matter of simple abstinence from indulgence but a matter of continually being tested, or continuous 12 Brahmacharya involves observance of control over thought word and deed in our worldly pursuits, i.e. conduct in relation to the universe should be with the view to realize God/Truth. Sannyasa is a stage of life when one must leave home and family and treat the world as one’s family.

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experiments with Brahmacharya. This lays the basis for Brahmacharya being a principle to be practiced in the life of a householder, and not merely outside it. Dismantling Political Economy: Bread Labour, Swadeshi, and Sarvodaya The nexus between politics, industry and science that formed the essence of the political economy of the modern nation-state needed to be dismantled by a sociopolitical and economic order based on truth and non-violence. The dismantling of the science of violence had to proceed systematically involving the body, the body politic and the cosmos. Three principles formed the ideological backbone of Gandhi’s socio-political and economic thought: Sarvodaya, swadeshi and bread labour. Sarvodaya meant the welfare of all, and nothing less. It rejected any classification into majority and minority or capital and labour and had its basis in a spirit of sacrifice rather than self-preservation, which was the basis for the demand for rights in liberalism. In terms of a principle of economics this meant that ‘… we shall cease to think of getting what we can, but we shall decline to receive what all cannot get’ (Young India 3–9–25 from Gandhi 1954, p. 29). The working of experiments with this law in economic life, Gandhi believed, would not be without ‘its immense and unconscious spiritual results’. Swadeshi, Gandhi held, is a universal law applicable equally to economics, politics and religion that ‘a man’s first duty is to his neighbour.’. It is that in us ‘which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote’ (Gandhi 1962, p. 40). This principle undercuts the impulse both towards imperialism and its more contemporary avatar, globalization. The principle underlying swadeshi is that one who serves his neighbour serves the world. This is fundamentally different from modern interpretations of swadeshi, as that which is indigenous, arising from a spirit of narrow parochialism and competition with the other, as against a spirit of neighbour-hood. Finally, sarvodaya and swadeshi are based on the law of bread labour, which means the sacrificial offering of bodily labour of each, as a necessary condition of life. According to Gandhi the law of bread labour is a necessary sign of one’s common humanity. It is not a necessary condition for making a living as much as it is of living itself. Gandhi acknowledges his debt to Tolstoy in this regard. In referring to Bondaref’s insistence of the importance of bread labour Tolstoy had remarked that it was one of the most important discoveries of modern times. Gandhi goes on to explain the significance of the law of bread labour drawing from the incredible simplicity of its truth the most profound principles of human ecology: The idea is that every healthy individual must labour enough for his food, and his intellectual faculties must be exercised not in order to obtain a living or amass a fortune but only in the service of mankind. If this principle is observed

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The realization of the truth underlying the law of bread labour brings home its significance as a necessary condition for sustenance of the cycle of production and reproduction of not only man but society and the cosmos that includes all of non-human nature. Unlike Arendt (1958) who presents the modern dualist reading that labour and work are expressions in varying degrees, of the animality of man, for Gandhi bread labour is a sign of the law of non-violence that is the law of his species that lays the ground of his unity with all men and with all creatures of the universe. Arendt attributes only action and speech to the humanity and ‘species characteristic’ of man; they are those that enable man to show and express himself to the other, just as much as they allow him to know and understand the other. This is an anthropocentric reading of labour, work and action. Further, she reverts back to a reading of human nature that is not non-violent. It is only an attribute acquired in society, and not intrinsic to it. For Gandhi, on the other hand, it forms the very foundation of human civilization: Obedience to the law of bread labour will bring about a silent revolution in the structure of society. Man’s struggle will consist in substituting the struggle for existence by the struggle for mutual service. The law of the brute will be replaced by the law of man. (Harijan, 29–6–1935, p. 156 from Gandhi 1957, p. 98) The Village Industries Association was set up to this effect, as an experiment in “willing bread labour”. (Harijan, 29–6–1935, p. 156 from Gandhi 1957, p. 99)

Theory of Property and Trusteeship The issue of freedom and equality defined internally and externally, according to Gandhi, then, does not rest on the question of the ownership of property and of the means of production, or the equitable distribution of goods in a political economy as defined by the socialist and liberal debates, but primarily on labour and the mode of production, the relation between production and distribution, and the material, and scientific culture that it presupposes and promotes. In liberal theory, on the other hand, the right to property along with the rights to life, and liberty are considered to be the three basic natural rights of the individual, and constitute the foundational principles of post-Enlightenment definitions of liberal democracy and its aspirations. The right to property is often seen to be necessary to give meaningful content to the liberal understanding of freedom and life. This definition divorces the internal from external conditions of freedom and therefore freedom from equality; it focuses on ‘right’ as a claim to be settled from

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the outside, or with minimum interference in an individual’s rights to freedom and property. Locke’s theory of property which is the fundamental basis of liberal theories of property is, however, limited to the question of what gives one the right of ownership of land/property.13 If Hobbes questions the legitimacy of Common law against state prerogative, Locke lays the grounds in political theory for the rejection of people’s claim on the commons. According to him, though God gave the world to men in common, ‘He gave it to the use of the industrious and the rational (and labour was to be his title to it), not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious’ (Locke 1937, p. 23). He acknowledges, however, that as things stand, this theory is subject to the limits of the law and territorial boundaries of the state. Locke’s understanding of property rejects the constraints and claims of community and rules in favour of individual enterprise providing the moral legitimacy for accumulation of wealth by individuals and nations. Liberalism has accepted uncritically the unstated implication of this theory that a well to do person is so due to his being rational, virtuous, hard working and efficient. To be poor, on the other hand, is a sign of sloth and sin. The principle is applied equally to judge people within a sovereign state and more overtly to characterize nations bringing not merely legal but moral legitimacy to the usurping of common land and the imperial extension of territorial boundaries. It is not surprising therefore that liberal labour theory of property has consciously remained untouched by the phenomenon of industrialization and technological invention, and ignores completely Marx’s scathing critique of the capitalist mode of production Therefore, ironically, it continues to argue for the rights of the individual to property independently of its changed nature due to technological invention. The same bourgeois mind which praises division of labour in the workshop, lifelong annexation of a labourer to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as being an organization of labour that increases its productiveness – that same bourgeois mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to socially control and regulate the process of production, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights to property, freedom and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual capitalist. (Marx 1887, pp. 336–7)

Thus contemporary liberal theory confines itself to philanthropy and regulatory procedures of governmental policy in the name of distributive justice through allocation and taxation in an otherwise free market system. Distributive justice is then measured in terms of productivity, income, and the price system. In the 13 This is extended in the context of defining territory and the principles that determine right to territory as the ‘plenitude principle’, discussed in Chapter 4 on Territory.

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process, private ownership of means of production which controls and generates surplus labour is not accounted for in factoring the right to property. So overpowering is liberalism’s understanding of property that it subverts all other articulations and possibilities. Thus, for instance, Plato’s dictum ‘friend’s property is common property’ which brings within its ambit all possessions, including the community of women and children, lends itself, under the liberal eye, to the shocking but common misinterpretation that women and children are the common possession of the entire community to be used as one pleases! But property in Plato does not mean the same thing as it does in modern liberal vocabulary; it is not a thing to be possessed or acquired but that which is to be nurtured and held in trust for the community and for posterity. It was not a matter confined to the issue of distributive justice but was based on principles of sharing, reciprocity and unity of all existence. If we wish to build a society on presuppositions of peace then we must ensure that ‘all means have been taken to eliminate everything we mean by ownership from life’ and we ought to make every effort to bring all things ‘even what nature has made our own in some sense of common property, … act, in the common service’, that is, to ensure that all ‘the institutions of a society make it most utterly one’ (see Plato 1961, Laws V, p. 1324). Gandhi’s formulation of this principle within the framework of the modern nation state was in terms of trusteeship. Gandhi’s own theory of property, or rather, the denial of any rights to it, counters Locke’s understanding and therefore the very presuppositions of liberal theory on the matter. For Gandhi, the very fact that everything ‘belonged to God and was from God’ meant that the resources of the earth were not given to any individual but to people as a whole. Therefore when an individual had more than what he needed, he became trustee of that additional portion for others to partake of it. The second principle that Gandhi notes is that God only creates from day to day, enough therefore for everyone’s need but not their greed, not for accumulation. Finally, in what can be seen as a response to Locke’s thesis on the value of labour as that which legitimizes one’s right on that which we have tended and produced, Gandhi points out that while all men are born equal and they must have equal opportunity they do not all have equal capacities. Therefore while a person with greater talent may earn more, they can be keepers of their earnings only as trustees. Rawls recognizes this flaw in liberal interpretations of equality, that it makes no moral allowance for differences in ability. He therefore erects an elaborate hypothetical device in the form of ‘the veil of ignorance’ to create an imagined initial condition of equality, the Original position, which would allow people to choose their principles of justice on ‘general considerations’ unhindered by the knowledge of the contingencies of their circumstance and of how they would therefore fare in a competition for resources: Somehow we must nullify the effects of special contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own

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advantage. Now in order to do this I assume that the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance. (Rawls 1973, p. 136)

And, of course, then Rawls is ready with a universal principle of rationality that all parties, if they are rational will, willingly and obviously, choose to determine their conceptions of Justice in terms of– ‘that which will satisfy more of his desires than less’. Thus the utilitarian formula gains rational legitimacy within liberal theory again. Rawls recognizes, immediately, that the drawback of this procedure of arriving at a conception of Justice is that it makes no room for saving. Conservation of resources is only an afterthought in liberal formulations of property. Rawls’ response, as is the case with much of the liberal tradition, lacks the gravity that the question demands. He argues that persons in the Original position can simply decide to be concerned only with the present generation and ‘acknowledge the principle that no one has a duty to save for posterity’ (Rawls 1973, p. 140). This merely defines the rational limits of the devices he uses to arrive at a conception of justice and not the problem. There is ‘an adjustment’ required here such that ‘Whatever his temporal position, each is forced to choose for everyone’ (Rawls 1973, p. 140). The more recent and much acclaimed capabilities approach (proposed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum) is an attempt only to make this adjustment. It seeks to work out a system of assessing the requirements of capabilities or ‘real freedoms’ along with a calculus of ‘conversion factors’ that would establish the Rawlsian Original position in real terms, dissolving the need for ‘the veil of ignorance’. The question of ‘saving for posterity’ still remains unattended though. Like Einstein, perhaps, the liberal believes that human ingenuity would somehow find a way out. The Ashram-Laboratory: Body, Body Politic and Political Economy The Ashram brought together Gandhi’s experiments with Truth with respect to body, body politic and political economy, working out the finer details of practice, and serving as a resource and training centre for a Satyagrahi14 life. At each stage of Gandhi’s active political life, it was necessary to set up an Ashram-laboratory. It was based on the principle that politics and religion (and science, one may venture to add) cannot be separated. This understanding was not confined to a narrow definition of a life in politics but to the life of the polis and therefore to preparing every individual for a life of truth. For the common man, a life in religion was not a life of a recluse but one which involved vigil over every aspect of life, personal and political, social, scientific and economic. Thus Gandhi believed that even children in the Ashram should grow up being instructed about the political institutions in the country and issues of national growth: ‘The quest of truth cannot 14 Translates as ‘Soldier of Truth’.

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be prosecuted in a cave. Silence makes no sense where it is necessary to speak. One may live in a cave in certain circumstances but the common man can be tested only in society’ (Gandhi 1955, p. 2). Thus the Ashram was called ‘Udyog Mandir’ or temple of Industry. It was organized and established in order to be able to conduct experiments with Truth and non-violence, to be able to study and record the effects of the experiments both on the person and the community with a view to prepare men and women for national service not in conflict with the welfare of other nations and the world. Gandhi held that there was a necessary and precise relation between spiritual acts and their effects on us and the world which therefore made it necessary to be ever watchful. This thesis was to be put to test in the Ashram: I for one believe that spiritual acts have clearly defined results precisely like combinations or processes in the natural sciences. Only as we have no such means of measurement in the former case as in the latter, we are not ready to believe or we only half-heartedly believe in the spiritual influences. Again we are inclined to be lenient to ourselves with the result that our experiments are unsuccessful and we tend to move only in a circle like the oil-miller’s bullock. (Gandhi 1955, p. 2)

The importance of being conscious and wary of any imperfection and untruth entering either a person’s life or the community was brought home to all the Ashram inmates who had to pledge themselves to the practice of 11 observances to be members of the Ashram. In addition, those in charge of the Ashram were held responsible for any form of untruth or imperfection that crept into the Ashram, whether institutional or personal. If any individual was found guilty of misconduct both the person in charge of the Ashram and the individual concerned had to perform penance, and take responsibility for the wrong doing. In addition to the 5 cardinal vows of Truth, Ahimsa, non-stealing, nonpossession and brahmacharya, the Ashram inmates had to follow the observances of the control of the palate, physical labour, swadeshi, fearlessness, removal of Untouchability and tolerance bringing together the personal and the political in a way in which the practice of any one to the complete exclusion of any other would be impossible. The first five, it may be argued, are necessary principles that must govern the relation between mind and the world for the sustenance of the cycle of production and reproduction of the universe. Gandhi’s definition of non-stealing and non-possession/poverty undermines the very presuppositions of liberalism’s foundational arguments for both property and territorial expansion: ‘Whoever appropriates more than the minimum that is really necessary for him is guilty of theft’ (Gandhi 1955, p. 30). The other six are specific to the self-discipline required of the body and the body-politic (in this case, India). They constitute the sites of experiment which would put to test one’s mastery over the five cardinal vows in time/in history.

