MAHATMA GANDHI

PERSPECTIVES ON PAN-ASIANISM

2011-04-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Shiva linga has raised more controversy in both East and West than anything else. The debates involve the likes of Swami Vivekananda, Basav, Abhinavagupta and the staunch western critiques. Its amazing that Indian men and women, boys and girls rever Shivalingam with so much intensity that there never is iota of doubt about its changing history. For the masses, Shivalinga is the eternal and immutable sign of the Supreme Shiva. Many Orientalists have made fun of Indians worshipping a phallus-idol. But, the cultural relativism is not being studied in historical contexts.

Pashupat & Lakulish
Pashupat Shaivism is the oldest Shaivite sect and finds mention in the Mahabharata. If one considers the mention of episodes of Mahabharata in the grammatical analysis done by Patanjali in Mahabhashya during 2nd century B.C., one can safely assume the prevalence of the sect during 3rd-4th century B.C. When some scholars try to pit Indus Valley seal as representing Pashupat Shiva, it speaks much about the politics of history writing and least about some true account of Indus Valley civilization, the knowledge about which arose in tandem with the shift of British Indian capital from poitically active Calcutta to slavish Delhi .Since the script is yet to be deciphered and single seal can not be made the basis to represent a vast urban civilization like Indus Valley, I am not a votary of the idea of tracing genealogy of Shaiva worship to Indus Valley civilization

Pashupat is derived from Pshupati,a name of Shiva. Shiva is the shepherd of souls,the bonded souls being “pashu” in Indian tradition. It is mentioned that the followers of the sect wrapped deer skin around waist, held iron tridents and believed in intense devotion towards Shiva. They abstained from greed, sex, violence and followed strict code of ethics. Their final goal was to root out ego by assuming different practices like singing, dancing, laughing, walking like mad persons, talking absurdities.They were the earliest critiques of Vedic rituals after Buddhism and Jainism.

During 2nd century A.D., it is believed that the greatest Pashupat sage, Lakulish appeared in Gujarat .He is said to have died at his seventh month. But, the followers believe that Shiva himself entered his body to preach the doctrine. He became the Lakulish,the lord of Staff(lakula) and his every iconography depicts him holding a club.Somanatha temple became major centre for the followers of this doctrine.The order grew across North India and Nepal. The famous Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu is dedicated to this sect.

Lakulish ,club and the erect phallus

Lakulish is considered as Shiva himself in human form at Kayavarohan,in Gujarat, where it is believed Shiva entered the dead body of the child. It is mentioned in the local tradition that Lakulish and his main four disciples, Karushya, Mitra, Garga and Kushika installed a linga to commemorate the Kavyarohan. This linga is known as Kavyarohaneshwara. Image of Lakulish himself has been carved with the linga .Thus the iconocographic unity of Shiva and Lakulish was established.

I would like to suggest that the installation of lingam by the Shaivite Pashupat might have been influenced by the inscription of buddhist percepts on pillars. The earliest Shiva linga can be traced to 2nd century B.C. But, by that time inscriptions over pillars became a regular feature after the rise of King Ashoka(304-232 B.C.). Ashokan pillars were built across the Indian civilization and later kings adopted same mode to commemorate any significant event. These pillars were the master pieces of sculptures. The rivalry and exchange between Buddhists and Shaivites are known from earliest times. Probably, the idea of lingam as a miniature pillar was appropriated by the earliest Shaivites, Pashupat. Just as pillars were inscribed with the image of lions or the chakras, the Shivalinga was inscribed with the image of Lakulish.The puranic explanations available in Shiva Puran, Linga Puranas are constructions of later period during the Guptas.
http://lakulish.wordpress.com/
Not only that, in later centuries(a statue of 9th century during Pratiharas has been preserved), Lakulish is shown holding a club with the shape of phallus. In fact, he is shown as urdhavaretas ,meaning therby an erect phallus making semen to move against the gravity within subtle energy channels that runs parallel to the club(lakula) being held in the left hand. Thus, the genealogical history of Shivalingam hovers around Lakulish and his sects. He is the holder of phallus-club. He is the victor over sexual urge represented by an upward erect phallus in the idols. He is one with the Shivalingam also. The LingaPurana(the narrative about the origin and significance of lingam) mentions about Lakulish as an incarnation of Shiva.
7th century image of Lakulish
www.mparchaeology.org

Phallus, skull, khatvang… the unfolding similitude

http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/mahakala/
The kapaliks(skull-bearer) sect developed out of the Pashupat, but they engaged in macabre practices and over indulagence in sexuality and drinking.The club of Lakulish was substituted by the khatavang,a staff capped with human skull. It is how the skull-ritual entered the Tibetan Buddhism. Padamsambhav who lived in the regions dominated by Kapalika-Shaivites borrowed many ideas from them. The paintings of Padamsambhava depicts him carrying a khatvang, the most representative item of the Kapalika. Its another matter that the Buddhists infused cognitive surplus in this borrowing by claiming that the three skulls topping the khatavang represents the bodies of three Buddhas.

How did this trandformation take place? How did the oneness of Lakulish and Lingam later evolved into Lakulish holding a phaluus-shaped club in his hand and an erect phallus paralleling the same? How was the phallus-looking club substituted by the skull-capped khatavang of the Kapalik and later by three skull-capped khatavang of the Vajrayana Buddhists? I must emphasize upon the logic of similitude. In Oriental civilizations, it is still the basic mode of thinking. Likes influences likes. There is structural resonance through which the effect of one structure gets transmitted to another structure. This explains the belief in microcosm reiterating macrocosm and the unity and connectivity of two. Therfore, Atman was believed to be the person-like but of thumb size residing in individual’s heart and the Atman as mere the individuation of the Parmatman,the great unity as described in the Upanishads, the oldest philosophical treatises. The logic of similitude gives credence to the idea of rituals since by propitiating rituals at micro-level, it is assumed that the cosmic layer can be both influenced and controlled. This belief-system lies at the root of primacy of ritual in our civilization in molding and holding the socital foundations.

The question of transformation of lakula into khatvang can be explained by the logic of similitude. The skull-bowl appears as the cap of the phallus. When the idea of Brahmarandha, the tenth door at the topmost cranial surface was assumed, the upper part of skull which looked like a cup bears striking resemblance with the phallus. Both have holes at the centre from where the life- enhancing fluid secrets. The semen and the nectar of immortality assumed to be secreted from the top of the skull has strong correlation also. Therefore, to preserve semen and make it flow against the gravity to the cranium became the highest goal of the Yogis as well as Tantriks in Indian tradition.

The hypothesis gets strength from the fact that Kapaliks still believe in consuming everything from the skull, where anything poured transmutes into nectar. Therfore, the tradition of Vammargi preactioners of tantras make use of skull-bowl for serving and consuming ritual prasad.
Thus ,by putting a skull –over the staff in form of khatvang, the Kapaliks believed that they are more authentic in appropriating the technology of similitude to gain the power of immortality that the lingam holds within.

Abhinavagupta and Sivalingam

http://www.koausa.org/Saints/Abhinavagupta/index.html

It was the great Shaivite philosopher ,Abhinavagupta who is credited with polularizing worship of Shivalinga to gain the grace of Shiva. It is to remember that Abhinavagupta grew during early 11th century at which time the greatest centre of Pasupat Shaivism, Somanath was destroyed by the marauding army of Mahmud Ghazani.Mahmud Ghazani has tried twice to sneak into Kashmir where Abhinavagupta lived, but failed to destroy the region. Most probably, Abhinavagupta being the sharpest mind, might have realized that for one destruction of linga representing Shiva at Somanath, let there be thousands of Shiva linga in every nook and corner of the nation.

Vira Saivism grew subsequently in southern India, particularly in Karnataka and Andhrapradesh .Basavanna who lived from 1105 AD to 1167 AD popularized the philosophy of “shiva is linga and linga is Shiva” .They even wore Shivalinga . The Shiva linga grew as the icon of Indian civilization both in the north as well as south.

Kailash/Arunachalam-Geographical Shiva-linga

Source:http://www.chinayak.com/Toursintibetmain.asp
From 7th century onward, the concept of ‘pithas’ grew. Each of the 51 Shaktapithas represented the phonemes of Sanskrit alphabet and contained the power of the universe since the universe itself is nothing more than the grosser manifestation of Phoneme-universe. The Word became world.Similarly, the idea of 24 sacred sites grew among the Buddhists, Nath cult as well as many tantrik tradition. The sites also stood for the aspect of lord that its geography represented. This was the homologization of geography with cosmogony of body. In such circumstances, hills like Arunachalam and Kailash became the most sacred Shiva-linga due to its resemblance with the Shiva-linga.
There may be problem in dating the emergence of Kailash as the sacred Shiva linga. There has not been mention of Kailsh in Vedas or Upanishads. The mention occurs only in the Puranas which grew as a part of millenarian movement from 5th century onward. It is Padamsambhava who is credited with consecrating the scared sites in the Himalayas. He meditaed near Kailsh-Mansarovar at Dharampuri and is believed to have transmuted into rainbow body at Chiru gonpa. Though, Hindus claim that Kailsah was consecrated by Sankaracharya, it seems unlikely that two greatest consecrator of sacred sites who almost at same time were in the Himalayas as well as Kashmir neither ever met nor argued. Since finding the footprints of Sankaracharya beyond Badrinath is nearly impossible and the fact that no monastery or temple exist in the Kaialsh Mansarovar region which celebrates Samkaracharya’s consecration, it can be safely assumed that he was never there. It was only after the Buddhist idea of Demchok living in Kailash became popular in the northern part of the subcontinent that Kailash assumed significance in Hindu imagination.
Now that we find varieties of Shivalinga (sphatika Shivalinga ) gaining popularity, one must ponder over the evolution of Shiva linga in Indian tradition. From the dark granite rocks to transparent, postmodern plastic Shivalinga is an amazing journey of an idea.
(Niraj, written on 30.4.2011, 0130 hrs.)
Posted by Niraj Kumar at 1:51 AM 0 comments
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Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Lohia and Asian consciousness: Fragments of a Young mind

Lohia and Asian consciousness: Fragments of a Young mind
Niraj Kumar
source:liveindia.com

Born in a non-descript corner of Hindi heartland, hundred years ago, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia's ideas often touched the lofty height of a prophetic visionary. He was an incessant fighter against injustices and valiant warrior of ideas. He was loyal to his conscience and the mankind. Everything else was transitory and inhered counterfeit value for him. He demolished the British imperialism. He fought for the racial equality in America. He resisted the state's oppressive laws in Manipur. He launched the struggle for the preferential treatment of the long-suppressed castes but resisted Ramaswamy Naicker's (Dravida Kazhagam leader) attempt to incite caste violence . He was a constant critic against the imposition of lone dynastic rule in India. He was the torch-bearer of democracy who resisted every attempt of glorification of individual may it be Babasaheb Ambedkar or Nehru or even his mentor, Mahatma Gandhi. He attacked Marx and he attacked Sankar's Advaita Vedanta. Admonishing both ideological camps, the Atlantic and the Soviet, he strived for the creation of the Third Camp. He formulated new theories of Small unit Machine, Equal irrelevance, Seven Revolution and Permanent Civil Disobedience. He spoke on truth, beauty contests, Olympic games, caste discrimination, Cold War, capitalism, liberalism, economics, philosophy, language, culture. There was hardly any aspect of national and international situation, which did not invite his attention. The structure of his mind corresponded somewhat with structure of truth to produce 'Aspects', 'Fragment's, as admitted by him in the preface of his musings over the political philosophy still relevant to democracy troopers, "Marx, Gandhi and Socialism"(1963). It is difficult to comprehend Lohia's mind as each aspect he discerned reveals the deepest secrets of existence. Else one may compare his thought with a hologram. Slice his argument to the smallest bit and still it shines with the wholeness, beauty and coherence- the three powers of truth. He advocated avoidance of extremes in theory and practice. He is the Gautam Buddha of Indian democracy. Being a student of Pan-Asianism, it is my attempt to retrieve Lohia's provocative insight into Asia, its youth and the future.

A name, the echoe and gestures of an Asian idea

I was born years after untimely, rumor-stricken demise of Dr. Lohia. While I might be seven years young, I heard a unique name from my father's mouth: Ram Monohar Lohia. Lohia, who? We had heard about Mahatma Gandhi , Pandit Nehru, Bhagat Singh, Subhash Chandra Bose, Khudi Ram Bose, Chandrasekhar Azad, Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai. But this was a surprising word. Never in our schools did our teachers utter anything about Lohia. My father explained. In India, there were only two political philosopher-practitioners: Mahatama Gandhi and Dr. Lohia. I swallowed my childhood dissent. I had never encountered any image or discourse in printed schoolbooks with regard to the latter personality.
In subsequent years, I studied political science at University level. There was no mention of Dr. Lohia anywhere. We had to extricate political ideas from obtuse writings of Sri Aurobindo, M.N. Roy or effete works of Babasaheb. The adolescent disorder of ideological vagaboncy took over. In the sphere of social and political activities, majority owed allegiance to Dr. Lohia's socialism. The then leaders in power in Hindi heartland were seeking popular legitimacy by claiming themselves to be Lohiavadis.
The disjuncture between theory and practice is self-evident. The formal governance structure resists Lohia's ideas. It tries to efface him from nation's memory. But, Lohia's words find resonance in every blank face who dare to sacrifice at the altar of democracy. As much as the statist intellectuals and the state confabulate to marginalize Lohia's contribution towards Indian democracy and global political thinking, his name finds new echoes with multiple nodes.
I was introduced to Dr. Lohia's multifaceted personality and works by his close-aide, successor and the stalwart of post-independence Indian political history, George Fernandes. Since 1993, I was passionate about writing a book on a political philosophy to unite Asia. It was a young man's romantic flirtation with an unexplored terrain, which required intellectual rigour, the capacity to make proper judgments and resource mobilization. I lacked the expertise, skill and resource. When I shared my problems with Shri George Fernandes, he guided me to take a detour over Lohia's thought. He narrated how Lohiaji dreamt about an Indo-Pak confederation and held various political leaders, chiefly Nehru as "guilty man of India's partition." I began to study Dr. Lohia's writing. A ray of hope grew brighter. I felt I am at home with his magnificent writing.

Capitalism, Communism and Asia

Lohia always pondered over the changing reality. It was very difficult for him to hold established doctrine for a pragmatic action. He groped for new and elegant frameworks. He viewed capitalism as the doctrine of “people living upward of 40 degrees north of the equator'. Lohia found capitalism as being the doctrine of individual, free enterprise, mass production and balance of power based- ‘peace.’ ‘Capitalism imposed the peace of death on Asia and elsewhere, caused their population to grow and their economic apparatus to decay”, Lohia stated. He found how population and production proceeded simultaneously among the white or pink people, but the coloured people suffered crisis in culture and crafts along with the rampant population growth. He rejected the capitalist integration of Asia as capitalism bred poverty and war. He held a staunch view that capitalism will destroy the precarious national freedom.
His view on communism was as strong. Marxism and Soviet system was a fad among the first generation political elite of independent nations of Asia. Lohia was never enamored by these prevailing trends. He found a crisis inherent at the centre of the communist system. Communism necessitates a centralized party and subsequently a centralized state to develop the forces of production. A dictatorial party and state is immoral and cannot uphold the morality of a utopia.
Dr. Lohia viewed that “communism inherits from capitalism its technique of production, it only seems to smash the capitalist relations of production.” He viewed both as part of a single civilization as both are driven by continuous application of science to economy and rising standard of living. An individual may be either in US or in the Soviet Russia, is impelled by “identical aims of increasing output through mass production.” Lohiaji stated that the modern civilization has split up into these two warring camps to renew itself.
How right was he? China discovered this global gambit between two camps during 1960s that led to Sino-Soviet rift. China’s orchestration of ‘East wind will prevail over west” hastened the decolonization of Asia and Africa. When the Cold war ended, the Soviet Union collapsed. The USA and the USSR were geopolitical mirror images with morphological resonance. The crisis in the Soviet camp has produced crisis in the Atlantic camp even. Now the world system theorists like Immanuel Wallerstein et al. boldly assert that the Cold War was a well structured game and the Soviet Union merely played the role of a sub-hegemonic partner. During the Cold War, the blood that was spilt was Asian: either in Vietnam or in Korea or in Afghanistan. The two camps merely played the simulated games of “mutually assured destruction” and in the process checked the sedimentation of intra-Asian cooperative ties.
Dr.Lohia’s prognosis was astute and forthright. But he has been proven right in his laments for decay of the ‘Modern civilization’. He assured his generation that there would be shift of power from one region of the world to another, that when a civilization flickers, the torch generally passes into the hands of its out castes.” He claimed that civilizational creativity would be spurred among the underdeveloped two-third of the world.
With this view, Dr. Lohia ventured to invigorate Asian socialism. He wanted Asia’s socialists to keep away from both forms and camps of the existing civilization and of providing socialism with its own continental characteristics. He was instrumental in organizing a full conference of Asian socialists in Burma. While speaking on ‘Asia and World Order’ in December, 1952, Dr. Lohia sought Asian socialists to “reject the claim of the Atlantic camp to represent freedom as much as it must repudiate the claims of the Soviet camp to represent anti-imperialism'. He desired to make use of Buddha’s legacy to forge an Asian socialism based on cooperation, goodwill, unity and mutual development. He was highly critical of the enormous expenses being incurred at constructing Chandigarh by the Nehru Cabinet. Instead, he wanted Sarnath-Banaras to be developed as a national and international asset, which the East Punjab capital can never be. By using the goodwill based on Buddha’s life and thought, he wanted Indian Government to begin a Buddhist venture.
It is possible that he found Buddha as the antidote of Marxism in Asia. He condemned China for using powers flowing through hysteria of Marxism against other Asian nations. He described Marxism being Europe’s weapon against Asia and China as the source of wider civil war erupting across Asia. The vigor with which he took up the cause of Tibet in India and abroad explains his fascination with Buddhism.

Problems of Asian Socialism]

Dr.Lohia delivered a speech at Rangoon to the preliminary meeting of the Asian Socialist conference on 26th March 1952 on the lingering problems of Asian socialism. After elaborately dealing with the isomorphic nature of capitalism and communism, Dr.Lohia emphasized the third way. He shared how the rationalization of economic system would imperil Asian nations, which constitute high-density population. In Asia, there are “too many people, too little land and too few forces of production.” In such a situation, even communism that relies upon extreme rationalizations of economic sphere cannot feed billions of Asian while that might destroy individual liberty in the continent.
Dr. Lohia criticized communists for raising a phony slogan of ‘redistribution of land' as the panacea of Asia’s illness. For Dr.Lohia, redivison of land without democratization of the state and without decentralization of political power would culminate into a mere paper transaction.
The Soviet form of collectivization of agriculture or the corporatisation of farming in the Atlantic block would prove to be Asia’s bane. In Asian conditions, peasant must learn intensive, agriculture and enter into cooperative farming. They may utilize low-cost machine. The village should be given maximum state power. This kind of coupling would catalyze new way of living and an economic upturn.
Dr.Lohia championed the concept of ‘immediacy’ in the context of Asian Socialism. While European socialists worked for incremental changes in the state structure, Dr. Lohia suggested that socialist measures in Asian situation ought to be drastic so that the economic poverty is eliminated and the communists are deterred from usurping state power to redirect their energy and doctrine against Asian civilization.
Dr. Lohia had to jostle with the problem of methods and weapons of struggle against injustice. Though, five yearly elections give people chance to purify the system, Dr. Lohia advocated peaceful mass action beyond ballot and bullet. He opposed the organized violence and use of lies.
Dr. Lohia found the solutions to various problems of Asian socialism in few basic concepts: democratization of administration, small capital outlay such as small machine, socialized property and maximum attainable equality.
An Asian Policy

In the forthcoming days of the preparatory conference, Dr.Lohia developed a full fledged Asian Policy for the Asian socialist. Speaking in the Conference in March, 1952 at Rangoon, Dr. Lohia summed up his argument as follow:
1. All Asia is prostrate with the common disease of poverty, and it is aggravated in that Asians known so little of one another.
2. A major weakness of Asia is the existence of politics of religion or caste or race or language.
3. There is lack of integrated thinking and of discernment in Asia.
4. Major weakness of Asian politics is the disease of the big man who is in reality a small man.
5. Another Asian weakness is the emergence of a new middle class with expensive taste and habits.
6. The Asian politics is dominated by politics by assassination and government of terror.

Dr. Lohia was so appalled, at Asia’s hitherto negligible role in world affairs due to the above mentioned weakness, that he explicitly announced an all Asian foreign policy that might force the Atlantic and Soviet camp to say ‘yes’ or ‘No’ to the Asian voice. He pleaded for such a policy as without that the newly won Asian independence amounts to the mere right to say ‘yes’ or ‘No’ to Mr. Truman, the American President and Mr. Stalin, the Soviet Leader.

What was his prescription for an Asian voice in the international affairs? Dr.Lohia’s enunciations can be summarized as below:
1. The type of the tension where the combatants are a direct reflection of the Atlantic or Soviet camps, and have already begun waging war and where no third creative forces are present has to be reconciled and a third force needs to be created as in case of Indo-China and Korea.
2. Tension where combatants are native or are only partially under control of Atlantic and Soviet camps, the immediate remedy is to recognize existing frontiers and to attempt confederative agreements. For example, the case of India and Pakistan, Israel and the Arab Word, Peking China and Kuomintang Formosa.
3. Tension where an Asian people and government are being sucked into the orbit of one or the other camp as is the case of Japan. All Asia must put forward a policy of guaranteed neutrality in respect of Japan.
4. Tensions that flow out of foreign interests still existing in Asia are shown as in case of Iranian oil or Portuguese Goa. All Asia must associate itself with the native against the foreigner, but take good care to see that the native does not fall from the frying pan of the Atlantic into the fire of the Soviet Camp or vice versa.
5. Tensions that arise out of the weakness in body and mind of Asian areas unattached to either camp are latent throughout the belt that stretches from Indonesia to Egypt. This area must give itself joint ideological, economic and military security. Without internal economic reconstruction, no Asian country can become a fit instrument for such an all Asian foreign policy.
Dr. Lohia’s five-fold policy of abstention, confederative approaches, neutralization, expulsion of imperialist interest and mutual assistance pacts far surpass Panchshila policy formulated by the formal governments in India, China or Indonesia. His approach was concrete and simple. In fact, his ideas fructified in some form under the banner of Non-aligned movement. But the credit was given to Tito, Nehru and Nasser.
Dr. Lohia’s political activism can be traced to this five-fold Asian policy. He fought against the Portuguese in Goa. He worked for an Indo-Pak confederation. He opposed the fratricidal war across Asia. His elegant principles are still relevant. It seems Dr. Lohia formulated an Asian Policy for centuries and not merely for his decade
.

Emergent Pan-Asianism and Dr. Lohia’s path

The contemporary situation in Asia is worsening. Even though, there are no more split Euro-American ideological camp and their simulated struggle, Asia is teaming with anger against the encirclement of whole Asia by NATO military machine. The war is raging between declining Atlantic alliance and amoebic jihadis. One by one, the contagion of instability and politics by terror is encompassing Asian nations. Fanatic monsters gain popular legitimacy by pitting their martyrdom against Anglo-American imperialism and Russian Eurasianism. The need of the hour is an all_Asian policy.

Asia stands at a crossroad. Should it fry in the cauldron of Euro-American civilization or should it tread on Eastern approach to resolve the looming political, economic and ontological challenges. Asian nations were beguiled by the West in accepting the economic and financial architecture designed to perpetuate western hegemony. Asians worked hard, saved more and consumed less. The West frittered away their savings, gobbled Asian's wealth, consumed beyond their means and worked leisurely in merely the economics of sign-sector. Now they stand at Asian's door seeking financial help to bailout the pride of their modal of capitalism. Asia is awash with money earned with sheer dint of hard labour. The West is eyeing to appropriate our accumulated wealth. While carrying begging bowls, they blame Asia for their precarious situation. They view Asians' simple living within their means as a world problem. What if Asia decide to march on the footsteps of Gandhi and Dr. Lohia ? Will not then the whole edifice of Western hegemony collapse in a catastrophe ?

Asians have to beware of subtle machinations by the western nations. TheWall Street is bankrupt, the shadow bakning system of investment banks have disappeared, the automobile and aviation industries are flailing and the giant banks have been exposed as mere zombies in the western world. Inspire of the succession of collapses, the dollar is growing stronger vis-à-vis Asian currencies. What is the fall out? Weaker Asian currencies signify reduction in credit extended to the US. Asian will keep on extending help to find itself cornered by the clever and bullying ploys weaved by a faltering West. One by one Asian nations will be devoured by financially hungry West. This is a challenge to Asia's imminent rise as propeller of future history.

What has to be done? Asian nations ought to devise a coherent and integral strategy for Asia's survival. The cooperative grids have to be operationalised at multiple levels. An Asian Monetary Fund and an Asian common currency, yanpee(a combination of Chinese yuan, Japanese yen ,Korean won and South Asian rupee) has to be created. To stall recessionary cycle from affecting Asian economy, a Keynesian booster of huge fiscal investment can be launched in the pan-Asian infrastructure sector. Asian nations have more than five trillion dollar of saving available for intra-Asian investment. Railways and Asian Highway projects has to be revitalized. A low-energy consuming small-machine technology has to be harnessed. Nano-technology, superconductivity, molecular biology should become the priority areas of research. Apart from revolution in new technology as envisaged by Dr. Lohia, mental blocks and prejudices have to be revived. Buddhism can be an apt vehicle for unifying Asian minds.

We have witnessed in recent years the competitive diplomacy of soft power around Nalanda, Silk Road and the Middle path doctrine. Japan, China, Singapore and India are engaged in a geo-cultural rivalry to outbid each other. Taking a cue from Dr. Lohia's philosophy. a cooperative dialogue can be initiated to revive the legacy of Buddha. Every world-religion originated in Asia. Buddhism flourished all across. Asia unlike other world-religions, which transcended the geographical barriers (Islam, Christianity) or localized within a particular geography (Sikhism, Hinduism). There are inherent complementarities between Buddha's thought and Asian consciousness. Sooner it is harvested, better it will be for the project of Asian integration. The forces of rising cultural nationalisaton have to be steered towards a pan- Asian predicament. The first prerequisite for such a stupendous task is a Lohia doctrine: Asia for Asians. Lohia's five-fold all- Asian policy has to be declared and adhered by each Asian nation, however big or small.

Let the West vacate Asia. Asia lies asunder. We need Dr. Lohia’s thought to create a powerful and united Asia. The beginning has to be made. Let this birth centenary be celebrated with the slogan ‘Lohia for Asia’ and the gloom that is marching steadily in Mumbai and Lahore, Nifty and Nikkei, will disappear immediately.

(Published, OtherSide, March,2009 on Birth Anniversary of Lohia)

Posted by Niraj Kumar at 10:19 PM 2 comments
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Tuesday, April 26, 2011
God Particle discovered at LHC,Geneva?
Leaked memo reveals 'discovery of God particle'
By Louise Wells

Monday, 25 April 2011

Source:cosmosmagazine.com
It is the most elusive subatomic particle in the universe and its discovery could revolutionise nuclear physics.
So it is no wonder that a rumoured encounter with the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle", at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva has led to hysteria among some scientists. However experts have urged caution over a leaked internal memo, warning it could well be a false alarm.
Finding the Higgs is one of the main goals of the LHC, a 17-mile underground tunnel. The Higgs was proposed in the 1960s to explain why matter has mass and is the missing piece of the standard model of particle physics. Speculation has now run wild on the internet after an anonymous note was posted on the blog of Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit.
The memo revealed that one of the LHC detectors had picked up a signal consistent with what Higgs is expected to produce. The scientists noted that "the present result is the first definitive observation of physics beyond the standard model".
But Cern, the European organisation for nuclear research, stressed the note was only preliminary. Spokesman James Gillies said it was "way, way too early" to confirm whether Higgs had been detected, and he told Wired magazine: "The vast majority of these notes get knocked down before they ever see the light of day."

Source: Independent http://www.independent.co.uk

Posted by Niraj Kumar at 11:29 PM 0 comments
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Sunday, April 24, 2011
Pan-Asianism in Japan:18th Century to Present
Pan-Asianism in Japan:18th Century to Present

Kita Ikki(1883-1937)
Prince Konoe Atsumaro(1863-1904)

An alliance with the mighty Chinese empire was being mooted in Japan since the latter part of the eighteenth century, as a means of protecting the region against a possible threat of the West. Japan viewed China as saviour of ‘toyo’. In his Kaikoku heidan (Military Problems of a Maritime State, 1791), Hayashi Shihei, a Confucian scholar, urged the promotion of East Asian regional defence as a means to safeguard the Orientals from the assault of occidental intruders. Russia, being in the vicinity, was dreaded most. Sato Nobuhiro in Bokaisaku (Policy of Coastal Defence, 1806) recommended an alliance with China to counteract Russia’s southward expansion. Aizawa Seishihai (1782– 1863) in Shinron (New Proposals, 1825) advocated a similar alliance.

In the aftermath of the Opium Wars (1840–42), China’s decline as a bulwark against the western powers became obvious and Japanese intellectuals began to espouse the adoption of western science and technology. The myth of China as saviour of Toyo was destroyed, but the idea of Sino–Japanese alliance against Seiyo (West) regained vitality with Commodore Perry’s visit. The ‘lip and teeth’ maxim became popular as a basis of an interdependent ‘Shirishi hosha’ (lips-and-teeth, cart-andwheel kind of) relationship among Japan, China and Korea. Hirano Kuniomi (1828–64) argued in Seibansosaku (Concrete Measures to Control the Barbarians, 1863) that given the geographic and cultural proximity, China and Japan could devise common strategies against the West. When the Russians attempted to seize the Tsushima islands in 1861, Hirano recommended an immediate dispatch of an embassy to solicit China’s and Korea’s cooperation. Taking Russian moves as a sign of renewed western aggression, Katsu Kai shu, a leading naval authority, wrote to Kido Takayoshi in 1863:
“What we ought to do is to send out ships from our country and impress strongly on the leaders of all Asian countries that their very existence depends on banding together and building a powerful navy, and that if they do not develop the necessary technology they will not be able to escape being trampled underfoot by the West.”

The rhetoric of Sino–Japanese cooperation crystallized in the signing of the Sino–Japanese Treaty of Amity and Friendship on 13 September 1871.
In a memorial submitted to the Emperor in 1875, Iwakura Tomomi said:
‘If Russia took China, Japan’s teeth would lose their lips and grow cold. The two should help each other as the two wheels of a cart or the two wings of a bird.”

The Foreign Minister, Inoue Kaoru, wrote to the Japanese Minister at Peking, Tamaki Shishido:

“We, Go-Toyo (Orientals), we the two nations, should unite against the gai
koku (foreign countries), and help each other to defend ryokoku no dokuritsuken (our rights of national independence).”

With the success in the Formosan affair, a number of Japanese also started advocating the meishu (leadership) concept for Japan in Asia. In 1879, Kusama Tokifuku (1853–92) devised a plan whereby he entrusted upon a renovated Japan the duty of stimulating the oriental countries to attain freedom. His plan was to begin from India where the tide of nationalism had started growing and he urged the Japanese to help the Indian people to attain jichi (self-government). Once India was freed, the British hold in East Asia would loosen and China might regenerate, he said.
Baba Tatsui
Source:www.ndl.go.jp
Baba Tatsui, who was in London in 1874, had been attending several meetings with the aim of redressing the Indian problem. Another political figure, Ono Azusa (1852–86), a leader of the Kaishinto, viewed Japan as the leader of the Orient and urged it to cooperate with other Asian nations to prevent western dominance.

The advocacy of an East Asian alliance under Japanese leadership was, however, shortlived. The challenge came from none other than the father of modernization in Japan, Fukuzawa Yukichi. Striving for a complete modernization during the early Meiji era was highly influenced by Fukuzawa Yukichi. Fukuzawa’s ‘logic of civilization’ (Bunmei ron no Gairyaku—Introduction to the theory of civilization, 1875) which envisaged the history of mankind as a linear progression from barbarism to civilization became the guiding principle for Meiji rulers. He published the editorial ‘Datsu-a-Ron’ (Dissociation from Asia) in the 16 March 1885 issue of Jiji Shinpo (News of the Time) and argued that Japan should dissociate from Asia and strive for a status equal to European nations. Other editorials by Fukuzawa appearing around that time were similar in context: ‘Wipe out China and Make Peace with Europe’ (24 and 25 September 1884), ‘Poland of the Orient’ (15 and 16 October 1884).
Fukuzawa Yukichi
Source:www.forums.samurai-archives.com

Fukuzawa wrote in that famous editorial, ‘Datsu-a-Ron’:
“Western civilization spreads like measles…. Not only we cannot prevent the spread of civilization, but as men of wisdom we should endeavour to promote its spread so that the people may enjoy its beneficial effects…. Japan is alone in having freed itself from old ways, and it must now move beyond all Asian countries by taking ‘dissociation from Asia’ (datsu-A).”

Fukuzawa’s ‘datsu-a-ron’ thesis was lambasted by the contemporary ‘Ko-a-Saku’ (Policy of enlightening Asia) thesis. Sugita Teiichi (1851–1920), a member of the Liberal Party and later Speaker of the House of Representatives, observed:
“The yellow race is about to be devoured by the white. We used to be told that the white race loves freedom and values equality. It is very curious that they proceed to subvert freedom and deprive others of equality…. While the countries of Asia are inseparably bound to a common destiny, our thoughts are thousands of miles apart, we lack mutual empathy as members of a common race…. Now we must go even further and appeal for freedom throughout Asia under the banner of universal justice, dispelling the illusions that have caused the seven hundreds million people of Asia to temporize and act with servility for hundreds of years. We must cast off the shame of past insults at the hand of the white race, and take steps to usher in a new age of freedom and enlightenment.”

Sugita’s ideas were based on a concept of Sino–Japanese alliance first espoused at the beginning of the Meiji period by heroes of the Restoration such as Iwakura Tomomi (1825–83) and Okubo Toshimichi (1830–78). To resist the ever-increasing pressure of the western powers, Sugita proposed an alliance of all Asian countries, especially Japan and China. He termed the proposed alliance a ‘rengo’, a Great Asian Confederation, to obliterate the stigma of the humiliation suffered at the hands of the white race by liberating the whole of Asia. Sugita had asked his countrymen to promote the spirit of ‘heavenly mission of independence’ and ameliorate the lives of six hundred million people of Asia in accordance with tenchi no shinri (universal rational principles) and unai no kodo (law of the universe). Like most Japanese of his time, he saw Japan as the leader in a future scheme for Asia, but there were no aggressive methods involved in carrying out Asia’s revival.

Sugita set up the Toyo Gakkan (Oriental Academy) at Shanghai (1885), which later became the Nisshin Boeki Kenkyujo (Institute of Sino– Japanese Trade) under Arao Sei (1859–96). Sugita’s ideas influenced Chinese statesman K’ang Yu-Wei (1858–1927) and the Chinese poet Huan Tsun-hsien (1848–1905).

At the same time, People’s Right leaders, including Itagaki Taisuke, started showing a concern for freedom in other Asian countries. There were ‘Ko-a-ron’ (support Asia) personalities involved with the question of Korea. Oi Kentaro (1843–1922), Tarui Tokichi (1850–1922) and Nakae Chomin (1847–1901) were the main figures of this group. In 1885 Tarui Tokichi wrote down his views on united ‘Asia’. The original work was lost when he was arrested in the Osaka incident, but later it was rewritten and published in August 1893 as the ‘Daito-gapporon’ (Theory of Greater Asia) in the journal Jiyu byodo keirin (Freedom and Equality) edited by Chomin. Tarui’s essay proposed that Japan and Korea could unite on an equal basis to form the country of Daito (Great East) and both could work together in common defence against the West and that Korea could be set on the road to modernization. After Japan’s and Korea’s union, he wrote, ‘We can help China, Tartar, Mongolia and Tibet to regain their independence and join the grand federation…. In this way we shall be able to defend ourselves from mistreatment by foreigners’.

Thus, Tokichi provided an elastic concept of ‘Daito’ and a conception of unity based on the racial solidarity of non-Caucasians. While arguing in favour of the confederation, Tarui made the following points:
1. As proved by the examples of Germany and Great Britain, confederation is the ideal way to create a powerful country.
2. The yellow race must unite to safeguard itself against the colonialism of the white race, and specifically the danger of the Russian advance in East Asia.
3. Japan is a ‘wonderland’ of distinctive virtues of imperial rule and ‘perfect constitutionalism’, virtues which are instrumental in making Japan the leader of the anti-white front.
4. Since the virtue of harmony (shinwa) is the cardinal feature of eastern morality it is natural that this virtue be adopted as the moral principle of the confederation.
5. The confederation is to be formed on equal terms, despite differences in historical background and national strength.

Tarui’s concept of hebang (confederation) had wide appeal among Chinese reformers like K’ang Yu-wei and Liang Chi’ Chao.

Soon, pan-Asian rhetoric was punctuated by the Sino–Japanese War in 1894–95 over Korea. Japan’s victory gave its citizens a sense of achievement of equality with western powers as other western powers began to show a compromising attitude (Britain agreed to relinquish extra-territoriality of 16 July 1894 as on 1899) towards Japan. Yet Japan’s emergence as a new power in Asia aroused the western fear of the Yellow Peril. Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941) began propagandizing about the Peril after 1895. A racial counter discourse was being poured out in a confident Japan too and the idea of the unity of non-Caucasian race (Asian) became the talk of the day.

Takayama Chogyu (1871–1902) said that the ‘last nation-states of the Turanian race, China, Japan and Korea, are now being subjected to an encirclement attack by the Aryan race’. Many voices in Japan were calling for friendship with China in order to prepare for a struggle against the Caucasians. This was the decade in which ‘racism’ became rampant in western colonies and within the ‘western home’ against immigrants. It was this background which impelled Konoe Atsumaro to take up the cause of Asian integration vigorously. Konoe published an article, ‘Do Jinshu Domei’, in the January 1898 issue of Taiyo:
‘We must ally with those of the same race and we must study the China problem.’
He observed that “East Asia will inevitably become the setting for a racial struggle in the future. However foreign policies may change for the moment, it is only for the moment. We are fated to have a struggle between the white and yellow races, and in that struggle Chinese and Japanese will both be regarded as the sworn enemies of the whites.”

Konoe also affected the government decision to give shelter to K’ang, Yu-wei and Liang Ch’i Ch’ao after the failure of Hundred Days in 1898 in China. Konoe and K’ang worked together for an ‘Asian Monroe doctrine’ to counter western intervention:
‘Western imperial powers compete in Asia for their own interest. Asia is Asia’s Asia. It should be only Asians who make decisions on Asian issues’. Yet Konoe was a meek witness to the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China by western powers in league with his own nation, and the Anglo–Japanese Naval Treaty of 1902.

In 1904, the Russo–Japanese war broke out. In modern times, it gave Japan the opportunity to become the first yellow nation to defeat a western power. Leaders from all over Asia celebrated the victory (even pacifist Rabindranath Tagore took out a procession in Santiniketan to commemorate the victory). This victory boosted pan-Asian thinkers more vigorously than any other incident. Japan had realized now that having attained military technology and imperial victories could not give it the status it deserved in western (civilized) eyes: they were merely the Yellow Peril for the West. The victory over Russia showed Japan the way to come out of this torn identity. Asians were jubilant. The West felt it as its humiliation, the white people’s humiliation. Japan was now convinced that it must return to its Asian roots in action (forgetting Fukuzawa’s advice of datsu-a-ron): it must re-Asianize.
Kakuzo Okakura in Taoist dress
Source:http://home.planet.nl/

In the meantime, Kakuzo Okakura Tensin (1872–1913), the Japanese art historian, had called for elevating ‘Asia’ to an aesthetic and moral unity, negating the orientalists’ programme of representing its present as inferior/barbaric/backward. Okakura had visited India in 1901–2 and published his monumental work Toyo no Riso (The Ideals of the East) in 1902. He wrote:
“For if Asia be one, it is also true that the Asiatic races form a single mighty web…. If the history of Delhi represents the Tartar’s imposition of himself upon a Mohammedan world, it must also be remembered that the story of Baghdad and her great Saracenic culture is equally significant of the power of Semitic peoples to demonstrate Chinese, as well as Persian, civilization and art, in the face of the Frankish nations of the Mediterranean coast. Arab chivalry, Persian poetry, Chinese ethics, and Indian thought, all speak of a single ancient Asiatic peace, in which there grew up a common life.… Islam itself may be described as Confucianism on horseback, sword in hand.”

