War-torn world needs Gandhian balm
AS I recall Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or seek to understand his worldview through an interpretative understanding of the texts he is known for — The Story of My Experiments with Truth and Hind Swaraj — I confront a paradox. A careful look at the harsh reality of the world we live in indicates that Gandhi is dead, or his spirit is negated everywhere — from the domain of political economy to the spheres of culture and education. Yet, despite this negation, I feel strongly that we need to have a serious engagement with him in order to save and heal this tormented world.
Those who believe that it is still possible to save the world are likely to plead for a paradigm shift.
To begin with, as I look at our collective destiny in these hyper-modern/hyper-nationalist times, I feel that we are defining ourselves primarily as reckless consumers seduced by the market-driven ideologies of ‘good living’ and militant warriors intoxicated by a set of exclusivist identity markers. As we internalise the gospel of ceaseless consumption — a logical consequence of neoliberal market fundamentalism -- our needs multiply and our insatiable greed (more cars, more gadgets, more consumption, more electricity, more fossil fuel extraction, more deforestation and hence more carbon emissions) causes severe damage to the environment. Likewise, as we become more and more hyper-nationalist, we further divide and fragment the world. In a way, it becomes exceedingly difficult to free ourselves from the oppressive binaries: Hindu vs Muslim; India vs Pakistan; or for that matter, Israel vs Palestine. Yes, we find ourselves in what many social scientists would characterise as a ‘risk society’ — a society tormented by war, militarism, terrorism, authoritarianism and above all, a climate emergency. Of course, there is not even the slightest trace of the Gandhian spirit in this world.
Gandhi — possibly, like Henry David Thoreau — urged us to reduce our artificial needs, value spiritually awakened simplicity and live in harmony with the ecosystem. Gandhi urged us to discover the source of inner strength, courage, commitment to truth and justice and the art of resistance against an unjust system (say, colonialism or the caste system) in ahimsa, aparigraha and sarvodaya. Possibly, in Gandhi’s mental landscape, there was a creative blend of the Bhagavadgita’s notion of karmayoga and the redemptive power of the love Jesus articulated in his Sermon on the Mount. Moreover, it is not difficult to find the traces of philosophic anarchy and romanticism in Gandhi’s ways of critiquing the entire edifice of industrial capitalism. Yes, his sharp comments on ‘doctors and lawyers’ in Hind Swaraj or his romance with a fairly decentralised village swaraj indicates that he differed significantly from the standardised notion of modernity prevalent in his times, be it bourgeois industrial capitalism or Marxian socialism. Likewise, as he articulated sharply in his Autobiography, John Ruskin had a profound impact on the way he celebrated the dignity of labour and interrogated the oppressive binary: mental vs manual. In Gandhi’s worldview, farmers, weavers and carpenters play no less an important role than doctors and lawyers. It was, therefore, not surprising that the doctrine of Nai Talim or basic education he pleaded for attached so much importance to the kind of pedagogic practice that uses one’s hands and legs, unites the brain and the heart, and combines theory and practice. Don’t forget that Gandhi himself experimented with it as a ‘teacher’ while engaging with the children or young learners who were staying with him at the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa during 1910-13.
Hence, a question I often ask myself is whether it is possible to rediscover Gandhi in these turbulent times, critically and creatively experiment with his ideas, and evolve a philosophy of praxis for creating a just and humane world. Well, we should not forget that Gandhi’s critics were many. We know the way the likes of Rajani Palme Dutt used their Marxian doctrine of historical materialism and critiqued Gandhi’s romantic longing for ‘village swaraj’ or some sort of ‘nonviolent socialism’ as Ram Rajya. Likewise, Dr BR Ambedkar was never comfortable with Gandhi’s approach to the caste question. And of course, as the politics behind his assassination revealed, the brigade of militant Hindu nationalists loathed Gandhi — and his doctrine of ahimsa and religious pluralism.
These critiques notwithstanding, the fact is that it is difficult to escape Gandhi. The reason is that our modernity, despite the grand Enlightenment promises of reason and freedom, has failed. We live amid all-pervading violence — the violence of techno-science and its instrumental rationality leading to a massive environmental disaster; the violence of new devices of surveillance through which the modern state seeks to establish its absolute control over its citizens and devalues the fundamental principles of democracy; the violence of religious fundamentalism and the simultaneous growth of diverse forms of terrorism; and above all, the routinisation and normalisation of war — one war leading to another! Yet, those who refuse to be paralysed by the pessimism this dystopian world creates and believe that it is still possible to save this world are likely to plead for a paradigm shift — from the aggression of power to the civility of dialogue; from possessiveness to distributive justice; from religion as an instrument of hyper-nationalism to what late Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh characterised as the religiosity of loving kindness and compassionate listening; from revenge and violence to what political philosopher Martha Nussbaum regarded as peace, reconciliation and forgiveness; and from one-sided emphasis on economic prosperity to the cultivation of soul force.
And if we want to undertake this transformative journey, there is no way we can avoid a rigorous engagement with Gandhi and his quest for an ecologically sustainable, peaceful and egalitarian world that emphasises people’s soul force rather than the brute power of a heavily centralised, authoritarian state. Gandhi was not perfect; yet, he seems irresistible.