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Gandhi gives an account of the different stages that his notion of an Ashram went through starting with opening his home to become an Ashram and ending with the last and final experiment in Sewagram (Shegaon, renamed ‘village of service/ Sewagram’ by Gandhi established in 1936), in a booklet Ashram Observances in Action (Gandhi 1955). The principles and purpose for which the Ashrams were established and the observances that Ashram members had to follow and their meaning are described here in the manner of the conditions required for a life of service and experiments with Truth and non-violence. In 1904, the first Ashram, the Phoenix settlement, was set up in South Africa, with 100 acres of land ‘with the visible object of (cultivating) purity of body and mind as well as economic equality’. What Gandhi sees as the second step was made in 1906 with the introduction of brahmacharya as an Ashram observance, since he had come to see it as ‘a sine qua non for a life devoted to service’. In 1911, Tolstoy farm was established with Kallenbach, extending the membership beyond the families of workers of the Indian Opinion press to satyagrahi families, Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Parsi, taking part in the satyagraha movement. This Ashram sought to settle problems of inter-religious community living and ‘to seek the root of every activity in religion’. It was shut down within a year, in 1912, and the inmates moved to the Phoeinix settlement. Gandhi notes that the community kitchen and system of congregational prayer started in Tolstoy farm continued in Phoeinix. In 1913, it was inmates from the Phoeinix settlement who returned to India with Gandhi to start the satyagraha movement. The fourth Ashram was set up in Kochrab, Ahmedabad in May, 1915 ‘to remedy what it thought were defects in our national life from the religious, economic and political standpoints’. Sewagram was meant to have life members who would stay on even after Gandhi’s death and ‘render lifelong service through the activities of the Ashram’. In the final analysis, it was not a political or spiritual heir that Gandhi sought to leave behind as his legacy but rather the institution of the Ashram laboratory that could persist with experiments with Truth.15 The Body and Diet Reform Gandhi’s experiments with diet are based on a principle of minimum need keeping in mind concerns of health and hygiene but more importantly the needs of the poorest of the poor and finally, the presuppositions of non-violence and Truth. Control of the palate was essential for brahmacharya, which implied self-control 15 Many have pondered on Gandhi annointing Jawaharlal Nehru as his political heir. If the logic of our arguments on Gandhi’s notion of swaraj are right, then no head of state could possibly be that heir. As discussed in the chapter on Territtory, it was Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Khudai Khidmatgar who Gandhi had singled out for the future experiments of India, to be carried out in exile, as it were, in the NW FP whether autonomous or under Pakistani jurisdiction.

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in relation to one’s body (animal passions) and in relation to the world (cosmos). He conducted extensive experiments in diet reform on himself and in the community kitchen in the Ashram, urging inmates, friends and family to join in. He was very conscious of the enormous significance that these experiments in diet and diet reform would have for the poor of India, and for the world at large. His experiments do not merely anticipate the continued emphasis on nutrition and food security in poverty alleviation programmes but raise fundamental questions about the presuppositions of diet and diet reform, their purpose, vegetarianism, and the very notions of what constitute health and a healthy body, nation building and poverty alleviation from the point of view of a society based on presuppositions of non-violence. His first obsession with diet began from a point of view quite antithetical to his later non-violent persuasion. It was a nationalist spirited, young Gandhi, frustrated with India’s inability to fight the British who made bold to go against the diktats of his Vaisnav upbringing and overcome his dislike of meat, to commence his clandestine experiments in meat eating with the view to acquire enough strength to be able to combat the power of the British. The belief in physical strength as a means to power was soon replaced, however, by a different theory of power which worked from a position of apparent weakness, following the law of non-violence fortified by faith and truth rather than muscle and might. Thus the observance of the ‘control of palate’ was closely linked to the observance of celibacy or brahmacharya which Gandhi saw as the ultimate preparation for non-violence. In the introduction to Gandhi (1955), he lists the objectives that his dietetic experiments were designed to achieve as: 1) to acquire control over the palate as part of self-control in general; 2) to find out which diet was the simplest and cheapest so that by adopting it we might identify ourselves with the poor and 3) to discover which diet was necessary for perfect health, as maintenance of health is largely dependent upon correct diet. (Gandhi 1955, p. ix)

These objectives, it may be argued, constitute the principles of a fundamentally different theory of diet, food security, and health, from those presupposed in modern life. They presupposed that diet control must primarily serve the larger goal of self-control in general and is therefore, first and foremost, a means to spiritual health rather than physical health, a preparation and aid to non-violence rather than violence, individually and socially. Unlike the nutrition and food security schemes drawn up as part of poverty alleviation policy which seek to determine a subsistence diet for the poor, and seek further upgrading in the light of growing income and consumption levels of the rich, Gandhi’s scheme simply targets the self-indulgence of the well to do for his experiments in diet reform, urging them to consider their minimum food requirement, so that they may identify themselves with the poor. The assumption is that diet reform must evolve

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a nutritious subsistence diet in consonance with his conviction that God provides enough for the daily needs of all. Health and diet are defined then not in terms of what is required to combat the other as it is in terms of what is required to serve the other. Therefore, commenting on a letter from a troubled worker’s experiments with diet Gandhi points out that the attempt at eliminating milk from their diet because it was expensive was wrong. The worker had reported that, as a result, inmates had fallen ill and were left with no time or energy for service. The basic necessities required for a healthy life of service should never be done away with. ‘It is true that millions get not a drop of milk. But they do not get many other things without which we dare not do if we are to live to serve’ (Gandhi 1957, p. 116). Other minute details of diet reform were discussed in the newspapers he edited. Experiments with less expensive and more viable substitutes for different items of food were considered, experimented upon and discussed in his Young India providing a forum for other workers and readers to discuss the results of their experiments. The efficacy of substituting coconut milk or goats milk for cow’s milk, of using jaggery instead of sugar, cheaper tamarind pulp instead of costlier lemons, vegetable oils instead of ghee, uncooked instead of cooked food, were discussed with the gravity of an issue of national importance in the midst of the national struggle. An important aspect of these discussions on diet reform was that it envisaged the possibility of nation-wide people’s experiments with diet, with determining localized, subsistence, balanced diets. This laid the ground for developing a culture of experiments on diet and diet reform without leaving it to centralized state based policy. It was never Gandhi’s view that these were matters of lesser importance that could wait till after India had got her independence: ‘Diet reform is a limitless field of research fraught with the greatest consequences for the world and more especially for the famishing millions of India It means health and wealth which to Ruskin mean one and the same thing’ (Harijan, 1–6–1935, p. 124 from Gandhi 1957, p. 116). As with the charkha, diet reform, in the final analysis would lay the foundations of the health of the individual as well as society, the independence and interdependence of people and nations by addressing the condition of helplessness felt at the level of the most basic human need for food in a manner that satisfies the hunger of the body as well as of the spirit. References Adams J. (2010) Naked Ambition. London: Quercus. Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bose, N.K. (1957) Selections from Gandhi. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Das, V. and Uberoi, J.P.S. (1971) The Elementary Structure of Caste. Contributions of Indian Sociology 5, pp. 33–43. Dirks, N.B. (2003) Castes of Mind. Delhi: Permanent Black.

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Einstein, A. (1954) Ideas and Opinions. Bargmann, S. (trans.). New York: Bonanza Books. Gandhi, M.K. (1941) Constructive Programme. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1951) Towards Non-Violent Socialism, Kumarappa, B. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1954) Sarvodaya, Kumarappa, B. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1955) Ashram Observances in Action, Desai V.G. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1957) Economic and Industrial Life and Relations Vol. I. Kher, V.B. (compiled and ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1969) Voice of Truth, Narayan, S. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi M.K. (1999) The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi: Publications Division. Government of India.16 Locke, J. (1937) Treatise of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, Sherman, C.L. (ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Marx K. (1887) Capital. Moscow: Progress Publishers (undated). Plato (1961) The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Hamilton, E. and Cairns, H. (eds). Princeton: The Princeton University Press. Prasad, S.C. (2001) Exploring Gandhian Science: A Case Study of the Khadi Movement. PhD Thesis, New Delhi: IIT Delhi. Rawls, J. (1973) A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford Unviersity Press. Schumacher, E.F. (1973) Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. London: Blond and Briggs. Smith, A. (1957) Selections from The Wealth of Nations, Stigler, G.J. (ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Srinivasan, A. (1987) Women and Reform of Indian Tradition: Gandhi an alternative to Liberalism. Economic and Political Weekly 22 (51), pp. 2225–8. Veeravalli A. (1999) Experiments in the Science of Peace. Seminar 473, pp. 64–6.

16 This work has been abbreviated as CW in the main text. The version used here is the electronic book (98 volumes) downloadable from: http://www.gandhiserve.org/e/ cwmg/cwmg.htm (Accessed: 14 January 2014).

Chapter 6

Presuppositions of Pluralism: Experiments in Unity, Equality, and Difference Love and exclusive possession can never go together. Theoretically when there is perfect love, there must be perfect non-possession. The soul is our last possession. So a man can only exercise perfect love and be completely dispossessed, if he is prepared to embrace death and renounces this body for the sake of human service. (Gandhi, The Modern Review, 1935)1 I saw that nations like individuals could only be made through the agony of the Cross and in no other way. Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself. (Gandhi, Young India, 31–12–31)2

By the time India had prepared the ground for her freedom from British rule, the post-Enlightenment world had witnessed not only the indignity of slavery and apartheid but also the two world wars which were, undoubtedly, the worst and most devastating instances of racial, religious and class discrimination that the world had seen. Hitler’s scientific experiments in racial difference and systematic racial cleansing of Jews, and the new developments in the science, invention and use of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put the politics and science of vivisection to use for the successful conduct of pogroms against humanity. They together demonstrated the effect of experiments based on alienation of self and other, and the dualism of means and ends, which destroyed any relation between God, man and nature. Confronted by the failure of his non-violent methods to quell the fury and violence of the pre-Partition riots Gandhi resumed his experiments in brahmacharya/celibacy in Noakhali. They brought into question the positivist foundations of post-Enlightenment theory and practice and religion and politics. For Gandhi, religion and politics could not be separated just as the personal and the political could not be separated. While the Los Alamos experiments left both perpetrator and victim, scientist and politician soulless and installed fear in the world, deluding itself with the thought that the Bomb would be the greatest deterrent to war and harbinger of peace for the future, Gandhi prepared for the 1 Bose (1948) pp. 16–17. 2 Bose (1948) p. 17.