In his next work, The Awakening of Japan (1905), he spoke about the ‘Night of Asia’, the ‘White Disaster’ and an Asian reincarnation. He was as much appalled by the ‘bogey of yellow peril, propagandized by western leaders, as every educated Asian was. He wrote:
If the guilty conscience of some European nations has conjured up the spectre of a yellow peril may not the suffering soul of Asia wail over the realities of the White Disaster … to the wounded imagination of Orientals history will tell of the gradual advance of the White Disaster which was descending on Asia.”

Making a scathing attack on western penetration, and the western reaction to Asian resistance, he wrote:
‘If China tried to lift her head, if the worm turned in its agony, did not Europe at once raise the cry of the yellow peril? Verily, the glory of the West is the humiliation of Asia.’

Okakura’s visit to this region was preceded by the little known visit of a Japanese monk Ekai Kawaguchi (1899) who, in a long letter to the Nepalese Prime Minister Chandra Shamsher, propounded the unity of Asia and pan-Asianism.
Mori Ogai, the Japanese novelist, coined the term hakka (white peril) in 1904 as a political provocation, under which he justified resistance of all non-western people subjected to colonial oppression. Ogai’s ‘hakka’ and Tokichi’s elastic concept of Daito (Greater Asia) came to haunt Japanese thinking. Tarui’s earlier appeal to unity of non-Caucasian races in his essay ‘Daito-gapporon’ (August 1893) contributed to ‘the development of a powerful stream of pan-Asianist rhetoric called “dosoron” (theory of identical ancestry), a theory that advocated the political unification of nations on the basis of their racial affinity.’ The idea was fuelled for further growth by the increasing number of Asian students eagerly seeking knowledge of modernization following the Russo– Japanese war. Nearly 8000 Chinese students went to Japan.

Phang Boi- Chau, a Vietnamese nationalist leader, also advocated between 1905 and 1909 sending talented students to Japan (the Dong-Bu movement).
Many exiled Asian leaders like Sun Yat-sen, Kim Ok Siun, U Ottama, and Aguinaldo took shelter in Japan. In 1905, the Tung Mengh-hui (Chinese Revolutionary Association) was established in Tokyo by Sun Yat-sen.

Another ideological current that was to be influential in pan-Asianism was the theory of harmony of civilization (bunmei chowa-ron). The Japanese felt pride in being inhabitants of the meeting-place of East and West, which made it possible to defeat both the ‘old eastern civilization of China and the old western civilization of Russia’. Okuma Shigenobu argued that ‘eastern and western civilizations spread along different routes and met by accident in Japan’ (1907).

There was a socialist undercurrent towards pan-Asianism too, which cannot be ignored, for its proponent Kita Ikki actively supported Sun Yat-sen in toppling the Qing dynasty in 1911. Kita harboured a strong resentment against the West for the backhanded treatment of the racial equality clause in the Versailles conferences. He returned to Japan from China in 1919, where he was an observer for the Amur River Society, carrying an explosive manuscript. In this manuscript, ‘An outline plan for the reorganization of Japan’ (Nihan Kaizo hoan taiko), published in 1923, Kita proposed the ‘Japanese emperor as a representative of the people’. He developed this argument further in Shina Kakumei gaishi (An Unofficial History of the Chinese Revolution) (1918) by figuring the Meiji emperor as Napoleon who had the task to expand the Meiji restoration all over Asia, precisely as Napoleon claimed to have expanded the French Revolution all over Europe. In the preface to this work, he outlined the basic principles of his own concept of pan-Asianism. These two works became the Bible for the young officers during the 1930s, who advocated the carrying out of a Showa restoration. Kita argued that
‘A socialist revolution in Japan … would be the first step in the chain reaction leading to the liberation of all Asian countries from western political and economic domination.’

After the end of the First World War ,the Japanese proposal for including a clause of ‘racial equality’ was rejected at the Versailles conference. Japanese plenipotentiaries Makino and Chinda had put up two alternative clauses for the same, but the chairman of the commission, Robert Cecil himself opposed the proposal. Greece, Belgium and other European nations vehemently opposed it, while China showed its support for the Japanese proposal in spite of the Sino–Japanese confrontation at that time. This was the period of charged racial arrogance of the Eur-American authorities. This issue had become dominant in the domestic political discourse of Japan. The League for Racial Equality was convened by Sugita Teiichi in the first half of 1919, at Tokyo. Addressing a meeting of the League, Paul Richard, a French philosopher, was so appalled at the contemporary racial politics that he equated western civilization with the civilization of the barbarians. Richard suggested the ultimate way to resolve this humiliation:
‘Organize the League of Nations of Asia—the United States of Asia’.

Race consciousness was pervading politics and academics on both sides of the Pacific. This was the time when the grandest text on pan- Asianism written by Kodera Kenkichi swayed the Japanese mood. Kodera Kenkichi’s 1200-page text, Dai Asia Shugi-ron (Theory of Pan-Asianism) opened with an emotional protest against the racially discriminatory international climate. In response to criticism of his argument, Kodera wrote:
“Some people denounce pan-Asianism as being based on a narrow racist frame of mind. But racial prejudices are what the white nations have taught us. To speak of the white peril and to advocate pan-Asianism cannot touch the malicious propagation by Europeans and Americans of the yellow peril and their call for a white alliance. While the former is defensive, passive and pacifist, the latter is offensive, aggressive and imperialistic.”

Kodera had developed his theory of cooperation with China only to undermine this white alliance. Kodera Kenkichi (1877–1949) was a veteran member of the Lower House of the Imperial Japanese Diet till 1926. He was later, the Mayor of Kobe and an alumni of George Washington University where he studied western law and international relations. His work influenced politicians like Nagai Ryutaro and Nagashima Ryuji who proposed the idea of Japanese leadership in Asia to rejuvenate Asia to rid it from the “white peril”. In the year 1919, Sawayanagi Masataro published a book,”Asianism”(Ajiashugi) reiterating Kodera’s ideas of pan-Asian unity. In 1924, the journal, Nihon oyobi Nihonjin(Japan and the Japanese) published a special issue on Pan-Asianism. In 1926, Murobose Takanobu published three volumes on “Asianism” describing the role of Asianism in the world after the end of the First World War.

This magnum opus inspired growth of various pan-Asian organizations. Though the work of Kodera Kenkichi became the source of inspiration for Japanese officials during 1930s, Kodesa himself never championed a militaristic version of the idea. His pan-Asianism was defensive, one in which Asian integration would protect Asian countries from threats abroad,particularly the “white peril”..

In the meantime, domestic politics in Japan too was in turmoil, culminating in the assassination of Prime Minister Hara by ultranationalists in 1921. At international level, the Washington Conference was held (1921– 22) establishing military equilibrium in the Pacific. Japan was isolated in the western international system centred around the newly created League of Nations. Japan was viewed abroad as having challenged the powers and crossed the line from ‘respectable imperialism’ to bold aggression in the Twenty-one Demands and the Siberian Intervention. The Bolsheviks abrogated the 1916 Russo–Japanese Alliance. Soviet Russia re-established itself in maritime Siberia by 1922, which Britain, the USA and France forced the Japanese to abandon, as well as the Japanese claim upon Shantung. In 1925, the maritime province of Siberia and the northern half of Sakhalin were formally restored to the USSR.

The Kyoto Conference(October, 28- November, 9,1929) after the collapse of the League of Nations therefore emphasized a shift in Japanese policy from universalism to regional schemes and bilateral approaches. This regional impulse was, partly, a byproduct of the intellectual groundwork of the Kyoto School. Nishida and his Kyoto School were working on the principle of overcoming the modern. The nation-state that had been developed with industrial capital beginning in the Modern Age had to be overcome, they argued. This could be done by introducing the ‘particular’ as a mediator between the ‘universal’ and the ‘individual’. A version of Romanticist philosophy, it was different in application. In romanticism ‘race’ was discovered as the ‘particular’ that mediated the ‘world’ and the ‘individual’; in the Kyoto School, an expansive notion of ‘region’ as the ‘particular’ assumed the mediating role between the world as the ‘universal’ and the nation-state as the ‘individual’. This regionalism was supposed to be a reality going beyond both exclusive and narrow-minded nationalism and abstract cosmopolitanism, and beyond both capitalism and socialism. The crisis of ‘modern’ (as evident from the world economic depression, the product of capitalism) and the threat to the nation-state (as evident from the rise of Soviet cosmopolitanism, a product of communism) was to be overcome by treading the path of Asian regionalism.

Apart from the philosophical grounding of regionalism, academic interest had shifted to the study of geopolitics after the publication of German ‘Geopolitics’ in the late 1920s. Japanese geopolitics did not emerge out of the need to justify expansionism. Rather, anti-western ideology and an emphasis on indigenous tradition was brought about by Japan’s isolation in international politics. The Kyoto geopoliticians emphasized the uniqueness of Japanese spiritual tradition, tennoism, being the only state in the world ruled by a unilineal tenno family for more than two thousand years. Shinto ideology was mobilized to identify the people’s geopietal sentiments with tenno worship.

The upsurge in regionalism was paralleled by a rise of the revolutionary right wing who were planning Showa Restoration, to restore the country to its ancient virtues under the authority of the emperor. Okawa Shumei, Mitusukawa Kametaro and Kita Ikki formed Yuzonsha (Society for the Preservation of the National Essence) in 1919. In 1922, the League
for the Prevention of Communism was formed. The celebration of the Empire Foundation Day commenced from 11 February 1926. The most prominent right-wing thinker, Okawa Shumei (1886–1957) while liaising with the Army for a coup d’état, also began to develop a programme of Asian Liberation.

Okawa formulated a theory of civilizational confrontation (bunmei taiket su-ran). In his classic work, Nihan Oyobi Nihonjin no michi (The Fate of Japan and the Japanese) published in 1925, he argued:
“Throughout the process of world history, the encounter of East and West and their blending has almost always, or more precisely without exception, been achieved by means of war. The battle between East and West is a conceptual formulation; it does not mean that Asia as a whole will wage war against United Europe…. In reality, it means that one nation from each group will be selected as representative and they must fight to realize the forthcoming new world.”
Okawa was involved in a range of activities that bridged the world of officialdom and militant paramilitary organizations. A respected scholar of Islamic studies (he translated the Qur’an), he was a visionary of Asia’s liberation. He believed that Asians must liberate themselves through collective movements and common purpose. In an essay ‘Kakumei Europpa to fukko Ajia’ (Revolutionary Europe and Renascent Asia, 1922), he meditated on the consequences of the domination of Asia by Europe and saw its solution in an Asian renaissance.

Okawa and his contemporaries were now providing an ideological map of pan-Asianism to eliminate western hegemony in Asia in an ultimate encounter, ‘the war to end wars’. Okawa even prepared plans to launch a war either on the Asian continent against the Soviet Union or in the Pacific against Great Britain and the USA.

Toyama’s Kokuryukai started publishing an English monthly, New Asia(Ajia Jiron) (1921–23). It is this magazine which first started using the term Pan-Asianism prominently. In the very first issue of the magazine, the Editors explained the mission in following words:
“ The danger posed by the white people (hakujin) to the yellow people(ojin) is imminent… The Japanese Empire ,as the last representative of Asia, is the only one that can face and fight the West as the backbone of the yellow races(oshoku minzoku)…We have to implement a foreign policy , and implant the idea of Greater Asianism-the great achievement of the foundation of our country-in the minds of the people, and bring about a comprehensive solution to the East Asia problem based on this Asianism”[Ajia Jiron 1,1 (July, 1917]

Besides this , another journal, Eastern Review( Toho Jiron) began publishing articles on Asianism.
The 1920s were troubled years of party government in Japan. Japan underwent the domestic depression of 1926. World depression began in the United States in 1929 and the march north of the Kuomintang troops together with the emergence of a strong Chinese nationalism threatened Japan’s position in Manchuria. Action was necessary if Japan’s position in Manchuria was to be maintained. Finally in September 1931, the Japanese army advanced into areas beyond the South Manchurian Railway zone on a plan prepared by Ishiwara Kanji. In March 1932, Manchuria was proclaimed an independent state under the last Qing ruler (P’u-yi).
Prime Minister Inukai, who wanted to restrain the army in Manchuria, was assassinated by ultranationalists on 15 May 1932. These ultranationalists were opposing internationalism and favoured Japanese expansion or pan-Asianism. Amidst such domestic confusion, power came into the hands of officers like General Tojo. Soon, Japan was caught in the throes of international rivalry and mistrust, and invaded China (1937).

Leadership had shifted into the hands of pan-Asianists like Konoe, Kanji and Tojo. In March, 1933, about 40 military officers, academicians ,leaders and civil servantsfounded the Greater East Asia Socity(Dai Ajia Kyokai) and ventured into an offensive, militarist version of pan-Asianism which was to bring disaster to Asian neighbours itself. The group included the maverick general like Inshiwara Kanji(1889-1949) and leaders like Konoe Fumimaro, son of Konoe Atsumaro.

Ishiwara Kanji with Okawa Shumei
Source:www.japanfocus.org

Ishiwara became an influential thinker of Japan’s ‘Greater Asia’ foreign policy in the period that culminated in the Pacific War and Fumimaro became the Primew Minister of expansionist imperial Japan. In July 1937, Japan invaded China. In January 1938,Japan launched an all-out offensive in China in order to set up a new central government favourable to the Japanese. By October 1938, Hankow and Canton were under Japanese control and Premier Konoe Fumimaro announced the establishment of Japan’s New Order in East Asia on 3 November 1938.
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On one hand, governance fell into the hands of pan-Asianists like Konoe, and on the other hand people like Okawa Shumei and Yabe Teiji, Ishiwara Kanji and Royama Masamichi provided ideas to the government to take pan-Asianism across the whole continent. Konoe’s announcement of Japan’s New Order in East Asia was not a sudden decision. A number of regional models were proposed for peace machinery in the Far East to overcome international seclusion and condemnation . Ashida Hitoshi, a diplomat, sponsored the Asian Locarno concept in 1932. He argued that if the international powers persisted in refusing to recognize Manchukuo, Manchuria would remain a ‘chronic disease’, perpetually fouling Japan’s relations with other major nations. He envisaged a Locarno pact for the Far East (Kyokuto Rokaruno), as an instrument for the peaceful solution of disputes just like the system developed in Central Europe in 1925. Ashida considered Japan, Manchukuo, Soviet Union and China as possible members of this pact.

Takagi Yasaka and Yokota Kisaburo presented a detailed proposal for a security pact of the Pacific in August 1933. The contracting parties of this Pacific Agreement were to include Japan, China, USSR, USA, Great Britain and France. The two proposals were not based on any reference to a common culture.

Asian regionalism based on ‘cultural essence’ was promoted by proliferating pan-Asianists during the 1930s. Greater Asianism (Dai Toashugi) was promoted through a new organization, Dai Ajia Kyokai (Greater Asia Association), founded on 1 March 1933. Konoe Fumimaro was a member of the group. The group viewed such a federation as a defence of East Asia against cultural conquest by occidentals, represented most demonically by Soviet Communism. In 1934, a semi-official agency, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai (KBS) was established to expand cultural relations with the Asian nations. Ishiwara Kanji, a member of the Dai Ajia Kyokai formed his own Toa Remai Kyokai (East Asia League Association) in 1939.

Various plans were already afloat, such as Ishiwara Kanji’s concept of East Asian Federation, the concept of East Asia Cooperative Body (Toa Kyodotai) by the famous spy Ozaki Hotsumi (Sorge spy case), ‘Greater East Asia Co-existence Sphere’ (Dai Toa Kyo Zonken) of Yabe Teiji, Okawa Shumei’s The Establishment of the Greater East Asian Order (1943) (Dai Toa Chitsujo Kensetsu). This apart, Kamikawa Hikomatsu had proposed a Japanese version of the Monroe Doctrine.
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Royama Masamichi made the concept of regionalism the rationale for a new order in East Asia. Takhashi Kamekichi emphasized the idealism of Japan’s endeavour as a peacekeeping force. These ideologues influenced the official policy. First, the Navy showed an interest in creating such a Greater East Asia sphere. In a radio broadcast, Premier Konoe Fumimaro proclaimed ‘The New Order in East Asia’ on 22 December 1938. The concept embraced only Japan, Manchuria and China but not yet South-East Asia. It was Matsuoka Yousuke, the foreign minister, who proclaimed ‘Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere’ on 1 August 1940, followed a few days later with a
radio address by Premier Konoe.

After the Pacific War broke out, Premier Tojo Hideki spoke to the House of Peers in the 79th Diet on 20 January 1942 (Japan had already occupied Hong Kong, Malaysia and the Philippines). He spoke of liberation from Britain and America and of including Burma and possibly even Australia within the sphere.
Six nations in the Co-Prosperity Sphere attended the Greater East Asia Conference held in Tokyo on 5 and 6 November 1943. Subhas Chandra Bose was present as an observer, being the head of the government of Azad Hind. Other leading delegates were Ba Maw, Head of State of Burma, Wang Ching-Wei, President of China, Chang Chung- Hui, Prime Minister of Manchukuo, Prince Wan Waithayakan of Thailand and Laurel, President of the Philippines.

A number of Asian leaders voiced support for Japan and placed the war in an East vs West, oriental vs occidental, and ultimately blood vs blood context. The Tokyo conference was designed to be an inspiring symbol of
pan-Asian idealism and the demise of white rule in Asia, and it fuelled for the moment the Asian racial dream and western racial fears. The western media fuelled the Asian dream further by emphasizing the ‘war against Japan as a holy war, a racial war’, the perpetual war between oriental and occidental ideals. Pearl S. Buck and Lin Yutang were so appalled by the ‘racialization of the war against Japan’ that they warned of a Third World War between whites and non-whites within a generation.

Japan had taken a leap in the name of Greater East Asia Co-prosperity to implement the ideology of the Showa Kenkyu Kai (Showa Research Association that included influential civilians of various ideological persuasions), namely Showa Restoration (nativistic and nationalistic harping for a period of security, strength and prosperity) and Kyodoshugi (cooperationism). The Japanese army was chanting its victory song after expelling ‘white peril’(hakka) from Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya and Burma. Korea and China were already under Japanese control. A Japan-centred hakko ichiu had emerged in East and South-East Asia.The Japanese victory and pan-Asiatic slogans fed into each other. Asian leaders exulted on the surrender of imperial powers in the Pacific.

The defeat of Japan ended the co-prosperity sphere, and all outward manifestations of pan-Asianism. But the slogan ‘Asia for Asiatics’ had inspired people. Japanese determination had unmasked the white man’s invincibility and Asian jubilation on every fall of colonial outposts instilled a dread of ‘Yellow epidemic’ among the ‘white’ imperialists. Asian nations then ran amok for independence.

Japan’s Asian Quest During the Cold War

The objectives of the Japanese leadership during World War II were to oppose ‘Communism in Asia’, to liberate the Asian colonies from the yoke of European imperialism and to foster pan-Asian solidarity. Instead, the result was the rise of communism in mainland Asia, stationing of more foreign troops on Asian territory and disarray in Asian solidarity on the issue of communism, anti-communism and neutrality. The atomic bomb was used for the first time against the ‘Yamato nucleus of Asia’ and the territory of the ‘leader of Asia’ fell to American occupation (1945–52). In theory, the occupation was inter-national, with a thirteen nation Far Eastern Commission in Washington and a four-power Allied Council for Japan in Tokyo, but in practice, the power was in the hands of American General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). The SCAP dismembered the empire, disestablished the Shinto and removed the old leadership. General Tojo was hanged with six others as war criminals. Japan was paralyzed and made a base by USA to continue its containment against the new rising leader of Asia, namely China.

In this pessimistic phase, the cultural undercurrent for a renewed nihanjinron continued to flow. The memory of the treatment meted out by the ‘white people’ during the war did not vanish. The harsh treatment meted to the Nisei (American citizens of Japanese descent) during the world war in concentration camps was seen now as a war against the ‘race’, not alone a ‘nation’.

In contrast to the western behaviour, the Chinese, who also fought against the Japanese occupation forces, declared ‘repaying violence with virtue’. Chiang Kai-shek appealed to the nation in a radio broadcast from Chongqing on 15 August 1945, the day of Japan’s unconditional surrender, ‘not to repay violence with violence’. His appeal was heeded. The Chinese people refrained from vindictiveness, allowing over two million Japanese soldiers, paramilitary, and civilian residents to return safely by June 1946. The Japanese, after all, were Asians, just like them. Chiang Kai-shek also blocked the USSR-led machination to abolish the Emperor system. He saved Japan from being divided and occupied by multiple powers after the war, sparing it the fate of Korea or Vietnam.

The contrasting treatment given to Japan by Asian nations and the West reminded the Japanese of their Asian identity. But the continued occupation by the Allied powers and the installation of a puppet regime did not help in pursuing the pan-Asian discourse vigorously. The US, in its turn, sought to re-educate Japan ideologically and to root out its Asianism. It purged offending politicians from public service, controlled the freedom of speech to suppress Japanese nationalism and Asianism, and promoted western liberalism and moderate socialism. Till 1951, Japan was virtually isolated from the rest of Asia. All its relations were filtered through the sieve of the SCAP authorities.

When Japan regained its independence on 28 April 1952, Yoshida Shigeru stood at the helm of the administration. Known for his contempt of Asia and Asians, he still held the Chinese people in great esteem. Obviously, Yoshida could not divest himself of the Asianist baggage he had acquired from his association with Konoe Fumimaro. He maintained the lofty idea of developing Asia, but being a pragmatist, he realized that it could be done through the combination of American money and Japanese technology. He sent the first economic mission to South-East Asia in the summer of 1951 and began to build up a regional framework of economic cooperation.

Regaining independence, Japan swung into action to build up a ‘triad of union’ predicated on economic cooperation between the US, Japan and South-East Asia. In a policy speech, Yoshida expatiated in October 1952 upon the need for ‘mutual understanding with Asian democracies’ and ‘strengthening economic relations with South-East Asia’. Isolated from its neighbour China and Koreas because of the cross-game of the Cold War, Japan may have sought the alternative of cultivating relations with South-East Asia. Withstanding American pressure, Yoshida signed the Japan-China Private Trade Agreement through Ishibashi Tanzan in January 1952. He was trying to forge an independent course when he was forced to step down and Hatoyama took over in December 1954.

The Hatoyama cabinet sent Takasaki Tatsunosuke as its official representative to the Afro-Asian conference held in Bandung in April 1955. The delegates conferred with Chou, and after the conference he and other Asian statesmen adopted a vehemently anti-American posture. In December 1956, Ishibashi Tanzan became Prime Minister. He had been the key architect of Japan-China Private Trade Negotiation and was known for his pre-war view of renouncement of all territorial claims. He had advocated ‘small Nipponism’ before the war and worked as editor-in-chief of Toyo Keizai Shimpo (New Oriental Economic Review). He was widely held as a rare combination of liberalist and Asianist. Ishibashi, soon after assuming office, expressed his keenness to improve relations with China and to expand Japan–China trade, making the US wary of him. Ill health forced Ishibashi to step down within two months and his foreign minister, Kishi Nobusuke, assumed power.

Japan under the Kishi Nobusuke cabinet (1957–60) committed itself to a strong alliance with USA. Nobusuke had been an advocate of Great Asianism during the prewar years. Soon after assuming power, he made a round of visits to Asian countries in May 1957, to consolidate his position in Asia so as to bolster his bargaining position vis-à-vis the USA in June 1957. Same year, he floated the plan for a South-East Asia Development Fund to ‘liberate Asia from poverty’ through US-Japan cooperation. In one way, he was responding to the American dilemma—if Asia remained poor, communism would overcome it and American hegemony would be lost forever. In November 1957, Nobusuke made another round of visits to the Asian and Pacific countries in the hope of building an anti- Communist Asia-Pacific alliance. His visit was also meant to help him achieve his pre-war Greater Asia ambition.

With Japan dependent for its security upon USA, Nobusuke could not have gone far ahead on Tanzan’s line or Yoshida’s latter-day initiatives, inviting the Americans’ wrath. He, therefore, let other political groups take the initiative in bringing Asia closer. The first secretary of Japan Socialist Party, Asanuma Inejiro was allowed to visit China in March 1959 where he declared that ‘American imperialism is the common enemy of the peoples of Japan and China.’ Matsumara Kenzo, leader of the anti-Nobusuke camp within the LDP, visited China soon after and held frank exchanges with Chou En-lai on four occasions. This visit paved the way for the Liao-Takasaki trade agreement in November 1962, which provided for Japanese exports to China on a deferred payment basis. But the official line maintained by Nobusuke was merely subservience to US authorities. A revised US-Japan Security Treaty replaced the Security Treaty of 1951 in January 1960. The treaty becoming unpopular, the projected visit of Eisenhower was cancelled and Nobusuke had to resign in July the same year.

By this time, an upswing in the Japanese economy helped define Ikeda’s economic diplomacy towards Asia. In January 1964, when President Sukarno visited Japan, Ikeda was already finalizing his plan for an Asian version of the European Economic Community. He took initiatives for establishing an Asian Productivity Organization (APO) in 1961 and an Asian Parliamentarians’ Union in 1960. Sato Eisaku, who succeeded Ikeda in November 1964, maintained the pace of Ikeda’s economic diplomacy in Asia. He concluded the Japan– Republic of Korea treaty, initiated by Ikeda, in 1965. On the occasion, the official representative, Shiina Etsusaburo expressed his ‘deep remorse’ for Japanese wartime actions in Korea. But the treaty was opposed by Utsinomiya Tokuma, a prominent LDP member, who advocated friendship with North Korea and visited Pyongyang a number of times, claiming Kim Il-sung was an Asian leader and third world representative rather than a communist.

By then, the USA had begun bombing North Vietnam, with Sato giving full-throated support to the American propaganda of ‘dominolike fall to communism’. He also visited South Vietnam in 1967. But other Japanese leaders argued that it was ‘intervention against national self-determination in Asia’ reflecting ‘American imperialism’. Vietnam’s becoming communist would do nothing to harm the USA, Miyazawa Kiichi said, because the Vietnamese would not dare to try to become a source of worldwide revolution. To assuage Japanese feelings the decision to revert Okinawa in 1972 was finalized at a summit meeting between Nixon and Sato in November 1969.

On the economic front, Sato showed sympathy with Asia. The Asian Development Bank was founded after an inaugural meeting in Tokyo in November 1966. Sato toured Australia, New Zealand and Korea in early 1967, and soon the prototype of an Asian EEC, the ASEAN was established in August 1967. No vision of an Asian EEC could, however, have been fruitful if the colossus of the East, China, was sidelined. Earlier, Premier Sato convened a ministerial conference for the economic development of South-East Asia (MED SEA) in Tokyo in April 1966. This included countries of Indochina, Burma and the five South-East Asian nations. This was the first time since the war that Japan had called together an international conference, without prior notice being given to the USA, and which was not included.

The task of normalizing relations with China fell on the shoulders of Tanaka Kakuei, who succeeded Sato in July 1972. Tanaka visited China in September 1972 and offered to normalize diplomatic relations with it. On the occasion, Chou En-lai said that China would abandon its claims for reparations from Japan as the Japanese people were suffering hardship. Tanaka, on Japan’s behalf, expressed ‘deep remorse for the huge trouble which Japan caused to the Chinese people’. Tanaka had developed the consciousness of ‘Asian village’ type of community.

Propelled by his Asian consciousness, Tanaka established diplomatic relations with North Vietnam in September 1973 and toured five South- East Asian countries in January 1974. Tanaka deployed an independent ‘resource diplomacy’ towards Asia in the wake of the 1973 oil shock, to make Japan less dependent on the major US oil companies. The Japanese government also pursued an independent Middle East policy resisting the pressure brought by Henry Kissinger on the leadership and recognized PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Further, Japan asked Israel to cede the Arab territories occupied in the 1967 war. An interest in Middle Eastern studies was also created and a number of institutes and journals like Chuto Keizai Kenkyusho (Economic Research Institute for the Middle East) and Jime Review came into being during the early 1970s. Soon Tanaka was arrested and imprisoned in the Lockheed affair
in what many believe to have been retaliation by the US for his independent
resource diplomacy.

The premiership of Miki Takeo, Tanaka’s successor, witnessed the defeat of USA in the Vietnam War. The situation was ripe for charting an independent Asia policy. Fukuda, the next premier, visited South- East Asia on 18 August 1977. In Manila, the last stop of his tour, he announced the Fukuda Doctrine of his Asian policy, drawn up with emphasis on the importance of ‘heart-to-heart ties’, based on the following principles:

1. Japan will devote itself to peace and never become a military power.
2. Japan will promote cooperation as an equal partner, upholding the value of ‘heart-to-heart ties’ among members of Asian society and affirming ethnic diversity.
3. Japan will cooperate energetically in voluntary efforts by members of ASEAN to enhance the organization’s solidarity and strength, in the expectation that mutual understanding and coexistence can eventually be achieved in Indochina.

Fukuda signed the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with China in August 1978. Japan’s Asia policy had come of age. In October 1981, Suzuki Zenko, the next prime minister, received the PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat in Tokyo while he was on an ‘unofficial’ visit. Japan also refused to toe the American line during the Iran hostage and Afghan crises at the turn of 1979–80. As Japan gained economic strength and influence during the 1970s and ’80s, other nations of South-East and East Asia began to appreciate its achievements. Malaysia and Singapore turned to Japan as a model for economic and social development in the 1980s, an approach encapsulated in the ‘look East policy’ advocated by Mahathir in 1981. Japan, if it had to be the model of Asia, would have to erase the memories of its past deeds in Asia. This realization led to the beginning of ‘politics of apology’: Emperor Hirohito expressed his deep regret to South Korean President Chun Doohwan in September 1984.

Japan was re-entering Asia through aid, economic cooperation and apology diplomacy. This was accompanied by the process of denigrating the West and celebrating the rise and creativity of its own region. The cultural threat from western Christianity was being highlighted. In his 1976 call for a return to Buddhism, philosopher Takeshi Umehara characterized Christianity as a blood-stained religion and denigrated western civilization. Hideaki Kase complained of a century’s onslaught by Christianity on Japan. Within Japan, the view of ‘Asian liberation’ began to gain prominence: Okuna Seisuke, Director-General of the National Land Agency in the Takeshita cabinet in 1988, declared in 1988,
It was the Caucasian race that colonized Asia. If anybody was the aggressor, it was the Caucasians. It is nonsense to call Japan the aggressor or militaristic. The people of Asia, long colonized by whites, needed to be liberated to give them stable livelihoods.… Eventually we were defeated, but Asian nations all became independent. ( Asahi Shimbun, 26 April 1988).

The Japanese were rediscovering the old vision by the end of the 1980s. No sooner did the Cold War architecture collapse, Japan surged ahead in singing the Asian chorus emanating from the newly industrializing economies of East and South-East Asia. The Asian voice culminated in the Kajiyama vision of 1995, a vision to be ‘a member of Asia, to share both good times and bad times with fellow Asians.’

Japan is now a member of ASEAN+4 and East Asia Summit. Though, Japan is in throes of prolonged recession, Japan helped the growth of Asia by pursuing a Flying Geese Model of economic development. The economic growth has propelled Asia to the status it once held before the Opium Wars. Japan has been using the multilateral platforms like Asian Development Bank to establish common infrastructure as well as institutions for integrated Asia. ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda is the leading force to propel Asian states towards vision of integrated Asia.
ADB Chief, Haruhiko Kuroda

Post-Hiroshima period was marred by Japan’s silencing for Asian voyage. Recent crisis at Fukushima following earthquake and deadly tsunami may reinvigorate the Japanese society to discover hope in the vision of United Asia, a peaceful, prosperous village type community of Asian people.

Anti-Christian Violence in India

2011-02-26T00:13:00.000-08:00

It is reasonable to argue that the ascendancy of the Bharatiya Janata Party [hereafter BJP] to relative supremacy in Indian politics over the course of the last few years bears a direct relationship to the considerable, even dramatic,increase in violence against Christians and other minorities in India. In this short paper, I shall be furnishing a brief chronicle of the recent violence, besides foraying, again briefly, into such questions as the politics of conversion, the inaccuracy of claims regarding the alleged growth of the Christian population in India, and so on.
Christians in Modern India: A Brief Political and Social Survey

The history of Christianity in India goes back to a few decades after the birth of Christ, and there is evidence of Syrian Christians having established themselves in Kerala before 100 AD. India’s contacts with Christianity were renewed with the coming of the Portuguese in 1498: this was wholly inauspicious for the modern beginning of Christianity in India, since the conduct of the Portugese is without exaggeration described as barbaric. The Christian presence became more marked in some respects in the nineteenth century after British rule had been consolidated in India, though here again the pretense was often maintained that British rule had no association with Christianity. The sleight of hand is witnessed, for example, in James Mill’s fatal characterization of Indian history into three periods: Hindu; Muslim; and British.

Some of the anti-Christian sentiments harbored by contemporary Hindu extremists dwell on the time when India was under British colonial rule, and when a substantial number of Christian missionaries openly voiced crude anti-Hindu sentiments. There is also the widespread belief among advocates of a more militant Hinduism that the colonial state encouraged conversions of lower-caste Hindus and otherwise promoted Christianity as a state religion, but on the whole there is little to substantiate this view, though doubtless Christians were looked upon more sympathetically than they had been in India under Muslim or Hindu rulers. It is a remarkable fact that in 200 years when India was under British rule, the Christian population of India never exceeded 3% of the population. Though the sentiments of Hindus were often flagrantly wounded by Christian missionaries, whose insensitivity and arrogance come across in countless number of texts, missionaries today are nonetheless more often remembered for performing social work in both metropolitan centers and more remote parts of the country, and for establishing schools where the bulk of the Indian elites still receive their schooling (see Bhavana Pankaj, "India’s Christians Protest Persecution", Asian Week [7 January 1999]).

The reality faced by Christians in modern India is that they are a small minority and not noticeably present in public life. They are dwarfed by the Hindus (nearly 78% of the population) and Muslims (around 14% of the population). The much smaller Parsi population has had a far more tangible and far-reaching impact on Indian civilization as well as what is called "nation-building". The militant Hindus have spread a canard that the Christian population is increasing rapidly in India, and they have attempted to create the widespread impression that lower-caste Hindus are being forcibly converted in large numbers to Christianity. For instance, on the very day that Pope John Paul II arrived in India in late 1999, an advertisement in the form of an open letter addressed to the Pope was placed in Indian newspapers by the Citizens Committee of the Dharma Raksha Sammelan [Association for Protection of the Hindu Faith] in Chennai [Madras], which stated that "the Christian missionary activity in our nation is tearing apart families and communities in every strata of our society." The letter states that "religious conversion, which seems to be synonymous with papal work, is violence pure and simple." Purporting to speak on behalf of the nation, the letter concluded thus: "We Indians are deeply hurt by the spurt in the aggressive campaigning of the Church to convert the people of India by all available means" (see V. Sridhar, "A Numbers Game", Frontline [Madras], Vol. 16, no. 25 (27 November 1999). In fact, there have been many other similar calls for an end to conversion (for example, M. V. Kamath, "Mission Impossible: Putting an End to Conversion Activity", Times of India 13 October 1999), all implicitly based on one of more of the following assumptions, all patently false: (1) Christian missionary activity is illegal; (2) the Christian population is increasing dramatically; (3) and that conversions take place forcibly, or are otherwise inauthentic because the converts are seduced with offers of money or other forms of patronage.

The evidence to the contrary is ample. The Constitution of India (1950) recognizes the right to freedom of religious worship, and the Constituent Assembly, which drafted the Indian Constitution, recognized further that people have the right to "propagate religion". More importantly, the Census of India, which remains the most authoritative source for population statistics, clearly shows that the Christian community has stagnated and even registered a small decline in recent years. In an article published by Rajendra K. Chaddha in the magazine Organiser (31 October 1999), which is the mouthpiece for the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party that has been governing India since March 1998, it was claimed that the Christian population had grown from 2.53% of the total population of India in 1981 to 2.61% of the total population. However, the Census of India tells a different, and obviously more reliable, story. While the rate of growth of the Christian population was higher than that of the population as a whole between 1921 and 1971, the gap narrowed and was eventually reversed. Thus, between 1981 and 1991, Christians declined from 2.45% to 2.32% of the entire population. Moreover, while the population of India increased by 23.79% between 1981 and 1991, the Christian population grew by only 16.89% in the same period. . The Justice Wadhava Commission of Inquiry appointed by the Government of India came to the same conclusion, and it adds the interesting fact that between 1991 and 1998 the Hindu population increased by 2.5%, while the Christian population increased by .008% (see V. Sridhar’s article in Frontline [above]; Rajeev Dhavan, "Christians in India", The Hindu (5 November 1999); and P. R. Ram, "To Be or Not To Be: The Conversion Debate", available through South Asia Citizens Wire).

In short, the most common rationale offered for violence against Christians in India, namely that the community is growing at an alarming rate through forced conversions, is absurd and has been decisively rejected by the print media and the world of scholarship. Even if the allegations made by Hindu extremists were true, they cannot be offered as an excuse for violence against another religious community. It is also the case, though the scholarly and popular literature on this question leaves much to be deisred, that recent converts to Christianity fare much worse than those Indian Christians who have been members of that faith for one or more generations. Recent converts are seen as traitors to Hinduism, as people who are against the tide of history and fail to recognize that India is -- as the Hindu militants would like to think -- a Hindu nation, and as people who are determined to weaken India in the face of opposition from hostile countries, including Pakistan. There may also be some resentment against the generally improved lifestyle of Christians: rates of literacy among both Christian men and women are higher than among Hindu men and women, and in the various indices that are used internationally to determine social and economic development, such as infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, and death rate, Christians score better.

The Hindutva literature on conversion, finally, has entirely failed to enter into an engagement on the complex philosophical, political, and ethical questions surrounding conversion. Some of the Hindutva advocates, whose contempt for Gandhi is barely disguised, have brazenly furnished Gandhi’s views as justification for their opposition to conversion. Gandhi was not keen on conversion, partly because he held to the view that the convert had an inadquate understanding of his or her own faith; and Gandhi did not think that any one religion was superior to another. But absolutely nothing in Gandhi’s life, teachings, or writings can even remotely be summoned in support of the view that Gnadhi would have opposed a person’s right and desire to convert, and it is unthinkable that he would have countenanced the use of violence to prevent conversion. In this matter as in many others, the militant Hindus have shown themselves extraordinarily adept in abusing and manipulating Gandhi.

Anti-Christian Violence in India, 1997-2000

The media first actively began to report incidents of violence against Christians in 1997. As I have argued earlier, the increase of violence against Christians must be viewed in the context of the rise of Hindu nationalism and the ascendancy of the BJP to political power at the center of the nation. From 1964 to 1996, only 38 incidents of violence against Christians were registered in the country, though doubtless many incidents were not recorded at all; in 1997 alone, 24 incidents were noted by the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, and in 1998, the number had gone up to 90, though some Christian spokespersons have claimed that the true figure is several times higher. Hindu militants, one can safely conclude, see the rise of the BJP and other like-minded parties as an invitation to commit violence against Christians and other minorities with impunity.

Though incidents of violence against Christians have occurred in nearly all parts of India, the violence has been largely confined to north, central, and western India, to the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and the capital area of New Delhi -- not coincidentally, most of these areas have been under BJP rule in recent years. Some of the more gruesome incidents took place in eastern India, in the state of Orissa. Intimidation of Christians has extended to such acts as arson (the fire-bombing of Churches), the distribution of threatening literature, the forcible reconversion of recent converts back to Hinduism, the burning of Bibles; there have also been incidents, though much fewer in number, involving the rape of nuns and the murder of both Christian priests and missionaries. Cases of physical assault have also been recorded from various parts of the country: on 5 November 1999, 26 students -- not all Christians -- of St. Joseph’s Evening College, Bangalore, were attacked by 40 VHP activists for allegedly converting lower-caste Hindus (the Dalits) to Christianity (Walter Fernandes, "Caste as vested interest", The Hindu [4 January 2000]). In Gujarat alone, where the BJP grip over power is very strong, 22 churches were burnt or destroyed, and another 16 damaged, in 1997. In the following year, 1998, according to the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, 5 nuns were raped, 9 killed, and 25 subjected to physical abuse (see Ravi Arvind Palat, "Violence against Christians in India", New Zealand Herald [26 January 1999]; also V. Venkatesan, "A pattern of persecution", Frontline 15, no. 26 [19 December 1998]). In mid-June 2000, four churches in different parts of India were bombed, while in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, church graves were desecrated. In the same month, a church in Maharashtra was ransacked, and an evangelist working for the India Campus Crusade for Christ was found stabbed to death at his home (see Robert Marquand, "In India, a Pattern of Attacks on Christians", Christian Science Monitor ([29 June 2000]).

