Gandhi for the 21st Century: Religion, Morality and Politics 9819937914, 9789819937912

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Mrinal Miri Bindu Puri

Gandhi for the 21st Century Religion, Morality and Politics

Gandhi for the 21st Century

Mrinal Miri · Bindu Puri

Gandhi for the 21st Century Religion, Morality and Politics

Mrinal Miri North-Eastern Hill University Shillong, Meghalaya, India

Bindu Puri Centre for Philosophy School of Social Sciences Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, Delhi, India

ISBN 978-981-99-3791-2 ISBN 978-981-99-3792-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3792-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrinal Miri

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2 Satya and Ahimsa: Learning Non-violence from the Gita . . . . . . . . . . . Bindu Puri 2.1 Gandhian Ahimsa: Philosophical Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Gandhian Ahimsa and Tolstoy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Gandhian Ahimsa and the Bhagavad Gita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 The Gita: Nationalist Politics and Gandhi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Making for the Exception: Tilak, Gandhi, and Violence in the Gita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Gandhi: Meeting the Thief with Ahimsa/love . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Gita and Ahimsa: Desireless-Ness and Samata/Equality . . . . . . 2.3.1 Ahimsa and the Sthitaprajna/Perfect Person of the Gita . . . . 2.3.2 Nishkamakarmayoga/Non-attachment to the Ends of Action, Present-Centred Action and Gandhian Ahimsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 Samata/Equality in the Gita and Ahimsa as the Unilateral Obligation of Owning Kinship with the ‘other’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 The Practice of Ahimsa: The Means to Arrive at the Truth/ God of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 The Practice of the Equability of the Gita: Ahimsa and Satya/Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Ethics: Western and Indian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrinal Miri References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7 8 14 16 19 26 29 30

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Contents

4 For Love of Country: Gandhi and Tagore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Bindu Puri 4.1 Tagore’s not so Narrow Causeway: Coming Close to Herder . . . . . . 72 4.1.1 Tagore and Herder on Populism Pluralism and Expressionism: A Critique of the Universalism of the Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 4.1.2 Tagore and Herder: Enlightenment Modernity and the Nation of the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4.2 Kant’s Moral Philosophy and the Modern Nation-State . . . . . . . . . . 84 4.3 Gandhi and Tagore: of Love of the Country and the Indian Nesan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 4.3.1 Tagore and the Alternative Nesan5 of the East . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 4.3.2 Tagore and Gandhi: A Decentralized Nesan/Praja . . . . . . . . 95 4.3.3 In Conclusion: Metaphysics and Politics; The Ishopanishad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 5 Body, Action, Authority, Ethics, and Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Mrinal Miri References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 6 Gandhi’s ‘True’ Politics and the Integrity of the Good Life: Satya, Swaraj, Tapasya, and Satyagraha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bindu Puri 6.1 Gandhi’s Integrity; the Practice of a Politics Integrated with Morality, a Moral Religion and the Natural World . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Gandhi: Real Politics and Power Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Continuity with the Past and with the Non-human World: Absolute Equality, Swabhawa, Swaraj, and Tapasya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.3 The Inseparability of Means and End: Tapas as the Means of Real Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Gandhi’s Moral Politics: The Purva Paksa on the Restraint of the Self and Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Reading Skaria’s Critique of Gandhi: of Truth/God and Gandhi’s Moral Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 Reading Skaria’s Critique of Gandhi: of Enacting Equality as Tapasya/Ability to Suffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Debating Skaria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 Debating Skaria: on Gandhi’s Truth or God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Debating Skaria; Coercion, Satyagraha, Swaraj, and Gandhi’s Groundless Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.3 In Conclusion: Gandhi’s Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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138 146 151 152 157 161 163 166 182 184

Contents

7 Gandhi’s Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrinal Miri 7.1 Privacy and Spirituality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Truth and God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 The heart of a religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 Fellowship of Religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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About the Authors

Mrinal Miri is a well-known philosopher. Born in 1940, he took his Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He is the author of several books and has published numerous articles in professional journals including Mind, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, etc. His recent paper, entitled “Indigenous Knowledge and its Transformation,” published by NUEPA, has drawn much critical attention. He served as Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and as Vice Chancellor of North-Eastern Hill University. He was also nominated as Member of the Upper House (Rajya Sabha) of the Indian Parliament. Bindu Puri is a professor of contemporary Indian philosophy at the centre for philosophy, school of social sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru university. Her main interests are in the areas of contemporary Indian philosophy and political philosophy. Puri has over 58 papers in edited anthologies and philosophical and interdisciplinary journals. She has authored three monographs; Gandhi and the Moral Life (2004) The Tagore-Gandhi Debate on Matters of Truth and Untruth (Springer Nature Publications: 2015); and The Ambedkar-Gandhi Debate: On Identity, Community and Justice (Springer Nature Publications: 2022). She has eight edited volumes, the most recent being Reading Sri Aurobindo—Metaphysics Ethics and Spirituality (Springer Nature Publications: 2022). She has presented over 180 papers and lectures at national and international forums. Professor Puri is a fellow of the Australia India Institute, university of Melbourne and was the Sugden fellow at Queen’s College, university of Melbourne for 2023. Puri delivered the prestigious annual ‘M. K. Gandhi lecture on Peace and the Humanities’ 2017 for the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Council of Ottawa in Canada as well as the Johnson and Hastings lectures at the university of Mount Allison, in Canada for the same year. Puri has also delivered the prestious annual Sugden Oration 2023 at Queen’s college, university of Melbourne in Australia and delivered lectures at the Australia India Institute and the Melbourne Law school at the university of Melbourne in the same year.

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Chapter 1

Introduction Mrinal Miri

Abstract The book consists of six chapters—three by Bindu Puri and the other three by me. Our styles are different—the result perhaps of the different kinds of training we had received as students. But our interests coincide and frequently our arguments: Puri’s arguments clothed in the rich narrative style where the philosophy unmistakably shines through and mine somewhat skeletally just philosophical. Keywords Satya · Ahimsa · Spiritual · Religious · Ethics · Morality · Western · Indian · Upanishad · Non-instrumental

Bindu Puri is a well-known and distinguished Gandhi scholar. I doubt if there is any philosopher other than Puri in the country who has taken the kind of interest in Gandhi that she has taken with such scholarly meticulousness and philosophical insight. It is an honour, therefore, to have shared a few chapters of this book with her. The book consists of six chapters—three by Puri and the other three by me. Our styles are different—the result perhaps of the different kinds of training we had received as students. But our interests coincide and frequently our arguments: Puri’s arguments clothed in the rich narrative style where the philosophy unmistakably shines through and mine somewhat skeletally just philosophical. Puri’s first essay “Satya and Ahimsa: Learning Non-violence from the Gita” goes really to the heart of the matter in Gandhi’s thought. Gandhi’s affirmation that the Gita is the source of two of his absolutely central ideas (i.e. ahimsa/non-violence and satya/truth), whether in matters of morals, or of religion, or indeed of politics, resonates through the best part of his writings. He persisted with this affirmation with great vigour, confidence, and rare lucidity—initially at least, in the teeth of formidable opposition from one of colonial India’s very astute thinkers, Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Tilak believed that to think that we can achieve swaraj by non-violent means alone is at best an illusion, and a sadhu motivated by such delusional thinking had no place in the political struggle for the freedom of India. Tilak read the Gita in ways that taught M. Miri (B) North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. Miri and B. Puri, Gandhi for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3792-9_1

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him that, to use violence as one among the means to achieve an end of immense moral and spiritual significance for the nation, is more than adequately justified. Gandhi argued that the Mahabharata war as reflected in the Gita should be taken not as a real war between cousins, but as an allegory of the intense moral struggle that may raze in the mind of a man facing powerful conflicting desires within and seeking a way out of them to liberation. Not that in a real war, satya and ahimsa would, for Gandhi, not be the proper response because ahimsa includes fearlessness and also the gift of fearlessness to the opponent. However, the discovery of the necessary non-instrumentality of the moral action in the Gita was the key to realizing the centrality of satya and ahimsa as the most potent of the teachings of the great book. Puri takes us through Gandhi’s counter to his contemporaries with much scholarly and philosophical finesse. She shows how Gandhi brings his knowledge of the Yoga Vasistha and the Ishopanishad to bear upon his understanding of initial chapters of the Gita thereby placing him firmly in the ancient Indian philosophical tradition and, at the same time, dispelling the view, held by some, that it was his reading of Tolstoy and of the Bible that was the truly formative influence on his moral thinking. In her essay, “For Love of Country: Gandhi and Tagore” (the third essay in this volume), Puri addresses the issue of the idea of a nation. She considers the view of many modernists that Gandhi and Tagore were opposed to the idea of a nation. She agrees with them to the extent that the idea of a nation involved in this view is that of a unity that a certain human population seeks to serve their desire for economic wellbeing, political sovereignty, and security from internal and external violence. This is the modern idea of a nation-state. Given Gandhi’s views on civility, understood in modern terms, and of a community rooted in a living tradition deriving its organic unity from it, it is not surprising at all that Gandhi would be seriously opposed to the idea of a modern nation-state. Gandhi believed in the idea of a nation—particularly Indian nation—which is a natural expansion of the unity of the village community—a unity that derived its life and energy from its past and its strength from an inherent sense of ownership, belonging, dignity, respect, and very importantly, love—love for the great gifts of nature that the community has inherited from its ancestors, for its land, for its beauty, for its birds and animals, and for the communities surrounding it. The idea is indeed very close to Tagore’ notion of swadeshi samaj. Love, and, Tagore would add, love’s natural companion, poetry, is the bond that unites this samaj with everything that surrounds it. Togore’s poem, and Bangladesh’s national anthem, “O Amar sonar bangla, ami tomai bhalo basi” is the true expression of the kind of love that enlivens the nationalism that Gandhi and Tagore espoused. Puri here beautifully combines the Berlinean notion of the “great chain of mankind” with Tagore’s image of a great Eastern union that retained the local and the particular at its foundation growing outwards in concentric circles of co-operation from the home to the world. Puri’s last essay in the volume, “Gandhi’s ‘true’ politics and the integrity of the good life: Satya, swaraj, tapasya and satyagraha” deals with the question of the integrity, on the one hand, of Gandhi’s ideas and, on the other, of his ideas with his practice: integrity of ideas in their application to politics and integrity of the person engaged in the turmoil of politics. Puri argues with much persuasive power

1 Introduction

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that Gandhi’s ideas must stand or fall together. They form a community where each member supports another, and all the members depend on the support of others, while the whole, as it were, breathes life into all its members. In the second part of the essay, Puri considers certain criticisms of Gandhi which maintain that there may be inherent weaknesses and, perhaps, compulsions in Gandhian ideas which militate against their unity and integrity. Puri responds to such criticism with her usual subtlety and makes a philosophical intervention in defence of Gandhi. My first essay (second in the volume) “Ethics: Western and Indian” briefly shows how Western ethics has been dominated by the idea of morality as centrally envisaged by Christianity. As an aside, I raise the counterfactual question, what European civilization would have been like, if Christianity did not happen at all. I reject the view—and I am in good company here—that human civilization moves in a linear fashion always towards “human progress”. The coming of the so-called age of Reason did not change things much. Reason replaced God and the idea of universality as emanating from human being’s uniqueness—whether as a gift of God, or as exclusive to human Reason—remained paramount. Utilitarianism, happiness, liberty, secular politics, and humanism became the pillars of modernity. A particular combination of Reason, progressivism, and humanism resulted in a widespread, somewhat distasteful, Western attitude with the self-aggrandizing name, “white man’s burden”. The dharma tradition is quite radically different. Morality is considered naturally secular, and the particular and the contextual are all important for adequate ethical appreciation. Gandhi quite conclusively belongs to this tradition. The virtues, as described in Gandhi’s favourite hymn “Vaisnavo Jana To…”, were the corner stone of Gandhi’s ethical thinking. Ahimsa and satya naturally emerge from these and became the foundation of his moral philosophy. The West’s exclusion of animals from the domain of the ethical has caused serious constraints within its culture, and these are paraded as issues for the entire world. Gandhi was firm in his belief that animals have an “inner” life and are, therefore, proper subjects of moral concern. The idea that since animals do not have a language in the philosophically accepted sense cannot deprive them of a place in the arena of morals. My second essay, “Body, Action, Authority, Ethics and Politics” (fourth essay in the volume), shows how the body, the human body, is central to Gandhi’s moral thinking. The mind, unlike in the major part of the Western philosophical tradition, is not an entity independent of the body, but is an essential part of the body. Following the ancient Sankhya school of thought, Gandhi believed that the mind, manas, is an organ of the body with buddhi (intellect) and ahamkara (“I” ness) as its chief instruments. Ahamkara is the ego responsible for ethically unacceptable actions. The atman, the soul, if you like, is, as the Gita says: “Unmanifest (avyakto) he, Unthinkable (acintyo) he”). The atman is beyond normal human cognition and Gandhi’s words for it: “… in truth the a¯ tman does nothing… nor does it cause anything to be done”. Action, therefore, is entirely in the domain of the body. The ideas of non-instrumentality of ethical action, ahimsa, self-purification, self-sacrifice, fearlessness, gift of fearlessness, and, therefore, satyagraha are all to be understood with reference primarily to the body. Moral action is, at the same time, marked by spontaneity, spontaneity of the same kind as that of the proficient spinner at the spinning wheel—mindful spontaneity.

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Moral authority derives from truth, understood as the same as God. “Truth is God” is what holds morality together. Modern politics, premised on the ideality of ends and, therefore, necessary instrumentality of political action, is devoid of morality. Can such politics be purified? My third essay, entitled “Gandhi’s Religion”, is about just that Gandhi’s religion. Unless one appreciates the very unique claim that Gandhi makes about religion, it would be impossible to understand his original assertion that all religions are the same at heart. If we take the Abrahamic religions alone, perhaps it will not be so very difficult to appreciate the claim of this sort. But think of Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Hinduism; how would such a claim resonate with all the religions together with the Abrahamic ones? Gandhi was absolutely certain that there is a religion that lives in every religion. And this is that Truth is God; not this or that truth, but truth as such. Take this out, and there will be no religion left. Apart from this core, religion is mostly a matter of culture. A culture, nursing a particular religion, is naturally beloved of its people: it is a source of their stable identity, of pride, and confidence and defines their specific humanity. Cultures are temporal and, therefore, are liable to change; cultures can communicate with one another, mutually converse, and learn from each other. If the heart of all religions is what Gandhi says it is—and it is extremely difficult to disagree with him—then conversion from one religion to another is neither necessary nor possible. If conversion means conversion to another religious culture, then it implies surrendering one’s specific humanity and embracing another. This may indeed be possible, but it is an extraordinarily difficult process and devoid of any moral compulsion. Frequently, however, attempted conversions are motivated by ulterior desires which have nothing whatever to do with purely religious sentiments. One such motive is cultural (demographic, really) domination—and such a motive is ethically as objectionable as colonialism itself. What remains is to restore faith, devotion, surrender, and hope to Gandhi’s religion. But Gandhi’s life itself is a brilliant example of such transparently integrative and restorative practice.

Chapter 2

Satya and Ahimsa: Learning Non-violence from the Gita Bindu Puri

Abstract This essay will examine Gandhian ahimsa in its inseparability from truth. In this context, it will take issue with those who have argued that Gandhian ahimsa was either (entirely or in part) drawn from Tolstoy or (entirely or in part) from the anekantavada of the Jains; arguing that while Gandhi was influenced by both these sources, his ahimsa was drawn (in his own admission) from an altogether different source, i.e. from the metaphysics and ethics of the Bhagavad Gita. Even if one were to disregard for the moment the differences between Gandhi and the other interpreters of the Gita (specially from those who were his contemporaries), Gandhi’s drawing of ahimsa as non-violence and a non-passionate universal love from the context of the war between cousins in the Gita might seem surprising. Gandhi’s contemporaries like Tilak and Sri Aurobindo (among others) had argued that the Gita had justified the exception to the law of harmlessness for the sake of duty and suggested that the aim of the Gita was to undertake a critique of the ethical and confirm it’s subordination to the political. Gandhi however had argued (to the contrary) that the metaphysics of oneness in the Gita brought out in the vision of Sri Krishna’s divine form recommended both desireless action and absolute ahimsa; given that to harm anyone or anything in the universe was, quite literally, to harm oneself. Keywords Ahimsa/non-violence · Satya/truth · Tolstoy · Metaphysics · Bhagavad Gita · Equality · Equi-mindedness · Isha Upanishad · Yoga Vasistha · Desireless action · Teleology · Present centred action

Gandhi had made an inseparable connection between satya/truth and ahimsa/nonviolence and recommended that human beings ought to respond to all others (human and non-human) with non-violence; indeed with love and just as if they were members of the same family. As fairly apparent, Gandhi had clearly understood ahimsa as a lot more than merely non-injury; B. Puri (B) Centre for Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. Miri and B. Puri, Gandhi for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3792-9_2

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B. Puri Ahimsa is not the crude thing it has been made to appear. Not to hurt any living thing is no doubt a part of ahimsa. But it is its least expression. The principle of ahimsa is hurt by every evil thought, by undue haste, by lying, by hatred, by wishing ill of anybody. It is also violated by our holding on to what the world needs. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 49:408)

Gandhi was clear that ahimsa was not to be taken as a commandment from the divine but rather as the only path to the divine/truth. This equation was much more important than it might seem, and its significance will perhaps emerge in the final section of the essay; Truth exists, it alone exists. It is the only God and there is but one way of realizing it; there is but one means and that is ahimsa. (ibid., 409)

However, while there is some agreement among scholars about the significance of ahimsa in Gandhian philosophy, there seems to be less agreement about the philosophical sources for Gandhi’s arguments about ahimsa and its somewhat unique and intimate connection with satya or truth. This essay will suggest that it is in the conception of ahimsa perhaps that Gandhi’s acceptance of the religio-moral “background picture” (Taylor, 2001: 8) of the Bhagavad Gita1 drawing in part from the non-dualist metaphysics of the vedanta comes out most clearly. Accordingly, the essay will attempt to examine ahimsa and its inseparability from truth; in the context of Gandhi’s background framework seemingly constituted by a non-dualist metaphysics and related ethics of progressive renunciation. The last (this essay will suggest) was drawn primarily from the Bhagavad Gita and perhaps to a lesser extent from Gandhi’s own readings of the Ishopanishad and the Yoga Vasistha. One might recall that Gandhi is on record as having read the first two chapters of the Yoga Vasistha on the recommendation of his close friend and spiritual interlocutor; the Jain mystic and philosopher Raichandrabhai Ravjibhai Mehta. The essay will be in four sections. The first section is entitled “Gandhian Ahimsa: Philosophical resources”, and it will suggest that though Gandhi found resonances in Tolstoy and the Jains his ahimsa can be better located in terms of his proximity to a “background picture” (ibid.) drawn primarily from the advaita metaphysics of non-dualism of the Gita and to some extent from the Ishopanishad and the Yoga Vasistha. Gandhi drew on the “moral ontology” (ibid.) in these texts and shared their “moral intuitions” (ibid.) which emphasized an ethics of the progressive renunciation of ego centred projects in the light of the oneness of all being. The second section has been entitled “Gandhian ahimsa and the Bhagavad Gita”, and it will attempt to bring out the significance of Gandhi having drawn ahimsa (paradoxically enough) from the Gita which was set in the context of a war between cousins. The third section entitled “The Gita and ahimsa: desireless-ness and samata/equality” will argue that two important ideas from the Gita-samata/absolute equality and nishkama karma/ action without attachment to ends/fruits played a constitutive role in Gandhi’s ahimsa. The fourth section entitled “The practice of ahimsa: the means to arrive at the truth/ God of religion” will bring out the close connection between truth and ahimsa in the context of Gandhi’s argument that religio-moral truth cannot be authenticated by liturgical debates about the exact meaning of propositions and passages in classical texts; but rather by an engagement with living a life involving the practice of the

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values recommended in them. Gandhi’s argument in this context points both to a need to reinterpret religious texts (like the Gita); and to the necessity to live in accordance with the spirit/central meaning of the religious text concerned, in the light of such reinterpretation. What this came to mean in the present context was that the moral aspirant who sought to authenticate the truth of the Gita could only do this by living life in accordance with the spirit of the Gita and the desireless action recommended therein. Gandhi argued that such an aspirant would find soon enough that only an ahimsanat life would allow him/her to live such a life, i.e. one in accordance with the central message of the Gita. Significantly Gandhi had argued that given the inevitability of change to the human condition, such a reinterpretation was not only a duty but a religious qua religious duty; because the devotee could only live by the meaning of a religious text by an adaptation of such texts to the times in which he/she lived. Gandhi reiterated the need for reinterpretation and for living by the truth, one believed in, often enough; Nor is the Gita a collection of Do’s and Don’ts. What is lawful for one may be unlawful for another. What may be permissible at one time, or in one place, may not be so at another time, and in another place. Desire for fruit is the only universal prohibition. Desirelessness is obligatory. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 175)

This fourth and concluding section to the essay will also gather together the different strands of the argument and reiterate the point with which the essay opened, namely that Gandhi’s ahimsa was largely drawn from his reading of the Gita.

2.1 Gandhian Ahimsa: Philosophical Resources This section will suggest that Gandhi’s emphasis on non-violence followed from a faith in a metaphysics of oneness and belief in the sameness (consequently equality) of all being. Witness that a commitment to ahimsa could well seem to follow from the idea that since all being was the same as one’s own being one should meet all ‘others’ (human/non-human) with an equal deference. However, one might add a caveat here to the effect that the practice of non-violence would not necessarily follow from the idea that ‘all being was one’; without the related belief (and insistence) that moral practice in accordance with the truths enunciated in religious texts was the only way to authenticate the truth of such beliefs, for instance, that in the non-duality of Brahman. This caveat (and the practice) is significant for, in a Gandhian framework (at least), it ensures that a metaphysics of oneness can only be authenticated by the moral aspirant’s practice which would (in this case) imply action consistent with a belief in the oneness of the ‘other’ with the self. This argument connecting Gandhian ahimsa as non-violence and equal deference to all others with the nondualism (of the vedanta as) enunciated in/by the Gita might of course seem misguided to those long accustomed to reading Gandhi’s non-violence in the light of the twin influences of Christianity and the metaphysical pluralism of the Jains. There are interpreters for instance, who think of ahimsa as somewhat predominantly influenced

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by the Sermon on the mount and by Tolstoy’s spiritual understanding of Christianity (Gray & Hughes, 2015; Parel, 2010). Others speak of the primary influence of the metaphysical pluralism of the Jain philosophy (Bilgrami, 2011). Still others argue for the view that Gandhi’s philosophy is based on “cross cultural dialogue” (Parekh, 1989: 376). The importance of locating the philosophical influences on Gandhian ahimsa might emerge more clearly if one were only to consider that the sort of argument Gandhi had used to arrive at non-violence could have influenced not only his conception of non-violence but also that of truth and of the relationship between these terms. One might begin to see how (rather why) locating the influences on Gandhian ahimsa could be important if one would consider the philosophical implications of locating ahimsa in different traditions of thinking. Note for instance that if one takes Gandhi to have arrived at non-violence from a position of metaphysical pluralism (somewhat close to the anekantavada of the jains) one might then have to say (see Bilgrami, 2011) if one wanted to be consistent of course, that Gandhi had to be a relativist about the truth. Note that it is such an argument that leads Bilgrami to conclude that Gandhi was not only a relativist about religious and moral truth but that there was a “…unblushing relativism, indeed subjectivism” (ibid., 96) about Gandhi’s “…notion of truth (satya) … itself” (ibid.). On such a view, Gandhian non-violence would follow from his awareness that truth was relative to the point of view of the aspirant and that there could be as many truths as points of view, seven, in the sapta bhanghi syadvada2 of the Jains, at any rate. However, this would also mean that it could become difficult to consistently understand Gandhi’s purported acceptance of such relativism alongside his avowed faith in Absolute truth or indeed his identification of truth with God (Puri, 2015: 66–101).

2.1.1 Gandhian Ahimsa and Tolstoy As Gandhi said himself (and as has been oft noted by commentators), he was influenced by Tolstoy and indeed by the sermon on the mount. While Gandhi had read other books by Tolstoy, it was The Kingdom of God is within you (which Gandhi had read in 1894) that has been taken to have most directly influenced his conception of ahimsa. For it was in this text that Tolstoy had taken issue with the Christian church because (and this is significant to the present argument) he believed that the Church had not put enough emphasis on the commandment of non-resistance to evil by force. Tolstoy had completed The Kingdom of God is within you in 1893 and significantly the book followed upon his efforts to disentangle the truth of the Christian teaching from the falsehood which (as he argued) had crept into it. In this connection, one might recall his earlier works An Examination of Dogmatic Theology and What I believe which explained why Tolstoy did not accept (and indeed why he considered as mistaken) the church’s interpretation of Christianity. In the Preface to The Kingdom of God is within you which (as one might recall) was mandatory reading for the members of Gandhi’s Phoenix Settlement in South Africa, Tolstoy had explained;

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In affirming my belief in Christ’s teaching I could not help explaining why I do believe, and consider as mistaken, the Church’s doctrine, which is usually called Christianity. Among the many points in which this doctrine falls short of the doctrine of Christ I pointed out as the principal one the absence of any commandment of non-resistance to evil by force. The perversion of Christ’s teaching by the teaching of the Church is more apparent in this than in any other point of difference. (Tolstoy, 2006: xiii)

It seems fair to say that in The kingdom of God is within you Tolstoy had located the heart of the Christian religion in the sermon on the mount in the New Testament which had taught the doctrine of non-violence and the supremacy of conscience. The centrality accorded to the sermon on the mount in Tolstoy’s reading of the New Testament meant that he had focused primarily on the issue of violence or perhaps (better put) on that of non-violence. Incidentally, such an emphasis also implied that Tolstoy seemed to have sidelined issues which other commentators had emphasized in their readings of the New Testament, for instance those concerning daily temptations, doubt, death and resurrection and the question of “what is Truth?” or rather what one might understand by the term “truth”. Tolstoy supported the doctrine of nonresistance to evil by force (to which he accorded a primary place in his interpretation of the New Testament) with the argument that there could be only two solutions to the question of deciding disputes between human beings “when some men consider evil what others consider good” (ibid., 41). These solutions were “either to find a real unquestionable criterion of what is evil or not to resist evil by force.” (ibid.). As the unquestionable criterion of evil had not been found through the past ages, the second solution was “the solution given by Christ”. (ibid.) Tolstoy argued that “laying down in the sermon on the mount the principles by which to guide men’s life” (ibid., 164), Christ had put forth the teaching of non-resistance to evil. Significantly, Tolstoy believed that this was a first in the history of ideas particularly those pertaining to the religions of humanity as “…before Christ, men did not see that resistance by force to what each regards as evil …is only one of the methods of settling the dispute, and that there is another method, that of not resisting evil by force at all” (ibid., 166). As Tolstoy had explained, it was the Christian solution alone, which could lead to a world where human beings would “cease to learn to make war” (ibid., 45) and remain “united in love,” (ibid.) so that “…the lion” (ibid.) would “… lie down with the lamb” (ibid.). In an interesting turn of events, Tolstoy recommended non-resistance to evil by force to colonized Indians in his “Letter to a Hindoo”. Gandhi had chanced upon this letter and had made efforts to get a translation published in 1909. Tolstoy had argued in this letter that the English had been able to hold India because Indians had, on their own part, held on to a belief in force as the fundamental principle of the social order. He had suggested that if Indians would only give up the law of violence, millions would be unable to enslave even one individual Indian. Gandhi chanced upon this letter which made an impression on him perhaps because it confirmed his own faith in non-violence. He had himself translated it (from the English version) into Gujarati and had written a Preface to the English translation. Some part of that preface is significant to the argument of the present section. On 18 November 1909, Gandhi wrote (in this preface) that the central message of Tolstoy’s teaching was not to return injury by injury;

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B. Puri Count Tolstoy is a Russian nobleman… After much experience and study, he has come to the conclusion that the political policies generally followed in the world are quite wrong. The chief reason for that, according to him, is that we are vengeful, a habit unworthy of us and contrary to the tenets of all religions. He believes that to return injury for injury does harm both to ourselves and our enemy. According to him, we should not retaliate against anyone who may injure us, but reward him with love instead. He is uncompromising in his loyalty to the principle of returning good for evil. He does not mean by this that those who suffer must seek no redress. He believes rather that we invite suffering on ourselves through our own fault. An oppressor’s efforts will be in vain if we refuse to submit to his tyranny. Generally, no one will kick me for the mere fun of it. There must be some deeper reason for his doing so. He will kick me to bend me to his will if I have been opposing him. If, in spite of the kicks, I refuse to carry out his orders, he will stop kicking me. It would make no difference to me whether he did so or not. What matters to me is the fact that his order is unjust. Slavery consists in submitting to an unjust order, not in suffering ourselves to be kicked. Real courage and humanity consist in not returning a kick for a kick. This is the core of Tolstoy’s teaching. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 240)

One might wonder and ask if Gandhi had learnt the doctrine of non-violence from Tolstoy or if and, “how far he looked at” (Basham, 2006: 20), Tolstoy’s works “as merely confirming and systematising attitudes and values which he had obtained at home…” (Ibid.). One could then also ask if certain “elements in the religious life of nineteenth century Hinduism might have prepared the ground for some of Gandhi’s ideas.” (Ibid.) It is surely significant that Gandhi had himself clarified at the time that he looked upon Tolstoy as one of his teachers he did not accept all of his ideas; No one should assume that I accept all the ideas of Tolstoy. I look upon him as one of my teachers. But I certainly do not agree with all his ideas. The central principle of his teaching is entirely acceptable to me, and it is set out in the letter given below. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 242)

In an essay that he had written on 19 November 1909 Gandhi emphasized that Tolstoy’s non-resistance to evil was not an entirely new idea in the history of ideas but that it was the beautiful restatement of an old truth which came naturally to man, i.e. was swabhavika (natural or of the human being’s inner most orientation) to the human being; One of the accepted and ‘time-honoured’ methods to attain the end is that of violence. The assassination of Sir Curzon Wylie was an illustration in its worst and [most] detestable form of that method. Tolstoy’s life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non-resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self-suffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great and divine law of Love. He applies it to all the problems that worry mankind…. One need not accept all that Tolstoy says—some of his facts are not accurately stated—to realise the central truth of his indictment of the present system which is to understand and act upon the irresistible power of the soul over the body, of love, which is an attribute of the soul, over the brute or body force generated by the stirring up in us of evil passions. There is no doubt that there is nothing new in what Tolstoy preaches. But his presentation of the old truth is refreshingly forceful. His logic is unassailable. And, above all, he endeavours to practise what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 243–244. The emphasis is my own addition.)

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Such statements make it apparent that even before he had read Tolstoy, ahimsa had become fairly central to Gandhi’s ideas and practices. One might then perhaps suggest that Gandhi did not quite draw (as much as recognize) his own emphasis on ahimsa/non-violence from reading Tolstoy; quite clearly (as Gandhi had said himself) ahimsa was an “old truth” (Ibid.). On reading Tolstoy however, Gandhi recognized and celebrated Tolstoy’s emphasis on the non-resistance to evil in the sermon on the mount as somewhat close to his own understanding; and thereby as confirming his application of non-violence to the problems in South Africa. One might consider that “…when he read the doctrines on the Sermon on the mount and of Tolstoy, his mind had already been prepared by ethical teachings which he had absorbed…” (Basham, 2006: 22) in his early life. Indeed Gandhi had said as much in a letter (dated 1 October 1909) he wrote to Tolstoy about the struggle that had been waging in South Africa for the last three years; The climax was reached three years ago, with a law which I and many others considered to be degrading and calculated to unman those to whom it was applicable. I felt that submission to a law of this nature was inconsistent with the spirit of true religion. I and some of my friends were and still are firm believers in the doctrine of non-resistance to evil. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 130)

Though it might seem clear enough that Gandhi had not quite drawn his idea of non-violence from his readings of Tolstoy; one might consider, in this connection, an open letter which Gandhi wrote in reply to a correspondent at the time. As Gandhi wrote, the correspondent concerned had questioned the sources of his own philosophy of non-violence, claiming that Gandhi had been inspired by Tolstoy and the Buddha. As Gandhi explained the correspondent had written to him arguing that; Non-violent non-co-operation movement failed not because there was sporadic outburst of suppressed feelings here and there but because the movement was lacking in a worthy ideal. The ideal that you preached was not in keeping with Indian culture and traditions. It savoured of imitation. … It was not the spirit of kshama of the Indian rishis, it was not the spirit of ahimsa of the great Indian yogis. It was an imperfect physical mixture of Tolstoyism and Buddhism and not a chemical mixture of East and West… (Letter from a correspondent quoted in Gandhi, 1888–1948, 30: 244)

In his reply to this argument from the correspondent, Gandhi had explicitly clarified his own position emphasizing that though he admired Tolstoy and the Buddha, his own ideas about non-violence had been inspired by/from the Bhagavad Gita; I do not believe that “my philosophy” is an indifferent mixture of Tolstoy and Buddha. I do not know what it is except that it is what I feel to be true. It sustains me. I owe much to Tolstoy and much to Buddha. I still somehow or other fancy that “my philosophy” represents the true meaning of the teaching of the Gita. I may be totally mistaken. Such a mistake can do no harm either to me or to anybody. For the source of my inspiration is of no consequence if what I stand for be unadulterated truth. Let the philosophy I represent be tested on its own merits. I hold that the world is sick of armed rebellions… The non-violence I teach is active nonviolence of the strongest. But the weakest can partake in it without becoming weaker. They can only be the stronger for having been in it. (ibid., 248)

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In the light of the above exchange (between Gandhi and the correspondent), it might seem important to consider what philosophical difference the Gita could have made to Gandhi’s conception of non-violence in terms of its close interrelation with truth. To begin with, one might consider that there are perhaps at least two reasons which might explain why it should have seemed necessary to Gandhi to explain, that though he had learnt much from Tolstoy, he had drawn his non-violence from quite a different source. The first reason was perhaps that given his commitment to ahimsa as the swabhava/inner or own most orientation of the human being qua human being, Gandhi could not (and indeed did not) endorse Tolstoy’s argument that the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force had first come to be known to the world though the Christian teaching. Indeed Gandhi had argued, to the contrary, that non-violence was natural to man, and, as he put it often enough, it was the “law of the species” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 21: 134). He had also often argued that truth and non-violence were values which were common to all religions. Note here that Gandhi had described truth and ahimsa as “fundamental truths” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 38:296–97), “fundamental rules of conduct” (Prabhu & Rao 2007: 74), “law(s) of the species” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 21: 134), “eternal principles” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 68: 260) and “Universal Principle(s)” (Bose (ed) 1948: 31). The second reason why Gandhi was possibly led to explain that his ahimsa was drawn from the Gita might have emerged from Gandhi’s philosophical difficulties with another argument made by Tolstoy. One might recall in this connection that Tolstoy had argued that non-resistance to evil by force drew from considerations related to a balance of power/modus vivendi given an “insufficiency of the principle of the authoritative definition of evil” (Tolstoy, 2006: 167) or perhaps from the concern for a reciprocity in human relations. The first argument mentioned above rested (in Tolstoy’s own avowal of it) upon the premise that since it was “irrational” (ibid., 166) to resist by force what each regarded as evil given that “no human definitions can succeed in making what some regard as evil be accepted as such by others” (ibid.) human beings ought not to resist evil by force; The insufficiency of the principle of the authoritative definition of evil and resistance to it by force, evident as it was in the early ages of chistianity, becomes still more obvious through the division of the Roman Empire into many states of equal authority, through their hostilities and the internal conflicts that broke out within them. But men were not able to accept the solution given by Christ, and old definitions of evil, which ought to be resisted continued to be laid down by means of making laws binding on all and enforced by forcible means. The authority who decided what ought to be regarded as evil and resisted by force was at one time the Pope, at another an emperor or king, an elective assembly or a whole nation. But both within and without the nation there were always men to be found who did not accept as binding on themselves the laws given out as the decrees of a god, or made by men invested with a sacred character …and there were men who thought good what the existing authorities regarded as bad, and who struggled against the authorities with the same violence as was employed against them…the struggle grew more and more intense. And the longer men used violence as the means of settling their disputes, the more obvious it became that it was an unsuitable means, since there could be no external authority able to define evil recognized by all. (ibid., 168)

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In a second (and related) argument, Tolstoy suggested that, we (human persons) ought not to do to others, what we would not want them to do to us; i.e. since we did not want to be subjected to force we ought not to subject others to force so that they would not subject us to force either; The less the doctrine was understood, the more obscure it appeared and the more necessary were external proofs of its truth. The proposition that we ought not to do unto others as we would not they should do unto us, did not need to be proved by miracles and needed no exercise of faith, because this proposition is in itself convincing and in harmony with man’s mind and nature; but the proposition that Christ was God had to be proved by miracles completely beyond our comprehension. (ibid., 48)

The proposition “that we ought not to do unto others as we would not they should do unto us” (ibid.) (as will become apparent from the section on “Ahimsa and the Bhagavad Gita” in this essay) formed no part of Gandhi’s own argument for ahimsa. For Gandhi, the law of non-violence was an unconditional and one-sided/ unilateral obligation to own all others as part of one’s own family. Such kinship was an unconditional duty incumbent on all humans on account of their innermost orientation/swabhava which reflected that the human being was made in the image of God. Indeed in a set of two interesting essays written in Young India in 1926 on the swabhava/nature/own, most orientation of the human being qua human being Gandhi had explained that ahimsa/non-violence involved owning kinship with the most distant/ different ‘others’ and that such ahimsa was the human being’s innermost nature and the special virtue/khaas lakshana of the human species. In this set of essays, Gandhi had emphasized that; …the difficult dharma which rule my life, and I hold ought to rule that of every man and woman, impose this unilateral obligation (ekpakshi farj) on us. And it is so imposed because only the human is the image of God. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 36: 5).