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ultimate test of the weapon of non-violence with his experiments in celibacy in the midst of the pre-partition Hindu–Muslim riots at Noakhali. The celibacy experiments were premised on the presupposition that true love is a consequence of complete dispossession, i.e. detachment from the body and the world. As is evident by now, Gandhi’s reading of this or any spiritual or ethical principle was a matter to be put to test in personal and political experiment. Thus ‘detachment’ or ‘dispossession’ could not mean indifference or transcendence but the ability for non-violence and love that is undeterred in the face of pain, pleasure or death. The Noakhali experiment sought to rekindle the brotherhood of Hindus and Muslims, and rich and the poor and labourer and land owner externally, through fearless community service amongst its angry and anguished riotravaged people, and, internally, by self purification through enduring the ultimate test of brahmacharya. The two were not unrelated in Gandhi’s cosmology and epistemological presuppositions; the microcosm could transform the macrocosm, and spiritual or ethical actions had the power to transform physical events. The brahmacharya/celibacy experiments were by far the most ambitious in vision and scope in attempting to understand and demonstrate the relation between science, religion and politics. Traditionally, brahmacharya merely meant sexual abstinence and therefore involved maintaining a distance from members of the opposite sex. Gandhi’s interpretation extended its meaning to a control of all organs of sense, involving a mastery over the senses rather than their suppression. In this interpretation it involves a disciplining of the senses with reference to all spheres of life and is necessarily related to Truth and non-violence but also to the other spiritual disciplines of non-possession and non-stealing. Unlike the Manhattan project which involved top secret experiments in a joint effort of some of the best scientists from Europe and America, Gandhi’s critical experiments in brahmacharya/celibacy left him isolated and brought into public view and scrutiny that which is perceived as the most private and secret aspect of an individual’s life, his sexual life. He made no secret of his experiments, discussing the need and the results of his experiments openly with close friends and associates many of whom abandoned him, deeply shocked and angered by what was to them an incomprehensible indulgence, at best, and an unnecessary transgression, at worst. He argued, on the other hand, that the experiments were his sacred and bounden duty. He saw them as a crucial part of his yajna/sacrifice to restore peace. For Gandhi, this was definitely a spiritual experiment in self-purification conducted on himself, but more importantly, it was a scientific one based on the law of the unity of means and ends and microcosm and macrocosm that would enable testing the power of the weapon of absolute non-violence in Noakhali and demonstrating the possibility of non-violent disarmament to the world: To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to

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Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification; without self-purification the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream; God cannot be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one’s surroundings. (Gandhi 1958, p. 155)

This passage lays down the epistemological, metaphysical and ethico-political grounds for the brahmacharya experiments of the last phase. The possibility of ‘identification with everything that lives’ is based on a theory of the relation between the part and the whole or microcosm and macrocosm. This envisages firstly that the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm and secondly, that the microcosm merges with the macrocosm when complete identity is achieved. The first principle ensures that the truth in thought, word and deed necessarily has to take account of the relation between part and whole or of the individual to the body politic and the cosmos. They cannot be in conflict with each other in the final analysis. Gandhi recognised that this could be achieved in practice only if one’s actions were based on a principle of sacrifice, self-suffering and non-violence. The success of the brahmacharya experiments in Noakhali was critical both personally and politically for Gandhi. They would be his final testament to Truth and non-violence demanding the ultimate sacrifice from him at the altar of an alternative vernacular modernity and foundation of equality in difference based on relations of independence and interdependence. The enormous significance of his experiment was not lost on Gandhi: A. Chakravarthy: Noakhali has now become a laboratory where a crucial test is being made; the remedy will apply to situations all the world over where disputes arise between communities and nationalities and a new technique is needed for peaceful adjustment Gandhi: From London too I have heard to the same effect. People are interested in what happens in Noakhali. I feel that my responsibility is great and that our work has to ring true. (Conversation with Amiya Chakravarthy, Harijan, 12–1–1947 from CW 93:136)

Why Noakhali? Many in the Congress believed that Gandhi should have been in Bihar where widespread Hindu–Muslim riots had been reported. He, however, chose to make Noakhali the site of his experiment. Lelyveld (2011) points to the factors that could have determined Gandhi’s decision. Noakhali was a Muslim dominated area and was a Muslim League strong-hold. Bose (1974, p. 30) notes that 18% were Hindus and 82% were Muslim, although three-fourths of the cultivated land in Noakhali was owned by Hindus. Therefore part of the reason

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for the Hindu–Muslim divide was due to the economic divide between land-owner and labour. Only 3 Hindu families remained in Noakhali since the others had left in fear after the atrocities against the Hindu minority and its women during the riots. Finally, being in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and a Muslim League territory, it was bound to become part of Pakistan post-Partition. These facts explain the reasons behind Gandhi’s decision to make Noakhali his ‘laboratory’. Firstly, the challenge put forward by Muslim League propaganda that Hindus and Muslims were fundamentally different would be met in their own territory. Gandhi’s belief that the constructive programme represented both the power of dissent and of transformation through reform, would be tested by initiating trusteeship amongst the land-owning Hindus of the area. Gandhi wished to live amongst the Muslim peasants and convince them that he was as much concerned about them as he was of the Hindus. Gandhi proposed to woo the Hindus who had fled Noakhali to set their fear aside and return to their homes. The introduction of spinning on the charkha in Noakhali had already initiated an experiment of transformation in the material culture and socio-economic conditions of the people. This would test his belief that it was bread labour as the basic need of life that united the rich and the poor and the high and low as it would the Hindus and Muslims of Noakhali. Gandhi saw bread labour as a vernacular form of sacrifice.3 Bose (1974) notes that Gandhi immediately set out to speak of trusteeship to the people of Noakhali and neighbouring areas. Muslims remained absent from his meetings but when he could pursue and speak to them, he spoke to them of Islam and its love of peace, pleading with them to let their Hindu brethren to return without fear, with the assurance that they would not let a single Hindu woman be harmed. Gandhi’s effort was to demonstrate the fundamental opposition to a theory of the cosmos based on self-destruction, as is evident was the case with the epistemological system of classification that separated science, religion and politics based on the dualism of subject and object (or self and other) and means and ends, that made possible the atom bomb. Through the experiments in the constructive programme and brahmacharya the necessary relation between matter and spirit, self and the world and religion and politics was to be demonstrated. If he could perfect the relation of non-violence with respect to his body and its other, then it would prepare him for the task of establishing non-violence in the body politic involving the realization of unity and equality in difference. The personal and the political were related as microcosm is to the macrocosm. The law of brahmacharya was recognition that the yajna, offered by male and female, in a relation of absolute non-violence, as equal and different partners in the sacrifice, would realize and reflect the truth of the law of non-violence in the Universe 3 ‘If all laboured for their bread and no more, then there would be enough food and enough leisure for all. Then there would be no cry of over population, no disease and no such misery as we see around. Such labour will be the highest form of sacrifice. Men will no doubt do many other things either through their bodies or through their minds, but all this will be labour of love for the common good’ (Gandhi 1969, p. 331–2).

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besides freeing them for universal service. As such, brahmacharya is conceived as the science of man’s conduct in relation to the universe based on the necessary relation between body, body politic and cosmos. He argued therefore that without self-purification, it is impossible to effectively implement the constructive programme or for the individual and civil society to become sovereign: The conquest of lust is the highest endeavour of a man or woman’s existence. Without overcoming lust, man cannot hope to rule over self. And without rule over self there can be no Swaraj or Rama Raj. Rule of all without rule of oneself would prove to be as deceptive and disappointing as a toy-mango, charming to look at outwardly but hollow and empty within. No worker who has not overcome lust can hope to render any genuine service to the cause of Harijans, communal unity, Khadi, cow protection or village reconstruction. Great causes like these cannot be served by intellectual equipment alone, they call for spiritual effort or soul-force. Soul force comes only through God’s grace and God’s grace never descends upon a man who is slave to lust. (Harijan, 21–11–36, p. 321 from Bose 1948, p. 248)

As we have argued in Chapter 2, the Cartesian dualism of mind and the world formed the basis for the presuppositions of war in the modern world. It made possible the positing of a mechanistic, godless notion of the world and soulless notion of the body ruled by the abstract, rational and universal principles of an alienated self, i.e. the dualism of mind and the world meant the rejection of rule over oneself and the establishment of rule/power over the other. Gandhi’s conception of swaraj counters this very thesis arguing, on the contrary, that there can be no rule without self- rule, i.e. rule over oneself, neither can there be service, or true love of the other. The Experiment as Sacrifice All efforts at putting an end to the communal riots that had started as soon as India’s independence was in sight seemed to be failing. Everyday Gandhi received new reports of carnage and killings of Hindus and Muslims in Punjab, Bihar, Bengal, Delhi. The Congress had all but forsaken Gandhi on the question of Partition and the future plans for a swarajist state for India. Gandhi’s anguish at the violence around him, the lies and his realization that the Congress effort at non-violence in the freedom movement had after all been a matter of strategy rather than creed, left him bereft of any support for what he believed was the only way and method to achieve true freedom. All that had conspired neither proved the falsity of the law of non-violence nor of his understanding of swaraj. It could only mean that he had fallen short in his efforts, that his experiment and his preparation for it were imperfect. Thus the situation demanded that he intensify his efforts at selfpurification and the ultimate and only method he knew of further perfecting his

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non-violence was through testing himself with the brahmacharya experiments. Within the logic of his framework, he was therefore left with no other choice. The final and indubitable test of the control over all the senses, and any conscious or unconscious lapse could only be tested through brahmacharya as he understood it: My meaning of brahmacharya is this: One who never has any lustful intention, who by constant attendance upon God has become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited. Such a person should be incapable of lying, incapable of intending or doing harm to a single man or woman in the whole world, is free from anger and malice and detached in the sense of the Bhagavadgita. Such a person is a full brahmachari. Brahmachari literally means a person who is making daily and steady progress towards God and whose every act is done in pursuance of that end and no other. (CW 94:152)

Manu, a 17-year-old girl, in fact, Gandhi’s grandniece, was chosen to be his companion for the critical brahmacharya experiments of the Noakhali period. The experiments involved sleeping naked with Gandhi in his bed. Gandhi had on earlier occasions tried the experiment with other women in the Ashram; Sushila Nayyar and Abha, Manu’s sister being two of the other known companions. He, however, argued that it was no special concession for him that Manu was his grandniece. It appears then that she was chosen for, what Gandhi must have believed to be her innate disposition and preparedness for the experiment. He spelled out the conditions of the experiment and its personal and political implications when, mistaking the hour of the clock, he woke up in the early hours of the morning and began to speak in a soft voice to Manu who had been in bed with him. Pyarelal, his secretary, who was present in the room, silently, made notes. They are quoted here in full as a record of the context, structure and intent of the experiment and the role envisaged for Manu in it: The purity of my yajna will be put to the test only now. Today I find myself all alone. (Even the Sardar and Jawaharlal) think that my reading of the situation is wrong and peace is sure to return if Partition is agreed upon. The Viceroy is a nice and intelligent man. They did not like my telling the Viceroy that even if there was to be Partition, it should not be through British intervention or under the British rule. They wonder if I have not deteriorated with age. But if I did not show myself as I am, I would prove a hypocrite. And I must speak as I feel, if I am to prove a true and loyal friend to the Congress. Never mind if I am not a four-anna member of the Congress. But they all come and consult me, seek my advice. Similarly I am also a friend of the British. I must therefore tell the British what is good for them. Else, of what use is my being their friend? If I were to prove my true and loyal friendship to them it becomes my bounden duty to lay bare the facts before them and show them the right way, regardless

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of whether my advice is appreciated or resented. I see clearly that we are setting about this business the wrong way. We may not feel the full effect immediately, but I can see clearly that the future of independence gained at this price is going to be dark. I pray that God may not keep me alive to witness it. And I have left you in this vast field to fend for yourself. I have done it with full deliberation because you share my burden in this sacrifice although you are a little girl with no experience of life. In order that God may give me the strength and wisdom to remain firm in the midst of universal opposition and to utter the full truth, I need all the strength of purity that you will have in your sincere work, whether in thought or act, while waking or asleep or even when you are not conscious of yourself. In the matter of devotion or purity, or in treading the path of truth years hardly count; what is needed is spiritual strength. Wasn’t Prahlad very young?4 Had little Dhruva5 attained a mature age? But they had the strength to tread the path of truth. Moreover, a man may grow old and yet be a fraud. But somehow in spite of my being all alone, in my thoughts, I am experiencing an ineffable inner joy and freshness of mind. I feel as if God himself was lighting my path before me. And it is perhaps the reason why I am able to fight on singlehanded. People now ask me to retire to Kashi or go to the Himalayas. I laugh and tell them that the Himalayas of my penance are where there is misery to be alleviated, oppression to be relieved. There can be no rest for me so long as there is a single person in India whether man or woman, young or old, lacking the necessaries of life, by which I mean a sense of security, a life style worthy of human beings, i.e., clothing, education, food and shelter of a decent standard. I said the same thing to Sarat Babu yesterday. I cannot bear to see Badshah Khan’s grief. His inner agony wrings my heart, but if I gave way to tears, it would be cowardly and, stalwart Pathan as he is, he would break down. And I don’t want him to break down. But maybe all of them are right and I alone am floundering in darkness. The more you remain vigilant and cheerful by maintaining good health the more you will influence all that I do. I shall perhaps not be alive to witness it, but should the evil I apprehend overtake India and her independence be imperilled, let posterity know what agony this old man went through thinking of it. Let not the coming generation curse Gandhi for being a party to India’s 4 In Indian mythology, he is known to be the young son of Hiranya-Kasipu, Lord of the demons who never tired of fighting the gods. Much to his father’s displeasure and embarrassment, Prahlad was a great devotee of Lord Vishnu. His father threatened to kill his son if he did not stop adoring Vishnu. Prahlad survives attacks from demons, wild tuskers set free upon him and even the burning flames of the pyre he is thrown into, Dowson (1982). Gandhi is referring to these tests of faith from which young Prahlad emerges unscathed. 5 The pole star is named after Dhruva in Indian mythology. Ill-treated by his step mother Suruchi and denied succession to his father’s throne, Dhruv vows never to receive any honours that he did not earn with his own actions. He undertakes severe austerities towards this end and is sought to be distracted by the gods themselves. Emerging victorious from all temptations put in his path, he is raised to the office of the pole star by Lord Vishnu himself. Dhruva is thus Grahadhara or the pivot of the planets (Dowson 1982).