There have also been at least five widely known cases involving the murder of Christian clergymen, though perhaps as many as 20 priests and pastors may have been killed. Two might be mentioned by way of illustration. The entire country was shocked in January 1999 when an Australian Baptist missionary, Graham Staines, was murdered along with his two sons by being burnt alive inside a locked car. Staines had lived in India for the greater part of his life, and was working among lepers in Orissa, one of India’s most deprived regions (see the Human Rights Report and State Department Report, as cited below). His assailant, a Hindu militant by the name of Dara Singh, went around boasting about his deed, and even gave television interviews, while the police claimed that he could not be found. On 7 June 2000, the Catholic priest, George Kuzhikandam, was murdered in his sleep in a church in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh. The church cook, Vijay Ekka, who slept near the murdered clergyman and first reported the murder, was taken away by the police for interrogation, and himself died in police custody. Though the police claimed he had committed suicide, the autopsy indicated that he had been strangled. It is widely believed that the cook was silenced.

Anti-Christian violence in India has been widely noted, and in April 1999 Human Rights Watch visited the Dangs district in southeastern Gujarat, where over a period of 10 days, from 25 December 1998 to 3 January 1999, there were numerous violent and clearly premeditated attacks on Christians and their institutions. Their 1999 report on the violence perpretrated against Christians furnishes a detailed record of what they saw and heard, and provides the testimony of those victimized (it can be accessed at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/indiachr/christians). A chronological record, as well as the historical background to the present spate of violence, can also be found in the U.S. State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 1999: India (released by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Washington, DC, 9 September 1999). Shortly before dying in a car crash in Poland in the summer of 2000, Archbishop Alan de Lastic of New Delhi addressed a letter to Prime Minister Vajpayee, drawing his attention to the attacks upon Christians in all parts of the country, and stating that the thugs engaged in violent activity and attacks upon Christians "know no action will be taken [against them], and they can get away with any kind of violence" (Seema Mustafa, "Archbishop to PM: Your Silence Kills", The Asian Age (14 May 2000). The Archbishop noted that the Christian community was threatened with its worst crisis since India acquired independence in 1947 (see Pamela Constable, ‘The Burden of the Cross in India", Washington Post [3 July 2000]).

The evidence for violence against Christians in India is consequently incontrovertible. There are numerous compilations of atrocities perpetrated upon Christians, and they suggest an alarming pattern of violence: the intimidation of priests; threats placed against Christian schools; false allegations against Christian priests; the destruction of Christian institutions, such as the Damian Leprosy Hospital complex run by Catholic nuns for 31 years; attacks upon churches; assault upon Christian nuns and pastors, such as in the city of Jhansi on 2 May 2000; the distribution of scurrilous literature; and murder of Christians.

Nathuram Godse, the RSS, and the Murder of Gandhi

2011-02-26T00:11:00.000-08:00

On 30 January 1948, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi, and to his countrymen and women as Bapu, the “Father of the Nation”, was shot dead by Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a Chitpavan Brahmin from Pune. Much ink has been spilled on determining whether Godse was, at that time, a member of the RSS, or indeed of the Hindu Mahasabha, or perhaps of neither organization. Though Godse single-handedly carried out the execution of Gandhi, others were implicated in the assassination plot, and among those against whom the Indian government filed charges was Veer Savarkar. Godse, as investigations after Gandhi’s murder were to reveal, appears to have been close to Savarkar, a prominent leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. Godse was certainly a frequent visitor to Savarkar’s residence, and he did not, in the time that intervened between his arrest on January 30 and his execution upon conviction of the charge of murder nearly two years later, ever disown his association with the Mahasabha.

The general consensus appears to be that Nathuram, who saw himself as a passionate and ardent defender of the Hindu motherland against the depredations of Muslims, was at one point active in the RSS but resigned his membership in the early 1930s. This mere fact, if fact it be, has been pounced upon by the RSS in the five decades following Gandhi’s assassination to argue that Godse had no association with the RSS, and curiously Nathuram’s younger brother, Gopal Godse, who was convicted of partaking in the conspiracy to murder Gandhi and served a fifteen-year jail term and still speaks in the most bitter terms of Gandhi as the betrayer of India, has himself on more than one occasion had to issue a strong rejoinder to the RSS, with whose ideological outlook he is otherwise in complete sympathy, for attempting to disguise his brother’s long-term association with the RSS. Thus, shortly after releasing Nathuram’s book, Why I Assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, in December 1993, Gopal Godse in an interview with Frontline magazine stated: “All the [Godse] brothers were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us. Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah [intellectual worker] in the RSS. He has said in his statement that he left the RSS. He said it because [Madhav Sadashiv] Golwalkar and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.” [See issue of 28 January 1994]

Whether Godse formally remained a member of the RSS is much less important than the fact that though the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS had some ideological differences, both organizations were united in their extreme hostility to Gandhi as well as to Muslims. Golwalkar and Savarkar shared a platform in Pune in 1952, as Sitaram Yechury’s What Is This Hindu Rashtra (Madras: Frontline Publications, 1993) has recently documented, and it is a little-known fact that at one point the RSS, eager to foment the impression that it did not stand by the virulently anti-Muslim sentiments expressed in Golwalkar’s influential book, We or Our Nationhood Defined (1938), claimed that the author of the book was Babarao Savarkar, the brother of Veer Savarkar. Sardar Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister in Nehru’s Cabinet, was himself inclined to view the Mahasabha and the RSS as organizations that had together created an atmosphere in which, as he wrote on 18 July 1848 to the Hindu Mahasabha leader, Shyam Prasad Mookerjee, “such a ghastly tragedy [Gandhi’s assassination] became possible. There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in this conspiracy.” Yet, as Patel added, in terms that leave no room to doubt that from his standpoint the RSS also stood implicated in Gandhi’s assassination, “The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of Government and the State. Our reports show that those activities, despite the ban, have not died down. Indeed, as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing measure.” Two months later, on September 11th, Patel was again unequivocal in his denunciation of the role played by the RSS in Gandhi’s assassination: addressing Golwalkar, Patel spoke about the “poison” spread by the RSS. Following Gandhi’s murder, “Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government or of the people no more remained for the RSS. In fact opposition grew. Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.”

It scarcely matters, then, whether Nathuram Godse retained membership in the RSS when he shot Gandhi dead. Godse was involved in Hindu extremist organizations, including the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, his entire adult life, and the continuing attempts by RSS to evade responsibility for Gandhi’s assassination are characteristic of that extreme pusillanimity and tendency to falsehood which have always been the signal trademarks of an organization that is determined to bring the idea of Hindu Rashtra to fruition.

See also on MANAS website:

Mahatma Gandhi Home Page

“Hey Ram! The Politics of Gandhi’s Last Words”

Veer Savarkar: Ideologue of Hindutva

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At a Glance...
HISTORY &
POLITICS

Veer Savarkar: Ideologue of Hindutvar

Nathuram Godse, the RSS, and the Murder of Gandhi

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ANCIENT INDIA

MUGHAL INDIA

BRITISH INDIA

GANDHI

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

INDEPENDENT INDIA

CURRENT AFFAIRS

Veer Savarkar: Ideologue of Hindutva

Vinay Lal

Vinayak Damodar (“Veer”) Savarkar can, with some justice, be described as the inspirational force behind the resurgence of militant Hinduism in contemporary India. His fame has been on the ascendancy since the Hindu right captured power in India less than a decade ago, and lately he has been lionized in the film “Veer Savarkar” by the filmmaker Sudhir Phadke, a fellow Maharashtrian. In May 2002, L. K. Advani spoke glowingly of Savarkar and Hedgewar, the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS], as men who had “kindled fierce nationalistic spirit that contributed to India’s liberation.” Savarkar’s advocates view him as a luminous visionary, a supreme patriot who sacrificed much for the defense of Mother India, a great revolutionary and even social reformer; his opponents, who generally do not question his patriotism, nevertheless point to his political conservatism, his support of reactionary movements, and his advocacy of a communal-based politics verging on fascism.

Savarkar was born in Bhagur village in Nasik district of present-day Maharashtra on 28 May 1883 into a Chitpavan Brahmin family. His early exposure to the political activities of the Maharashtrian elite who were opposed to British rule may have come at the hands of his elder brother, Ganesh [Babarao], who is said to have been greatly inspired by the actions of Lokmanya Tilak, the Chapekar Brothers, and other revolutionaries. The Savarkar brothers were active in the Mitra Mela, a secret society formed with the aim of liberating, through the use of armed force, India from British rule. Veer Savarkar attended Fergusson College in Pune: his biographer, Dhananjay Keer, notes that Savarkar gathered around him a group of students who debated European political texts, discussed revolution, and championed swadeshi [self-reliance]. In 1906, Savarkar left for London to get credentialed in law; his passage was paid for by Shyam Krishnavarma, an Indian patriot settled in London who used his journal, The Indian Sociologist, to make a case for Indian independence. The journal was advocating violent revolution by 1909; but before then, in 1907, Savarkar had published a Marathi translation of Mazzini’s autobiography which did very well. By early 1909, according to the senior intelligence officer James Campbell Ker, author of Political Trouble in India 1907-1917 [1917, reprinted 1973 by Oriental Publishers, Delhi], Savarkar had taken charge of India House, the London headquarters of those Indians who claimed revolutionary credentials (p. 177). That year, on July 1, Madan Lal Dhingra assassinated Sir William Curzon-Wyllie at the Imperial Institute. This assassination, less than a month after Ganesh Savarkar was convicted on the charge of sedition and sentenced to transportation for life, is said to have been instigated by Savarkar’s orders; yet Savarkar himself never wielded any arms. His critics, quite rightly, describe this cowardice as typical of Savarkar’s conduct; and it is striking, of course, that nearly 40 years later Savarkar was again thought to have encouraged and instigated Nathuram Godse to murder Mahatma Gandhi, without himself having taken up arms. It is more than likely that Savarkar became a master at manipulating those who looked up to him, and sought to conduct his violent activities without explicitly implicating himself in gruesome deeds of murder.

A steady stream of publications emerged from Savarkar’s pen over a course of five decades, and his first substantial work, the Indian War of Independence, appeared in 1908, or fifty years after the rebellion of 1857-58 had been crushed. Though in this work Savarkar argued that Hindus and Muslims had stood together in resistance to the British, in later works he showed himself much less enamored of Hindu-Muslim unity, and for most of his adult life he would, in fact, become known for his advocacy of the rights of Hindus. Hindu Pad-Padashahi [1925], a treatise on Hindu Kingship, or more particularly on the glories of India under Maratha rule, showed as well the impact of political events on Savarkar’s thinking: both the Khilafat movement, as well as the Moplah Rebellion, doubtless played a part in turning Savarkar against Muslims. However, his signature piece, in this respect, was a “treatise” he penned in 1922, “Essentials of Hindutva”, a more elaborate version of which appeared in 1928 as Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (Nagpur, 1928). Savarkar vigorously set forth the idea that Hindus constituted a nation, bound together by common blood, and that Hindus were united “by the tie of a common heritage we pay to our great civilization -- our Hindu culture”. Savarkar eschewed the word “Hinduism”; to him, Hindutva represented the essence of the Hindu way of life. As he wrote, “If there be any word of alien growth it is this word Hinduism and so we should not allow our thoughts to get confused by this new fangled term.” The Hindus’ devotion to their motherland was supreme; indeed, whosoever was devoted to Hindustan, and considered it his or her holy land (punyabhoomi), was a Hindu.

The most elaborate legend, vigorously promoted by Savarkar’s friends and admirers, has developed around his supposed bravery. In 1910, as Savarkar was being taken to India after a warrant had been issued for his arrest on charges of sedition and treason, he escaped as his ship docked at Marseilles. Upon being recaptured, Savarkar challenged the legality of his arrest in France, but the international court at Hague, though it took the view that an illegality had been committed when Savarkar was handed over to the British police, nonetheless ruled against Savarkar. Savarkar was, at his trial in Bombay, sentenced to imprisonment for life, and transported to the Andamans. In 1922, he was sent back to India, but confined to Ratnagiri District until 1937. Yet, to put it mildly, there are serious reasons to doubt whether Savarkar was deserving of the epithet of “Veer” [brave] that was bestowed on him. The indisputable fact remains that throughout his political life, Savarkar showed himself perfectly capable of not merely negotiating with the British, but serving as an active collaborator. When confined to jail in the Andamans, Savarkar negotiated with the British to have himself set free. Moreover, when Congress refused to form a government in the Central Provinces and Bengal, the Hindu Mahasabha under Savarkar’s guidance opted to collaborate with the British. He thought it a God-given opportunity for the Mahasabha to flex its muscles while the Congress was in hibernation. Similarly, though the Congress declared itself opposed to offering the British any assistance during World War II, Savarkar was keen that Hindus should acquire experience in the use of firearms. Savarkar saw in World War II an opportunity for Hindus, who had been emasculated (in Savarkar’s view) by centuries of oppression under Muslim and British rule, and rendered incapable of even elementary knowledge in the discharge of firearms by virtue of legislation that forbid ownership of guns among Indians. to become versed in fighting strategies. Not only did the Hindu Mahasabha, whose presidency Savarkar assumed in 1937 upon the rescission of the order which confined him to Ratnagiri District, not oppose the British position in World War II, but the Mahasabha played no role in the Quit India movement and indeed even assisted the British in its suppression.

In the last analysis, Savarkar appears as an extraordinary embodiment of utter mediocrity. In the large corpus of his writings, there is barely anything to suggest a creative mind at work, and one searches in vain for any original idea. Savarkar imbibed the worst of Western political and social traditions, and his warped ideas about race superiority, the survival of the fittest, and the nation as a “blood entity”, so to speak, were derived from the most objectionable strands of Western thinking. In his avid desire to militarize the Hindus, he showed himself hostage to crude notions of realpolitik. He perfected the art of assassination and political intrigue by remote control, and his true disciple in this respect is Bal Thackeray. It is no surprise that he should appeal to the leadership of the present generation of Hindu extremists, who are similarly bereft of intellectual ideas, moral sentiments, and the barest standards of truth in public life, and whose idea of bravery entails murderous onslaught upon religious minorities. If Savarkar is at all to be remembered, let it not be forgotten that as Nathuram Godse plotted to take Mahatma Gandhi’s life, Savarkar blessed him and wished him success in his God-given task.

Further Reading:

Keer, Dhananjay. Veer Savarkar. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1966.

Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. The Indian War of Independence, 1857. New Delhi: Rajdhani Granthnagar, 1970; 1st ed., 1908.

Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? Nagpur, 1928.

Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform. Bombay: Khare, 1949.

Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History. Trans. and ed. S. T. Godbole. Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1985.

Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. My Transportation for Life. Trans. V. N. Naik. Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1984; 1st ed., 1949.

Gandhi’s Not History

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First published in Hindustan Times (24 August 2006), p. 10. Also published in Satyagraha 100 Years, 1906-2006: In Pursuit of Truth (Durban: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, 2006), pp. 29-33.

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In the immediate aftermath of the ferocious fighting that raged along the border between Lebanon and Israel for close to a month, and as the streets of Baghdad are daily strewn with the remains of bodies of innocent children and civilians, the 100th anniversary of one of the most significant events of recent human history is not likely to be remembered. In 1906, an Indian-born lawyer in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi, not yet the Mahatma, encountered the draft Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance proposed by the Transvaal Government in the August 22nd issue of the government gazette, and at once decided that this legislation would have to be opposed. He saw, Gandhi later wrote, nothing “except hatred of Indians” in the proposed legislation, which, if passed, “would spell absolute ruin for the Indians in South Africa.” The Ordinance required all Indians in the Transvaal region of South Africa, eight years and older, to report to the Registrar of Asiatics and obtain, upon the submission of a complete set of fingerprints, a certificate which would then have to be produced upon demand. The Ordinance proposed stiff penalties, including deportation, for Indians who failed to comply with the terms of the Ordinance.

Fingerprints were then demanded only from criminals, and the subjection of women to such a requirement had no other objective but the humiliation of Indians. Gandhi understood well that the Ordinance effectively criminalized the entire community and must be challenged. He mobilized the Indians, who had first arrived in South Africa as indentured laborers in 1860, to offer resistance. At a meeting held in Johannesburg, 3000 Indians took an oath not to submit to a degrading and discriminatory piece of legislation, and Gandhi spoke at length on the obligation to never repudiate a pledge. Thus was born satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, and over the course of the next four decades, first in South Africa and then in India where Gandhi spent the last three decades of his life, he endeavored to perfect it, offering satyagraha not only to the British but to the world as a form of ethical politics and as a consummate lifestyle. Many in Gandhi’s own lifetime doubted its efficacy, and some claimed that satyagraha could only have succeeded against an allegedly gentlemanly opponent such as the British; many more have since claimed that the unspeakable cruelties of the twentieth century render nonviolent resistance into an effete if noble idea, and that though the world loves romantics there is little use for them in real life.

India’s resounding experiment with democracy, for all its shortcomings and the one major relapse of the mid-1970s, when an internal emergency was imposed and constitutional safeguards suspended, may owe much more to Gandhi than is commonly conceded. However, South Africa, which Gandhi claimed as his second home and which he left for good in 1914, may present a more complex case of the assessment of his legacy. The most pressing charge against Gandhi is that he did little to improve the situation of black Africans and did not draw them into the struggle against racism and the ideology of white supremacy. By what right Gandhi could have claimed to act as a spokesperson for black and colored Africans is a question that the critics have not adequately addressed. The Natal Indian Congress, in the founding of which in 1894 Gandhi had a hand, became the model for the African National Congress (ANC), and it is equally striking that black South African nationalists, from Chief Albert Luthuli to Nelson Mandela, have been forthright in pronouncing Gandhi as having exercised an incalculable influence on their thinking and on the moral tenor of the struggle against apartheid. The word satyagraha is derived from satya (truth) and agraha (firmness), and it is not implausible that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was not only post-apartheid South Africa’s homage to Gandhi but a way of extending satyagraha into the twenty-first century.

If one of the first principles of Gandhian thinking is that a moral politics rests upon consideration of means rather than ends, then we are not even called upon to assess the consequences or efficacy of embracing nonviolent resistance and, more broadly, the entire worldview associated with satyagraha. The advocates of nonviolent resistance who are dismissed as woolly-headed idealists should, on the contrary, be more aggressive in requiring the proponents of violence to demonstrate that violence can produce enduring good. Just how far we have traveled in the last one hundred years is transparent from the ease with which fingerprinting, once demanded only of criminals, has now been normalized in most societies as part of the surveillance regime of the modern nation-state. There was some slight indignation when the Unites States, shortly after 9/11, began to require fingerprints from every adult visitor, but what was once seen as a form of oppression is now viewed as a routine activity. One of the least appreciated aspects of Gandhi’s worldview is his construal of deception, secrecy, and perpetration of falsehoods as forms of violence. The advocate of satyagraha may no more resort to secrecy than to violence, and it is remarkable that, before undertaking his famous salt satyagraha of 1930, Gandhi addressed a letter to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, informing him of his plans to resist an iniquitous piece of legislation and inviting Irwin to arrest him. Gandhi would have seen a long thread that not only ties the secret surveillance of American citizens and residents to American aggression in Iraq and the brutal culture of violence amidst which we are now living, but that knots together terrorists and their antagonists in mutual admiration for nefarious secrecy and violence. At the 100th anniversary of satyagraha, even a modicum of reflection on the debased state of our politics might assist in recuperating a place for nonviolent resistance.

Gandhi -- A Select Bibliographic Guide

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A minimal familiarity with the outlines of Gandhi's life might be acquired by consulting any one of the following biographies: Geoffrey Ashe, Gandhi (New York, 1969); Judith Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (Yale, 1990): Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York, 1950); Dhananjay Keer, Mahatma Gandhi: Political Saint and Unarmed Prophet (Bombay, 1973); B. R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography (1st ed., 1958; expanded edition, New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1981); and Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (Dutton, 1969). This list does not indicate my endorsement of any particular biography, and you can pick up some other biography of your choice. There are very short biographies of Gandhi as well, some of considerable merit, such as George Woodcock’s little study, Mohandas Gandhi, for the Modern Masters series (New York: Viking Press, 1971), Catherine Clement’s Gandhi: Father of a Nation (London: Thames & Hudson, 1996); Bhikhu Parekh’s Gandhi (Oxford University Press, 1997); and Krishna Kripalani’s Gandhi: A Life (1968; reprint ed., New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1982) In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of Indian independence, a number of new studies of Gandhi’s life were released, but the more recent biographies of Gandhi are not demonstrably better than previous ones. For a more comprehensive account, see the 8-volume biography by D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (New Delhi, 1951), which has the advantage of reproducing many of Gandhi's speeches and writings, often in their entirety, and the 4 volumes of Pyarelal's biography, The Early Phase and The Last Phase (Ahmedabad, various years). But Tendulkar has few insights into Gandhi’s life and thinking and is predominantly a chronicler.

Reference Material and Scholarly Studies: A Brief Note

Constant use should be made of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 100 volumes (Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Publications Division, 1951-1995; this includes the supplementary volumes). Quite handy iis Index of Subjects to the Collected Works (1988). The three-volume anthology edited by Raghavan Iyer, The Moral and

Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (New York and Delhi: Oxford UP, 1989) is not only more manageable but is superbly edited, and except for specialists seeking to write on Gandhi at length, will suffice as a representative and thoughtful selection of Gandhi’s voluminous writings. There are, besides, literally hundreds of anthologies of Gandhi’s writings, and in his own lifetime Navajivan Press as well as other publishers brought out collections of Gandhi’s writings on particular subjects, such as nature cure, Hindu-Muslim relations, village reconstruction, non-violence, and so on. For a small sample, see the following booklets (and in some cases small books) of Gandhi’s thoughts on particular subjects released by Navajivan: The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism (1959); Woman’s Role in Society (1959); Trusteeship (1960); Medium of Instruction (1954); Bapu and Children (1962); Bread Labour [The Gospel of Work] (1960); and The Message of the Gita (1959). Among the more creative anthologies, the following readily come to mind: Pushpa Joshi, ed., Gandhi on Women (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1998, in association with Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi; cf. the selections found in Gandhi to the Women, ed. Anand Hingorani [Delhi, 1941]); Nehru on Gandhi (New York: John Day Company, 1942); Gandhi on Non-Violence, ed with introduction by Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions paperback, 1964 -- this is a thoughtful albeit much too brief introduction to the subject); What is Hinduism? (New Delhi: National Book Trust for Indian Council for Historical Research, 1994). An extremely useful survey on the anthologizing of Gandhi is to be found in Stephen Hay, “Anthologies Compiled from the Writings, Speeches, Letters, and Recorded Conversations of M. K. Gandhi”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 110, no. 4 (October-December 1990), pp. 667-76.

There are numerous bibliographies on Gandhi, but all are severely dated. Among thousands of scholarly monographs on Gandhi, the following may be consulted with some profit and pleasure -- some are available in newer editions or reprints, even if not mentioned below:

Alter, Joseph S. Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Ambedkar, B. R. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. 1945, reprint ed., Lahore, 1977. For a contemporary rejoinder, see K. Santhanam's Ambedkar's Attack (New Delhi: Hindustan Times, 1946).

Bondurant, Joan. Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict. Rev. ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.

Borman, William. Gandhi and Non-Violence. New York: State University of New York Press, 1986.

Chatterjee, Margaret. Gandhi’s Religious Thought. University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.

Dalton, Dennis. Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Dhavan, Gopinath. The Political Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. Bombay, 1946; reprint, Delhi, 1990. Extremely good for the ‘grammar’ of satyagraha.

Erikson, Erik H. Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969. Psychoanalytic interpretation.

Fox, Richard. Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.

Green, Martin. The Challenge of the Mahatmas. New York: Basic Books, 1978.

Green, Martin. The Origins of Nonviolence: Tolstoy and Gandhi in their Historical Settings. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986.

Green, Martin. Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolution. New York: Continuum, 1993.

Hunt, James D. Gandhi in London. New Delhi: Promilla & Co., 1978.

Hutchins, Francis G. India’s Revolution: Gandhi and the Quit India Movement. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1973.

Iyer, Raghavan. The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973. Perhaps the single best study of a conventional sort of Gandhian thought.

Jordens, J. T. F. Gandhi’s Religion: A Homespun Shawl. New York: St. Martin’s Press; London: Macmillan, 1998.

Juergensmeyer, Mark. Fighting with Gandhi. New York, 1984.

Kapur, Sudarshan. Raising Up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter with Gandhi. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

Khanna, Suman. Gandhi and the Good Life. New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1985.

Kishwar, Madhu. Gandhi and Women. Delhi: Manushi Prakashan, 1986. [First published in two successive issues of the Economic and Political Weekly 20, nos. 40-41 (1985).]

Nanda, B. R. Gandhi and His Critics. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1985.

Parekh, Bhikhu. Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse. New Delhi: Sage, 1989.

Parekh, Bhikhu. Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination. London: Macmillan, 1989; reprint ed., Columbus, Missouri: South Asia Books, 1996.

Patel, Jehangir P. and Marjorie Sykes, Gandhi: The Gift of the Fight. Rasulia, Madhya Pradesh: Friends Rural Centre, 1987. Anecdotal rather than scholarly but very insightful.

Pinto, Vivek. Gandhi’s Vision and Values: The Moral Quest for Change in Indian Agriculture. New Delhi: Sage, 1998.

Pouchepadass, Jacques. Champaran and Gandhi: Planters, Peasants and Gandhian Politics. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999. [Compare: Rajendra Prasad, Satyagraha in Champaran (2nd ed., Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1949) and D. G. Tendulkar, Gandhi in Champaran (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1957).]

Prasad, Nageshwar, ed. Hind Swaraj: A Fresh Look. Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1985.

Rao, K. L. Seshagiri. Mahatma Gandhi and Comparative Religion. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978.

Swan, Maureen. Gandhi: The South African Experience. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985. Critical of Gandhi but not wholly persuasive.

Terchek, Ronald J. Gandhi: Struggling for Autonomy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. A study with a more expansive conception of Gandhian politics than ordinarily encountered in the literature.

Gandhi & the Nobel Peace Prize

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Mohandas Gandhi, the Mahatma, “the Great Soul”, was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This has been a perennial source of unhappiness for those Indians inclined to view Gandhi as by far the most deserving candidate of the twentieth century, and the hand of Britain, and the imperial West more generally, is seen as having been instrumental in depriving Gandhi of this “great honor”. Many Nobel Laureates in Peace are themselves agreed that Gandhi should have been honored before they were honored. The Dalai Lama, in his acceptance speech in Oslo on 10 December 1989, described himself as accepting the award “as a tribute to the man who founded the modern tradition of non-violent action for change, Mahatma Gandhi, whose life taught and inspired me.” [See http://www.tibet.com/DL/nobelaccept.html] Many others besides Indians have pondered over Gandhi’s omission from the list of winners, and as Gwladys Fouché and Sally Bolton wrote in the Guardian not long ago, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has been “criticised for failing to honour Mahatma Gandhi” (“The Nobel Prize”, 11 October 2002). (The Peace Prize alone is conferred by a committee of the Norwegian Parliament; the other awards are handed out by a Swedish committee.) Some Indians imagine that racist sentiments prevented Gandhi from receiving this signal honor, and they are doubtless right -- to a degree. The feeling persists that this omission mars the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. When, in 2001, V S Naipaul received the Nobel Prize in literature, and Kofi Annan and the UN were conferred the peace prize, even a critic of the entire institution of the Nobel prizes such as the journalist Amit Gupta, who was correct to criticize both Naipaul and Annan, could not cease to mention the omission of Gandhi as one of the reasons why the Nobel Prizes stand discredited. [See Amit Sengupta, “Grateful Alive”, Hindustan Times (16 October 2001).]

When all is said and done, most middle-class Indians, the Indians who are keen on such forms of adulation from the West and believe that score-keeping in these arenas is a worthy way of measuring the progress made by nations and individuals alike, would be delighted to see Gandhi being awarded the peace prize posthumously. That would chalk up the number of Indians who have been conferred the Nobel Prize in any area. However, as I shall suggest, we should be relieved that Gandhi was not given the Nobel Peace Prize. Considering that its recipients have included naked imperialists such as Theodore Roosevelt, a self-avowed terrorist such as Menachem Begin, and Henry Kissinger, the architect of the secret bombing of Cambodia, a war-monger and war criminal for whose arrest a warrant should be put out if there was any respect for the tens of thousands of the victims of Kissinger’s policies in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, and elsewhere, it would be doing Gandhi a discredit to place him in that company. There are, as we shall see, other compelling reasons why Gandhi is much nobler without a Nobel.

A little history on Gandhi and the Nobel Peace Prize is in order. Gandhi was nominated for the award five times -- in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947, and 1948. Under the rules governing the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, there was nothing to preclude the posthumous conferral of the award, though the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s own deliberations appear to have muddled the issue. On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse; that year, six nominations were received on Gandhi’s behalf. On November 18th, the committee, in a public pronouncement, declared that it had found “no suitable living candidate” for the award, thereby implying that that it was not empowered to confer posthumous awards. To be sure, there were practical questions as to who -- one or more of his sons, and their families; or Navajivan Publishing House, which was charged with publishing Gandhi’s writings; or any of the numerous institutions which received Gandhi’s blessings -- would inherit the award if it were given to Gandhi, who was on the shortlist in 1948; but this cannot have been a principal consideration in denying Gandhi the award. If, as is true, a posthumous award had never been conferred previously, here was certainly more than good cause to create a new precedent. There hadn’t been anyone quite of the stature of Gandhi before the committee’s considerations either, so in every respect the committee was called upon to be thoughtful and creative. That was, evidently, asking too much of the committee.

The first nomination of Gandhi for the Nobel Peace Prize took place in 1937. The nomination originated from among Europeans, a testament not merely to the fact that Gandhi had countless number of admirers outside India, but also to his belief that allies would never be found wanting in India’s endeavor to gain independence. Notwithstanding his critique of the modern West, Gandhi always recognized the “other” West, the marginalized, dissenting West within the West. Though Gandhi made it to the shortlist, the Committee’s advisor, a professor (now obscure) by the name of Jacob Worm-Muller, wrote of Gandhi that he is “frequently a Christ, but then, suddenly, an ordinary politician.” Gandhi’s critics, among them British officials, held him responsible for the bouts of violence into which the nonviolent movement was thought to degenerate from time to time. A feeling persisted among some of his critics that Gandhi was preeminently an Indian nationalist, and that Gandhi himself was inclined to put the welfare of Indians before the good of humankind as a whole. As Worm-Muller observed, in obvious criticism of Gandhi, “One might say that it is significant that his well-known struggle in South Africa was on behalf of the Indians only, and not of the blacks whose living conditions were even worse.” Ten years later, it was still held against him that he was a “patriot” before being an advocate of peace. In 1947, in any case, the conferral of the award upon Gandhi would have been nearly inconceivable. Mountbatten knew enough of what was transpiring in India to understand that Gandhi was the single largest force for peace in strife-ridden Calcutta, and like many others he waxed eloquent about the miracle of Calcutta. As he wrote in appreciation to Gandhi, “In the Punjab we have 55,000 soldiers and large scale rioting is on our hands. In Bengal our forces consist of one man, and there is no rioting.” But many outside India, aware of the widespread killings that were taking place as India got partitioned and the new state of Pakistan came into being, might have been wondering whether India had been led astray under Gandhi’s leadership. Within India, of course, Gandhi had more than his share of detractors, and some of his opponents, not only among the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, even held him responsible for the partition and its bloodshed.

And so it is that Gandhi was never conferred the Nobel Peace Prize. But why should this be a matter of misgiving and regret, and why should we strive for such accolades? Anyone familiar with Gandhi’s life would at once recognize that Gandhi scarcely cared a jot for such forms of recognition, and it is in the fitness of thinking that Gandhi, who left this world with very little on him, and almost made a virtue of nakedness, should have been unadorned by any titles, awards, formal designations, and the like. The Nobel Prize would have made Gandhi small: as the historian Jens Arup Seip, acting as the committee’s advisor in 1947 and 1948, divined Gandhi had left such an immense ethical mark on the world that he could “only be compared to the founders of religions.” Moreover, even a cursory familiarity with Gandhi’s writings suggest that he understood that colonization of the mind is in many respects more far-reaching than economic colonialism and political domination, and one insidious and pervasive form of such colonization is the fact that Indians, as well as other people in the “developing” world, continue to look to the West to validate their lives and make them meaningful. Our obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize that was never conferred on Gandhi is not so much inspired by indignation that he was overlooked as by the feeling that we think of our lives as incomplete until we have been given proper recognition by the West. Above all, it behooves us to recall that Gandhi was deeply immersed in the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, and the Gita offers no more supreme teaching than the injunction that just duties must be pursued with detachment, without any expectation of compensation or rewards. It does Gandhi enormous discredit to continue to be agitated by an omission of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for which we should be grateful.

More Than a Man of Action

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Dalton, Dennis. Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. 279 pp. $29.50, cloth.

[Originally published in Gandhi Marg 16, no. 4 (Jan.-Feb. 1995):491-96.]

As India prepares to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, fatally christened the 'Mahatma', the ideas of the 'Father of the Nation' appear entirely to be in abeyance. A Sunderlal Bahuguna or a Medha Patkar may continue to derive inspiration from Gandhi's teachings and his practice of satyagraha, but for the most part the laying of floral wreaths at Gandhi's samadhi in Rajghat (and elsewhere), and the mantric and mindless invocation of his name on select occasions, appears to be the extent to which Gandhi is a presence in the minds of India's leaders and modernizing elites. With characteristic insight and premonition, and not without a touch of sadness, Gandhi was the first to pronounce upon his irrelevance in the India that was coming into shape before his eyes, and in October 1946 he went so far as to say, "I know that mine is today a voice in the wilderness" (CWMG 75:366). Intent upon doing blasphemous homage to the Mahatma, India's rulers have bid multinationals, some of them with incomes larger than the Gross Domestic Product of even some industrialized countries, to make this country once again a fair playground for profiteering and naked aggrandizement. Coca-Cola, once summarily ejected from the country's otherwise sacrosanct borders for its anti-national activities in the 1970s, accepted with alacrity an invitation to make its presence felt anew in thirsty India. When queried, India's rulers are bound to say that the Mahatma was a known advocate of prohibition, a sworn enemy of liquor, and would not have begrudged people a cool and refreshing drink, though if we may be permitted a hermeneutics of reading, it is just as certain that today Gandhi would have been more opposed to Coca-Cola and Pepsi than to alcohol.

Whatever the future of Gandhi's ideas, the scholarship on Gandhi has shown no like signs of diminishing. Dozens of books on Gandhi continue to appear every year, and hundreds if not thousands of mediocre university professors in India (and some abroad) continue to make their living as 'Gandhi specialists', peddling the teachers of a man they barely understand. The fundamental words in Gandhi's vocabulary, such as swaraj, satya, ahimsa, sarvodaya, swadeshi, satyagraha, and tapasya, have been analyzed in minute detail, and the conditions under which satyagraha can be applied if not imitated have been examined in innumerable works. Gopinath Dhavan, in a relatively early work entitled The Political Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi (1951), set out boldly the grammar of satyagraha, and over the years a number of fairly authoritative studies, such as those by Raghavan Iyer, Joan Bondurant, and Gene Sharpe, have explored the moral and political contours of Gandhi's thought. The relationship of ends to means; the Gandhian distinction between satyagraha on the one hand, and duragraha and passive resistance on the other; Gandhi's formulations of satya and ahimsa, and their complex relation to each other -- questions like these have been the staple of scores of studies, and it is exceedingly doubtful that any fresh insights are to be gained in pursuance of these questions.

Regrettably the recent study by Dennis Dalton, who teaches political science at Barnard College, the sister institution of Columbia University, is unable to emancipate itself from the tedious burden of Gandhian scholarship. The book comes highly recommended by certain pillars of the American Indological establishment, but one has become accustomed to witnessing American scholars of Indian history and politics, members of a minuscule club, congratulating each other with avid fervor. Here and there Dalton does bring to light some hitherto ignored details of Gandhi's life, or otherwise provide a fresh interpretation of some Gandhian 'text', and the entire study suggests an extensive familiarity with the large corpus of Gandhi's writings. A case in point is Dalton's comments on Gandhi's prayer-meetings. Although others have commented on the syncretistic nature of these prayer-meetings, where texts representing a variety of religious sentiments were read, Gandhi's mode of dealing with dissenters, and his endeavors to draw them into the circle of reason and faith, have been overlooked. As Dalton notes, verses from the Koran and the Bible would be read alongside Hindu texts, unless there was some objection from a member of the audience; in that event, Gandhi would omit the prayers, and instead take as his text for the post-prayer message the subject of intolerance itself. This had the effect of inducing the audience to insist upon having the prayers read after all (p. 163). Dalton writes, then, with evident sympathy for his subject, and insofar as he remains confined to elaborating the nature of satyagraha, the relationship of swaraj to swadeshi, or any of those questions that have engaged two generations of scholars working on Gandhi, he writes with clarity and considerable discernment.

The difficulties with Dalton's book lie elsewhere, and are to be encountered from the outset, from the supposition, as the title of the book conveys, that preeminently Gandhi represents, or is about, "nonviolent power in action". The license to think so appears to have come from Gandhi himself: "I am not built for academic writings. Action is my domain" (p. 1). Undoubtedly Gandhi was not a systematic philosopher, but that is a common enough observation; just as significantly, and perhaps more pointedly, he rarely told stories, a matter that has escaped the attention of scholars. Satyagraha is the name that Gandhi after much soul-searching gave to his movement and to the observance of non-violence in political life; and as it is his practice of non-violent resistance that seemingly provided the inspiration to Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Philip and Daniel Berrigan, Daniel Dolci, and others who have valiantly struggled for political reform and social justice, it has perforce become easy to think of Gandhi as belonging within the realm of action. It is Gandhi's translation of ideas into action that, to follow Dalton's own mode of reasoning, made him into a more revolutionary, lasting, and 'relevant' figure than Malcolm X, whose promises remained largely unfulfilled.

While recognizing that Gandhi authored the theory of satyagraha, and then launched a movement, even a mass movement, that he hoped to ground in the principles of satyagraha, Dalton allows the distinction between 'ideas' and 'action' to obtrude upon his understanding of Gandhi, and as a consequence the most enduring aspects of Gandhi's thought escape him. It is in his little tract of 1909, Hind Swaraj, that Gandhi first set out his critique of modern civilization and its pathologies, and to the end he remained dedicated to the ideas he had propounded in Hind Swaraj. In 1938, for example, Gandhi said of his little tract that "after the stormy thirty years through which I have since passed I have seen nothing to make me alter the view expounded in it" (p. 18). Dalton admits all this, but is nonetheless keen on paring away its excesses: "It is a brief polemical tract", he says of Hind Swaraj, "more than a logical development of a serious and measured argument: written hastily . . . it suffers from occasional disjointedness and egregious overstatement.." Since the brunt of Dalton's argument in his study of Gandhi is to suggest that Gandhi's achievement lay in embracing an 'inclusivist' vision, a philosophy devoid of a distinction between the 'Self and the 'Other' (see, for example, p. 6, 90, 162), he finds himself rejecting Hind Swaraj as a manifesto, at least partially, of the "exclusivist' variety, a work marked and bedeviled by a polarization of "us" and "them", Western materialism against Indian spirituality, and so forth.

Had Dalton inquired into Gandhi's conception of the 'Other', his argument might well have been tenable and persuasive. If Gandhi chose not to reject Hind Swaraj even in his declining years, when infirmity and the illnesses of old age would have been expected to make him less prone to a "sweeping denunciation of doctors and hospitals" that Dalton so deplores, even characterizing Gandhi's arguments as "lapses into pure fantasy", it is precisely because his manifesto heralded a critique of modernity. The 'Other', unlike what Dalton imagines, is scarcely the Englishman, or even Western civilization; and if it is the West, it is that predominant part of the West which had allied itself with the ambitions and project of modernity. As Ashis Nandy has so brilliantly argued in a number of works, with which Dalton appears to have no familiarity, and which have made Gandhi once more a figure to be reckoned with among many Indian intellectuals for whom the Mahatma was all but dead, Gandhi was engaged in a critique of modernity, and in offering that critique he wished to ally himself with the repressed, feminine side of the West, and with those elements in Western civilization which colonialism and conquest had rendered recessive. The very form in which Hind Swaraj is cast, as a dialogue between the "Reader" and the "Editor", is meant to reflect its dialogic and dialectic enterprise. Offering an essentially realist reading of Hind Swaraj, in which the tract is rendered as a "high-water mark of his [Gandhi's] exclusivist ideology", Dalton cannot account either for the special place that Hind Swaraj would continue to occupy in Gandhi's mind, or for its status as a foundational work of anti-Enlightenment ideology, or for its principled critique of historicism and instrumental rationality. If it is at all true, as Dalton maintains, that Gandhi in Hind Swaraj is guilty of "the depiction of social and political realities in antagonistic terms of unbridgeable dichotomies" (p. 20), he should have asked what the "us" and "them" signify. How could "them" have been Britons, or Western civilization, when Gandhi was certain that the mere substitution of Indians for the British without a fundamental alteration in the modes of governance was scarcely to be preferred to English rule? Gandhi was not without his sense of the 'Other', and while he had too much respect for persons and civilizations to render them into the 'Other', he was wholly prepared to render history and realpolitik into the 'Other'.