The philosophically operative injunction here is constituted by the set of terms “…unilateral obligation (ekpakshi farj)…” (Ibid.) which clarify that ahimsa was a one-sided/unilateral and categorical obligation incumbent on every human qua human and not restricted in scope to the human world. Indeed Gandhi had gone on to argue in a fairly philosophically dense paragraph; The truth is that my ethics not only permit me to claim but require me to own kinship with not merely the ape but the horse and the sheep, the lion and the leopard, the snake and the scorpion. Not so need these kinsfolk regard themselves. The hard ethics which rule my life, and I hold ought to rule that of every man and woman, impose this unilateral obligation upon us. And it is so imposed because man alone is made in the image of God. That some of us do not recognize that status of ours makes no difference, except that then we do not get the benefit of the status, even as a lion brought up in the company of sheep, may not know his own status and, therefore, does not receive its benefits; but it belongs to him, nevertheless, and the moment he realizes it, he begins to exercise his dominion over the sheep. But no sheep masquerading as a lion can ever attain the leonine status. And to prove the proposition that man is made in the image of God, it is surely unnecessary to show that all men admittedly exhibit that image in their own persons. It is enough to show that one man at least has done so. And, will it be denied that the great religious teachers of mankind have exhibited the image of God in their own persons? (ibid.)

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The most important insight in this passage was that it brought out the point that the human obligation to respond to hostile others with love/ahimsa (and as if they were one’s family members) was in no part contingent on any hypothetical clause of the sort that is involved in an “If…then…” argument. Gandhi would not therefore have been able to accept any argument of the form ‘If no authoritative definition of evil is available then nonviolence is required to secure a modus vivendi and balance of power allowing conflicting parties to co-exist peacefully’. One might also consider that the unconditional nature of the obligation which made Gandhian ahimsa incumbent on all humans ruled out summarily any derivation from arguments such as the one offered by Tolstoy in the following statement; we ought not to do unto others as we would not they should do unto us (Tolstoy, 2006: 48)

As seen above, Gandhi could not accept any such argument as he thought of ahimsa as an unconditional and one-sided obligation incumbent on every moral agent no matter whether the moral agent concerned wanted /did not want the ‘other’ (the interlocutor) to use force against him/her self. Note that Gandhi was clear that the snake and scorpion who used force against the human in the form of the sting were also beings towards whom the human person had a unilateral/one-sided obligation to respond with non-violence. The non-violence was obligatory not because the human person did not want the other (snake, scorpion, or human) to use force against him/ herself (or to secure a balance of power in the absence of a universally accepted definition of evil) but because being made in the image of God the human person was non-violent/owned kinship with all manner of being by his/her very nature. Gandhi traced his own understanding of ahimsa to the Gita, and it will be the object of Sect. 2.2 to attempt to bring out the influence of the Gita on Gandhian ahimsa.

2.2 Gandhian Ahimsa and the Bhagavad Gita Most scholars writing on Gandhi agree that Gandhian ahimsa meant much more than non-injury; even if following the Jains, one were to understand “non-injury” in the sense of responding to the human and non-human world with compassion. In a Gandhian world view, ahimsa however seemed to have encompassed more than compassion; it meant a love for all and seemed to indicate a transformation in one’s way of life, one which rested “on an understanding about the inherent worth and dignity of all life.” (Terchek, 2011: 117). It was perhaps a way of life that—in the last—completely transformed a moral aspirant’s response to the most distant and different ‘other’ with a feeling of kinship and love as if the erring other was of one’s own kin/family. One might suggest that such an ethics (and such an expansive understanding of non-violence/ahimsa) possibly rested upon a philosophical metaphysics of non-dualism (whether Gandhi thought of such non-dualism as qualified in the manner of Ramanuja, unqualified in the manner of Sankara or devotional as directed towards the figure of Sri Krishna as in the Gita) and related belief in the oneness of all being. Gandhi had clearly found support for his belief in the oneness of all being and

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an ethics of desireless-ness in the Gita, in the first two chapters of the Yoga Vasistha of Valmiki and in the Ishopanishad. In this connection, it is important to note that Gandhi is on record as having read the first two chapters of the Yoga Vasistha and that these chapters have philosophical continuities (in Gandhi’s own mind) with the discussion on non-attachment and the desireless-ness somewhat central to the Gita. One might also recall that he spoke of the Ishopanishad after 1934 and in 1937 there were four speeches on the Ishopanishad during his travels in South India in connection with the abolition of untouchability. However, (as already noted) despite an agreement on its somewhat more comprehensive role in a Gandhian life, scholars have not found much agreement, on the philosophical lineage of Gandhian ahimsa. A closer reading of Gandhi’s interpretation of philosophical arguments in the Gita, Yoga Vasistha, and the Ishopanishad could perhaps explain why and how ahimsa was transformed (in Gandhi’s conception of it) and came to signify much more than it did in traditional Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu accounts. One might recall that non-violence came to be read by Gandhi (in a complete departure from previous discussions on yama/niyama in the orthodox Hindu and the Jain traditions) as the only path/means to truth/God. In what follows, I will suggest that Gandhi had transformed the received understanding of ahimsa/ non-violence as a fastidious observation of the yama/vrata/vow of non-injury; into, ahimsa as the only means to truth/God. This transformation was perhaps more significant than might appear on a first reading. Consider that the transformed notion of ahimsa in Gandhi also involved a significant transformation in the manner in which the relationship between the yamas/vows of truth and ahimsa had traditionally been understood. It is important to note that Gandhi (in a contrast with more traditional accounts) thought that the vows of truth and ahimsa were inextricable from each other in as much as the being of ahimsa was the being of truth. He was able to effect such a conceptual change with philosophical dexterity by arguing that since there was no difference between means and end, ahimsa/non-violence (as the only means to arrive at truth) was the very being of truth/God itself (considered as the end of the good human life). I will argue here that Gandhi’s somewhat transformed understanding of ahimsa drew from the ideas of samata/absolute equality and desireless-ness/non-attachment in the Gita. I will also suggest that in his several comments on the Gita, Gandhi developed an epistemic argument about the significance of the practice of religiomoral dictum recommended in religious texts to the process of coming to the truth of such dictum. On this view, rules/values recommended in religio-moral texts which could not be practised consistently with the project of living a good human life could not be authenticated; and this would mean that they ought to be rejected as simply not true. Such beliefs would then need to be either summarily rejected or reinterpreted in line with the dominant meaning of the religious text concerned and it’s avowed aim of helping the moral aspirant lead a good human life. The significance of practice for the authentication of propositions offered as purported religio-moral values/principles/truths perhaps further enforced Gandhi’s belief that ahimsa was inseparable from—and the only way to arrive at—truth/ satya. One might recall here that the Gandhian connection between truth and ahimsa

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drew from Gandhi’s wider understanding of ahimsa as egolessness and humility; and from his belief that the path to truth involved overcoming both external and internal obstacles and that the latter were related to egoistic self-concern. On this view, it would be impossible to arrive at the truth without the practice of ahimsa, i.e. complete selfless-ness. However, there was perhaps another reason that Gandhi regarded ahimsa as inseperable from truth, and this drew from the significance of practice for the authentication of propositions offered as purported religiomoral values. Consider that the recommendation of ahimsa/non-violence as a value would be quite literally meaningless unless it was translated into the moral agent’s practice. One could not for instance on the very face of it murder, injure, shout at, speak ill of, or slap another, and, consistently profess non-violence as a value. There was perhaps a transparency in the recommendation to practise ahimsa/non-violence; which one might not have been able to find with the other traditional yama/niyamas or vows. Consider in this connection that while one might, for instance, be able to profess truth for a while (at least and longer if one is clever) without always remaining truthful, one could not profess the value of ahimsa while being violent through action and speech, at the very least. The Gandhian argument about the connection between practice and the validation of religious truths which he made in his several comments on the Gita and the inseparability of ahimsa from truth drawn (no matter how strange it sounds) from the Gita came to define Gandhi’s difficulty with (and rejection of) modern politics which he described as “power politics”. However, this last will be taken up in the sixth essay in this book and will not be discussed here. To go back now to Gandhi and the Gita, one might now recall Gandhi’s admission that his philosophy of ahimsa/non-violence represented the true meaning of the Bhagavad Gita.; …My philosophy represents the true meaning of the Gita (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 30: 248)

Even if one were to disregard for the moment the differences between Gandhi and the other interpreters of the Gita (specifically from interpreters who were Gandhi’s contemporaries), Gandhi’s drawing of ahimsa as non-violence and non-passionate universal love from the context of the war between cousins in the Gita can seem a little surprising.

2.2.1 The Gita: Nationalist Politics and Gandhi As is fairly well known, Gandhi had first studied the Bhagavad Gita in London in 1889 when he read Edwin Arnold’s translation entitled The Song Celestial with two theosophist brothers. However, Gandhi’s first serious lectures on the Gita came in 1920; and in 1923 (in entries in the Jail diary), Gandhi recorded reading (Purani’s translation of) Aurobindo’s Gitanishkarsha, “the Gita by Tilak” (Gandhi, 1888– 1948, 26: 414), the Mahabharata and Nathuram Sharma’s commentary on the Gita. Between February and November 1926, Gandhi withdrew from mass political action and translated the Gita from Sanskrit to Gujarati and several comments appeared

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between 1926 and 1932.1 The years following 1926 were the years in which his involvement in Indian politics was the most intense, and during this time, the Gita became fairly central to Gandhi’s own religious practice. Prayers and readings from the Gita became mandatory to the communal prayers in the Sabarmati Ashram, and one might also recall that when Gandhi and fellow satyagrahis stepped out on the Dandi March from Sabarmati Ashram in March 1930, they each carried a copy of Gandhi’s commentary on the Gita, the Anasaktiyoga. One can perhaps better appreciate the significance of Gandhi’s somewhat unique position (drawing ahimsa from such a study of the Gita) against the background of the increasing importance of the Gita itself during the early 1900s; both in nationalist politics in colonial India, and indeed, in the wider world of readers. In 1783, the Gita had become known to the Anglo American world through Charles Wilkin’s English translation which followed an earlier Portuguese translation available to European readers. Following such an availability, the 1830s and 1840s witnessed a progressive rise in the prominence of the Gita across the world. Scholars such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Conway turned their attention to the text. Quite at the same time, the Gita had also come to be the central text for nationalists in colonial India. From the 1880s, the Gita was in fact at the forefront of debate between colonial officials, missionaries, and Indian radicals who interpreted Krishna’s advice to Arjuna as legitimizing the use of violence in the Indian struggle for independence. Many nationalists commented on the Gita at this time including Bankim Chandra, Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, and Gandhi. During his several visits to London from South Africa between 1904 and 1909, Gandhi came increasingly into contact with the more radical Indian nationalists (like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and some others staying at the India house in London) and came to see the difference between their and his own understanding of the Gita. That Gandhi recognized and took these differences very seriously seems quite clear from the manner in which he had engaged in the Hind Swaraj with arguments (made by Savarkar and the others at India House) with which he had become acquainted while he was in London. However (as he said in

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Gandhi was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita in England in 1888–1889 when he read Sir Edwin Arnold’s translation. It made such an impact on his thinking that he went on to engage systematically with it across the next few decades of his life. In 1919, he commented on the Gita in one of the Satyagraha leaflets. In 1926, he gave a series of almost daily talks on the Gita between February and November during morning prayers at the Satyagraha Ashram. They were posthumously published under the title Gandhijijinu Gitashikshan (Gandhi’s Teaching of the Gita). Gitashikshan seems to have been translated by the editors of the collected works as “Discourses on the Gita”. It was later published in English as a book The Bhagavadgita (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1980). Gandhi’s Gujarati translation of the Gita the Anasaktiyoga literally “the yoga of non- attachment” was completed in Yeravada jail in 1929. The Anasaktiyoga was a “rendering” of the Gita with short glosses on some passages and an additional preface. The English translation of the book by Mahadev Desai was published in 1931 by Navajivan Press under the title The Gita according to Gandhi. There were also two other publications. Faced with complaints that Anasaktiyoga was too difficult to follow, Gandhi wrote a series of letters on the Gita. These were later published under the title Gitabodh. To help readers understand the Anasaktiyoga, he published a glossary to the terms in it, which was published in1936 as the Gitapadarthkosa.

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his autobiography), it was only in 1918 after a near death experience that he “began to devote all waking hours to listening to the Gita” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 44: 428). Indeed there were very significant differences between Gandhi’s reading and the commentaries written by his contemporaries. These differences are important to this discussion on ahimsa in Gandhi because the commentaries written by his contemporaries centred around reading the Gita as defining the exception to ahimsa/ non-violence. In this connection, one might note that between 1905 and 1910, Sri Aurobindo had written and spoken repeatedly about the Gita. In the Bande Mataram of 26 December 1906, Sri Aurobindo argued that; Politics is concerned with masses of mankind and not with individuals. To ask masses of mankind to act as saints, to rise to the height of divine love and practise it in relation to their adversaries or oppressors, is to ignore human nature. It is to set a premium on injustice and violence by paralysing the hand of the deliverer when raised to strike. The Gita is the best answer to those who shrink from battle as a sin and aggression as a lowering of morality. (Aurobindo, 2002: 1117)

In England, the expatriate Shyamaji Krishna Varma brought out the Indian Sociologist and the issue dated January 1913, inspired by the Gita shared some of the same sentiment; We need therefore hardly emphasize the point that it is natural for every people to use violence in order to counteract violence. (Krishna Varma quoted in Chakrabarty & Majumdar, 2013: 74)

In June 1897, Tilak’s journal Kesari had also spoken of the Gita as defining the exception to ahimsa and argued that “Shrimat Krishna’s teaching in the Bhagavad Gita is to kill even our teachers and kinsmen” (Chakrabarty & Majumdar, 2013: 72). Tilak, one might recall, had written his commentary the Gita Rahasya in the Mandalay jail around the year 1908 which (as already seen) Gandhi had read. After the Congress resolution of December 1919, the conflict between Tilak and Gandhi intensified around the Gita and the nature of political action. The exchange between them perhaps presents the que to bring out the philosophical issues involved in Gandhi’s reading of ahimsa in/from the Bhagavad Gita. In fact before one can locate the influence of the Gita on Gandhian ahimsa, it becomes important to look at the conflict between Gandhi and Balgangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) the most significant voice in the purva paksa on the question of violence and the political in the Gita. This becomes important both because it brings out the apparent incongruity of Gandhi’s emphatic claim that he derived ahimsa from the Gita and also because then as much as now; Far from transcending and superseding Tilak, however, Gandhi’s ethical politics were forced to subsist with their alternative … (Kapila, 2013: 180)

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2.2.2 Making for the Exception: Tilak, Gandhi, and Violence in the Gita For Tilak (among other Indian nationalists struggling for freedom from colonialism), it was the Gita among all the Hindu texts which had broken the salience between the ethical and the political. Tilak had challenged that salience (of the ethical and political) one that Gandhi had affirmed as the inseparability of truth and ahimsa, and indeed emphasized, by distinguishing “true” from “power” politics (however as noted earlier this distinction will be taken up in Chapter Six of this book). Negating the inseparability—between ahimsa and truth—became essential for Tilak (and other nationalists like Veer Damodar Savarkar) to justify violence against the colonizer. In such a context, the warlike setting of the Gita (where Sri Krishna recommended violence against the kin, for the sake of duty) served to define the theoretical space for the exception to the law of ahimsa/harmlessness. For Tilak, Savarkar, and many others, by making space for the exception, the Gita justified violence for the sake of duty and thereby it could perhaps be said that the Gita’s “aim and intervention was in the end a critique of the ethical and its subordination to the political.” (ibid., 188) One might dwell a little here on Tilak’s arguments about the central message of the Gita and his point that it defined the exception to what to Gandhi, appeared as, the unilateral and somewhat categorical obligation of harmlessness/non-violence. This becomes important here, if only because, Tilak’s understanding was in somewhat direct conflict with Gandhi who (as noted earlier in the essay) drew upon an understanding of ahimsa as the unilateral obligation/ekpakshi farj of every human to own kinship with the most distant other from the very same Gita. Of course Gandhi could not have but known that he was creating a storm, so to speak; as he was very well acquainted with Tilak’s interpretation of the Gita (and of others which followed a similar line of argument). Tilak and Gandhi had also come into an open conflict in national dailies over the position of ahimsa in the Gita. Consider here that Gandhi wrote on 2 May 1920; We had a visit from Tilak Maharaj yesterday also. He frankly said that he had not my forbearance and he believed in giving tit for tat. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 20: 273)

Tilak on his part had argued against commentators (like Gandhi) who had given interpretations of the Gita different from his own. Pointing out that these thinkers had somehow neglected the established key to a proper understanding of the Gita (or of any religious text) Tilak had argued that the key to a proper understanding of a text was to locate the central purpose of the text as defining the dominant meaning. In the case of the Gita, Tilak suggested that the confusion apparent in many readings would dissipate (on its own) once interpreters would focus on the central purpose of the Gita as lying in the event that occasioned Sri Krisna’s discourse; The Gita is not such a pot of jugglery, that any one can extract any meaning he likes out of it. The Gita had been written long before these various schools came into existence, and it was preached by Sri Krsna to Arjuna not to increase his confusion but to remove it; and it contains a preaching of one definite creed to Arjuna…and the effect of that advice on Arjuna has also been what it ought to have been. (Tilak, 1935: 28)

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If one were to read the Gita along the lines of Tilak’s argument (regarding the significance of the central purpose as providing the key to a proper understanding of a text), it would appear that in the Gita Sri Krishna had answered Arjuna’s question about whether he should proceed to war by recommending a righteous war; because (as Sri Krishna had explained) violence for a righteous course was justified and this justification was the central purport of the Gita. This became obvious enough (according to Tilak and other nationalists) if one were to focus on the central event, i.e. Arjuna’s despondency and Sri Krishna’s urging him to make war on his family now turned into the enemy. The question of the universal ethical recommendation of harmlessness loomed large to question such an interpretation. Tilak had argued that the Gita whose central message was action (not jnana/knowledge or bhakti/devotion) was propounded to teach “‘yoga’…a special device of performing actions.” (ibid., 77). Such a Yoga/device was one of discrimination which was taught by the Gita to help the moral aspirant (in this case Arjuna) define the exception to the law of harmlessness. Tilak writes; The subject matter of the Gita is to show whether or not there are any means of ascertaining what course should be followed by a person on such an occasion and if so, what those means are. (ibid., 75)

To Tilak, the recommendation made by Sri Krishna to put the claims of the political before the obligations of kinship and fraternity in the Gita made room for the exception to the universal law of ahimsa/non-violence/harmlessness. Tilak explained that Sri Krishna had argued that killing the kin/family was to be undertaken for the protection of life; …as a result of other important considerations coming into existence, one has unavoidably to temporarily forget not only the relationship between the older and the younger in age, but also the universally accepted relationship between father and son. (ibid., 60)

Significantly, Gandhi (like Tilak) believed that Arjuna’s opening question in the Gita was the central event around which that text was written. However, Gandhi’s interpretation of that central event put him and Tilak in two different worlds, as it were. Gandhi suggested that the account of the central event in the Gita was purely metaphorical and that the war (and recommendation to fight it) was a metaphor for the inner drama eternally going on within the individual moral being—the drama consequent to the struggle between good and evil within rather than outside the soul; So far as the Gita is concerned, I do not regard it as a historical discourse. It takes a physical illustration to drive home a spiritual truth. It is the description not of a war between cousins but between two natures in us-the good and the evil… Ahimsa paramo dharmah is one of the highest truths of life. Any fall from it must be regarded as a fall. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 30: 445–446)

Or again; Even in 1888–89, when I first became acquainted with the Gita, I felt that it was not a historical work, but that, under the guise of physical warfare, it described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind, and that physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring…the author of the Mahabharata has not

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established the necessity of physical warfare on the contrary he has proved its futility. He has made the victors shed tears of sorrow and repentance and has left them nothing but a legacy of miseries. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 167)

In such a context while Gandhi (like Tilak) recognized the centrality of Sri Krishna’s answer to Arjuna as the main event of the Gita, he argued that this answer and “the message of the Gita” (Ibid.) was that of “showing the most excellent way to attain self realization” (Ibid., 168). It was in such a context that Sri Krishna in his answer to Arjuna’s doubt had gone on to emphasize that a moral aspirant could not afford to discriminate between his/her own people and ‘others’. For Gandhi then “the object of the Gita” (Ibid.) was not only to recommend ahimsa as a kinship with all being but also samata/absolute equality between all being. Gandhi wrote that Sri Krishna’s answer to Arjuna’s doubt was meant to emphasize non-discrimination between one’s own people and others and to urge Arjuna to fight, for; …should it be necessary to cut off, with a sword, one’s fathers head, one must do so… if one would be ready to cut off anyone else’s head in similar circumstances. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 83) (the highlighting is mine and not present in Gandhi’s original text)

To Gandhi the significance of Sri Krishna’s emphasis on cutting off one’s fathers head if one would be ready to cut off anyone else’s head in similar circumstances would become clear once one realized that no one would really be able to cut off the heads of their family members. Such a realization would help the aspirant understand that Sri Krishna’s recommendation of absolute equality between one’s own and others could only be effected by an engagement in action without an attachment to results, i.e. the desireless action recommended in the Gita. Such action would destroy all sources of evil within the inner life of the moral agent leaving no possibility of countenancing violence against the other. On 16 March 1930, Gandhi explained; My aspiration is that every Gujarati will read this Gita, ponder it and practise its teaching. An easy way to ponder it is to try and understand the meaning without referring to the Sanskrit text and then to conduct oneself accordingly. For example, those who interpret the teaching of the Gita to mean that one ought to kill the wicked without making a distinction between one’s kinsmen and others, should kill their parents or other relatives if they are wicked. In practice, they will not be able to do so. Naturally, then, it would occur to the reader that where destruction is prescribed the work contemplates some other form of destruction. Almost every page of the Gita advises us not to make a distinction between our own people and others. How is this to be done? Reflection will lead us to the conclusion that we should perform all our acts in a spirit of non-attachment… In the very first chapter we find Arjuna facing the troublesome question of one’s own people and others. In every chapter the Gita brings out how such a distinction is false and harmful. I have called the Gita Anasaktiyoga. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 48: 438–439. The emphasis is my addition.)

To act without attachment and thereby without discriminating between one’s own and others was then the central message of the Gita, and as Gandhi explained, such conduct was impossible without as complete a non-violence (egoless-ness) as humanly possible. However given that ahimsa was natural to the human species and already understood as good in worldly life, why should Sri Krishna of the Gita have urged Arjuna to fight at all? As already mentioned (and in consonance with its religio-moral theme),

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Gandhi believed that the Gita opened with the account of the inner duel between good and evil within the moral aspirant; …the battle field described here is primarily the one inside the human (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 76)

Gandhi considered why Sri Krishna should have answered Arjuna urging him to fight and thereby given him “a plainly contrary teaching” (Ibid., 80) to that of non-violence/ahimsa which was regarded as good in “common dealings” (Ibid.) at the time that the text was written; What people would generally do in their common dealings is regarded as good. If we see anyone here, or elsewhere, who renounces a right in regard to worldly matters and forgives even strangers, not to speak of relations, we would think of him as a good man. If we desist from beating up a thief or any other felon, do nothing to get him punished but, after admonishing him and recovering from him the stolen article, let him go, we would be credited with humanity and our action would be regarded as an instance of non-violence; a contrary course would be looked upon as violence. How is it, then, that Shri Krishna stops Arjuna from advancing such an argument? How can we explain a plainly contrary teaching in Bhagavad Gita? Why does Shri Krishna describe Arjuna as cowardly and weak? (Ibid., 80)

Gandhi explained that the reason that Sri Krishna answered Arjuna by recommending the fight lays in the reasons that Arjuna advanced for his despondency. One might recall that Arjuna did not raise doubts about violence but only about violence against his own people; We should, therefore, think carefully about this illustration of the battle. The first thing to bear in mind is that Arjuna falls into the error of making a distinction between kinsmen and outsiders. Outsiders may be killed even if they are not oppressors, and kinsmen may not be killed even if they are. My son, even if a drunkard, would inherit my property. I would write in Navajivan about another’s son if he was wicked, but would not treat my own son in that manner. The Gita says, “No, this is not right. We have no right to point an accusing finger at others. We should point out the lapses of our own people first.” Arjuna was Dronacharya’s best pupil. Bhishma had actually showered love on him as if he had been his first-born. Arjuna should be ready to kill either of them. It has become his duty to non-co-operate with both, for they have joined the wrong side. Should it become necessary to cut off, with a sword, one’s father’s head, one must do so if one has a sword and is a Kshatriya, and if one would be ready to cut off anyone else’s head in similar circumstances. Shri Krishna, therefore, asks Arjuna to free himself from ignorant attachments in this world. How should I act as editor of Navajivan? Would it be right for me to proclaim with beat of drum the theft committed by an outsider’s child and say nothing about a boy of my Ashram, who may have misbehaved in the same way? Certainly not. The Gita permits no distinction between one’s relations and others. If one must kill, one should kill one’s own people first. Shri Krishna asks Arjuna: “What is this you are saying about people being your relations?” The Gita wants to free him from this ignorant distinction of some people being his relations and others not. He has resolved to kill. It was not right, then, that he should shrink from killing particular individuals. (ibid., 83)

Gandhi emphasized that the metaphor of this war and of Sri Krishna’s advice to Arjuna in the Gita was perhaps best suited to bring out the manner in which an individual self was apt to divide the world into two warring factions; that of the party aligned to his/her self and those at the opposite end against the interest of the self.

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Sri Krishna had insisted that Arjuna should break away from the habit of dividing the world between two camps, i.e. of one’s own and of the ‘other’ and advised him to make no distinction between kinsmen and ‘others’. Such a breaking of the habit of dividing the world into two warring parts (one’s own and that of the ‘other’) was nothing if not a development of samadrishti/seeing things with an equal eye. The absence of division would, in itself, have made Arjuna (any moral aspirant) fight the moral war within by keeping to the moral rule of samata/absolute equality, i.e. not discriminating between one’s own and the ‘other’ when contemplating any action. Accordingly, Gandhi argued that the opening question and Sri Krisna’s answer was meant to bring out the need to act in the spirit of oneness, i.e. according absolute equality to all manner of being. The Gita then not only recommended ahimsa but also absolute equality between one’s own and the hostile other, and it made no room for the exception to the law of harmlessness. Making much the same point, Gandhi wrote in his comment on the Gita; Suppose that your father was a teacher, that you and… misbehaved in the same way and your father punished …but not you; would that be right? Arjuna did what even a child like you does. Shri Krishna told him all this long argument of the Gita just to explain this. (Ibid., 91) We should merely cure the fever of a member of our family, but try to discover the cause of the fever from which the whole world is suffering and remove the cause. (Ibid., 214)

What then of the warlike illustration? As already mentioned above, the warlike illustration was a metaphor for the dharma yuddha/battle for righteousness within every moral agent and Sri Krishna’s answer was meant to recommend that “…whenever faced with a moral problem” (Ibid., 88) the aspirant would need to “give up attachment to the ego” (Ibid.). For it might seem obvious enough that it is an exaggerated concern for the self that leads a moral agent to make a division between those who align with its (ego’s) interest and self-image and those who threaten the same ego and its interests. Progressive egolessness would perhaps lead the aspirant into the development of an equi-mindedness between the self, kinsmen, and others outside the kin or hostile to the agent’s ego-driven projects; if the aspirant would “then consider what” (Ibid.) should/ought to be done he/she would indeed “come to no harm. This is the substance of the argument which Shri Krishna has expanded into 18 chapters.” (Ibid., 88–89). The connection between the ego and untruth, violence, and absence of equi-mindedness seems clear enough. Indeed if one were to locate a single enemy of the moral life, it would need to be the “fat relentless ego” (Murdoch, 1970: 51) as Iris Murdoch has described it. As Murdoch reminds students of moral philosophy, the ego necessarily compels the aspirant to see the self in the best possible light which implies that all else must necessarily pale in comparison. Untruth, violence, and inequality follow in the wake of the project of keeping the dazzling ego in place, as it were. One might now consider what Gandhi’s argument suggesting that the Gita recommended humility, ahimsa, and equi-mindedness could mean for Tilak’s reading of the Gita as making space for the exception to the “religion of harmlessness” (Tilak, 1935: 43). Tilak one might recall had spoken about possible exceptions to ahimsa

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and the figure of the thief and of theft were central to such discussions and indeed to the exceptions. Of course this was not in itself new as the metaphor of dispossession was central to much of colonial discourse justifying violence against the thief/ dispossessor/colonizer; But, assuming for the sake of argument that some villain has come, with a weapon in his hands to kill you, or to commit rape on your wife and daughter, or to set fire to your house, or to steal all your wealth, or to deprive you of your moveable property: and, there is nobody who can protect you; then should you close your eyes and treat with such unconcern such a villain…saying ‘ahimsa paramo dharmah?’ or should you, as much as possible, punish him if he does not listen to reason? (Ibid., 43)

Tilak was clear that a unilateral human obligation to ahimsa was not without the exception identified by the discrimination between duty and non-duty and of course defined by Sri Krishna in the Gita; In short the ordinary rules of morality are not always sufficient, and even the most principle maxim of ethics, namely that of Harmlessness, does not escape the necessity of discrimination between the duty and the non-duty. (Ibid., 44)

Even as he put forth these insights in his commentary on the Gita, Tilak saw that reading the Gita as defining the exception to the law of ahimsa involved the related (inseparable or not) question of truth/satya. Indeed in the very next paragraph (that followed the one just quoted above from Tilak on the Gita), Tilak spoke about truth; There is another law which has become wholly authoritative and acceptable to everybody in the world, …and among all religions, and that is the law of Truth. (Ibid., 45)

Tilak defined truth primarily as an ontological value, i.e. as that which exists rather than as predominantly a moral value identified with/exhausted by truth telling.; Because, the law of Truth is not confined to speech, that conduct which leads to the benefit of all, cannot be looked upon as objectionable merely on the ground that the vocal expression is untruthful. (Ibid., 47)

It might be interesting to recall here that a contemporary reading of Gandhi’s truth that of Akeel Bilgrami (2006) with which I have taken issue (see Puri, 2015) suggests that Gandhi’s truth was solely a moral value. In somewhat sharp contrast, Tilak had spoken of truth as primarily, perhaps only, an ontological value; The Vedas extol the worth of Truth by saying that it is satya which controls the firmament, the earth, the air and the other primordial elements…The root meaning of the word ‘satya’ is ‘which exists’, that is, ‘which never ceases to exist’ or ‘which is not touched by the past, present or the future’; (Tilak, 1935: 45)

Such a philosophical rethinking of truth as primarily ontological (breaking its connection with the primacy of veracity/truth telling and the domain of the ethical) made it possible perhaps for Tilak to break (at the very least, challenge) the inseparability of truth and ahimsa in Gandhi. For if “the Earth has become dignified on account of Truth” (Ibid.) those who challenge that which exists—the nation, the home, the body—sully the earth itself, as it were, as thieves and this creates the

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duty to protect the truth and thereby justifies violence against them. Tilak explicitly brings up the connections between truth and ahimsa explaining that stealing provides a primary occasion for the exception to both the laws of truth speaking/veracity and non-violence. He explains; Those learned Western philosophers who have not been surprised by the exceptions to the Law of harmlessness have attempted to blame our law givers on account of exceptions to the law of truth. (ibid., 49)

Significantly, Tilak explains the presence of the exception to ahimsa/harmlessness by referring to “the third common law, namely of not-stealing (asteya)” (ibid., 54). He understands truth primarily as an ontological value as concerned with what exists as a matter of fact and only secondarily as truth telling or veracity. The conflict between the two aspects of the law of truth was on Tilak’s view to be settled by looking towards the third yama that of non-stealing/asteya. Here then lay the primary contribution of the Gita which defined the exception to the law of non-violence by settling the issue of the conflict between truth as sat/that which exists and satya/truth telling; by reference to asteya/non-stealing, i.e. the law prohibiting stealing or dispossession understood as disruption of that which exists in the possession of the rightful owner; If stealing or taking away by force that wealth which a man has lawfully acquired is permitted, the people will stop accumulating wealth and all will suffer; and chaos will reign as a result of the arrangement of society being broken up. (Ibid.)

Tilak had argued that the Gita was in fact written to expound on the exceptions to moral laws like harmlessness and veracity by using “the pretext” (ibid., 69) of “removing his (Arjuna’s) doubts about his duty.” (ibid.). It is fairly clear then that Tilak too recognized that the warlike illustration in the Gita furnished a pretext providing Sri Krishna an opportunity to articulate moral guidelines for human aspirants. However unlike Gandhi (and reading these guidelines very differently), Tilak argued that the Gita ought to be read as breaking the salience of truth and ahimsa and establishing the supremacy of the political over the ethical. With some dexterity, Tilak argued that the Gita emphasizes and explains the exceptions to the laws of truth and non-violence and “discriminates between the doable and the not-doable” (ibid.). In this connection, Tilak writes; I have laboured on this subject so long only with the idea of impressing on the mind of my readers how the circumstances in which Arjuna found himself in the beginning of the Gita as a result of a conflict between fraternal affection and a warrior’s duties were not something out of the common; and how similar circumstances very often befall great and responsible persons in life, giving rise to a conflict between the principles of Harmlessness and Self-Protection, or of Veracity and general welfare, or between the protection of one’s own person and one’s reputation, or again between different duties arising out of different aspects of the same situation; and how, many exceptions arise, which are not provided for by ordinary and generally accepted moral laws; and Lastly how on such occasions, not only ordinary, but even very clever and learned persons, naturally feel the desire of finding out whether or not there is some definite formula or basis for determining what should be done and what not … (ibid., 67).