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On the issue of Partition his Congress colleagues had forsaken him, and he stood alone in his belief that it could only spell disaster. Gandhi saw that in the final analysis, it would not augur well for the sovereignty of the two nations that the British oversaw their deliberations. The future of swaraj looked bleak and Gandhi’s powers of persuasion seemed to have waned inexplicably. It was perhaps Gandhi’s moment of realization that few, even his closest associates, comprehended his method or the meaning of swaraj he had been pursuing. In addition his decision to conduct the experiments in brahmacharya left him lonelier than ever with some of his closest associates disapproving and even registering strong reprimand. This was his final test of faith. For Gandhi however the path was difficult but clear. The experiment, or yajna (sacrifice), to be performed was not only his dharma but little Manu’s as well. The yajna they were to perform held the key to what India would make of the Partition even if it were to come to pass, and the future of Hindu–Muslim unity as it would be tested in the NWFP. The underlying presupposition of the non-dualism of religion and politics or matters of the spirit and matters of the world is clear from this passage. It is also evident that Gandhi recognizes that this is precisely what his friends and the world reject in him and attack when they advise him to retire to the Himalayas or Kashi which are known as places of spiritual retreat for the Hindus. He reiterates here his commitment to the view that for him salvation lies in politics: ‘I laugh and tell them that the Himalayas of my penance are where there is misery to be alleviated, oppression to be relieved.’ Matters of the spirit were not a matter of transcendence or separation from the world but a matter of being in this world as discerned by the experience of pain and its alleviation through penance in the here and now. The trepidation and foreboding with which he watched the ‘vivisection of India’ and the prediction of his colleagues that all would be well after the Partition, was mirrored in the reluctance with which he submitted to letting Manu undergo an operation to cure her of her illness. He thought of his submission as a sign of weakness born out of his attachment to Manu as was his submission to Partition, a hapless consequence of his attachment to his Muslim brethren embodied in the figure of Badshah Khan; or on the other hand, it was perhaps a fear of the consequences that prevented Gandhi from stopping Manu from going in for an operation, just as the fear of meaningless blood being shed between Hindus and Muslims stopped him from putting his foot down against Partition. In both cases, he detected a lack of faith in Ramanama (remembrance of the name of King Rama, symbolizing the possibility of the kingdom of God on earth) and the unity of means and ends, an imperfection in his practice of non-violence, and therefore in his love. The agony of having to choose between one or the other course, each of which could turn out equally devastating in its consequences confronts Gandhi

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with his own finitude, his humanity, that does not allow decisions to be made by dry application of rationality, expediency or principles of consistency: During the last eight days, since I sent you to the hospital, I have been constantly thinking where I stand, what God demands of me, where He will ultimately lead me … Though I have no longer the desire to live for 125 years, as I have said again and again of late, my striving to meet death unafraid with Ramanama on my lips continues. I know my striving is incomplete; your operation is a proof. But if I should die of lingering illness, it would be your duty to proclaim to the whole world that I was not a man of God but an impostor and a fraud. If you fail in that duty I shall feel unhappy wherever I am. But if I die taking God’s name with my last breath, it will be a sign that I was what I strove for and claimed to be. (Talk with Manu in CW 95: 130) But, if it occurs to me to utter the name of Rama with my last breath, it should be taken as a proof of the success of my attempt. And as you are a witness to this yajna of mine, I do wish that you should be my witness in this and not go before me. Even though there have been differences between me and my old and intimate friends, I find myself more firm in my ideas and this gives me great satisfaction and contentment. [From Gujarati] (CW 95:59)

The theory and method of swaraj were there but it was in this context of the anguish of the decisions he was confronted with that he was preparing himself for the ultimate test. His experiment in brahmacharya, or sacrifice, would be pure and his faith resolute if he could face death with Ramanama on his lips. It could not however be conducted without a witness and Manu was to be his witness in this. For the supreme sacrifice, it was incumbent on him that his body (and mind) be in perfect health – a sign of his unflinching practice of Ramanama, the law of his being, in word and spirit. He must therefore not die from ill-health, an inconsequential death, by all appearance, but for Gandhi, a sure sign of the weakness of his body and soul, his lack of faith in Ramanama and the path of truth and non-violence. Therefore he bids Manu to be his witness and make it her duty to declare to the world that he was a fake and a fraud if he were to die of ill-health. This is no ‘desire’ for martyrdom, a temptation, or allegation which, it has been said, even Christ had to contend with. It is an experiment with Truth where, on the one hand, brahmacharya is the ultimate test of non-violence, making the experiments in celibacy a necessity, and on the other, they are preparation for the complete absence of fear in the face of death, in the cause of Truth. This last is a test of faith – to be able to face death with the name of God/Truth on his lips. In both, Manu was to be his witness. This presupposes a non-dualism of subject and object in establishing proof of the truth in an experiment. For Gandhi therefore, the purpose and intent underlying the question of sexuality is brahmacharya which represents the law of God on earth and constitutes one’s relation with all of creation:

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The celibacy experiments have to be understood in the broader context of the theory that the knowledge and practice, or rather, experiments with the law of brahmacharya lead to a realization of the law of God in us, which is signified by His Name. This explains the significance of Ramanama or the Name of God in Gandhi’s life which again was not restricted to mere chanting but a following of God’s law whether in the context of healing the body or the body politic through Ramraj and the cosmos/Universe through brahmacharya. It could be said then that when the imperative of the law of non-violence as a means to Truth, which, we have argued, counters the dualism of mind and the world that the Enlightenment instituted, becomes second nature to a person, it constitutes brahmacharya. Brahmacharya refers then to the rule of conscience or Ramraj when body, body politic and cosmos become the temple of God. The very requirement for testing by experiment did not permit Gandhi to be satisfied with only the broader or more abstract definition, nor could he be constrained by narrow orthodox definitions and prescriptions of sexual morality. The two limits of the definition were necessarily related and the truth of this could only be determined by experiment where his own brahmacharya would be tested. If the experiment failed and either he or Manu felt any passion, then Gandhi argued that it would be a sign that he had not achieved complete control and purity yet. It would be no fault of his partner since he believed that if purity of mind and body could be attained by him then it would be reflected in her as well. If he succeeded in achieving absolute control over his mind and body in his relation to his other, enabling his female partner to achieve complete purity, they would be prepared for testing non-violence, in the most trying circumstances, restoring peace in Noakhali. In the final analysis then, the experiment with brahmacharya was no experiment. As Gandhi insisted, when Thakkar Bapa6 asked in desperation, ‘Why here?’ that is, why he needed to perform these experiments in Noakhali, ‘it was a sacrifice and sacred duty’. Unlike in the case of an experiment, he had no choice but to act even in the face of reprimand and abandonment by associates and friends: ‘One may forgo an experiment, one cannot forgo one’s duty.’7 However, 6 His full name was Amritlal, Vithaldas Thakkar. He was a close associate of Gandhi and headed the Harijan Sewak Samaj, an association for the service of the depressed classes and tribals that worked for the removal of Untouchability, established by Gandhi in 1939. 7 ‘… the conversation (with Thakkar Bapa) had an unexpected sequel. Manu told Gandhiji that she saw no harm in conceding to Thakkar Bapa’s request to suspend the practice for the time being, provided Gandhiji agreed. Gandhiji readily agreed’ (CW 94:41).

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this duty followed from the very presuppositions of experiments in Truth and non-violence that necessarily involved the observance of non-possession, nonstealing and brahmacharya. The brahmacharya experiment as conceived by Gandhi brings into relief the contrast between the experiments of modern science and Gandhi’s experiments with Truth. In the former case, as we have seen, the separation of subject and object is a necessary condition of the experiment and objectivity that determines the truth. As a result truth is a matter of correspondence with the object and knowledge is power over the object without self rule/power over the subject. However, Gandhi’s experiments establish their necessary relation, thus simultaneously laying down the conditions of sacrifice and experiment, and establishing the presuppositions of the unity of science, religion and politics. In this he transforms both ‘sacrifice’ and ‘experiment’ challenging at once the religious orthodoxy’s ritualism and the vivisectionist experimentalism of modern science, both of which are experiments with power rather than Truth. Brahmacharya and the Sexual Revolution The experiments in brahmacharya are perhaps the finest example of experiment based on the dialectic of tradition and modernity, East and West, the personal and the political, the private and public and the microcosmic and the macrocosmic. The sense of moral outrage Gandhi’s celibacy experiments created cut across boundaries of modernists and traditionalists, scientists and politicians; Gandhi’s closest associates and friends abandoned him in the wake of these experiments. Neither religion nor science was served by these misadventures of Gandhi according to them. N.K. Bose warned Gandhi to be wary of Freud’s theory that such behaviour could be the result of sexual repression. He quizzed him on the impropriety of treating the woman as his inferior and ‘using’ her for an experiment. Gandhi was vehement in his response saying that it was rather when he had looked on his wife Kasturba as an object of his lust that he had treated her as his inferior. Bose’s final break was on grounds that he would rather spend time on scientific enquiry in the University than be silent spectator to Gandhi’s pursuit of these experiments that merely disturbed the peace of all around him.8 His unorthodox use of brahmacharya raised questions in particular about human sexuality and ethics of sexual relations, and the principles of equality between men and women. It shocked and embarrassed the orthodox Hindu and the liberal educated Indian equally. His thesis that the brahmacharya experiments were crucial for selfpurification and non-violence and truth did not hold water with either category.

8 As noted in the Introduction, Srinivasan (1998) argues that Bose, from his positivist perspective, was indeed objecting to Gandhi’s understanding of science rather than to the celibacy experiments per se.

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Against the shocked traditionalists in his satyagraha movement Gandhi argued that a vow of brahmacharya is empty and of little value if it is not tested: I want to test, enlarge and revise the current definition of brahmacharya, by which you swear, in the light of my observation, study and experience. Therefore, whenever an opportunity presents itself I do not evade it or run away from it. On the contrary, I deem it my duty – dharma – to meet it squarely in the face and find out where it leads to and where I stand. To avoid the contact of a woman or to run away from it out of fear, I regard as unbecoming of an aspirant after true brahmacharya. (CW 94:134)

Most later discussions on the matter have been equally consistent in not taking his contention that following brahmacharya without testing oneself continually is not following it in its true spirit seriously. Neither, for that matter, was his claim that if followed properly, it would have consequences that extended far beyond self-purification, to the establishment of truth and non-violence in the world, taken seriously. Sudhir Kakar, an eminent psychologist and psychoanalyst by profession, sees the Noakhali experiments as a ‘preoccupation’ with ‘private experiments wherein the aged Mahatma pathetically sought to reassure himself of the strength of his celibacy’ (Kakar 1989). As to the sacrificial and political aspect of Gandhi’s experiment, Kakar sees it as some version of Hindu sacrifice ‘whose only purpose was a restoration of personal psychic potency that would help him to regain control over political events and men …’. This analysis ignores non-violence as the basis and purpose of Gandhi’s experiments and argues instead, presupposing the dualism of means and ends, and from the point of view of the presuppositions of modern science, that the mind is trained and knowledge is acquired with the sole purpose of gaining control over the other whether man or nature. Thus Kakar attributes to Gandhi the very qualities of universalist arrogance of the state and the religious fundamentalist, that the latter fought against, rather than the principles of civil society that he sought to strengthen all his life. Gandhi’s experiments are for Kakar sexual exploits which are ‘the prideful vice of an uncompromisingly virtuous man’. Adams (2010, p. 282) states without comment some of Gandhi’s arguments in defense of the brahmacharya experiments but then goes on to treat them as symptomatic of an obsession with sex, the experiments themselves being that of an ignorant old man who did not know ‘that with declining testosterone production, sex tends to become more diffused’. This illustrates what a burgeoning industry Gandhi’s celibacy experiments could turn into for those who only halfheartedly contend with the theoretical underpinnings of these experiments. Alter (2000) makes a case for Gandhi’s experiments on food and sex to be understood as a ‘discourse of science’ with a focus on experiment from, what he calls, a ‘biomoral’ point of view where the body and its health, and morality are necessarily linked. With this focus on the body, he argues that non-violence for Gandhi was ‘as much an issue of public health as an issue of politics, morality, and religion’. Alter points out that earlier studies wrongly separated Gandhi’s personal