Similar confusions prevail in Dalton's discussion of Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable. The wretched life of Bakha, the hero of the novel who is condemned to removing garbage and human faeces for his likelihood, is certainly an apt and moving illustration of the manner in which an entire class of people in India have been systematically deprived of their rights and rendered into outcastes. The Christian missionary whom Bakha encounters speaks to him of the universal brotherhood of man and strikes a chord within him; and Gandhi, whose darshan Bakha seeks just as eagerly as any other villager, awakens him to a consciousness of his worth as a human being, and the inherent dignity of all human labor. Bakha is brought to the awareness that the brahman is no superior to the shudra, and that it is only by the contrivance of the upper castes that the shudras and untouchables have been systematically oppressed. But though Bakha may be consoled by Gandhi's attempts to make Indian society more inclusive, and though the nobility of the Mahatma's teachings on the equal worth of all human labor may leave its impress upon his mind, he is scarcely released from the necessity of having to undertake the removal of others' night soil. Thus, when by chance he happens to hear of the flush toilet, which holds out the promise of rendering obsolete the task of the scavenger, at long last hope swells within him. This is the irony of Anand's humanist reading of Gandhi: noble as are the teachings of the Mahatma, the immediacy and efficiency of the technological solution might well be more appealing. Dalton, however, appears to miss this irony; thus, according to him, "Anand saw in Gandhi's action a striking truth: that the practice of untouchability had divided Indian society with a persuasive sense of exclusiveness and against this Gandhi's inclusive spirit had spread unity and uplifted members of the harijan community" (p. 57). In this naive reading, the tension between the moral and the technological, which is assuredly one of the central problems in our engagement with modernity, disappears and Bakha is almost rendered into a convert to Gandhi's cause. There was, as Anand suggested through the figure of Bakha, almost an element of the archaic in Gandhi, but Dalton fails to interrogate this reading, instead satisfying himself here (and elsewhere) with some exceedingly long quotations. This is disappointing, for what is indeed most problematic about the Dalit movement today is its largely uncritical support of modernization and the regime of development, which owes a great deal, not unjustifiably, to the deep distrust with which Ambedkar viewed the structures of village India.

If Dalton's reading of Anand's Untouchable is unsatisfactory, he altogether ignores Ambedkar, which is all the more surprising in view of the fact that a chapter is given over to critiques of Gandhi emanating from Tagore and M. N. Roy. From almost no one else (apart from some Marxists) did Gandhi face such overt hostility as he did from Ambedkar, and Gandhi's endeavors to improve the conditions of untouchables, and draw them into the fold of Hindu society, continue to be matters of acute controversy, as some recent disparaging remarks by Mayavati and members of the Bahujan Samajvad Party suggest. Gandhi's complex relationship with Ambedkar is one that Dalton should not have overlooked, for it is only through a nuanced reading, such as that offered by D. R. Nagaraj in a recent study, that we can begin to appreciate how far, over a period of ten years and more, Gandhi and Ambedkar "had internalized each other.". If Ambedkar was brought around to the realization that Gandhi's dialectical method for the reform of Hinduism was not without merit, Gandhi came to appreciate Ambedkar's insistence on the material reform of social institutions. But this is not Dalton's insight: he sees, quite predictably, only enmity and contempt for Gandhi on Ambedkar's part (p. 64).

Dalton furnishes a similarly conventional reading of the complex relationship between Tagore and Gandhi. A great deal has been written on this, though a remark that Ashis Nandy attributes to the anthropologist Surajit Sinha is more suggestive than anything that Dalton or most other writers have to say on the subject: While "Tagore wanted to turn all Indians into Brahmans, Gandhi sought to turn them into Shudras." Tagore spoke from a lofty pedestal, while Gandhi worked in the slum of politics, but both shared a profound respect for Indian civilization. The brunt of Dalton's argument is that though Gandhi offered a critique of the Western nation-state system, he remained a staunch supporter of nationalism, and it is in this respect that Tagore and he had to part ways (pp. 67-78). "Nationalism is a great menace", wrote Tagore, adding for good measure: "It is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India's troubles." Dalton concedes that Gandhi, like Tagore, recognized that India's problems were preeminently social rather than political, but in his view Gandhi remained an unremitting nationalist. As Gandhi himself was to write, "Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive. It is health-giving, religious and therefore humanitarian." In Dalton's view, Gandhi not merely endorsed nationalism, he also "dismissed all attacks" on it (p. 75).

Without even explaining what Gandhi might have construed by nationalism, Dalton is unable to sustain his argument. His understanding of Tagore is less problematic, though a close reading of not only Tagore's political essays but also his novels on the subject of nationalism -- Gora, Ghare-Baire [The Home and the World], Char Adhyay [Four Chapters] -- suggests that Tagore, while critical of the cult of nationalism and the unthinking sacrifices it demanded of the youth of India, was quite sympathetic to nationalism insofar as it was congruent with both 'internationalism' and the ethos of Indian civilization. Failing to make a distinction between nationalism and patriotism, between nationalism of the western variety and a nationalism that sought to predicate itself on all that colonialism sought to suppress, Dalton is unable to get a grip on Gandhi, and thus it escapes him that for Gandhi "nationalism began to include a critique of nationalism." The "fear of nationalism" was common to both Tagore and Gandhi, and as Ashis Nandy has put it in his inimitable way, "They did not want their society to be caught in a situation where the idea of the Indian nation would supersede that of the Indian civilization, and where the actual ways of life of Indians would be assessed solely in terms of the needs of an imaginary nation-state called India."

While Dalton's book makes for easy reading, and is in some respects a good introduction to Gandhi's thought, besides being sympathetic to its subject, it does not offer a very imaginative reading of the Mahatma's life. In the chapter on Gandhi's march to the sea at Dandi, where he made salt in defiance of the laws of the land, Dalton is able to bring out the ambiguity in the official British response to him. As Dalton argues, it is the strength of satyagraha that it can evoke such ambiguity and draw the 'Other' into the circle of inclusivity, but this argument is scarcely novel. Indeed, as students of Gandhi's life are only too well aware, Gandhi was able to work on the feelings of General Smuts in South Africa in much the same way as he was able to bring the British to the negotiating table many years later in India. What Dalton might have paused to reflect on is that Gandhi chose to initiate his revolt by way of walking to the sea. For Gandhi, walking stood as a metaphor for an entire way of life, a mode of being in which one stayed within limits. As Gandhi had written in Hind Swaraj, one should only travel as far as one's hands and feet can carry one, and if modernity was construed by him as a plague, it was precisely because modernity had the fatal arrogance to transcend limits.

In the concluding part of his book, Dalton draws on some comparisons between Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and even Plato. On the subject of Plato, it appears to me that the comparison is too far-fetched to merit comment, and even faintly ludicrous. Dalton's rationale for viewing Gandhi from the Platonic 'angle' is that both were idealists and exponents of 'freedom', but so were a hundred other principal figures over the last two millennia, and any characterization of Plato as a philosopher of freedom is only possible if one altogether ignores the fundamentally totalitarian basis of his thought. In certain respects both were utopian thinkers, but what does Plato's ideal Republic share with Gandhi's Ramrajya? There has never really been a tradition of utopian thinking in India until recently, not if by utopia we mean technocracy and a blue-print for social engineering. As for the American associations with Gandhi, the 'influence' of Thoreau on Gandhi, and of Gandhi on King, is now a commonplace of works on nonviolent theory and action. Undoubtedly Martin Luther King did draw on the teachings of Gandhi, and nonviolence was the mainstay of the civil rights movement in the United States. But this is as far as the comparison can be carried, for almost nowhere in King is there a critique of modernity, or of the nation-state. Of course King was aware of the abuses of which a nation-state was capable, and it was his genius that made him link America's involvement in the unholy war in Vietnam to the repression unleashed upon African-Americans in the United States, but he was prepared to accept the modern world-system. Gandhi's views on masculinity and femininity, his eating habits, his recourse to spinning and abandonment of western dress, his advocacy of swadeshi: all this has as much to do with non-violence as his practices in the domain of political action. The same cannot be said for King, whose understanding of non-violence was less far-reaching, and who could not offer the kind of critique of the modern world-system that was so central a plank of Gandhi's thought. King might, in fact, be more accurately characterized as that singular 'man of action' that Gandhi appears to be in Dalton's interpretation.

Gambling on Gandhi
Vinay Lal
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
[Published as “Experiments with Truth: Gambling with Gandhi”, Times of India (2 October 2006). Also published as “Gambling on Gandhi”, Daily Star (Dhaka), 8 October 2006), and under the same title in Asia Media on 10 October 2006

It is that time of the year when, in a ritual invocation, many people find it necessary to proclaim that Mohandas Gandhi, in India also the ‘Father of the Nation’, is still ‘relevant’. There are those who, witnessing the continuing violence in Iran, Afghanistan, and Sudan, or the recently ‘concluded’ blitzkrieg launched by Israel on Lebanon, or indeed the myriad other instances of acts of violence, terror, and aggression that comprise the daily news bulletins, aver that Gandhi has never been more necessary. Since the human addiction to violence scarcely seems to have diminished, the Gandhians view the Mahatma’s staying power as a self-evident truth; however, another class of his admirers read the same evidence rather differently, as an unfortunate sign of the fact that Gandhi’s teachings have been repudiated if not rubbished. The small voice of nonviolence, many agree, is seldom heard in the din of violence.

In 1907, the Italian philosopher, Benedetto Croce, published a book entitled What Is Living and What Is Dead in Hegel Today? Croce knew better than to ask if Hegel was ‘relevant’, which is, to put it bluntly, a word strictly for the unintelligent, certainly for those who are apolitical. Nevertheless, if the more familiar variation of this question inescapably presents itself to anyone confronting the figure of Gandhi, we must surely ask what kind of Gandhi, and whose Gandhi, we seek to invoke when we wish to stress his relevance. One of the most enduring aspects of Gandhi’s life, one only infrequently understood by most of his disciples and admirers, is that he seldom allowed himself the comfort of platitudes, just he was quite mindless of established conventions, the protocols of social science discourse, and the known parameters of dissent. Around the same time that Croce had finished writing his book on Hegel, the young Gandhi, providentially ensconced in South Africa, was embarked on a novel political and moral experiment. Quite oblivious to history, he declared, in his seminal tract, Hind Swaraj, that ‘Nonviolence is as old as the hills’. At the same time, he was the first to recognize that where others had embraced nonviolence strictly from expediency, ahimsa was for him an inextricable part of his being. He was always the first to recognize that he was his own master and disciple and was unlikely to carry anyone alongside him.

Even many who openly admire Gandhi doubt the efficaciousness of satyagraha. In his own lifetime, many claimed that it could only have succeeded against an allegedly mild-mannered opponent such as the British. If Gandhi could not forestall his own violent death, if indeed his teachings appeared to have left little impression upon his own countrymen, should we at all expect the primacy of nonviolence to be recognized by actors in the modern nation-state system which was born of violence and, as contemporary politics more than adequately demonstrates, feeds on it at every turn? In his defense, Gandhi argued that nonviolence is not merely a weapon to be adopted or abandoned at random will, and that practitioners of nonviolence are ethically bound to understand that shortcomings in the application of nonviolence do not reflect upon any limitations inherent to nonviolence itself. Moreover, though it is commonplace to view Gandhi’s adherence to nonviolence as a measure of his alleged romanticism and failure to recognize the inescapably coercive nature of modern politics, it is telling that Gandhi did not construe himself as an uncritical proselytizer on its behalf. When asked by the American journalist Louis Fischer why he did not preach nonviolence to the West, Gandhi replied: ‘How can I preach nonviolence to the West, when I have not even convinced India? I am a spent bullet.’ However enthusiastic a missionary Gandhi may have been in the cause of ahimsa, he abided by the injunction that it is morally indefensible to propagate teachings that one is unable to observe in one’s own life or within the ambit of one’s own community.

On a recent visit to South Africa, I attended a special screening, cosponsored by the Indian Consulate-General, of Shyam Benegal’s ‘The Making of the Mahatma’ at a cinema complex in Durban on September 11th. Such is, of course, the American monopoly on world events that by far the greater majority of people will have to be reminded that September 11th marks not merely the fifth anniversary of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, but also the anniversary of the coup that overthrew Allende’s government in Chile and, even more significantly, the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of satyagraha by Gandhi in Johannesburg. This cinema stands in the midst of the Suncoast Casino complex, and by way of refreshments invitees were offered free Coca-Cola and popcorn. Gandhians will doubtless take umbrage at this heady combination of junk food, sugared drinks, and the ultimate vice of gambling being put together at an ostensible homage to the Mahatma. It is certainly true that the well-intentioned admirers of Gandhi remain utterly clueless about Gandhi, and do not understand that Gandhi, engaged in the relentless pursuit of truth, would have been at least as vociferous an opponent of sugar, modernity’s preeminent mass killer, as he was of alcohol.

In truth, however, the casino may be the most apposite place to reflect on Gandhi. His followers might be reminded that Gandhi took a great gamble when he endeavored, as his assassin charged, to foist nonviolence upon India. Like that other troubled gambler and paragon of truth in Indian civilization, Yudhisthira, Gandhi gambled away everything and put his life on the spot. No more interesting gamble has perhaps ever been waged in contemporary history, and Gandhi’s critique of modern knowledge systems, his interrogation of received notions of politics, development, and dissent, and his suturing of nonviolence to mass resistance all stand forth as vivid testimony of his political genius and ethical probity. We should be immensely grateful that he took the gamble that he did.

The question for us, therefore, is just this: will we content ourselves with mindless discussions of his ‘relevance’, or are we willing to gamble ourselves on Gandhi?

Gandhian Ecology
Vinay Lal
It is tempting to think that Gandhi may have been an "early environmentalist", and yet there appear to be insuperable problems in embracing this view. His views on the exploitation of nature can be reasonably inferred from his famous pronouncement that the earth has enough to satisfy everyone’s needs but not everyone’s greed. Yet Gandhi appears to have been remarkably reticent on the relationship of humans to their external environment, and it is striking that he never explicitly initiated an environmental movement, nor does the word ‘ecology’ appear in his writings. The 50,000 pages of his published writings have relatively little to convey about trees, animals, vegetation, and landscapes, with the notable exception of pages devoted to the subject of cow-protection and the goat that Gandhi kept by his side.

It is also doubtful that he would have contemplated with equanimity the setting aside of tracts of land, forests, and woods as "wilderness areas", though scarcely for the same reasons for which developers, industrialists, loggers, and financiers object to such altruism. Though an admirer of Thoreau's writings, such as the essay on "Civil Disobedience", Gandhi would not have thought much of the enterprise, rather familiar to him from the Indian tradition, of retreating into the woods. He was by no means averse to the idea of the retreat, but Gandhi spent an entire lifetime endeavoring to remain otherworldly while wholly enmeshed in the ugly affairs of the world. The problems posed, for example, by the man-eating tigers of Kumaon, made famous by Jim Corbett, would have left less of a moral impression upon him than those problems which are the handiwork of men who let the brute within them triumph. It is reported that when the English historian Edward Thompson once remarked to Gandhi that wildlife was rapidly disappearing in India, Gandhi replied: "wildlife is decreasing in the jungles, but it is increasing in the towns."

Thus neither ‘ecologist’ nor ‘environmentalist’ seem to sit on Gandhi’s frame with ease. And, yet, few people acquainted with Gandhi’s life, or with environmental movements in India, would cavil at the suggestion that Gandhi has been the inspirational force behind the ecological awareness of contemporary Indians. It may be mistaken to speak of the Chipko movement and the Narmada Bachao Andolan ["Save the Narmada Movement"] as "Gandhian", since any such reading perforce ignores the traditions of peasant resistance, the force of customary practices, and the appeal of localized systems of knowledge, but the spirit of Gandhi has undoubtedly moved Indian environmentalists. Not only that: far beyond the confines of Indian environmental movements, exponents of deep ecology have spoken glowingly of the impress of Gandhi’s thought upon them. Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher with whose name deep ecology is inextricably intertwined, has testified that from Gandhi he learnt that the power of non-violence could only be realized after the awareness of "the essential oneness of all life."

To comprehend the ecological dimensions of Gandhian thinking and practice, we shall have to go well beyond the ordinary implications conveyed by the categories of ‘ecology’ and ‘environment’; indeed, we may not even find much in these words, as they are conventionally understood, to bring us close to Gandhi, unless we are prepared to concede that ethics, ecology, and politics were all closely and even indistinguishably interwoven into the fabric of his thought and social practices. If, for instance, his practice of observing twenty-four hours of silence on a regular basis was a mode of conserving his energy, entering into an introspective state, and listening to the still voice within, it was also a way of signifying his dissent from ordinary models of communication with the British and establishing the discourse on his own terms. Similarly, Gandhi deployed fasting not only to open negotiations with the British or (more frequently) various Indian communities, but to cleanse his own body, free his mind of impure thoughts, feminize the public realm, and even to partake in the experience of deprivation from which countless millions of Indians suffered. Gandhi deplored the idea of waste, and fasting was a sure means of ascertaining the true needs of the body and preserving its ecological equanimity.

The ecological vision of Gandhi’s life opens itself before us in myriad ways. First, as nature provides for the largest animals as much as it provides for its smallest creations, so Gandhi allowed this principle to guide him in his political and social relations with every woman and man with whom he came in contact. Gandhi’s close disciple and attendant, Mirabehn, wrote that while he worked alongside everyone else in the ashram, he would carry on his voluminous correspondence and grant interviews. "Big people of all parties, and of many different nations would come to see Bapu, but he would give equal attention to the poorest peasant who might come with a genuine problem." In the midst of important political negotiations with senior British officials, he would take the time to tend to his goat. Gandhi remained supremely indifferent to considerations of power, prestige, and status in choosing his companions; similarly, he was as attentive to the minutest details as he was to matters of national importance. One of his associates has reported -- and such stories proliferate -- that when news reached Gandhi of the illness of the daughter of a friend, he wrote to her a long letter in the midst of an intense political struggle in Rajkot, detailing the medicines that she was to take, the food that she was to avoid, and the precautions she was to exercise. His own grand-niece, pointing to the meticulous care with which Gandhi tended to her personal needs, all the while that he was engaged in negotiations for Indian independence, perhaps showered him with the most unusual honor when, in writing a short book about him, she called it Bapu -- My Mother.

Secondly, without being an advocate of wilderness as that is commonly understood today, Gandhi was resolutely of the view that nature should be allowed to take its own course. Arne Naess has written that he "even prohibited people from having a stock of medicines against poisonous bites. He believed in the possibility of satisfactory co-existence and he proved right. There were no accidents . . ." There is far more to these narratives than his rejection of modern medicine. Gandhi scarcely required the verdict of the biologist, wildlife trainer, or zoologist to hold to the view that nature’s creatures mind their own business, and that if humans were to do the same, we would not be required to legislate the health of all species. On occasion a cobra would come into Gandhi’s room: there were clear instructions that it was not to be killed even if it bit Gandhi, though Gandhi did not prevent others from killing snakes. "I do not want to live", wrote Gandhi, "at the cost of the life even of a snake." Gandhi was quite willing to share his universe with animals and reptiles, without rendering them into objects of pity, curiosity, or amusement.

Thirdly, Gandhi transformed the idea of waste and rendered it pregnant with meanings that were the inverse of those meanings invested in it by European regimes, which represented the lands that they conquered as ‘unproductive’ and ‘wasteful’, and requiring only the energy and intelligence of the white man to render them useful to humans. Gandhi, contrariwise, was inclined to the view that man was prone to transform whatever he touched, howsoever fertile, fecund, or productive, into waste. His close disciple and associate, Kaka Kalelkar, narrates that he was in the habit of breaking off an entire twig merely for four or five neem leaves he needed to rub on the fibers of the carding-bow to make its strings pliant and supple. When Gandhi saw that, he remarked: "This is violence. We should pluck the required number of leaves after offering an apology to the tree for doing so. But you broke off the whole twig, which is wasteful and wrong." Gandhi also described himself as pained that people would "pluck masses of delicate blossoms" and fling them in his face or string them around his neck as a garland.

Yet this alone was not wasteful: there was also human waste, around the disposal of which an entire and none too savory history of India can be written. While it was a matter of shame that Indian society had set apart a special class of people to deal with the disposal of human excrement, whose occupation made them the most despised members of society, Gandhi found it imperative to bring this matter to the fore and make it as much a subject of national importance as the attainment of political independence and the reform of degraded institutions. Unlike the vast majority of caste Hindus, Gandhi did not allow anyone else to dispose off his waste. His ashrams were repositories for endeavors to change human waste into organic fertilizer. Moreover, during the course of the last twenty years of his life, he was engaged in ceaseless experiments to invent toilets that would be less of a drain on scarce water resources. If Gandhi had done nothing else in his life, one suspects that he would still find a place in histories of sanitation engineering in India; he would also be remembered as one caste Hindu who did not hesitate to wield publicly the toilet broom.

Fourthly, and this is a point that cannot be belabored enough, Gandhi did not make of his ecological sensitivities a cult or religion to which unquestioning fealty was demanded. One writer credits him with the saying, "I am a puritan myself but I am catholic towards others". His attitude towards meat is illustrative of his catholicity in many respects: Gandhi was a strict vegetarian, some might say in the "unreflective" manner in which many Indians are vegetarians from birth. He was aware, as his writings amply demonstrate, of the cruelty to animals, but he may have been unaware of the argument, which is widely encountered in the ecological literature today, about the extreme pressures upon the soil and water resources induced by the meat industry. In this matter, as in many others bearing upon critical elements of his thought and ethical practices, the anecdotal literature is more revealing, more suggestive of the extraordinary notion of largesse which informed every action of his life. Once, when he had an European visitor at his ashram, where only vegetarian meals were prepared, Gandhi had meat served to him. This surprised everyone, but Gandhi, who had come to understand that his visitor was habituated to meat at every meal, construed it as unacceptable coercion to inflict a new diet upon him.

Gandhi himself partook of milk and milk products, unlike those who style themselves ‘vegans’ in the United States, and his reverence for life and respect for animals did not border on that fanaticism which is only another name for violence. Jehangir Patel, an associate of Gandhi, has written that one day his intimate disciple and attendant, Mirabehn, came running to him in an agitated state of mind. "Bapu [the affectionately respectful term for Gandhi] won't be able to eat his breakfast", she said. "Some one has put meat into the fridge where his food is. How could you allow such a thing?" The cook, Ali, explained that he had gotten the meat for the dogs, and offered to remove it at once. Jehangir asked him to let the meat remain there, and Gandhi himself was fetched. Jehangir then apologized to Gandhi: "I did not think of speaking to Ali. I did not realise that this might happen." Gandhi replied, "Don't apologise. You and Ali have done nothing wrong, so far as I can see." Gandhi took some grapes lying next to the meat, and popped them into his mouth; turning then to Mirabehn, he said: "We are guests in our friend’s house, and it would not be right for us to impose our idea upon him or upon anyone. People whose custom it is to eat meat should not stop doing so simply because I am present." Similarly, though Gandhi championed prohibition, he would not prevent anyone from drinking alcohol, and he condemned altogether the principle of drinking on the sly; as he told Jehangir, "I would much rather you were a drinker, even a heavy drinker, than that there should be any deceit in the matter."

Though Gandhi was, then, no philosopher of ecology, and can only be called an environmentalist with considerable difficulty, he strikes a remarkable chord with all those who have cared for the environment, loved flowers, practiced vegetarianism, cherished the principles of non-violence, been conserving of water, resisted the depredations of developers, recycled paper, or accorded animals the dignity of humans. He was a deep ecologist long before the term’s theorists had arisen, and one suspects that even the broadest conception of "deep ecology" is not capacious enough to accommodate the radically ecumenical aspects of Gandhi’s life. He wrote no ecological treatise, but made one of his life, and it is no exaggeration to suggest that he left us, in his life, with the last of the Upanishads or "forest books". This is one life in which every minute act, emotion, or thought was not without its place: the brevity of Gandhi’s enormous writings, his small meals of nuts and fruits, his morning ablutions and everyday bodily practices, his periodic observances of silence, his morning walks, his cultivation of the small as much as of the big, his abhorrence of waste, his resort to fasting -- all these point to the manner in which the symphony was orchestrated.

Note on publication: This article has been adapted from the much lengthier version published as Vinay Lal, "Too Deep for Deep Ecology: Gandhi and the Ecological Vision of Life", in Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water, eds. Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP for Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University, 2000), pp. 183-212; another version was published as "Gandhi and the Ecological Vision of Life: Thinking beyond Deep Ecology", Environmental Ethics 22, no. 2 (Summer 2000), pp. 149-68.

Gandhi in London: The Law Student and the “Inner Temple”
Vinay Lal

Gandhi left India for the first time on 4 September 1888, when he was about a month shy of his nineteenth birthday, and arrived in London in late October. Like many other Indians of his class background who were able to equip themselves financially to undertake the expensive sea voyage to Britain, Gandhi sought to get credentialed in law. His biographer, Geoffrey Ashe, states that Gandhi had himself “enrolled” at the “Inner Temple” on November 6th, and that among the “four Inns of Court, Indians tended to prefer it as possessing social cachet” (p. 29). But Ashe, not unlike Gandhi’s other biographers, has precious little to say about Gandhi’s relationship to the “Inner Temple”, Gandhi’s institutional affiliation to the University of London, or indeed what is meant by the “Inner Temple”.

Readers of the main web page on Gandhi on MANAS [http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Gandhi/gandhi.html] would have noticed the following lines where I describe how Gandhi, having defied many of his elders in India who were opposed to his journey to Britain, set about pursuing an education in law in London:

Here, too, Gandhi showed determination and single-minded pursuit of his purpose, and accomplished his objective of finishing his degree from the Inner Temple. He was called to the bar in 1891, and even enrolled in the High Court of London; but later that year he left for India.

In October 2003, I received from a gentleman in Britain a communication advising me that the information conveyed in the lines above is wholly incorrect. Describing himself as a barrister, a graduate of the University College London (UCL), and as a member of the “Inner Temple”, this gentleman stated that the Inns of Court do not confer degrees, that Gandhi in fact earned his degree from UCL, and that there is no such thing as “enrolling” in a court in Britain. Though with respect to one of these points, namely the fact that the four Inns of Court -- Gray’s Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple, and Lincoln’s Inn -- do not confer degrees, this gentleman is entirely correct, so long as strict fidelity to empirical facts is the only criterion of what counts as “right” and “wrong”, it does not appear to me to stretch the point to suggest that the brief description offered by myself of Gandhi’s experience with the institutions peddling a law degree, so to speak, can stand as it is.

Let us delve into this question in somewhat greater detail. University College London claims Gandhi among its “famous alumni” on its website [www.ucl.ac.uk], and it is conceivable that university records will show that Gandhi took classes at UCL. But the declaration of “fact”, if “fact” this be, is much less interesting than the other observation that a careful reader of Gandhi’s autobiography is likely to reach: UCL left such little impression on Gandhi that he nowhere mentions it in his own autobiography, which down to the present day remains the most authoritative source of information about Gandhi’s years in London. Gandhi’s most notable biographers, for instance D. G. Tendulkar, Robert Payne, B. R. Nanda, and Geoffrey Ashe, make no mention of University College London, and it is striking that the short chapter on Gandhi’s London years in Nanda’s biography dwells exclusively on Gandhi’s friendships with vegetarians, theosophists, and other dissenters. About the time that Gandhi left London, he published in the Vegetarian (20 June 1891) an article where he felt bound to admit that in his stay of three years many things had been left unaccomplished. Nonetheless, added Gandhi, “I carry one great consolation with me that I shall go back without having taken either meat or wine, and that I know from personal experience that there are so many vegetarians” (quoted on pp. 30-31). In this respect, Nanda is only following the cues offered by Gandhi himself: as he left London, Gandhi could not be bothered to recount his experiences at the University of London.

There is no question that Gandhi was enrolled at the Inner Temple. Standing at the site of what was once perhaps a pagan temple, the “Inner Temple” was Gandhi’s conduit to the world of law and a legal education. Chapter 24 of Gandhi’s autobiography, the twelfth consecutive chapter devoted to his sojourn in Britain, begins with the observation that he has hitherto refrained from saying anything about the purpose for which he went to England, “viz., being called to the bar.” Other than passing examinations, being “called to the bar” entailed, Gandhi informs us, “keeping terms”. Gandhi further elaborates, “‘Keeping terms’ meant eating one’s terms, i.e. attending at least six out of about twenty-four dinners in a term. Eating did not mean actually partaking of the dinner, it meant reporting oneself at the fixed hours and remaining present throughout the dinner.” Though the British condemned India as a country that was stifled by arcane rituals and archaic social institutions, their own commitment to such preposterous practices seldom received comment. However, writing his autobiography in the 1920s, and looking back on his years in London, the irony of being installed at the “Inner Temple” did not escape Gandhi. “The institution had gradually lost all its meaning,” he wrote, “but conservative England retained it nevertheless.” Gandhi describes the books he went through in order to sit for the examinations, but there is no mention of any classes that he might have taken. Insofar as Gandhi had any education in Britain, one can say, with the usual liberties allowed by interpretation, that though the “Inner Temple” did not then, and does not now, confer any degrees, in a manner of speaking Gandhi earned his degree at an institution which socialized him into the life of those qualifying for the bar.

How, then, did Gandhi describe the aftermath of his legal education in Britain. A paltry two lines in a dense two-volume work address this question: “I passed my examinations, was called to the bar on the 10th of June 1891, and enrolled in the High Court on the 11th. On the 12th I sailed for home” (Chapter 24). If there is no such thing as enrolling in a High Court, as my correspondent from Britain so strongly avers, then we must either conclude that Gandhi didn’t know what he was doing, or that 30 years later he could not recall what exactly “enrolling” in Court entailed, or -- much more likely -- Gandhi had his name registered at the Court as someone who, having been called to the bar, was now entitled to practice law. But neither the autobiography nor the biographies are helpful on this point.

The story of Gandhi at the “Inner Temple” does not conclude with his departure from Britain in 1891. In 1922, as described elsewhere on the MANAS website, Gandhi was convicted of sedition. The “Honourable Society of the Inner Temple”, which includes Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in the “Select List” of its “Famous Members” [see http://www.innertemple.org.uk/history/famous_members.html], then engaged in doubtless the most dishonorable action in its history in that it “disbarred” Gandhi. His name was struck from the rolls, and Gandhi, who had done the law the greatest honor in the speech that he offered in defense of himself, became an embarrassment to the Inner Temple and the legal establishment. The “Inner Temple” rightly describes Gandhi as the “architect of Indian independence”, but it is significant not until 1988 did the institution reinstate Gandhi as a member. Did it take 40 years after Gandhi’s assassination and Indian independence to recognize that Gandhi authored Indian independence and that, in disbarring Gandhi, the Inner Temple had mocked itself rather than Gandhi? None of this, to be sure, would have surprised Gandhi an iota.

References and Further Reading:

Ashe, Geoffrey. Gandhi. New York: Stein & Day, 1969.

Gandhi, M. K. An Autobiography. 1st ed. in 2 vols., 1927 & 1929. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1959.

Nanda, B. R. Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography. Unabridged ed., Delhi: Oxford UP, 1981.

‘Hey Ram’: The Politics of Gandhi’s Last Words

2011-02-25T23:59:00.000-08:00

[Published in Humanscape 8, no. 1 (January 2001):34-38.]

On the evening of 30 January 1948, around ten minutes past five o’clock, Gandhi emerged from the interior of Birla House, where he had been immersed in a meeting with Sardar Patel, and began to walk towards the garden where for some days he had been holding an ecumenical prayer meeting every evening. The details of that last two-minute walk are not unimportant, but have been often glossed over: in a life deliberately and insistently given to walking, Gandhi’s last walk appears to be of no paramount or unusual significance, except insofar as it terminated in the immediate extinction of his life. Perhaps a narrative of the circumstances under which Gandhi walked to his destination that evening may help illuminate the importance of the details. Gandhi was sworn to punctuality, and his life was governed by the watch to an unusual degree; though it should at once be added that despite keeping to a meticulous schedule for much of his life, Gandhi’s conception of time was never such that it did not allow him to make time for anyone, howsoever high or lowly, who should choose to enter into his life or make demands upon him. That pernicious word ‘busy’, with which we all excuse ourselves from the common obligations of humanity, and the onerous company of unwanted relatives, acquaintances, and others who seek to intrude upon our time, was surely no part of Gandhi’s lexicon. Yet on this, what would transpire to be the last day of his life, Gandhi would be late to his 5:00 PM appointment with friends, devotees, and those who came to seek his darsan. It is said of the philosopher Kant that he was so punctual in taking his daily walk that the housewives of Konigsberg set their clocks by his walk; well might one have said the same of Gandhi.

If the slightest slackening of the disciplined life was calculated to agitate him, it is a reasonable inference that Gandhi was in a disturbed or uneasy frame of mind as he quickly walked towards the garden of Birla House on the evening of January 30. Indeed, his grand-niece, Manu, later related that in the minutes before his assassination, he scolded her and Abha, who together with Manu tended to his needs, for failing to keep a watch on the time. He said, "I do not like being late for the prayer meeting. Today’s delay is due to your negligence . . . Even a minute’s delay for the prayer causes me great discomfort." (1) The onerous responsibility he had taken upon himself to heal the rift between Nehru and Patel, his two closest associates, and now the two most powerful in the government of independent India, could only have aggravated the distress that Gandhi might have been expected to feel that evening. We can never know how his mood affected his reception of the assassin’s bullets.

Among the very few possessions of his life, now preserved in the Gandhi Museum at Rajghat in New Delhi, is the time-piece that Gandhi attached to his dhoti or loin-cloth, and which had served him well for several decades. The iconic representation, in sculpture, painting, and photography, of the full-length Gandhi gives pride of place to his watch. As Gandhi approached the elevated platform from where he conducted the prayer meeting, Nathuram Godse brushed aside Manu, who was walking by Gandhi’s side, perhaps a pace or two in front of him, and fired three shots at him in rapid succession with a revolver at point-blank range. Gandhi fell to the ground, and the time-piece broke: it had lost its raison d’être, and would henceforth serve no master. It did its duty to the very end; the minute hand stood at 13, and the time-piece remains, perhaps, the most reliable witness to the assassination. Months ago, a nation had been vivisected; now a man was severed from his watch, and the man who had stood watch on the unfolding of the nation had descended into the bowels of the past. As for the assassin, it is reliably reported that Nathuram folded his hands in the posture of reverence, or at least in the traditional manner of conveying the Indian greeting of namaskar, before firing the shots that would put an end to the life of the man to whom he had just paid his profound respects. Engaged in an act of parricide, Nathuram had perforce to render solitary obeisance to the man who shaped the contours of his own identity, whatever his contributions to the nation.

Nathuram would live to have his day in court, and Gandhi would at once be revered and trivialized as the ‘Father of the Nation’. Some of his more unforgiving critics and detractors, his assassin included, would describe him as the ‘Father of Pakistan’. The hagiographers and admirers insisted that, as the bullets struck Gandhi and he fell to the ground, he uttered the phrase, "He Ram"; his foes state that Gandhi did no such thing, and that he merely gasped. When some three decades ago Nathuram Godse’s speech at his trial was finally published, his brother, Gopal Godse, averred in his introduction to the volume that Gandhi merely uttered a "feeble or faint ‘ah’" as breath left his body. (2) The now octogenarian Gopal has conducted a relentless assault on Gandhi since his release from prison in 1964, and in a recent interview that the Government of India has sought to proscribe, he claims that "the government knew that he [Gandhi] was an enemy of the Hindus, but they wanted to show that he was a staunch Hindu. So the first act they did was to put ‘Hey Ram’ into Gandhi’s dead mouth." (3) Gopal Godse was not present at the assassination, but it is apparently on Nathuram’s own authority that he describes Gandhi as having uttered "the faintest Ah!" (4)

Gandhi’s ‘final words’ have been a matter of some controversy, though the commentary has been surprisingly slim on the philosophical and political import of Gandhi’s last words, whatever they may have been. On the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 1998, the last day of his life became the focus of resolute attention in the print media. In "The Mahatma’s Final Hours", Vijay Rana stated, without describing his source, that "The apostle of non-violence could only utter ‘Hey Ram!’ before slumping on the ground" (5). The Hindu, in an unusual tribute entitled "Mahatma Gandhi: The Last 200 days", which consisted in describing the last 200 days of his life in 200 consecutive issues of the newspaper, concluded its final segment thus: "As the second and the third [bullets] hit, he sinks gently to the floor, breathing out his last two words, holy in thankfulness or supplication, ‘Hey Ram!’" (6) Yet Gandhi’s former "aide", V. Kalyanam, who claims to have been by his side when the assassination took place, recalled recently that "Mahatma Gandhi never said ‘He Ram’ when he died. It was a fiction of the imagination, of those who came later." Kalyanam admits that Gandhi often said, "I wish I could die with the name of Ram on my lips", but he denies that these words were uttered by Gandhi as the bullets struck him. (7) Kalyanam could not have been very close to Gandhi, however, since Manu and Abha were on either side of him; in the days following his last fast, moreover, Gandhi’s voice was very faint, and he was certainly further away from Gandhi than the two young women who became known as his walking sticks. Kalyanam’s testimony also stands contradicted by Manu and Abha, as one might expect. It is not unimportant that, though describing himself as an "aide" to Gandhi, Kalyanam is not mentioned in any of the noted, or even minor, biographies of Gandhi; indeed every modern-day politician has an aide, but Gandhi cannot be assimilated to the creatures who inhabit the world of modern politics. Neither is there any independent verification of Kalyanam’s whereabouts on that fateful evening.

In the midst of all this, it is important to reflect on why the last words of Gandhi have elicited some controversy, and what bearing the resurgence of Hindu militancy may have upon the attempt by his most determined foes to put into question the received view about Gandhi’s last utterance. There is also the larger philosophical consideration that a person’s entire life is presumed to be captured by the last words or moments: the very word ‘last’ betokens a finality. The ‘last words’, or the final gestures, of ‘great men’ have often been the subject of much inquiry and speculation, though seldom have these words become the pivot for oppositional world views. Beethoven’s biographers, for instance, are agreed that that when he died on the evening of 26 March 1827, thunder and lightning struck; the composer is said to have raised a clenched fist, and looked upwards "with a grave and threatening expression, as though to say, ‘I defy you, hostile powers! Away, for God is with me!’" (8) Another biographer has argued that the clenched fist appeared to convey these words, "I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, / The best and the last!" (9) The physician who attended upon him wrote, "Toward six in the afternoon came a flurry of snow, with thunder and lightning. Beethoven died. Would not a Roman augur, in view of the accidental commotion of the elements, have taken his apotheosis for granted?" (10) Beethoven’s contemporary, Goethe, is reported to have said, famously, "more light" as he lay dying: these words created a lasting impression, to the extent that Rabindranath Tagore wrote to his niece Indira, "How I cherish light and space! Goethe on his death-bed wanted ‘more light’. If I am capable of expressing my desire then, it will be for ‘more light and more space’." (11) Indeed, it is Tagore’s "space" that, in his final moments, was being violated by his admirers: as they tugged at the poet’s beard, so that each might get a specimen of the great man’s hair, Tagore is described as imploring and admonishing them with the words, "Chede dao, Chede dao", "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!"