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2.2.3 Gandhi: Meeting the Thief with Ahimsa/love On 24 October 1909 (around the time that Tilak was writing his arguments about the Gita as making space for the exception to ahimsa and veracity/speaking the truth), Gandhi was encountering an argument close to Tilak’s at a Dussehra dinner at Nazimuddin’s Indian restaurant at Bayswater in London. At this dinner, the Ramayana and the Gita had come to be at the centre of the debate (on the question of exceptions to violence) between Gandhi and Savarkar among others present on the occasion. A secret service agent who was present at this dinner had in fact recorded (at the time) that Savarkar and others had argued that the Gita taught different things than Gandhi thought it did. Gandhi himself gave an account of the conflicts at the dinner in a letter he wrote a day later; On Sunday last, I presided at the Dussera Festival Dinner. It was given practically by the extremist Committee. Nearly seventy Indians came. I accepted the proposal unhesitatingly so that I might speak to those who might assemble there on the uselessness of violence for securing reforms. This I did. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 195)

Years later, appropriately enough, it was in Discourses on the Gita that Gandhi recalled the conflicts in London; When I was in London, I had talks with many revolutionaries. Shyamji Krishnavarma, Savarkar and others used to tell me that the Gita and the Ramayana taught quite the opposite of what I said they did. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 82)

The matter of violence and non-violence in the Gita and the Ramayana was clearly on Gandhi’s mind, and when he wrote the Hind Swaraj (as he sailed back from London to South Africa in November 1909), he dwelt at some length on the notion of theft and argued that the figure of the thief presented no exception to ahimsa. Gandhi had already made the journey to London a few times and spent much time at India house at Highgate in London where he had become acquainted with Shyamaji Krishnavarma, Savarkar, and others and their arguments about the Gita. An understanding of their positions perhaps led Gandhi to make a considered response to a reading of the Gita as defining the conditions for the exception to the yama “cardinal …virtue(s)” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 33: 448) of harmlessness. Consequently perhaps (and quite appropriately) in the Hind Swaraj, Gandhi spoke at length of the thief and of how the moral aspirant ought to respond to the thief. Perhaps it was then the voice of the purva paksha echoing in Gandhi’s memory who raised the question in the guise of the reader in Hind Swaraj; Will you not admit that you are arguing against yourself? You know that what the English obtained in their own country they obtained by using brute force. …What does it matter what means they adopted? Why should we not obtain our goal, which is good, by any means whatsoever, even by using violence? Shall I think of the means when I have to deal with a thief in the house?” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 286)

Speaking through the arguments made by the Editor (in the dialogue form adopted in the Hind Swaraj), Gandhi represented a perspective which opposed the idea that

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theft could justify the exception to the yama “cardinal virtue(s)” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 33: 448) of harmlessness/non-violence; Now we shall take the example given by you of the thief to be driven out. I do not agree with you that the thief may be driven out by any means. If it is my father who has come to steal I shall use one kind of means. If it is an acquaintance I shall use another; and in the case of a perfect stranger I shall use a third…. I myself seem clearly to see what should be done in all these cases, but the remedy may frighten you. I therefore hesitate to place it before you. …You will also have seen that any means will not avail to drive away the thief. …it follows that your duty is not to drive away the thief by any means you like. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 287–288. The emphasis is my own addition.)

Having clarified that the person of the thief/occasion of the theft did not justify the moral aspirant’s making an exception to the “cardinal virtue…” (Gandhi, 1888– 1948, 33: 448) of ahimsa/harmlessness, Gandhi explained (paradoxically enough given Tilak’s reading) that ahimsa involved meeting the thief as if he was a kin or an ignorant brother. Now let us examine the other. You set this armed robber down as an ignorant brother; you intend to reason with him at a suitable opportunity: you argue that he is, after all, a fellow man; you do not know what prompted him to steal. You, therefore, decide that, when you can, you will destroy the man’s motive for stealing…. Henceforth, you, therefore, keep your doors and windows open, you change your sleeping-place, and you keep your things in a manner most accessible to him. The robber comes again and is confused as all this is new to him; nevertheless, he takes away your things. But his mind is agitated. He inquires about you in the village, he comes to learn about your broad and loving heart, he repents, he begs your pardon, returns you your things, and leaves off the stealing habit. …This is the second method. Thus, you see, different means have brought about totally different results. (ibid., 289)

Almost two decades later in the Discourses on the Gita in 1926, Gandhi returned to the thief and the exception. Commenting on the yoga described in the third chapter of the Gita; No one has yet succeeded in laying down a universal rule about how we should act towards a thief. We should, however, bear in mind that however we act we should be inspired by love for him. We must think and find out how we may win him over with love. We should assume that it is not in human nature to steal. Even as rational beings we should be convinced that there is no human being in the world who is beyond all hope of change. Love is a kind of force of attraction. Science tells us that even dust has the property of attracting other things. Even a particle of dust possesses some kind of power of attraction; that is why Mirabai sings about the bond of love. That bond is much stronger than that of a slender thread can ever be. Why should we be filled with passion or get angry whenever we lose anything? Such is the yoga described in this third chapter. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 167)

Significantly, the thief comes up, yet again, when Gandhi comments on the notion of yajna in the Gita and here it is the higher caste Indian—the one who does no bodily labour for society—who is now the thief and the theft is that of labour. This is significant for Gandhi suggests that not only the colonizer but the so-called upper caste Indian is also implicated in a theft. It is the Indian who does no labour who is the second kind of thief, and it is this thieving Indian who (paradoxically enough) attempts to justify violence against the other thief, i.e. the colonizer. However, in the

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case of this second thief (the one who steals the labour of the other) too (like the first), Gandhi argues that there is to be no exception to the niyama/casual virtue of bread labour3 as there was none possible. Note here that on Gandhi’s understanding of it, all apparent exceptions to the yamas and niyamas/cardinal and casual virtues, for instance, apparent exceptions to the yama of non-violence, did not arise on account of a weakness in the principle itself but rather arose due to the moral agent’s weakness in practising the principle, in this case, non-violence. When he was questioned about having made exceptions to the law of ahimsa by participating in war as a nurse for soldiers wounded in the war Gandhi explained; In answer I must confess my bankruptcy, not that of non-violence. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 95: 286)

In the same spirit, Gandhi recommended bodily labour to all Indians in exactly in the same way and across castes; The gods, gratified by yajna, that is, by your work for the service of others and your bodily labour, will grant you the means to gratify your desires; that is, the gods in the form of society will grant them to you. Anyone who receives what they give but offers nothing to others is a thief. He is a thief who does not do bodily labour for society. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 139–140)

Gandhi continued to think about the thief and the idea of the Gita as making space for the exception (as pointed out by Tilak, Savarkar, and others perhaps) continued to haunt him. In 1929, he wrote on “The message of the Gita” in the Anasaktiyoga. Gandhi explained that he was writing the Anasaktiyoga specifically in response to those who disagreed with him that the message of the Gita was ahimsa. Gandhi made this clear; Just as, acted upon by the affection of co-workers like Swami Anand and others, I wrote My Experiments With Truth, so has it been regarding my rendering of the Gita. “We shall be able to appreciate your meaning of the message of the Gita, only when we are able to study a translation of the whole text by yourself, with the addition of such notes as you may deem necessary. I do not think it is just on your part to deduce ahimsa, etc., from stray verses”, thus spoke Swami Anand to me during the non-co-operation days. I felt the force of his remarks. I therefore told him that I would adopt his suggestion when I got the time. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 164–165)

He referred once again in this text to having studied Tilak’s work but clarified that he steadfastly believed that the message of the Gita was that of establishing “the futility” of “physical warfare” (Ibid., 167) and that it made no room for a righteous war; Now about the message of the Gita. Even in 1888-89, when I first became acquainted with the Gita, I felt that it was not a historical work, but that, under the guise of physical warfare, it described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind, and that physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring … Its second chapter, instead of teaching the rules of physical warfare, tells us how a perfected man is to be known. In the characteristics of the perfected man of the Gita, I do not see any to correspond to physical warfare. Its whole design is inconsistent with the rules of conduct governing the relations between warring parties. (ibid.)

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Gandhi also, at this time, reiterated the argument from The Discourses on the Gita about a different kind of theft and yet again made no room for an exception to the casual virtue/niyama of bodily/bread labour for the so-called higher castes; In fine, unless man uses all his physical, mental and spiritual gifts in the service of mankind, he is a thief, unfit for Freedom. (ibid., 188)

In the very next year in a letter to Narandas Gandhi, Gandhi returned to the thief with the caption “Now about ahimsa” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 49: 406); The trouble from thieves continues to increase, as they think it is their business to steal. In the end we see that it is better to tolerate the thieves than to punish them. The forbearance may even bring them to their senses. By tolerating them we realize that thieves are not different from ourselves, they are our brethren, our friends, and may not be punished. But whilst we may bear with the thieves, we may not endure the infliction. That would only induce cowardice. So we realize a further duty. Since we regard the thieves as our kith and kin, they must be made to realize the kinship. And so we must take pains to devise ways and means of winning them over. This is the path of ahimsa. It may entail continuous suffering and the cultivating of end-less patience. Given these two conditions, the thief is bound in the end to turn away from his evil ways and we shall get a clearer vision of truth. Thus step by step we learn how to make friends with all the world; we realize the greatness of God, of Truth. Our peace of mind increases in spite of suffering; we become braver and more enterprising; we understand more clearly the difference between what is everlasting and what is not; we learn how to distinguish between what is our duty and what is not. Our pride melts away and we become humble. Our worldly attachments diminish and likewise the evil within us diminishes from day to day. Ahimsa is not the crude thing it has been made to appear. (Ibid., 406–407)

Given that theft—whether of labour or that of country—made for no exceptions to either the law of bodily labour or that of harmlessness/ahimsa—how did the Gita contribute to Gandhi’s conception of ahimsa and its intimate interchangeability with satya/truth? This then presents the que for the next section of this essay.

2.3 The Gita and Ahimsa: Desireless-Ness and Samata/ Equality This section will locate the central ideas from Gandhi’s reading of the Gita in terms of their possible bearings on his understanding of ahimsa. In this connection, subSect. 3.1 will look at the Gita’s notion of sthitaprajna/perfect person and Sect. 3.2 at the concept of detachment and non-possessiveness to the fruits of one’s own action in the Gita and in the first two chapters of the long ignored Yoga Vasistha (of which Gandhi scholars know but little except perhaps that he had read them). Section 3.3 will look at Gandhi’s reading of equality in the Bhagavad Gita and attempt to examine, if and how, such an equality transformed ahimsa from the fastidious practice of noninjury (in line with Jain ethics) into the idea of a unilateral obligation of owning kinship (and translating such kinship into one’s practice) with all being. The last and fourth section of this chapter will discuss Gandhi’s reading of satya against

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the idea of the oneness of being which he had read into both chapter eleven of the Bhagavad Gita (in which Arjuna beheld the universal form of Sri Krishna) and the shorter Isopanishad of which (as already noted) he had spoken at some length. The section will argue that it was Gandhi’s understanding of truth/God as the oneness of all being that made for its interchangeability with ahimsa. Such an understanding at once distanced Gandhi’s truth from the anekantavada4 of the Jains and his ahimsa from Tolstoy’s “do unto others as you would want them to do unto you”.

2.3.1 Ahimsa and the Sthitaprajna/Perfect Person of the Gita In reply to a correspondent who had argued that chapters 1 to XI of the Gita did not support the vision that the Gita taught non-violence Gandhi wrote of Chapter II of the Gita; …the last nineteen stanzas of Chapter II have ever remained engraved in my heart. For me, they contain the essence of dharma. They embody the highest knowledge. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 33: 84)

He went on to argue in the same piece entitled “Meaning of the ‘Gita’”; That the overall teaching of the Gita is not violence but non-violence is evident from the argument which begins in Chapter II and ends in chapter XVIII. The intervening chapters propound the same theme. Violence is simply not possible unless one is driven by anger, by ignorant love and by hatred. The Gita, on the other hand, wants us to be incapable of anger and attain to a state unaffected by the three gunas. Such a person can never feel anger. I see even now the red eyes of Arjuna every time he aimed an arrow from his bow, drawing the string as far as his ear. (ibid., 87)

One might consider why the last nineteen stanzas of the second chapter that dealt with “the man of stabilized mentality” (Edgerton, 1994: 27) or the sthitaprajna/perfect person who has attained an equi-mindedness of spirit should have assumed so much importance for Gandhi’s belief that the Gita taught non-violence. One can perhaps find some clarity when one sees that the stanzas concerned contain the description of the sthitaprajna as the person without attachment. The Gita itself explains that attachment (to persons, things, or to fruits of actions) becomes the source of desire, anger, and thereafter (and thereby) violence; when a man meditates on the objects of sense, Attachment to them is produced. From attachment springs desire, From desire wrath arises; (ibid., 27)

Gandhi described the sthitaprajna (from chapter two of the Gita) as a person who had learnt “the method of acting in a disinterested spirit” (ibid., 126). The point was not so much that the karma/action of the sthitaprajna bores no fruit as much as that the person/actor sought none. As Gandhi put it in so many words;

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This does not mean that his (or her) karma bears no fruit only that he(or she) seeks none. (Ibid., 191; the parenthesis are my addition)

A consideration of the sthitaprajna’s method leads Gandhi to appreciate the significance of severing the individual moral aspirant’s engagement in action from purposiveness as such. A progressive journey towards perfecting such a method meant a dissociation of action from teleology/desire for an end, and it also meant that an aspirant who engaged in action in such a spirit would progressively be left with no sources of anger or of violence. Gandhi’s point was that the sthitaprajna spoken of in the Gita was nothing if not the aspirant who progressively arrived at, as perfect a non-violence as possible, in the human condition.

2.3.2 Nishkamakarmayoga/Non-attachment to the Ends of Action, Present-Centred Action and Gandhian Ahimsa The matchless remedy is renunciation of fruits of action. This is the centre round which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets. (Gandhi, 1888–1948 46: 169) That is, not renunciation of action but of attachment to the pairs, … (ibid., 189)

Gandhi’s interpretation of the Gita’s nishkama karma/action without desire for end/purpose as a complete rejection of the connection between action and the seeking of an end therefrom—a connection indeed that instrumentalized/trivialized the action itself into a mere means—seemed to have led him to an important insight. Gandhi saw that once the preoccupation with the telos/end/goal, in fact with teleology as such, was rejected, the moral aspirant (aspiring perhaps to progress towards the state of the tranquil minded person) would be left with no plan to intervene in the chain of cause and effect in the world. All that would be left for him/her was to be attentive to the action/the everyday/the present. Gandhi likened such detached actions of the Gita to “breathing, winking and similar processes” (ibid., 182) describing them as “automatic” (Ibid.) and (more aptly) spoke of acting “spontaneously” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 119). The point was that spontaneity and absence of seeking left the agent free with no thought of “arrogating” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 182) to her/him “self the agency or responsibility thereof” (ibid.). Interestingly, Gandhi explained the effect of such spontaneity on the person who was thus rendered free of the opposition inherent in the gunas/qualitative constituents of Prakriti using the analogy of a stone which reposes and moves without seeking either state; The inner meaning of these verses is that he who has transcended the gunas will be unaffected by them. A stone does not desire light, nor does it disdain activity or inertness; it is still, without having the will to be so. If someone puts it into motion, it does not fret; if again it is allowed to lie still, it does not feel that inertness or delusion has seized it. The difference between a stone and a gunatita is that the latter has full consciousness and with full knowledge he shakes himself free from the bonds that bind an ordinary mortal. He has, as a result of his knowledge, achieved the repose of a stone. Like the stone he is witness, but not the doer,

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It was perhaps Gandhi’s emphasis on the freedom/swaraj (as self-rule) to be experienced by the agent in actions which were present centred, un-meditated, and spontaneous which made for the importance of practices like spinning in a Gandhian life. Gandhi’s recommendation of spinning and related actions such as making yarn absorbed the moral agent in that which was at hand, and in such absorption, they helped the aspirant to grow into non-violence as an abiding state of character. Consider that a person absorbed in/satisfied with the everyday making of yarn and spinning for itself with no desire for any external end (for most of the spinners would not seek financial remuneration from such actions performed for the sake of swaraj as self-rule) might have little impetus to anger and violence. As Gandhi explained in the discourses on the Gita; Dwelling constantly on objects of sense-pleasure produce attachment for them… Attachment produces impatience and passion gives rise to anger… (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 118).

On Gandhi’s view, an engagement with the spontaneous present centred action recommended by the Gita would lead the moral aspirant to progress towards developing an equi-mindedness towards all things. However farfetched this connection might seem, it could become somewhat clearer if one would consider that since spontaneous action without thought and calculation of end/result, would (as noted), make no space for desire/attachment/aversion for anything, equi-mindedness would seem to follow in its wake; These are not media of exchange. They are themselves the things we want. In other words, if the means and the end are not identical, they are almost so. The extreme of means is salvation. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 171)

Such an equi-mindedness was indeed the hallmark of absolute freedom and the characteristic of the sthitaprajna/perfect person of the Gita. Gandhi explained; He who has the same regard for friend and foe, for one who deserves to be hated and one who is a kinsman, for the sadhu and the sinner, as he would for clay and gold, he may be said to have won the battle of this life. The same law applies to the world of the living as applies to the world of inert matter. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 220)

Gandhi drew such an equi-mindedness to all manner of being in the here and now, in the world as it is/exists, from the spontaneity of the action without purpose recommended by the Gita; They have conquered the world in this very earth, in this very life, who are equal in mind to all human beings,… (ibid., 211)

Quite clearly the freedom in present centred action left an impress on Gandhian ahimsa in that he believed that the practice of action without teleology—with no agenda as it were—had an effect on the agent/the self. Seeking no end from his/her action perhaps restored the self to its own state of swaraj or self-rule, i.e. to that state which drew from its own nature. One might (like Gandhi) accept the significance of

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such severance (of action from a seeking of its end/goal) if one were to consider that an agent who remains present in the action for itself could experience a certain kind of freedom one that could be experienced once the “delusion” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 191) of “arrogating …the authorship of action…” (ibid., 191) is given up; We are slaves of our senses. From this slavery we must win swaraj for the atman. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 119)

Gandhi suggested that such freedom/swaraj marked the moment of reversal or a return to the human being’s natural/swabhavika condition; a state in which (since acting as dictated by the pursuit of ends had been rendered impossible) the self would act as came naturally to her/himself without the pressure of having to constantly control the uncontrollable, i.e. the ends of action. Gandhi had described the natural/ swabhavika state of the human being as an ahimsanat/non-violent state in which the individual delighted to do no harm. Gandhi argued that the Gita was concerned with how the moral aspirant might attain his/her natural ahimsanat state rather than merely with the recommendation to be fastidiously ahimsanat/non-violent by the practice of non-injury in one’s behaviour; I have felt that in trying to enforce in one’s life the central teaching of the Gita, one is bound to follow truth and ahimsa. Where there is no desire for fruit, there is no temptation for untruth or himsa. Take any instance of untruth or violence, and it will be found that at its back was the desire to attain the cherished end. But it may be freely admitted that the Gita was not written to establish ahimsa. It was an accepted and primary duty even before the Gita age. The Gita had to discover the message of renunciation of fruit. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46:173)

Drawing perhaps from this discovery of the “the discipline of selfless action” (Ibid., 189) in the Gita and in the Yoga Vasistha (of which I shall speak presently), Gandhi had argued that the desireless action of the Gita helped the aspirant to arrive at his/her innermost nature. In an essay entitled “what is natural” in Young India, Gandhi had described this human nature; Man’s nature then is not himsa, but ahimsa, for he can speak from experience, his innermost conviction, that he is not the body but atman, and that he may use the body only with a view to expressing the atman, only with a view to self-realization. And from that experience he evolves the ethics of subduing desire, anger, ignorance, malice and other passions, puts forth his best effort to achieve the end and finally attains complete success. Only when his efforts reach that consummation can be said to have fulfilled himself, to have acted according to his nature. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 35: 359)

The connection between a purposiveness in action driven by an “attachment to the pairs” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 189) and violence also found confirmation from Gandhi’s readings of another old treatise recommended to him by Raichandrabhai Ravjibhai Mehta. This was the Yoga Vasishtha or the Vasishtaramayana of Valmiki of which we know that Gandhi had carefully read the first two chapters—“On Dispassion” and “On the behavior of the seeker”. While the Bhagavad Gita opened with the despondency of Arjuna in the battlefield brought about by the doubts regarding whether he should engage in a battle, at the opening of the Yoga Vasishta the sixteenyear-old prince Rama is in a state of dejection disillusioned with life and its attractions. As the story goes when Rama was in such despondency, there was a visit from

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the sage Vishvamitra to his father—King Dasharatha’s—court. Rama was summoned by his father to the court where he explained the cause of his misery to the sages present in the following words; What is this world?...How does this suffering come to an end. (Venkatesananda, 1993: 9)

Rama went on to ask of his father and the sages assembled at the court; Hence, pray tell me :what is that condition or state in which one does not experience any grief? How can one who is involved in the world and its activities, as I am, reach the supreme state and bliss? (ibid., 19)

The story goes that Visvamitra asked the sage Vasistha to answer Rama’s doubts and (as requested) the sage answered, recommending that “one should free oneself from likes and dislikes and engage oneself in righteous self-effort and reach the supreme truth,…” (Ibid., 27). Describing such a state of freedom (somewhat close enough to the state of the sthitaprajna described in chapter two of the Gita), Vasistha too recommended the absence of attachment to ends or rejection of the seeking of ends by the individual who engaged her/himself in actions in the world; To renounce all craving for what is not obtained unsought and to be satisfied with what comes unsought, without being elated or depressed even by them-this is contentment. (ibid., 33 the highlighting is my addition)

This emphasis on renunciation of craving for that which is not obtained unsought and the related idea of non-attachment as the severance of action from a desire for ends led Gandhi to the critical insight into the inseparability of means and ends. Like Arjuna and Rama perhaps, Gandhi drew upon the insight that an absorption in the action at hand becomes both the means and the end in itself. Any argument then (such as that made by Tilak) which would seek to transform action itself into a means—one which sought justification for itself perhaps in the light of an end sought (e.g. that of bringing the thief/colonizer to justice)—would destroy both the agent’s freedom/ swaraj as a state significantly “free” from the tyranny of the pair of opposites and his/ her swabhavika human state. This, one might recall from the earlier discussion was for Gandhi, a state in which the self-remained absorbed/content in that which came of itself completely unsought and was thereby completely ahimsanat. Gandhi drew from the inseparability of means and end which he saw in the Gita’s recommendation of non-attachment and its related insistence on the refusal to permit Arjuna to make a distinction between his own and others, to argue that the practice of ahimsa was indeed the very being of truth. It was such insights from the Gita which provided Gandhi with the philosophical foundation for an ahimsa which, as an absolute equality of deference/respect, was the only appropriate response to the absolute equality of the different other.

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2.3.3 Samata/Equality in the Gita and Ahimsa as the Unilateral Obligation of Owning Kinship with the ‘other’ In the earlier sections, there has been some reference to the fact that while commenting upon Sri Krishna’s advice to Arjuna at the start of the Gita, Gandhi had made a connection between samabhava (i.e. having the “attitude of equality to things/persons/even events as they are/exist”) and ahimsa. This section will dwell a little further into the possible reasons that led Gandhi to make such a connection and suggest that they drew from a metaphysics of non-dualism drawn perhaps from a combination of two sources: the first the non-dualism of the vedanta as put forth in the Gita; and the second, a devotional faith in the oneness of the universe as evidenced by the vision of the universal form of Sri Krishna in the Gita. This section and indeed this essay is primarily interested in tracing Gandhi’s ahimsa to possible roots in the religio-moral framework and the non-dualist metaphysics of the Bhagavad Gita in order to philosophically unpack Gandhian ahimsa in terms of its close connection to truth. It is in such a context then that this essay speaks to the influence that metaphysics—in this case a non-dualist metaphysics and the divine vision of oneness in the Gita—exerted on social ethics and individual moral life at the hands of a practitioner like Gandhi. In a later essay (one on Gandhi’s true/real politics), there will be some discussion on how such a metaphysics (and consequently ethics) leads to a transformed notion of politics in Gandhi. It seems important here to recall Roby Rajan’s point made in a little different (though not completely unrelated context) about the “peculiar conjuncture ‘metaphysics and politics’” (Rajan, 2016: xli) which, as he explains, draws upon the idea that; Metaphysics in this understanding is, therefore, not to be mistaken for abstract doctrine alone; what concerns us here is rather the precise modality through which abstraction becomes actuality by triggering a new politics-without in any way invoking some super-contextual agency, or occult force that secretly accomplishes the work of social transformation. (ibid., xli)

How metaphysics can indeed become the catalyst for social and individual transformation, and how this happened in Gandhi’s ethics, will become clearer from the discussion which follows here. In this connection, this section will suggest that Gandhi had read the Gita as a text about absolute equality (and therefrom as recommending absolute non-violence) and argue that this changed how he thought of both ethics and politics. Following Lal, it might be important to note (on an aside) at the start that in reading the Gita as a text about ahimsa and equality Gandhi managed to alienate at the same time both the left and the right in Indian politics. Speaking about Gandhian non-violence as tolerance (a word that Gandhi, for one, was not happy with and had rejected), Lal points out; If to the Indian Left the idea of Hindu tolerance is a chimera, a form of self-flattery to which the Hindu takes frequent resort as if to compensate for centuries of rule under foreignors, to those at the other end of the political spectrum the reasons for jettisoning the idea are equally compelling. (Lal, 2016: viii–ix)

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Gandhi of course went even further than what Lal describes as “Hindu tolerance” (Ibid.) and argued that Sri Krishna had recommended kinship, not tolerance, as a form of responding to the different always equal—and often angry—other. ‘Sahishnuta’ is a translation of the English word ‘Tolerance’. I did not like that word… Kakasaheb, too, did not like that word. He suggested ‘Respect for all religions’. I didn’t like that phrase either. Tolerance may imply a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one’s own, and respect suggests a sense of patronizing… (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 50: 78)

Indeed in rejecting tolerance for (as argued above) kinship, Gandhi made it clear that ahimsa was linked to a conception of Absolute truth, one that could not be conceived as relative to the standpoint of the seeker. This might be the que to recollect and emphasize that Gandhi spoke of truth both as concerned with what exists as a matter of fact and as a moral notion connected with speaking the truth/veracity. This might seem evident enough if only one were to consider that if truth was entirely relative and subjective, there could at best be room for tolerance of the truths of others relative to their points of view. In a situation where truth was taken to be relative, there would be little room for claiming kinship with those ‘others’ (whose trueuntruths were only to be taken as true from their point of view and at best tolerated from one’s own point of view) as kinship would naturally enough involve sharing/ having equal deference for their truths (as for instance is the case within a family). Consider that if everyone is believed to have their own truths, as it were, with truth itself as essentially relative, the religio-moral truths of the ‘other’ different from the self would not command an equality of deference. Gandhi rejected such absence of equal deference and argued, to the contrary, that since human and non-human beings lived by truth or God (being children of the same God) they each (and the truths they held on to) deserved the same and equal deference. The same, that is, as that the self-owed to members of his/her family. Family members were of course always considered equal to (and by) the self as born of the same mother as it were. Gandhian ahimsa as an equality of deference/treatment followed from such a status of equality and indeed became a co-relative of such equality. However the argument for equality itself perhaps emerged from an even more compelling background framework; one that was provided by a metaphysics of vedantic non-dualism and enforced by the Gita’s account of the vision of the universe as one with/and in Sri Krishna. Such a metaphysics implied that the human and non-human universe was essentially one and as Gandhi often reiterated; to harm anyone or thing in the universe was eventually quite literally to harm oneself. In the comments on the Gita, Gandhi explained quite clearly that a metaphysics of oneness was “the secret of even-mindedness” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 198). As he wrote in Discourse V in the Anasktiyoga; As a man thinks, so he becomes, and therefore those whose minds are bent on being the same to all achieve that sameness and become one with Brahman. (ibid., 191)

Of course one cannot refuse to take cognizance here of the manner in which the Advaita Vedanta itself had countenanced the possibility that a metaphysics of oneness could go along (and be held consistently) with inequalities between persons

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and beings at the level of empirical reality. One might recall for example that in the Advaita Vedanta, the notion of a oneness and an absolute equality at the level of absolute reality was consistent with an inequality between persons at the level of empirical reality, i.e. in the here and now. Significantly (and as will become apparent in this and the following sub-sections), such an understanding was ruled out by the Gita or so Gandhi thought at any rate. It therefore becomes important to see how and why the Gita was able to provide the conceptual space (for Gandhi) to speak about such an equality—one that had to be affirmed—in the here and now. To begin with one needs to note that across both his Discourses on the Gita and the Anasktiyoga, Gandhi had made eight arguments about the equality recommended by the Gita (Puri, 2022; 145–162) of which I will mention only the first two here. The first argument derived, as already mentioned, from Arjuna’s despondency and Sri Krishna’s answer not to discriminate between one’s own and the other. In Discourses on the Gita, Gandhi had argued clearly that moral agents were required to treat others as absolutely equal in status/samata. Therefore (as noted), Arjuna was advised by Sri Krishna not to discriminate between kinsmen and others at the very start of the text. This argument becomes important because (for Gandhi) Sri Krishna had insisted that Arjuna could not justify making an exception to treating his own and others with the equi-mindedness owed to them as essentially and absolutely equal. It is significant that in making this insistence, Sri Krishna did not take recourse to the philosophical justification from the Advaita Vedanta. He could, for instance, have said that though all human beings were equal at the paramarthika satta/level of Absolute reality, Arjuna could make an exception at the empirical level to uphold the inequality between his kinsmen and ‘others’ and therefore refuse to engage in any battle that involved his own. However famously enough, Sri Krishna had answered Arjuna’s question “kairmaya saha Yoddhavyam?”, i.e. “Against whom I must fight?” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 78) in unambiguous terms making it clear that discrimination between one’s own and others was irrelevant to the moral life. Gandhi’s second important argument for equality (in his 1929 commentary on the Gita the Anasaktiyoga) connected samadarshita/to “see things with an equal eye despite inequalities” with samabhava and samata/status of equality. In 1929, Gandhi spoke of an “Equimindedness” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 50: 102). Mahadev Desai, the translator of Gandhi’s Anasaktiyoga, had paraphrased samabhava into English as “treating alike”. In verse 18 of chapter 5 of his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita,5 the Anasaktiyoga, Gandhi had interpreted the term samadarshanah as samadrishti/ looking “with an equal eye”.6 Gandhi’s writes as follows: The men of self-realization look with an equal eye on a Brahmana possessed of learning and humility, a cow, an elephant, a dog and even a dog eater. (Gandhi, 1888–1948 Vol. 46, 191)

Gandhi went on to explain and discuss the verse; That is to say, they serve every one of them alike, according to the needs of each. Treating a Brahmana and shwapaka (dog-eater) alike means that the wise man will suck the poison off a snake-bitten shwapaka with as much eagerness and readiness as he would from a snake-bitten Brahmana (ibid.)

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In terms of the different levels of reality accepted by the Advaita Vedanta, one could say that equality between human beings rested on the argument that apparently unequal things and persons would be accepted as really the same when seen at the rarefied level of what might be designated as the level of Absolute reality/ paramarthika satta. It seems clear enough that on such a reading of the Gita, it is the sameness of the atman/soul at the level of Absolute reality that overcomes the partiality and inequality seen at the level of every day existence. Ajay Skaria has insightfully suggested that in Gandhi’s alternative reading of samadarshana/seeing things with an equal eye despite inequalities as samabhava/attitude of equality to things as they are or exist in the here and now, “the equality of the atman/soul can no longer comfortably co-exist in separation and abstraction from the inequality of (material nature) to draw on Ramanuja’s word” (Skaria, 2016: 208). Gandhi’s sense of things and human beings as equal in the here and now and consequently as deserving of equal deference as ahimsa/love seems to have found support from two ideas that he learnt from the Gita and confirmed from his readings of the Ishopanishad. The first (as already discussed in Sect. 3.2) was that the Gita had laid out the nature of action without teleology that made for such equi-mindedness. Second that the account of Arjuna’s vision of the universal form of Shri Krishna in chapter XI of the Gita gave Gandhi enough conceptual space to speak of non-dualism in the universe just as it existed rather than when it was considered in abstraction from the here and now. Gandhi came to associate Chapter XI in the Gita and the Gita itself with the Ishopanishad which found a special place in his writing after 1934.