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or spiritual experiments from his political experiments and therefore considered Gandhi’s obsession with sex and food as related merely to his personal spiritual self-discipline. Citing later attempts he concludes that they, on the other hand, search for psychoanalytic or symbolic explanations in an attempt to ‘resynthesize’ the seemingly irreconcilable and incongruent – sex, food, politics and religion. It may be said that where perhaps Alter falters is in delineating the structural contours of Gandhi’s method and theoretical presuppositions in reconciling these incongruent elements. His claim, for instance, that Gandhi’s Truth is essentially trans-national and his experiments syncretic, citing Gandhi’s interest in thinkers such as Russell and Havelock Ellis is misleading in fundamental ways. In the first instance, there is no ‘Gandhi’s Truth’, there are only experiments with Truth that test and illustrate the truth in that instance and in the particular form it would take. Secondly, the conscious and necessary basis of all his experiments in the law of non-violence distinguishes his method and purpose from any other such as that of Ellis. This, of course, does not stop Gandhi from making their experiments his own. However Alter is right in his assessment that the role of the body in Gandhi’s understanding of the moral and spiritual has been neglected. This indeed is the crux of the problem since the non-dualism of body and spirit, immanence and transcendence is inconceivable to the positivist or the dualist. What unites the religious orthodoxy and the modern scientific mind is the belief in the separation of matters of the spirit from matters of fact or the mind and the world. This is the dominant view of modernity and is expressed well in Kant who believes that a ‘pure moral philosophy’ can be constructed only when it is ‘perfectly cleared of everything which is only empirical, and which belongs to anthropology’. With the exception of Alter then, it can be said that there has been no attempt to understand the experiments in the context of Gandhi’s own arguments comprehensively, so that, just as his immediate interlocutors and associates had done, his commentators have leapt to conclusions and drawn implications based on disbelief and predetermined assumptions rather than engage with his theory and its presuppositions. The prejudice arises, however, not from a questioning of Gandhi’s integrity which is beyond pale and question for most, as much as from a disbelief and rejection of the possibility of the dialectic of science, religion and politics and the personal and the political that Gandhi’s method proposes. The din of the protestors is such that they cease to hear other voices and points of view so much so that it is believed that Manu, the young girl in the experiment could not possibly have applied her mind, that is, if she is presumed to have one in the first place; she could not but have been under Gandhi’s spell. Manu’s diaries in Gujarati were finally published in 2013, more than 50 years after Gandhi’s death and over 30 years after hers. It is well known that as an young girl of 19 when Gandhi died she had been advised both by his close associates, and family, not to disclose any part of her experience of the brahmacharya experiments with Gandhi. Thus, it would not be wrong to presume that it was not from her own conviction that she kept the diaries confidential but out of deference to Gandhi’s associates.

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Her book, Bapu – My Mother, written and published soon after his death in 1949 therefore makes no mention of the experiments. She says however, in her diary entry of 28 December 1946, written nine days after she joined Gandhi at Srirampur in riot torn Bihar: ‘Bapu is a mother to me. He is initiating me to a higher human plane through the Brahmacharya experiments, part of his Mahayagna of characterbuilding. Any loose talk about the experiment is most condemnable.’ Many have questioned Gandhi’s choice of young and vulnerable girls who had known him for a long time in the Ashram and were so fond of him that they could not refuse him nor gauge the implications of their actions. Gandhi argues, citing other instances from Indian mythology of young boys and girls who had been chosen for critical tests of truth, that Manu’s tender years did not come in the way of her office in this experiment. Age did not count in ‘treading the path of truth’, nor did it come in the way of spiritual strength. She was to be witness to the truth of Gandhi’s experiment in non-violence, which held within it the seeds of the future of Hindu–Muslim unity, of a life of self respect for young and old, rich and poor, and men and women, and India’s swaraj. For this yajna, she, equally with Gandhi would have to strive for purity of thought word and deed. For 21 years after his death Manu is said to have settled down in Mahuva a small coastal town of Gujarat. There she established a school for children and started a Bhagini samaj (Society of Sisters).9 She remained a spinster all her life. In her later years, on a particular occasion while carrying a gift of a chunari (veil) to a follower’s wedding, she is supposed to have remarked to a close associate, Bhanuben Lahiri, the following: ‘I see myself as Mirabai who lived only for her Shyamlo.’10 This moment of self-reflection in her later years is testament to her recognition of the profound nature of her relationship with Gandhi and her strength, self-possession and sense of vocation. In this context studies of the psychological impact that Gandhi could have had on Manu seem beside the point. The relations of proximity and distance, and equality and difference between man and woman were tested in these celibacy experiments. Neither Manu’s youth nor her gender could come in the way of her being an equal and necessary partner in this sacrifice. Without her there could be no witness to the purity of Gandhi’s non-violence or celibacy. Similarly he is witness to her truth and, in this, their 9 In 1918 Bhagini samaj was established in Bombay in memory of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a well known freedom fighter amongst the moderates and in some ways the political guru of Gandhi. Gandhi spoke on the occasion and envisioned for it the role of bringing women out of their poverty and ignorance to produce women leaders who could initiate social reform, women’s education and arouse in them a sense of their strength and vocation in service of society. 10 http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mahatma-gandhi-experiment-sexualitymanubendiscovereddiaries/1/278952.html (accessed 6 Aug. 2014). Mirabai, a celebrated woman saint of India, was married off at an young age to the crown prince of the state of Chittor in Rajasthan, but much to the chagrin of her husband, she had pledged her spirit and love to Lord Krishna and spent all her time in devotion to him. Her jealous husband and in-laws tried in vain to confine her to her duties as princess of a royal household but had finally to give in to her love of her Lord.

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relation is complementary and equal. In this experiment and sacrifice therefore lie the principles of negotiating the problem of equality and difference and unity in plurality. The principles of equality and difference underlying brahmacharya are articulated in terms of correspondence and complementarity that inform Gandhi’s method and point of view with respect to the relation between man and woman, capital and labour, rich and poor, Untouchable and brahmin or Hindu and Muslim. He rejects the post-Enlightenment method of negotiating equality and difference only on principles of uniformity, homogeneity or freedom on the one hand, and alternatively, holding them necessarily unequal, based on principles of hierarchy, heterogeneity, and suppression. The question for Gandhi would be – What would the sexual revolution look like from the point of view of and in the service of Truth and the law of non-violence? Wilhelm Reich (1974) who is known to have first coined the term ‘sexual revolution’ insisted that the need for change in our understanding of sexuality, and freedom from institutions of marriage, family and the social institutions that bind and oppress human relations, was nothing less than a call for revolution in society. He noted that unlike other revolutions it did not use or advocate violence or oppression. Freud, on the other hand talked of the repressed sexual experience that individuals could be freed from through psychoanalysis. Thus the external and internal, the public and the private, oppression and repression as aspects of sexuality were both under scrutiny and seeking means of freedom from the clutches of self and society. Gandhi was not unacquainted with the sexual revolution and acknowledges being inspired by the thought of Havelock Ellis and Bertrand Russell in his own research. Attending both to the questions raised by tradition or the orthodoxy and by modern critiques of tradition, he opened up the traditional conceptions of celibacy to scientific scrutiny and experiments on the relation between self and other, liberating sexuality at once from the narrow confines of the personal and the private to a matter of political and public office. The innovations he brings into the orthodox interpretations of traditional practices like that of brahmacharya, however, are not the whims of a spiritual idealist nor a madman but are well thought out critiques that seek to rescue and reinvent ancient concepts and practices in the light of modern issues, new perspectives and findings of modern research, yet again, emphasizing the centrality of experiment in the quest for Truth and non-violence. The discourse in psychoanalysis and in issues of social reform was defined in terms of sexual freedom and sexual oppression or repression based on irreconcilable positions of homogeneity and heterogeneity or equality and inequality. The framework for Gandhi is one defined by celibacy as a condition of non-violence, presupposing equality or correspondence and difference or complementarity between man and woman, and sexuality as an obstacle to it. The questioning of the need for institutions like marriage for purity in sexual relations and the nature of the sexual raised several issues for Gandhi. While he did not agree that marriage was dispensable, the very nature of sexual relations within

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the institution of marriage, the true meaning of brahmacharya and means of its practice were questions that needed to be revisited, researched and tested, without merely relying on a blind acceptance of tradition. This he felt was a sacred duty and not merely an urge to satisfy one’s curiosity, scientific or otherwise. Gandhi argued that to be married to one woman alone and for a husband and wife to love each other alone is a constricting self obsession which leaves little room for universal love. Thus those who want to follow the law of non-violence must not marry. If they do marry, they will be able to follow the law of non-violence only if they decide to become brother and sister. This was the true test of brahmacharya. ‘The very thought that all women in the world are his sisters, mothers or daughters will at once ennoble a man and snap all his chains’ (Gandhi 1954, p. 11). In fact, he goes further and argues that it is not sensual affinity that is the basis of the natural relation between man and woman but the affinity between brother and sister, mother and son, and father and daughter (Gandhi 1978, p. 66). It is therefore not the principle of conjugality that sustains society but brotherhood, or if you will, sisterhood. Gandhi is often criticized for his view that sexual relations in marriage should be limited only for the purpose of procreation. It is argued that this involves a suppression of natural instincts and appears to be a perversion of the very institution of marriage. Gandhi argues in response that marriage without brahmacharya is a state of bondage for both the man and the woman, and further that it involves turning the woman into an object of lust rather than treating her as an equal. Similarly brahmacharya practiced without the love of the other and service as its object is suppression of the truly human within. Incidentally, Freud is quite in agreement with Gandhi’s view to the extent that he holds that there is nothing ultimately that distinguishes the varieties of sexual perversion from the normal except the intent of reproduction: On the contrary, we shall recognize more and more clearly that the essence of the perversions lies not in the extension of the sexual aim, not in the replacement of the genitals, not even always in the variant choice of the object, but solely in the exclusiveness with which these deviations are carried out and as a result of which the sexual act serving the purpose of reproduction is put on one side. (Freud 1966, p. 322)

Further, Freud had observed, during the course of his ‘Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis’ delivered in Vienna during the first World war between 1915–1917, that his thesis that the sexual and the genital, or that sexual perversion and reproduction are distinct phenomena could not be studied adequately since ‘these sexual perversions are subject to a quite special ban, which has even affected theory and has stood in the way of the scientific consideration of them’ (Freud 1966 p. 321). Thus Freud too felt the lack of conditions for experiments in this area. Another curious point of similarity is the fact that the scientist and psychoanalyst Freud, like

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Gandhi, had taken a vow of celibacy at the age of 40. However, it is unclear what he did with it or what role he saw for it personally and in his research. For Gandhi, it was an experiment and sacrifice with respect to the body, body politic and the cosmos. It is clear that brahmacharya was intrinsic to his theory of the law of non-violence which formed the basis for the relation between mind and the world. As he never tired of pointing out brahmacharya meant the control over all one’s senses and should not be confined merely to abstinence from sexual activity. In the final analysis the Noakhali brahmacharya experiments were meant to be proof of the possibility of absolute non-violence, a non-consuming and nonconfining love which surrendered itself to the service of all, which sustained not just human beings but all of creation. This experiment then is, in effect a sacrifice in the service of all creation which Gandhi equated with the service of God. For Gandhi, it was a matter of transforming the human power of reproduction into the power of regeneration of society and life itself. As he says, in his letter to Mira, ‘Then how to use our organs of generation? By transmitting the most creative energy that we possess from creating counterparts of our flesh into creating constructive work for the whole of life’ (Gandhi 1958, p. 106). The Cosmological Foundations The experiment marks then the beginning and the end (‘the alpha and the omega’), the physical end and metaphysical renewal of the world, announcing a new existential beginning in the cycle of life and death that is exemplified in martyrdom and is reflected in the world. Gandhi presupposes the vernacular view here, rejected equally by religious orthodoxy and modern science, that creation/ the Universe is the body of God or the view that God can only see Himself through his reflection in Creation. By dedicating himself/herself to the service of creation, that is, through perfect love, the individual, in other words, the part, sacrifices itself in the cause of the whole, or is made sacred so that it may reflect the whole. This does not involve a rejection or renunciation of the body but involves the body being witness to the spirit and the self to the other. The principles of the relation between the microcosm and macrocosm, and body and spirit and man and woman are echoed in Leibniz’s point of view and philosophical system as they are in William Blake, whose scathing attack on the puritanism of the orthodoxy and deification of rationality of modern Europe are well known. Blake contrasts the state of England before and after its fall, describing the role of the divine as the ‘Jerusalem in every man’, the body being the temple of God, till Reason declared itself God: In the Great Eternity every particular Form gives forth or Emanates Its own peculiar Light, & the Form is the Divine Vision And the Light is his Garment. This is the Jerusalem in every Man,

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Blake notes that it is this enthronement of the power of reasoning as abstracted from the world, which characterizes the dominant regime of Enlightenment philosophy, that is the beginning of spiritual strife and hate, sexuality as a form of possession and rationality that questions and ostracizes any belief of God in this world. In other words, it marks the ascendancy of the soulless power of human reason in relation to God, man and nature. So the poem continues: The silent broodings of deadly revenge springing from the All powerful parental affection, fills Albion from head to foot. Seeing the sons assimilate with Luvah, bound in the bonds Of spiritual Hate, from which springs Sexual Love as iron chains, He tosses like a cloud outstretch’d among Jerusalem’s Ruins Which overspread all the Earth: he groans among his ruined porches. But the Spectre like a hoar frost & a Mildew, rose over Albion, Saying, “I am God, O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power! “Am I not Bacon & Newton & Locke who teach Humility to Man, “Who teach Doubt and Experiment? & my two Wings, Voltaire, Rousseau? “Where is that Friend of Sinners? that Rebel against my Laws “Who teaches Belief to the Nations & an unknown Eternal Life? “Come hither into the Desart & turn these stones to bread. “Vain foolish Man! wilt thou believe without Experiment “And build a World of Phantasy upon my Great Abyss, “A World of Shapes in craving lust & devouring appetite?” So spoke the hard cold constrictive Spectre: (Keynes (1948), p. 500–501)

The irony is evident in Blake’s invocation of Bacon, Newton, Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau, all Enlightenment thinkers, who, while appearing to preach humility to man, each propagated the culture of power over the world through science, religion or politics. His insightful analysis detects that the enthronement of reason in the world is necessarily accompanied by a belief in a transcendent and overbearing God, espousing a stifling ‘all powerful parental affection’, thus heralding the hegemony of reason and the state, on the one hand, and organised religion, on the other. The presuppositions of dualism render Christ incomprehensible; making 11 Albion in Blake’s mythology is said to refer to ‘primeval man’, but is also said to be the ancient name of England.