Most strikingly, perhaps, one can understand the importance historically ascribed to the ‘last words’ by considering the manner in which the gospels attempted to imprint a portrait of Jesus as the Savior by imputing to him a final utterance that would been characteristic of his teaching. Jesus was nailed to the cross, and some women offered him drugged wine, which he refused to take — most likely because he wanted to die fully conscious. According to Matthew, "Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit" (27.45); and Mark similarly agrees that "Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last" (16.37). Both agree that sometime before he cried out loudly, Jesus said with evident anguish, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27.46; Mark 15.34) This may well have been imagined by Jesus’s disciples, since none of them were present at the crucifixion, or if they were, which is exceedingly unlikely, they could not have been close enough to Jesus to discern his last words. Indeed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me", is a quotation from the Old Testament (Psalms 22.1), and was almost certainly inserted to make the prophecy of the appearance of the Messiah seem to come true. However, in the public imagination, it is the words which Luke ascribes to Jesus, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (23.34), which are most often viewed as Jesus’ last utterance, though the evidence for supposing that these words were inserted into the gospels much later, perhaps several decades after the death of Jesus, is compelling. (12) If the messianic view of Jesus had to prevail, doubtless something more than a "loud cry" had to be attributed to him as he was about to breathe his last. (13)

Gandhi’s reputed last words, "He Ram!", I wish to suggest, take on an exceedingly complex politics. Writing in December 1947, as if in anticipation of his death, he wrote: "In the end it will be as Rama commands me. Thus I dance as He pulls the strings. I am in His hands and so I am experiencing ineffable peace." (14) Gandhi had often expressed a desire to die with the words "He Ram!" on his lips (CWMG 90:489), and in his last prayer meetings he often described "Ramanama", or the constant invocation of the name of Ram, as the "best medicine". In his childhood, Gandhi had been taught to repeat Ramanama, but his enthusiasm then was short-lived; and it is not until he began to engage in various social and spiritual experiments, such as fasting, and returned to a close perusal of Tulsidas’s Ramacaritmanas, that he began to view it as an "infallible remedy." (15) Since at least 1924 (CWMG 23:302-3), Gandhi had been recommending the practice of Ramanama to his friends and acquaintances, but for nearly two years before his death, he had taken to advocating it enthusiastically to a wider public as an "unfailing remedy." (16) When he turned to a village-based natural health-care system in March 1946, after having realized that a nature-care clinic in an urban setting could not meet the needs of the villagers, he prescribed a regimen of mud packs, massage, sun baths, and the recitation of Ramanama for the patients; and yet, aware how the recitation could be debased to a mere mechanical exercise, Gandhi always cautioned against uttering the name of Rama except as part of a process of self-realization or as an effort to call forth the divinity within oneself (CWMG 83:107-8, 184-86, 336-7). Recognizing, as well, the weaknesses to which human beings are liable, Gandhi conceded that communion with God could in the beginning be "just lip repetition of his name even disturbed by impure thoughts. But ultimately what is on the lips will possess the heart. . . . We are monarchs in the Domain of Effort. God is the sole Monarch in the Domain of Results." (17) He even likened Ramanama to a "mathematical formula", thereby suggesting that its efficacy extended from well beyond the individual to society as a whole, transcending the barriers of space and time alike.

With belief in the efficacy of Rama, and with the desire to have the name of Rama on his lips when he should die, Gandhi commenced the walk from the interior to the garden of Birla House. If indeed he uttered the words, "He Ram!", as he slumped to the ground, he would appear, from the standpoint of Gopal Godse and his other detractors, to have outfoxed them — yet again. On 20 January 1948, Nathuram, Gopal, and a handful of others had engineered a bomb explosion at Birla House with the hope of killing Gandhi, but the attempt was a resounding failure; two days later, Gandhi took Manu aside and told her: "I wish I might face the assassin’s bullets while lying on your lap and repeating the name of Rama with a smile on my face. But whether the world says it or not — for the world has a double face — I tell you that you should regard me as your true mother." On the evening before his death, Manu has written, Gandhi suggested that the moment, and manner, of his death would reveal to the world whether he was a real Mahatma or not: if he were to die of a "lingering disease, or even from a pimple", she was to shout from the rooftops to the whole world that he was a "false or hypocritical Mahatma." Yet if an explosion took place, as it had last week, "or if someone shot at me", Gandhi told Manu, "and I received his bullet in my bare chest without a sigh and with Rama’s name on my lips, only then should you say that I was a true Mahatma." (18) That is precisely the manner in which Gandhi appears to have died, judging from the overwhelming consensus among his biographers. Thus, to enumerate two instances, B. R. Nanda relates that "Gandhi fell instantly with the words ‘He Rama’ (Oh, God)", while in her critical biography Judith Brown captures the last moment in Gandhi’s life in similar language: "The frail old body slumped to the ground; but his last words were, as he had wished, to call on the name of Ram, the God whose presence had sustained him and made him a prisoner of hope." (19)

It is understandable that Gandhi’s detractors should think of his last words as a fabrication: a hagiography was in the making, and nothing is likely to make a hagiographic representation more influential than have the subject of that portrait die what is at once a pious, dramatic, and heroic death, one in conformity with the subject’s own idea of a desirable death. Nathuram Godse’s speech in his own defence at his trial would stress what the assassin alleged to be Gandhi’s appeasement of the Muslims, and his unforgivable betrayal of the Hindus; and it could scarcely serve the assassin’s purpose if Gandhi had died in the manner of a Hindu bhakta, with the name of Ram on his lips. On the other hand, among his critics on the left, Gandhi’s practice of Ramanama, his invocation of the name of Ram and similarly of the concept of "Ram Rajya", was construed as a sign, if not of his partiality towards the Hindu faith, at least of political naivete. Gandhi was sometimes said to have alienated the Muslims by the evident display of his adherence to Hinduism and particularly Hindu symbols, though his critics were willing to concede that Gandhi had a rather expansive conception of his faith. That Gandhi’s "Ram Rajya" had no necessary reference to any historical Ram, or to the kingdom over which the Ram of the Ramayana is said to have presided, is a point that his secular critics appear not to have fully understood. As he was to write shortly before his death, "Sometimes we tread a dangerous path in believing that Rama and Krishna were historical entities and we are compelled to take recourse to all manner of arguments to prove that" (CWMG 88:148). To the advocates of secularism, Gandhi would have insisted that, whatever the course adopted in the modern West, the separation of religion and politics could not be countenanced in India; in the words of the concluding chapter of his autobiography, the "devotion to Truth" was bound to draw a person into the "field of politics", and yet "those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means" (20). When Gandhi uttered the words "He Ram", he was doubtless true to himself; but, politically speaking, he managed to confound, as he does so down to the present day, both the Hindu militants who falsely declared him a traitor to his faith and so showed only their own miserable conception of Hinduism, as well as the secularists whose conception of both religion and politics is much too narrow to accommodate the creative ecumenism of true dissenters like Gandhi.

Notes:

(1) Manubehn Gandhi, The End of an Epoch, trans. Gopalkrishna Gandhi (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1962), p. 41. The American journalist Vincent Sheehan, who was present at Birla House on the evening of Gandhi’s assassination, relates that he and Bob Stimson, the Delhi Correspondent of the BBC, had been there since a little before 5:00 PM. Stimson looked at his watch at one point, and it showed the time of 5:10 PM, whereupon Stimson said, "Well, this is strange. Gandhi’s late. He’s practically never late." See Lead, Kindly Light (New York: Random house, 1949), p. 202.

(2) Gopal Godse, "Events and Accused", introduction to Nathuram Godse, May It Please Your Honor (Delhi: Surya Prakashan, 1987), p. 11.

(3) See interview with Gopal Godse, "His Principle of Peace Was Bogus", Time (Asia Edition) 14 February 2000, and Krittiwas Mukherjee, "Calcutta Customs seizes Time copies", India Abroad (New York), 25 February 2000, p. 10; the interview is also available on-line.

(4) See Gopal Godse, Gandhiji’s Murder and After, trans. S. T. Godbole (Delhi: Surya Prakashan, 1989), p. 64.

(5) Indian Express Magazine, Spectator Section (25 January 1998), p. 2.

(6) Anon., "In Lord Rama merges the Mahatma: Day 200", The Hindu (30 January 1998). The author of this series of articles is, in fact, Shri V. Ramamurthy; the entire series has now been published as a book entitled Mahatma Gandhi: The Last 200 Days (The Hindu Publications, Chennai, 2003).

(7) "Gandhi did not say ‘He Ram’ when he died", Indian Express (Chennai), 19 Feb. 1998.

(8) Walter Riezler, Beethoven, trans. G. D. H. Pidcock (New York: Vienna House, 1972 [1938], p. 61.

(9) Robert Haven Schauffler, Beethoven: The Man Who Freed Music (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1929), p. 486.

(10) See O. G. Sonneck, ed., Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries (New York: Dover Publications, 1967 [1926], p. 226.

(11) See Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 368.

(12) The most commonly agreed dates of the composition of the gospels — Mark, 65-70 CE; Matthew, 80-85 CE; Luke, 85-90 CE; and John, c. 100 CE — suggest that the sayings, parables, and actions attributed to Jesus should be taken as just that, attributions, with varying degrees of credibility.

(13) An interesting discussion of the Crucifixion, with particular reference to Jesus’ last words, is to be found in Stephen Mitchell, The Gospel According to Jesus (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), pp. 268-270.

(14) Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [hereafter CWMG], 90:273.

(15) M. K. Gandhi, Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1940 [1927], p. 23, 253.

(16) A discussion of this is to be found in J. T. F Jordens, Gandhi’s Religion: A Homespun Shawl (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), pp. 179-83.

(17) M. K. Gandhi, In Search of the Supreme, ed. and comp. V. B. Kher, 3 vols. (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1961), 2:17.

(18) See Manubehn Gandhi, Last Glimpses of Bapu (Delhi: Shiva Lal Agarwala, 1962), pp. 234, 297-98.

(19) B. R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997 [1958]), p. 512; Judith Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 382.

(20) Gandhi, Autobiography, p. 371.

Hind Swaraj

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Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule is a small tract written by Gandhi in 1908. Gandhi had been living in South Africa for some years, had been to India on a visit, and on the voyage back to South Africa from London he penned this work in less than ten days, writing with his left hand when his right hand started giving him some pain. Hind Swaraj appeared first in installments in the pages of Indian Opinion, a newspaper founded and edited by Gandhi, and in 1909 was published as a book, though it was proscribed at once by the Government of Bombay. Less than 100 pages long, and comprised of twenty short chapters, Hind Swaraj is cast in the form of a dialogue between Gandhi, who is called "The Editor", and his interlocutor, known as "The Reader." Some readers might be reminded of the Socratic dialogues, where Socrates has by far the greater number of lines; his interlocutors appear as sophists. Others will think, perhaps, of the Upanishadic dialogues, while yet others might think of Hind Swaraj as a Sunday school catechism, where matters of ‘truth’ and ‘doctrine’ are put in the form of questions and answers.

As Gandhi was to observe in a foreword which he called "A Word of Explanation", he had in London come into contact with Indian "anarchists" or, in the language of the Indian government, "extremists", and had encountered these people in India as well. While struck by their "bravery", Gandhi thought the "zeal" of these extremists, who sought to procure India’s independence through the use of violence and techniques of terror, including political assassination and bombing campaigns, "misguided". For over a decade, Gandhi had been experimenting with non-violent resistance in South Africa, and he held firmly to the view that India was especially equipped to show the way out of violence through the higher law of non-violent resistance. Gandhi thought of Hind Swaraj as a book that could be "put into the hands of a child. It teaches the gospel of love in place of that of hate. It replaces violence with self-sacrifice. It pits soul force against brute force" (p. 16).

However, it is not for this reason alone that Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj, and indeed its afterlife suggests that it is seldom read as a treatise on non-violence. Over the remaining forty years of his life, Gandhi would continue to write on non-violence, and his later writings have eclipsed Hind Swaraj in this respect. But if Hind Swaraj occupies a seminal place in Gandhi’s oeuvre, and can even reasonably be described as one of the most critical documents of the twentieth-century, it is because in this work he initiated what he himself described as "a severe condemnation of ‘modern civilization" (p. 16). Gandhi inaugurated the most far-reaching critique of modernity that one can imagine, and though it must have struck the preponderant number of his contemporaries as an absurd treatise, Hind Swaraj strikes the reader of late modernity as a work of extraordinary prescience and insight. All too often Hind Swaraj has been read as a denunciation of the West (qua West), but this reading is nowhere substantiated by the text. Throughout, Gandhi remains clear that the replacement of white rulers by brown rulers would be of little consequence to the people if the new set of rulers governed by the same principles, with the same objectives, and with a similar commitment to principles of modern civilization. As he put it with characteristic forthrightness, addressing his imaginary interlocutor, "we want English rule without the Englishman. You want the tiger’s nature, but not the tiger; that is to say, you would make India English. And when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englistan." As he adds, pointedly: "This is not the Swaraj [freedom, self-rule] that I want" (p. 30). Doubtless, Western civilization was already largely synonymous with modern, industrial civilization: to this extent, Hind Swaraj can be read as a critique of the West. But Gandhi remained unequivocally bound to the view that India had been grounded into submission not so much by the British as by modern civilization; it is the glitter of the modern world that seduced India and rendered it captive. As he wrote, in a chapter entitled "Why was India Lost?", ""The English have not taken India; we have given it to them. They are not in India because of their strength, but because we keep them" (p. 38).

In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi launched into a ferocious critique of the "parasitic" professionals who staff modern society, particularly doctors, engineers, lawyers, and the like. He gave it as his opinion that sometimes "quacks are better than highly qualified doctors"; as for doctors trained in modern, allopathic medicine, Gandhi observed that "for the sake of a mistaken care of the human body, they kill annually thousands of animals. They practise vivisection" (pp. 59). Lawyers existed to "advance quarrels instead of repressing them" (p. 55). These and numerous other similar sentiments which crowd the pages of Hind Swaraj continue to be profoundly embarrassing to modernizing Indians, and Gandhi’s own contemporaries predicted that Hind Swaraj would soon be forgotten, repudiated by Gandhi himself. Gandhi’s own ‘mentor’, the political leader Gokhale, opined that Gandhi would consign Hind Swaraj to the dustbin of history, but Gandhi affirmed in 1921, and again in 1938, that he saw no reason to retract anything he had written in Hind Swaraj. There seems even less reason today to view Hind Swaraj as a merely Luddite or romantic document: in its ecological wisdom alone, and in its profound sense that there must be limits to human consumption, wants, and addiction to technological solutions, it remains an enduring and endearing work. Hind Swaraj is the indispensable work in the Gandhian canon.

Further Reading:

Gandhi, M. K. Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule [1908]. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1938; various reprints.

Nandy, Ashis. "From Outside the Imperium: Gandhi’s Cultural Critique of the West." In Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1987, pp. 127-162.

The Mother in the 'Father of the Nation'

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Originally published in Manushi: A Journal of Women and Society, no. 91 (November-December 1995):27-30.

India has just finished observing the 126th birthday of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known to Gandhi's intimate friends and acquaintances as Bapuji, to most other Indians (including, curiously, his detractors) as Gandhiji, and to the rest of the world as Mahatma Gandhi. He is also, in official Indian broadcasts and in official representations of him, 'Father of the Nation', and it is by this designation that a grateful country, or so one presumes, remembers him on his birthday and other solemn occasions. As the chief architect of the nation's independence movement, Gandhi no doubt led, or fathered, the country to emancipation from British rule. Indeed, in no other country was the association between the freedom struggle and one man so close as it was in India, and in shaping all the principal moments of the movement, from the struggle in Champaran to the non-cooperation movement of 1920-22, the civil disobedience movement, the Salt Satyagraha, and the Quit India Movement, Gandhi was to have the authorial and decisive voice. It is under the Mahatma's guidance that the movement, unique among anti-colonial struggles in the Third World, remained largely non-violent, and it is largely on Gandhi's account that the movement was bound to a certain ethical conception of political and public life. It is Gandhi's vision that was supposed to have inspired Nehru, purportedly his 'successor', and that led, among other sources of political wisdom, to the formulation of fundamental rights for all Indian citizens, and safeguards for minorities, in the new constitution. If ever the appellation 'Father of the Nation' has seemed appropriate, never more so than in the case of Mahatma Gandhi.

Though Gandhi has always been an unacceptable, and sometimes hated, figure for people of a certain political persuasion, such as Marxists, Naxalities, and orthodox Hindus, and for Punjabis and Bengalis who unthinkingly -- or perhaps with too much reason and not enough of a heart -- were to place the blame for the partition and consequently their own dislocation on Gandhi's shoulders, there has been a surprising unanimity on conceding the title of the 'Father of the Nation' to him. The designation has become sacrosanct in a manner that makes it undesirable, for the common fate of those who are venerated is that they are worshipped, vilified, or ignored, but almost never understood. Only in very recent years, if the aspersions cast on his name by Mayavati and Kanshi Ram are any indication, has he seemed to be less than the 'Father of the Nation', and in the most extreme form of the allegation, he only fathered a tribe of dull, corrupt, vulgar, and singularly unattractive politicians. It is in any case transparent that no greater mockery is made of the 'Father of the Nation' and his teachings than by those politicians who, in an annual and totemistic enactment of modern political ritual, lay wreaths at his samadhi every October 2nd. In yet another caricature of Gandhi, the Mahatma is represented merely as a shrewd bania and upholder of sanatan dharma, appearing in the guise of a saint, master of the art of dissimulation.

Though many of the criticisms of Gandhi do him a great deal of injustice, and are too contemptible to be worthy of a response, a strong case is to be made for doing away with 'Father of the Nation' as a designation for Gandhi. The reasons for doing so are manifold, as I have already suggested, but here we need concern ourselves with only one set of considerations which appears not to have been noticed so far. In remembering Gandhi as the 'Father of the Nation', we turn him into a resolutely masculine figure, a very questionable and dubious enterprise; concurrently, the female half of the population, which more accurately, ashamedly, and alarmingly is less than half, is put on notice that in giving birth to the nation, and in nurturing and developing it to its full powers of maturity, beauty, grace, and wisdom, they had, and will continue to have, no role to play. The solution scarcely resides in producing a woman, say a Sarojini Naidu or Rani of Jhansi, who might conceivably be thought adequate to play the part of the 'Mother of the Nation'. No woman remembered as the 'Mother of the Nation' would ever achieve parity with the 'Father of the Nation', least of all in a country where the name of the father alone is recorded in passports, official forms, and government records; moreover, the inclusion of women in the narratives of history is, paradoxically, often the easiest way of undermining the centrality of women's issues, the gendered nature of our discourses, and the deep structuring of patriarchy.

It is incontestably evident that Gandhi had a deep interest in, and profound awareness of, issues affecting primarily women. Most singularly, Gandhi was a firm advocate of equality between men and women, and he was not prepared to countenance discrimination against women in any form. In the matter of sexuality, for instance, he deprecated those 'double standards' by which a man who engaged in unregulated sexual conduct was easily forgiven, even considered 'liberal', but a woman who did likewise was considered a prostitute, traitor to her sex and to the noble ideals of wifehood and motherhood. This is scarcely to say that Gandhi thought that both men and women could engage in promiscuous sexual activity; rather, he wished to hold men to the same standards to which women were held. Men were least entitled to pontificate on the morals of women, or to act as custodians of their virtue; and as he once put it pointedly, "Why is there all this morbid anxiety about female purity? Have women any say in the matter of male purity? Why should men arrogate to themselves the right to regulate female purity?" Gandhi's advocacy of equality between the sexes, nevertheless, did not prevent him from being patriarchal, most notably with respect to the occupations to be followed by women. In fact he could be insufferably sanctimonious about these matters. He did not think that women should assume the roles and occupations pursued by men, and he was rather adamant in adhering to the view that the principal bread-winner would continue to be the man. But the value of housework was not, in Gandhi's view, thereby demeaned, and indeed he was of the opinion that women, in contributing to good standards of housekeeping, nutrition, sanitation, and hygiene, were thereby performing a far more valuable service to the nation than engineers, scientists, and other experts. Besides, as Madhu Kishwar has noted, what is so striking about Gandhi is that, unlike politicians whose pronouncements are habitually radical but whose practices are to the same degree retrograde and insulting to women, Gandhi was orthodox in his pronouncements but refreshingly radical and experimental in his practices. Thus Gandhi himself labored to devise ways which would enable women to spend less time in the kitchen and his own diet consisted of largely uncooked food. By admitting women into his ashram, he offered them the choice of something other than marriage, and among his close political associates and confidantes were a number of women. A much larger number of prominent Indian women, such as Kamala Chattopadhyay, Sarojini Naidu, Usha Mehta, Sushila Nayar, and Aruna Asaf Ali, have testified to the part played by Gandhi in drawing women away from their homes, and in bringing them into the midst of the independence struggle. Many Indian feminists have, not unexpectedly, recognized Gandhi as an unequivocal champion of women's rights -- though Gandhi's language was the language of duties not rights -- and an avid listener of women's voices.

If, as Ashis Nandy has so eloquently argued, a "major element in Gandhi's philosophy was his rediscovery of womanhood as a civilizing force in human society", it is also the case that his practices were informed by a concerted endeavor to bring women into the public realm; and one could go so far as to say that Gandhi sought to feminize politics and the public realm. It is partly within this context that one must view Gandhi's resort to fasting, his insistence upon spinning, and his resolute conviction in the efficacy of non-violent resistance. Gandhi thought of women, upon whom fell the role of nurturing the human race, as naturally prone to non-violence in conduct and thought, and more adept at the art of persuasion. Far from being the weapon of the weak, non-violence was the weapon of the strong, and Gandhi held firm to the view that women had greater powers of resilience and resistance than men. The rules of politics were the rules laid down by men, and only women were capable of humanizing this public sphere and rendering it more accountable to the conscience of men and women. Through his recourse to fasting, Gandhi sought to negate the supposed distinction between men's fasts as political and public, and women's fasts as ritualistic and private, and in so doing he provided a new interpretation to traditions of women's fasting by placing those squarely within a politics of resistance. By taking upon himself the task of spinning, Gandhi sought to draw attention not only to the plight of Indian households, which had been stripped of their earning capacity by the heartless introduction of mechanization, but to the exemplary role of women in keeping the household afloat through their daily efforts at spinning. As Gandhi had the unique gift of finding the heroic within the trivial, and of eliciting the poetic from the prosaic, so he found in the daily lives of women the most salutary lessons on how to run a country, engage in the political life, and lead a life of economic thrift and moral plenitude. The constant rotation of the spinning wheel, though it might have suggested stagnation to some, was to Gandhi a profound illustration of the sustaining power of women, and of their reliability as keepers of the hearth and guardians of a society's moral codes. Here, again, there is the difficulty that Gandhi relied upon highly suspect categories of 'nature' and the 'natural', but the net effect of his view of women, and of those 'feminine' practices from which he had a great deal to learn, was such as to empower women and make them feel the equal of men.

Finally, there is the consideration that Gandhi himself had eminently 'feminine' qualities, and he appreciated these qualities in other men as well. During his fast in 1933, undertaken on behalf of the cause of Harijan upliftment, he found the highest words of praise for Sardar Patel, later to be known as the 'Iron Man' of India, for the Sardar had nursed him with such care and affection that Gandhi was reminded of his own mother. Gandhi himself acquired something of a reputation for nursing, not only his wife Kasturba, but the inmates of the ashram, his friends and acquaintances, and the animals at his ashram. There is the famous story told of the time when, engaged in a critical meeting with members of the Cabinet Mission on 2 May 1946, Gandhi withdrew to attend to his goat that had been hurt that morning. When he did not return for more than fifteen minutes, Stafford Cripps and his colleagues went looking for him, and were more than a trifle annoyed to find Gandhi applying mud over the sprained ankle of his goat. In his autobiography, Gandhi wrote of how he acted as a nurse to his father, and both during the Boer War and World War I, he volunteered his services as a nurse. To nurse others was a "passion" with him, and all his close associates, particularly the women around him, were to recall with intense longing and admiration the times when Gandhi's words and hands had lulled them in their illness to a comfortable sleep. No one put it more suggestively than Gandhi's grandniece and companion of the last few years, Manubehn, who authored a book to which she gave the title, Bapu -- My Mother.

We must, thus, pause to reflect on the appropriateness of describing Gandhi as the 'Father of the Nation'. Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse, found in Gandhi's recourse to fasting and advocacy of spinning sure signs of effeminacy, and there are many others among India's modernizers and business elites who have condemned Gandhi to the periphery as an example of a soft and feminine leader who could not survive in the modern world. But Gandhi was possessed of a civilizational sensibility where the boundaries between the masculine and the feminine were not so easily drawn, a sensibility akin to that which produced images of the ardhanariswara in Indian art and culture, which could give birth to schools of painting where Radha is transformed into Krishna and Krishna in turn sports the looks and clothes of Radha, and which today still has a place, albeit an increasingly maligned one, for a large number of people, the hijras, who live on the border between the feminine and the masculine. The presence of the masculine within the feminine, and conversely of the feminine within the masculine, described a dialectical and dialogic relationship between the sexes. Gandhi himself was not reticent in describing his ideal, "A man should remain man and yet should become woman; similarly a woman should remain woman and yet become man."

The nuanced sense of the feminine and the masculine, and of the feminine in the masculine as much as of the masculine in the feminine, is lost in the characterization of Gandhi as the 'Father of the Nation'. Though India has ever been the motherland, patriarchy could not be so easily appeased; Gandhi had to be invested with an unworthy title, and one for which no equivalent has been found in Hindi, the national language with whose advocacy Gandhi had a long and critical involvement. The fact that we continue to use the expression, 'Father of the Nation', in a language that is still alien to the vast majority of the people who inhabit India, and which betokens power and dominance, points to the signal triumph of the masculine in the political domain. That very liminality, the wondrous ability to stand on the threshold between the feminine and the masculine, the private and the public, the profane and the sacred, the slum and the ashram, the vernacular and the classical, is seriously compromised in the designation of Gandhi as the 'Father of the Nation'. Though Gandhi's services to the nation were innumerable, the embodiment of liminality, which is also the liminality of Narasimha, the man-lion who came as Vishnu's incarnation to save the world, was Gandhi's supreme gift to the nation. But it is easier to think of Gandhi himself as a gift to the nation, a gift we can never reciprocate, and which we are still yet to appreciate, and it is apt that rather than characterizing him as the 'Father of the Nation', we should call him Bharatdan.

'Quit India' Movement

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At the outbreak of war in 1939 between Britain and Germany, India was also declared to be at war with Germany as it constituted part of the British empire. The Congress took the view that while it opposed fascism, it could render no support to the British either: there was little to choose between the totalitarianism of the Nazis and the colonialism of the British. It was not with the consent of the Indian people that India was dragged into the war, nor was this India's war; moreover, the Congress expected, but could not procure, an unconditional offer of British withdrawal from India as a condition of its support. Consequently, neutrality was the official policy of the Congress. In an effort to bring the British to the negotiating table, Gandhi launched his 'Quit India' movement in August 1942, and issued from a large meeting ground in Bombay (since re-named August Kranti [revolution] Maidan) the famous call to 'do or die': Indians were to wage one last struggle to achieve independence, or die in that attempt. Elaborate plans were made to offer non-violent resistance; however, almost the entire Congress leadership, and not merely at the national level, was put into confinement less than twenty-four hours after Gandhi's speech, and the greater number of the Congress leaders were to spend the rest of the war in jail.

T he 'Quit India' movement was followed, nonetheless, by large-scale violence directed at railway stations, telegraph offices, government buildings, and other emblems and institutions of colonial rule. There were widespread acts of sabotage, and the government held Gandhi responsible for these acts of violence, suggesting that they were a deliberate act of Congress policy. Gandhi resolutely denied these charges, but the deadlock was not to be resolved. It has been suggested by other scholars that though Gandhi himself did not authorize violence, he had grown skeptical of the efficacy of non-violence, and that he had arrived at the point in his life where he was determined to see India attain independence during his lifetime. However attractive this line of reasoning might appear, it has little support in Gandhi's voluminous writings. Others have suggested that the 'Quit India' movement was a failure in that it invited the government to unleash repression, and therefore led to the incarceration of the Congress leadership. Consequently, it has been argued, the Muslim League, which declared its support to the British, was to grow in strength during the war, while the Congress languished. Though the Muslim League failed to secure support even among Muslim voters before the war, elections in 1946 suggested that it had the loyalty of the majority of Muslims in many Muslim-dominant areas. On these lines, then, it is suggested that the 'Pakistan movement' developed when there were no countervailing forces to check it, and that Gandhi played into the hands of both Muslim communalists and British imperialists. The 'Quit India' movement remains, in any event, among the most controversial episodes in Gandhi's life and modern Indian history.

Dandi : Salt March

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Early in 1930, Gandhi, Nehru, and the Congress were to make a call for purna swaraj, or complete independence from British rule in India. Coming out of what might be termed a political retirement, Gandhi searched his mind for some action that might ignite the nation and serve as the expression of the will of the general community. The course of action that Gandhi decided to undertake is revealed by a remarkable letter that he addressed to Lord Irwin, the Viceroy, a letter most unusual in the annals of political discourse. "Dear Friend", he wrote to his political adversary on March 2, "I cannot intentionally hurt anything that lives, much less fellow human beings, even though they may do the greatest wrong to me and mine. Whilst, therefore, I hold the British rule to be a curse, I do not intend harm to a single Englishman or to any legitimate interest he may have in India." In a rather detailed analysis, Gandhi was to note the vast inequities in the salaries paid to Indians and to British officials: where the average Indian earned less than 2 annas per day, the British Prime Minister earned Rs. 180 per day, while the Viceroy received Rs. 700 per day; more tellingly, the Prime Minister of Britain received 90 times more than the average Britisher, but the Viceroy received "much over five thousand times India's average income." While not desirous of humiliating the Viceroy, Gandhi apologized for taking a "personal illustration to drive home a painful truth", and asked him "on bended knee" to "ponder over this phenomenon." The system of administration carried out in India was "demonstrably the most expensive in the world", and it had only further impoverished the nation.

If the British were not prepared to combat the various "evils" afflicting India under colonial rule, Gandhi was prepared to commence a fresh campaign of "civil disobedience". As he went on to inform Irwin, he intended to break the salt laws, a gesture that no doubt must have struck Irwin as bizarre. The British exercised a monopoly on the production and sale of salt: yet this was an essential ingredient, required by the poor as much as by the rich. "I regard this tax [on salt]", Gandhi wrote, "to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man's standpoint. As the independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land thebeginning will be made with this evil." Since Gandhi intended no harm to the Viceroy himself, or indeed to any Englishman, he chose to have his letter delivered in person by a "young English friend who believes in the Indian cause and is a full believer in non-violence". The Viceroy, not unexpectedly, promptly wrote back to express his regret that Gandhi was again "contemplating a course of action which is clearly bound to involve violation of the law and danger to the public peace."

"On bended knees I asked for bread and I have received stone instead", Gandhi remarked, and making good his promise, he set out on March 12 with seventy-eight of his followers and disciples from Sabarmati Ashram on the 241-mile march to Dandi on the sea. All along the way, he addressed large crowds, and with each passing day an increasing number of people joined Gandhi on the march. It is said that the roads were watered, and fresh flowers and green leaves strewn on the path; and as the satyagrahis walked, they did so to the tune of one of Gandhi's favorite bhajans, Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram, sung by the great Hindustani vocalist, Pandit Paluskar. On April 5, Gandhi arrived at Dandi: short prayers were offered, Gandhi addressed the crowd, and at 8:30 AM he picked up a small lump of natural salt. Gandhi had now broken the law; Sarojini Naidu, his close friend and associate, shouted: "Hail, Deliverer!" No sooner had Gandhi violated the law than everywhere others followed suit: within one week the jails were full, and subsequently Gandhi himself was to be taken into jail.

It has been suggested by some historians that nothing substantial was achieved by Gandhi through this campaign of civil disobedience. Gandhi and Irwin signed a truce, and the British Government agreed to call a conference in London to negotiate India's demands for independence. Gandhi was sent by the Congress as its sole representative, but the negotiations proved to be inconclusive, particularly since various other Indian communities had been encouraged by the British to send a representative and make the claim that they were not prepared to live in an India under the domination of the Congress. Yet never before had the British consented to negotiate directly with the Congress, and Gandhi met Irwin as his equal. In this respect, the man who most loathed Gandhi, Winston Churchill, understood the extent of Gandhi's achievement when he declared it "alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor." Likewise, even Nehru was to come to a better appreciation of Gandhi following his march to the sea, since many Indians now appeared to understand that the nation had unshackled itself and achieved a symbolic emancipation. "Staff in hand he goes along the dusty roads of Gujarat", Nehru had written of Gandhi, "clear-eyed and firm of step, with his faithful band trudging along behind him. Many a journey he has undertaken in the past, many a weary road traversed. But longer than any that have gone before is this last journey of his, and many are the obstacles in his way. But the fire of a great resolve is in him and surpassing love of his miserable countrymen. And love of truth that scorches and love of freedom that inspires. And none that passed him can escape the spell, and men of common clay feel the spark of live. It is a long journey, for the goal is the independence of India and the ending of the exploitation of her millions."

T he picture of Gandhi, firm of step and walking staff in hand, was to be among the most enduring of the images of him, and it is through this representation that the Bengali artist Nandlal Bose sought to immortalize Gandhi. Yet in innumerable other respects, many of which have received little attention (and of which I shall mention only four), the march to the sea remains an extraordinary event. First, no one knew the meaning and potential of symbols as much as did Gandhi, but his ability to read and manipulate signs has not been the subject of any systematic study. Second, unlike most 'revolutionaries', Gandhi thought it no part of his quest for truth to retain secrecy: accordingly, the Government was informed of his precise plans and invited to arrest him. Again, though women were full and active members of Gandhi's community, and many were to be closely associated with him over a lengthy period of time, no women were present among the 78 people chosen to accompany him on the march. Gandhi took the view that the presence of women might deter the British from attacking the satyagrahis, and that no such excuse should be available to the British if they should wish to retaliate. Behind this lay Gandhi's distinction between non-violence of the strong and non-violence of the weak; curiously, Gandhi's thinking was also informed by a certain sense of chivalry, such that any triumph of non-violence was diminished if the playing field was not level. Fourth, the walk brought the body into the body politic, and so belonged with Gandhi's other practices of the body.

Further Reading

Dalton, Dennis. Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, Ch. 4.

Tendulkar, D. G. The Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (new rev. ed., Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Publications Division, 1961), pp. 14-38.

Pietermaritzburg: The Beginning of Gandhi's Odyssey

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Gandhi had arrived in Durban, South Africa, in 1893 to serve as legal counsel to the merchant Dada Abdulla. In June, he was asked by Dada Abdulla to undertake a trip to Pretoria in the Transvaal, a journey which first took Gandhi to Pietermaritzburg. There, Gandhi was seated in the first-class compartment, since he had purchased a first-class ticket. A European who entered the compartment hastened to summon railway officials, who ordered Gandhi to remove himself to the van compartment, since 'coolies' and non-whites were apparently not permitted in first-class compartments. Gandhi protested and produced his ticket, but was warned that he would be forcibly removed if he did not make a gracious exit. As Gandhi refused to comply with the order, he was summarily pushed out of the train, and his luggage was tossed out on to the platform. The train steamed away, and Gandhi withdrew to the waiting room. "It was winter," Gandhi was to write in his autobiography, and "the cold was extremely bitter. My over-coat was in my luggage, but I did not dare to ask for it lest I should be insulted again, so I sat and shivered" (Part II, Ch. 8). He says he began to think of his "duty": ought he to stay back and fight for his "rights", or should he return to India? His own "hardship was superficial", "only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice."

In such circumstances did Gandhi first become aware of racism and of the grave inequities to which people are subjected on the grounds of color; and consequently Gandhi was to embark on a journey that would take him far beyond Pretoria. In other ways, too, this train journey, initially aborted, from Durban to Pretoria was to be symbolic of the manner in which Gandhi would cause other transgressions, and Gandhi's endeavors to reach all his countrywomen and men. Upon his permanent return to India in early 1915, Gandhi would use trains to travel the length and breadth of India, and he always traveled by third-class. Few Indians of his time, or indeed since, acquired the knowledge of India that Gandhi was to gain by his travels, and there can scarcely be any Indian who had criss-crossed the country by train as much as Gandhi had done.

The story of Gandhi's travails at Pietermaritzburg Railway Station has now acquired another life. In a moving ceremony at Pietermaritzburg Railway Station presided over by Nelson Mandela, the President of South Africa, the Freedom of Pietermaritzburg was conferred posthumously on Mahatma Gandhi on April 25, 1997. Gathered together to right a century-old wrong, President Mandela recalled "Gandhi's magnificent example of personal sacrifice and dedication in the face of oppression". Gopalkrishna Gandhi, India's High Commissioner to South Africa, received the Freedom of Pietermaritzburg on behalf of his grandfather and noted that Gandhi's experience at the railway station was something like a second birth: "When Gandhi was evicted from the train, an Indian visiting South Africa fell but when Gandhi rose, an Indian South African rose."

Sources

Gandhi, M. K. Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Trans. from Gujarati by Mahadev Desai. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1927; many editions in print [Dover, Navajivan, Beacon Books, Penguin]

Mandela, Nelson. Righting a Wrong

Gandhi, Gopalkrishna. The Acceptance Speech. Mainstream (7 June 1997), pp. 30-32.

Kasturba Gandhi

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Kasturba Gandhi, known affectionately as Ba, was married to Mohandas Gandhi in 1882 when she was but ten years old. When Gandhi left for London in 1888, she did not accompany him: she was already a mother, since Harilal had been born earlier that year. Manilal was born to them in 1892; Ramdas followed in 1897, and Devadas, the last of their four sons, was born in 1900. In 1906, Gandhi decided to observe brahamacharya, or observe the vow of chastity: and thereafter Mohandas and Kasturba never had any sexual relations. Gandhi himself wrote that Kasturba eagerly assented to his decision to take a vow, but we do not have this from her own mouth, and some modern feminist readings have taken this an instance of Gandhi's overbearing attitudes.

It is unequivocally clear, however, that Kasturba worked alongside her husband. When Gandhi became involved in the agitation to improve working conditions for Indians in South Africa and give them the power to represent themselves, Kasturba eventually decided to join the struggle. In September 1913, she was arrested, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment at hard labor. On numerous subsequent occasions in India, she took Gandhi's place when he was under arrest, and was always closely associated with the struggle in India, giving encouragement to women volunteers.

Kasturba was to develop into a very considerable figure in her own right, but sadly she has scarcely received the attention she deserves. She showed an independence of spirit, and Gandhi's autobiography records an incident when he was almost tempted, in a moment of acute anger, to throw her out of the home. He had asked that she should contribute, as did everyone else at their ashram, to menial tasks; and though she agreed, she balked at having to clean the toilets, and flatly refused to do so. There were also disagreements between them on the care of their sons, whom Kasturba (like some others) was inclined to believe had been neglected by their father. Gandhi, on the other hand, took the view that as his sons, they were entitled to no special privileges. Harilal, in particular, caused her great sorrow, and when he once arrived at her bedside during her last illness, she burst into tears.

Mohandas and Kasturba remained married for sixty-two years, but it is one of the marriages about which we know very little, though Gandhi's own life has been recorded in excruciatingly minute detail. We do not really know, for example, how she received the presence of other women who were to become Gandhi's followers and devotees, to the point where they, rather than Kasturba, attended to his daily needs. Yet this very question presumes the centrality of the husband-wife nexus over all others, and this may be a way of approaching questions that have had little resonance in Indian culture. Contemporary witnesses have testified to the extraordinary bonds of affection between them. Following the 'Quit India' movement, Kasturba joined her husband in detention at the Aga Khan's Palace in Poona. It is there that she died in 1944; Gandhi was at her bedside, and a picture taken just after her death shows Gandhi huddled in a corner, a pale shadow of himself.

The Gandhi of Tavistock Square

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Originally published as “The Tavistock Square Gandhi and the War on Terror, War on Non-violence”, Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 30 (23 July 2005), pp. 3242-44; also published in OpenDemocracy.net as “The Tavistock Square Gandhi: ‘war on terror’ and non-violence”, and by the same title in InterCulture, no. 149 (October 2005), pp. 55-58; and as “The Tavistock Square Gandhi” in the Toronto Star (28 July 2005).]

__________________________

Central London has many beautiful squares, oases of rest, reflection, and rumination. Nearly every square has historical associations, but Tavistock Square is uniquely significant. At its centre is one of the most moving of all statues of Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948). The statue, by British sculptor Fredda Brilliant, was gifted to London by the Indian High Commissioner in Britain in 1967, and unveiled by the Labour prime minister of the day, Harold Wilson.

On my first visit to London in 1989, once I had checked into my lodgings on Upper Woburn Place, I hastened to Tavistock Square to see for myself this memorial of the chief architect of India’s independence movement. The harmony it seems to express between form and function, place and purpose, history and present, is a richly associative tribute to Gandhi’s own philosophy of peace and non-violence.

In the midst of the horrific carnage and mayhem created by coordinated bomb attacks in London on 7 July 2005, it is doubtful that very many people are thinking of the fate of a statue. Yet it was indeed in Tavistock Square that one of the four bombs blew apart a bus, taking 13 of the 52 innocent lives that day.

The Gandhi statue lent Tavistock Square a certain serenity, and it was soon followed by a number of peace memorials. A cherry tree was planted to remember the victims of the Hiroshima bombing; in 1986 the League of Jewish Women planted a field maple to mark the United Nations' International Year of Peace; in 1995, a granite memorial was installed at the square to honour conscientious objectors, and unveiled by one of their number, the composer Michael Tippett. One can understand why, among Londoners, Tavistock Square became known as "the peace park".