2.3.3.1

The Universal Divine Form in the Gita: Gandhi and Equality in the Here and Now

Though Sect. 3.2 has already examined the influence exerted by the Gita’s action without teleology on Gandhian ahimsa and absolute equality with the other, it remains here to discuss the two additional sources which provided the philosophical foundations for Gandhi’s significant departure from vedantic arguments that had served to harmonize present inequality with absolute equality from the perspective of absolute reality. The first of these sources was Chapter XI of the Gita called the discipline of the vision of the universal form and the other drew (as mentioned earlier) from Gandhi’s own reading of the Ishopanishad. Chapter XI of the Gita had an account of Shri Krishna’s revelation of his universal form to Arjuna and one might recall a passage laying out the metaphysic of oneness from the original; The whole world there united, And divided many-fold, Beheld in the God of Gods’ Body the son of Pandu then. (Edgerton, 1994, XI verse 13: 109)

Building on such oneness Chapter XI of the Gita (one might recall) closed on the recommendation of samabhava/equality of attitude in the verse;

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Doing My work, intent on Me, Devoted to Me, free from attachment, Free from enmity to all beings, Who is so, goes to me, son of Pandu. (ibid.,119)

In his Discourses on the Gita, Gandhi commented on this verse from Chapter XI drawing the lesson of equi-mindedness; The Lord has given the whole substance of chapter XI in this last verse. “He who works for Me is ever devoted to Me, who is attached to nothing and bears ill will to none-not even to a person who may have committed a heinous sin-but ever blesses him instead,-such a person comes to Me”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 278)

It seems clear enough that for Gandhi the substance of the chapter on the universal form in the Gita lay in recommending that the moral aspirant stay intent on developing an attitude of equability to all that exists in the empirical world just as it exists in the here and now. Such equability as seen in earlier sections was not a matter of mere words, and it had to be practised to be upheld. It implied therefore that the moral aspirant live by an ahimsa that bore “ill to none” (Ibid.). It might be philosophically useful to reflect here on how metaphysics might transform politics. Lipner for instance has argued that the Gita makes itself available to be read (though not necessarily of course) as putting forth “the metaphysical tier of an all-pervading and all-sustaining God whose nature is a wholly encompassing love, and the empirical stratum of a material world or universe which, through the prevenient presence of its intimate, undergirding divinity, I have to realize as ‘not different from me’ if I am to act towards the world in the appropriate manner; acting in this way constitutes right/action or dharma…And there is no doubt that the inspiration for this self-denying ethic harks back to the Gita.” (Lipner, 2016: 128). Interestingly, Gandhi seemed to have dwelt on the argument connecting a metaphysics of oneness with an equi-mindedness to all according samata/the status of equality to all beings in the here and now. In fact 3–4 years after he completed the Anasaktiyoga, Gandhi came to associate Chapter XI in the Gita and the Gita itself with the Ishopanishad. Gandhi started giving the Ishopanishad a special place after 1934. One might recall that in a letter that he wrote on 2 February 1934 Gandhi said; The earthquake has given me a jolt. But I have learnt that it is madness on our part to regard ourselves as different from others. If we regard all as one, no one dies or lives. “As in the body so in the universe.” The body ever dies, yet lives. Similarly the Cosmos as expressed in the creation ever dies yet remains alive. As we are but a mere drop in that scheme, our death is no death. Transformation of the body will go on, so what shall we mourn for? Shall we then become hard-hearted? No, but if all of us living beings are one in spite of the seeming difference, we should die for one another, in other words make sacrifices to our utmost. This same idea has been expressed wonderfully in the first mantra of the Ishopanishad. If you are not familiar with it tell me and I shall send it to you. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 63: 95)

Gandhi wrote to Vallabhai Patel on 22 May 1934; However, who can thwart Nature? …So long as Death remains unconquerable, nothing that Man does will avail him. Hence the first verse of the Ishopanishad. Do you remember it? I

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B. Puri used to recite that Upanishad every day in jail, trying to memorize the verses. If you don’t remember them and if you wish, I will send you a copy of the Upanishad. It contains only 18 verses. The author has compressed all knowledge within that short compass. There is no difference between its teaching and the Gita’s. What is present in it in the form of a seed has become a beautiful tree in the Gita. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 64: 6)

The references made by Gandhi to all things as equal in spite of their “seeming difference” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 63: 95) in the light of their shared vulnerability to death connect directly to Chapter XI of the Gita. These passages seem to have drawn on the description of Sri Krishna’s universal form in Chapter XI; As the many water-torrents of the rivers Rush headlong towards the single sea, So yonder heroes of the world of men into Thy Flaming mouths do enter. As moths into a burning flame Do enter unto their destruction with utmost impetuosity, Just so unto their destruction enter the worlds Into Thy mouths also, with utmost impetuosity. (Edgerton, 1994, XI verses 28 & 29: 113)

It is significant that Gandhi thought of equality as a value connected with empirical reality, i.e. what was described as the vyavaharika satta (the realm which shared an equal vulnerability to death) by the advocates of Advaita Vedanta. It is even more significant that when Gandhi went about trying to secure such equality during a tour of south India in connection with the abolishment of untouchability, he reiterated the connection between the Gita and the Isha Upanishad in a philosophically dense speech. Speaking at Quilon in January 1937, Gandhi said; But I have fixed upon the mantra that I am going to recite to you, as containing the whole essence of Hinduism. Many of you, I think, know the Ishopanishad. I read it years ago with translation and commentary. I learnt it by heart in Yeravda Jail. But it did not then captivate me as it has done during the past few months, and I have now come to the final conclusion that if all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left intact in the memory of Hindus, Hinduism would live for ever. Now this mantra divides itself in four parts. The first part is… It means, as I would translate: All this that we see in this great Universe is pervaded by God. Then come the second and third parts which read together, as I read them: …I divide these into two and translate them thus…: Renounce it and enjoy it. There is another rendering which means the same thing, though…: Enjoy what He gives you. Even so you can divide it into two parts. Then follows the final and most important part…: which means: Do not covet anybody’s wealth or possession. All the other mantras of that ancient Upanishad are a commentary or an attempt to give us the full meaning of the first mantra. As I read the mantra in the light of the Gita or the Gita in the light of the mantra I find that the Gita is a commentary on this mantra. It seems to me to satisfy the cravings of the socialist and the communist, of the philosopher and the economist. I venture to suggest to all who do not belong to the Hindu faith that it satisfies their cravings also. And if it is true—and I hold it to be true—you need not take anything in Hinduism which is inconsistent with or contrary to the meaning of this mantra. What more can a man in the street want to learn than this that the one God and Creator and Master of all that lives pervades the Universe? The three other parts of the mantra follow directly from the first. If you believe that God pervades everything that

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He has created, you must believe that you cannot enjoy anything that is not given by Him. And seeing that He is the Creator of His numberless children, it follows that you cannot covet anybody’s possession. If you think that you are one of His numerous creatures, it behoves you to renounce everything and lay it at His feet. That means that the act of renunciation of everything is not a mere physical renunciation but represents a second or new birth. It is a deliberate act, not done in ignorance. It is therefore a regeneration. And then, since he who holds the body must eat and drink and clothe himself, he must naturally seek all that he needs from Him. And he gets it as a natural reward of that renunciation. As if this was not enough, the mantra closes with this magnificent thought: Do not covet anybody’s possession. The moment you carry out these precepts you become a wise citizen of the world, living at peace with all that lives… And if zamindars and monied men and all who have possessions would treat themselves as trustees and perform the act of renunciation that I have described, this world would indeed be a blessed world to live in. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 70: 297–299)

Gandhi’s speech at Quilon connects the metaphysics of the Isha (reiterated according to Gandhi in/by the Gita) to an ethics of absolute equality in the world (social and economic) as it exists and thereby initiates Gandhi’s distinctive derivation of the implications of the “inclusive template” (Lipner, 2016: 130) of the Advaita Vedanta in an “ethical-theological tradition for other-regarding action” (Ibid.). Gandhi argues here that the metaphysics of oneness must lead to the practice of as absolute an equality as humanly possible (with equality based on a metaphysics of oneness) as he said “These… must be completely harmonized in a yogi. Without devotion there is no even-mindedness…” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 199). He explains that if one is to believe that the great universe is pervaded by God or in terms of the Gita constitutes the body of God; the human being must enjoy what God gives or alternatively one could say that whatever a human being gets is enjoyed under/by the will of God. Gandhi wrote in Discourse VII of the Anasktiyoga; The sense is that every nook and cranny of the universe is filled with Brahman, that he is the sole Agent of all action, and that the man who imbued with this knowledge… completely surrenders himself to Him, becomes one with Him…all his desires are extinguished… (ibid., 196)

For Gandhi, this consciousness of oneness and subsequent relinquishment of an ego-driven sense of agency (exercised primarily in seeking egoistic ends purposefully through an engagement in actions) suggested the renunciation of the fruits of action; for enjoying what is essentially divine dispensation means to act in a present centred way and without any purposiveness for the sake of the dazzling self. This would be appropriate given that a moral aspirant would act from the perspective that life itself continues only as per the blessing of the divine. One might recall the verses from the Gita quoted above where mortals were seen rushing into the mouths of the universal body of God. For Gandhi therefore, both the Isha and the Gita recommended that mortal humans act in the spirit of oneness with all manner of being and in the light of their own mortality, i.e. spontaneously and with no thought of reward. Such renunciation of results naturally enough would rule out avarice or the coveting of anyone else’s possessions since one would act content with unsought ends. On such a view, it would seem to follow, that the moral aspirant would be equiminded towards all ‘others’ as part of the same world body of God and thereby one with her/himself, and indeed towards all events that would be seen as brought

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about unsought. These arguments led Gandhi to argue that oneness of being and nonattachment to results ought to change the moral aspirant’s perspective to possessions. As temporary things held by humans who were essentially temporal, riches could only be held on to, as trustees. Gandhi therefore recommended that the rich should act in the seemingly unequal world as if they were only trustees of their possessions and with no thought of personal ends. For once they renounced all purposiveness, they would enjoy everything with the condition that they used only that which was “necessary to …growth” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 70: 303–304) catering to need rather than greed; Those who know a little bit of Sanskrit will find that there is nothing abstruse there that you find in other Vedic mantras, and its meaning is simply this: All that there is in this Universe, great or small, including the tiniest atom, is pervaded by God, known as Creator or Lord. Isha means the Ruler, and He who is the Creator naturally by very right becomes the Ruler, too. And here in this verse the seer has chosen no other epithet for the Deity but that of the Ruler, and he has excepted nothing from His jurisdiction. He says everything that we see is pervaded by the Deity, and from that naturally the other parts of the mantra follow. Thus he says: Renounce everything, … i.e., everything that is on this Universe, the whole of the Universe, and not only this tiny globe of ours, renounce it. He asks us to renounce it as we are such insignificant atoms that if we had any idea of possession it would seem ludicrous. And then, says the rishi, the reward of renunciation is i.e., enjoyment of all you need. But there is a meaning about the word ‘enjoy’—you might as well say use, eat, etc.,—but it means that you may not take more than is necessary for your growth. (ibid.)

Gandhi connected ahimsa to such absolute equality and drew both ahimsa and equality from a metaphysics of oneness as it was brought forth in the Ishopanishad and the Gita. This transformed his understanding of ahimsa and indeed of truth as inseparably connected to ahimsa. This transformation, and how it came to be, will be the subject of the next section.

2.4 The Practice of Ahimsa: The Means to Arrive at the Truth/God of Religion That Gandhi read ahimsa as a complete way of life—one indeed of progressively owning up to kinship with a progressively expanding sense of family—seems to have had no parallel in Tolstoy or indeed in the Indian tradition where most of the schools had recommended ahimsa/non-injury as a vrata/vow for those who sought to live a good human life. One aspect in which Gandhi seemed to have followed the emphasis on ahimsa as one of the vows/vratas (or as the schools of Indian philosophy termed them “yamas” requisite for the moral aspirant) was that he too connected ahimsa with truth and the other “yamas” or “cardinal virtues” in his own use of that term. One might recall that in the schools of Indian philosophy, the yamas were vows taken to practise ahimsa/non-violence, satya/truth, asteya/non-stealing, brahmacharya/celibacy, and aparigraha/non-possession. The second aspect was that in the spirit of ancient Indian philosophy, Gandhi emphasized the centrality of practice implicit in the notion of taking a vow/vrata. Yet the manner of the connection

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between truth and ahimsa was quite his own and, I will suggest, drew from his understanding of the Bhagavad Gita. As this essay has argued the question of philosophical sources assumes importance for philosophical reasons. This is because the reasons/arguments that lead one to think in a particular manner perhaps influence in substantial ways the content of the organizing thoughts/concepts. The ‘why’ which explains the arguments that lead one to hold certain beliefs/put forth certain concepts explains, as it were, the ‘what’ in what one thinks’ when one refers to those beliefs/ concepts. Accordingly, this essay has made somewhat heavy weather of unpacking the sources of Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa in the Gita, Yoga Vasistha and the Isha Upanishad not only to answer why Gandhi thought about satya and ahimsa in the manner that he did, but also to substantiate what he could have meant by forging the connection (between truth and ahimsa) in the manner in which he did. In this connection, one might note that the last few sections have brought out both Gandhi’s adoption of a vedantic metaphysics of oneness and his deviation from classical vedanta in an emphasis on samata/equality of deference to be practised in the here and now. There were then three important aspects to Gandhian ahimsa; 1. Its close interrelationship with equality built into the emphasis on understanding ahimsa as the unilateral obligation to own kinship with the rest of creation; 2. The idea that ahimsa was the only means to arrive at truth as God (with truth being taken as the best name/designation for God) and as there was no distinction between means and end the idea that the very being of ahimsa was that of truth; and 3. That the only way to arrive at the God/truth of one’s own religion was that of ahimsa. The next Section 2.4.1 will explain how these three aspects of the close connection between truth and ahimsa can best be understood in the context of Gandhi’s argument primarily made in his reading of the Gita that religio-moral truth can be authenticated not by liturgical debate about the exact meaning of classical texts but by the practice of living out the truth in a devotee’s own life. The section will also argue that it was Gandhi’s understanding of truth as the oneness of all being that made for its interchangeability with ahimsa.

2.4.1 The Practice of the Equability of the Gita: Ahimsa and Satya/Truth The battle field of Kurukshetra only provides the occasion for the dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna. The real Kurukshetra is the human heart, which is also a dharmakshetra (the field of righteousness)… Some battle or other is fought on this battle-field from day to day. Most of these battles arise from distinctions between ‘mine’ and ‘thine’, between kinsmen and strangers…. Therefore, we must forget the distinction between ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. That is to say, we must give up our likes and dislikes. This is the teaching of the Gita and all other scriptures. To say this is one thing; to practice it is quite another. The Gita is there to teach us how to practice it. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 55: 34)

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Gandhi was led to consider the question of how best to authenticate religious teaching/truth in the context of the debate with his contemporaries about the truth enunciated in the Gita. Significantly, the debate came to centre around the question if the Gita did/did not lay forth the yoga of identifying the exception to the recommendation of non-violence as constituted by the exceptional case of upholding truth (understood as sat/what exists) and preventing its destruction by the dispossessor/ thief. Gandhi argued that the conflict arose from the wrong belief that the meaning of the Gita was fixed for all times and lay in the letter of the text. In 1919 during the Rowlatt Satyagraha, Gandhi wrote about the differences with his contemporaries regarding the central import of the Gita. He argued that if one tried to live by truths brought forth in the Gita, one would be able to understand the central message of the text even where there seemed to be inconsistencies in the narrative. Gandhi explained that the Gita opened with Sri Krishna’s advice to Arjuna to engage in a war maintaining an equality of deference between his own family and those not his own, i.e. the ‘others’ . At this point, “Arjuna has two courses open to him: he should either kill Duryodhana and others or else convert them. In the circumstances Arjuna’s laying down arms would mean the annihilation of all…” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 84). This led into the discussion on equi-mindedness between one’s kin and others and the description of action without attachment as the only way to freedom from the tyranny of desire, passion, and anger. In Gandhi’s view, living with equability by such discipline was the only way to attain truth metaphorically brought out in the Gita by Arjuna’s ability to see the vision of oneness in the universal form of Sri Krishna. Gandhi argued that if the moral aspirant, the Arjuna, in every seeker was to be equi-minded, he/she would contemporaneously be, progressively non-violent, in his/her practice. Gandhi had explained in 1919 in Pamphlet number 18 that the way to arrive at the truth in/of the teachings of the Gita was that of bringing such truth into practice and the experience of the aspirant; I shall now endeavour to consider in all humility a doubt raised by some Hindu friends regarding the meaning of the Bhagavad Gita. They say that in the Bhagavad Gita Sri Krishna has encouraged Arjuna to slay his relations and they therefore argue that there is warrant in that work for violence and that there is no satyagraha in it. Now the Bhagavad Gita is not a historical work, it is a great religious book, summing up the teaching of all religions. The poet has seized the occasion of the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas on the field of Kurukshetra for drawing attention to the war going on in our bodies between the forces of Good (Pandavas) and the forces of Evil (Kauravas) and has shown that the latter should be destroyed and there should be no remissness in carrying on the battle against the forces of Evil, mistaking them through ignorance for forces of Good… We, who are saturated with the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita but who do not pretend to any special spiritual qualifications, do not draw out sword against our relations whenever they perpetrate injustice but we win them over by our affection for them. If the physical interpretation alluded to of the Bhagavad Gita be correct, we sin against it in not inflicting physical punishment upon our relatives whom we consider to have done us injustice. Everywhere in that Divine Song, we note the following advice given to Arjuna: Fight without anger, conquer the two great enemies, desire and anger, be the same to friend and foe; physical objects cause pleasure and pain, they are fleeting; endure them. That one cannot strike down an adversary without anger is universal experience. Only an Arjuna who destroys the devil within him can live without attachment. It was Ramdas brought up in the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita who not only endured the lashes of a wrongdoer but actually produced for him a Jagir. Narsinh Mehta, the first poet

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of Gujarat and the prince among bhaktas, was nurtured in the Bhagavad Gita teaching. He conquered his enemies only by love and has given through one single poem of matchless beauty the great text of their conduct to his fellow-Vaishnavas. That encouragement from violence can be deduced from the Bhagavad Gita demonstrates the deadliness of Kaliyuga. It is only too true that we often find an echo of our sentiments in what we read and see. If it is true that God made men in his own image, it is equally true that man makes God also in his own image. I have found nothing but love in every page of the Gita … (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 18: 25–26)

Elsewhere Gandhi wrote that disputes arose between himself and others because these others did not attempt to practise the life recommended in the Gita and therefore failed to arrive at the truth enunciated therein. Gandhi argued that in terms of the framework provided by the Gita, the truths of religion or truth qua God could not be arrived at by liturgical exercises but only by translating such truth into practice, i.e. by making it a “part of one’s experience” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 99). It still remains meaningful to ask, how and why this Gandhian emphasis on practice, should have transformed ahimsa into the very being of truth? Somewhat close to Aristotle whose ethical treatises were works of practical science and who had argued that the characteristic aim of studying ethics was not the acquisition of knowledge about action but rather action itself; Gandhi thought of religious texts as primarily concerned with the living of a good human life. Aristotle had famously argued that we study ethics not in order to know what good men are but in order to become good and act as good men do. For Aristotle (as one might recall), ethics is one of the practical sciences and the other is politics. Coming from a very different set of background assumptions, Gandhi shared the emphasis on practice and indeed the continuity between politics and ethics. This led him to argue that the aim of the Gita was not to lay down the yoga of discrimination pointing out how best to identify the exception to moral principles, but rather its aim was to show how one could live by such principles even in the most difficult of circumstances. Gandhi was clear that the practical sciences—ethics and politics—could not be read in isolation from one another. Accordingly, Gandhi like Aristotle made an important distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge in his Discourses on the Gita; Jnana here means listening to readings from the Shastras, meditating over them, studying them, and vijnana means realizing the atman in direct experience. Jnana is understanding through reason, and vijnana is that knowledge which sinks through reason into experience. Jnana is knowledge obtained from the Shastras, whereas vijnana is knowledge which is part of one’s experience. Non-violence will have become direct experience for us in this sense when our whole life comes to be permeated with the spirit of compassion, when non-violence manifests itself in us in its true essence. (ibid.)

Applying this distinction to his own reading of the Gita, Gandhi argued that in trying to translate the truths given in the Gita into experience one would soon realize that the only way to respond to the metaphysics of oneness (enunciated in the Gita) was to move from theory to practise. Once the moral aspirant moved to translate the truths into experience, he/she would be led to act with ahimsa as an equal deference to all manner of being as if these other beings were his/her kith and kin. For Gandhi, such a practice of ahimsa was the very being of the truth of the oneness enunciated

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in the Gita. Hence, Gandhi followed the above passage distinguishing jnana from vijnana with the following; He who has the same regard for friend and foe, for one who deserves to be hated and one who is a kinsman, for the sadhu and the sinner, as he would have for clay and gold, he may be said to have won the battle of this life. The same law applies to the world of the living which applies to the world of inert matter. As clay and gold are ultimately the same substance, so the sadhu and the sinner are ultimately one. The sadhu and the sinner are forms of the same reality. They are both manifestations of the atman. The layer of uncleanliness has disappeared from over the sadhu’s atman and is becoming ever thicker over the sinner’s. We shall have risen above the ordinary level only when we learn to have equal regard for either. Tulsidas has shown by his example how we can do that. (ibid.)

Gandhi believed that the truth enunciated in religio-ethical texts could only be authenticated by practice; and this made for the inseparability of ahimsa (as a nonviolence towards all in action, speech, and thought) and truth (of oneness enunciated in the Gita) in his thought and action. However, Gandhi also framed an epistemic argument in support of this connection when he argued that since the obstacles to arrive at truth were not only external but also internal, the aspirant needed to overcome internal obstacles that prevented him/her from arriving at truth and this effort involved egolessness/humility. Gandhi explained that a moral aspirant who began the moral journey with truth speaking and moved progressively towards Absolute truth/God as the goal of the moral life; would realize soon enough that truth speaking and seeking was inextricable from non-violence understood, in the last, as utmost humility. In 1930 in From Yeravda Mandir, Gandhi asked “But how is one to realize this Truth, which may be likened to a philosopher’s stone or the cow of plenty? By abhyasa, single-minded devotion, and vairagya, indifference to all other interests in life— replies the Bhagavad Gita.” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 49: 383–84) Of “following Truth” (ibid., 384), Gandhi clarified that “(T)there can be no place in it for even a trace of self-interest” (ibid.). One might of course wonder why an ego-driven self-interest should be antithetical to truth. At this point, it could be useful to recall Iris Murdoch’s argument that it is the ego that prevents a moral aspirant from being able to see things as they exist as a matter of fact. This is because the ego needs to tamper with what is seen in order to keep its inflated self-images in place. Gandhi argued therefore that “Humility cannot be an observance by itself…In one who has ahimsa in him it becomes part of his very nature” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 50: 117). This insight (and the connection between ahimsa/humility and truth) perhaps led Gandhi to argue that “without ahimsa it is not possible to seek and find Truth” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 49: 409). They remained intertwined in Gandhi; The path of Truth is as narrow as it is straight. Even so is that of ahimsa. It is like balancing oneself on the edge of a sword. By concentration an acrobat can walk on a rope. But the concentration required to tread the path of Truth and ahimsa is far greater. The slightest inattention brings one tumbling to the ground. One can realize Truth and ahimsa only by ceaseless striving… It appears that the impossibility of full realization of truth in this mortal body led some ancient seeker after truth to the appreciation of ahimsa. The question which confronted him was: “Shall I bear with those who create difficulties for me, or shall I destroy them?” The seeker realized that he who went on destroying others did not make headway

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but simply stayed where he was, while the man who suffered those who created difficulties marched ahead and at times even took the others with him. The first act of destruction taught him that the truth which was the object of his quest was not outside himself but within. Hence the more he took to violence, the more he receded from truth. For in fighting the imagined enemy without, he neglected the enemy within. (Ibid., 407–08)

It remains to end with the thought with which the chapter began, that is, with the thought that it is important to understand where Gandhi derived his arguments for ahimsa given that such sources would also define how he understood ahimsa and of course how he understood truth. One might consider here that Gandhi clearly believed (unlike Tolstoy) that ahimsa was not to be taken as a commandment from the divine but rather as the only path to the divine/truth. This had all kinds of consequences for a good human life and for a truly religious life. Witness that in a Gandhian framework one could only arrive at the God of one’s own religion if one was non-violent and full of love to others who believed in different Gods. One might then end this chapter on a note on the significance of ahimsa in a truly religious life by closing with Gandhi’s argument that there would be no religious salvation/moksha for the devout without perfect non-violence. Gandhi cautioned the devotee that he/she could only attain salvation after death, i.e. after he/she had attained freedom from the body and the inextricable violence associated with physical existence; But ahimsa is an ideal which it is impossible to realize to perfection. It may be possible to realize it in thought, but not in action. Shankaracharya has said that one seeking moksha should have far greater patience than one who would try to empty the sea, drop by drop, with a blade of grass. One must have equal patience for realizing the ideal of perfect non-violence. It is impossible in this body to follow ahimsa fully. That is why moksha is laid down as the supreme end of life. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 85–86)

Notes 1. The Bhagavad Gita literally “The song of the celestial Lord” appears as an episode in the Bhishma Parva (chapters 23–40) in the sixth book of the Mahabharata. It contains 700 verses in 18 chapters and is often referred to as the Gitopanishad. Traditionally Vyasa is supposed to have written it some 5000 years ago. 2. The Jain seven-valued logic is a system developed by Jain thinkers in ancient India to support and substantiate their theory of metaphysical pluralism. This system has seven distinct semantic predicates with the qualification ‘may be/syat’ which may be thought of as seven different truth values. Traditionally, in the Jains (and other Indian systems), this system of argumentation is referred to as the saptabhangi or syadvada. The earliest reference to Syadvada occurs is the writings of Bhadrabahu (c. 433–357 BCE). 3. Gandhi had added bread labour to the list of niyamas or casual virtues which had been enumerated in 1926 as follows “the niyamas or the casual virtues are, according to the same authority: shaucha (bodily purity) santosha (contentment), tapa (forbearance), swadhayaya (study of scriptures), Iswarapranidhana (resignation to the Will of God)” (Gandhi 1888–1948, 33: 448). 4. Anekantavada/many-sidedness is the ancient Jain doctrine which propounds metaphysical pluralism as the ultimate truth of reality. It states that the ultimate truth and reality is complex and has multiple aspects.

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5. The Bhagavad Gita also referred to simply as the Gita is a religious book for the Hindus. It is a 700-verse text in Sanskrit that is part of the epic Mahabharata. The Gita narrates a dialogue between the Kshatriya prince Arjuna and his charioteer Sri Krishna. At the start of the war between the Pandavas and their cousins the kauravas Arjuna is filled with despair and wonders if he should take part in a war against his kinsmen. Sri Krishna’s reply to him forms the Gita. Krishna counsels Arjuna to fulfil his duty by action without any self-directed desire for results thereof. 6. “The men of self-realization look with an equal eye on a Brahmana possessed of learning and humility, a cow, an elephant….” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 191).

References Aurobindo, S. (2002). Bande Mataram. In The complete works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA) (Vol. 6–7). Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department. Basham, L. (2006). Traditional influences on the thought of Mahatma Gandhi. In A. Raghuramaraju (Ed.), Debating Gandhi: A reader (pp. 19–44). Oxford University Press. Bilgrami, A. (2006). Gandhi’s integrity: The philosophy behind the politics. In A. Raghuramaraju (Ed.), Debating Gandhi: A reader (pp. 248–266). Oxford University Press. Bilgrami, A. (2011). Gandhi’s religion in relation to his politics. In J. M. Brown, & A. J. Parel (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Gandhi (pp. 93–116). Cambridge University Press. Bose, N. K. (Ed.). (1948). Selections from Gandhi. The Navajivan Trust. Chakrabarty, D., & Majumdar, R. (2013). Gandhi’s Gita and politics as such. In S. Kapila, & F. Devji (Eds.), Political thought in action: The Bhagavad Gita and modern India (pp. 66–87). Cambridge University Press. Edgerton, F. (Translated and Interpreted).(1994). The Bhagavad Gita. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt. Ltd. Gandhi, M. K. (1888–1948). Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi (Vol. 1–98). Publications Division Government of India, 1999. Accessed online in October, 2022. https://www.gandhiashramsev agram.org/gandhi-literature/collected-works-of-mahatma-gandhi-volume-1-to-98.php Gray, S., & Hughes, M. T. (2015). Gandhi’s devotional thought. Philosophy East and West, 65(2), 375–400. Kapila, S. (2013). A history of violence. In S Kapila, & F Devji (Eds.), Political thought in action: The Bhagavad Gita and modern India (pp. 177–199). Cambridge University Press. Lal, V. (2016). Preface: Civilizational dialogues and the politics of a collective. In V. Lal, & R. Rajan (Eds.), India and the unthinkable: Backwaters collective on metaphysics and politics. Oxford University Press. Lipner, J. (2016). A marriage made in heaven?How metaphysics transforms politics: A case study. In V. Lal, & R. Rajan (Eds.), India and the unthinkable: Backwaters collective on metaphysics and politics. Oxford University Press. Murdoch, I. (1970). The sovereignty of good. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Parekh, B. C. (1989). Gandhi’s political philosophy: A critical examination. University of Notre Dame Press. Parel, A. J. (Ed.). (2010). Hind swaraj and other writings. Cambridge University Press. Prabhu, R. K., & Rao, U. R. (Eds.). (2007). The mind of Mahatma Gandhi. Navajivan Publishing House. Puri, B. (2015). The Tagore-Gandhi debate: On matters of truth and untruth. Springer. Puri, B. (2022). The Ambedkar—Gandhi debate: On Identity, community and justice. Springer Nature. Rajan, R. (2016). Introduction: Post-metaphysics and the future of an Illusion. In V. Lal, & R. Rajan (Eds.), India and the unthinkable: Backwaters collective on metaphysics and politics. Oxford University Press.

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Skaria, A. (2016). Unconditional equality Gandhi’s religion of resistance. Permanent Black. Taylor, C. (2001). Sources of the self: Making of the modern identity. Harvard University Press. Terchek, R. J. (2011). Conflict and nonviolence. In J. M. Brown, & A. J. Parel (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Gandhi (pp. 117–134). Cambridge University Press. Tilak, B. G. (1935). Sri Bhagavad Gita-Rahasya or Karma-Yoga-Sastra (1st ed., Vol 1) (B. S. Sukthankar, Trans.). Tilak Bros, Bombay Vaibhav Press. Tolstoy, L. (2006). The Kingdom of God is within you (C. Garnett, Trans.). Dover Publications, INC. Venkatesananda, S. (1993). Vasistha’s Yoga. State University of New York Press.

Chapter 3

Ethics: Western and Indian Mrinal Miri

Abstract The influence of Christianity on Western moral philosophy is unmistakable. The enlightenment certainly made a difference. But Reason replaced God, morality retained its universality and became secular. The dharma tradition is firmly grounded in practical reality, and while universality has a place in it, its focus is on particularity and contextual specificity. Gandhi was firmly rooted in the Indian tradition and derived his inspiration primarily from the Gita. Some of the central Gandhian ideas on morality are: truth, ahimsa, satyagraha, sacrifice, and the virtues free of any instrumentality. Gandhi also believed that animals are a significant part of the domain of morality. Although animals may not perhaps have language, they certainly have an inner life which makes them unmistakably the proper subject of moral attention. Keywords Domain · Reason · Abrahamic · God · Atman · Brahman · Animal liberation · Freedom · Happiness · Ecstasy · Bliss

Moral philosophy in modern West has two main sources: religion and the so-called enlightenment project formally inaugurated by Immanuel Kant. For religion or theological ethics—morality is the gift of God to humanity; to be moral is to surrender to God’s will and follow his sovereign rule for all humanity. For the so-called enlightenment the domain of morality is strictly within the domain of the logos—reason and speech. As long as morality derived from religion requires overriding perhaps speechless faith in God—it is inviolable by reason and “knowledge”. But for the enlightenment intervention: morality is strictly within the domain of reason—secular. There are two prominent views emanating from the enlightenment project: (1) morality and its universality are dictated by universal autonomous reason (Kant)— emotions and other non-cognitive properties of the mind are not part of the arena of morality; and (2) the end of secular morality is happiness for all—the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Since the concept of happiness is quite doggedly M. Miri (B) North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. Miri and B. Puri, Gandhi for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3792-9_3

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unclear, and there may be more views—some mutually incompatible—about the nature of happiness than it may quite deceptively appear to begin with, the modern western mind seems to have replaced the idea of happiness with that of liberty, as though liberty was an easier concept to grasp than happiness. The largely accepted modern view is that liberty must be the goal of non-theological morality. Morality consists in applying the right means to achieve this end. The morality of an action is strictly proportionate to its utility in the pursuit of this end. The details and shape of modern moral thinking in the west are a result of combining these two in subtly different ways. However, a particular combination of these two views has often led to somewhat distasteful moral world views. Thus human beings, on one such view, are unique among all beings, because they alone are endowed with reason which enables them to decide between the right and the wrong, between the moral and the immoral. However, not all human beings are endowed—or adequately endowed—with reason whereby they can validly distinguish between right and wrong—good and bad. There cannot therefore be proper, mutually responsive moral interaction between such human beings and the ones who are endowed with reason. There are two attitudes possible for the morally endowed to the ones who are not so endowed—(1) a natural attitude of pity and sympathy for the latter who after all are capable of suffering pain; and (2) an urge to lift their level of rationality so that one day they can become full members of the moral human community. “The animal exemplifies the being who must be excluded from abstract equality who has voice but no speech (the animal would include usually those humans who cannot reason and talk, historically massive examples of such animal-humans would include women, slaves, colonised, Salter’s American Indians and terrorists” (Skaria, 2016: 38). This you will recognize is the famous “white man’s burden”—of European colonialism throughout the non-white world. It is quite natural for non-white civilizations to react sharply to this extraordinary attempt of the European colonials to degrade the amazingly rich and fecund ethical thinking and moral traditions and practices of their colonial subjects—not just in their own eyes but in the eyes of their subjects. The two aims, of course, go together— one effectively setting the other in motion. But think of the Indian tradition which has embedded in it the Dharma Shastras, the Gita, the epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the Jaina and Buddhist interventions. The idea that human beings are unique among all earthly creatures in that they— and only they—have the gift of reason and the capacity to distinguish between the moral and the immoral—is common between the western religious tradition—the so-called Abrahamic tradition—and western modernity. The idea is also at the heart of western secularism. And the claim is that this secularism which is pervasive in the western articulation of law, politics, economics, etc. has come to the non-European world from the west. The non-European world has appropriated it in a break from its own traditions. Even Derrida endorses the view that modernity’s articulation of secularism basically in “Abrahamic language” is the gift of Europe to the rest of the world. Thus Derrida: modernity emerges from and is articulated in “an Abrahamic language which is not (in the case of Japan or Korea,

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for example) that of the dominant religion of their society, but which has become the universal idiom of law, of politics of the economy, or of diplomacy: at the same time the agent and symptom of this internationalization” (Derrida, 2005: 28). Also, “the sacredness of the human”, central to the concept of human rights, “finds its meaning in the Abrahamic memory of the religions of the Book, and in a Jewish but above all Christian interpretation of the ‘neighbour’ or the ‘fellow man’” (ibid., 30). In this connection, Bernard Williams suggests a very pregnant counterfactual conundrum: As things turned out. The world we actually have is so significantly shaped by christianity that we cannot endorse Oscar Wilde’s engaging remark,” Whatever in fact is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to medievalism.’ It will never be correct to see Christianity as merely longest and most painful route from paganism to paganism. But the formative influence of christianity is something we owe to the way things turned out, and although we can do little with that thought, it may well be true that not only something else, but something else very different might have been in the place of Christianity…The overwhelming role of Christianity in the transition from antiquity to the modern world is necessary, in the sense that if we try to subtract it, we cannot think determinately of an alternative history, and we cannot think of people who would be ourselves at all; but while the role of Christianity is in this way necessary, it might not have been. (Williams, 1993: 12)

The idea that secular morality is a unique contribution of the west to the nonwestern world is unacceptable in the light of glaring contrary evidence. A quick look at the examples of the Chinese and the Indian traditions is sufficient to throw serious doubts on its validity. Take the dharmic tradition. There are, of course, multiple versions and interpretations of this tradition. But one of the most plausible ways of looking at it is the suggestion that morality is not pregiven, prior to, human social life. The complex contingencies of human life are the spring board of its emergence, and in the course of the interplay of the moral and other regulatory principles, the moral acquires an authority that goes beyond its contingent origins. Take the Apastamba Dharma Sutra of the Dharma Shastras: “Right and wrong (dharma and adharma) do not go about saying, ‘Here we are’; nor do gods or centaurs (gandharvas) say, ‘this is right, this is wrong’” (Doniger (ed), 1991, 11). Let us very briefly look at Manu’s exposition of dharma. As the poet Ramanujam says of Manu, “One has only to read Manu, after a bit of Kant to be struck by the former’s extraordinary lack of universality. He seems to have no clear notion of universal human nature from which one can deduce ethical decrees…To be moral for Manu is to particularise—to ask who did it, to what and when” (Ramanujan, 1989, 45–46). A denial of universal (unique) human nature is a summary rejection of the Abrahamic-enlightenment universal humanity, and to particularize is to place morality firmly in the domain of this mundane temporal world. There is, of course, for the greater part of traditional Indian philosophical thought, the world beyond the transient world of humans and other beings—the eternal, never changing, “world” of the liberated soul naturally free from the volatilities of the moral life. And this latter is firmly rooted in the contingencies of life in this world. Dharma is the regulator of human life through its ever-sensitive, ever subtle particularities. It is because dharma is context-sensitive in this way that it can legitimately apply to the most

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intransigent of human conditions (apada dharma—dharma of extremities). [E.g. it is no violation of dharma if an elder brother who is physically incapable of taking part in procreation requests his younger brother to help in his wife’s conception of a possible heir, of course with the consent of the wife.] Sanatana dharma is the set of ethically regulatory principles that have come down to us from ancient times which have been culled from ancient texts like the Upanishads, Vedas, Puranas, the Gita, and the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, and, most importantly, reflection on the great variety and subtleties of human experience through time. Santana Dharma consists of general principles of action, but they are subject to modifications and changes in the light of the dharma of the time and situation. Neither monotheistic authoritarian universality nor the Reason of enlightenment, but it is these generalities of Sanatana Dharma which guide man in his (her) search for the good, fulfilling life in this world. An aside on monotheism: “… It (monotheism) hammers at human consciousness demanding that it transcend itself, that it reach out into a light of understanding so pure that it is itself blinding…In polytheism, says Nietzsche, lay the freedom of the human spirit, its creative multiplicity. The doctrine of a single Deity, whom man cannot play off against other gods and thus wins open spaces for their own aims, is ‘the most monstrous of all human errors’” (Steiner, 1971, 38). Gandhi Gandhi uses the deep and supple Indian tradition of ethical thinking: the central moral ideas of this tradition: ahimsa, satyagraha, love, surrender of the sovereignty of the self, being, as opposed to just human being, fearlessness, and the gift of fearlessness. All these ideas are interconnected in multiple ways, and Gandhi’s use of them is extraordinarily inventive and original. I shall touch upon only some of Gandhian ideas which are profoundly opposed to the western tradition of theological ethics of Abrahamic foundation and its modern secular transformation: 1. The casting of Christianity as the world religion per excellence—the supreme ethical religion professing the intention of ethical conquest of the world— was extraordinarily strange to Gandhi. According to the retrospective account provided in Autobiography and elsewhere, in his youth, listening to the missionaries “stand in a corner near the high school and hold forth, pouring abuse on Hindus and their gods” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 44: 116), he comes to be convinced about the equality of all religions except Christianity, which because of its intolerance could not be equal to Indian religions.1 Gandhi’s attitude to Christianity softened a great deal through the course of his life; but he remained firm in his view that no religion can legitimately claim supremacy over other religions. 2. There is no hierarchy of religions. No religion is superior or inferior to another. Gandhi took into consideration religions which he had intimate knowledge of: Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, and Buddhism. Among major religions, he did not consider were Taoism of China and Shintoism of Japan. He also did not consider any of the numerous tribal religions. Of his attitude to tribal religions, I have this story: on his visit to what is now Nagaland prior to India’s independence, Gandhi was asked about what he thought of the Angami religion;

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Gandhi’s reply was “I would like to join them in their prayers”.2 Gandhi believed that large parts of all religions of the world are temporal and therefore are subject to change and are subject to historical-cultural contingencies. They are what may be called the grounded faith held in place by performative continuity. But like all grounded belief, they are subject to change and critical review. Criticism of a religion must, however, be left to the follower of the faith; not because Gandhi believed in the relativistic indifference to another’s religion; but because criticism of the other is likely, so Gandhi believed to be motivated by the desire to undermine it. As we know, Gandhi was right in this. But Gandhi also believed in a “religion which underlies all religions” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 264). This religion is groundless—ungrounded—and is constituted by daya or prem; Gandhi uses these words interchangeably and translates them as “compassion”, “pity”, or “love”. It is this core of ungrounded faith that “resides in all religions”. And it is this that makes all religions equal. 3. The Hindu tradition—much older than the Christian—has always allowed the possibility of the ethical life without a faith in God and his miracles and interventions in this world. Gandhi was a firm believer in this tradition. (Think of Gandhi on atheism and his favourite bhajan—“Vaishnava Jana To…”.) [Vaishnava Jana To is a song in praise of qualities of mind which are ethically and spiritually liberating. A person who has developed these qualities of mind is known as a devotee of Vishnu. But the qualities are self-luminous and autonomous; their self-luminosity and autonomy are not dependent on a prior faith in Vishnu. They are qualities such as are expressed in: empathy for those who are suffering; help, without a sense of pride and self-satisfaction, for those in need; respect and tolerance for all beings of the world totally without a sense of disdain for any; firmness in speech and deed; freedom from craving; respect for all women; truthfulness in their entire being; total disinterest in the wealth of others; nonattachment to worldly possessions and false distractions (maya); fondness for the name of Rama (the best of humans); and devoid of greed, deceit, lust, and anger. The virtues of such a person liberate his entire lineage.] A tradition that can give rise to a song or a hymn such as Vaishnava Jana To has the notion of a secular morality embedded in it and does not have to borrow it from an alien tradition. Satyagraha is frequently equated with daya dharma. It is ungrounded because it is beyond the realm of reason and logos. The final response of the satyagrahi to the question “why satyagraha?” is silence. For satyagraha that requires the relinquishing of the sovereignty of the self—devoid of the sovereignty of the self there can be no reason and no knowledge (in the enlightenment sense) that organizes this decision—it requires faith and silence. [“Silence is conceived as a tripartite schema: dumbness-speech-silence. Satyagraha belongs not to speech, the zone of reason and logos, nor to dumbness, the subaltern soundlessness, but to silence—a zone that comes only as a withdrawal, which is also to say, a traversal both of speech and dumbness” (Skaria, 2016: 136).] Secular morality belongs to the domain of speech, and as Skaria puts it beautifully, the “satyagrahi both affirms this speech and bursts from it into silence” (ibid.). Religion that resides in all religions requires this silence.