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it appear, on the contrary, that it is He who rebels against God and the laws of reason that govern the world – ‘Where is that friend of sinners? that Rebel against my Laws’. Thus science, religion and politics, separated by the dominant Enlightenment epistemology of dualism, collude in their persecution of Christ, who is witness to their non-dualism. As the rest of the poem unravels, this is paradoxically, the source and beginning of Europe’s indulgences and wars as much as it is of the withering of the human spirit sounding the death knell for Europe and the world. As a final attack against abstract universal reason and its general/formal Knowledge Blake describes the voices of living creatures appealing to believers in the autonomy of reason to acknowledge that: ‘Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falsehood continually,/On Circumcision, not on Virginity, O Reasoners of Albion!’ (Keynes 1948, p. 503). This reiterates Gandhi’s understanding that it is not abstinence, but continuous experiments in brahmacharya, that sustain the universe. Leibniz (1934, pp. 21–32) presents what can be seen as the metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions of Gandhi’s brahmacharya experiments and their relation to God and the World. Rejecting the mind as a mere mirror of the world, Leibniz, contra Kant, argues that it is also ‘an image of the Deity’. Further, discussing the method and elaboration of this principle, he says the following: … our soul is architectonic in its voluntary activities also, and, discovering the sciences in accordance with which God had regulated things (pondere, mensura, numero, etc.), it imitates in its own sphere, and in the little world in which it is allowed to act, what God forms in the great world. For this reason all minds, whether of men or superhuman spirits, entering as they do by virtue of reason and the eternal verities into a kind of society with God, are members of the City of God, that is to say of the most perfect state, formed and governed by the greatest and best of monarchs: where there is no crime without punishment, no good action without proportionate reward, and finally as much virtue and happiness as is possible: and this, not by any derangement of nature, as if what God has in store for the soul might disturb the laws of the body, but by the actual order of natural things, by virtue of the harmony pre-established from all time between the realms of nature and of grace, between God as Architect and God as Monarch, in such a way that nature itself leads to grace, and grace perfects nature in making use of it. (Leibniz 1934, p. 29)

In other words, the soul, in knowing the world, knows the laws of God and in so far as its actions are governed by these laws, it reflects, in microcosmic fashion, the laws of God in itself, establishing, the kingdom of God within and the City of God on earth. Thus, Leibniz too rejects a transcendent God and mind/soul as separate from the world and the body, and reaffirms the principle that they can only be realised or known ‘not by any derangement of nature’ but in and through

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the body, body politic and cosmos ‘in such a way that nature itself leads to grace and grace perfects nature in making use of it’. The point of the matter is that the ‘other mind’ of Europe saw well the presuppositions of the new world of the Enlightenment and its implications. However, Gandhi’s was perhaps the first extensive personal and political experiment in laying the foundations of non-violence in modern times. Not leaving it to abstract theory, his daring brahmacharya experiments test the ontological and metaphysical grounds of non-violence in this world. They pit a theory of the power of nations against a theory of the truth of nations, the one founded on the self-alienation of humanity and the other on its sovereignty. The Vernacular Modernity It is true that Gandhi did not propose a system of thought. In fact, it was his intention not to do so or to be seen to have done so. However, Gandhi was clear that his experiments had theory, method and point of view. It may be said that through his experiments he, in effect, institutes the foundations and articulates the vocabulary of a vernacular modernity, giving substantive meaning to the discourse of the life of the people. The centrality of experiment in Gandhi’s theory and method itself is the key to a principle of motion in history and therefore to a vernacular modernity based on innovation and invention rooted in the sovereignty of the people in and through their work instead of a system of imposition of universal standards and order dependent either on dogmatic tradition or on the expert and the state as separate and distant from the layman. It envisages a living tradition of work and thought based on principles of non-violence, non-exploitation and reciprocity in science religion and politics that is constitutive of the very substance of democracy. The struggle for swaraj/sovereignty as an effort to restore to each ‘a control over his own life and destiny’ but only with due and necessary consideration of a similar need in the weakest and smallest of God’s creatures, men or nations, establishes civil society, as opposed to the state, as the foundation of relations between nations, that is, relations beyond borders. Gandhi demonstrates what is at stake in the two points of view on civilization, one based on presuppositions of peace and the other on presuppositions of war. To him they are fundamentally incommensurable. The method of non-violence cannot be compromised even for peace, since, in the ultimate analysis, that would mean a sacrifice of Truth. In 1931, Gandhi represented India on behalf of the Congress at the Round Table Conference. Negotiations for the final event and structure of India’s freedom had begun. The solidarity that had constituted India’s freedom struggle was now developing cracks with factional interests coming to the fore. Representatives of Hindus and Muslims, upper castes and depressed castes, and finally, the Princes of India’s erstwhile Princely states were all present to ensure that their interests

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will not go unrepresented. The conference of course included the British Prime minister and members of his cabinet. Gandhi’s address to the members of the Round Table and the Prime minister of Great Britain is paralleled only by the classic defense of Socrates and the grandeur of Chief Seathl’s letter (Seathl 1855) in its opposition to the method and power of the state. His clarity on the question of point of view is evident in his firm assertion that there can be no ground for negotiation unless they agree on the definition of freedom or swaraj that the Congress had been fighting for all these years. However, in this one sees Gandhi as astute political theorist and politician. If they did agree then, he argued, India and the English people would have achieved the inconceivable – they would become partners in the Empire, not so that together they may rule the rest of the world but so that together they could remove the forces of exploitation that burdened their people and the world. In this event India and Great Britain would be partners for mutual benefit and on grounds of friendship. If they did not, then there was no scope for negotiation, no common meeting ground which could be approached with a ‘spirit of compromise’. Gandhi saw that then the situation would be reduced to merely one of Britain being the arbiter in the distribution of power and wealth amongst the warring parties of India which is what the Round Table conference promised to become a venue for. On the other hand, this was not mere strategy, since it was backed by the moral authority, not of Gandhi, not even of the Congress, but of the constructive programme, and the non-violent civil disobedience that the people of India had sustained in their struggle for freedom. Thus, Gandhi argues, that though he recognized that the Congress had not followed the non-violent method as a creed but as policy, it still represented the non-sectarian and universal interest of the people of India, and that it had been instrumental in developing this new method of civil disobedience. Gandhi knew, exactly, the place that this new found method had in the experiments with non-violence and truth that the history of civilizations had witnessed. He likens the civil disobedience that the people of India would be forced to take up in the event that it does not achieve true swaraj to the martyrdom of Socrates himself, only here there would be 350 million people offering willing non-violent dissent: A nation of 350 million people does not need the dagger of the assassin, it does not need the poison bowl, it does not need the sword, the spear or the bullet. It needs simply a will of its own, an ability to say “no”, and that nation is today learning to say “no”. (Gandhi 1969, p. 41)

It is this ability of the people to say ‘no’, their refusal to resign themselves to a dependence which stifles self-respect and sovereignty, their refusal to succumb to the temptations of modern civilization that states find most frustrating and difficult to overpower. The Manchester mill workers on the other hand understood Gandhi’s call to boycott British mill cloth and welcomed him with a warmth that confirmed

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that the law of non-violence and not violence is what ultimately prevails in the face of truth. Gandhi ends with a moving tribute to the love that he had witnessed from the English people, again reminding the heads of state and us of the truth of human civilizations – that it is love and non-violent reconciliation that sustains nations in and through the most trying and destructive of times. … No matter what befalls me, no matter what the fortunes may be of this Round Table Conference, one thing I shall certainly carry with me, that is, that from high and low I have found nothing but the utmost courtesy and the utmost affection. I consider that it was well worth my paying this visit to England in order to find this human affection. It has enhanced, it has deepened my irrepressible faith in human nature … (Gandhi 1969, p. 49)

References Adams, J. (2010) Naked Ambitions. London: Quercus. Alter, J.S. (2000) Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bose, N.K. (1948) Selections from Gandhi. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House Bose, N.K. (1974) My Days with Gandhi. Hyderabad: Orient Longman Limited. Dowson, J. (1982) A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion, Geography, History and Literature. New Delhi: Rupa & Co. Freud, S. (1966) Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Starchey, J. (trans. and ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Gandhi, Manubehn (1949) Bapu – My Mother, Desai, C. (trans.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House Gandhi, M.K. (1949) Ramanama, Kumarappa, B. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House Gandhi, M.K. (1954) Sarvodaya, Kumarappa, B. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M.K. (1958) My Religion, Kumarappa, B. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House Gandhi, M.K. (1969) Voice of Truth, Narayan, S. (ed.). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House Gandhi, M.K. (1978) Hindu Dharma. Delhi: Orient Paperbacks. Gandhi M.K. (1999) The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi: Publications Division. Government of India.12 Keynes, G. (1948) (ed.) Poetry and Prose of William Blake. London: The Nonesuch Press. 12 This work has been abbreviated as CW in the main text. The version used here is the electronic book (98 volumes) downloadable from: http://www.gandhiserve.org/e/ cwmg/cwmg.htm (Accessed: 14 January 2014)

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Kakar, S. (1989) Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality. London: Penguin Books. Lelyveld, J. (2011) Great Soul. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India. Leibniz, G.W. (1934) Philosophical Writings, Morris, M. (trans.). London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Reich, W. (1974) The Sexual Revolution, Pol T. (trans.) New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Seathl (1855) Letter to President Franklin Pierce of the United States in Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 10, No. 3. (Summer, 1976).13

13 Letter released by the United States Government as part of the Bicentenary celebrations. Appears in the journal with the title ‘Message to the Modern World’.

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Index

Adams, J. 96n1, 130 Afghanistan 84, 90–91 Agamben, G. 52 ahimsa attribute of society 23 cardinal vows 114 as creed 14 observance of the law of 121 votary of 66 All India Spinners Association 102 Alter, J. 12, 130–31 Ambar see Khadi science Ambedkar, B.R. 3, 63, 64, 105, 107 amphiboly 38–9 anarchy 9, 70 capitalism 106 enlightened 67 philosophical 69 vs. rule of state 35, 49, 68 social division of labour, in 107 Utopia 52 Anderson, B. 88–9 Anderson, M. 75 boundary/frontier 78n6 Anderson, P. 33–5 séance 39 apartheid 17, 119 Apology (Socrates) 45–6, 46n12 Arendt, H. 110 Aristotelian legacy ix, 32 Aristotle 31 Ashram 58 charkha experiments 101–2 diet reform 116 evolution of (Gandhi’s) 115 inmates 58, 107 as laboratory 1, 16, 104, 113–15 observances 115 Udyog Mandir 114

Ashram Observances in Action (Gandhi) 115 Azad, Maulana 14 Badshah Khan, see Ghaffar Khan, Khan Abdul Banerjee, M. 86 Bapu – My Mother (Manu) 131–2 Bardoli Resolution 15 Bhagini samaj (Society of Sisters) 132, 132n9 Bhakti movement 19 Bilgrami, A. 2n3, 33 Blake, W. 135–7 Bose, N.K. 14, 129 Bose, S.C. 3 brahmacharya/celibacy Ashram observances 115 cardinal vow 114 definition of 108n12, 130 diet reform 115, 116 experiment 108, 114–16, 120–28, 135 vs. presuppositions of war 122–3 sexual revolution 129–38 varnashrama system 108–9 bread labour 36, 40, 57, removal of conditions for 71 rejuvenating village economy 72 charkha and 102 sign of common humanity 109–10, 122 Campbell, D. 61 capabilities approach 113 capitalism alienation 27–8 charkha and 102 dialectical materialism 16 law of 107 multiculturalism 88, 92