The Gandhi represented here is a seated figure, ponderous and meditative, not the more familiar Gandhi with the walking-stick, a searing image made popular by his famous march to the sea. It is this seated image with which, for a long period through the 1970s and 1980s, the state-owned television channel, Doordarshan, announced its news bulletin.

Non-violence as conversation

A short walk from Tavistock Square is University College London, whose website claims Gandhi as one of its graduates. Gandhi had arrived in London in 1888 shortly after his 19th birthday to study law. London would begin and end his foreign sojourns; though where he first arrived to "play the English gentleman" and render the homage that the subjugated customarily accord to their oppressors, his last (1931) trip was to parley with the viceroy on equal terms and negotiate India's independence. On the way, Gandhi shed a great deal: a top hat, coat-tails, the native's awe for the white man, and western civilisation's addiction to violence.

Gandhi had learned to become an unflinching advocate of non-violence through close encounters with its opposite. He came face-to-face with the sheer ugliness of racial violence in South Africa on numerous occasions. He raised an ambulance corps to assist the British when the Boer war broke out in 1899, and again at the start of the Zulu “rebellion” of 1906.

Most commentators have, rightly, seen these incidents as expressions of Gandhi's ardent belief that Indians could only claim their rights within the British empire if they were prepared to defend the empire against its opponents. In an era when the language of rights was already becoming part of the vocabulary of political conduct and discussion, Gandhi still insisted on the importance of retaining a conception of one's duties.

But it is characteristic of Gandhi that, rather than running away from violence, or becoming paralysed by its brutalities, or claiming a pacifist sensibility, he entered into the battlefield of violence in the capacity of a healer, bearing truth (as he then saw it) on the stretcher of non-violence. He would henceforth have a dialectical, dialogic, and hermeneutic awareness of non-violence.

The advocates of violence seldom if ever speak to the votaries of non-violence, and one of the many reasons why Gandhi held non-violence to be superior to violence is that its proponents extend an invitation to those who swear by violence to enter into a dialogue. The advocates of non-violence are always in a conversation with the adherents of violence. This relationship brought Gandhi to an awareness of the fact that some forms of non-violence are tantamount to violence, that avoidance of violence is not necessarily a form of non-violent action, and that there may be occasions when the practice of violence is the only way of honouring the spirit of non-violence.

In Gandhi's own time and later, he was nearly alone among the principal theorists and practitioners of revolutionary change in arguing for the primacy of non-violence, and he stands ranged against a whole galaxy of figures – Lenin, Trotsky, Fanon, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara – who not only glorified violence but dismissed non-violence as a chimera. Gandhi had held up the later Tolstoy as a figure worthy of emulation, though Lenin spoke with open contempt of his compatriot’s "imbecile preaching about not resisting evil with force."

One hears even less of non-violence these days. It may be argued, of course, that Trotsky, Fanon, and Che are just as much foreign figures to jihadis or suicide bombers as Gandhi, and that the schooling terrorists receive is of a different order. There has already, in the aftermath of the 7 and 21 July London attacks, been much talk of the "sleeper cells" that al-Qaida is said to have formed in Britain, of the madrasa at which Muslim men are believed to be indoctrinated to hate the west, and of the experts in terrorist warfare who are one species, altogether unintended, of the iconic transnational figure of the 21st century.

Whatever the precise training required to strap explosives together into a bomb, plan and orchestrate an attack in heavily monitored areas, and eventually to steel oneself to explode devices along with oneself in a busy public space, the schooling received by the perpetrators of the Tavistock Square and tube bombings was not confined to madrasas or radical mosques.

They also attended secular schools and colleges in Britain, and imbibed the learning of its “streets” – not in the sense of street urchins or deprived children, but as observers (via television, video, and popular culture’s dissemination of war-heroics) of the United States’s and Britain’s prosecution of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also took their cues from a culture of violence of which the architects of the war on terror are deeply immersed. The perpetrators of terrorism have also understood that there are numerous ways in which one can enlist oneself as a member of the “profession”.

A pact of violence

It may be that, despite the horrors of 7 July, Tavistock Square will continue to be known as London's "Peace Park" – if only because the instant legend of the grit, resilience, and resolve of Londoners needs to be embodied as well as remembered.

But such soothing consolations disguise more than they reveal about the culture of violence which stitches together modern society. Gandhi was felled by an assassin, as was Martin Luther King Jr, two decades later. It is supremely if ominously fitting that a proponent of violence should answer the prophet of non-violence. One of the most disturbing aspects of violence is that it is irreversible, just as its perpetrators, through their very act, claim to be in possession of a superior version or account of truth.

Gandhi divined a key truth about colonialism, namely that it is a pact – and pacts are not without their element of deception, coercion, and attraction – between colonised and coloniser. This is something that can be brought to our awareness of the pact that drives the modern culture of violence. The colonised were, to be sure, exploited and beaten; but they were also lured by the glitter of the modern west. Today’s western leaders and “good Samaritans” are, indeed, repulsed by savage and brute acts of violence; but they also breathlessly await such acts, as if they are uttered in a language that they themselves intimately understand. How else can one explain that stupefyingly idiotic, obscene, and terror-laden phrase, indeed ambition – "the war on terror"? Terrorism, after all, is manna to the prosecutors of the "war on terror".

It would be wishful thinking to suppose that the London bomber who chose to explode a bomb in London's peace park, a short distance from the statue of Gandhi, was seeking in his own macabre way to enter into a dialogue with Gandhi and the advocates of non-violence. We have entered into a phase of brutal and unending violence. Terrorists and advocates of the “war on terror” are bound together in a horrifying pact. Violence has a ravenous maw. It countenances no opposition. The assassin of Gandhi and his numerous patrons, having done away with the old man, have been determined ever since to install violence as the supreme monarch. One wonders whether, once the assassins of non-violence are finished with their work, any statues of Gandhi will remain.

The Gandhi Everyone Loves to Hate

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special article
Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 4, 2008 55
The Gandhi Everyone Loves to Hate
Vinay Lal
Gandhi has legions of admirers, but he has also been the
target of severe, even virulent, criticism from numerous
perspectives. Though Gandhi still commands veneration
from many, he is also someone everyone loves to hate.
Some critics fault him for particular positions, such as his
support of the Khilafat movement, his inexplicable views
on the Bihar earthquake, his deployment of Hindu
imagery or idioms of speech such as ‘Ram Rajya’, and so
on. Other critics, arguing from specific ideological
positions, are inclined to find systemic shortcomings in
Gandhi’s views.
This paper, focusing in the latter half to a greater extent
on modernist and especially feminist readings of Gandhi,
suggests that the feminist reading is fraught with more
ambivalence than is commonly recognised, and in
somewhat unexpected ways. It is argued that though
Gandhi may not have been his own best critic, his critics
have also not done him the justice of attempting to
understand how he negotiated the various critical
worldviews that he encountered.
This paper is a revised version of a lecture that was first delivered as an
invited lecture on October 2, 2005 at Emory University, Atlanta, and I
am grateful to Deepika Bahri for the invitation and her friendship over
the last decade. A year later, I read out portions of it at a seminar at the
Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg.
Vinay Lal (vlal@history.ucla.edu) teaches history at the University of
California, Los Angeles and is presently with the University of California
Education Abroad Programme in India.
Uniquely among the major public figures of the modern
world, Mohandas Gandhi attracted an extraordinarily
wide and diverse following and, perhaps oddly for someone
who is customarily thought of in terms of veneration, an
equally if not more diverse array of often relentlessly hostile
critics.1 The first part of this story is better known than the latter
part of the narrative around which this paper is framed,2 though
much remains to be understood about the manner in which Gandhi,
notwithstanding his rather strident views on modernity, industrial
civilisation, materialism, sexual relations, indeed on everything that
is ordinarily encompassed under the rubric of social and political
life, drew to himself people from very different walks of life.
Among his most intimate disciples, who, it is no exaggeration
to say, surrendered their life to the Mahatma, one thinks of the
daughter of an English admiral, raised on the music of Beethoven
in the lap of luxury and immense privilege; a Tamilian Christian,
trained as an accountant and economist, who was among the first
Indians to earn a degree in business administration; a Gujarati
villager, son of a schoolteacher, who was embraced by Gandhi
when they first met in 1917 as something like a long-lost son; and
an Anglican clergyman, arriving in India from Britain on what
was destined to become a one-way ticket, who came to the realisation
that Gandhi was a better Christian than many who call
themselves Christians.3
Indeed, the phenomenon – registered as a fact but never quite
unravelled – of Gandhi’s followers, has been of extraordinarily
great interest to his detractors, such as Vidya Naipaul, who are
certain that the alleged mediocrity of the master’s disciples suggests
that the source itself radiated much less light than is commonly
imagined. To be sure, one does not have to search far and
wide to find ready explanations for Gandhi’s ability to draw people
to one or more of his causes and passions. There is the supposed
fact of Gandhi’s “charisma”,4 which public commentators
and political scientists seize upon much as Indologists seized
upon caste or the village community when they sought to explain
the social structures of Indian life. By the 1920s and 1930s, that is
in Gandhi’s own lifetime, it had also become something of an
article of faith to pronounce that Gandhi’s message was resonating
with tens of millions around the world who were weary of
materialism and violence. This was before most of the atrocities
of a violence-filled century, from the Holocaust down to Bosnia
and Rwanda, had been perpetrated. Since there is, apparently, no
end to our weariness, Gandhi’s “charisma” should continue to be
drawing people into the ambit of his worldview. If one wished to be
more inventive, one could adopt the view of one venerable Indian
writer who, regretful that even a once manly race such as the
British had succumbed to the myth of the Mahatma, attributed
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october 4, 2008 EPW Economic & P 56 olitical Weekly
Gandhi’s success in luring countless number of innocents to the
fact that humankind is contemptibly fickle and unable to sustain
the rigorous demands of a reasoned worldview.5
Interesting as is the subject of leaders and followers, I shall
leave aside those ruminations and turn instead to Gandhi’s critics.
The most obvious reason for doing so, I wish to suggest, is that
Gandhi appears to be a more, not less, compelling figure in the
face of criticism. The media was much less pervasive in Gandhi’s
lifetime than it is in ours, but it is not often appreciated that every
aspect of Gandhi’s life was scrutinised in excruciating detail ever
since he became burdened with Mahatmahood.
An Open Book
Since Gandhi himself never much abided by the distinction
between the private and the public, he also opened himself up to
criticism. It is doubtful, for example, that anyone would have
known anything of that very small heap of indiscretions which he
describes in his autobiography and later writings – the theft of a
few gold coins from the family home; the visit to a brothel from
where he emerged, predictably, with his virginity intact; the
wretched encounter, which commenced and ended in his mind via
the belly, with a dead goat; the lust that drove him to Kasturba’s
bed while his father lay dying; and the immense disappointment
he experienced in his 60s when he was painfully brought to the
awareness that he had not yet mastered the sexual instinct –
had Gandhi not himself rendered his life, in his words, into
an open book.
If Mahatmahood can only be tested in slums and the spaces
carved out by modern politics, then no extenuating circumstances
can be pleaded in an endeavour to create a hermetic
space for the notion of a saintly life without blemishes. Writing
on March 5, 1925 to the prominent Muslim clergyman Maulana
Zafar Ali Khan, who had objected to Gandhi’s description of
punishment by stoning as something that could not be defended
on the mere ground of its purported sanction in the Koran, Gandhi
unhesitatingly declared that “even the teachings themselves of
the Koran cannot be exempt from criticism. Every true scripture
only gains by criticism. After all we have no other guide but our
reason to tell us what may be regarded as revealed and what may
not be” (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG) 30:336).6 If
Gandhi was prepared to accept that even scripture gains from
criticism, there is every warrant for supposing that he would have
taken a similar view of criticism directed at his own life.
We can entertain, as well, a more political reading of the idiom
of criticism. One of the most endearing images of Gandhi is of
someone who nursed the wounded, nurtured the young, and furnished
solace to those who appear to have been defeated by life.
The particular conception of rights (and corresponding duties) to
which he held in the early stretches of his political life led him to
raise an ambulance corps during the Boer War and subsequently
the Zulu Rebellion.7 He was always present to provide, in the sentimental-
laden jargon of the day, “the healing touch” on the various
occasions when the streets in one town or another were
rocked by communal conflict. “We will not run to him for advice
and seek solace from him”, said Nehru over All-India Radio, hours
after Gandhi’s life had been extinguished, and yet the light that
had illumined the country would continue to “give solace to
innumerable hearts”.8 His grand-niece has furnished what is perhaps
the most touching portrait of Gandhi’s tenderness when, in
a book called Bapu, My Mother, she described how the old man
attended to her daily needs and never for a moment let her think
about how she had been orphaned. But if we are thus inclined to
think of how Gandhi rendered comfort to the afflicted, attentiveness
to Gandhian hermeneutics requires that we should pay heed
to his political and moral ambition to afflict the comfortable. In
saying this, I do not, of course, intend to reduce him to a gadfly or
mere irritant, or suggest that he is most productively viewed as a
slayer of dragons and mocker of all pretensions.
My contention is that Gandhi furnishes no solace or anchor
to those who are accustomed or inclined to view the world in
Manichaean categories, and that one of the many reasons why
Gandhi creates a profound uneasiness among the many constituencies
which had to deal with him – Brahmins and Sudras, Sanatanists
and Dalits, Indians and the English, Hindus and Muslims,
liberals and Marxists, feminists and patriarchs, communalists
and secularists, modernisers and traditionalists, developmentalists
and ecologists, even militarists and pacifists – is that he came
to embrace the idea of an open-ended conversation even as he
stood unequivocally for certain moral, political, and epistemological
positions. Many people concur that Gandhi gifted, not as a
mere abstraction but as a political practice, the idea of ahimsa
(non-violence) to the modern world; others have spoken of
Gandhi’s gift of the fight.9 No more profound gift did Gandhi
bestow than the gift of being able to live with ambiguity. It may
well be this sensibility that Gandhi inherited from the myth-laden
world of the epics and the puranas.
To enter into Gandhi’s world is to come to the awareness that
paradoxes leap from every page of his life. If one were to place
Gandhi within the framework of analytical philosophy, one might
perhaps productively distinguish between several kinds of paradoxes,
for example those generated by his own moral and political
practices, those imposed upon him by the act of interpretation,
and those arising from the disjunction between orthodoxy
and orthopraxy. Let me dwell upon some of these without discrimination.
One cannot think of any biographical note ever
penned on Gandhi, for example of the kind routinely encountered
in encyclopaedias, that does not somewhere describe him
as an Indian nationalist. Supposing that he were, as he is often
and not unjustly, described as the chief architect of the Indian
independence movement, it is striking that alone among Indian
nationalists he had almost nothing invested in the ideology of the
nation state. The politics of the nation state is inextricably bound
to a zero-sum game, and the vocabulary of “winners” and “losers”,
which has an absolute stranglehold on modern politics, is one that
Gandhi entirely disowned. The 1920s and 1930s, notwithstanding
the rifts and dissensions within the Congress party, were the
days of the Gandhi Congress. Yet he was not even a due-paying
member of the Congress. With the arrival of independence, the
Congress was finally in the position of being able to taste the
fruits of power. However, in his so-called last will and testament,
written a mere few days before his death, Gandhi advocated the
dismemberment of the Congress party as a political organisation
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 4, 2008 57
– a view not calculated to earn him the goodwill of politicians
who, as Gandhi had predicted 40 years earlier in Hind Swaraj,
were desirous of having English rule without the English.
As many others before me have observed, Nathuram Godse
engaged in what may be called a permissive assassination.10 The
aftermath of Gandhi’s death was equally drenched in irony.
Many people knew Gandhi as a Hindu, a point underscored by
his political antagonist, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who at Gandhi’s
death sent a carefully crafted condolence message to the Indian
government expressing his sorrow at the death of “Mr Gandhi”,
“one of the greatest men”, as Jinnah put it, “produced by the
Hindu community”. The supreme irony of that message is better
relished if one recalls that Gandhi’s assassin was a Hindu
ideologue who strenuously objected to Gandhi’s alleged betrayal
of the Hindus. But Jinnah was certain that “there can be
no controversy in the face of death”.11
It is, of course, quite possible to argue that Gandhi’s lofty conception
of a moral politics was not incompatible with his understanding
that power is sometimes never more effectively wielded
than when one appears to have disowned it. Much has been written
on this subject apropos the Indian past and Hindu prototypes of
the Brahmin and the Kshatriya, albeit from a largely Indological
standpoint. In India, it is alleged, the renouncer is rather sui
generis, exercising a mesmerising hold over his or her flock: he,
rather than the warrior, exemplifies the true model of masculine
power in the temporal realm. Churchill’s (in)famous invocation
of Gandhi as a half-naked fakir of a type frequently encountered
in Oriental nations, purporting to parley on equal terms with the
representative of the king-emperor, which is almost always read
as an expression of the sheer contempt that an arrogant Englishman
had for an effeminate specimen of a subject race, calls to
mind this particular conception of political power that cannot
quite be embraced under the various categories through which
power generally operates.
Churchill saw in Gandhi’s exercise of power a particularly
Oriental variety of chicanery; nor could he countenance the
thought that a modern democracy does not necessarily have the
last word on the legitimate exercise of power. Yet even this much
may be more of a concession to Gandhi’s critics than is warranted,
since Gandhi was both close to, and distant from, power. The
revolutionary’s dream of capturing power did not interest him;
and yet, despite being deeply wedded to democratic sentiments, he
wielded control over errant members of the Congress party as
well as his own personal entourage like a stern autocrat. We
should perhaps multiply the layers of the anomalies that Gandhi’s
life presents to us, thus viewing him with considerable justification
as a warrior who forsook arms, and as an advocate of ahimsa
who was desirous of forging the satyagrahis under him into a
highly disciplined force that would have been the envy of a general.
It is in the domain of religion, nonetheless, that the paradoxes
in Gandhi’s life appear in the starkest terms. He described himself
as a devotee of Ram, and venerated the Ramacaritmanas of
Tulsidas, but he unequivocally rejected passages in Tulsidas that
he found offensive or degrading to women and the lower castes.
Though he viewed himself as much of a Hindu as anyone else,
Gandhi seldom visited temples and, it is safe to say, he did not
generally view temple worship as intrinsic to Hinduism: if anything,
considering the care with which he tended to the body,
he would have agreed with the 11th century Virasaiva saint
Basavanna: “My legs are pillars,/the body the shrine, the head a
cupola of gold”.12 One can doubtless find passages in his voluminous
writings which are contrary to what I am suggesting – and
let me underscore “voluminous” here, not merely because his collected
writings run to 98 large volumes, but because the whole is
comprised largely of pieces that are characterised by their pithiness
and brevity. “Some form of common worship, and a common
place of worship”, Gandhi wrote in the early 1920s, “appear to be
a human necessity” (CWMG 28: 432). Much stronger is this passage,
from an article he wrote in the early 1930s: “Just as human
beings cannot think of the atman without the body, similarly they
cannot think of religion without temples. The Hindu religion
cannot survive without temples” (CWMG 54: 128). However, in the
same article, he wrote in a rather matter-of-fact tone: “I feel no
need to go to temples; hence I do not visit them” (CWMG 54: 127).
Lest anyone should think that Gandhi merely viewed visits to
temples as necessary for the masses, while quite unnecessary for
people of elevated spirituality such as himself, it is necessary to
add that he commenced the same article with the observation
that “I do not consider it a mark of greatness that I do not visit
temples”. It is in this context that his sharp differences with the
Dalit leader, B R Ambedkar, over the question of temple-entry
take on a rather different hue than one customarily finds in the
literature, where the conflict is largely presented as one over the
politics of representation and as an attempt by a bourgeois Hindu
leader to prevent Dalits from embracing more radical positions.
While deploring the immense disabilities under which Dalits
laboured, and mindful of the fact that they were prohibited from
entering many Hindu temples, Ambedkar nonetheless viewed
the entire question of temple-entry as peripheral to their lives.
Any gains made by the Dalits were purely symbolic, and even
then transitory: as Ambedkar was to write in a trenchant critique
in 1945, “after a short spurt of activity in the direction of removing
untouchability by throwing open temples and wells the Hindu
mind returned to its original state.”13 On his part, for someone
who never experienced any need to go to a temple, Gandhi
emerged as a remarkably strong advocate of the right of others to
worship at temples. His antagonists within the Dalit community
have continued to view Gandhi as the great imposter, as someone
who falsely claimed to speak on their behalf and in their language,
though it is hard to resist the view that his position on
temple-entry betokened his ability to embrace the religious view
on the ground.
Object of Hate?
Having, I think, furnished a lengthy preamble to this paper, let
me advert to its title and commence with the proposition that
Gandhi was someone who everyone loved to hate. There is,
needless to say, no singular Gandhi that everyone loved to hate,
and the advocates of many critical worldviews on Gandhi have
all authored their own Gandhi. This is far from being as
unreasonable
as it sounds, for if environmentalists, pacifists,
conscientious objectors, non-violent activists, nudists, naturopaths,
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vegetarians, prohibitionists, social reformers, internationalists,
moralists, trade union leaders, political dissidents, hunger
strikers, anarchists, luddites, celibates, anti-globalisation activists,
pluralists, ecumenists, walkers, and many others have at one
time or another claimed Gandhi as their patron saint, or at least
drawn inspiration from him, then one is also free to choose the
Gandhi that one dislikes. It may even come as a surprise to many,
who know of Gandhi only as a prophet of non-violence, a beacon
light to a beleaguered humanity, and an instigator of change
through peaceful means, three among other sentiments which
have ceaselessly circulated about him, to discover that Gandhi
provoked, and continues to provoke, considerable resentment,
and often sharper reactions, among a wide swathe of his and
our contemporaries.
The fear that Gandhi’s reputation for saintliness would eclipse
public memory of his shortcomings and failures has been a tremendous
motor driving Gandhi’s critics, and equally Gandhi’s own
proclivity towards detail, attentiveness to which he considered as
important as immersion into large political questions, has been
effectively turned against him. As the two volumes of Nirad
Chaudhuri’s autobiography amply demonstrate, his virulent
criticism of Gandhi, fully enabled by the author’s mastery over
the satirical mode, pivots around such things as the hard and unforgiving
countenances on the faces of Gandhi’s assistants, his
costly and quirky attachment to his goats, and the allegedly
picnic-like atmosphere that surrounded Gandhi’s funeral. All of
these enriching details lead Chaudhuri to ask, “Will the hand of
truth at any time reduce the vile myth of Gandhi to the putrid
mass it deserves to be?”14 In a simpler vein, and in an idiom more
characteristic of the United States, where even supposed star
academics write books with titles such as Telling the Truth about
History, the critic Richard Grenier, something of a lesser Thomas
Friedman (if one could imagine such a thing) in his own time,
furiously set about trying to demolish the hagiographic portrait
of Gandhi that emerged from Attenborough’s film with a book
entitled, The Gandhi Nobody Knows.15
Gandhi’s critics, one might say, divide into two groups. The
usual tack among the greater majority of them has been to focus
on particular positions that he adopted, or on certain phenomena
and issues on which he is alleged to have held views that are construed
as inadequate if not outrageous. By way of illustration, the
briefest mention of Gandhi’s pronouncements on the Bihar earthquake
of 1934, his support of the Khilafat movement, and his
oft-expressed longing, especially in the twilight of his life, for
“Ram Rajya” will suffice.
On Bihar Earthquake
When an earthquake devastated northern Bihar in 1934, Gandhi
publicly described it as a form of God’s chastisement of Hindus for
their oppression of Harijans.16 It is not only his friend Tagore, gravely
puzzled why Bihar had to bear the brunt of God’s displeasure,17
who was scandalised by Gandhi’s open invitation to the people to
be superstitious enough to believe that a law of compensation
prevails at all times.18 Down to the present day, Gandhi’s views
on the earthquake are adduced as evidence of his disdain for
modern science and his readiness to harness blind faith.
The objections to his resort to religious idioms of expression
have been equally strenuous, if different in some respects, and
partake of the view that Gandhi erred grievously in dragging religion
into the political domain. Gandhi embraced the demand,
which first originated with the All India Khilafat Conference, to
preserve the Turkish ruler in his position as the Muslim world’s
Khalifa (or Caliph) as his own as the British set about dismembering
the Ottoman empire following the conclusion of the first
world war. Even those not wholly indisposed towards Gandhi,
such as the writer Mukul Kesavan, have denounced Gandhi’s
“bad faith” and “opportunism” in acting as an overly enthusiastic
proponent of a lost and reactionary cause. Kesavan argues, as
many before him have done so, that Gandhi plunged into the
Khilafat movement because he “saw it as a quick, cheap way of
getting the Muslims on board” and because it permitted him a way
to capture the Congress party at a critical stage in the nationalist
movement.19 Gandhi, on this narrative, proved incapable of controlling
the passions he had stirred, and he was never wholly able
to abandon the temptation to appeal to the religious sensibilities
of people whom he knew to be easily excitable. He might have
claimed that Ram Rajya was only an expression of a utopian
dream about India whose citizens would be self-governing
according to the highest principles of moral and political life, but
did not his frequent invocations of Ram Rajya signify his anxiety
that he should be seen as being beloved of the masses?
To each of these criticisms, a rejoinder is certainly possible.
However indefensible appear to be Gandhi’s pronouncements on
the Bihar earthquake, any criticism which posits a stark opposition
of faith and reason, superstition and science, seems hardly
any more satisfactory. A geologist might offer a compelling account
of how tectonic plates move and under what circumstances
they crash into each other, but the craving we have for meaning,
for reading acts of nature in the light of human experience and
the language of poetry, is not so easily exhausted. In a spirited
response that Gandhi offered to Tagore in the pages of Harijan,
he appears to have worked in the Indian philosophical mode of
‘purvapaksha’, anticipating the objections to his own argument.
“Visitations like droughts, floods, earthquakes and the like”,
wrote Gandhi, “though they seem to have only physical origins,
are, for me, somehow connected with man’s morals. Therefore, I
instinctively felt that the earthquake was a visitation for the sin
of untouchability”. Crucially, with an awareness of how his own
argument might be turned against him, he adds: “Of course, Sanatanists
[that is, adherents of an orthodox conception of Hinduism]
have a perfect right to say that it was due to my crime of preaching
against untouchability”.20 Moreover, though the doctrine of
karma rests on the notion of individual responsibility, Indian
social theory had never offered any account of collective responsibility.
Gandhi’s reading of the Bihar earthquake can be seen as
an unprecedented effort in that direction.
Similarly, it may be that our conception of the gift is so impoverished,
if the gift is always impossible and every political transaction
has to be construed as some form of exchange that we cannot
but think of Gandhi’s politics as also bereft of altruism. It is
not at all clear to me that, in supporting the Khilafat movement,
Gandhi sought in exchange a promise among Muslims to support
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“cow protection”. I do not say that Gandhi did not hope, through
his championing of the Khilafat movement, to bring Muslims
into the mainstream of national political life, but that is quite
different than the conception of him as an opportunist waiting to
extract his pound of flesh.
There are many other criticisms of Gandhi along these lines,
always riveted on certain events, particular shortcomings, or
political and cultural practices with which he was associated.
Much critical scrutiny, for example, has been directed lately on
the tumultuous relations that he, the Father to a nation but
apparently much less so to his own family, had with his own
sons, his unabashed description of himself as a believer in both
‘sanatan dharma’ and ‘varnashrama’, and his sexual puritanism.
But a second group of critics, whose views are most recently recapitulated
and interpreted in a collection called Indian Critiques of
Gandhi,21 have been less fixated on particular issues and have
been animated rather by specific world views. Gandhi’s thoughts
on trusteeship, to take one example, were viewed as repellent by
his Marxist critics, but these same critics were just as likely to
note that Gandhi never lacked bourgeois patrons, that while
critical of materialism he lacked a critique of the world system
of capitalism, that his repugnance for violence made him averse
to class warfare, and that Gandhi, enamoured of some ideal
conception of the Indian village, was shockingly insensitive to
the travails of urban India.
In the remainder of this paper, then, I shall turn to a very brief
consideration of some of the critical perspectives brought to bear
upon Gandhi by those who describe themselves as feminists,
Marxists, secularists, and developmentalists, or as proponents of
some other encompassing world view.
Feminist Reading
Let me turn first to the feminist reading of Gandhi, a reading
fraught with considerable ambivalence and shared in part by others
who, even if they may not be feminists, consider Gandhi’s
views on women as unspeakably retrograde. The publisher and
writer S Anand has recently written of Gandhi’s Ram Rajya as a
charter for the oppression of women. Anand commences with
Rama: “At the drop of a bow, Rama is suspicious of Sita’s honour.
He repeatedly tries what we today call ‘honour killing’”, and
proceeds to argue that women who are today accused of infidelity
and branded as witches or beaten up mercilessly experience an
oppression similar to what Sita had to undergo at the hands of
Rama, rather mysteriously held up as the paragon of mankind.
Such was Ram Rajya, “a reign of social terror” for “women, Shudras
and untouchables”. Anand then moves seamlessly to Gandhi:
“This is also Gandhi’s Ram, for Gandhi’s attitude towards women
was no different”.22 He adduces as evidence an incident from
Gandhi’s Tolstoy Farm days, where the harassment of two young
girls by a boy then led Gandhi to the conclusion that if the young
women were shorn of their fine long hair, it would “give them a
sense of security and at the same time sterilise the sinner’s eyes”.
Anand concludes provocatively, “Dump Gandhi’s ‘Tolstoy Farm’;
give me Osho’s commune any day”.
Not everyone who has written on Gandhi and his relation to
women has been similarly unhindered by subtlety of thought or
interpretation; indeed, feminist readers of Gandhi have generally
displayed ambivalence, which can be charted in various registers,
rather than outright hostility. Some commentators have argued
that Gandhi did not merely have difficult relations with his wife,
a common enough occurrence in marriages, but also that his relationship
with Kasturba was laced with violence and consequently
puts a significant damper on his claim that in all his thoughts and
actions he only allowed himself to be governed by the principles
of satya and ahimsa. Thus Erik Erikson, in his study of “Gandhi’s
Truth”, points to the disjunction between the non-violent struggle
that Gandhi waged against the British and the psychological
violence to which Kasturba and the inmates of Sabarmati Ashram
were subjected.23 Following Erikson’s cue that Gandhi may have
sacrificed people to truth, Carol Gilligan, in her acclaimed work
In a Different Voice, likens Gandhi to the “biblical Abraham”.
Against the patriarchs Gandhi and Abraham, both of whom
were prepared to sacrifice their sons in the name of some higher
truth, Gilligan posits the woman who appeared before Solomon
and “verifies her motherhood by relinquishing truth in order to
save the life of the child”.24 Nor is it a small matter, so goes the
argument, that whatever the ease with which he conducted
himself around women, Gandhi may have found it difficult to
achieve intimacy with his wife, and that in the last three decades
of his life Gandhi may have been closer emotionally to women
other than Kasturba.
Many feminists, Indians more so than those in the west, are
appreciative of his efforts in bringing women into the struggle for
freedom, and they have understood that Gandhi’s recourse to
non-violent struggle facilitated their participation in it.25 Their
investment in the political life also furnished them with freedom
from the stranglehold of marriage, as the autobiographies of
many middle class women testify. But if one of feminism’s greatest
struggles has been to resist the ascription of qualities and virtues
as purely (or even largely) feminine or masculine, then clearly
Gandhi’s thinking appears to pose insurmountable problems.