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Faith belongs to the zone of silence. [Wittgenstein: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” (Wittgenstein, 1999, § 7).] Ahimsa must guide action not just towards all human beings, but to all beings of the world and particularly to all living beings. But (i) ahimsa is never an easy option. Gandhi: violence and killing done by warriors is preferable to the nonviolence of those who are afraid to die. “I want both Hindus and Mussulmans to cultivate the cool courage to die without killing. But if one has not that courage, I want him to cultivate the art of killing and being killed, rather than in a cowardly manner flee from danger. For the latter in spite of his flight commits mental himsa. He flees because he has not the courage to be killed in the act of killing” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 24: 448). (ii) Also, turning the other cheek [“the royal road of turning the other cheek” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 17: 163)] cannot be a rule to be always followed—to do so would make it a “blind fetish” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 43: 59). (iii) There is too the problem of residual killing in everyday life—the “inevitable violence” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 36: 391) the “unavoidable violence” (ibid.) of eating and drinking that is not even implicated in the necessary courage required by the practitioner of ahimsa; this violence is not within the ambit of the principle of ahimsa; “is external to ahimsa” (Skaria, 2016: 134) as Skaria says, because “one never completely renounces the will to live” (ibid.). Aware of this residual killing, Gandhi describes ahimsa by analogy to the Euclidean line or point: a high ideal striven for but never achieved. Another concept that is part of the cluster of concepts that constitute the moral, according to Gandhi, is the idea of self-sacrifice. Other ideas intimately related to it are: surrendering the autonomy of the self, relinquishing the sovereignty of the self, and the pure gift of fearlessness (abhaydan). The third is possible only on the basis of the achievement of the first two. The distinguished French sociologist Marcel (1966) (The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, first published in 1925) famously argued that a gift is a form of exchange between individuals, an individual and a group, or between groups of individuals. The giver makes the gift in actual exchange or in anticipation of an exchange (return) from the recipient. The return may be in kind or a commitment to a mode of relationship such as domination, subordination, honour, and respect (e.g. the royal feast to the populace). But to reduce the gift to a mode of exchange is to turn it into an instrumentality and to render the idea of a non-instrumental (pure) gift vacuous (deconstructed). The gift of fearlessness, on the other hand, is unintelligible except as a pure gift. It can never be given in expectation of a return “gift” from the recipient. To trade fearlessness with something from the recipient is to denude the idea of fearlessness of any significance. For there would be a huge element of fear left in the giver. “What would the return gift be like and would it come at all?” Such a supposed gift of fearlessness would therefore be an instance of self-deception and thus not a genuine gift of fearlessness at all. This gift must be coeval with the relinquishing of the sovereignty of the self. Gandhi also reminds us that it only needs a small extension of the idea to see that self-sacrifice is not limited to humans: the sacrifice of the seed involved

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in the birth of the plant; the sacrifice of animals to protect their young; and so on. “The corn grows only when the seed dies. The child lives only because the mother suffers for it even to the point of death” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 22: 190). This, of course, is subject to the objection that science has abundantly proved that behaviour of animals, other than humans, and of vegetative life is capable of being fully explained—without any residue of explicandum—in genetic (physical) terms. The so-called self-sacrifice of animals and plants is a purely metaphorical extension of language which belongs properly only to the complex ways in which we meaningfully talk about our mind and the self. There is, of course, also the view that even all human behaviour, including behaviour that is cultural or culture specific, is similarly reducible to behaviour of physical items—items recognized by the sciences as the stuff the world is made of. This view, as it stands, is somewhat of an old hat; although it has interesting subtleties and ramifications, it is best to let it rest among the wreckage of discarded views. (But, of course, in philosophy, there is nothing like a view that is totally discarded.) However, there is another very interesting view (that primarily of Bernard Williams) respectful of science and its basic instruments and principles of understanding and yet insisting that there are very specific and large areas of human behaviour which require us to move beyond the strictly scientific. These areas of human behaviour come under the general rubric of “culture” and are encapsulated in concepts such as knowledge, truth, truthfulness, moralimmoral, sincerity, hypocrisy, and justice. Sacrifice and self-sacrifice would, of course, fall quite unquestionably within this area of human behaviour. Williams’ word for this variety of explanation is “genealogical”, a term that he thinks Nietzsche used for a similar purpose. The key genealogical enquiry considering the appearance or emergence or origin of a cultural constituent begins with the postulation of a fictional “state of nature” (Williams, 2002). The state of nature contains a society or a group of human beings who have certain basic needs including the need to co-operate. Williams mentions E. J. Craig’s illuminating account of the concept of knowledge as an example of genealogical explanation of the kind that he accepts. Given the basic need for co-operation, the powers of observation, recognition, etc. that co-operation requires, human beings “would develop a concept with just about the properties of the familiar concept of knowledge” (William, 2002: 21). It is important to realize that the availability of this genealogical explanation ensures that the concept of knowledge is not reducible to previously existing properties of human beings in the state of nature, including genetic properties, and further that it is, therefore, non-genetic. Let us suppose that we accept the genealogical mode of explanation as the kind of explanation that truly accounts for the emergence of certain basic human properties and practices, e.g. the ones that we have already mentioned. Would such an account not be available for properties that animals manifest? 8. Perhaps not. The most conclusive argument seems to be the one centring round the issue of language. What is undeniable perhaps is that animals have (species or subspecies specific) communication systems. One of the most amazing of such systems is what has been called the “language” of bees (Karl von Frisch,

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(1974) Decoding the Language of the Bee). The “language” consists of various movements of the returning forager bee’s movements, such as flying in circles in front of the hive and intricately different motions made by its tail. These movements indicate the location of the source of nectar, its distance from the hive, and the quality and quantity of the nectar. The swarm takes the information in and makes its move accordingly. Complex as this bee behaviour is, it cannot, so it is presumed, count as language, because it can be accounted for without any residue of explicandum, in terms of biogenetic mechanical causal processes. Any language—if it is a language at all—must be capable of being learned. The most elementary kind of language teaching and learning requires the use of the concept of truth. E.g. “This is a dog”, “that is a table”, and so on. These are assertions of truth. And the concept of truth is part of a network of concepts such as: doubt, certainty, deceit, and lie; these concepts and their ramifications are beyond the capacity of animals to wield. A natural language, moreover, as it has been almost universally accepted in philosophy, embodies the form of life—we might even say, the culture—of the native speakers of the language. A native speaker of a language can, as we well know, learn another language that may be totally strange to him and may become proficient in its use. Anthropologists who study cultures that are completely alien to theirs know that the most authentic understanding of the culture being studied is through a mastery of its language. Language encompasses both the inner and outer life of a community, and the two in their organically bonded relationship constitute the culture of the community. To master an alien language is, at the same time, to become privy to the intricate bonding of the inner and the outer and thus to be able to shed the sense of strangeness of the alien observer. The stranger then becomes a “native” of another culture. As Jhumpa Lahiri, the distinguished story-teller, says, after the Italian writer Dominico Starnone: “A new language is almost a new life, grammar and syntax recast you, you slip into another logic and another sensibility” (Starnone quoted in Lahiri, 2016: 147). 9. If the bee behaviour is to be counted as a language, or part of a language, it should be possible for humans to learn the language and, in time, to become a native of the bee culture. This obviously is an absurdity. But part of the absurdity may spring from the enormous physical difference between bees and humans. The story, so it may be thought, will be different if we consider, for instance, monkeys or a subspecies of monkeys. But this does not seem any less absurd. Nothing can count as our having learned the language of monkeys, not withstanding the highly enjoyable Mowgli stories. 10. But this does not of course prove that animals do not have an inner life. Lions do not laugh, and dogs do not hum tunes. But lions growl, as we may occasionally do; dogs whimper; birds build nests for their new-born and feed them; elephants protect their young; tigers stock their prey; the albatross rears its young by flying everyday hundreds of miles to bring food for it; the male bird dances in front of its potential mate to attract its attention; the deer panics at the hint of the presence of the leopard behind the bush; and the monkey warns the herd of the presence of danger. Such language is not anthropocentric sentimentality

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on the part of humans. The gap between possible biogenetic accounts of such behaviour and their meaningfulness is too obvious to be deniable.3 There are cultures which have, as it were, a groundless faith in the inner life of animals and their being thus objects of our moral attention. Animals suffer pain and, therefore, need our caring attention. They go to incredible lengths to care for their helpless young, and this deserves our moral cognizance. Since animals do not wield language, they cannot be part of our interactive moral community. But paying moral attention to them is a perfectly intelligible, legitimate activity for such cultures; they are, therefore, part of what we might call the ethical domain. There are, on the other hand, cultures for which the domain of ethics does not extend beyond human life. The West’s resolute reluctance to include animals within the domain of ethics is part of the continuing tradition of Abrahamic monotheism and enlightenment universalism of Reason. The inability of the West to see beyond a human-centred (or should I say person-centred?) ethics is ingrained in the monotheistic frame of thinking that the west is willy-nilly rooted in. It is perfectly understandable that an organization such as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has originated in the West. Such a movement questions norms internal to a culture. Such norms completely exclude animals from the larger ethical domain. The fact that SPCA has been able to spread its “message” across the world is a mark of the power that western civilization still wields to influence norms of cultures other than its own. 11. It is interesting that there can be no white man’s burden in the case of animals. Animals are beyond the ethical ken of the colonizer’s civilization (culture). And rationality, capacity to reason, cannot, in any case, be raised to any level at all, because animals are totally devoid of reason. Since the capacity to reason is completely absent in animals, the question of raising it to any level does not arise. It is not there to be tinkered with in any manner, so the burden of doing so cannot be there either. All that can be done is tinker with your own culture. So, the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. But mere tinkering cannot take you far. What you need is a cultural paradigm change, a cultural revolution. But a cultural revolution would involve a total rejection of an existing world outlook which is then replaced by an almost impossibly different world outlook: e.g. a polytheistic world outlook being replaced totally by a monotheistic outlook and a feudal outlook being replaced totally by what we might call an “egalitarian” outlook. Such revolutions would involve a section of human population becoming native to a completely alien world like the anthropologist becoming irretrievably native to an alien mode of life. Did the Christian “revolution” eliminate polytheism altogether? Has the “feudal world” been replaced by a totally “egalitarian” world? History does not have examples of revolutions such as this. There can certainly be abstract, general description of what it would be like to be part of a revolution of this nature, but the crunch lies in the details and particularities of life. The preceding world outlook always persists in these details and particularities. What would it be like for a cultural revolution to induce man’s ethical domain to expand so as to include animals and plants within it? The SPCA has remained an external weapon in Western

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culture for the safety and protection of the human world; its acceptability lies in its utility for the wellbeing of human life. 12. Gandhi frequently addressed the issue of the responsibility of human beings to care for and serve other animals. In a letter to Nehru in 1925, Gandhi wrote: “Cow-protection to me is infinitely more than mere protection of the cow. The cow is merely a type of all that lives. Cow-protection means protection of the weak, the helpless, the dumb and the deaf. Man becomes then not the lord and master of all creation but he is its servant. The cow to me is a sermon on pity” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 31:199). However, a little later, in 1926, a very different aspect of his thinking about the man–animal hierarchy emerges: Consider beasts and birds. Cattle do not eat for the satisfaction of the palate, nor do they eat like gluttons. They eat when they are hungry—and just enough to satisfy their hunger. They do not cook their food. They take their portion from that which Nature proffers to them. Then, is man born to pander to his palate? Is he alone fated to be always ill? Among the animals which are not domesticated, there is no starvation; they have no rich and poor, nor is there one group that eats ten times in a day another that scarcely eat even once. All these distinctions are to be found only in our species; yet we regard ourselves as superior in intelligence to animals. It is, however, God and spend our lives in its worship, we must surely be inferior to them. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 12: 420–21)

But yet a third aspect of Gandhi’s thinking on the same theme, this time a sharply critical look at the possible excess in the practice of Jainism a religion as dear to him as Hinduism: The emphasis laid on the sacredness of subhuman life in Jainism is understandable. But that can never mean that one is to be kind to this life in preference to human life. While writing about the sacredness of such life, I take it that sacredness of human life has taken for granted. The former has been over-emphasised. And while putting it into practice, the idea has undergone distortion. For instance there are many who derive complete satisfaction in feeding ants. It would appear that the theory has become a wooden, lifeless dogma. Hypocrisy and distortion are passing current under the name of religion. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 91: 61)

It is clear that while Gandhi regarded animals as having an inner life—what he called a soul—and, therefore, as proper recipient of our moral attention, he was equally emphatic that animals are not part our interactive human moral community. 13. Lastly, a word about Gandhi’s rejection of what he called modern civilization or modern civility. To desire endlessly is man’s natural impulse—modernity’s man. Civility, modern civility, consists in making necessarily incalculable attempts at managing and organizing man’s desires in such a way as to devise and invent ever new means to achieve the satisfaction of infinitely numerous human desires. Politics, economics, structural violence, information machinery of the sovereign state, the knowledge industry, and international diplomacy are placed in the service of this primary motivation of modern civility. This pursuit of the infinite in terms of the finite is necessarily impossible, but engagement in this impossible pursuit generates, in Gandhi’s words, an incredibly “heady intoxication”. So, Gandhi (Hind Swaraj, Chapter 6) says, “Those who are intoxicated by modern civility [“civilisation”] are not likely to write against it. Their care will be to

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find out facts and arguments in support of it. And it is not even as though they do it consciously. They themselves believe what they write. A man seized by sleep believes in the dreams that come to him. When his sleep flies away, only then he realise his own mistake. The same is the situation of a man seized by civilization…their writings hypnotise us. And also one by one we are drawn into the vortex” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 259). Gandhi’s diagnosis of the disease of modern civility may sound quite as heady as the “disease” itself. But his insight, I think, is invaluable for a critical reflection on our times. We must also remember that Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj in 1910, and modernity seems to have treaded the path exactly as Gandhi’s diagnosis would have led us to believe. I would like to end by making a speculative point about how Gandhi would have answered a reader’s questions about how to understand the idea of a totally liberated soul. A totally liberated soul merges into the Paramatman and is necessarily beyond the world of space and time and therefore beyond the karmabhumi of the satyagrahi. Paramatman is characterized by three qualities: sat, chit, and ananda—truth or reality or existence, consciousness, and joy. Paramatma is beyond Maya—it cannot therefore be illusory; it is real; it must have consciousness, but its consciousness must be a temporal and beyond the bounds of space and, therefore, unintentional; it is necessarily not directed at anything spatio-temporally real; lastly, it must be ananda, because it is free from the miseries and sufferings of this world. But can we even say this much about the Paramatman? And, “‘mustn’t we be silent whereof we cannot speak?” Is there even an analogy whereby we can perhaps get a glimpse—illegitimate as it might be—of what being merged in the Paramatma could be like? Maybe, there is. Let us listen to what one of the most distinguished post-modern fiction writers, Milan Kundera, has to say about “ecstasy”. Ecstasy means being “outside oneself” as indicated by the etymology of the Greek word: the act of leaving one’s position (stasis). To be outside oneself does not mean outside the present moment, like a dreamer escaping into the past or the future. Just the opposite: ecstasy is absolute identity with the present, instant and total forgetting of past and future. If we obliterate the future and the past, the present moment stands in empty space, outside life and its chronology, outside time and independent of it (this is why it can be likened to eternity, which too is the negation of time) (Kundera, 1993: 85). We are used to connecting the notion of ecstasy to great mystical moments. But there is such a thing as everyday, ordinary, vulgar ecstasy: the ecstasy of anger, ecstasy of speed at the wheel, the ecstasy of earsplitting noise, ecstasy in the soccer stadium. Living is a perpetual heavy effort not to lose sight of ourselves, to stay solidly present in ourselves, in our stasis. Step outside ourselves for a mere instant, and we verge on death’s dominion. (ibid., 87)

This account of ecstasy, if we accept it, at least makes it possible for us to imagine timeless sat, chit, and anand. But, of course, the timelessness of ecstasy is within time—the temporal framework—while the timelessness of sat, chit, and ananda is totally independent of time.

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Notes 1. Nineteenth-century evolutionary historicism inevitably relativized Christianity, therefore. Believers could assert that Christianity stood prior to all heathen religions, which had merely assimilated and distorted its texts. Alternatively, they could argue that all other religions were imperfect, but moving inexorably towards Christian perfection. But in either case, these assertions opened themselves to immediate challenge on textual, historical, and philosophical grounds. Once comparative criticism became the order of the day, it was easy enough to show that Christianity was truly the “Dharma of distraction” (Bayly, 2013: 5). 2. The story is most likely apocryphal. 3. There are however interesting exceptions. While explaining the Stoics’ account of animal behaviour, the very distinguished philosopher Richard Sorabji says, “What exactly goes on in a dog when it has the appearance of a scent as lying in a certain direction, the Stoics do not say. Bit it would be compatible with their view that the dog’s phantasia should consist of a three-dimensional picture in which a warm glow, corresponding to the scent, lies in a certain corner, corresponding to the direction. The dog would not have to bring together two items corresponding to our concepts of agent and direction, but the scent and the direction would both be represented in such a picture, and we would have to predicate the scent of the direction in order accurately to express the dog’s phantasia…Whatever the mechanism the suggestion is that a dog’s phantasia can be propositional” (Sorabji, 1993: 23).

References Bayly, C. A. (2013). India, Bhagavad Gita, and the world. In S. Kapila, & F. Devji (Eds.), Political thought in action (pp. 1–24). Cambridge University Press. Derrida, J. (2005). On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness (M. Dooley & M. Hughes, Trans.). Routledge. Doniger, W. (Ed.). (1991). The law of Manu (With an introduction and notes, W. Doniger, Trans. with B. K. Smith, Trans.). Penguin Books. Gandhi, M. K. (1888–1948). Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi (Vol. 98). Accessed October 2022 from https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/collected-works-of-mah atma-gandhi-volume-1-to-98.php Kundera, M. (1993). Testaments betrayed: An essay in nine parts. Harper Perennial. Lahiri, J. (2016). In other words. Alfred K. Knopf. Marcel, M. (1966.) The gift: Forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies (I. Cunnison, Trans.). Cohen & West Ltd. Ramanujan, A. K. (1989). Is there an Indian way of thinking. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 23(1), 41–58. Skaria, A. (2016). Unconditional equality Gandhi’s religion of resistance. University of Minnesota Press. Sorabji, R. (1993). Animal minds and human morals. Duckworth. Steiner, G. (1971). In bluebeard’s castle: Some notes towards the redefinition of culture. Yale University Press. von Frisch, K. (1974). Decoding the language of the bee. Science, 185(4152), 663–668. Williams, B. (2002). Truth and truthfulness. Princeton University Press. Williams, B. (1993). Shame and necessity. University of California Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1999).Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (C. K. Ogden, Trans. With an Introduction B. Russell Trans.). Dover Publications.

Chapter 4

For Love of Country: Gandhi and Tagore Bindu Puri

Abstract As is fairly well-known several issues raised by Tagore became a subject of some debate between Gandhi and him during the years between 1915 and 1941 (Puri, 2015). These issues could be broadly categorized into two, those concerning an uncritical adoption of the western modular nation as the end/goal by those engaged in the movement for India’s freedom and those concerning satyagraha (in the form of non-cooperation, boycott, fasting, etc.) as the unquestioned “moral” (Bhattacharya, 2008: 49) means to that end. This essay will examine the first set of issues and argue that though Tagore had difficulties with what he described as “the nation of the west” (Tagore, 1996: 425) these difficulties did not amount to a rejection of the “case for self-determination-the forging of the national links” (Berlin, 1999: 264) or of an independent politically reorganized Indian nation but were targeted at the uncritical acceptance of “the nation of the west” (Tagore, 1996. 425)/“cruel epidemic of evil” (ibid., 424) which was “sweeping over the human world” (ibid.); as the goal of India’s struggle for freedom/swaraj. This essay will take issue with scholars who argue that Tagore’s arguments against the western nation did not distance him from Gandhi because both shared insights into the illegitimacy of the nation-state. It will suggest, to the contrary, that what these thinkers had rejected was the modular western nation-state which they saw as a product of enlightenment modernity, and that this was not a rejection of the nation per se. Gandhi and Tagore came together in their “love of country” (Bhattacharya, 2008: 70), expressed in/by a resolve of building a praja or great eastern nesan in continuity with the premodern communities of India’s past. One which was modelled closely along the lines of harmony in diversity and in the spirit of Tagore’s swadeshi samaj/indigenous Indian society. Keywords Gandhi · Tagore · Nation of the west · Nesan · Great Eastern Nation · Friendship/maitri · Machine · Cooperation · Herder · Fichte · Enlightenment · Kant · Rationalism · Universalism · Anthropocentricism · Swadeshi samaj

B. Puri (B) Centre for Philosophy, School of Social Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. Miri and B. Puri, Gandhi for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3792-9_4

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Perhaps there is no greater testimonial to the persistent Eurocentrism of academic discourse in Indian universities than that presented by debates in the Indian academy about the critique of the modular form of the western nation among the leaders of India’s freedom struggle. The most important debate that comes to mind here is that between Gandhi and Tagore on the end and means to the freedom of India. It is interesting that Gandhi, and more so Tagore, have persistently been read as “defying the universal sociology of nationalism” (Nandy, 1994: 84). Tagore has most often been interpreted (by many contemporary scholars) as imagining and endorsing a post-nationalist Indian state after decolonization; The view that Tagore was ‘anti-national’ is not uncommon today; it is the consequence of dependence on a handful of writings -chiefly Nationalism, a reductionist reading of Tagore’s writings-and a lack of awareness of the different stages of the evolution of his thoughts on nationalism. (Bhattacharya, 2020: 36)

In a very important argument, Nandy (for instance) has suggested that by the 1920s Indian nationalists developed an “ambivalence” about “the nation-state system” (Nandy, 1994: 90) and made a distinction between the sacred responsibility of taking an anti-imperialist stand and accepting “the western idea of nationalism as being the inevitable universal of our times” (ibid., x). Having pointed out that some Indian leaders had argued against the specific form taken by the western nation-state in modernity Nandy has suggested that the dissenters could be divided into two groups. On this account, the first group consisted of those who expected nationalism to wither away and be replaced by a “new, enlightened, secular universalism” (ibid.) which would “emerge as the cultural basis for a future One world” (ibid.); and the second group, of those, who could “only be called dissenters among dissenters” (ibid). Describing Tagore as part of this second group of dissenters Nandy has explained the position of that group in the following passage; They regarded nationalism as a by product of the Western nation-state system and of the forces of homogenization let loose by the western world view. To them, a homogenized universalism, itself a product of the uprootedness and deculturation brought about by British colonialism in India, could not provide an alternative to nationalism. Their alternative was a distinct civilizational concept of universalism embedded in the tolerance encoded in various traditional ways of life in a highly diverse, plural society. (ibid., x–xi)

Interestingly Nandy argues that though Tagore had rejected the western nationstate, or (in terms of this argument) any nation-state at all, as a possibility for India; this did not serve to divide him from Gandhi. This, as he explains, was because Tagore and Gandhi were both at best “imperfect or bad nationalists” (Nandy, 2013: 16). They distinguished “nationalism from anti-imperialism and patriotism; for them it was an imposition” (Nandy, 1994: 89) and they hinted in their writing and life at “an alternative to Nationalism” (ibid.) and to the “political culture of nation-states in both the West and the East” (ibid., 89–90). Close enough to Nandy’s description of Tagore as a dissenter (from the idea of the nation) Partha Chatterjee too speaks of Tagore’s “non-nation” (Chatterjee, 2011: 94); Quayum of Tagore’s “indictment of Nationalism” (Quayum, 2020: 67). Collins of “…Tagore the anti-nationalist, anti-non-cooperator” (Collins, 2014: 70)

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and “Tagore’s particular brand of Universalism” (ibid., 88) one inspired by a “vast unspeakable Oneness…” (ibid., 89). The difficulty with these descriptions is that they assume that the rejection of the western modern “nation-state system” (Nandy, 1994: 90) which had entered India “riding piggyback on the western ideology of nationalism” (ibid., ix) implied the complete rejection of the “political culture of nation-states in both the West and the East” (ibid., 89–90) and instituted some form of universalism in its stead. As Nandy puts it—if those who rejected the political culture of nation-states accepted some form of enlightenment-inspired internationalism—they would be described as dissenters to the nation concept. However, those thinkers who had proposed an alternative to the nation-state in the form of a distinct civilizational universalism specific to India could “be called dissenters among dissenters” (ibid., x). Nandy’s description of the alternative possibilities to which Indian leaders who had rejected the nation of the west could be aligned might seem problematic. Simply because it appears to—somewhat uncritically—accept the idea that the modern western nation-state became the blueprint and the only possible form/ module [as Anderson explained in Imagined Community (1983)] of the nation-state. It appears that this was the only, and indeed the inevitable form, of the nation which would be transplanted/emulated in fairly identical ways all over the modern world and in the countries of the erstwhile colonized. On this view, the western nationstate could either be accepted or rejected and there was no possibility that Tagore or Gandhi (among others) might have been able to imagine a third possibility, i.e. of an alternative Indian/eastern Nation or perhaps nesan as Tagore put it in his essay “Nesan ki”/What is Nation (preferring to keep the English word but replacing the “a” with an “e” following the pronunciation of the word in spoken Bengali). The problem with all such arguments (for instance the aforementioned arguments made by Nandy, Collins, Quayum, and Chatterjee) seems to be that they rest on the centrality of the west to the dissenting self in as much as they take “the west as a crucial vector within the Indian self” (Nandy, 1994: 89). No wonder then that scholars interpreting debates (about the form of a post-independence Indian nation-state) between leaders of the anti-colonial struggle; rest all their arguments around a fundamental equivalence between the idea of the nation and the piggy-back “module” (Anderson, 1983) of the modern nation-state made available from the western experience and western world. This equivalence has persisted in Indian academia and lingered on in the discussions about debates between nationalists like Gandhi and Tagore so that any thinker who has critiqued/rejected the western nation-state is taken to have necessarily and summarily rejected the idea of the political unification of the country, i.e. the nation per se in favour of a “de-territorialized world” (Collins, 2014: 90). A world that is imagined either around an enlightened secular universalism or at best a “distinct civilizational concept of universalism” (Nandy, 1994: x–xi). However, one could well wonder if those who had cautioned against an imitation of the nation of the west and sought to redefine the nation; might have been proposing an alternative concept of nesan. More specifically one could ask if Tagore’s complete rejection of the “Western Nation” (Tagore, 1996: 426) necessarily implies that he had rejected any possible (alternative) nesan state in India; one different, for instance, from the homogenous, one-language-one-culture, modular form made available from

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the western experience which had led (in its turn) to the world wars? Collins has answered this last question and [somewhat oblivious to Tagore’s arguments about the alternative “great eastern nation” (ibid., 438)], has emphatically argued that “for Tagore the nation is distinctively modern and exclusively Western” (Collins, 2014: 72) thereby making the equivalence between the “western nation-state” and “nation” absolutely clear and unambiguous. Nandy, one might recall, had also answered this question unambiguously (and in the affirmative) stating that Tagore’s love for the country as the mother janmabhumi/land of one’s birth “who can at any moment turn less benevolent” (Nandy, 1994: 86) was not without fear and that he had rejected any possible alternative nesan state; …while Tagore wrote with great sensitivity and felicity about the nation as suffering mother, he also took a position against nationalism (ibid., 89)

As Nandy argues for Tagore the “omnipotence of the mother is recognized but feared; it is not romanticized or defensively glorified” (ibid., 86). Striking a different note Sabyasatchi Bhattacharya has argued that while Tagore spoke with reservation about the European model of the nation-state and pointed out the “antinomies of nationalism…it would be a mistake to think that their resolution in his mind was simply in terms of a ‘anti-nationalism’.” (Bhattacharya, 2020: 46). This essay will suggest that Tagore attempted to resolve the antinomies which he had identified in the nation of the west by proposing a great Eastern Nesan which retained the local and the particular at its foundation; growing out in circles of cooperation, from the home, to the world. Indeed Tagore’s alternative eastern nation-state was conceived as going outwards in oceanic circles from the village, which was at it’s centre; rather than as a giant structure imposed from the top crushing the village with it’s weight. Reaffirming this contrary note (one supported by Tagore’s numerous songs of love of the country) it may be recalled that Tagore had recommended to the Japanese that they accept the responsibility of creating “a great eastern nation” (Tagore, 1996: 438) instead of adopting/emulating the Western one which was based on the premises of enlightenment philosophy and was a product of European history. This alternative “great Eastern nation” (ibid. 438) imagined in continuity with “India’s earlier experiences with large indigenous state systems” (Nandy, 1994:ix) had perhaps inspired the critiques of the western nation-state and parliamentary democracy made by nationalists like Sri Aurobindo,1 C. R. Das, Gandhi, and Tagore. It is surely significant to note in this context that the modular western nation-state, which came “into historical being” (Anderson, 1983: 4) in Europe and the Americas towards the end of the eighteenth century; has itself, been somewhat reinvented, in the last century in the West as it has indeed been reinvented across the rest of the world. After the experience of “the early stages of nation-building and state-formation in the Southern world” (Nandy, 1994: 90), the world has indeed been led to “a redefinition of the concept and functions of the state” (ibid.) as multicultural, plural, and inclusive. Commentators who live in this century then might not only be in a position to affirm that “Europe did not say the last word on the subject” (ibid.) but also to claim that the alternative decentralized great eastern nesan visualized by Tagore and Gandhi was—and is—a possible way to imagine an alternative nesan state. While one might

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certainly need a more detailed account of that alternative eastern nesan, it certainly seems a little strange (on the face of it) to describe Indian thinkers (like Tagore and Gandhi) who recommended a plural, diverse, eastern nation, and demanded “to be treated as human and as equal” (Berlin, 1999: 256) as bad nationalists. Consider the difficulty of describing Gandhi as an imperfect/bad nationalist given that he had argued (from fairly early on) that the Indian praja/nation had existed from ancient times. Recall that he had written in 1909 that; The English have taught us that we were not one nation before, and that it will require centuries before we become one nation. This is without foundation. We were one nation before they came to India. One thought inspired us. Our mode of life was the same. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 268)

It was in much the same spirit that Gandhi had written to Tagore in 1921; In order to be fit to save others, we must try to save ourselves. Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive. It is health giving, religious and therefore humanitarian. India must learn to live before she can aspire to die for humanity. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 24: 416)

It might also seem difficult to describe Gandhi as a bad nationalist if one considers that he had struggled to set up an alternative non-violent Indian state across the duration of his life. One indeed which he thought would “enable the masses to appreciate what swaraj …will mean to them” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 51: 327). One might recall with profit, in this connection, Gandhi’s efforts to institute a state which would guarantee an elaborate set of equal—social, economic, and political rights— for Indians.2 Of course, it might also seem equally absurd to describe Tagore as a bad nationalist given that he was deeply concerned with (what Berlin later described as) the desire for “recognition” (Berlin, 1999: 252) and spoke persistently of “love of country” (Bhattacharya, 2008: 70), of “Mother India” (Tagore, 2012a: 458)and indeed declared that—“I love India, I cultivate the idolatry of geography” (ibid., 458). It might then also seem difficult to suggest that Tagore was fearful of the mother/ country who could “at any moment turn less benevolent” (Nandy, 1994: 86) and further that he was as an exponent of the “non-nation” (Chatterjee, 2011: 94). These descriptions might seem simply misleading if one considers that Tagore had made many arguments against shallow internationalism and in favour of self-determination. Note for instance that Tagore had argued in 1931; I have recently heard a proposal to segregate the Indian population in some Christian commonwealth of South Africa. It is a plan to smother their self respect under the cover of political untouchability. India has been suffering from such segregation of her personality for a long period of foreign subjection. She is exiled in a dimness of insignificance…This is the worst calamity that can happen to any country when before the modern lidless gaze of publicity all peoples are exposed to each other’s view…I have more than once had the ocassion to notice an outburst of irritation even from some Americans at the idea of India ever dreaming of political severance of British connection. It costs them nothing to think that we Indians are innately and immutably different from themselves and that it would be annoyingly absurd for us to aspire after the same human rights for which they once fought against their own brothers. (Tagore, 2012a: 878)