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Nehru and Gandhi 98 social division of labour 106–7 structure of 101 Cartesian dualism vii, 23–5, 123 Kant 39 caste system 64 social organization and 105–9 vs. varnashrama 19n11 charkha khadi science 103–5 national flag 98, 98n4 Noakhali 122 pillar of swaraj 19 philosophy of 95 and social division of labour 107 theory of labour 99–103 village economy 71 weapon of civil disobedience 44, 72, 97 Chatterjee, P. 5 citizenship 31 definition of 67 and multiculturalism 89 public and private sphere 53, 56 Thoreau 58 city civilization, idea of 71–2 civil disobedience/resistance 55, 139 constructive programme 43–6, 105 Nazis and 41–2 salt satyagraha 57–60 spinning wheel as a weapon of 97 swaraj/sovereignty and 50–6, 69 civil society 12, 15, 49, 65 as abstraction 27 affirmation of 55 constructive programme 123 Gandhi’s presuppositions 57, 67 in law 54, 54n5 human conscience and 76 institutions of 61 modernity and 80, 130 Pashthuns 90–91 pluralism and 66 private citizen and 46 vs. religion and the modern nation state 53, 53n4

sovereignty of ix, 50, 51–2, 56, 70, 75, 75n3, 138 State and 19–20, 49–50, 60, 61, 68–9 Untouchability and 64 common law 54, 111 commons 111 Marx 71 usurpation of 71 communal riots 123 celibacy in the midst of 119–22 conformity/congruence, principle of 27 Connolly, W.E. 15, 61 conscience the army and 58–9 brahmacharya and 128 civil society and 76 democracy and 66–7, 69–70 Hobbes 26, 32, 51 Hume 10, 29, 37 plurality of 42 vs. power of State 76, 91 presuppositions of 66–8 post-Enlightenment regime 67–8, 76 public and private sphere, in 52–3 swaraj and 50 terrorism and 60 as witness to Truth 36 constructive programme 20, 139 brahmacharya and 123 the caste system and 107 the charkha and 72, 101, 103 in Noakhali 122 and office, concept of 45–6 presuppositions of peace 16, 43–6, 50, 87 in war and peace44, 97, 105 Cortright, D. 6 cosmological foundations 135–8 cosmopolitanism, theory of 80 cow protection 19, 123 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant) 38, 39n9 cultural identity vs. religious identity 78 territory and 78, 81, 88 custom conscience, source of 29, 68

Index epistemological foundation, Hume 10, 37 Oakeshott 30n6 Pashthuns 91 pluralism and 60 vs. state and religion 53, 53n4 swaraj and ix Dalton, D. 5, 6, 41 Dandi march 57–60, 101 Darwin’s theory of evolution 20 Das, V. 105 Das Capital (Marx) 98, 101 democracy Connolly 61 vs. custom/tradition 60 liberalism and 51, 54 property, right to 110 non-violent institutions of 66–72 parliamentary 19–20 vs. swaraj 106 vernacular modernity, and 138 depressed classes constructive programme and 107 separate electorate 64 Ambedkar vs. Gandhi 64–5 Descartes, R. see Cartesian dualism Devji, F. 5 dialectical materialism 16, 20, 27–8, 101 diet reform 16, 115–17 Dirks, N.B. 105 dissent, conditions for modern nation state and 51–2 distributive justice Gandhi 102 liberalism and 99 Marx 111 Plato 112 division of labour caste system and 64 charkha and 102 modes of production and 98–9, 104 capitalist 99–101, 100n5 social 105–9 in the workshop 111 dualism see Cartesian dualism Durand line 90–2 see also frontier Dworkin, R. 9

145

East and West4, 5, 16–17, 80 brahmacharya 129 Einstein, A. 96, 113 Ellis, H. 131, 133 Engels 52 English education boycott of 17, 98 civil society and 80 panopticism and 78 Enlightenment ix Bilgrami viii, 2n3 Blake 136–7 brahmacharya and 128 European 4n4, 95–6, 128 Kant 53 Leibniz 138 multiculturalism and 89 postconscience and 67, 76 constructive programme and 45 vs. Gandhi 55, 98 Habermas, 45 Hobbes, 28 human nature, theories of 26 Hume 10, 11, 29 method of analysis vii, 4, 15, 133 non-dualism and 30 non-violence 23 panopticism and 77, 79 pluralism and 60 property, theory of 110 rural-mindedness and 70 sovereignty 49 Srinivasan 12–13 territory and 75 universalist agenda 16, 20 war and peace, presuppositions of, 30–1, 119 Enquires Concerning the Human Understanding (Hume) 10 equality of all 101 brahmacharya and 129, 132–3 difference and 34–5, 43, 44, 60–66, 121, 122 fundamental 72, 110 Rawls 27n5, 112

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ethnic identity 34 fundamentalism and 89 private sphere, in 89 experience Bilgrami 2n3, 33 Dhareshwar viii experiment and 10, 10n7, 11–12, 39 history/custom vs. reason and 10, 25, 30 matter and spirit 126 Parekh 5 philosophy vs. theory, political 10 and reason, limits of 35–6 reflection (Hume) and 29, 37 Veblen 31 experiment foundations of 9–11 Feynman, R.P. 10n7 food security 116 Foucault, M. 77 free enterprise, economics of 100 Freud, S. 129, 133–4 frontier, see also territorial identity 57n8, 66 vs. boundary 78n6, 85, 85n11 neighbour-hood and 57 North West Frontier Province (NWFP) experiment 83–8, 92 permeable 89 Durand Line 91 Uberoi 84n10, 86 Frontier Gandhi, see Ghaffar Khan, Khan Abdul fundamentalism ethnic 9, 89 globalization and 89 religious 9, 76, 89 Gandhi, Maganlal 102 Ghaffar Khan, Khan Abdul/Badshah Khan/ Frontier Gandhi 84–7, 92, 115n15, 126 globalization 17, 92 fundamentalism and 89 integration vs. interdependence 89–90 multiculturalism and 88

porous borders (the Afghan case) 90 vs. swadeshi/neighbour-hood 109 Gokhale, Gopal Krishna 132n9 Habermas, J. 45 Hart, B.L. 42 Harvey, William 20 Hind Swaraj x, 7, 17–18, 80, 106 Hinduism Ambedkar 64–5 caste system vs. varnashrama (social organisation), 105–9 cow protection 19 essence of 19 Gandhi’s speech at the Round Table Conference 65 Islam and 82 sanatana 18n10 Untouchability 19, 63–6, 105 vivisection of 63 Hindu–Muslim unity 13, 19, 41, 61–3, 77, 79, 92, 132 Akbar 82 brahmacharya experiments Noakhali 120–23 partition 126 demand for Pakistan 81–3 economic divide 122 frontier experiment 83–8, 87 Gandhi’s struggle for Hindi vs. Urdu debate Hindustani 61–2, 102 Hindustani Prachar Sabha 61 Hindurashtra 19, 81 Hindustani see language history (in epistemology) Asian frontier (Uberoi) 86 experiment and theory 10, 10n6 Gandhi 11, 20, 39, 41–2, 68, 82, 114, 138 Hume 10, 11, 29, 37 Kant 11 the law of non-violence and 25 Marx 16, 27–8 Partition and 83 philosophy and 8

Index Hitlerism 95–6 Hitler, A. 7, 34n8, 95–6 racial cleansing of Jews 119 scientific experiments in racial difference 119 Hobbes, T. ix, 9 Covenants and pacts 28–9 human nature, theory of 20, 26, 32 means and ends 34 sovereignty 49, 51 common law 111 human existence, law of vii, non-violence 23, 33, 43 human nature Arendt 110 Azad, Maulana (Congress resolution) 14 Gandhi (Round Table Conference) 140 ontological foundations and law of 12, 39–41 Nazi Germany 42 principles of social sciences and ethics 11, 42, 51 and sovereignty, theory of 51 theories of 26–30, 32 human resources (capitalism) 101 Hume, D. vii, 38 custom, concept of 11 history and experiment as epistemological concepts 10, 11 social contract 29 reflection, concept of 36–8 scepticism 37 ‘imagined communities’ 88 vs. experimental community 92 imperialism, idea of 75 attack on 98, 109 Industrialism and 95 panopticism and 89 territorial 75, 78, 80–81 independence of India, see swaraj Indian National Congress 14, 44, Khudai Khidmatgars and 84, 86 India’s sovereignty and 67 Partition and 62, 123–4 India’s freedom see swaraj

147

individual rights, limits and scope of 34, 52 individualism as abstraction 27 in Gandhi 69 Industrial Revolution 98–9 Industrialism 15 the charkha experiment and 97–8 dualism of science and politics 96 European Enlightenment and 95 vs. industrialization 96–7 theory of labour and the charkha 99–103 Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Freud) 134 Irwin, Lord 58 Jinnah, Muhammad Ali 63, 63n11, 84–5 two-nation theory 81–2 jirgas 91 justice common law and 54 distributive Gandhi 102 liberalism 99, 111 Plato 112 Hobbes 32 Rawls as fairness 9, 27n4, 27n5 as satisfaction of desire 113 rights, in terms of 20 swaraj and 55, 67 Kakar, S. 130 Kant, I. peace perpetual 30 as policy ix standing army 58 reason amphiboly/Leibniz 38–9 Categorical Imperative vs. conscience 68 dualism of matter and spirit 131, 137 Hume 37 means and ends 34 private vs. public, use of 53–4

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social contract and 29 universal cosmopolitan condition, theory of 11 Kantawala, Biharilal charkha innovation, Gandhi’s comment on 104 Khadi constructive programme and 44, 123 Khadi science i103–5 Ambar, scientific journal in Hindustani 102 Prasad, Shambu 12, 102n research and development 101 Gandhi, Maganlal 102 satyagraha pledge 102 swaraj and 56, 79 Khudai Khidmatgars 84–7, 115n15 Hindu–Muslim unity, NWFP experiment in 84 Partition and 85 Khyber Pakhthunakhwa, see North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Kolers, A. 78–9 labour see also division of labour and bread labour dualism and 20, 23–4 mode of production 96–7, 104, 110 non-violence and 35 the body and 36, 40 place of 1 and property, theory of 111–12 theory of 99–103 Gandhi 72 Marx 16, 27–8, 71 language culture and 18, 20 national 61–2 see also Hindu–Muslim unity Hindustani 61, 102 panoptic institutions and 79 satyagraha and 6 Laws (Plato) 31–2 Leibniz, G.W. vii, 137 see also cosmological foundations contradiction, principle of 38 Gandhi and 39

reflection, principle of 36–8 sufficient reason, principle of 38 Lelyveld, J. 121 liberalism 6, anarchy in social division of labour 106 Gandhi and 108–9 freedom and 52 property and 111–12, 114 society and 52 technology and 99 life and death, cycle of 135 living wage and division of labour 106 Locke, J. 26, 29, 49, 79 property, theory of 111–12 MacDonald, Ramsay separate electorates and 63 Manhattan project 120 Mantena, K. 7 Manu/Manubehn 87 Brahmacharya experiments and 124, 126–8, 128n7, 131–2 Lahiri Bhanuben and 132 Marx, Karl 16, 71, 99–100 Das Capital 98, 101 dialectical materialism, theory of 27 Gandhi’s response 28, 67, 69 human nature and 27 the modern city and 70 socialism, definition of 28 Utopia 52 Mazumdar, Gangabehn 101 means and ends vii–viii, 16, 24, 34, 35, 41, 119–20, 122, 130 Ramanama and 127 and vivisection, science of 34n8 method vs. creed vii, 7, 33 Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan vs. the Congress 87 non-violence and 14–15, 123 policy and 139 Miller, D. 8, 9 Miller, W. (of United Press) salt satyagraha, reportage of 59–60 modern civilization vii, ix British rule and 78–9 civil disobedience and 139 constructive programme and 43

Index Gandhi’s critique of 2–3, 4n4, 17, 29, 80, 98 Marx 28 Partition and 81 presuppositions of 12 tradition and 6 true civilization and 18 universalizing regime of 78–80 modern nation state 3 civil society and 51–2 the Congress and 13 constructive programme and 43, 101–2 internal critique of 15 political economy dismantling of 109 industrialization and 98 trusteeship and 112 presupposistions of 20, 26–7, 32, 34 Habermas 45 public and private spheres and 52 civil disobedience and 54 PIL and 54n5 standing army and 58 satyagrahi and 67 swadeshi/neighbour-hood and 55 swaraj and 49–50 panchayat raj and 70 city vs. village civilization 72 sovereignty and 55, 57 territory and 75, 78, 85 multiculturalism and 88–9 Partition and 81 modernity vii–ix, 79 see also modern nation state and modern civilization alternative vernacular 121, 138–40 brahmacharya experiments and 129 Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ and 88 the Congress and 98 charkha and 101 European 4n4 Gandhi’s non-dualism and 40 gifts of 80 Hume 11 Kant 131 post-Enlightenment Europe and 20 swaraj and x