Gandhi did not doubt, and he is amply on record in this respect,
that women, partly as mothers of the human race and nurturers,
were naturally more inclined towards non-violence; in a much
stronger version of this argument, he wrote that they scarcely required
any training in non-violent resistance, as nature had
equipped them with all the necessary advantages.
Women could be leaders of a non-violent struggle, Gandhi
averred, and variations of this argument, and appeals to men to
learn from women, appear everywhere in his writings. But the
indubitable fact remains that in handpicking several dozen companions
to accompany him to Dandi in defiance of the salt law,
Gandhi failed to include a single woman in that august group.
The omission was far from being accidental, and is rooted both in
Gandhi’s distinction between non-violence of the weak and nonviolence
of the strong and in a certain notion of what, for lack of a
better word, we might call chivalry. The inclusion of women in
his group, Gandhi was to state, would have been calculated to
deter the British from retaliating; but any advantage so gained
was no test of adherence to ahimsa, since the non-violent resister
must withstand, even invite, the gravest provocations. To the extent
that women are non-violent from instinct, habit, or custom, they
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exemplify non-violence of the weak – much as does a nation that,
like India, had been forcibly disarmed. Only those who have the
capacity to resist, but desist from pursuing that course of action,
can claim the mantle of non-violence.
Feminists have also been profoundly troubled, even enraged,
by Gandhi’s insistence that men and women were to occupy different
if “complementary” spheres in life. He thought it unlikely
that a woman would want to be the bread winner of the family,
and was quite certain that, as he stated in his answer to a query
he had received in 1935 about a woman’s role in maintaining the
family, “the duty of a woman is to look after what in English is
called the hearth and home”.26 It cannot be said that most other
men, whether among elites or the working class, whether in
England, India, or elsewhere, would at that time have thought
any differently from Gandhi, but it is imperative that Gandhi not
be sheltered behind the argument that he was, at least in this
respect, very much a creature of his times. If we should accept
that Gandhi was well ahead of his times in most matters,
from his prescient outlook about perniciousness of ecological
devastation to his understanding that violence breeds more
vicious cycles of violence, why should we settle for the claim
that Gandhi ought to judged by his times when his views on
women are in question?
The various anthologies of Gandhi’s writings on women – and
anthologies of Gandhi’s writings, I might add parenthetically, are
something of a cottage industry – are full of his homilies on what
ought to be their position in society. But here, as in so many other
critical domains, my submission is that Gandhi is much more elusive
than is suggested by the critiques directed at him. Let me return
to the passage previously cited, where the duty of a woman
to home and hearth is delineated. Gandhi continues, “Man has
never performed this task. He has been content to build forts and
ramparts for protection. Will he come forward to protect the
home? And even if he does so, what sort of protection will he
offer?” As man looks outward to society, woman looks inward
to her family.
But just as there is no reason to suppose that satyagraha directed
at the nation state is more difficult or ennobling than satyagraha
at the level of the family and the community, so there is
no compelling reason at all why we should be seduced into thinking
that the builders of forts engage in more constructive or significant
work. Indeed, men are so impoverished and trapped by
their social conditioning that the militarist metaphors come to
occupy an inescapable place in their family lives. “Even in a
home”, the passage continues, “he will build fortresses and walls.
He will make holes within these to fire bullets from and put glass
and nails on walls. In the end, the children of the house will meet
their death by climbing upon these” (CWMG 67: 125).
One would be quite justified in thinking that Gandhi, whose
intimate familiarity with prisons did not extend to the high-security
prisons of the modern type, and whose acquaintance with cities
did not extend to the gated enclaves of exclusive communities in
Delhi, Los Angeles, Washington, New York, or Johannesburg, had
nonetheless been able to provide an accurate cartography of the
security-stricken modern city. However uneasy many are likely
to feel at his strict demarcation of the respective duties of men
and women, it is clear that he took a starkly dim view of men
filled with their own self-importance. Men who turn their own
homes into forts that trap their children have scarcely anything
to teach women. If in Gandhi’s estimation the work of a bhangi
added at least as much to a society’s worth as the work of doctors,
lawyers, or pandits, the work of women at home was likewise
worth not any less than the work of men. Nor did Gandhi, crucially,
adopt the position that different duties had some relation to differential
rights: thus, in the same piece, he avers that while their
duties may be different, “their rights are the same. If a woman
sets out in shirt and trousers with a gun in her hand, a man has
no right to stop her. In such matters men and women enjoy equal
rights.” A woman’s duty did not demand of her that she take up
the political life, but she had every right to do so. Consequently,
Gandhi had no difficulty in reconciling the representation of women
as guardians of the home and hearth with the political reality, to
which women such as Sarojini Naidu, Vijayalakshmi Pandit,
Sucheta Kripalani, Usha Mehta and Aruna Asaf Ali gave vibrant
expression that they may be at the helm of political movements.
Gandhi had, then, a deep aversion to double standards so
rampant in every culture, and one can extend this argument to
sexual relations, another domain where his views are infused
with notoriety. While scornful of Gandhi’s puritanism, and his
(as Jawaharlal Nehru and many others after him have put it) unnatural
repugnance towards the sexual life, feminists may nonetheless
perhaps take heed of the fact that, in insisting that men
were to forswear sexual relations as much as women, Gandhi did
not at least endorse varying standards of sexual conduct for men
and women. Nothing in Gandhi’s writings or actions even remotely
lends itself to the view that he insisted on sexual probity
among women but turned his face the other way when it came to
the sexual conduct of men.
At least one prominent Indian feminist has argued that Gandhi’s
pronouncements, even if they do not bring cheer to most women,
may be read in a very different light when viewed against the
backdrop of the vibrant possibilities that Gandhi’s conduct
created for women.
Gandhi, unlike people who usually enter politics, was typically
much more radical in conduct than in his speech – indeed more
radical than even most reformers who claim to treat women on
an equal basis.27 Like many feminists and activists, Madhu Kishwar
and Ketu Katrak, among others, are also prepared to concede
that Gandhi feminised the nationalist struggle.28 While I am persuaded
by these arguments, none of them bring us sufficiently
close to a very different layer of readings, which I have addressed
at length in my writings and will therefore not take up at any
length at this juncture,29 that would alert us to Gandhi’s own
femininity. To take one instance, the women who partook of the
sexual experiments that Gandhi conducted late in his life, joining
him in bed naked, were unquestionably inclined to view him as
womanlike. The supposition that behind the Mahatma there was
an old man with dirty thoughts, or that his experiment, considering
his exceptional position in Indian life and the, contrariwise,
highly impressionable age of young women living in awe of him,
constituted naked sexual exploitation is one that his critics have
eagerly entertained, even if the women who shared his bed with
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him or others who were intimately familiar with his life and
thoughts never adopted anything remotely close to that view.
Whatever one’s scepticism about Gandhi’s varied relationships
with women, or his views about the sexual division of labour, it is
important to recognise that there are significant feminist thinkers
who have been attracted by Gandhi’s femininity. Phyllis Mack,
following the work of the anthropologist Victor Turner, has
argued that Gandhi, much like the Quakers and Franciscans,
derived his very model of radical action from “feminine behaviour”,
from what Turner termed anti-structure: so feminine humility
and chastity were to be used in the interest of a spiritualised
politics, and “the tasks of daily life”, which almost invariably fall
upon women, were to be elevated, as indeed they were, “to a
holy discipline”. Mack rightfully concludes that the example of
Gandhi shows that “‘feminine’ domestic habits of thought and
activity may be transposed into the public sphere and transformed
into highly effective forms of activism by both women
and men”.30 The work of other feminist thinkers, though they may
not have drawn explicitly on Gandhi, extends Mack’s insights
further and suggests why a “rehabilitation” of Gandhi in feminist
thinking may yet take place. Gandhi’s life was wedded to an ethic
of care: however flawed his political judgments, and however unattractive
some of the ideas by which he stood, it is transparently
clear that Gandhi retained an extraordinary ability to nurse the
wounded, minister to the sick, nurture the young, and bring into
the orbit of everyday life those, such as victims of leprosy, who had
been shunned by society.31 As some feminist writers have argued,
moral issues are to be approached not only through the language
of justice, which conceives of the individual as the bearer of
rights, but also through the ethic of care, which posits the primacy
of a social self and the interdependence of human beings.
Marxists’ Critique
Having, I think, sufficiently hinted at some of the principal contours
of the feminist engagement with Gandhi, let me turn, in the
concluding part of this paper, to a succinct consideration of some
of the difficulties that Marxists, developmentalists and modernisers
have had with Gandhi. Their criticisms are legion – and, it is
necessary to add, utterly predictable. They run the gamut from
observations on Gandhi’s own lifestyle, the cult-like following
that he supposedly attracted, his disempowering and impractical
attachment to non-violence, and his failure to recognise class as
the pre-eminent category of social, economic and political relations,
to his unstinting opposition to industrial civilisation, his
inability to carry a mass movement to a successful conclusion, his
inadequate comprehension of economic institutions, his defence
of obscurantist or oppressive social practices and institutions,
and – most of all, as his assassin outlined in his own defence
at his trial – the utter disjunction and bulging gap between
Gandhi’s world view and the nature of modern politics. Though
well-intentioned people continue to this day to be animated by
the subject of Gandhi’s relevance, Nathuram Godse had already
declared Gandhi to be a complete irrelevance. Had Godse permitted
Gandhi to die a natural death, one suspects that he would have
been more effective in fulfilling his ambition of consigning
Gandhi to near oblivion. But that is another story. In justifying
his assassination of Gandhi, Godse sought to explain that “Indian
politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be practical, able
to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces…[The]
nation would be free to follow the course founded on reason
which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building.”32
At the lower end of the left-Marxist spectrum are arguments
that converge on the personality of Gandhi. It has been argued
that Gandhi was too friendly with the captains of industry and
allowed himself to be patronised by rich industrialists who subsidised
his ashrams and pet projects. This sentiment is most
famously, if inadvertently, captured in the quip attributed to one
of his greatest admirers and followers, Sarojini Naidu, “It costs a
lot of money to keep Gandhiji in poverty”.33 Saumyendranath
Tagore mocked the idea of the “happy family” that was said to
emerge from Gandhi’s readiness to engage capitalists in conversation,
and did not doubt that the bourgeois leaders of Indian
industry were thrilled at the ease with which they could exploit
“the prophet of the bourgeoisie”, and, more importantly, the
workers who were susceptible to Gandhi’s charm. “Whenever
there is unrest among the workers”, wrote Saumyendranath in
the 1920s, “the millowners of Ahmedabad are in the habit of
requisitioning Mahatma Gandhi to use his influence to settle the
disputes. With the consent and support of Gandhiji, some of his
followers had taken upon themselves the task of organising the
workers into unions. The poor workers, unconscious of their class
interests, have readily fallen prey to this clever move”.34
Nearly every argument in this vein eventually moves
towards the expression of the sentiment that Gandhi became
the chief agent of false consciousness. In the colourful words of
Saumyendranath’s more famous compatriot, M N Roy, Gandhi
fed a hungry people “spiritual moonshine”. As he elaborates,
the “cult of non-violence”, running rampant through Indian
nationalism, “is the clever stratagem of the upper class to head
off a revolutionary convulsion, without which nationalism will
never come into its own…”35 Thanks to Gandhi, we, the pitiful
people of India, never had a Lenin or Mao to lead us to a glorious
revolution – nor, I might add, to the resplendent deaths of millions,
all in the name of development and modernisation. If only we
had had a revolution of the French or Bolshevik type, we might at
least have been a fulfilled people; but that dream and aspiration
need not be altogether relinquished, as there is still time to emulate
Mao’s successors. This enlightened view, to which three generations
of Marxist historians and commentators have given their
generous assent, passes for criticism among Gandhi’s detractors.
Never mind the millions slaughtered in Stalin’s kulaks, or in
Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’: the god of development must
perforce be appeased.
There is, of course, much more to be said about why Marxists
and the fond advocates of modern civilisation have been so dismissive
of Gandhi, but much of that would be an elaboration of
the cues that I have already offered. Some critiques of Gandhi
will not go away, and in closing let me summon two points I have
only made in passing. It has been an article of faith for those who
view Gandhi as having had a deleterious effect on civil society to
argue that, in failing to keep religion and politics apart, and in
frequently resorting to Hindu idioms in his public speeches,
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Gandhi forever contaminated, communalised, and fragmented
the public sphere. The Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Mayawati,
doubtless a paragon of the idea of unity, recently charged Gandhi
with dividing society along caste lines.36 Another critic harps on
Gandhi’s Hinduness with these words: “Whereas Gandhi statues
always depict him with the Gita, Ambedkar statues always have
him holding the Constitution, a modern text that espouses
equality. Ram Rajya is a dystopian relic. Bahujan Samaj should
be our utopian ethic.”37 Gandhi died on January 30, 1948, and the
Constitution of India did not then exist: so much for the fidelity to
facts among the scientific-minded modernisers of our times! Had
statues of Gandhi shown him with the Constitution, we can be
certain that his detractors would have complained bitterly of the
abuse of history and the Hindu’s tendency to trade in myths.
However, it is also true that having over the course of the last
two decades witnessed the remarkably swift ascendancy of
the Hindu right, and come to the realisation that Gandhi’s
Hinduism may be best calculated to steer the faith’s more militant
advocates away from the fulfilment of their political ambitions,
at least a few Marxist and secularist critics are suddenly
discovering in Gandhi a figure of ecumenism, sanity, and religious
harmony. Since the proponents of a highly masculinised
Hinduism have openly derided Gandhi as, in their own language,
an eunuch who preferred castrated Muslims to wholesome
Hindus,38 his critics infer that Gandhi’s soft Hinduism is about
as close as one can get to no Hinduism at all in a man who
clearly held himself to be a Hindu.
Modernisers’ Critique
A similarly complete disavowal of Gandhi has become difficult to
sustain on the part of those who are unrepentantly committed to
modernisation and industrial civilisation. Once wholly contemptuous
of Gandhi’s critique of industrial society, and prone to rubbish
him as a relic of a bygone period of human evolution, some
modernisers are now viewing Gandhi as someone who was unusually
sensitive to what E P Thompson characterised as the “moral
economy of the peasant”. Now that the dam of development has
broken, figuratively and otherwise, Gandhi is being brought back
through such ideas as “sustainable development”, “development
with a human face”, and “alternative technologies”. The time
may not be very far when even Gandhi’s idea of “trusteeship”,
which all but the obdurate and true-blooded Gandhians have
completely obscured, is resuscitated – not, I might add, as some
kind of formula for keeping the peace between the owners and
tillers of land, or between capitalists and workers, but as a way
of enhancing our ecological awareness that we are morally
obligated to act as the trustees of the multiple inheritances
bequeathed to us by previous generations. I wonder if Gandhi’s
oft-stated desire to reduce his life to zero, or his full-bodied
embrace of near nakedness, also did not arise in part from his
desire to himself act as a trustee of nature: “The earth provides
enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed”.
Though it has become a commonplace among those who style
themselves as public commentators and even scholars of Gandhi
to diminish him with the observation that he was more a man of
action than a thinker, one doubts that very many of them would
have been capable of the nuanced notion of trusteeship that
Gandhi brought into the dialectic by keeping dissenting strands
of western thought for which the west itself then had little
appetite in safe custody for use by future generations of Europeans
more receptive to divergent histories of their past. Even as India’s
colonisers were documenting, recording, interpreting, and most
significantly inventing an Indian past, Mohandas Gandhi was
acting as an archivist and trustee of European intellectual traditions
that Europe had all but trashed.
And so to the coda. It is neither necessary nor desirable to aver
that Gandhi was his own best critic as it would endow him with a
self-sufficiency that he would have disowned. But it is nonetheless
palpably true that his conception of the truth remained
hermeneutic, dialectical and dialogical. This is just as much as
the case with his vegetarianism and his advocacy of prohibition
as it is with the political choices that he exercised. His vegetarianism,
for example, has been inspirational for many, and it is his
reverence for all living beings that has made him important to
Indian environmentalists and the members of the German Green
party alike. However, unlike many vegans in postindustrial
nations, Gandhi readily served meat to his meat-eating guests,
even to those who knew him as an extraordinarily devout vegetarian.
The critics often rest their case on a static Gandhi, but it is
very likely that, had he been alive today, he would, keeping in
mind the immense toll that obesity has taken of modern lives and
the levels of saturation achieved by the popular media, have been
more opposed to Coca Cola, sugared drinks, super-sized meals,
and the culture of fast food than to alcohol.39 “The philosophy of
Coca Cola”, Ashis Nandy has written, “is the archetypal social
philosophy of our times”; Coca Cola “is the ultimate symbol of the
market”, “a way of thinking rather than a thought”.40 In opposing
Coca Cola, Gandhi would not merely have been making a futile
gesture against the market; he would have signalling his alarm at
the totalising nature of modern knowledge systems.
Many Possibilities
Gandhi’s life opens up many possibilities that we should be prepared
to entertain and to which the Gandhians, whose own readings
of Gandhi have rendered him into a museum piece even
while they shout themselves hoarse over his “increasing relevance”,
should perhaps be more attentive. Had Gandhi allowed
the British to frame his choices for him, he would not merely have
been consigned to deploying those modes of “resistance”, whether
that be constituted as the recourse to arms or the adoption of
parliamentary and polite procedures of redress, which the British
considered to be legitimate expressions of dissent; rather, his
entire moral and cognitive framework would have been captive
to a colonial epistemology which had firm notions about the
“self”, the “other”, and social relations in an unequal world. The
gift of the Gandhian mode of play is that in it there are no winners
and losers, not even, let me hasten to add, what are today
described by management gurus, cheerleaders, policymakers,
and “people-friendly” consultants as “win-win situations”. The
task of the next generation of scholars and thinkers will surely be
to devise an epistemological critique more commensurate with
the world view that Gandhi came to inhabit.
special article
Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 4, 2008 63
Notes
1 B R Nanda has attempted to capture both constituencies
in his work: ‘The Master and the Disciples’,
Gandhi Marg 15, 2, July-September 1993,
pp 154-73, and Gandhi and His Critics, Oxford
University Press, New Delhi, 1985.
2 I would like to allude, if only briefly, to the two
sets of disjunctions which in part, and only in
part, led to this paper. In the staunchly middle
class circles of west Delhi in which I grew up and
from which my family drew the greater bulk of its
acquaintances, the respect for Gandhi was commingled
with deep suspicion, foreboding, and
even hatred of the “Father of the Nation”. Many of
the people who lived through the Partition held
Gandhi responsible for their own misfortunes,
and among the family elders and some of our
guests the sentiment that Gandhi had often blundered
in politics ran deep. Owing to my sustained
interest in Gandhi over nearly three decades, his
name came up in conversations often, and there
was frequent mention of his appeasement of
Muslims and his inability to understand the
modern world. If he was nonetheless referred to
as Gandhiji, it was not only out of habit, but also
from the recognition that Gandhi had been a
patriot, if a misguided one, and from an acknowledgment
that the state-sanctioned version of
Gandhi could not be entirely rubbished. As young
teenagers, my friends and I wondered why a
national holiday had been set aside in the memory
of a rather backward-looking old man who
wandered about scantily dressed, but the received
textbook versions spoke of him in such unambiguously
hagiographic language that the instinct to
laugh at the old man was somewhat contained. In
recent years, it appears to me, the reaction against
him has hardened, and one cousin who is a doctor
casually referred to Gandhi as a scoundrel
(Gandhi to kamina tha). I suspect that the disjunction
between the authorised version of Gandhi
and that encountered in middle class homes is
one which is familiar to many.
As a graduate student in the United States in the
1980s, I became aware of another kind of disjunction.
In those heady days of post-colonial theory
and cultural studies, when anti-racism, antiimperialism,
and nationalism spawned immense
number of studies and it was argued that finally
“the empire was writing back”, there was barely a
mention of Gandhi among internationally known
thinkers except in the writings of a few Indian
scholars, notably Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee,
and Shahid Amin. None of the post-colonial
critics or cultural studies advocates had any use
for Gandhi, not even Henry Louis Gates, Homi
Bhabha, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, or, most significantly,
Edward Said. In the voluminous writings
of Said, Gandhi appears as a rare footnote; on the
other hand, a cultish attachment to Fanon is everywhere
evident. One would have thought that
Bhabha, over whom the shadow of Lacan looms
large, might have sensed something of an affinity
between psychoanalysis and satyagraha, or that
the post-colonial critics with their stated intention
of defying master narratives and signifying
their solidarity with the downtrodden might
have found Gandhi an intellectually and ethically
engaging figure. The silence which surrounded
Gandhi at a time when colonialism was the
principal subject of a supposedly dissenting body
of work might itself be construed as a critique of
Gandhi, one that did not even do him the service
of taking him seriously.
At the conclusion of my talk at Emory in 2005,
Gyanendra Pandey made two interesting arguments
to suggest why Gandhi has drawn, so to
speak, a near blank among major figures in the
academies in the US and the United Kingdom,
though I remain unconvinced by either argument.
Pandey suggested that the insularity of the Indian
intellectual tradition, while not recognised by
Indians, is deeply experienced among scholars
of India in the US, Japan, and elsewhere. For
insularity of intellectual traditions, I would think
that one could turn more profitably to the US
itself, where most debates appear to be conducted
without any reference to anyone except godblessed
Americans. As someone with a fair
share of experience of the American academy,
stretching back to my first undergraduate days at
a US university in 1978, I find it all but implausible
that the US academy should be viewed as an example
of intellectual ecumenism or cosmopolitanism.
Moreover, in the case of Gandhi, his alleged
indigenism or nativism, his repudiation of the
modernist aesthetic, the unsexiness of non-violence,
the moralist tone of much of his work,
among other phenomena, appear to me to furnish
better grounds for understanding why he has
been marginalised by the progressive or radical
elements of the academy.
Secondly, Pandey argued that Africa and the
Atlantic world, far more so than India, have registered
an intellectual and political presence in
American life. There is no gainsaying this fact,
and the story stretches from the early presence
of the slave trade through the Civil War to the
traditions of jazz, blues, rap, and hip-hop. Indian
studies, in comparison to studies of the Atlantic
world or African-American Studies, occupy a
minuscule if rapidly growing place in the American
academy. However, by an irony of history, in no
community did Gandhi have a more magisterial
role than among African-Americans. Everyone is
aware of Martin Luther King’s full-throated embrace
of Gandhian ideas of non-violent resistance, but
many other important if not supreme figures
of African-American history, such as Bayard
Rustin, James Farmer, A Philip Randolph and
James A Lawson, had a deep engagement with
Gandhi’s ideas. Sudarshan Kapur’s study, Raising
Up a Prophet: The African American Encounter
with Gandhi, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992,
amply documents Gandhi’s presence in the African
American political imagination, as does
John D’Emilio’s superb biography, Lost Prophet:
The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, The Free
Press, New York, 2003.
This paper also provides, I believe, some cues that
might help us to understand the relatively marginal
note Gandhi has played even in supposedly
progressive, liberal, radical, or dissenting elements
of the academy in the US, Britain, and elsewhere
where recent theoretical trajectories have
informed much of the work on nationalism, colonialism,
racism, and the like. Gandhi has a considerable
presence in peace studies or conflict
resolution programmes, though a “theorist” of
non-violent resistance such as Gene Sharp takes
precedence in most such programmes; moreover,
the institutionalisation of Gandhi has robbed his
thinking of its most radical and potentially emancipatory
elements. See also Vinay Lal, ‘Gandhi,
the Civilisational Crucible, and the Future of
Dissent’, Futures 31 (1999), pp 205-19, and idem,
‘Gandhi and the Social Scientists: Some Thoughts
on the Categories of Dissent and Possible Futures’
in Arif Dirlik (ed), Pedagogies of the Global: Knowledge
in the Human Interest, Paradigm Publishers,
Boulder and London, 2006, pp 275-97.
3 The literature on Gandhi’s followers is reasonably
voluminous, if extremely uneven and on the
whole not especially insightful. The profiles in
Jayant Pandya, Gandhiji and his Disciples, National
Book Trust, New Delhi, 1994, are useful; much
more complex, if still handicapped by a notion of
“influence”, is Thomas Weber, Gandhi as Disciple
and Mentor, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2004. Mark Lindley, J C Kumarappa:
Mahatma Gandhi’s Economist, Popular Prakashan,
New Delhi, 2007, introduces new material into
the discussion.
4 Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I Rudolph,
Gandhi: The Traditional Roots of Charisma, Orient
Longman, Hyderabad, 1983, originally published
as Part 2 of The Modernity of Tradition: Political
Development in India, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1967.
5 Nirad Chaudhuri, Autobiography of an Unknown
India, University of California Press, Berkeley,
1973 [1951].
6 M K Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi,
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Publications
Division, New Delhi, 1961, hereafter cited
in the body of the paper as CWMG. The 100-volume
set is now available online at www.gandhiserve.
org in PDF format.
7 Vinay Lal, Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a
Good Civil Society, Mohan Singh Mehta Memorial
Lecture 2008, Seva Mandir, Udaipur, 2008.
8 Jawaharlal Nehru, Nehru on Gandhi, John Day,
New York, 1948, pp 127-28.
9 Jehangir P Patel and Marjorie Sykes, Gandhi: His
Gift of the Fight, Friends Rural Centre, Rasulia,
Madhya Pradesh, 1987.
10 This argument was advanced by Robert Payne,
The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, Dutton,
New York, 1968, and finds reaffirmation in
J L Kapur, Report of the Commission of Enquiry
into the Conspiracy to Murder Mahatma Gandhi,
6 vols in 2, Government of India, New Delhi,
1970.
11 Message of January 30, 1948, online at: http://
pakistanspace.tripod.com/48.htm
12 A K Ramanujan (ed) and trans, Speaking of Siva,
Penguin Books, Baltimore, 1973, p 88 [Vacana
no 820].
13 B R Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have
Done to the Untouchables, Thacker and Co, Bombay,
1945, p 114.
14 Nirad C Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!
India 1921-1952, Chatto and Windus, London,
1987; Addison-Wesley Publishing Co, New York,
1988, p 885. The other “episodes” can be referenced
at pp 436, 439, and 874.
15 Richard Grenier, The Gandhi Nobody Knows, Thomas
Nelson, New York, 1983, was first published
as a lengthy film review in Commentary. From
political and cinematic standpoints, there is
much to criticise in Attenborough’s film, though
the hostility it provoked, particularly in Britain,
arises from very different grounds that can adequately
be gauged by the reception given to the
film in the tabloid and conservative press. The
much acclaimed Paul Johnson, advising the readers
of the Daily Telegraph, April 16, 1983, that
“Gandhi Isn’t Good For You”, described Gandhi
as a “consummate sorcerer’s apprentice”; and
likewise John Vincent, a historian at Bristol
University, nonchalantly held Gandhi responsible
for the “shedding of innocent blood during the
massacres” that followed in the wake of Partition
(‘We Must Not Feel Guilty Over Gandhi’, Sun
[London], April 21, 1983.
16 “Speech at Public Meeting, Tinnevelly”, January 24,
1934 and “Speech at Public Meeting, Tuticorin”,
January 24, 1934, both in CWMG 63:34, 40.
17 Gandhi’s piece on “Bihar and Untouchability” in
Harijan on February 2, 1934 adverts to this matter:
“I am not affected by posers such as ‘why punishment
for an age-old sin’ or ‘why punishment to
Bihar and not to the South’ or ‘why an earthquake
and not some other form of punishment’. My answer
is: I am not God. Therefore I have but a limited
knowledge of His purpose”. See CWMG 63:82.
18 See Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, compiler and ed,
The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates
between Gandhi and Tagore 1915-1941, National
Book Trust, New Delhi, 1997, p 156.
19 Mukul Kesavan, ‘Gandhi’s Bad Faith: The Opportunism
of the Khilafat Movement Alienated Muslims’,
Telegraph, June 26, 2005, online at: http://www.
telegraphindia.com/1050626/asp/opinion/story_
4915438.asp (accessed on September 15, 2008).
20 Bhattacharya, The Mahatma and the Poet, p 160;
also CWMG 63:164-66.
21 Harold Coward (ed), Indian Critiques of Gandhi,
State University of New York Press, Albany, 2003.
speciAl article
october 4, 2008 EPW Economic & P 64 olitical Weekly
22 S Anand, ‘To Thee Thy Kingdom’, Tehelka, October
27, 2007, also online at: http://www.tehelka.
com/story_main34.asp?filename=hub271007
Tothee.asp
23 Erik H Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of
Militant Non-violence, W W Norton, New York,
1969, pp 230-31.
24 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological
Theory and Women’s Development, Harvard UP,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982, pp 104-05.
25 See, for example, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay,
Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces, Navrang, New
Delhi, 1986, who is forthright in her assessment
that “to those of my generation the real political
history of India begins with the Gandhi era”
(p 147).
26 CWMG 67:125; also in Puspha Joshi (ed), Gandhi
on Women, Navajivan, Ahmedabad, 1988, p 294.
27 Madhu Kishwar, ‘Gandhi and Women’, Economic
& Political Weekly 20, Nos 40 (October 5, 1985)
and 41 (October 12, 1985), pp 1691-1702 and
1753-58, respectively; reprinted as Gandhi and
Women, Manushi Prakashan, Delhi, 1986.
28 Ketu Katrak, ‘Indian Nationalism, Gandhian
‘Satyagraha’, and Representations of Female
Sexuality’ in Andrew Parker, May Russo, Doris
Sommer and Patricia Yaeger (eds), Nationalisms
and Sexualities, Routledge, New York, 1992,
pp 395-406.
29 Vinay Lal, ‘Nakedness, Non-violence, and Brahmacharya:
Gandhi’s Experiments in Celibate Sexuality’
in idem, Of Cricket, Guinness and Gandhi:
Essays on Indian History and Culture, Seagull,
Calcutta, 2003; Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2005,
pp 114-53.
30 Phyllis Mack, ‘Feminine Behaviour and Radical
Action: Franciscans, Quakers, and the Followers
of Gandhi’, Signs 11, No 3 (Spring 1986), pp 457-77
esp p 477.
31 Joseph Kupfer, ‘Gandhi and the Virtue of Care’,
Hypatia 22, no 3 (Summer 2007), pp 1-21. The
focus in this article is on Attenborough’s Gandhi
(1982), but the author’s questionable embrace of
the film need not detract from the argument in
general. One wonders if the day of Gandhi’s
assassination is also celebrated as anti-leprosy
day from sheer sentiment, or whether critics
such as S Anand, who resolutely adhere to the
position that Gandhi’s life remains singularly
unattractive in every respect, have any idea of
the vast array of activities in which Gandhi’s
life was enmeshed, many of them not calculated
to earn Gandhi profit in the material world,
political power, or even an army of followers.
Cynicism, however, is infinitely inventive: somewhere
someone will pronounce that, in working
with leprosy patients, Gandhi sought to derive
cultural capital.
32 Nathuram Godse, May It Please Your Honor, Surya
Prakashan, Delhi, 1987, pp 154-55.
33 Sarojini Naidu’s quip is encountered in numerous
variations: the most likely story has it that while
waiting for a third-class railway coach to be
brought from a considerable distance to Gandhi
so that he could travel alongside the poor, she
remarked: “If Gandhi only knew how much it
costs us to keep him in poverty!” In other variants,
the story even goes beyond Naidu. The American
poet Gary Snyder, recalling his commitment to
non-violence and a simple way of life, says that he
remembered “reading that Gandhi’s great supporter,
the Indian industrialist Tata, once said, ‘It
costs me a fortune to keep Gandhi simple.’” See
Catherine Ingram, In the Footsteps of Gandhi:
Conversations with Spiritual Social Activists, Rupa
& Co, New Delhi, 1997, p 247.
34 Saumyendranath Tagore, ‘Gandhism and the
Labour-Peasant Problem’ in idem, Sudarshan
Chattopadhyay (ed), Against the Stream, 2 vols,
Saumyendranath Memorial Committee, Calcutta,
1:19-21.
35 M N Roy, ‘The Cult of Non-Violence: Its Socio-
Economical Background’ in idem, Selected Writings,
3 vols, Oxford UP, Delhi, 1989, 2:153, 156.
36 Sarabjit Pandher, ‘Charge against Mahatma’,
Hindu, October 28, 2007.
37 S Anand, ‘To Thee Thy Kingdom’, Tehelka, October
27, 2007.
38 This viewpoint is frequently encountered in the
public speeches of prominent ideologues of
Hindutva, such as Praveen Togadia, Uma Bharati,
and Sadhvi Ritambhara. See also Sudhir Kakar,
The Colours of Violence, Viking Penguin, New
Delhi, 1995.
39 On sugar as history’s mass killer, see Ashis Nandy,
‘Sugar in History: An Obituary of the Humble
Jaggery’, Times of India, June 16, 1994; for the
wider canvas, see Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and
Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Penguin,
1986.
40 Ashis Nandy, ‘The Philosophy of Coca Cola’ in
Vinay Lal (ed), Dissenting Knowledges, Open Futures:
The Multiple Selves and Strange Destinations
of Ashis Nandy, Oxford University Press, New
Delhi, 2000, pp 201-04.
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director