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Tagore had suggested indeed that Indians could gain a different kind of nation; one distinct both in terms of the manner in which it would come to be and in terms of the kind of state it would bring “into historical being” (Anderson, 1983: 4). He had argued (often enough) that India could (and would) show a world of modular and more aggressive forms of the nation; that a people could “assert their rights, whether as individuals or as groups, as never to violate their fundamental obligation to humanity, which is to respect life…” (Dutta & Robinson, 1997: 540). It seems fair to say then that nationalism and respect for humanity were not antithetical for Tagore or rather that the nation-state of Tagore’s imagination was one that could be a collective being perfectly in harmony with other collective beings/nations. It is significant to recall that the (earlier discussed) descriptions of Tagore’s nonnationalism (in comments that came after and about him) almost always emphasized his nationalism essays which were delivered (between 1916 and 1917) in a somewhat direct response to the imperialism which had accompanied European nationalism, and which Tagore had experienced, in his travels across the world during the first world war. It is interesting that scholars describing his position on the nation have chosen to entirely ignore Tagore’s oft-repeated declaration that what he was rejecting was “the nation of the west” (Tagore, 1996: 425). As they have chosen to ignore Gandhi’s emphasis in the Hind Swaraj that he was rejecting “English rule without the Englishman” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 255), i.e. the idea/conception of the nation which underlay the British system of governance and parliamentary democracy which he saw as the product of enlightenment modernity and hence plagued by its defining predicaments. This self-imposed neglect becomes witness to/of the difficulty faced by post-colonial Indian academia to think from within— what might be best described in K. C. Bhattacharya’s words—as a “svaraj in ideas” (Bhushan and Garfield, 2011: 103). It seems clear then that it remains meaningful to ask once again if the rejection of the nation of the west or of the modular form of nationalism made available by the West (in the 1900s when Gandhi and Tagore were writing) necessarily ruled out the acceptance (by leaders of a freedom struggle) of the nation qua “gain by the country of itself” (Bhattacharya, 2008: 77) or of the responsibilities of instituting an alternative concept of nation-state to politically reorganize India? An affirmative response might indeed seem perplexing given that the leaders of India’s freedom struggle had sacrificed their well-being (and sometimes their very life) precisely to institute such an alternative nation-state in India; one which would bring political and economic rights to the poor and politically dispossessed masses. The answer then might lie elsewhere-it may lie in the acceptance that Tagore and Gandhi (among others like Chittaranjan Das for instance) had alternative imaginations of the nation to best express “the true shakti of India’s spirit” (ibid.) and an alternative conception of freedom-alternative that is to western imaginations. Recall that C. R Das in his presidential address to the Gaya session of the congress had spoken of the difference between Indian nationalism and “Nationalism in Europe” (Zaidi, 1986–1989: 55). He had explained quite clearly and in so many words that;

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That is European nationalism; that is not the nationalism of which I am speaking to you today. I contend that each nationality constitutes a particular stream of the great unity, but no nation can fulfil itself unless it becomes itself and at the same time realises its identity with Humanity. The whole problem of nationalism is therefore to find that stream and to face that destiny. (ibid., 56. The emphasis is my own addition)

This rejection of European nationalism was then perhaps not necessarily tantamount to a rejection of the “consciousness of nationality” (Berlin, 1999: 249) or of the need to politically reorganize the country (which by all accounts Tagore, Gandhi, and Das sought) but only indicated that these Indians underscored the need for the Indian mind to “respond in it’s own language” (Bhattacharya, 2008: 86) and along the lines of its own intellectual and political past to rebuilding free India. Both Tagore and Gandhi had decisively rejected the idea that the free country was to be built along the lines of “the foreigners” (ibid., 73) and on the model of the western nation “to be found in the pages of the Englishman’s history” (ibid., 76). Coming back again to Tagore’s essays on nationalism one needs to place them in the context of the year in which they appeared—1916–1917 in a world torn by war—and Tagore’s visit to destroyed Europe including war-ravaged French cities. The first part of Tagore’s essays contains the lecture that he gave in Japan in 1916 while the later part was delivered during his second visit to the USA in 1916–1917 at a time when that nation was on the verge of entry into the First World War. Describing these lectures in 1933 Tagore had himself clarified that; “At that time my lectures were on the subject of nationalism. I spoke against the prevailing nationalism of the west.” (Dutta & Robinson, 1997: 429. The emphasis is my own addition). It is surely significant that (writing in 1933), Tagore had himself described his critique as having been directed against the nationalism of the west which he saw spreading “like some prolific weed” (Tagore, 1996: 440) across the world at his time; rather than against the sentiment of nationalism itself. Tagore perhaps saw more clearly than many (alongside Gandhi and C. R. Das) that “organizations of National Egoism” (Bhattacharya, 2008: 55) which were based on the aggressive espousal of the ascendancy of “one language, one culture’, nationalism and the first world war which had emerged from an exclusive pursuit of national egoism; had in their turn, emerged from “the material civilization of the West” (ibid., 59). He seemed to have understood that this version of nationalism was a product of an enlightenment-engendered individualism (albiet one built around a collective self) and more importantly of an anthropocentric view of the cosmos. This insight led him to argue that it was natural enough that the western nation, as a product of the world view ushered in by the enlightenment, was conceived as an expression of the collective egoism of a people and as an exclusive organization of politics and commerce. Significantly and coming close to Sri Aurobindo (and in somewhat sharp departure from a Darwinian account) Tagore had taken issue with the world view ushered in by the enlightenment in his lectures on The Religion of man where he spoke of “the evolution process of the world” (Tagore, 2012a: 93) and suggested that with the appearance of man the course of “the progress of Life’s evolution” (ibid., 94) had changed. Tagore had explained in this set of lectures (delivered at Oxford) that

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the appearance of man had changed the course of evolution from the multiplication of the external to the development of man’s inner life; to adopt “a novel method of experiment, …” (ibid., 97) introducing “…the element of Mind…” (ibid.). He argued that of all the civilizations of humanity it were the eastern civilizations alone which had understood and incorporated the significance of this “change of direction in … evolution” (ibid., 99). This insight led him to recommend the world view of the East (and of Indian civilization) as more in keeping with that change and indeed with the change in perspective wrought by the turn away from the multiplication of the physical plane towards the “element of Mind” (ibid., 97). Such a realization was well reflected in the ends of life recognized in Indian civilization (and more generally in Eastern civilizations) which were conceived in line with this turn towards the inner. Such insights led Tagore to argue at many places that it was from the East that the West would draw inspiration. Note that reflecting on the Great War perhaps, he wrote (on February 2, 1921), in the same spirit that; The night deepens; The house is empty; it’s loneliness Aches with silence. Come, woman, bring thy lamp of vigil! Enter the secret chamber of sorrow Make the dark house quiver with The agony of thy prayer. Till the day dawns in the East. The Fight has ended Shrill cries of loss trouble the air, The gains, soiled and shattered, are a Burden too heavy to carry home. (Tagore, 2012a: 279)

On Tagore’s view, India/East would carry the light “to win freedom for all humanity” (ibid., 284). Significantly this freedom would be somewhat wider than and different from the notion of freedom/liberty around which the early forms of the nation-states had been conceived in the West. Both Tagore and Gandhi had explained that the freedom which would ground Indian independence would not be understood exclusively as the liberty of the enlightenment or conceived solely in terms of political rights. Individual and collective freedom was alternatively conceived (by both thinkers) primarily as individual swaraj/self-rule (described as self-restraint) and only thereafter as political freedom/home rule. One might realize the significance of this difference from the western liberal tradition if one would only consider that freedom as self-restraint could well harmonize the individual’s freedom with the freedom of the ‘other’. As Tagore had explained the principles of the freedom of India would be “not merely self-determination but self-conquest and self-dedication” (Dutta & Robinson, 1997: 400) It was in such a spirit that Tagore had spoken of human beings as “music makers” (Tagore, 2012a: 135) capable of bringing differences between people into harmony like notes in a piece of music; and had spoken of the human being’s ability to exercise his/her

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freedom without bringing that freedom into disharmony with the equally important freedom of the other. Significantly for Tagore this ‘other’ did not refer merely to all other Indians, but also to all other peoples of the world and to the natural world. This might seem natural enough given that freedom in Tagore was concerned with interdependence rather than independence. Significantly, this freedom of the individual (swaraj in Gandhi) was conceived to be such that it secured not only political rights for the individual but also his/her freedom from the crushing weight of an exclusive preoccupation with the desires that emerged from the economic and political aspects of human life. Tagore was clear that such an individual freedom from the crushing weight of an exclusive preoccupation with desires for material goods would be compromised by the setting up of an Indian nation along the lines of the modular forms made available by the West. This chapter will be in three sections. Section 4.1 “Tagore’s not so narrow causeway: coming close to Herder” will argue that Tagore’s critique of the nation of the west can be best understood by aligning him with the critic of the enlightenment, Johann Gottfried Herder; in that Tagore seemed to have emphasized a sense of belonging to the home, an appreciation of the uniqueness of small communities and the idea that art and creative activity express the unique identity of a people/group. These were probably versions of (what Berlin later described as) Herder’s populism, pluralism and expressionism. Like Herder, Tagore was a critic of the rationalism and universalism of the enlightenment; summarily rejecting “colourless cosmopolitanism” as the goal of human history. He was firmly against any notion of a universal history of man progressing towards a cosmopolitan intent; brought out, for instance, in Fichte’s argument about the divine mission of German nationalism. Section 4.2 entitled “Kant’s moral philosophy and the modern nation-state” will follow Sect. 4.1 (and indeed Berlin’s lead) in tracing nationalism in the west to the enlightenment and (for instance through arguments like those made by Fichte) to some of Kant’s fundamental moral insights. It will argue that Tagore departs significantly from a nationalism thought along the lines of the individualism of the enlightenment and autonomy over nature. Section 4.3 titled “Gandhi and Tagore: of love of the country and the Indian nesan” will argue that Gandhi’s constructive programme and alternative constitution for India (published as “Draft Constitution of Congress” in 1948) drew inspiration from Tagore; and that these thinkers came together not because they shared insights into the illegitimacy of nationalism but rather because they shared a love of country alongside (and in harmony with) a commitment to the human qua human obligation to earn rights while respecting the right to life of the human and nonhuman ‘other’. The section will argue that they parted company not because Tagore had rejected the nation-state but rather because Tagore the lover of art and life had made space for an aesthetic appreciation of ananda/delight within the realm of finitude which Gandhi the tapasvi was ill-equipped to understand. The concluding section “Metaphysics and politics; The Ishopanishad” will reiterate the same point arguing that the differences between Tagore’s aesthetic appreciation of ananda/delight and Gandhi’s rejection of the finite became clear, interestingly enough, in their contrary readings of the very first stanza of the Ishopanishad.

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4.1 Tagore’s not so Narrow Causeway: Coming Close to Herder One might recall that Isaiah Berlin had famously described Tagore’s position on nationalism by describing him as standing “fast on the narrow causeway” (Berlin, 1999: 265) between cosmopolitanism and an aggressive nationalism based on a “romantic over-attachment to the past” (ibid.). One might better understand Tagore’s “complex truth” (ibid., 266) and his conception of an alternative “great eastern nation” (Tagore, 1996: 438) which he believed it possible to imagine; if one would only place him among critics who had rejected both the philosophical presuppositions and world view of the enlightenment. This section, and Sect. 4.2 which immediately follows this, will suggest that Tagore had insightfully connected the homogenizing modular form taken by the western nation-state to the central epistemological and ontological presuppositions of the enlightenment, and it was this connection that led him to reject both those presuppositions and the western nation-state as the product of such presuppositions. However as already noted this in itself need not be taken to imply that Tagore was thereby opposed to the idea of the nation itself as a form of political reorganization to constitute and safeguard the autonomy and sovereignty of a particular people abiding in a geographical space to which they were tied through their “ethical ideals” (ibid., 440) and their own “legacy of ancient culture” (ibid., 437) tradition and history. One might indeed make conceptual space for Tagore’s alternative nesan located in a “narrow causeway” (Berlin, 1999: 265); if one would only note his philosophical proximity to arguments made in a tradition (and a conception of nation located in that tradition) opposed to the rationalism and universalism of the enlightenment. The object of this discussion is to show that there is some philosophical ground for thinking that Tagore’s critique of the nation of the west was not a rejection of the value of belonging to a group or nation in favour of a cosmopolitanism derived in a direct philosophical lineage from the enlightenment and from its foremost exponent Kant. Rather the section will suggest that Tagore was opposed to the nation of the west precisely because it’s specific modular form derived from some of the fundamental philosophical presuppositions of the enlightenment. It will suggest that Tagore was opposed to the modular western nation with its paradoxical espousal of a homogenous collective self (which imposed top-heavy chains of organization destroying organic communities) alongside an espousal of “shallow internationalism” (Berlin, 1999: 264) inspired by Kant. This last point becomes important in the present context because reading Tagore’s critique of the “nation of the west” (Tagore, 1996: 425) as an expression of his insights into the connection between the philosophy of enlightenment modernity and the specific form of political reorganization that this philosophy gave rise to in the countries of the west and might explain why Tagore’s critique of the modern nation-state failed to divide him from Gandhi. One might recall in this connection that Gandhi’s critique of modernity and industrial civilization (it’s inevitable co-relate) was one of the most important themes in Hind Swaraj.

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In this context the following sub-sections 1.1 and 1.2 will attempt to both bring out, Tagore’s alternative concept of the nation and, it’s conceptual distance from the philosophy of the enlightenment; by examining the philosophical presuppositions of the enlightenment in the arguments of one of it’s most fierce critics (and father of nationalism) Johann Gottfried Herder. Though Herder had studied philosophy with Immanuel Kant in at Königsberg, Kant’s friend, and colleague, Johann Georg Hamann was a more important influence on his counter-enlightenment philosophy. Herder had insights into aspects of modernity that fragmented human communities, and he placed a contrary emphasis on language and cultural differences. One might recall that Berlin had summarized Herder’s opposition to the rationalism and universalism of the enlightenment by describing three aspects of Herder’s philosophy opposed to the enlightenment at a fundamental conceptual level, i.e. populism, pluralism, and expressionism. Accordingly, the following Sect. 4.1.1 “Tagore and Herder on populism pluralism and expressionism: a critique of the universalism of the enlightenment” will (as mentioned earlier) make the point that while Tagore shared Herder’s beliefs in the unique value of belonging to organic communities that grew from below he rejected a modular and centralized western nation which imposed uniformity from the top. Like Herder Tagore believed in the equality and incommensurability of plural values, and emphasized the point that art and culture uniquely express the personality of every group/peoples. This and the next sub-section will also bring out their shared critique of an over-emphasis on reason (against self-expression) in enlightenment modernity and their belief that an enlightenment-driven imposition of universality destroys the unique spirit and culture of individual communities. Section 4.1.2 entitled “Tagore and Herder: Enlightenment modernity and the nation of the west” will further examine similarities in their positions in an attempt to throw light on Tagore’s insights into the connections between the philosophical presuppositions of the enlightenment and the modern western nation-state. Taken together the arguments made across the two Sects. (4.1.1 and 4.1.2) will emphasize that Tagore rejected the western nation because it was conceptually founded on beliefs about the centrality of the human world in the universe, rejection of the non-human world as a source of objective values, imposition of mechanical chains of organization on erstwhile organic communities and on the related conception of the human being’s constitution as being exclusively/primarily rational. Section 4.2 which will follow will be entitled on “Kant and the modern nationstate”. It will support Tagore’s insights into the connection between the modular western nation and these premises by drawing from Isaiah Berlin’s (1999: 232–248) position that (though this might seem paradoxical) the fundamental premises of the moral philosophy of (the liberal internationalist philosopher) Kant can be seen as having inspired the specific form of the modular western nation-state as a new form of absolutism in modernity.

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4.1.1 Tagore and Herder on Populism Pluralism and Expressionism: A Critique of the Universalism of the Enlightenment This section (as noted) will be devoted to aligning Tagore’s position to that of the father of the related notions of nationalism and the Volk 3 Johann Gottfried Herder who countered the fundamental premises of the enlightenment. By aligning Tagore to Herder’s critique of the universalism of the enlightenment, rejection of the idea of a universal history of mankind and contrary espousal of a nation built around the personality of a unique people; the section will suggest that Tagore’s rejection of the nation of the west cannot be taken as a rejection of the value of belonging to a group and thereby as the rejection of every kind of nation. It will argue that though Tagore rejected both the nation of the West and the paradoxical recommendation of “shallow internationalism” (Berlin, 1999: 264) addressed by the western nations “to the weak” (ibid.); he came close to Herder in espousing an alternative concept of nation. One indeed which could not be aligned to the modular form inspired by enlightenment modernity. Though it is not my purpose here to directly address a comparison of their positions, the section will align Tagore with Herder, as having been opposed to the enlightenment at a fundamental philosophical level. Tagore’s arguments against the nation of the west become significant to the argument of this chapter (which suggests that Tagore and Gandhi had both recommended an alternative Indian nation) for two reasons. First because they serve to describe, by a process of elimination, the alternative nation-state which he (coming close to Gandhi) recommended to Japan (to which he had addressed his lecture “Nationalism in Japan”) and to the leadership of the freedom movement in India. The second reason (and the one that is important to this section) is that the arguments Tagore had made against the western nation-state seemed to have brought out his insights into the connection between the philosophy of enlightenment modernity and the nation-state of the west. Further the arguments serve to reinforce the point that Tagore’s critique of the “nation of the west” was directed against the specific modular form that, that the nation had assumed, in modernity; one which he traced to fundamental premises of the enlightenment, it’s rationalism and universalism and its somewhat distorted concept of the self/citizen as “an exaggerated giraffe” (Tagore, 1996: 431) with the “mental and material… far outgrowing… moral strength” (ibid.). Tagore was critical of the enlightenment’s conception of truth, of moral life and of the human self’s relation with the natural world. These premises (Tagore believed and argued) provided the conceptual foundation of the western nation as a product of European history and the enlightenment. His critique was also directed against the enlightenment’s fundamental epistemological position that since reality was ordered by universal objective laws which rational investigation could discover by the application of the scientific method; there could not be any subjective or divine element in arriving at the knowledge of the self, nature, truth, or beauty. It might of course seem to be a contradiction in terms to speak of enlightenment universalism and western nationalism or of the modern western nation-state in the

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same breath. For surely, no two concepts could be more opposed to each other than nationalism and the enlightenment. One might note that the enlightenment had celebrated universalism and had great faith in cosmopolitanism and the possibility of progress of humanity to a “world republic” (Kant, 2006: 81). One might recall Kant on the world republic and the possibilities of perpetual peace; As concerns the relations among states, according to the law of reason there can be no other way for them to emerge from the lawless condition, which contains only war, than for them to relinquish, just as do individual human beings, their wild lawless freedom, to accustom themselves to public binding laws, and to thereby form a state of peoples (civitus gentium), which continually expanding, would ultimately comprise all of the peoples of the world. (ibid.)

One might also recall with profit here the enlightenment’s “belief in the dry light of reason and science, which transcends local and national boundaries, something the conclusions of which any sensible man can verify for himself, without benefit of a particular language or soil or blood in his veins”. (Berlin, 1999: 233) However on reflection this connection (between the enlightenment and the nation of the west which is well exemplified in the work of Fichte) might not seem so strange. For it might emerge that the specific modular form of the western nation (with it’s destruction of organic communities that formed a part of the nation- state) which went on to become the inevitable for all peoples of the world; has much to do with central premises of the moral philosophy of the father of the enlightenment, Immanuel Kant. Kant had famously argued that the human being was the source of objective value, that it was his/her rational nature which provided that source and that the non-human universe could not be the ground of objective value. These premises of Kant’s moral philosophy not only concerned the anthropocentricism of the enlightenment but also lent themselves (in Fichte) to a conception of the homogenous collective self and to an over-emphasis on reason in the constitution of human nature. However, this will be taken up in Sect. 4.2 of this chapter. For now it might suffice to note in support of this argument (and in passing) that while seeking to explain the sociological roots of Western nationalism as a unifying category Benedict Anderson, in his Imagined Community (1983) had forcefully argued that the nationalism which had emerged in Europe and Americas seemed to have provided a modular form that was imitated and easily transplanted elsewhere in the world. Significantly one might have insights into the connection between this forms of nationalism with the sweeping universalism of the enlightenment if one would recall that in mathematics modular forms refer to those equations which can easily be applied to identical circumstances. One might move on to note that in somewhat sharp contrast to the notion of applying modular forms across different contexts in identical ways and indeed to the rationalism and universalism of Kant and to the spirit of the enlightenment; it’s celebrated critic Herder was “the father of cultural (and eventually every kind of) nationalism in Europe” (Berlin, 1999: 233) and of the Volksgeist. It is important here to recall that Herder was a part of a group which led the romantic revolt against rationalism and faith in the supremacy of the scientific method; Herder had emphasized the unique nature of each individual activity, of any particular historical period, language, and indeed every nation. Herder had a fierce “hatred of cosmopolitanism,

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universalism, anything which flattened out the differences between one community and another in favour of universal principles” (ibid.). It is significant that though he championed the individuality of cultures—for example, in This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity (1774), Herder also (like Tagore) championed the individuality of persons within a culture. Striking a fairly contrary note to contemporary scholarship on Tagore it is surely significant to note that (strange as this may sound) Tagore came fairly close to Herder in terms of sharing the latter’s belief in what Berlin has described as populism, pluralism, and expressionism (Berlin, 1998: 367–368) and in discouraging the imposition of homogeneity on communities. This might then give support to the argument that it is plausible that Tagore could also have been close to Herder’s critique of cosmopolitanism and support for a nationalism that celebrated the unique culture of the collective; one which was not reducible to exclusively political terms. Berlin indeed had described Herder’s opposition to the enlightenment in terms of a belief in populism, i.e. “the belief in the value of belonging to a group or a culture” (ibid., 367) which he thought was not reducible to political terms; of pluralism, i.e. “the belief not merely in the multiplicity, but in the incommensurability, of the values of different cultures and societies, and, in addition, in the incompatibility of equally valid ideals, …” (ibid.); and of expressionism, i.e. “the idea that human activity in general and art in particular express, the entire personality of the individual or the group and are intelligible only to the degree to which they do so” (ibid.). These are well-evidenced, one might recall, in Tagore’s arguments emphasizing historicism and suggesting that India should not imitate/emulate the nation-state of the west but follow instead it’s own history and distinctive genius in imagining it’s own unique form of political togetherness; in Tagore’s belief in the plurality and incommensurability of values espoused by different peoples living at the same or different ages/times; and in his idea of the surplus in human nature as the source of self-expression in art, culture, and music. Tagore had also clearly rejected both a homogenous modular western nation (which destroyed organic local communities) and a Kantian cosmopolitanism and argument for a world republic; Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatory of nationworship is the goal of human history. (Tagore, 1996: 419)

Returning to the fundamental premises of Herder’s philosophy which remained fairly contrary to the central premises of the enlightenment one might recall that, Tagore like Herder, had celebrated the value of belonging to a group. Herder saw society as an organism like a living whole and consequently believed that ideals and institutions that are progressive—good in the context in which they emerged—can go awry-if/once they are transplanted into a different body. One might note in this connection Tagore’s emphasis on society, significantly on swadeshi samaj/indigenous Indian society, and his emphasis on the local. Tagore spoke in this connection on the strength that individuals derived from belonging to the home/the community. Speaking on Japanese civilization and the possibility of creating an alternative nation in Japan he likened the ties in the Japanese “state…” (Tagore, 1996: 445) and Japan’s “national unity” (ibid.) to relationships in the family and the ties of friendship;

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It is a civilization of human relationship. Your duty towards your state has naturally assumed the character of filial duty, your nation becoming one family with your emperor at its head. Your national unity has not been evolved from the comradeship of arms for defensive and offensive purpose, or from partnership in raiding adventures… but it is an extension of the family and the obligations of the heart in a wide field of space and time. The ideal of ‘maitri’ is at the bottom of your culture,-‘maitri’ with men and ‘maitri’ with Nature. (ibid.)

Tagore (like Herder) had often emphasized the role of the spoken regional language (making many contributions himself to the Bengali language and Bengali music), and of ties to one’s own immediate natural environment. He often celebrated the relationship that members of his local community shared with “the shady avenue of shal trees resonant with the laughter and songs of simple joy” (Dutta and Robinson, 1997: 245) in their neighbourhood. One might recall that the central message of Tagore’s The home and the world was precisely that one needed to live in the home, i.e. the familiar local community and moving outward (in overlapping circles from there) the province and then the country of one’s birth; and yet be in harmony with—though not under the tutelage of—the world. Tagore also spoke of the uniqueness of a country and of it’s geographical being in a manner close to Herder. One might note as evident from the reference to the “shal trees” (ibid.) earlier that Tagore also seemed to have shared Herder’s emphasis on the importance of “climate” (Herder, 2004: 6) in the life of a group. Herder one might recall had underscored the importance of physical and geographical factors in defining the character and variety of civilizations. Coming close to this in his short stories, novels, and poetry; Tagore emphasized that the individual shared an intimacy and warm comforting relationship with his/her immediate natural surroundings. To move on to note the specific manner in which Herder’s arguments had found space in Tagore’s insights one might recall that Herder had argued that every activity, situation, historical period, and civilization had its own unique nature; and that any effort to understand and evaluate these in terms of rational/universal rules would destroy those differences which made up the unique being of each peoples; Egypt was without pastures or shepherd’s life: the patriarchal spirit of the first hut was therefore lost. Yet, formed* out of the mud of the Nile and fertilized by it, there was, almost as readily, the most superb agriculture. (ibid., 12)

And; Orient, you ground of God chosen just for this! The delicate sensitivity of these regions, with the quick, soaring imagination that so readily clothes everything in divine splendor; reverence for everything that is might, esteem, wisdom, strength, God’s foot- step, and right along with this, a childlike submission that is combined—naturally for [the Orientals], incomprehensibly for us Europeans— (ibid., 9)

Herder, one ought to remember, had cautioned the Europeans against the drive to universalism; A thousand times more foolish [still] for you magnanimously to bestow …your philosophical deism, your aesthetic virtue and honor, your universal love of all peoples full of tolerant subjugation, blood-sucking, and enlightenment according to the high taste of your time! (ibid., 11)

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One might read Herder and Tagore in continuity (on this point) if one recalls Tagore’s own rejection of a shallow universalism inspired by the enlightenment and contrary emphasis on the unique individuality of a people expressed in his novels, short stories, essays and even in letters to friends. In his advice to the Japanese, he warned against “the imitative stage of …schooling” (Tagore, 1996: 438) and affirmed the value of the uniqueness of different peoples. Drawing from such a uniqueness Tagore had emphasized the need for a group to constitute a nation after it’s own distinct “genius and…need” (ibid., 439) and distinct creative personality; For generations you have felt and thought and worked, have enjoyed and worshipped in your own special manner; and this cannot be cast off like old clothes. It is in your blood, in the marrow of your bones, in the texture of your flesh, in the tissue of your brains; and it must modify everything you lay your hands upon, without your knowing, even against your wishes. Once you did solve the problems of man to your own satisfaction, you had your philosophy of life and evolved your own art of living. All this you must apply to the present situation and out of it will arise a new creation and not a mere repetition, a creation which the soul of your people will own for itself and proudly offer to the world as its tribute to the welfare of man. (ibid. The emphasis is my addition)

One might also read Tagore somewhat in continuity with (what Berlin has described as) pluralism in Herder when he underscores the incommensurability of values born of different experiences; Man’s history is being shaped according to the difficulties it encounters. These have offered us problems and claimed their solutions from us…These difficulties have been different in different people of the Earth and in the manner of our overcoming them lies our distinction. (Tagore, 1996, 419. The emphasis is my addition)

Appreciating the value of belonging to a culture and of the pluralism in values held by different peoples Tagore wrote of Japan; Japan has imported her food from the West but not her vital nature. Japan cannot altogether loose and merge herself in the scientific paraphenelia she has acquired from the West and be turned into a mere borrowed machine. She has her own soul which must assert itself over all her requirements. (Tagore, 1996: 438)

Again affirming the idea that each people expresses the personality of the group in its unique way Tagore affirmed that; Europe has her past. Europe’s strength therefore lies in her history. We, in India, must make up our minds that we cannot borrow other people’s history, and that if we stifle our own, we are committing suicide…our ideals have been evolved through our own history… (Tagore, 1996: 456–457)

Tagore also seemed to have shared Herder’s rejection of an over-emphasis on reason at the expense of creative self-expression. One might say (following Berlin) that Tagore shared Herder’s expressionism when he emphasized individual creativity and self-expression and argued that human beings are essentially artists and music makers in so far as they abide in a surplus which constitutes that which they possess in excess of what is needed for physical survival. It is this “surplus” in the human being which pushes beyond what is necessary for self-preservation and “upon this fund

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of surplus science and philosophy survive… Man has a fund of emotional energy which is not all occupied with his self-preservation. This surplus seeks its outlet in the creation of Art, for man’s civilization is built upon his surplus.” (ibid., 351–352). Again close to Herder and opposed to the enlightenment Tagore shared a belief in another aspect of the same expressionism when he endorsed (in his discussion with Einstein for instance) “claims that all works of men are above all voices speaking, are not objects detached from their makers, are part of a living process of communication between persons, and not independently existing entities, beautiful or ugly, interesting or boring, upon which external observers may direct the cool and dispassionate gaze with which scientists …look on objects of nature.” (Berlin, 1998: 367). As Tagore wrote in 1917 the “age of the Intellect, of science” (Tagore, 1996: 430) taught that the “intellect is impersonal” (ibid.) but this was misleading for reality could not be learnt through “law” (ibid., 431) alone; Reality is the harmony which gives to the component parts of a thing the equilibrium of the whole. You break it, and have in your hands the nomadic items fighting against one another, therefore unmeaning. (ibid.)

Some parts of this opposition to the fundamental philosophical premises of the enlightenment are well brought out in Tagore’s dialogue with Einstein. This conversation brings out quite clearly that Tagore cannot be aligned to a position close to the universalism of the enlightenment (which has been attributed to him by scholars like Nussbaum (2002a) and Quayum (2020) among many others) for he was opposed to the fundamental premises of the enlightenment which Einstein can be seen to have posed to him in the form of questions; Einstein: Do you believe in the Divine as isolated from the world? Tagore: Not isolated. The infinite personality of Man comprehends the Universe. There cannot be anything that cannot be subsumed by the human personality, and this proves that the truth of the universe is human truth. I have taken a scientific fact to illustrate this-Matter is composed of protons and electrons, with gaps between them; but matter may seem to be solid. Similarly humanity is composed of individuals but, yet they have their interconnection of human relationship, which gives living solidarity to man’s world. The entire universe is linked up with us in a similar manner, it is a human universe. I have pursued this thought through art, literature and the religious consciousness of man. Einstein: There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe (1) The world as a unity dependent on humanity. (2)The world as a reality independent of the human factor. Tagore: When our universe is in harmony with Man, the eternal we know it as truth, we feel it as beauty. Einstein: This is a purely human conception of the universe. Tagore: There can be no other conception. This world is a human world-the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man. There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it truth, the standard of the Eternal Man whose experiences are through our experiences. (Tagore, 2012a: 911)

Tagore went on (in this conversation) to deny a fundamental premise of the enlightenment when he denied Einstein’s statement that “Truth, then, or beauty” (ibid.) can be “independent of man” (ibid.). As Tagore explained to Einstein;

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Tagore emphasized that truth was not “independent of” (ibid.,) human consciousness saying “what we call truth lies in the rational harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to the super-personal Man” (ibid.) Such an opposition to the fundamental epistemological premises of the enlightenment and emphasis on the personality of a people and on harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality; might bring out the reasons why Tagore could not accept the modular form taken by the nation of the West. This might seem obvious given that this form was based on a preoccupation with the rationalism of the enlightenment and involved the imposition of uniformity which was the inevitable consequence of the universalism of the philosophy of the enlightenment. Consider that the specific form of political togetherness imagined at a particular moment in time in the west might not have been suitable for very different peoples given their unique personalities and circumstances. Yet modular forms were generated to be simply imitated and constitutions like that of India took from other constitutions available at the time as if the somewhat homogenous form dictated therein was indeed the only one that might have worked.4 For one, this very idea of modular forms was in itself a product of the universalism and rationalism of the enlightenment; and for another the same universalism and rationalism went on to dictate the manner in which the unique variegated individual who was a member of the hitherto loosely formed indigenous collective was transformed into the primarily economic and political being, i.e. citizen of the modular nation-state.

4.1.2 Tagore and Herder: Enlightenment Modernity and the Nation of the West As seen in Sect. 4.1.1, Tagore like Herder was insightfully poised against the fundamental premises of the enlightenment; expressing perhaps a philosophy inspired by the upanishadic idea of the interrelationship between the unique self/soul of an individual being and the immanent universal Reality/Brahman within that very same subject. The discussion on Tagore’s proximity to some part of Herder’s counterenlightenment philosophy might lead the reader to agree with the present argument to the extent of acknowledging that Tagore was a critic of some of the fundamental premises of the enlightenment. That he took issues with an over-emphasis on reason at the expense of self-expression in art and that he rejected conceptions of truth and beauty as “independent of man” (ibid., 911). Yet it might still be possible to ask what this has to do with the rejection of the western nation-state?

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A philosophical examination of some of the arguments which Tagore had made against that nation-state might reveal that Tagore had insights into the connections— between the philosophy of the enlightenment and the modern nation-state—and that he rejected the western nation because it was constructed around fundamental premises of enlightenment modernity concerning rationalism, universalism, the nature of self, and of truth and beauty; to which he was opposed. One might recall several telling passages from Tagore’s nationalism essays where he made connections between the aggressive individualism of European nations and their unbridled desire for economic and political gain; with an enlightenment-driven world view where individual progress was understood in purely man-centred and material terms. One might note here how much a collective’s understanding of the nature of the self and of that self’s progress could dictate it’s specific imagination of political togetherness. Tagore’s insights into arguments like this last will become clearer if one would note the philosophical parallels between Herder’s arguments against the enlightenment and the arguments made by Tagore against the nation-state. Accordingly (and in continuity with the arguments made in Sect. 4.1.1), this section will discuss some of Tagore’s arguments against the western nation-state with a view to bringing out their conceptual proximity to some of Herder’s arguments against the enlightenment. One of these has already been discussed in passing (in the earlier section) in that Tagore seemed to have argued that the western nation was a particular form of political organization which was a product of European history. As noted in the previous section, he had argued (in the context of Japan and again of India) that for a colonized people to imitate a form of political organization which was a product of another group’s unique history and circumstance (let alone one which had proved disastrous for it’s own people and the world) involved a destruction of the subordinate group’s own organic communities and their culture, history, and language. Note in this context the following passage from Tagore; I, for myself, cannot believe that Japan has become what she is by imitating the west. We cannot imitate life, we cannot simulate strength for long, nay, what is more, a mere imitation is a sign of weakness. For it hampers our true nature, it is always in our way. It is like dressing our skeleton with another man’s skin, giving rise to eternal feuds between the skin and the bones at every moment. (Tagore, 1996: 437)

Another of Tagore’s arguments against the nation-state of the west reiterates his espousal of an historicism which rejects the enlightenment’s homogenizing universalism; which last he clearly links, with the modular nation of the west. This becomes apparent from Tagore’s argument in the nationalism essays that every people have their own civilizations which are products of their own unique experiences, and therefore, modular forms of nation cannot be applied in identical ways to the experiences of very different peoples; All particular civilization is the interpretation of particular human experience. Europe seems to have felt emphatically the conflict of things in the universe, which can only be brought under control by conquest (ibid., 444)

Tagore argued that it was the European experience which had dictated the form taken by the nation of the west, which had in turn led to the world wars. He had

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suggested that nation-states ought to be created in line with the experiences and the history of unique collectives and emphasized that these different experiences shape the personality of the group concerned; Japan …felt, in her world, the touch of some presence, which has evoked in her soul a feeling of reverent adoration. (ibid.)

This makes it clear that Tagore could not have suggested any form of universalism even as an alternative “distinct civilizational concept of universalism” (Nandy, 1994: x–xi). Rather (and as argued in Sect. 4.1.1) as already noted, Tagore seemed to have been (paradoxically enough) close to the critic of the enlightenment and “father of the related notions of nationalism, historicism, and the Volkgeist” (Berlin, 1998: 359) Johann Gottfried Herder. Herder too had emphasized that human beings have to pay attention to the particulars that make a people and time unique and suggested that each nation has its own centre of gravity and means of happiness within itself; …do you not see that things are entirely different with the spirit of that other time, with that land and that level of the human species. (Herder, 2004: 10) …and what, in the sequence of world events, could then only be developed in that country, that place! (ibid., 15)

Tagore seemed to have made yet another argument against the nation of the west when he pointed out that the western nation was conceived as an abstraction. In this connection, Tagore explained that this danger from abstraction in the western nation unfolded in two interrelated ways. For one the western modular nation was in itself instituted as an abstract being which imposed itself as first in the hierarchy of demands incumbent on individuals; of course always in the name of political and economic power or interest in such power. For another it substituted “‘love in the abstract’ as a normative orientation… that elevates love of an ideal over love of an individual” (Hartnett, 2022, 6). By posing love in the abstract and elevating it over love of/in the individual the western nation-state became (as Tagore said) one of the most powerful anaesthetics in the world effectively dulling human individual moral sensibility. Recall here that describing the “nation of the west” (Tagore, 1996: 425) as “a mere unreal abstraction” (ibid., 434) Tagore cautioned the people of the east that; …the idea of the nation is one of the most powerful anesthetics that man has invented. Under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion; … (ibid.)