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tradition and 18–19 Uberoi 40n10 multiculturalism, theory of 80, 82 imagined vs. experimental communities 92 vs. pluralism 88–90 porous borders and 90 Muslim League 62, 67, 122 demand for Pakistan 81–3 Khudai Khidmatgars and 84 national flag charkha vs. Ashoka Chakra 98, 98–99n4 colours of 98–99n4 national identity East vs. West 16 the modern nation state and 75 religious identity and 82 national language see language nationalism Anderson B. 88 internationalism and 57 Tagore 90 natural rights, theory of 26 liberalism 110 nature, law of 23, 26, 42, 64 ontological foundations and 39–41 Nayyar, Sushila 124 Nazis democratic powers and 18 non-violent resistance against 6, 41–2 Nehru, Jawaharlal 84, 86, 98, 115n15 neighbour-hood (swadeshi), theory of 55–7 vs. parochialism 109 non-violence Alter, J. 130 Ashram and 1, 114–15 definition of 25 frontier and 85 Islamic roots 86 Kakar 130 method as 16 vs. post-Enlightenment political theory 29 non-violence, the law of viii–ix, 11 brahmacharya and 122–3, 135 Ramanama and 128

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bread labour and 110 constructive programme and 43 diet reform and 116 epistemological foundations 35, 39 Cartesian dualism 23–5 experiment and 12–13 failure of 41 marriage and 134 society, foundations of 18 non-violent democracy institutions of 66–72 principle of 67 non-violent society, structure of 43–6 North West Frontier Province (NWFP) 83–8 see also frontier demand for autonomy for 83–5 frontierology 85 strategic position as a frontier 86–7 territory, theory of 84 Nozick, R. 9, 35, 52 Nussbaum, Martha 113 Oakeshott, Michael 9, 12n8, 26n3, 30n6 office, concept of civic 53 constructive programme 44–5 Habermas 45 Manu 132 private citizen 45–6, 54, 75n3, 133 Pakhthunistan 87, 90 see also NWFP Pakistan demand for 63, 81–3 FATA region 91 referendum in NWFP 85 the Durand Line 90–2 Panchayat Raj 50, 66–72 see also nonviolence panopticism/panoptic institutions 79–80 multiculturalism and 89 national ID card project 77n5 territory and 77–80 Pantham, T. 5, 7, 54 Parekh, B. 5, 7, 88 Parel, A. 5 parliamentary democracy see democracy

Partition (of India) 19, 76–8, 126 see also Pakistan Noakhali experiment as sacrifice 124–7 negotiation for 83–4 Khudai Khidmatgars and 86–8 riots 123 two-nation theory 81 vivisection 62, 83 Pashthuns see also frontier the Congress and Jinnah, point of view 86 non-violence and 86 state and 84, 90 Durand line dispute 90–91 Passion of Christ war and peace, presuppositions of 24 passive resistance 6 peace time preparation for war, concept of 105 perpetual peace, theory of 30–31 Philpott, D. 75n3 Phoenix settlement, South Africa 115 Phule, Jyotiba 105 Plato/Platonic Aristotle and ix property, concept of 112 Socrates’ defence 45–6, 46n12 civil disobedience and 46 war and peace, presuppositions of 31–2 pluralism, theory of 35, 76, 92 equality and difference, experiments in 60–61 vs. multiculturalism 88–90 Rawls 27n5 political economy 27 Ashram-laboratory and 113–15 caste system and 106, 108 dismantling 109–10 liberalism and 15 Marx’s critique 16, 27, 70 presuppositions of peace and 20, 98 constructive programme 44, 97 khadi 56, 101–3 rural-mindedness and 70, 72 property and 110 political theory Agamben 52

Index brahmacharya and 13 dualism vii, 7–9, 32 experiment foundations of viii, 9–11 Gandhi and ix, 2–3, 12, 15, 25, 30, 77 Pantham 54 Hobbes 29 Hume 29 Locke 111 Marx 101 non-violence, law of 23, 55 Plato 31 pluralism and 60 problematic of normative and descriptive functions of 8 political philosophy and 8–10 sovereignty and 49–50 swaraj and 45 positivist method Adams 96n1 Gandhi and 7, 13, 62, 131 brahmacharya 119 Hume 10, 37 non-dualism and 36 post-Enlightenment thought vii, 4 Hitlerism 95 Srinivasan 12, 129n8 Uberoi 40n10 power and empowerment, relations of 24 Prasad, Rajendra 61 Prasad, S.C. 12, 102n6, 104 price system and distributive justice 111 private citizen 75 concept of 45–6 office of 54 vs. sovereign state 75, 75n3 private sphere constructive programme and 45 liberalism and 27 public sphere and 52–5 dualism of 32, 34 production and reproduction charkha 102 constructive programme and 97 cycle of 27, 114 bread labour 110 property theory of Aristotle 31

151

common law, legitimacy of 111 commons and 71 human nature, theories of 29 liberalism and 52, 99, 111–12 Plato 112 Locke 79, 111 Rousseau 51 and trusteeship, theory of 110–13 Public Interest Litigation (PIL) 54n5 public sphere see private sphere Ramanama 126–8 Ram Raj/Ram Raj 5, 66–72, 123 Rawls, J. 8–9, 27n4–5, 35, 52, 112–3 reason Blake 135–7 conscience and 67–8 Descartes 24 dualism and 34 Einstein 96 experience and 10 Hume 10, 29–30, 37 Leibniz 38 Gandhi 25, 35–6 omnipotence of 36 Bilgrami 33 Kant 11, 39n9 private and public, use of 53–4 liberalism and 6, 52 social contract and 29 twentieth century political theory, in 9 universalist agenda and 16 reflection, principle of 36–7 Gandhi 39 Hume 29 custom and 37 Leibniz 38 Kant 39, 39n9 reflection, ontological part and whole/microcosm and macrocosm 40, 43, 135 Reich, W. 133 religious fundamentalism 9, 76, multiculturalism and 89 religious identity cultural identity and 78 multiculturalism and 89 territory, identification with 56, 75, 81–2, 85

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Ricardo 16 Round Table conference 63, 65, 82n8, 83–5, 90, 138–40 Rousseau, J.J. ix, 5, 26, 29–30, 49, 51, 136 Rowlatt Acts 102 Roy, Raja Ram Mohun 105 rural-mindedness, idea of 7, 70 Russell, B. 131, 133 Sanatani Hindu 18–19, 18n11 sannyasa 108, 108n12 see also caste system Saraswati, Dayanand 105 satyagraha 5, 14, 57–66 115 Ashram 101–2, 104, 107 civil disobedience and 55 salt satyagraha 57–60 Khadi 102 Khudai Khidmatgars and 86 liberal democracy and 54 new name, as 6 pluralism 60–61 Untouchability and 63–6 scepticism Hume 10, 37 Schoolman, Morton 61 Schumacher, E.F. 7, 105 science Blake 136–7 experiment 10, 12, 42 vs. brahmacharya 120, 122–3, 129 Gandhi and 6, 16, 135 Alter 130 Bilgrami viii epistemological foundations 33, 130 Hardiman 6–7 Srinivasan 13 industrialism 95 Khadi 12, 101–5, 102n6 law of violence and 20, 92 liberalism and 15 modern laboratory 1 Ashram 113 peace, of 97 politics and13, 96–7, 105

religion, politics and ix, 4n4, 16, 109 social science theory viii, 8 Hume 10, 37–8 swaraj 80 vivisectionist viii, 24 Uberoi 34n8, 40n10 science of peace see science self-discipline Ashram vows 114 self-governance see swaraj self-preservation, principle of 29 Gandhi and 109 self-reform 19–20, 60, 65 dissent and 55–6 sovereignty and 57, 79 Tolstoy 31 self-rule see swaraj self-sacrifice, laboratory, and the 1 labour and 1, 24 non-violence and 25, 36 self-suffering brahmacharya and 121 non-violence 25, 36, 40, 57, 68 Sen, A. 113 separate electorates, Gandhi’s protest against 20, 64–5 see also Ambedkar Sewagram 115 sexual revolution brahmacharya and 129–38 Shah, K.J. 5 Siedentop, L. 8–9 Smith, Adam 16, 99–100, 100n5, 104 social contract, theory of 20, 26 Hobbes 32 Hume 29 modern nation state and 51–3 social organization 105–9 see also division of labour caste system and 64 pluralism and 60 social reform swaraj 50, 106 sexual revolution and 133 socialism 26 Marx 27, 28, 69

Index Socrates 45–6, 46n12, 76 see also private citizen swaraj and 50, 139 Sorabjee, R. 5 sovereignty civil society, institutions of 16, 50, 66–7 Panchayat Raj 69–71 Ram Raj 68 vs. the state 20 Pashtuns 90–91 vernacular modernity and 138–40 dissent and 55 Gandhi and 57, 70 internal and external 55–7 multiculturalism and 88–9 national identity 16 Pakistan and 63, 81, 83, 126 post-Enlightenment conceptions of 49, 51–3, 62, 78 state of exception (Agamben) 52 state of necessity (Agamben) 52, 55 vs. power 66 public and private spheres 52–5 swaraj and ix, 5, 17, 50, 67, 78 territory and 56, 75, 75n3 terrorism and 60 Srinivasan, A. 12–13, 106n9, 129n8 sufficient reason, principle of 38 see also Leibniz supremacy of reason, myth of 37 see also Hume swadeshi/neighbour-hood 5, 109 body, and the 36 cardinal vows and 114 law of being 50 Ram rajya and 68–9 sovereignty and 50, 55–7 swaraj/self-governance ix–x, 5, 17, 20, 49, 55, 56n7, 68, 76, 138 see also sovereignty brahmacharya and 123, 126–7 vs. dualism 123 caste system and 106 constructive programme and 107 Gandhi’s political heir 115n15

153 Hindu–Muslim unity and 77–8, 82–3 independence and 77 individual and 67 modern civilization and 79–80 NWFP and 84, 91–2 national flag and 98n4 poorna swaraj (complete swaraj) 58 power vs. Truth 45 principle of 62 Round Table Conference and 139 sovereignty and 50 vs. post-Enlightenment theory 55–6 struggle for 138 swadeshi and 50, 57 three pillars of 19, 79 Untouchability and 64–5 village 70–71

Tagore, Rabindranath 6, 17, 40, 90 Tandon, P. 62 Terchek, R.J. 5–7 territorial imperialism 80 territory Aristotle vs. Plato 31 cultural and religious identity and 81, 85 frontier and 85 Gandhi 84 Jinnah 85 multiculturalism and 88–9 neighbour-hood, theory of 57 panopticism and 77–80 sovereignty and 49, 56, 75 swadeshi and 50 territorial boundary as legal entity 78 plenitude, principle of 78–9 terrorism 60 Durand Line and 91–2 Thakkar, Bapa 128 Tolstoy 5, 31, 69, 109 Tolstoy farm 115 true civilization 16–19 vs. modern civilization 18 Truth absolute and particular 11 Anderson P. 33 Bilgrami 33

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Blake 137 correspondence theory of 6, 33–9, 129 definition of 6 experiments with 11–15 Ashram as laboratory 1 failure of 41–3 foundations, epistemological 34–6 social science theory, in testing and 128 theory and method 3 theory vs. philosophy 9 law of nature and 40 metaphysical/cosmological foundations bearing witness to 68, 127 brahmacharya experiments and 121, 122 and non-violence, law of viii–ix, 29, 128 objectivity and 39 power and 45, 60, 64, 138 solidarity and 66 presuppositions of war and peace 16 civilizational dialogue and 17 reflection and 37–9 as séance 39 substantiation of 25, 28 two-nation theory 81–2

constructive programme and 44 Hinduism and 19 pillars of swaraj and 56 problem of 63–6 Utopia 9, 35, 52

Uberoi, J.P.S. 4n4, 34n8, 40n10, 53n4, 84n9, 86, 105 Udyog Mandir 114 see also Ashram universal general culture (Anderson, B.) 88, 90 Untouchability Ashram vows 114 Bihar earthquake and 40 vs. the caste system 105, 108 Ambedkar 107

war and peace Hobbes 51 presuppositions of ix, 24, 30–32 War and Peace (Tolstoy) 31 Wyatt, J. 99

varna system see varnashrama dharma varnashrama dharma 19, 19n12, 106–8 Veblen, T. 31 vernacular 1 bread labour and 122 cosmology 135 English education and 17 Hinduism and 18–9, 19n13 Hindustani 61–2 modernity 121, 138–40 scientific journal Ambar 102 village republics, establishment of 69 village swaraj 50, 70–72 civilization, village vs. city 72 Vincent, A. 9n5 vivisection of Hinduism 63 Manu’s operation and 126 the Partition 62, 81, 83, 126 science of 24, 34n8, 119 sovereignty and 66

yajna/sacrifice brahmacharaya and 120, 122, 126 experiment as 123–9 Manu 132