GANDHI, CITIZENSHIP, AND THE IDEA OF A GOOD CIVIL SOCIETY

2011-02-25T23:51:00.000-08:00

GANDHI, CITIZENSHIP, AND THE IDEA OF A GOOD CIVIL SOCIETY
Vinay Lal
[Author’s Preface: This approximates the text of the Dr. Mohan Singh Mehta Memorial
Lecture, delivered at Vidya Bhawan, Udaipur, on 19 April 2008. I am grateful to Shri Vijay
Mehta, President of the Mohan Singh Mehta Memorial Trust, and Shri Ajay Mehta,
President of Seva Mandir, for honoring me with their kind invitation, and to Shri Jagat
Mehta, former Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, for his warm hospitality
during my brief stay in Udaipur. This lecture is a small tribute to Dr. Mohan Singh Mehta,
whose vast array of activities extended from the arenas of administration, governance, and
diplomacy to education and a wide range of social services. Bhaisaheb, as Dr. Mehta came
to be known to the citizens of Udaipur and in particular to the people who worked under his
leadership, appears to have been one of the more successful institution builders in India, and
both Vidya Bhawan and Seva Mandir occupy a hugely significant place in the socioeconomic
and cultural history of Udaipur. I would also like to place on record my
appreciation of Ms. Neelima Khetan, Chief Executive Officer of Seva Mandir, whose superb
command of at least two languages was amply on display as she rendered my lecture into
chaste, mellifluous and accurate Hindi. And, finally, my thanks to the citizens of Udaipur for
turning out in such numbers and staying with me through thick and thin.]
Sixty years after his assassination, it can scarcely be doubted that Mohandas Gandhi
was the most singular figure anywhere in the world during the twentieth century. One
measure of his unique place in modern history is the fact that he has repeatedly had to be
assassinated, and that even as a rapidly burgeoning middle class appears to have abandoned
every particle of his thought, Gandhi’s spectre continues to loom large. Tridip Suhrud, one
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 2
of our more thoughtful commentators, has gone so far as to say that “Gujarat is not the land
of Gandhi anymore. . . . His existence in the Gujarati mind, society and economy has been
minimal.”i Gujarat may have gone further than most of the rest of India in repudiating
everything Gandhi stands for, but we sometimes disown with a vengeance that which
perpetually haunts us. As India rushes to embrace the modern, industrial civilization which
was the subject of Gandhi’s withering critique in Hind Swaraj, it is also instructive both how
Gandhi has trickled back into the popular imagination,ii as the resurgence of Gandhi in
mainstream Hindi cinema so amply demonstrates, and how he continues to be the principal
icon of protest around the world. When Indian Malaysians took to the streets a few months
ago to demand an end to discrimination and injustice, they held aloft pictures of Gandhiiii;
and Tibetan protestors have done the same the world over. Whatever else one may be
tempted to believe about Gandhi, it is clear that it is always too easy, and too early, to bury
him.
Gandhi’s achievements spanned an extraordinarily wide array of fields, even though
to the outside world he is known principally as the chief architect of Indian independence
and history’s most creative theorist and practitioner of mass nonviolent resistance. In India,
he is remembered for much else, from his ardent advocacy of Hindu-Muslim unity and what
would today be called interfaith dialogue to his hard-fought campaigns for the abolition of
untouchability and his stress on economic self-reliance. The history of Indian journalism,
for example, would be woefully incomplete without an elaborate mention of the several
newspapers that Gandhi founded and edited in his lifetime, and similarly his advocacy of
vegetarianism, nature cure, and so-called alternative systems of medicine, for which he has
been mocked by many of his contemporaries and other believers in modern science, now
seems to have put him far ahead of his own time. One could continue in this vein for a long
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 3
time: fortunately, however, it is neither my brief nor my ambition to catalog Gandhi’s
achievements. Even the word ‘achievement’, howsoever amplified it may be by sumptuous
descriptions, seems to be too small a word to convey the epic contours of his life.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to call forth, to develop the arguments that I propose to
explore in this lecture, one aspect of his life which has not been commented on at much
length in the copious literature that has developed around Gandhi. For more than fifty years
of his life, Gandhi was engaged in a tussle with the regime of the colonizer. Yet,
uncommonly for a revolutionary, Gandhi had a profound and almost unequalled respect for
the spirit of the law: some have attributed this to the fact that he was trained as a lawyer, but
it is unequivocally clear that he had little respect for the legal profession. His strictures
against lawyers in Hind Swaraj (1909) are well known,iv and he has written that he quit India
for South Africa in April 1893 because the “intrigue” in the courts and political circles in
Saurashtra was intolerable.v That Gandhi had not altered his views about the law is apparent
from his later writings, such as this piece he wrote for the Harijan on 17 February 1940:
“The atmosphere around law courts is debasing as any visitor passing through them can see.
I hold radical views about the administration of justice. But mine, I know, is a voice in the
wilderness.”vi When he was prosecuted for sedition in 1922, he pleaded guilty: not only did
his commitment to satya or truth made any other course of action impossible, but Gandhi
agreed with the prosecution that he had been responsible for preaching disaffection against
the British government in India.vii That violation of a particular law which is held to be
unjust is not inconsistent with the highest regard for the idea and spirit of law is nowhere
more clear than in Gandhi’s famous letter of early 1930 to Irwin, where he announced his
intention to break the ‘Salt Law’ – not laws in general, but a specific law that was iniquitous
in the extreme.viii
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 4
Thus, in considering Gandhi’s views on the law, it is necessary to understand that his
recognition that only a nation under laws can offer redress to its citizens did not prevent him
from having an antagonistic relationship to the law. He found that Indians in South Africa
lived under the burden of oppressive laws; and though the British government in India
described itself as a government duly established by law, to distinguish itself from the
despotisms that had allegedly always prevailed in India, Gandhi knew only too well that the
law did not apply equally to the British and to Indians. A despotism under laws can be vastly
more effective than the despotism which is bound by no laws at all. Many people might
suppose that Hitler’s Germany, the supreme example of a totalitarian state, offers an outright
example to the contrary, but in fact Germany under Hitler was governed by a plethora of
laws. Nazi Germany is distinguished not by its lawlessness, not even by the arbitrary or
uneven application of laws, but rather by the fact that it singled out entire groups – not only
Jews, but gypsies, homosexuals, and the mentally ill -- that were subject to the jurisdiction of
certain discriminatory laws while others were exempt from such laws. Indeed, Nazi
Germany is also distinguished by its many progressive laws, such as one enacted in 1933
which, referring to the intrinsic worth of animals, places them on the same footing as
humans.ix
In his awareness of how a law operates in a colonial state that at the same time
purports to offer equality to its subjects under the law, Gandhi was, in this matter as in most
others, unusually prescient. A state may well view the law merely as one of its arms, as a
cloak under which it can pursue its nefarious activities designed to advance the interests of a
particular racial, ethnic, or monied group, but no state can hope to win the eternal
approbation of its subjects if it does nothing else. If the law serves only to oppress or
consolidate inequality, the state loses much of its legitimacy. In his characteristic manner,
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 5
while mindful of the fact that oppression under the law is even more insidious as it not
always recognized as such, Gandhi sought to build on this ambiguity by urging Indians to
respect the spirit of the law even if specific unjust laws were to be violated. To this extent
at least, Gandhi also saved himself from the intractable difficulties into which revolutionaries
have always fallen. Accustomed as they are to being in the camp of resistance,
revolutionaries have seldom found it easy to construct or preside over a nation of laws. It is
no coincidence that, at the helm of the opposition that he was leading to British rule in
India, Gandhi also set into place a ‘constructive’ programme. The idea was not only, as he
explained on countless occasions, that India had to win, alongside political freedom from
colonial rule, economic, social, and legal freedoms. Rather, anticipating the fact that
resistance and opposition were also fraught with their own hazards, namely the inability of a
people to live under the law, Gandhi sought to create a socio-cultural framework that would
lead, when opposition to British rule had been rendered unnecessary, to a constructive
appreciation of the place of law in a just civil society.
I have spoken of Gandhi’s relationship to the law because it furnishes the first clues
we require in order to unravel Gandhi’s conception of citizenship and his idea of a good civil
society. Several years ago, when I sought to understand the myriad ways in which Gandhi
lived a life of remarkable ecological awareness,x I also discovered that the word ‘ecology’ is
not at all encountered in his writings. There were no national parks in India as such in
Gandhi’s time, and the modern environmental movements were nowhere on the horizon,
but nonetheless it is true that Gandhi has been the inspiration behind many of the principal
ecological movements of our times, from Chipko to the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Similarly, Gandhi did not often speak of citizenship, but that is not surprising considering
that the discourse of citizenship is comparatively recent to our times. The idea of the ‘rights
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 6
of the citizen’ received full expression in the French Revolution of 1789, but in a colonial
state there are few, if any, citizens. Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58, the British
and Indians alike became subjects of Victoria, though as subjects they had vastly differing
rights. As subjects of Victoria, and of her successors, the British in India could claim certain
rights as citizens within the Empire; Indians, on the other hand, had only the right to
petition the Queen, though the vast majority of them would not have known how to
exercise this right to seek more rights.
One of the peculiarities of the discourse of citizenship is that the conception of the
citizen has gone hand-in-hand with the conception of rights. A citizen of Delhi may be
described as an inhabitant of that city, but the word ‘citizen’ carries with it a charge that can
only be conveyed by some other sentiment. Thus, if one were asked to furnish a definition
of the word citizen, it is likely that one might think of the citizen as the bearer of certain
entitlements, in particular the right to franchise. The Oxford English Dictionary, the most
authoritative source for the English language, is explicit in providing this link: a citizen, it
says, is “An inhabitant of a city or (often) of a town; esp. one possessing civic rights and
privileges.” Correspondingly, it defines a “citizen of the world” as someone who “is at
home, and claims his rights, everywhere; a cosmopolitan.” But this definition, on close
examination, is neither very satisfying nor enlightening; ironically, it bespeaks a certain
parochialism. Take, for example, the American writer Henry David Thoreau, whose essay
‘Civil Disobedience’ is thought to have exerted a considerable influence on Gandhi.
Thoreau never left the United States, indeed he seldom traveled outside his native New
England and for nearly his entire life he was confined to the area around Concord,
Massachusetts where he grew up. Yet Thoreau was deeply steeped in world literature, and
had a greater acquaintance with the spiritual and sacred literature of India, China, and Japan
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 7
than almost any other American of his generation or the following.xi He would not have
hesitated to claim his rights everywhere, but one doubts that he felt at home everywhere; and
though neither by the standards of the 19th century nor by those of the 20th century would he
be considered cosmopolitan, he had a much greater awareness of the world than those who
style themselves cosmopolitan.
If we take an example closer to home, there is little question to my mind that both
Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Gandhi thought of themselves as citizens of the world.
But they were ‘citizens of the world’ in such extraordinarily different ways: Tagore traveled
widely nearly to the end of his life, until his early 70s, whereas Gandhi, having returned to
India from South Africa in early 1915, took only one overseas trip thereafter, to represent
India at the Round Table Conference in London, until the end of his life on 30 January
1948. Tagore founded Viswabharati, a ‘world university’ that he imagined would create the
space for intercultural conversations in a climate of freedom; on the other hand, one of the
many reasons why Harilal became estranged from his own father is Gandhi’s insistence that
his oldest son had nothing to gain from a formal overseas education. Yet, shortly before his
death, Tagore entrusted the welfare of Santiniketan to none other than Gandhi himself.xii
To be sure, Gandhi commenced his own political life with the conception of the
citizen as a bearer of rights and privileges. When he was thrown off the train at
Pietermaritzburg for daring, as a coolie, to enter a first-class cabin, it dawned on him that as
an Indian he had no rights in South Africa. It is a self-evident proposition that, for the rest
of his life, Gandhi would remain deeply committed to a political struggle designed to secure
equal rights for all Indians, first within the Empire and then as free subjects of an
independent India. But as I shall now argue, and this shall be the principal burden of my
remarks this evening, Gandhi is distinct among the political and moral thinkers of our time
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 8
in also decisively rejecting the exclusive association of citizenship with the demand for rights.
In the first instance, he resuscitated the hidden third term, namely ‘duty’, to flesh out the
meaning of both rights and citizenship; and, secondly, he sought to restore the idea of the
‘commons’ within which the true citizen finds the true fulfillment of his or her life. I shall
now endeavor to elaborate upon these remarks in various ways, and in so doing draw
attention to Gandhi’s thinking on a number of subjects which will be of interest to you, such
as his ideas about development, education, and the role of the state in the creation of a good
and just civil society.
Let me turn first to Gandhi’s conception of duty and how he brought it into play
with the idea of rights. Though the notion of rights and duties might seem to bear a
symbiotic relationship to each other, it is, in my view, an indubitable fact that the two have
seldom been brought into conversation with each other, and seldom have they been the
subjects of conjoined political inquiry. If you look, for example, at the question of rights and
duties in relation to the sexes, it is transparently clear that women were almost never seen as
the bearers of rights and privileges but rather were saddled with duties. Before the
revolutions of the late 18th century, which began to stress (in the words of Thomas Paine’s
political tract) the ‘rights of man’, the conception of duties would have weighed most heavily
with social commentators. I am mindful of the fact that political philosophers since the 17th
century had begun to weigh the rights of individuals against the state, but it required the
revolutions of the 18th century to eventually make the discourse of rights into a widely shared
discourse of civil society. Thereafter, over a long period of time, as anti-colonial struggles
developed around the world, and there was the political awakening of the masses and the
working classes in the industrialized nations, the notion of rights began to hold sway over
the imagination of common people. At this present juncture, I would urge you to reflect
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 9
upon the fact that the language of ‘duty’ has almost entirely disappeared from our political
vocabulary. Indeed, in a world where identity politics thrives on its insistence of rights for
distinct political, ethnic, racial, linguistic, or religious groups, the very notion of duties has
been rendered obsolete.
At the commencement of his political career, then, as Gandhi strove to secure rights
to Indians, he also undertook to inquire into the duties that might correspond with the rights
that were being claimed by those who were the victims of injustice. “During the first year,”
wrote Gandhi in Satyagraha in South Africa, “I was merely the witness and the victim of these
wrongs. I then awoke to a sense of my duty” (p. 38). Many of his actions are inexplicable,
even inexcusable according to his critics, if one fails to comprehend that Gandhi found it
unethical to hold to a conception of rights without demanding adherence to a conception of
duties. His critics have found it maddeningly perplexing that, at the outbreak of the Boer
War, Gandhi decided to come to aid of the British in South Africa by raising an ambulance
corps. Gandhi has described the lively discussion that took place among the Indians about
the course of action they should follow when war broke out between the British and the
minority Boers. That the Indians were required to adopt some position was not in doubt:
one of the charges laid against them, Gandhi says in Satyagraha in South Africa, is that they
“were merely a dead-weight upon the British”, and that they were unable to protect
themselves and their own homes, much less come to the aid of the British in the event of an
attack (p. 65). Some in the community, who held to the view that the Indians were
oppressed by the British as much as by the Boers, insisted that Indians should maintain
neutrality. Gandhi and some friends, on the other hand, embraced the view that the Indians
should come to the assistance of the British; as Gandhi has reported, he argued that “Our
existence in South Africa is only in our capacity as British subjects. In every memorial we
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 10
have presented, we have presented our rights as such.” While conceding that justice most
likely lay on the side of the Boers, Gandhi nevertheless advocated support of the British
cause. “The authorities may not always be right,” Gandhi told his audience, “but so long as
the subjects own allegiance to a state, it is their clear duty generally to accommodate
themselves, and to accord their support, to acts of the state.” (pp. 66-67)
Though the world has largely insisted on seeing rights and duties as standing in
opposition to each other, Gandhi saw them as appositional terms. If he held to the position
that rights flow from duties, he was not blind to the obvious circumstance that historically
deprived groups have been compelled to perform duties without having any rights conferred
on them. The burden of exercising duties falls most heavily on those who occupy the most
privileged positions in society, and accordingly Gandhi could admit the possibility that those
who have been deprived of rights should have fewer duties devolve upon them. If Indians
were to advance claims against the British, Gandhi recognized that lower castes were
similarly entitled to claim entitlements against the upper castes. He wrote in 1934 that
Harijans “should be taught to assert their rights of elementary citizenship” (Harijan, 23
February 1934; CWMG 64:204). Nevertheless, it is perhaps not much of a stretch to suggest
that he eventually came to view duties as holding nearly the same relationship to rights as
means do to ends. Gandhi had always been attentive to the means: if the means were
compromised, the end attained would be questionable. That Gandhi was not indifferent to
the ends is obvious from the fact that in 1942, when World War II had derailed Indian
independence, Gandhi issued something of an ultimatum to the British and advised his
countrymen and women, ‘Do or Die’. Indians were entitled to their freedom and, Gandhi
appeared to be saying, were to be prepared to secure this right at any price. But Gandhi’s
more characteristic position is gleaned from the appeal he addressed to the people of Rajkot,
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 11
who were immersed in a struggle with the local ruler, on 13 March 1939: “In swaraj based
on ahimsa, people need not know their rights, but it is necessary for them to know their
duties. There is no duty but creates a corresponding right, and those are true rights which
flow from a due performance of one’s duties” (CWMG 75:178).
True swaraj, Gandhi continued, “comes only from performance by individuals of
their duty as citizens. In it no one thinks of his rights.” Lest this extraordinary position be
viewed as something inconsistent with the general tenor of Gandhi’s thinking, it is
instructive to consider his letter to the scientist Julian Huxley, penned only a little more than
three months before his assassination. “I learned from my illiterate, but wise, mother”,
wrote Gandhi, “that all rights to be deserved and preserved come from a duty well done.”
We might suppose that there in an unquestionable right to life, but here, too, Gandhi
suggests a new reading: do we have a right to our life if we do not stand by our duty of
preserving the lives of others? If this seems to turn Gandhi into an advocate of capital
punishment, this position cannot be sustained: I may not have a right to my own life, but
the other person’s duty to preserve my life ought to guarantee my life. Every right, Gandhi
was certain, correlates “to some corresponding duty to be first performed” (Hindustan Times,
17 October 1947; CWMG 97:99). We arrive, thus, at this anomaly: though Gandhi became
the chief spokesperson for the rights of Indians and the rights of oppressed all over the
world, he also embraced the view that attentiveness by individuals to the performance of
their duties is the true condition of their liberation – liberation not only from colonial rule or
oppression from outside, but also from one’s ego, desires, and habits of thoughts.
If, as is now evident, Gandhi sought to alter the terms of political discourse by
calling attention to duties as much as rights, this logically calls to mind the next question:
just how do we determine what constitute one’s duties, and what is the realm of the action
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 12
that one must undertake? Many scholars of Gandhi have argued that this answer is rather
easily determined, and that Gandhi himself has furnished all the necessary cues. We know
that the Bhagavad Gita exercised an incalculable influence over Gandhi’s life and he studied
the text closely.xiii The Gita, one could say, is a set of teachings, delivered by Krishna to
Arjuna on the eve of the great battle around which the Mahabharata has been woven
together, about the performance of one’s duties, without attachment and without any heed
to the rewards that might follow. The ideal of the Gita is expressed in the figure of the
stithaprajna (Ch. 2, verses 54-61), the person who lives in utter equanimity. Though there is
scarcely any need to dispute Gandhi’s affection even reverence for the Gita, and his frequent
recourse to its teachings, in my judgment Gandhi ultimately did not stand by texts. Time
after time, Gandhi stressed that where the text, however sacrosanct, and one’s conscience
come into conflict with each other, the pursuer of truth must always follow one’s
conscience. Gandhi was also a political saint, if I may use this phrase, of an unusual kind:
he not only forged his own political vocabulary and created a unique grammar of political
action, but he also worked across such a huge array of human endeavors – among them,
journalism, education, women’s reform, social reform, the language question and the
promotion of Hindi/Hindustani, cow protection, Hindu-Muslim unity, eradication of
Untouchability, nutrition, sanitation, village reform, not to mention the political
independence of India and the reform of political institutions -- that he had to move beyond
texts and tradition in his quest for truth.
It is my submission to you that, in seeking to yoke the conception of citizenship to
the notion of duties, Gandhi also desired to place action within the realm of what might be
called the ‘commons’. Before I attempt to explain how Gandhi deployed the idea of the
commons, and what bearing his ideas about development, education, and the role of the
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 13
state have to the idea of the commons, it will be useful to place before you a brief sketch of
the moral, political, and intellectual contours of the idea of the ‘commons’. Hitherto the
notion of the ‘commons’ has been most commonly understood in its ecological sense,
pointing to an enhanced awareness that biodiversity and humanity’s inheritance of natural
resources are at grave peril and that land used to be held in common in most societies.
From the Club of Rome report down to the ecological movements in opposition to big
dams, strip mining, unregulated disposal of hazardous wastes, the wanton destruction of
animal and plant species, the uprooting of forests, and the like, there have been numerous
attempts to restore the notion of ‘commons’. In recent years, moreover, the muchacclaimed
World Social Forum can be viewed as an attempt to expand considerably the
reach of this idea. Opposition to intellectual property rights, drug patenting, corporate
mergers, the appropriation of land in the name of development, the privatization of water
and many other such phenomena is also inspired by the desire to reclaim the ‘commons’.
I want to suggest that Gandhi not only prefigured the language of the ‘commons’ but
also anticipated that it can become the bedrock of social and political movements aimed at
securing distributive justice, genuine pluralism, and commitment to democratic norms far
exceeding our presently impoverished conception of electoral democracy. Before turning to
Gandhi, however, let me turn to one concrete instance of the struggles that take place over
the commons, in this case the space of the ‘street’. Proponents of mass public
transportation argue their case not only on economic and ecological grounds, but also
because public spaces have shrunk. Cars have pushed pedestrians off the roads, the
phenomenon of road rage has become part of the public consciousness, and one is witness
to various other transformations that have ensued as a consequence. Streets in many urban
areas, in particular, have acquired a reputation as crime-ridden or dangerous places, but
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 14
much of life – children’s games, daily shopping, conversations among housewives -- in many
parts of the world and not just India, revolved around streets. In India’s largest
metropolitan cities, the elites have almost entirely abandoned the streets and know them
only through the windows of their cars. They seldom walk down the streets, and certainly
do not live on them; nor can they envision that such streets were, until recently, places of
public conversation and conviviality.
One of the most fundamental problems of our times is that the elites have opted out
of the state, abandoned the commons, and are committed only to a rights-based conception
of citizenship. In suggesting that they have opted out of the state, I mean a great many
things, from their rejection of the public sector, state-run schools, and the idea of social
services to their feverish embrace of privatization, their unabashed celebration of greed and
the so-called principles of the free market, and their open enthusiasm for Special Economic
Zones (SEZs). As it not possible for me to enter into a lengthy discussion of these matters,
I shall confine my remarks to the areas of education and development and suggest why our
present thinking on these matters is not conducive to producing a just civil society.xiv What
comes to mind, in the first instance, is an anecdote from the life of Gandhi. In the mid-
1930s, after Gandhi had relocated to Sevagram, an American clergyman by the name of Rev.
Dr. John Mott paid him a visit. Towards the end of his stay, Rev. Mott sought to crystallize
the weeklong discussions in a set of two or three brief remarks. “Tell me, Mahatmaji”, Rev.
Mott asked Gandhi, “what is it that, after nearly two decades of the freedom struggle, still
gives you the greatest hope”? Gandhi unhesitatingly replied, “What gives me the greatest
hope is that even today most Indians, despite the gravest provocations, still stand by their
faith in ahimsa.” Rev. Mott then moved on to the next question: “And what is it that fills
you with the greatest fear and makes you exceedingly unhappy”? Gandhi, we are told,
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 15
paused for a long moment – and then said: “What fills me with the greatest sorrow is the
hardheartedness of the educated.”
I think it is rather remarkable that already by the mid-1930s, when the educated
comprised a relatively tiny community, Gandhi was beginning to have grave suspicions
about the value and utility of formal education, particularly university-level education. Some
people have thought it hypocritical that, having availed of higher education in London,
Gandhi was not inclined to let his two older sons pursue the same course of action. A
rigorous defense of Gandhi’s thinking is not necessary at this juncture, though it will suffice
to say that it is precisely Gandhi’s own experience with higher education that, in his view,
conferred on him the moral authority to repudiate its alleged benefits.xv The reasons why he
held formal and higher education in considerable disregard are numerous, but one can begin
with his frequently voiced view that adherence to the creed of ahimsa came more naturally
and effortlessly to India’s masses than to its educated elites. To the extent that the educated
had followed him, Gandhi did not doubt that they did so not because they had an intrinsic
faith in the moral soundness and efficacy of ahimsa but rather because they recognized it as
the expedient way to win India its freedom. The educated had a calculated interest in
following Gandhi and giving their assent to ahimsa; the illiterate masses, on the other hand,
embraced ahimsa as a creed rather than as a policy, from the purest motives. Formal
education, particularly at the higher level where education cannot be disassociated from the
idea of specialization, also introduces, and thrives on, a number of disjunctions which in
Gandhi’s view are absolutely fatal to the development of a person’s moral faculty and thus to
the conception of the person as a whole entity. Such formal education aggravates the divide
between the head and the heart, between mind and body, between intellectual work and the
work of labor, between reason and emotion, indeed between thought and feeling.
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 16
Thus, when Gandhi adverted to the hardheartedness of the educated, he had in mind
the view that modern educational systems are not designed to teach compassion or empathy
for the poor and the wronged. Education may inspire a well-meaning economist to draw up
a model for the alleviation of poverty, but it is very unlikely to give that economist a feel for
the poor or for their lives. If anything, the economist’s model is much more likely to worsen
the condition of the poor: entranced by his own artful games, the economist overlooks the
fact that most models have little or no relationship to the reality that they purport to
describe. Their referential world is other models, and the work of other economists; and
before the well-meaning economist knows it, the lives of the poor themselves get reduced to
a series of numbers and abstractions. In all this, the meaning of ‘poverty’ itself never gets
interrogated.xvi I am convinced, in this regard, of two things: first, for all the supposedly
complex academic and policy work that has gone into defining poverty, talking about it, and
attempting to remove it, modern thought has resolved upon a tacit consensus: if you are not
a consumer, you are among the poor. Secondly, had Gandhi been alive and had he leisure
for intellectual work, he would, in his ordinarily creative way, have hit upon the idea that the
most imaginative and insightful way to write on poverty is to write about the lives of the
super-rich.
For all its failings, Gandhi did not at all abandon the idea of education. He regretted
the ‘hardheartedness’ of the educated, not their ‘heartlessness’. There is a significant
difference between the two: I very much doubt that Gandhi thought of anyone as
‘heartless’, and he would have agreed with the novelist E. M. Forster that the British had an
‘underdeveloped heart’. Education had hardened the British, too, and in his visit to Britain
in 1931 he found that the warmest receptions he received were from the working class,
particularly the mill workers of Lancashire who had suffered the most from the boycott of
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 17
British textile manufactures that Gandhi had initiated in India. But the most potent sign of
his enduring faith in the possibilities of education is that he entrusted much of his time and
energy into the formulation of what he described as ‘Basic Education’. Such education was
designed to instill in students a knowledge of the mother tongue, the enduring values of
Indian civilization and its wide history of literature, culture, and the arts, and the country’s
rich heritage of religious ideas; it also sought to give students an appreciation of the values of
sacrifice and the necessity of resistance to oppression, and insights into the nature of village
life and the reforms needed to sustain the village in the face of modernity’s onslaught. Over
the years, Gandhi wrote at length about education and he experimented unceasingly in this
domain as in all others, but he also unswervingly held to certain ideas: that education was
best which was conducted in the mother tongue, Indians were never to give ‘credence to the
idea that everything European is good’, and the labor of the mind and of the body were not
to be divorced from each other.xvii
On all these counts, it is all too self-evident that Gandhi’s aspirations have wholly
failed, and that in every respect, if one substitutes ‘America’ for ‘Europe’, his critique is at
least just as true today as it was then. If we consider this critique within the framework
which I have placed before you today, it is transparent both that the elites in India have
abandoned the educational commons and that education in India has not been designed with
a view to promoting the idea that citizenship comes with responsibilities. Though the IIMs
and the IITs are held forth as examples of ‘shining India’, and educated Indians speak with
them in a tone of undisguised admiration, India has by far the worst record in the world
when it comes to the arena of primary education. In less than three years after the
revolution in Cuba, the literacy rate shot up to 97%; the country today has 100% adult
literacy.xviii The less celebrated example of Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas ushered in a 6-
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 18
month literacy campaign in 1980, should also be borne in mind if one is tempted to think of
Cuba as an exception. Nicaragua today has adult literacy of 77% and a primary school
enrollment rate of 87%, and one can speculate if these figures would not have been
substantially higher but for repeated Americans attempts to undo the revolution and restore
the traditional oligarchy to power.
When I advert, however, to the abandonment of the educational commons, I am
calling attention to far more than the fact that India gave up on the quest for universal
primary education and sought to channel its resources into the creation of an elite class.
There is no significant body of research work in the social sciences that is being produced in
any of the Indian languages; nor is there even what we might describe as an Indian social
science. In most of the social science disciplines charged with understanding and
transforming the history, politics, and society of India, we have borrowed our ideas and
concepts lock, stock and barrel from the American social sciences. There is very little in this
body of knowledge which has some bearing on the lifestyles and modes of thought that have
evolved in India over the course of three to four millennia.
The very idea of ‘development’ is possibly, even though it may not be commonly
realized as such, American social science’s most successful export to the rest of the world. A
number of scholars have traced the idea of development to the immediate aftermath of the
post-World War II period when the Americans introduced a new regime of social
engineering.xix We need not bother with the precise genealogy of this idea at the present
moment, and arguably development had its antecedents in such phenomena, in the Soviet
Union, as the collectivization of agriculture. It is sufficient to say that as an universal and
sacrosanct idea, development was ushered in with the end of the Second World War and the
grim realization that a greater part of the world had been devastated by six years of total war.
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 19
Development was promised as the mantra that would free people from the shackles of the
past, rid them of their superstitions, emancipate them from their culture – all, of course, in
the name of introducing rapid economic growth and thus an unprecedented change in
lifestyles. Once development had become part of the arsenal of modernity, other things
naturally came in its wake, from development experts and the development industry to the
human development index. All cultures and civilizations could then be placed on a scale,
from superior to inferior; if countries ranked at the bottom aspired to climb to the top, they
had only to develop in the prescribed ways.
There was a time when we spoke of ‘social change’; now the only permissible
language is that of development. Some might wonder if there is any difference, other than
that of nomenclature. Unless one assumes that societies are or have been stagnant, there has
always been social change; the pace and mode of this change has varied according to time
and place, but societies have, with rare exceptions, always had to confront social change.
The ideology underlying development, on the other hand, is strikingly different – even if the
ideology comes masked in several disguises, for instance as development with a human face,
alternative development, sustainable development, and so on. By the mid-1950, the idea of
development had achieved the status of unimpeachable certainty, global in its reach and
totalizing in its capacity to order human relations. Development was insistently modern in
that it promised not only the rewards of modernity but also made incapable any dissent from
its ideology: those who dared to critique development were certain to be condemned as
primitives and pariahs.
What, then, might be the specifically Gandhian elements of a critique of
development? Development has always been uneven, but this is not a fundamental criticism:
to concede that it is uneven is to allow the possibility, as development’s advocates have
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 20
always claimed, that it may, if it displays more sensitivity, become less lopsided. Proponents
of sustainable and alternative development argue for precisely this, advancing the claim that
development should and can be more sensitive to the culture, history, and aspirations of the
people whom development targets. Gandhi would have agreed with some of this, perhaps,
and certainly he was opposed to any development that did violence to a people’s history,
culture, or sense of dignity. His opposition to colonialism stemmed in part from revulsion at
the violence of what the British described as their civilizing mission in India. But Gandhi
also had a more far-reaching critique of development than what is suggested by those who,
mindful of some of the excesses and indignities that have been committed in the name of
development, have been advocates of sustainable or alternative development.
First, the advocates of development, in howsoever mild or benign a form, have
found it difficult to resist the temptation to think that some sacrifices have to be made in
order for a country or a people to develop. Who makes these sacrifices, at what price, to
what end, and for whose development? The generation of Nehru, enthused by the song of
development to the extent that dams were transformed into the futures temples of humanity,
thought little of the millions of people who were displaced from their traditional homelands.
Worldwide, according to the World Commission of Dams’ own figures, some 45-100 million
people, at a conservative estimate, have been displaced by dams.xx The violence perpetrated
by development has, in other words, seldom been recognized as violence – and almost never
as ethnic cleansing, though there is no other phrase which as effectively captures the open
targeting of the poor, ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities, and the ‘underdeveloped’.
And since development permits no critique, one of its most insidious aspects is, as Ivan
Illich has written, that it “enlist[s] people in their own extinction.”
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 21
Colonial development was a form of underdeveloping the colony; postcolonial
development hijacks the futures of those it targets. Throughout his life, Gandhi was
centrally concerned with the enslavement of the colonized subject to the philosophical and
moral worldview of the colonizer. Perhaps the most famous passage in Hind Swaraj (1909) is
one where he warns against a conception of India where the mere substitution of Indians for
the English, without any substantive alterations in the structures of British rule, is mistaken
for independence. He expressed a fear that Indians wanted the tiger’s nature without the
tiger’s skin. The difficulty with development, as Gandhi intuited, is precisely this: it
condemns the subjects of development to lead not their own, but someone else’s,
conception of the good life. The developed person’s past is the developing person’s present;
indeed, in the developing person’s present, the developed can find traces of their own past
of which they may be only dimly aware. The developing person’s future is the developed
person’s present: in other words, those on the road to development have no future, or only
an imitative future, since their future has already been lived somewhere else. The best hope
that the developing world may hold on to is that the inevitable time lag between itself and
the developed world continues to narrow.
As I turn to my conclusion, I would like to leave you with three thoughts. One of
the many reasons why Gandhi remains immensely interesting is that he uniquely and
persistently brought theory and practice into dialogue with each other. The frequent
simplicity of his expressions belies the expectation that ordinary commonsense should
suffice in being able to comprehend the enormity of this achievement. I have, to take one
example, argued that Gandhi was opposed to the divide or disjunction between labor of the
mind and labor of the body. In the ordinary sense of these terms, one would be well within
one’s rights to interpret this statement to mean that Gandhi believed that intellectual work
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 22
should be conjoined with manual labor, whether that be farming, scavenging, spinning, or
weaving. It is important, indeed remarkable, that Gandhi joined sweepers in cleaning toilets:
this act can be read in numerous ways, as a sign of his resolute determination to break the
barrier between mind and body, to do away with rigid caste distinctions and to ennoble acts
ordinarily considered cheap and degrading, but it is also a mark of his faith in the commons.
The matter is still more complex, because in my view Gandhi also thought with and through
his body. One senses that he lived with a full awareness of how the body can become a site
of spectacle, but when we contemplate the vast range of public activities of which his body
became a bearer – fasts, enemas, massages, oil rubs, walks, baths, sun baths, among others –
it raises the possibility that Gandhi thought of the body as far more than an ancillary to the
mind. Gandhi can be credited with having invented the thinking body.
Secondly, as we think about Gandhi’s conception of citizenship and his physical,
moral, and political investment in the idea of the commons, we should also bear in mind that
fundamentally Gandhi was an anarchist. By this I mean that he believed in the devolution of
power as well as in a limited role for the state. Many of you will be familiar with the socalled
last will and testament of Gandhi, written virtually on the eve of his assassination,
where he urged that the Congress disband itself and that its members each adopt a village for
social, economic and political reform. If this may be put within the framework that I have
placed before you, Gandhi viewed the commons – here, the village commons -- as the
domain within which the rights and duties of citizenship are properly exercised. Gandhi’s
idea, needless to say, was destined to fall by the wayside: having waged a struggle over some
decades, Congressmen were not about to relinquish the fruits of the power that they had
acquired for the first time. It may be that his experience with the colonial state had rendered
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 23
Gandhi suspicious of all states, but I suspect that he also thought that the exercise of power
is inimical to the performance of duties.
Finally, to gauge just how radical Gandhi was in his thinking and practice of ideas, let
me suggest to you that he had in mind a vastly different relationship of the local to the global
than has so far been envisioned by anyone. You may recall that during the 1960s, an idea
supposedly appropriated from Gandhi began to circulate very widely in activist and
dissenting circles. The slogan that became current then was, ‘Think globally, act locally.’
The idea of cosmopolitanism attributed to Gandhi was that one should think about the
whole world but should confine one’s political activism to the local area where one can be
most effective. It is my submission to you that Gandhi had in mind the inverse of what has
been imagined: he would have said ‘think locally, act globally’. This thought appears to be
both counter-intuitive and contradictory of Gandhi’s practices: after all, he counseled
people to engage in those struggles that were in their proximity or held the most meaning for
them.
I would urge for your consideration the thought that nearly our entire conceptual
frameworks of knowledge have been borrowed from the West, and though Gandhi was
neither parochial nor a nativist, he did not think it possible that the emancipation of a people
is possible if they are living someone else’s history. At the same time, he was catholic
enough in his tastes to recognize that good thoughts emanate from everywhere, and that
freedom is indivisible: one cannot be free if others are enslaved. Therefore, the ‘citizen of
the world’, if we are to at all use that phrase, takes the entire world as the canvas of his or
her action. This is how we are to understand his implicit injunction to ‘think locally, act
globally’. The ‘citizen of the world’ accepts that every struggle around the world is his or her
own struggle; similarly, though one should open oneself up to thoughts from around the
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 24
world, Gandhi was also quite certain that those relying on the conceptual and intellectual
frameworks of others are living on borrowed time. There is, as Gandhi was fully aware, no
more profound colonialism than the colonialism of the mind. Gandhi commenced this
struggle against colonialism over a century ago, and as the present history of India suggests,
the greater part of this struggle remains today. It is this struggle that we must all join.
i Tridip Suhrud, “Modi and Gujarati ‘Asmita’”, Economic and Political Weekly XLIII, no. 1 (5 January
2008), p. 11.
ii Ashis Nandy, “The ‘Lure’ of Normal Politics: Gandhi and the Battle for Popular Culture of
Politics in India”, South Asian Popular Culture 5, no. 2 (October 2007), pp. 167-78.
iii See, for example, Dean Johns, “Gandhi would be proud” (28 November 2007), online at:
http://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/75374 (accessed 15 April 2008)
iv M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (1909), online at: http://www.mkgandhi.org/swarajya/coverpage.htm
(see ch. 11).
v M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, trans. Valji Govindji Desai (Ahmedabad: Navajivan
Publishing House, 1950 [1928]), p. 37.
vi M. K. Gandhi, The Law and the Lawyers, compiler and ed. S. B. Kher (Ahmedabad: Navajivan
Publishing House, 1962), p. 218.
vii Ibid., pp. 104-22.
viii See letter of 2 March 1930, anthologized in hundreds of books and collections of Gandhi’s
writings. The most authentic source is The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, hereafter abbreviated as
CWMG. I have used the original, rather than the revised, set of CWMG; the original set, for which
Professor Swaminathan acted as the Chief Editor, commenced publication in the 1950s and is
comprised of 100 volumes, including supplementary and index volumes. The revised set, issued by
the BJP-led Indian government, had to be recalled after vigorous protests from the scholarly
community. The original set is available online, in PDF format: see http://www.gandhiserve.org;
this site also has information on the controversy surrounding the new (and subsequently withdrawn)
CWMG.
ix Philip F. Cramer, Deep Environmental Politics: The Role of Radical Environmentalism in Crafting American
Environmental Policy (New York: Praeger, 1998), p. 21.
x Vinay Lal, “Gandhi and the Ecological Vision of Life: Thinking Beyond Deep Ecology”,
Environmental Ethics 22, no. 2 (Summer 2000), pp. 149-68; a longer version appears in my Of Cricket,
Guinness and Gandhi: Essays on Indian History and Culture (New Delhi: Penguin, 2005), pp. 154-184.
xi See Arthur Versluis, American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993). Arthur E. Christy, The Orient in American Transcendentalism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1932), is useful but dated.
xii Tagore wrote to Gandhi on 2 February 1940, as the latter prepared to depart from Santiniketan: “I
make my fervent appeal to you, accept this institution under your protection giving it an assurance of
permanence if your consider it to be a national asset.” See The Mahatma and the Poet, compiler and ed.
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1997), pp. 177-78.
xiii See M. K. Gandhi, Gita, My Mother, ed. Anand T. Hingorani (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,
1965). But the seminal text to consult here is the Gita According to Gandhi or the Gospel of Selfless Action,
ed. Mahadev Desai (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1946).
xiv The phrase ‘civil society’ operates on a very wide register. NGOs think of themselves as
synonymous with civil society, but this is the narrow end of the spectrum. By civil society I wish to
Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 25
designate predominantly non-state actors and institutions and the social and political agendas
advanced by such actors.
xv It is certain that had Gandhi not received his legal education in Britain, his critics would have
countered with the argument that he had no right to prevent his children from partaking of an
experience of which he had not been a beneficiary.
xvi For a radical perspective on poverty, see Majid Rahnema, “Poverty”, in The Future of Knowledge and
Culture: A Dictionary for the Twenty-first Century, eds. Vinay Lal and Ashis Nandy (New Delhi: Penguin
Viking, 2005), pp. 240-47.
xvii M. K. Gandhi, The Problem of Education (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1962), pp. 149-
50
xviii These figures are drawn from UNICEF:
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cuba_statistics.html (accessed 15 April 2008) and
the Human Development Report:
hdrstats.undp.org/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_CUB.html (accessed 15 April 2008).
xix The most succinct and critical account of development is to be found in Gustavo Esteva,
“Development”, in The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, ed. Wolfgang Sachs
(London: Zed Books, 1992), pp. 6-25, though the entire volume is nothing less than a revelation.
xx See the report entitled ‘Dams and Development’ at http://www.dams.org/report/overviews.htm
(accessed 10 April 2008). The report gives a figure of 40-80 million displaced people, but the report
is dated to 2000.

Modi, the Mahatma, and Mendacity

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Vinay Lal

14 October 2007

It is no surprise that an instigator of mass murder should also be the master of mendacity. Today’s Times of India reports that Narendra Modi has declared himself a believer in Gandhi’s ideal of ‘Ram Rajya’. ‘Modi quotes Mahatma’, states the paper in a bold headline, adding: ‘Ahead of Polls, Gujarat CM Harps on Virtues of Ram Rajya.’ Modi is quoted as declaring himself persuaded that Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals are ‘relevant’; more pointedly, when asked what he meant by ‘Ram Rajya’, Modi replied that Gandhi understood that to signify the ‘welfare state’.

The newspaper’s suggestion that Modi’s professed admiration for Gandhi may be merely an election ploy carries, obviously, more than a hint of truth. But the matter does not rest there. Modi may be no different than many other politicians who have invoked Gandhi’s name, but he is certainly more astute. Most often politicians will declare themselves, at least on October 2nd and January 30th, influenced by Gandhi’s ideas of peace and nonviolence, or at the very least they fall in line and are heard rehearsing the usual pieties about the importance of Gandhi’s message for the world. Yet Modi, in calling forth the phrase ‘Ram Rajya’, has gone much further. He is fully cognizant of the fact that suggestions of adherence to ideals of peace and nonviolence are not calculated to excite much attention, and that Gandhi is more skillfully appropriated by a specific reclamation of such of his ideas as were in consonance with sentiments held widely across India. Modi’s declaration comes in the wake of the controversy over Ram Setu (or, more formally, the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project), and disputes over Ram’s historicity; on the other hand, as Modi is only too well aware, Gandhi not only declared himself a votary of Ram, but increasingly, in the last years of his life, held on to the idea that the India of his dreams would be something of a ‘Ram Rajya’.

That Gandhi’s Ram, by his own admission, had no relation to the Ram worshipped by many Hindus, and certainly no reference to the Ram being championed by the historicists, is something of which little stock is taken. If the likes of Modi invoke Gandhi’s ‘Ram Rajya’, should we conclude, as some have, that Gandhi’s idea of Ram Rajya was inherently flawed, or that Gandhi should have been known that those who are much less scrupulous than him would manipulate his teachings? Modi’s alleged adherence to Gandhi’s ideal of ‘Ram Rajya’ will, in time, be pounced upon by his critics on the left, some of whom have long thought of Gandhi as a Hindu chauvinist while others hold to the view that Gandhi should be held accountable for the misdeeds committed in his name. (Of course, some of the same Marxist critics continue to describe the atrocities of Stalinism, the horrendous excesses of China’s ‘Cultural Revolution’, and numerous other forms of genocidal social engineering committed in the name of bringing around a true Marxist revolution as having no relation whatsoever to the teachings of Marx.) What is palpably true, and something that calls for continued reflection, is that “Gandhi” has become, if he has not been for some time, an empty vessel – and we will pour into it what we choose. Many Gandhis have been fashioned in the public realm; many more have yet to see the light of dawn.

Mahatma Gandhi HISTORY & POLITICS

2011-02-25T23:45:00.000-08:00

The last few months of Gandhi's life were to be spent mainly in the capital city of Delhi. There he divided his time between the 'Bhangi colony', where the sweepers and the lowest of the low stayed, and Birla House, the residence of one of the wealthiest men in India and one of the benefactors of Gandhi's ashrams. Hindu and Sikh refugees had streamed into the capital from what had become Pakistan, and there was much resentment, which easily translated into violence, against Muslims. It was partly in an attempt to put an end to the killings in Delhi, and more generally to the bloodshed following the partition, which may have taken the lives of as many as 1 million people, besides causing the dislocation of no fewer than 11 million, that Gandhi was to commence the last fast unto death of his life. The fast was terminated when representatives of all the communities signed a statement that they were prepared to live in "perfect amity", and that the lives, property, and faith of the Muslims would be safeguarded. A few days later, a bomb exploded in Birla House where Gandhi was holding his evening prayers, but it caused no injuries. However, his assassin, a Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin by the name of Nathuram Godse, was not so easily deterred. Gandhi, quite characteristically, refused additional security, and no one could defy his wish to be allowed to move around unhindered. In the early evening hours of 30 January 1948, Gandhi met with India's Deputy Prime Minister and his close associate in the freedom struggle, Vallabhai Patel, and then proceeded to his prayers.

Copyright: Siddharth Gondia/ GandhiServe
That evening, as Gandhi's time-piece, which hung from one of the folds of his dhoti [loin-cloth], was to reveal to him, he was uncharacteristically late to his prayers, and he fretted about his inability to be punctual. At 10 minutes past 5 o'clock, with one hand each on the shoulders of Abha and Manu, who were known as his 'walking sticks', Gandhi commenced his walk towards the garden where the prayer meeting was held. As he was about to mount the steps of the podium, Gandhi folded his hands and greeted his audience with a namaskar; at that moment, a young man came up to him and roughly pushed aside Manu. Nathuram Godse bent down in the gesture of an obeisance, took a revolver out of his pocket, and shot Gandhi three times in his chest. Bloodstains appeared over Gandhi's white woolen shawl; his hands still folded in a greeting, Gandhi blessed his assassin: He Ram! He Ram!

As Gandhi fell, his faithful time-piece struck the ground, and the hands of the watch came to a standstill. They showed, as they had done before, the precise time: 5:12 P.M.

Mahatma Gandhi HISTORY & POLITICS

2011-02-25T23:44:00.003-08:00

For the next few years, Gandhi would be engaged mainly in the constructive reform of Indian society. He had vowed upon undertaking the salt march that he would not return to Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, where he had made his home, if India did not attain its independence, and in the mid-1930s he established himself in a remote village, in the dead center of India, by the name of Segaon [known as Sevagram]. It is to this obscure village, which was without electricity or running water, that India's political leaders made their way to engage in discussions with Gandhi about the future of the independence movement, and it is here that he received visitors such as Margaret Sanger, the well-known American proponent of birth-control. Gandhi also continued to travel throughout the country, taking him wherever his services were required.

One such visit was to the Northwest Frontier, where he had in the imposing Pathan, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (known by the endearing term of "Frontier Gandhi", and at other times as Badshah [King] Khan), a fervent disciple. At the outset of World War II, Gandhi and the Congress leadership assumed a position of neutrality: while clearly critical of fascism, they could not find it in themselves to support British imperialism. Gandhi was opposed by Subhas Chandra Bose, who had served as President of the Congress, and who took to the view that Britain's moment of weakness was India's moment of opportunity. When Bose ran for President of the Congress against Gandhi's wishes and triumphed against Gandhi's own candidate, he found that Gandhi still exercised influence over the Congress Working Committee, and that it was near impossible to run the Congress if the cooperation of Gandhi and his followers could not be procured. Bose tendered his resignation, and shortly thereafter was to make a dramatic escape from India to find support among the Japanese and the Nazis for his plans to liberate India.

In 1942, Gandhi issued the last call for independence from British rule. On the grounds of what is now known as August Kranti Maidan, he delivered a stirring speech, asking every Indian to lay down their life, if necessary, in the cause of freedom. He gave them this mantra: "Do or Die"; at the same time, he asked the British to 'Quit India'. The response of the British government was to place Gandhi under arrest, and virtually the entire Congress leadership was to find itself behind bars, not to be released until after the conclusion of the war.

A few months after Gandhi and Kasturba had been placed in confinement in the Aga Khan's Palace in Pune, Kasturba passed away: this was a terrible blow to Gandhi, following closely on the heels of the death of his private secretary of many years, the gifted Mahadev Desai. In the period from 1942 to 1945, the Muslim League, which represented the interest of certain Muslims and by now advocated the creation of a separate homeland for Muslims, increasingly gained the attention of the British, and supported them in their war effort. The new government that came to power in Britain under Clement Atlee was committed to the independence of India, and negotiations for India's future began in earnest. Sensing that the political leaders were now craving for power, Gandhi largely distanced himself from the negotiations. He declared his opposition to the vivisection of India. It is generally conceded, even by his detractors, that the last years of his life were in some respects his finest. He walked from village to village in riot-torn Noakhali, where Hindus were being killed in retaliation for the killing of Muslims in Bihar, and nursed the wounded and consoled the widowed; and in Calcutta he came to constitute, in the famous words of the last viceroy, Mountbatten, a "one-man boundary force" between Hindus and Muslims. The ferocious fighting in Calcutta came to a halt, almost entirely on account of Gandhi's efforts, and even his critics were wont to speak of the Gandhi's 'miracle of Calcutta'. When the moment of freedom came, on 15 August 1947, Gandhi was nowhere to be seen in the capital, though Nehru and the entire Constituent Assembly were to salute him as the architect of Indian independence, as the 'father of the nation'.

Mahatma Gandhi HISTORY & POLITICS

2011-02-25T23:44:00.001-08:00

Owing to his poor health, Gandhi was released from prison in 1925. Over the following years, he worked hard to preserve Hindu-Muslim relations, and in 1924 he observed, from his prison cell, a 21-day fast when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out at Kohat, a military barracks on the Northwest Frontier. This was to be of his many major public fasts, and in 1932 he was to commence the so-called Epic Fast unto death, since he thought of "separate electorates" for the oppressed class of what were then called untouchables (or Harijans in Gandhi's vocabulary, and dalits in today's language) as a retrograde measure meant to produce permanent divisions within Hindu society. Gandhi earned the hostility of Ambedkar, the leader of the untouchables, but few doubted that Gandhi was genuinely interested in removing the serious disabilities from which they suffered, just as no one doubt that Gandhi never accepted the argument that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate elements in Indian society. These were some of the concerns most prominent in Gandhi's mind, but he was also to initiate a constructive programme for social reform. Gandhi had ideas -- mostly sound -- on every subject, from hygiene and nutrition to education and labor, and he relentlessly pursued his ideas in one of the many newspapers which he founded. Indeed, were Gandhi known for nothing else in India, he would still be remembered as one of the principal figures in the history of Indian journalism.

In early 1930, as the nationalist movement was revived, the Indian National Congress, the preeminent body of nationalist opinion, declared that it would now be satisfied with nothing short of complete independence (purna swaraj). Once the clarion call had been issued, it was perforce necessary to launch a movement of resistance against British rule. On March 2, Gandhi addressed a letter to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, informing him that unless Indian demands were met, he would be compelled to break the "salt laws". Predictably, his letter was received with bewildered amusement, and accordingly Gandhi set off, on the early morning of March 12, with a small group of followers towards Dandi on the sea. They arrived there on April 5th: Gandhi picked up a small lump of natural salt, and so gave the signal to hundreds of thousands of people to similarly defy the law, since the British exercised a monopoly on the production and sale of salt. This was the beginning of the civil disobedience movement: Gandhi himself was arrested, and thousands of others were also hauled into jail. It is to break this deadlock that Irwin agreed to hold talks with Gandhi, and subsequently the British agreed to hold a Round Table Conference in London to negotiate the possible terms of Indian independence. Gandhi went to London in 1931 and met some of his admirers in Europe, but the negotiations proved inconclusive. On his return to India, he was once again arrested.

Mahatma Gandhi HISTORY & POLITICS

2011-02-25T23:43:00.003-08:00

After one year of a none too successful law practice, Gandhi decided to accept an offer from an Indian businessman in South Africa, Dada Abdulla, to join him as a legal adviser. Unbeknown to him, this was to become an exceedingly lengthy stay, and altogether Gandhi was to stay in South Africa for over twenty years. The Indians who had been living in South Africa were without political rights, and were generally known by the derogatory name of 'coolies'. Gandhi himself came to an awareness of the frightening force and fury of European racism, and how far Indians were from being considered full human beings, when he when thrown out of a first-class railway compartment car, though he held a first-class ticket, at Pietermaritzburg. From this political awakening Gandhi was to emerge as the leader of the Indian community, and it is in South Africa that he first coined the term satyagraha to signify his theory and practice of non-violent resistance. Gandhi was to describe himself preeminently as a votary or seeker of satya (truth), which could not be attained other than through ahimsa (non-violence, love) and brahmacharya (celibacy, striving towards God). Gandhi conceived of his own life as a series of experiments to forge the use of satyagraha in such a manner as to make the oppressor and the oppressed alike recognize their common bonding and humanity: as he recognized, freedom is only freedom when it is indivisible. In his book Satyagraha in South Africa he was to detail the struggles of the Indians to claim their rights, and their resistance to oppressive legislation and executive measures, such as the imposition of a poll tax on them, or the declaration by the government that all non-Christian marriages were to be construed as invalid. In 1909, on a trip back to India, Gandhi authored a short treatise entitled Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, where he all but initiated the critique, not only of industrial civilization, but of modernity in all its aspects.

Gandhi returned to India in early 1915, and was never to leave the country again except for a short trip that took him to Europe in 1931. Though he was not completely unknown in India, Gandhi followed the advice of his political mentor, Gokhale, and took it upon himself to acquire a familiarity with Indian conditions. He traveled widely for one year. Over the next few years, he was to become involved in numerous local struggles, such as at Champaran in Bihar, where workers on indigo plantations complained of oppressive working conditions, and at Ahmedabad, where a dispute had broken out between management and workers at textile mills. His interventions earned Gandhi a considerable reputation, and his rapid ascendancy to the helm of nationalist politics is signified by his leadership of the opposition to repressive legislation (known as the "Rowlatt Acts") in 1919. His saintliness was not uncommon, except in someone like him who immersed himself in politics, and by this time he had earned from no less a person than Rabindranath Tagore, India's most well-known writer, the title of Mahatma, or 'Great Soul'. When 'disturbances' broke out in the Punjab, leading to the massacre of a large crowd of unarmed Indians at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar and other atrocities, Gandhi wrote the report of the Punjab Congress Inquiry Committee. Over the next two years, Gandhi initiated the non-cooperation movement, which called upon Indians to withdraw from British institutions, to return honors conferred by the British, and to learn the art of self-reliance; though the British administration was at places paralyzed, the movement was suspended in February 1922 when a score of Indian policemen were brutally killed by a large crowd at Chauri Chaura, a small market town in the United Provinces. Gandhi himself was arrested shortly thereafter, tried on charges of sedition, and sentenced to imprisonment for six years. At The Great Trial, as it is known to his biographers, Gandhi delivered a masterful indictment of British rule.

Mahatma Gandhi HISTORY & POLITICS

2011-02-25T23:43:00.001-08:00

Mahatma Gandhi HISTORY & POLITICS

2011-02-25T23:42:00.000-08:00

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in the town of Porbander in the state of what is now Gujarat on 2 October 1869. He had his schooling in nearby Rajkot, where his father served as the adviser or prime minister to the local ruler. Though India was then under British rule, over 500 kingdoms, principalities, and states were allowed autonomy in domestic and internal affairs: these were the so-called 'native states'. Rajkot was one such state.

Gandhi later recorded the early years of his life in his extraordinary autobiography, The Story of My Experimentswith Truth. His father died before Gandhi could finish his schooling, and at thirteen he was married to Kasturba [or Kasturbai], who was even younger. In 1888 Gandhi set sail for England, where he had decided to pursue a degree in law. Though his elders objected, Gandhi could not be prevented from leaving; and it is said that his mother, a devout woman, made him promise that he would keep away from wine, women, and meat during his stay abroad. Gandhi left behind his son Harilal, then a few months old.

In London, Gandhi encountered theosophists, vegetarians, and others who were disenchanted not only with industrialism, but with the legacy of Enlightenment thought. They themselves represented the fringe elements of English society. Gandhi was powerfully attracted to them, as he was to the texts of the major religious traditions; and ironically it is in London that he was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita. Here, too, Gandhi showed determination and single-minded pursuit of his purpose, and accomplished his objective of finishing his degree from the Inner Temple. He was called to the bar in 1891, and even enrolled in the High Court of London; but later that year he left for India.