This Tagorean insight seems to reaffirm Herder’s critique of the abstraction embedded in the philosophy of the enlightenment; Now let everyone make the calculation. Light, infinitely elevated and dispersed, while the inclination and drive to live is diminished incomparably! The ideas of a universal love of mankind, peoples, and enemies elevated and the warm feeling of affection for one’s father, mother, brother, children, and friends infinitely diminished!’ (Herder, 2004: 52)

Or,

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Every general image, every general concept is nothing but an abstraction-the creator alone is the one who conceives the full unity of any one and of all nations, in all their great diversity, without thereby losing sight of their unity. (ibid., 26)

Tagore’s next argument and oft-quoted critique of the modern nation-state as being machine-like and mechanical could also be seen as somewhat interrelated with the earlier-mentioned arguments. He had argued that the nation not only relied on largescale machinery, and heavy industries for economic and commercial well-being but also relied upon a mechanical organization of people for the purpose of power; We can only make a small village directly our own and assume the full burden of all its responsibilities. But as we widen the perimeter, we feel the need for machinery. We can never visualize the country on the same scale as the village. Which is why one cannot serve the country in an unmediated way; one must seek the help of a machine. We have never possessed this machinery, because of which we must now import it from abroad. The machine will not run unless we set up the full range of instruments and procedures that go with it. (“Svadesi samaj” (1904–5), RR, vol. 12, p. 693 tr. and quoted in Partha Chatterjee, 2011: 104.)

Tagore had argued that this mechanical generation of power in the western nation was premised on a thin conception of the person as the predominantly rational citizen in the philosophy of the enlightenment. This became necessary as “man in his fullness is not powerful but perfect…to turn him into mere power, you have to curtail his soul as much as possible”. (Tagore, 1996: 431). Tagore seems to have come close to other critics (of the enlightenment) who saw the enlightenment’s reliance on a purely procedural (rather than substantive) conception of reason as best characterized as mechanical. Perhaps it was the enlightenment’s procedural conception of reason that led to the creation of institutions which in turn substituted chains of organization for the bonds of society. Herder too had spoken of the “mechanical” (Herder, 2004: 51) and the “machine”—like (ibid., 52) character of the philosophy of the enlightenment and thereby of modern institutions built in its image; Thus it is surely becoming intelligible…Philosophy! Thought! Easier Mechanics! Reasoning that burrows all the way down to the foundations of society, which once simply stood and gave support (ibid., 51) The machine, meanwhile, has lost the desire to live, to act, to lead a noble and charitable, joyful human life; is it alive anymore? ...Is this the beautiful condition toward which we have been formed through everything, which is spreading further and further in Europe which is spinning out to all the continents, seeking to regiment everything so that it may become what we are—human? Citizens of one fatherland? Individual beings who are to be something in the world? It is possible! At any rate, going by numbers and needs, purpose and point, it is all sure to be political calculation: everyone in the uniform proper to his place—machines! (ibid., 52–53)

Yet another difficulty that Tagore saw with the modern western nation-state was perhaps powerfully tied to his travels during the First World War. Tagore (as already noted) had argued that the spirit of conquest and conflict rather than cooperation was at the basis of western nationalism. He had argued that “the Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation, …” (Tagore, 1996: 429).

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Here again one would note the parallels with counter-enlightenment philosophy if one were to visit the arguments made by Herder the powerful critic of the enlightenment where he writes at his sardonic best to Europeans; Balance [of power] in Europe, you great invention unknown to any previous age! [Behold] how these great state-bodies, within which mankind is no doubt best cared for, are now rubbing against one another without destroying each other, and cannot ever destroy each other! How we have such sorry examples before us of the poor statecraft of Goths, Huns, Vandals, Greeks, Persians, and Romans—in short, of all times! And how they proceed on the high road, these water-tons brimming with insects, swallowing every- thing up in order to create uniformity, peace, and security... How blessed we are! For the safeguard- ing of obedience, peace, security, of all the cardinal virtues and blessings: mercenaries, allies, balance [of power] in Europe! There is and must always be—so blessed are we—eternal tranquility, peace, security, and obedience in Europe. (Herder, 2004: 60-61)

The next section will attempt to draw philosophical support for the argument that Tagore’s critique of the nation-state of the West was a reflection of his insights into the connections between that state and the fundamental premises of enlightenment modernity. In this connection, it will draw philosophical support from Isaiah Berlin’s argument that “from Kant’s impeccably enlightened rationalism” (Berlin, 1999: 243) strange as it may sound, it “takes but two steps” (ibid.) to arrive at the idea of the nation-state as it has been conceived in the west.

4.2 Kant’s Moral Philosophy and the Modern Nation-State This section will argue that no matter how strange this might appear there are possibilities that one can make connections between the fundamental premises of the philosophy of the enlightenment and the particular form that the modern nationstate took during the process of it’s institutionalization across the European and Anglo-American world at the end of the eighteenth century. These premises were at their most visible in the moral philosophy of the father of the enlightenment, Immanuel Kant; and from there, through his somewhat unfaithful disciple Fichte, they came to manifest in the fundamental institution of enlightenment modernity, i.e. the nation-state. One might note here that like Herder, Johann Gottlieb Fichte had studied Kant’s philosophy and in fact he became his foremost though unfaithful disciple. Fichte one might recall was the founding figure of a philosophical movement which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Kant and was known as German idealism. However, Fichte unlike Herder had experienced the Prussian defeat at Jena in 1806 and witnessed the revolution overthrowing the German statelets and the

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overpowering presence of French civilization. This influenced Fichte’s conception of the nation-state and he put an emphasis on national identity and patriotism as stronger forces than political ideology and religion. However, it is also important to remember that Fichte like Kant put emphasis on the human being’s rational nature, on the political and inner freedom of individuals and argued that society had to allow and indeed assure free course to the human being’s rational nature. It followed that Fichte’s understanding of both society and nationality was non-historical. In his 1813 work Staatslehrer, he affirmed his cosmopolitanism and predicted a supranational and suprametaphysical goal of all history and politics to be attained through Christianity. His guiding principle was a universal rational philosophy moving towards such a goal. On this view, the earthly destiny of a nation was not important and only that nation counted which could lead humanity towards such a realization. As it turned out, Fichte argued that this nation was the German nation. In the tradition of the enlightenment, Fichte proposed a homogenous German identity and nationalism as a German collective will that would first bring about the fulfilment of the cosmopolitan existence of humanity. Fichte’s nation as might now seem apparent was quite different from the nation proposed by Herder discussed in the immediately preceding sections. Indeed as seen in the previous section Herder’s nation had little to do with the particular form taken by the nation of the west in modernity and was absolutely opposed to the identitarianism of modern nations which owes more to Fichte than to Herder. Indeed Herder had espoused communities that grew from below and he thought that the cultural togetherness was as much, if not more, important than the state, often saying that “Nature creates nations, not states”. One might also recall in support of his opposition to the homogenizing identitarianism of the enlightenment that Herder’s German nation was a decentralized nation divided into some 300 principalities. On the face of it, Fichte’s conception of nation and the identitarianism of German nationalism (and its divine mission) to which both Tagore and Herder would be equally opposed; seems very remote from Kant’s belief that all human beings share reason and that this is what makes it possible for them to arrive at answers to fundamental questions in morality and science. It may seem even further away from Kant’s belief that political arrangements, peace, justice, human rights and liberty and democracy and could only rest upon this fundamental faith in universal reason. Yet as seen in the work of Fichte it perhaps “takes but two steps to reach the romantic position from Kant’s impeccably enlightened rationalism”. (Berlin, 1999: 243) Perhaps ideas have “unintended and improbable consequences” (ibid., 234) in so far as they act in “ways wholly unforseen by their begetters” (ibid.). There is much to Berlin’s belief that Kant indeed might never have forseen that his moral philosophy could have influenced the organization of enlightened moderns into modular nation-states. Yet is it not, even more improbable, that the fundamental premises of Kant’s moral philosophy would have had absolutely no influence on the first (in the hierarchy of institutions) institution of enlightenment modernity, i.e. the modern nation-state? An affirmation of such an improbability might draw support from the two steps specified by Berlin and indeed from a reading of Fichte’s arguments about the German nation. One might recall that in a lesser-known paper on

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“Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism” (ibid., 232–248) Berlin has explained that Kant’s fundamental insight was that men are endowed with reason and that (for Kant) this enables them to answer questions about morality and theoretical science so that these answers are valid for all rational creatures in the same circumstances. Hence it is, that it followed for Kant, that universalizability is the test of all subjective principles of morality which human persons frame for themselves. Berlin suggests that if one considers Kant’s emphasis on human persons “framing subjective principles of morality for themselves” and consequent belief that it is this act that constitutes their autonomy; “one can see how …some …existentialist position could begin to develop” (ibid., 243). In that, it is an easy step from this fundamental Kantian insight to go forward and affirm that when an individual lives and acts by certain values it is not because they are “made or discovered by the reason that is present in all fully developed men and therefore guaranteed by it, and universally valid for all rational creatures” (ibid., 242); but rather because they are that unique individual’s own choice of acts or values and thereby express his/her inner nature. No: I do indeed live by such values, not because they are universal, but because they are my own, express my particular inner nature, the particular vision of the universe that belongs to me; …I choose them freely myself, they are my values because I am ‘I’, and have, when I am at my best, freely chosen them. (ibid., 242–243)

Fichte “Kant’s unfaithful disciple…, the true father of romanticism” (ibid., 243) therefore moved from Kantian premises to conclude that, “I do not accept anything because I must but I believe it because I will”. The second step Berlin would have us note is the new conception of “the chooser-of the choosing self” (ibid.) itself. In Kant, this chooser is “still the individual even though he attributes to the moral will a transcendent status outside space and time” (ibid.). However in the work of Fichte the individual choosing self gets transformed and becomes “a timeless, transcendent activity that is often identified with a world spirit” (ibid.). As Berlin put it “it was not long before Fichte, writing in the early years of the nineteenth century, declared that the true self is not the individual at all: it is the group, the nation.” (ibid., 244). Fichte’s notion of the collective choosing self, imposed a homogeneity on the group, that went against both Herder and Tagore’s conception of the organic community constituted from below. One might understand how Kant’s writing made for such a paradoxical movement from cosmopolitan universalism to an ardent aggressive— one language, one culture, German nation-state in Fichte—if one were only to note that it was not Kant’s political writing but his moral philosophy and ethical works that provided the seeds/impetus for such transformation. No one of course can dispute the tremendous influence of Kant’s unconditional moral imperatives on the modern age. Berlin explains how such an influence led the modern age to the modular nation arguing that; In the first place idolisation of nation or state derives, however illegitimately, from his (Kant’s) doctrine of the autonomous will, his repudiation of the objective hierarchy of interrelated values, independent of human consciousness, which had hitherto dominated Western thought in many guises-in the platonic vision of eternal real Forms, outside the world of change and

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decay; in that of Natural Law, which, after Aristotle and the Stoics, entered the Christian, and especially Thomist, conception of God and nature, and man’s relationship to both; in the metaphysical conception of nature as a rational structure; in the objective naturalism of Locke and the Utilitarians and their successors in liberal and social movements. (ibid., 245)

One might now consider that more than his doctrine of “the autonomous will” (ibid) it was Kant’s rejection of the idea that “values were objective realities embedded in the nature of reality” (ibid.) and that there was a rerum natura, a cosmos, a single coherent structure independent of human reason and will, that gave reasons for doing one thing rather than another; which “cut off the world of nature from the world of goals, principles, values.” (ibid.). Through Fichte and the romantics this idea influenced European consciousness to transform the voice of the rational Kantian self-formulating the categorical imperative, i.e. the human being’s autonomous law unto his/her self into “something wider and more impersonal” (ibid., 246) paradoxically far enough from enlightened cosmopolitanism “…to create a more terrifying form of Hobbe’s “mortal God”, a new absolutism… Hence, the deification of the stream of history in which I am but a drop and outside which I have no significance; …in short, the expansion of the notion of the self into some quasi-metaphysical super-personality that engages all my loyalty, all my desire to merge my individual self into a great collective whole, to which I yearn to sacrifice myself and others, since it will, I feel, lift me to a height that my confined empirical self could never have risen to.” (ibid.) Kant’s notion of the self-legislating autonomous individual at the centre of morality and his complete dismissal of an objective realm of values embedded in a cosmos understood as a single coherent system independent of human reason and desire transformed quite easily (at the hand of his successors) into the idolization of the western homogenous nation-state first seen in Europe and the Americas. Tagore was familiar with the interconnections between enlightenment philosophy and the theoretical foundation of the western nation-state and one can note too that, Tagore’s essays on aesthetics point also, and quite clearly, to his familiarity with the ideas of Kant. In this context one can recall that in his poem “Purnima” (the FullMoon Night) in the collection called “Chitra” (Tagore, 1961: 506) Tagore seems to refer to Kant’s “Critique of Judgment”. This draws confirmation from Tagore’s reference to “panditer lekha/samalochanar tattva” (writings of a scholar, literary theory). Many scholars have indeed affirmed that Tagore was familiar with Kant’s philosophy (Kampchen, 1991; Palmer, 2001: 145–146; Sengupta, 2005: 73–75). However, what appears even more significant is that Tagore seems to have been familiar not only with Kant’s philosophy but also with the peculiar manner in which central ideas in the enlightenment came to influence the institution of the “nation of the west”. This last might become more apparent if one recalls that Tagore appears to have been sensitive to both of Berlin’s arguments/insights from his essay on Kant and western nationalism (noted above) which attempt to explain how Kant’s fundamental ethical insights provided occasion to lead to the paradoxical movement of his own ideas from cosmopolitan universalism to a modular nation-state. Some sort of insight into these arguments seemed to have led Tagore to recommend an alternative plural eastern nation where ties of friendship and circles of cooperation derived from alternative

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foundations in a world view which had not rejected a commitment to a rerum natura or cosmos as the foundation and objective source of value. This meant that though Tagore (like Herder) accepted the value of belonging to a community and sharing a language; he rejected the idea that such belonging must necessarily involve a denial of the interconnection between that group and other groups and eventually the rest of the cosmos. It is significant to note here that Tagore rejected the anthropocentricism on which the modular western nation-state is based which is derived from an acceptance of the premise that it is the choosing self (individual or collective) who is the objective source of value. Tagore’s arguments indicated that an alternative kind of nation could be constructed (in Japan and India for instance) which would reflect the values and indeed beliefs about the self and the interrelationships between the human and non-human beings (and interrelationship between all manner of being) held by Eastern civilizations. In the context of this recommendation one can note that Tagore was sensitive to the connection between the Kantian location of individual autonomy as the source of all moral value and the institution of “ceremonials of …worship” (Tagore, 1996: 440) around the sovereign nation-state. He seemed also conscious of the related idea-one which defined the enlightenment philosophy and the early modern nation-state—that there is no reality outside of the human which grounds objective values that man can learn rather than create. It was this last perhaps which had led to the transformation of nature (in enlightenment modernity) into a material resource to be controlled by human beings (and the powerful nation-state); and which destroyed the idea of the integrity of the cosmos considered as a single coherent interconnected whole. Quite clearly then Tagore, who saw nature as mediating the human being’s relationship to God, could not have been more opposed than he was to the anthropocentricism that founded the modular western nation. The interplay between the fundamental moral premises that grounded Kant’s ethical works and the creation of the nation-state in the West perhaps led Tagore to a deep sense of discomfort with the western nation-state and these insights were well-expressed in the arguments which he had made against that state. One might note for example that the first of Berlin’s points—that of the connection between Kant’s emphasis on autonomy as self-government and the transformation of that idea into the idolization of the hypostatized homogenous collective self in the western nation—was a guiding insight in Tagore’s rejection of the nation of the west. Through the vignette of the heroine Bimala in The Home and the world Tagore can be seen to express a discomfort with the enlightenment’s understanding of freedom as the autonomy/independence of the individual subject (and moving outwards in concentric circles, the nation) from the world outside the choosing self as the source of objective value. A co-relative source of discomfort for Tagore was that the enlightenment understanding of autonomy involved a denial of an objective realm of values that informed individual moral choices independent of the reason and desires of the choosing self. It is this discomfort that Tagore brings out through the account of Bimala’s story and her eventual rejection of such an understanding of freedom. One might recall that in the novel Bimala rejects Nikhil’s (Bimala’s husband) offer that she should embrace her freedom as self-determination by rejecting the marriage which

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she had not chosen. Through Bimala’s rejection of the choice of consulting only her own desires to reject her unchosen marriage for a passion for Sandip; Tagore shared his discomfort with an enlightenment-driven understanding of autonomy understood as the independence of the choosing self from any realm of values outside of her/ himself. Tagore suggested that freedom was interdependence and not independence understood as the subject’s freedom to choose-whether this choice be conceived as free—when in line with Kant’s maxim of universalizability, or when in line with the dictates of the self’s own unique individual or collective autonomous being. Bimala voiced Tagore’s difficulty: But can freedom— empty freedom be given and taken so easily as all that? It is like setting a fish free in the sky-for how can I move or live outside the atmosphere of loving care which has always sustained me? (Tagore, 2012b: 350).

The problem with understanding freedom along the lines “of a fish in the sky” (ibid., 350) as a choice, taken from (in Nagel’s words) a view from nowhere; significantly free of the self’s preordained place in the cosmos which (on its part), constituted an objective realm of values both independent of the individual/collective person and incumbent on that person; is perhaps brought out by its interconnection with the second of the two points made by Berlin. Namely that such a notion of enlightenment autonomy involves the complete denial of the objective realm of values that necessitate themselves on an individual/collective being quite independently of reason and desire. Bimala and Tagore (through Bimala) gesture towards that realm of objective values when Bimala speaks of the truth of interrelationships in the family and country; and of the value of “love and care” (ibid.) that need to restrain individual/collective freedom to choose, for freedom and the choice, to be in harmony with interdependence (between all manner of being) and thereby quintessentially human. The novel also serves to bring out Tagore’s understanding of (and difficulties with) the interconnections between such a Kantian notion of freedom as autonomy, i.e. the right or condition of self-government and the idea (drawn therefrom) that the nation-state as the super self legislates autonomously. As the legislations (of the enlightenment-driven rational self and thereafter of the nation-state) require no justification from a realm of objective values embedded in the cosmos those legislations come first in the hierarchy of claims on an individual’s moral life. In the story that Tagore relates in his novel; the idea of the nation of the west as the self-validating source of claims that outweighed all other obligations held by an individual destroys quite literally Bimala’s home. This demon in the guise of a God, had come with his ruddy torch to call me that day, saying: “I am your country. I am your Sandip. I am more to you than anything else of yours. Bande Mataram!” And with folded hands I had responded.... Whatever else is mine shall be swept away before my love for you. Bande Mataram! (ibid., 355)

Through the vignette of Bimala’s devotion to Sandip and (therefrom) the idolization of the nation of the west; Tagore makes the significant point that India’s acceptance of such a modular nation grounded in the premises of enlightenment modernity

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and seen as the super self which legislates autonomously, would be tantamount to, the theft of country and loss of home. I had robbed my house, I had robbed my country. For this sin my house had ceased to be mine, my country also was estranged from me. Had I died begging for my country, however unsuccessfully, that would have been worship, acceptable to the god’s—but theft, is never worship,... (ibid., 358).

One might consider here that in making these connections—between the enlightenment modernity and the nation of the west—Tagore came very close to Gandhi. One need only recall that Gandhi had spoken of modern civilization at many places in his writing. By modern civilization he meant “state of things” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 259) or the mode of life that had emerged in the west after and as a product of enlightenment modernity and its attendant Industrial revolution which had brought about more than a change in the mode of production. As Gandhi had argued the change wrought by enlightenment modernity was a change in the human being’s conception of the self, of nature and of his/her relationship to nature. Gandhi had argued that with the human being considered as the source of all moral value and the related rejection of any value embedded in a cosmos independent of human reality; there was a progressive loss of religion and morality and a concentration on material well-being. In a fairly powerful argument in chapter VI of Hind Swaraj entitled “Civilization” Gandhi had brought out the connections between enlightenment modernity and it’s central institution the nation-state as an organization interested solely in economic and political power. He had defined the form of life that “the people of Europe” (ibid.) lived after the enlightenment as a “state of things” (ibid.) preoccupied with material well-being and described as “civilization” (ibid.); Its true test lies in the fact that people living in it make bodily welfare the object of life. (ibid.)

Gandhi, like Tagore’s Bimala, saw that the modern nation-state became the selfvalidating source of claims that overran all other claims made on the individual and this led him to say that; This civilization takes note neither of morality nor of religion. Its votaries calmly state that their business is not to teach religion. Some even consider it to be a superstitious growth…This civilization is irreligion, and it has taken such a hold on people in Europe that those who are in it appear to be half mad. (ibid., 261)

Gandhi rejected, both, the philosophical presuppositions of enlightenment modernity and its co-relative industrial civilization, as well as, it’s central institutions; he also rejected the professions that supported these institutions. As Dalton notes in Hind Swaraj, Gandhi drew “the dichotomies between the spiritual, moral fabric of Indian society, and the violent, politically corrupt nature of European state even more dramatically than any of his predecessors” (Dalton, 1986: 283). It is surely significant that Gandhi came closest to violence in language when he argued against the Parliamentary democracy of the nation of the west and against professions which supported the institutions of that modern state in the Hind Swaraj. One might take note in this connection of the following statement from Hind Swaraj confirming the

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Reader’s description of Gandhi’s views; “I deduce that the government of England is not desirable and not worth copying by us.” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 255) Gandhi wrote in reply that; Your deduction is justified. The condition of England is pitiable. I pray to God that India may never be in that plight. That which you consider to be the Mother of Parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. (ibid.)

4.3 Gandhi and Tagore: of Love of the Country and the Indian Nesan The last two sections of this chapter have attempted to bring out the point that Tagore was a critic of the enlightenment comparable to Herder and that he had insights into the connection between it’s fundamental premises (about the self and moral life best brought out in the consideration of Kant’s moral philosophy) and the homogenizing identitarian nation of the west. Sections 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 will attempt to throw some light on Tagore’s complex truth and argue that Tagore and Gandhi came close in that both were interested in a great eastern praja (Parel 2010: xv)/nation which was both (internally and externally) inclusive and in harmony with the idea of unity of peoples; rather than in imposing a homogenous uniformity upon them. The concluding Sect. 4.3.3 entitled Metaphysics and politics; The Ishopanishad will argue that since Tagore’s alternative Eastern nesan came close to Gandhi’s imaginings of the Indian praja the differences between Gandhi and Tagore can be better located in their different interpretations of a metaphysic of non-dualism; suggesting that while Gandhi spoke of oneness and an ascetic denial of the finite Tagore spoke of harmony between the divine, individual persons and material nature; and of harmony between the finite and infinite aspects within the individual. Tagore spoke of the affirmation of the finite and the delight in individual creativity and aesthetic being. These differences between them, it will be argued, led to Tagore’s differences from Gandhi over the choice of method to arrive at the freedom of the Indian nation.

4.3.1 Tagore and the Alternative Nesan5 of the East In his introduction to the Centenary volume brought out by the Sahitya Akademi in 1961 on the occasion of Tagore’s birth centenary Nehru wrote that: “Tagore was the poet and the singer; Gandhi was the man of action, the true revolutionary,” (Tagore, 2010: xiv) who “crept into the hearts of those who were disinherited and whose life was one long tale of unhappiness”. (ibid.) Nehru described Tagore as “essentially a person of international mould and thinking”, (ibid., xv) who helped to break down the barriers of a nationalism of the sort that is apt to become a “narrowing creed”, (ibid.). Yet, as Nehru argued, at the same time Tagore “believed firmly in a people growing from their own soil and according to their own genius” (ibid.). Perhaps this

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complex truth for which Tagore stood had defined an alternative understanding of nationalism and one which ought to have had a future. One might argue then that it is with good reason that “people refer to Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) as if he has a future” (Marsh, 2013: 1). This section will raise (yet again) the questions with which this essay has been preoccupied. Questions about whether Tagore had rejected the idea (one which Gandhi had certainly accepted) that India was a nation in the specific sense of having been a nation (praja as Gandhi wrote in the Hind Swaraj) occupying a historic territory with a people sharing a history and a common set of memories. It will then ask if Tagore had rejected the idea that India should become a nation in the philosophically significant sense of having to “be collected, strengthened, liberated given opportunity to grow and develop” (Berlin, 1999: 264) by her “own natural resources”, (ibid.) in her “own languages” (ibid.) with “unborrowed memories” (ibid.), i.e. organize herself politically. One might consider how difficult it would be for a people to develop according to their own genius without a political reorganization for without the protection of the nation-state, the rights of a people’s would become a luxury for the few. The section will raise these questions with a view to see if Gandhi and Tagore were indeed divided by Tagore’s rejection of the idea of the free Indian state; or indeed by Gandhi’s aspiration that India should be a free nation albiet one that served to redefine the western concept of the nation along the lines of its own genius and history. Perhaps this last would have been effected by extending the imagination of the community/nation to think of a togetherness which would be secure in it’s very internal inclusiveness; and consequently lend itself with greater ease to extend the internal inclusiveness in a fellowship with other peoples, indeed with other beings and significantly with material nature. The reason for locating quite where Tagore stands “on the narrow causeway” (ibid., 265) between a “romantic over attachment to the past” (ibid) and “cosmopolitanism… the danger of ‘leaving everything to the unalterable will of the Master’…” (ibid.) become especially relevant in the present context of understanding the relationship between Tagore and Gandhi. One might recall here that Berlin had argued that Tagore saw internationalism as a noble ideal, which could only be achieved when every nation was strong enough to bear the required tension, hence a people “who are scattered, weak, humiliated, oppressed must first be collected, strengthened, liberated, given opportunity to grow and develop at least to some degree by their own natural resources, on their own soil, in their own languages, with unborrowed memories, and not wholly in perpetual debt, cultural or economic, to some outside benefactor” (ibid., 264). Perhaps it is statements like this last which might have prompted Patrick Gardiner to make the comment that Berlin would have seen Tagore’s nationalism as “indicative of the line he wishes to draw between the beneficent and the destructively chauvinist guises” (Gardiner, 1999: xx) in which nationalisms might appear. One might add here that Tagore’s narrow causeway was just as much an alternative to shallow internationalism as it was to the modular western nation built along the lines of an enlightenment-driven deification of an Absolute collective will and a disconnect from material nature.

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It is important to make this point here partly because (as seen in this chapter) there are (and were) powerful suggestions (while he was alive and after he died) that Tagore rejected the idea that India should become a nation per se which would indeed have created an inalienable divide between him and Gandhi. It may be recalled that in her arguments against critics on the nature of patriotism and cosmopolitanism Nussbaum wonders “how far the politics of nationalism really is from the politics of difference” (Nussbaum, 2002a, 5). Nussbaum enlists Tagore to the side of a cosmopolitanism derived in a somewhat direct philosophical lineage from Kant and the stoics by arguing that “…The Home and the World is a tragic story of the defeat of a reasonable… cosmopolitanism by the forces of nationalism and ethnocentrism” (ibid.). To my mind Nussbaum’s argument that Tagore accepted the antithetical nature of nationalism and a cosmopolitanism understood as a recognition “that each human being is human and counts as the moral equal of every other” (Nussbaum, 2002b: 133) is philosophically misleading. It was indeed such a reading of Tagore that led Nussbaum to suggest that Tagore accepted the contrariness of the possibility of an individual having an allegiance to both nationalism and “the claim of common humanity” (ibid., 139) at the same time. It is this last perhaps which prompts Nussbaum to argue that; I believe that Tagore sees deeply when he observes that, at bottom, nationalism and ethnocentric particularism are not alien to one another, but akin-that to give support to nationalist sentiments subverts, even the values that hold a nation together…Once someone has said, I am an Indian first, a citizen of the world second, once he or she has made that morally questionable move of self-definition by a morally irrelevant characteristic, then what, indeed, will stop that person saying that… I am a Hindu first, and an Indian second… (Nussbaum, 2002a: 5)

Perhaps following this line of thinking Quayum writes of Tagore that; “The national boundary was an… arbitrary ‘circle’ for him that circumscribed his wish to be one with the rest of mankind” (Quayum, 2020: 79) The idea that Tagore was interested in that which was universally applicable and in world citizenship before he was interested in Indian citizenship might be further reinforced by arguments such as those made by Chatterjee. These suggest that Tagore’s critique of Gandhi drew from an opposition to the idea of the nation-state as the end/goal of the freedom struggle; Despite his massive contribution to the construction of the modern national culture of his country, Rabindranath was a consistent critic of nationalism. (Chatterjee, 2011: 94)

This might be an excellent place to digress a little and look at the idea, one indeed that Chatterjee (strange as this may sound in the context of the present essay which takes note of Chatterjee’s argument that Tagore rejected the idea of a nation), has taken issue with. (Chatterjee, 2014)6 This is the argument that the nation was first imagined in the west (Anderson, 1983) and then transplanted all over the world across a variety of climates and peoples with great success in fairly identical ways. That idea becomes important because as seen here (notwithstanding critique) the idea continues to insidiously dominate contemporary discussions on the “nation”. One might then recall Anderson’s very influential and celebrated set of arguments made in 1983 that “nationality, …nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are cultural artefacts of a particular kind” (Anderson, 1983: 4). The nation is in fact “an imagined

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political community and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”. (ibid., 6). Anderson had explained that by the end of the eighteenth century these artefacts came to be imagined in Europe and the America’s on occasion of the “spontaneous distillation of a complex ‘crossing’ of discrete historical forces; but that”, (ibid., 4) and (this is very important) “once created, they became ‘modular’, capable of being transplanted, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, to a great variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological constellations”. (ibid., 4) In terms of this argument once nations had been imagined in the western hemisphere they were imitated/transplanted all over the world and over the formerly colonized world with ease and accuracy. The reason that I choose to bring up Benedict Anderson’s (1983) influential thesis rather than readings from Renan (whom Tagore had read), Gellner or Anthony D. Smith, is because, it seems to me that Tagore, had anticipated some of Anderson’s key insights. One might recall that years before Anderson (1983)—in his essays in 1917 in fact—Tagore had argued that the idea of nation in “the sense of the political and economic union of a people” (Tagore, 1996: 421) had originated in the west. He had also like Anderson recognized that once this module had come into being it had spread all over the world to other countries. Recognizing this Tagore had in fact cautioned the world to stop an uncritical imitation of the specific western understanding/module and of that particular act of imagination which was a product of the history of the west. He had appealed to the peoples of countries outside the Western world to employ alternative and more authentic imaginations to imagine their togetherness along the lines of their own history and set of circumstances. It is surely significant to note, in this connection, that Tagore had clarified that his arguments against the nation (made at the time) were against the “the Nation of the West” (Tagore, 1996: 421). He had also clearly argued that the difference between earlier invasions of India and that of the British was that this last invasion had brought the modular western nation to overwhelm India (as it had other eastern nations) and overrun it’s indigenous premodern forms of life and political organizations. As he said in the context of Japan; The west in the voice of her thundering canon had said at the door of Japan, let there be a Nation-and there was a nation. (Tagore, 1996: 433)

Like Anderson, who had traced the origins of nationalism in the west to technology, the printing press and print capitalism in the West; Tagore too used the metaphor of the machine, and that of “purely mechanical organization” (ibid., 421) in connection with (as noted earlier), and as he termed it, the “nation of the west”. Tagore contrasted the western nation’s reliance on technology and a mass culture with the natural bonds of premodern forms of togetherness. It seems fairly apparent that Tagore was clear that he was arguing against this particular form of nation as it had originated in the west and not against any alternative kind of imagined community or country whose political union could and would have been imagined differently. In his essays on Nationalism in Japan he spoke of alternative imaginings in/of the great eastern nation;

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Japan has imported her food from the West, but not her vital nature…The whole world waits to see what this great Eastern nation is going to do with the opportunities and responsibilities she has accepted from the hands of the modern time. If it be a mere reproduction of the West, then the great expectation she has raised will be unfulfilled. (Tagore, 1996: 438. The emphasis is my addition)

Commentators who argue that Tagore had indeed rejected the nation in favour of a fellowship of nations “to forge an international community” (Quayum, 2020: 80) neglect to see that Tagore did not reject what he had called the “great Eastern nation” (Tagore, 1996: 438) but only cautioned that it should not be “imitative” (ibid., 438) of the “political civilization which has sprung up from the soil of Europe and is overunning the whole world, like some prolific weed” (ibid., 440). Rather he had advised the Japanese for instance to build a nation along the lines of that country’s native “genius” (ibid., 439); Therefore you cannot with a light heart accept the modern civilization with all its tendencies, methods and structures, and dream that they are inevitable. You must apply your Eastern mind, your spiritual strength, your love of simplicity, your recognition of social obligation, in order to cut out a new path for this great unwieldly car of progress, shrieking out its loud discords as it runs (ibid.)

Perhaps it is important to note that though he saw the contrast between the eastern nations and the western nation-state Tagore nonetheless seemed to have realized that the swadeshi samaj/Indian society needed to be organized politically though with the caveat that such a reorganization could yet be attempted differently from the western world; We must install the machinery. And regardless of which country its operating procedures come from, we must accept them as well, for otherwise all will be in vain. Yet, fully accepting that requirement, we must also say that India cannot run by machinery alone: unless we can directly experience the individual feelings of our hearts, our true selves will not be drawn to such a thing. You may call this good or bad; you may curse it or praise it; but that is the truth. (‘Svadeshi Samaj’ (1904–5), RR, vol. 12, p. 693. Tr. and quoted in Chatterjee, 2011: 105. The emphasis is my addition.)

Though Tagore did not write a blueprint on the alternative eastern nation in Japan or in India, there are powerful suggestions regarding the form such an alternative nation would take; in his essay on Swadeshi Samaj, in his novels Gora and Home and the world and in his songs of love for the motherland. The next section will attempt to bring out these suggestions and argue that these brought Tagore close to Gandhi.

4.3.2 Tagore and Gandhi: A Decentralized Nesan/Praja One might now need to ask if there are any pointers in Tagore that can help to better understand the character of the swadeshi nesan that personifies Tagore’s “complex truth” (Berlin, 1999: 266). To begin with one might better understand why Tagore

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had differentiated the goal of the Indian freedom movement from the setting up of a modular western nation in India if one would recall that Tagore had written on and commented upon, Ernest Renan’s essay on the nation which had first appeared in 1882. Renan had spoken of the early appearance of nations in Europe saying that “Since the end of the Roman Empire or, better yet, since the breakup of Charlemagne’s Empire, western Europe has seemed to us to be divided into nations, …” (Renan, 1990: 8). Renan had explained that the specific concept of nation as it had appeared in Europe at the time was new and had never existed outside of Europe in earlier times; …nations are something rather new in history. Antiquity did not know them: Egypt, China, and ancient Chaldea were in no sense nations. They were herds led by a child of the Sun or of the Sky. They were no Egyptian citizens, no more than there were Chinese ones. Classical antiquity had its republics and its municipal kingdoms, its confederations of local republics, its empires; it hardly had a nation in the sense that we understand it. (ibid., 9)

Renan had also significantly explained that race, religion, or language had no part in the making of the new nations; A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things which, in truth are but one, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One lies is the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form. Man, Gentlemen, does not improvise. The nation, like the individual, is the outcome of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice, and devotion. Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate, for the ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (by which, I understand genuine glory), this is the social capital upon one bases a national idea. To have common glories in the past and to have a common will in the present; to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more—these are the essential conditions for being a people. (ibid.,19)

Significantly (having read Renan) Tagore agreed with Renan’s fundamental insight that to constitute a nation a people did not need to share a common race, language, or religion rather; The memory of a glorious past and an ideal future consistent with that memory—those are the important things… The feeling of having collectively shared the burden of suffering and sacrifices in the past and of being prepared to do so once again in the future produces among the people a sentiment of unity and closeness—that is the nation. Although its past forms the background, its perceptible mark can be seen in its present. This is nothing other than a general consent, a clearly articulated desire of all to collectively live the same life. (Tagore translated & quoted in Chatterjee, 2011: 95)

Tagore one might note had emphasized the need for (and indeed inevitability of) a nesan state in India and spoke of the full image of freedom as the gain of one’s own nation or svades being made available to all; For this reason, I believe that if we have to inspire the country in the true quest for Swaraj, we must make the full image of Swaraj directly visible to all. This image may not be very extensive at this time, but we must insist that it be comprehensive and true. …I consider it essential that we do not restrict the duty of the svades merely to the spinning of thread, but spread it across the country in many small and localized efforts. The well being of all is a

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combination of many things… If the inhabitants of even one village can, by their efforts of self-making, make the entire village their own, then the work of finding the svades can begin there. (“Svarajsadhan” (1925–6), RR, vol. 13, pp. 341–2 as quoted in Chatterjee, 2011: 115)

Tagore argued at many places for an alternative nesan in India explaining that the basis of unity in the Indian nation would be different from that in European/western nations. One might recall here that he had written a number of stories, plays, novels and essays to put across the idea that it was society which was at the heart of the welfare of the Indians. Something which could be well understood by looking at the self-reliant Indian villages.7 Reading his numerous works reveals that while Tagore was opposed to a modern, capitalist, expansionist, western nation-state; he wanted to organize an alternative eastern nation in India around the geographical unit/the mother in which people came together (in turn) around certain social characteristics and customs; and a shared past. This emphasis on social as well as political unity (in contrast to exclusively political unity) could provide insights into some of the characteristics of Tagore’s swadeshi nesan (the “e” in the last translating more than just the spelling of “nation”). Tagore had argued that while the state was the foundation of unity in European civilization, in India it was the society that had provided support to the continuing interdependence between its many diverse peoples. It was not that Tagore disregarded the political unity provided by the western module of the nation-state; but rather that he suggested that social unity and freedom were more significant to understanding the alternative form of nesan that could be viable for a multi-ethnic, multi-religious India in line with her own history and premodern republics. Tagore’s emphasis on society can well provide the students of contemporary Indian philosophy with a few pointers which can throw some light on his alternative conception of the Indian nesan. The first being that the nationalist vision of the political reorganization of free India need not necessarily have been conceived as one which would replace the bonds of society. Instead the free Indian nesan ought to have been conceived as an institution which would work alongside social bonds and strengthen the same while moving outwards in concentric circles; so that the outermost circumference might never crush the living bonds in the village which was conceived to be at the centre. In practical terms this could only be realized by instituting a decentralized Indian nesan state somewhat in line with ancient India’s premodern republics. One in which the local or “the immediacy of the face-to-face community” (Chatterjee, 2011: 118) would retain its primacy so that the nesan would be built going outwards from the smallest units. In both his novels, Home and the world and Gora Tagore makes this key point about retaining an emphasis on the local in rebuilding an alternative Indian nation. Gora was Tagore’s first political novel written in 1910 and was partly a history of a key moment of anti-colonial nation and world making.8 In Gora Tagore brings out some arguments which can be important in this context. The first, as has already been mentioned, was an emphasis on the local; and another point was made by conjuring possible futures for India to bring out the alternative, and powerful, ethico-political potential of the unity of interrelationship and friendship/maitri in society as both

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nation and world making (as correlative in Tagore’s alternative understanding of the nesan). The third point which Tagore makes in this novel is that in adopting an aggressive somewhat homogenizing nationalism imported from the west both (the hero in his novel) Gora, and indeed India, would adopt a future nation which would affirm the nation of the west even in the act of resisting it. One might recall that in Gora the central character Gora experiments with a possible future for India as an orthodox homogenous Hindu nation (grounded for instance in caste observances) to combat a hierarchical and racialized imperial order. Paradoxically enough Tagore shows that it is when Gora learns the secret of his birth and realizes that he is not an Indian, a Brahmin or even a Hindu; that he finds/discovers his identity as an Indian. The novel makes the point that Gora’s identity and that of the great eastern nesan in India lie in building a state that respects diversity by building institutions without breaking (through decentralization of powers perhaps) the social domain of friendship which provides the foundation of the heterogeneous Indian society. This translates into Tagore’s first practical recommendation for the rebuilding of free India, i.e. as noted above that the nation-state grow close to the local so as to keep space for the bonds of friendship (social rather than purely civic) in the swadeshi samaj. Quite appropriately this realization is centred (in the novel) around Gora’s progressive recognition of the easiness with which his mother Anandmayi relates with friendship to her Christian maid, Lacchmia, as to the different ‘others’ that she encounters outside her own Indian society. A co-relative to the recreation (the contrast from construction is that the term “creation” retains the sense of a foray of the self-expression of a people) of the nation around social interrelationships and the local was the primacy of cooperation between people and the necessity of “direct personal bonds of ascribed kinship with every member of the community, sympathy, and concrete and planned activities for solving local problems” (Chatterjee, 2011: 118). Note how close this comes to Gandhi’s vision laid out in his last will and testament; Every panchayat of five adult men or women being villagers or village-minded shall form a unit. Two such contiguous panchayats shall form a working party under a leader elected from among themselves. When there are one hundred such panchayats, the fifty first grade leaders shall elect from among themselves a second-grade leader and so on, the first-grade leaders meanwhile working under the second-grade leader. Parallel groups of two hundred panchayats shall continue to be formed till they cover the whole of India, each succeeding group of panchayats electing a second-grade leader after the manner of the first. All secondgrade leaders shall serve jointly for the whole of India and severally for their respective areas. The second-grade leaders may elect, whenever they deem necessary, from among themselves a chief who will, during pleasure, regulate and command all the groups. (As the final formation of provinces or districts is still in a state of flux, no attempt has been made to divide this group of servants into provincial or district councils and jurisdiction over the whole of India has been vested in the group or groups that may have been formed at any given time. It should be noted that this body of servants derive their authority or power from service ungrudgingly and wisely done to their master, the whole of India.) (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 98: 334)

One might recall here that striking a similar note Tagore had founded a centre for rural reconstruction in West Bengal as also a cooperative Bank and this set the

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note for the sort of nesan he wanted India to build after freedom-one continuously being built on the foundation of society. The words ‘to build’ become significant as they gesture towards another aspect of Tagore’s alternative eastern nesan in India that it was to be built anew as a product of an open-ended process. Rather than a top-heavy, somewhat static institution, with giant chains of organization. Tagore emphasized that “in no country of the world is the building up of swaraj completed” (Bhattacharya, 2008: 82) and argued that “the country must be the creation” (ibid., 74) and indeed the “expression” (ibid.) of the people’s “forces of heart mind and will” (ibid.) as of their “service” (ibid., 71) and activities. The significance of this might become apparent if one would consider that in Tagore’s alternative vision the constitution of the great eastern nesan would, for instance, necessarily remain a little flexible and open to amendment and rethinking as laying the foundation of a process of the making of a great nesan rather than inflexible and fixed for all times. A decentralization state, chains of cooperation (not organization) and friendship between people in the task of national recreation from the local to the national then become the practical suggestions that provide the foundation for both Tagore and Gandhi’s alternative to the nation of the west. It is also important to note that Tagore’s recommendation of the nesan state built around the notion of friendship (rather than solely around the ties of citizenship) and Gandhi’s emphasis on the local has a corollary in that it makes for a nesan where there is no felt conflict between love of country and of humanity. As Tagore explains the primacy of the social brings in a disinterested love and the idea of harmony in difference to the task of national reconstruction; The ideals that strive to take form in social institutions have two objects. One is to regulate our passions and appetites for harmonious development of man, and the other is to help him in cultivating a disinterested love for his fellow-creatures. Therefore society is an expression of moral and spiritual aspirations of man which belong to his higher nature. (Tagore, 1996: 461)

This point is well brought out in the vignette of Anadmayi in Tagore’s novel Gora as she relates to the Christian maid Lacchmia in her Brahmin household as easily as she related herself to the orphan child, of a deceased Irish couple, whom she had adopted during the mutiny. It is this central insight which has perhaps been missed by contemporary commentators on Tagore when they are led to emphasize his internationalism at the expense of love of country. The point was that for Tagore, the alternative Indian state being built around ties of social rather than civic friendship would not rest unity on uniformity within, or outside the nesan. Tagore often spoke of the diversity of races and peoples in India and the manner in which the swadeshi samaj had “tried to make an adjustment of races, to acknowledge the real differences… and yet seek for some basis of unity”. (ibid., 453) He defended Indian society against the charge (often levied) that the indigenous Indian society far from respecting diversity had instituted caste distinctions, by pointing out that this was a retrospective judgement on the past made from the vantage point of the present. Being made on the ancient past from the standpoint of the present such judgements often failed to appreciate that (at the point of time in question) violent solutions had

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been adopted by western nations towards different ‘others’ in western societies. He argued that those in the majority in Western nations (at the time in question) had in fact adopted violence towards different ‘others’ relegating the “Red Indian and the Negro” (ibid.) to the periphery of society. Tagore’s point was that the injustice of the past could not in itself completely discredit the possibility that political unity in post-colonial India would (and could) be based on social interrelationships and that this would make for a harmony between love of country and of humanity. Such an argument might find support if one would consider that friendship between people, going out in oceanic circles from the local to the national, could find it easier to extend itself across geographical boundaries than purely political relationships of civic friendship which would be restricted to fellow citizens; The bond of kinship that prevails within a community not only protects it from wanton cruelty and injustice from inside but is the natural nerve channel through which we directly feel our own race in its entirety. (Tagore, 2012a: 879)

Tagore’s emphasis on friendship and society as the basis of polity in India was not without precursors in the Indian tradition. One might recall in this connection that many ideas related to friendship and world peace are found in Rigveda. One hymn prays for a non-violent friend, which says, “That I may gain a refuge now, may my steps be on Mitra’s path. Men go protected in charge of this dear Friend who harms us not”. (Griffith, 1896: 5.64.3.) There is a hymn in Yajurveda which says, “May all beings look at me with a friendly eye, may I do likewise, and may we all look at each other with the eyes of a friend”. (Griffith, 1957: 36.18) In a similar strain, both Jain and Buddhist texts speak of friendship as the basis of society and it has been intimately linked with nonviolence/ahimsa in all these traditions. Gandhi too speaks of ahimsa and of the ahimsanat alternative Indian state/praja in the same terms. It seems quite in the spirit of Gandhi then that Tagore should have spoken of the affinity between instituting a decentralized state around the bonds of society in diverse India and the realization of friendship with other nations; Once again I draw your attention to the difficulties India has had to encounter and her struggle to overcome them. Her problem was the problem of the world in miniature… A true unity is like a round globe, it rolls on, carrying its burden easily,... (Tagore, 1996: 459)

Tagore had spoken of the inherent quality of Bharatvarsha as “the realization of the one in many” and argued that; Since India possesses this quality, we will never imagine any society to be our enemy and be fearful. With ever new conflicts we will aspire for the expansion of ourselves. Hindus Buddhists Muslims and Christians will not die fighting each other in the case of India-here they will discover a harmony. This harmony will not be non-hindu; in fact, it will be Hindu in its essential sense. The links and organs of this Harmony may come also from alien countries; however its life and soul will be Indian. (Tagore, (1986-1992): 640)

Given the long debate and friendship between them (lasting from 1915 to 1941) it should not be surprising that Tagore’s alternative eastern nesan should have influenced the India of Gandhi’s dreams. Before closing the section one might take note of two points that could further demonstrate the continuity between Gandhi and Tagore’s

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imaginations of India. The first comes out in the continuity between Gandhi’s critique of modern civilization and Tagore’s rejection of the nation of the west. This has already been somewhat amply discussed and the second is the emphasis on the local and on decentralization. One might recall that Gandhi had rejected the pyramid-like structure of societal organizations in favour of the oceanic circle model; In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever-widening, neverascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 91:326)

Gandhi defined his conception of the alternative decentralized Indian nation-state in different speeches, reports, resolutions and four important texts -Hind Swaraj (1909), “The Declaration of Independence” (1930) which he wrote on behalf of the Indian National Congress, the Constructive Programme a nineteen point essay which he published in 1941 and the alternative constitution for India which he laid out in the Draft Constitution of Congress (1948) that he wrote on the day that he died (Parel, 2010: 184–186). All the four texts spoke of Gandhi’s vision of the constructive programme to rebuild India focussing on the village and its upliftment. As Gandhi put it himself, the struggle for an Indian nation was “altering the meaning of old terms, nationalism and patriotism, and extending their scope” (Bhattacharya, 2008: 63). There was much in common between Gandhi and Tagore’s vision of an alternative Indian nesan; Swadeshi does not mean drowning in one’s own little puddle but making it tributary to the ocean that is the nation. And it can claim to contribute to the ocean only if it keeps itself pure. It is therefore clear that only such local or provincial customs should have a nation-wide vogue as are not impure or immoral. And when once this truth is grasped, nationalism is transmuted into the enthusiasm of humanity. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 35: 505)

One might say then that Gandhi and Tagore came together in the aspiration for a differently constituted responsible nation which accorded primacy to the local. It is interesting and often ignored that Gandhi had himself testified that nationalism and love of country was what brought Tagore and him together. In 1941, when he wrote Tagore’s Obituary Gandhi described him as “an ardent nationalist” (Bhattacharya, 2008: 216) who had “left a legacy to the whole nation, indeed, to the world” (ibid.). Tagore too, on his part, had indeed testified that their vision of the alternative free Indian nation was not different. Note that in January 1938 Tagore wrote in an article entitled “Gandhi the man” that; Long before the Congress adopted them, I had myself preached and written about the necessity of a constructive programme of rural reconstruction in India; of handicrafts as an essential element in the education of our children; of the absolute necessity of ridding Hinduism of the nightmare of untouchability. Nevertheless, it remains true, that they have never had the same energising power in them as when he took them up; for now they are quickened by the great life-force of the complete man who is absolutely one with his ideas, whose visions perfectly blend with his whole being. (Dutta & Robinson, 1997: 540)

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4.3.3 In Conclusion: Metaphysics and Politics; The Ishopanishad This concluding section will reaffirm the point which has been oft reiterated across this chapter namely that Gandhi and Tagore shared a critique of the dominant idea of the nation brought from the west as a product of enlightenment modernity. They argued that heterogeneous India would be severely dented if the European nation (based on a racial and cultural unity) was imposed on it. Both these thinkers regarded the nation of the west as a by-product of the forces of homogenization let loose by a world view inspired by the universalism of the enlightenment and had pressed for the construction of an alternative nation in India and the East. This might lead one to consider that if Tagore and Gandhi were not distanced (from each other) by Tagore’s purported rejection of the idea of the Indian nation one might need perhaps to locate the differences between them elsewhere. This section will suggest that Tagore and Gandhi parted company not because Tagore rejected the idea of a/any nation per se, but rather because, as the lover of art and life he made space for an aesthetic appreciation in ananda/delight which Gandhi the tapasvi was ill-equipped to do. This comes out interestingly in their apposite readings of the very first stanza of the Isha Upanishad. While Gandhi and Tagore had certainly both drawn from the nondual metaphysics of the Upanishads, their very different interpretations of that nondualism, made for somewhat different understandings of reality which influenced their politics; for metaphysics (see Lal, 2019) can well influence one’s choice of method in politics. While the “metaphysics inherent to their politics reinforced their ethical positions…” so that “they simultaneously abstained from and transformed the purely political” (Mukherji, 2019: xvi), the differences in their understanding of non-dualism also led to their somewhat different transformations of the purely political. At this point, one might recall Roby Rajan’s argument (made in the context of Narayan Guru’s life and ideas) about the “peculiar conjuncture ‘metaphysics and politics’” (Rajan, 2016: xli). Writing in the same volume as Rajan one might recall that Julius Lipner speaks of a “combination of Vedantic metaphysics and the coreethics of the Gita” (Lipner, 2016: 118) as translating into “socially and politically regenerative action” (ibid.,119) at the hands of several key practitioners in colonial India. It is here then—in their different interpretations of vedantic metaphysics—that the differences between Gandhi and Tagore’s politics should be located. To support this last point it might be well to turn towards an ancient upanishadic text which both Gandhi and Tagore had read and referred to. This was the Ishopanishad and as will become apparent Gandhi and Tagore differed in their interpretations of this Upanishad and indeed of it’s very first verse. It is to their different readings of that same verse that it seems interesting to turn. The verse itself goes as follows; Om. All this-whatsoever moves on the earth-should be covered by the Lord. Protect (your self) through, that detachment. Do not covet anybody’s wealth. (or -do not covet, for whose is wealth?) (Swami Gambhirananada, 2019: 8)

Gandhi spoke of this verse in a letter to Patel;

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So long as Death remains unconquerable, nothing that Man does will avail him. Hence the first verse of the Ishopanishad. Do you remember it? I used to recite that Upanishad every day in jail, trying to memorize the verses. If you don’t remember them and if you wish, I will send you a copy of the Upanishad. It contains only 18 verses. The author has compressed all knowledge within that short compass. There is no difference between its teaching and the Gita’s. What is present in it in the form of a seed has become a beautiful tree in the Gita. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 64: 6)

In a speech in Lahore Gandhi perhaps clarified that which was common between the Ishopanishad and the ethics of the Gita, i.e. the self-restraint advised by the mantra; We are born into this world not for indulging in sensuous activities but for sacrifice, for restraint. The purpose of education is that we know God and progress towards the ideal, and get closer to Him. It is the strict law of God that anyone who desires to be close to Him should renounce the world and yet be in it. This is what the first mantra of the Ishopanishad exhorts us to do. This thing is difficult and yet easy at the same time. It is easy if we believe that we have to live for service. We acquire learning not for sensuous pleasures and for earning but for mukti. (ibid., 169)

The Ishopanishad continued to be central to Gandhi and he discussed the first stanza in some detail in 1937 at Quilon; …I have now come to the final conclusion that if all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left intact in the memory of Hindus, Hinduism would live for ever. Now this mantra divides itself in four parts. The first part is… It means, as I would translate: All this that we see in this great Universe is pervaded by God. Then come the second and third parts which read together, as I read them:.. . I divide these into two and translate them thus: Renounce it and enjoy it. There is another rendering which means the same thing, though: Enjoy what He gives you. Even so you can divide it into two parts. Then follows the final and most important part: …which means: Do not covet anybody’s wealth or possession. All the other mantras of that ancient Upanishad are a commentary or an attempt to give us the full meaning of the first mantra. As I read the mantra in the light of the Gita or the Gita in the light of the mantra I find that the Gita is a commentary on this mantra. It seems to me to satisfy the cravings of the socialist and the communist, of the philosopher and the economist. I venture to suggest to all who do not belong to the Hindu faith that it satisfies their cravings also. And if it is true—and I hold it to be true—you need not take anything in Hinduism which is inconsistent with or contrary to the meaning of this mantra. What more can a man in the street want to learn than this that the one God and Creator and Master of all that lives pervades the Universe? The three other parts of the mantra follow directly from the first. If you believe that God pervades everything that He has created, you must believe that you cannot enjoy anything that is not given by Him. And seeing that He is the Creator of His numberless children, it follows that you cannot covet anybody’s possession. If you think that you are one of His numerous creatures, it behoves you to renounce everything and lay it at His feet. That means that the act of renunciation of everything is not a mere physical renunciation but represents a second or new birth. It is a deliberate act, not done in ignorance. It is therefore a regeneration. And then, since he who holds the body must eat and drink and clothe himself, he must naturally seek all that he needs from Him. And he gets it as a natural reward of that renunciation. As if this was not enough, the mantra closes with this magnificent thought: Do not covet anybody’s possession. The moment you carry out these precepts you become a wise citizen of the world, living at peace with all that lives. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 70: 298–299)

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Interestingly Tagore spoke of this Upanishad writing a letter to Mahadev Desai (who had asked him to explain his thoughts on the Upanishad while being, one might assume, well-acquainted with Gandhi’s reading of the same) in 1935; Ishopanishat has, from the human point of view, divided truth into two aspects:- one dealing with life and another with immortality. The characteristic of this Upanishat is in the emptiness it lays upon the importance of both these aspects, none of which should be separated from the other…And therefore according to Ishopanishat avidya and vidya both have to be perfected and harmonised. The cult of the finite exclusively pursued leads us to no final goal and yet it gives us something which is concrete, but the cult of the infinite excluding the finite is an abstraction, it is an illimitable abyss of nihilism. The East in the modern time has been beaten in the race of life, because it has neglected to cultivate the science of the finite, and the West is being driven into conflict of passions and unmeaning multiplication of things because it has lost its respect for the cult of the infinite. The salvation of humanity lies in the meeting of the East and the West in a perfect harmony of truth. (Tagore, 2012a: 810–811)

Looking at the difference between Gandhi and Tagore’s reading of the very same mantra, it appears possible to suggest that Tagore’s differences from Gandhi came from their different readings of the “altruistric paradigm” (Lipner, 2016: 121) implicit in the vedantic metaphysics. Gandhi read that metaphysics as that of oneness and thereby as recommending an ascetic renunciation of desire and pleasure grounded in the diversity inherent in the finite. However, Tagore read the same mantra as harmonizing vidya/the cult of the infinite and avidya/the cult of the finite and further therefrom; as advocating harmony between creatures inhabiting the varied finite realm. This difference between their readings of the very same texts as recommending (in Gandhi’s case) oneness and (in Tagore’s case) harmony; led to differences about the kind of method they believed was the most appropriate to arrive at the freedom of the Eastern nesan. Tagore was critical of Gandhi’s advocacy of the method of satyagraha as a boycott of foreign cloth and educational institutions; as resting in a political asceticism that denied many participants, i.e. satyagrahis the life of the finite. Tagore sought for a method that harmonized the finite and infinite and therefore recommended “Karma” (Tagore, 2012a: 810) which involved the science of vidya and avidya; When through the help of avidya, the science of the finite, our rational and moral life reaches its fulfilment, then it is saved. The life lived in pursuance of mere animal needs, guided by a superficial and empirical knowledge of this world, is death for man… Man’s reason, and will, and power of aesthetic enjoyment, lays the path towards the supreme realization of the infinite. For the infinite is nothing negative,-it is not an emptiness that can be reached through an absolute elimination of the finite, but in it the finite has its ultimate meaning. (ibid.)

One could argue then that the differences between Gandhi and Tagore cannot be best located in a shared belief in the illegitimacy of the nation. The central divergences might rather have lain in the question of the appropriate method by which India could arrive at a nation-state—with one speaking of harmony between the knowledge of the finite and infinite—and the other rejecting the significance of the finite in the light of the oneness that exists at the level of the Absolute reality. Subsequent to this fundamental divergence between them Gandhi recommended a progressive renunciation/sacrifice of the finite; Tagore however recommended that the mind of

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the country abiding in the infinite yet exert itself in varied directions in the realm of the finite in a harmonious symphony to recreate the Indian nesan. Tagore’s recreation as noted earlier has a different connotation from the sense of reconstruction, recommended in Gandhi’s constructive programme; for it made room for an aesthetic enjoyment of the varied. This seems evident given that for Tagore all human creative endeavours abide in the surplus in human nature, affording time for leisure, reflection, and delight in the self-expression that creation involves. Perhaps one might traverse the differences between Gandhi and Tagore better by unpacking the difference between their different understandings of the nature of reality one denying and the other affirming the relevance of the finite to the choice of method for the attainment of freedom/swaraj. This in turn led to alternative recommendations of reconstruction (in Gandhi) or recreation (in Tagore) of the nesan as the appropriate method of arriving at Hind Swaraj/freedom of India.

Notes 1. “The legend of Indian political incompetence has arisen from a false view of the historical development and an insufficient knowledge of the ancient past of the country. It has long been currently supposed that she passed at once from the freer type of the primitive Aryan or Vedic social and political organization to a system socially marked by the despotism of the Brahmin theocracy and politically by an absolute monarchy of the oriental, by which is meant the Western Asiatic, type and has remained fixed in these two things for ever after. That summary reading of Indian history has been destroyed by a more careful and enlightened scholarship and the facts are of a quite different nature. It is true that India never evolved either the scrambling and burdensome industrialism or the parliamentary organization of freedom and self-styled democracy characteristic of the bourgeois or Vaishya period of the cycle of European progress. But the time is passing when the uncritical praise of these things as the ideal state and the last word of social and political progress was fashionable, their defects are now visible and the greatness of an oriental civilization need not be judged by the standard of these Western developments. Indian scholars have attempted to read the modern ideas and types of democracy and even a parliamentary system into the past of India, but this seems to me an ill-judged endeavour. There was a strong democratic element, if we must use the Western terms, in Indian polity and even institutions that present a certain analogy to the parliamentary form, but in reality these features were of India’s own kind and not at all the same thing as modern parliaments and modern democracy. And so considered they are a much more remarkable evidence of the political capacity of the Indian people in their living adaptation to the ensemble of the social mind and body of the nation than when we judge them by the very different standard of Western society and the peculiar needs of its cultural cycle. “(Aurobindo, 1997, 20: 386–387). 2. One might note in this connection the famous Resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Changes which was co-drafted by Gandhi and Nehru and introduced at the 1931 session of the Indian National Congress. All basic rights which were laid out in western constitutions were present in this resolution which sought to guarantee to all Indians equal rights of conscience, religion, speech, and free press, along with a detailed list of political, economic, and social rights. 3. Herder’s concept of Volk (‘people’), referred to the geographical circumstances as well as inner characteristics of a people. Herder believed that this national spirit was given by God during creation and that it was wrong to dispossess a nation of its national character, language, and peculiarity of spirit.

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4. One might recall that as the chairman of the drafting committee to frame the Constitution of India B. R Ambedkar expressed the importance of framing the constitution along the lines of other liberal constitutions in the world. “One really likes to ask whether there can be anything new in a constitution framed at this hour in the history of the world. More than hundred years have rolled over when the first written constitution was drafted… what are the fundamentals of a constitution are recognized all over the world. Given these facts, all Constitutions in their main provisions must look similar.” (Ambedkar 2014, 59). 5. Tagore was familiar with Ernest Renan and in 1901 in Bangadarsan discussing Renan’s essay on nation he differentiated nation/nesan from race/jati; “We will use the word jati as a synonym for the English word “race,” and call the nation nesan. If the words “nation” and “national” are adopted in the Bengali language, we would be able to avoid many confusions of meaning.... I do not hesitate at all in using the word “nation” in its original form. We have received the idea from the English; we should be prepared to acknowledge our debt by retaining the language too.” (Chatterjee, 2011: 95 quoting Tagore from “Nesan Ki” (1901–2), in Rabindra Rachanavalee’ (Bengali), (collective works of Rabindranath), vol. 12, p. 675. 15 vols (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1961–8). The year of publication of the original work by Rabindranath is indicated in parentheses.). 6. Note Chatterjee’s critique of Anderson in his book The Nation and Its fragments. Colonial and postcolonial Histories.; “I have one central objection to Anderson’s argument. If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain “modular” forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine. History, it would seem, has declared that we in the postcolonial world shall only be perpetual consumers of modernity…Even our imagination must remain forever colonized.” (Chatterjee, 2014: 5). 7. These included ‘Swadeshi Samaj’(The Indigenous/ Indian Society), ‘Bharatbarsher Itihasher Dhara’ (The Course of History in India), ‘Nesan ki’ ( What is Nation). ‘Prachya o Protichya’ (East and West), ‘Obostha o Byabostha’ (Status and System), ‘Shobhapotir Obhibhashon’ (The President’s Address), ‘PolliPrakriti’ (Nature of the Village), ‘Kalantar’ (Transition of Time), ‘Russiar Chithi’ (Letters from Russia), Gora, ‘Char Adhya’ (four chapters), ‘Tasher Desh’ (The land of the playing cards), ‘Ghara Bahira’ (Home and the world). 8. Which spanned from the 1857 Indian War of Independence to the 1905 Swadeshi Movement.

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Bhushan, N., & Garfield, J. L. (Eds.). (2011). Indian philosophy in English: From renaissance to independence. Oxford University Press. Chatterjee, P. (2011). Lineages of political society. Studies in postcolonial democracy. Columbia University Press. Chatterjee, P. (2014). The Partha Chaterjee Omnibus. Oxford University Press. Collins, M. (2014). Empire, nationalism and the postcolonial world. Rabindranath Tagore’s writings on history, politics and society. Routledge. Dalton, D. (1986). The ideology of sarvodaya: Concepts of politics and power in Indian political thought. In T. Pantham, & K. L. Deutsch (Ed.), Political thought in modern India. Sage. Dutta, K., & Robinson, A. (Eds.). (1997). Selected letters of Rabindranath Tagore. The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. Gambhirananada S. (2019). Isa Upnishanad. (S. Gambhirananada, Trans.). Advait Ashram. Gandhi, M. K. (1888–1948). Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 98. Accessed September, 2022 from https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/collected-works-of-mah atma-gandhi-volume-1-to-98.php Gardiner, P. (1999). “Introduction”. In H. Hardy (Ed.), The sense of reality (pp. xiii–xx). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Griffith, R. T. H. (1896). The hymns of the Rigveda. E.J. Lazarus. Griffith, R. T. H. (1957). The texts of the Yajurveda. S.B.N. Yadav. Hartnett, L. (2022). Love is worldmaking: Reading Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora as international theory. International Studies Quarterly, 66(3). (Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqa c037) Accessed in November, 2022. Herder, J. G. (2004). Another philosophy of history and selected political writings (With an introduction by I. D. Evrigenis & D. Pellerin Trans.). Hackett Publishing Company. Kampchen, M. (1991). Rabindranath Tagore and Germany: Documentation. Max Mueller Bhavan. Kant, I. (2006). Towards perpetual peace: A philosophical sketch. In P. Kleingeld (Ed.), Towards perpetual peace and other writings on politics, peace and history (D. L. Colclasure, Trans.) (pp. 67–109). Yale University Press. Lal, V. (Ed.). (2019). India and civilizational futures. Backwaters collective on metaphysics and politics 11. Oxford University Press. Lipner, J. (2016). A marriage made in heaven? How metaphysics transforms politics: A case study. In V. Lal, & R. Rajan (Eds.), India and the unthinkable: Backwaters collective on metaphysics and politics. Oxford University Press. Marsh, C. (2013). Rabindranath Tagore: Critic of the enlightenment. Asiatic, 7(1). Mukherji, G. (2019). Gandhi and Tagore: Politics, truth and conscience. Routledge. Nandy, A. (1994). The illegitimacy of nationalism. Rabindranath Tagore and the politics of self . Oxford University Press. Nandy, A. (2013). Regimes of narcissism, regimes of despair. Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2002a). Patriotism and cosmopolitanism. In J. Cohen for Boston Review (Ed.), M. C. Nussbaum For Love of Country? (pp. 3–17). Beacon Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2002b). Reply. In J. Cohen for Boston Review (Ed.), M.C. Nussbaum For Love of Country? (pp. 131–144). Beacon Press. Palmer, J. A. (Ed.). (2001). Fifty key thinkers on the environment. Routledge. Parel, A. (Ed.). (2010). Hind swaraj and other writings. Cambridge University Press. Puri, B. (2015). The Tagore-Gandhi debate on Matters of Truth and Untruth. Springer. Quayum, M. A. (2020). Imagining “One-World”: Rabindranath Tagore’s critique of nationalism. In M. A. Quayum (Ed.), Tagore, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Perceptions, contestations and contemporary relevance (pp. 65–85). Routledge. Rajan, R. (2016). Introduction: Post-metaphysics and the future of an illusion. In V. Lal, & R. Rajan (Eds.), India and the unthinkable: backwaters collective on metaphysics and politics. Oxford University Press. Renan, E. (1990.) What is a nation?. In H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and narration (pp. 8–22). Routledge. Sengupta, K. (2005). The philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

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Chapter 5

Body, Action, Authority, Ethics, and Politics Mrinal Miri

Abstract The western philosophical tradition has been abidingly occupied with the duality of the mind and the body. The soul is substantially the same as the mind for this tradition. In the Indian tradition, however, there is no duality between the mind and the body. The mind is an organ of the body, and I-consciousness is nothing but the ego which is a construct of the mind. For Gandhi, the human body is central to the articulation of the moral life. Concepts like brahmacharya, sacrifice, fearlessness, moral purity would not make sense if the body was not crucially involved in imagining the life of morality. Action is firmly in the domain of the body. The soul is atman and is not involved in action at all. Moral authority derives from Truth conceived as God. Modern politics is deeply involved in the ideality (future) of political action, and, as such, cannot extricate itself from the notion of the instrumentality of the ethical. Gandhi is firmly opposed to this idea, and many of his criticisms of modern civility follow from this. Keywords Dualism · Mind · Soul · Atman · Truth · God · Universality · Reason · Liberalism · Utility · Freedom · Happiness

In Gandhi’s thought, the human body is absolutely central to our understanding of human action—the human body as opposed to the “mind” (invariably equated with the “soul”) of traditional western philosophy running perhaps from Plato, through Christianity to the early twentieth century. One might even say, with much evidential justification from his writings, that for Gandhi, the living, willing, sensing, acting, thinking, reasoning, and deciding human being are the same as, identical with, the human body, seen as exhibiting a special, but natural, unity. 1. One of the most abiding ideas of western philosophical thought is that human action is the result of the interaction between two entities—the mind (or, the “soul”)1 and the body. The duality of the mind and the body finds its most definitive expression in Descarte’s famous work Meditations: in a human being M. Miri (B) North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. Miri and B. Puri, Gandhi for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3792-9_5

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(“human being” at all because of the presence of the human body), the body and the mind live in a mysterious interactive relationship—mysterious, because mind and body are substances so absolutely different from each other that it is beyond our normal understanding of causal relationship that the mind could be in a state of causal relationship with the body or vice-versa. Causal relationship, as we normally understand it, demands a spatial as well as a temporal route from the cause to the effect. Between the mind and the body, on the other hand, there is no spatial tractability, although there might indeed be temporal tractability. There is no spatial tractability, because the mind, in Descartes’ terminology, has no “extension”, and therefore, has no spatial location. But “beyond our normal understanding” or not we must accept the possibility of causal relationship between mind and body, for otherwise, it would become impossible for us to explain (indeed, to understand) how human action (as opposed to a mere movement of a bodily part) can take place. Willing, intending, deciding, resolving, etc., are actions of the mind which cause the body to perform actions of different kinds. The latter are actions at all—and not mere movements of the body— because they are causally preceded by the former. What is the difference, we might ask, between a hand just going up and the raising of a hand—the former a mere movement of a bodily limb, and the latter an action? The stark dualistic answer to this is that the mere movement of the limb is causally triggered by some bodily event or series of bodily events in the nervous system while the action of raising the hand is preceded by act of an entity, other than the body, called the mind, which somehow is located in the body. The mind-body duality picture of a human being has, it seems, been given a decent, and sometimes not so decent, burial in the twentieth century western philosophical thinking. It is the person who wills, intends, and decides, and the person is the same as the human body seen as having a certain kind of dynamic or organic unity. It took the western tradition, to come to this position, many centuries of domination by the mind-body duality doctrine. India’s ancient and abidingly influential S¯ankhya philosophy was quite clear that the mind is not an entity, independent, or separate from the body; it is an instrument or organ of the body. The living human body has, among other things, the sense organs which are the source of sense perception, the organs of action such as the arms and the legs, and the physical complex of the manas (mind), buddhi (intellect), and the ahamk¯ara (“I”ness or the ego). The living body is s´ar¯ıra, and the dead body is s´ava. But the s´ava, the dead body, remains a s´ar¯ıra until the last rites preceding the cremation are completed. Homeric Greeks had a similar conception of the living body. I can do no better than quote here Bernard Williams, one of the most brilliant philosophers of our time. In the course of his very keen arguments to free the Homeric conception of man from the grasp of the deep-rooted mind-body duality metaphysics of modern western scholars of ancient Greece, Williams writes When at the very end of the poem (Illiad), in one of the most moving scenes, Priam sets out to recover his son’s body from Achilles, he asks his companion (who is in fact the god Hermes): whether my son still lies/beside the ships, or whether by now he has been hewn/limb

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from limb and thrown before the dogs by Achilles. Hermes is able to tell him that although Achilles has abused it, dragging it around Patroclus’ tomb, the body is miraculously neither damaged nor corrupted: so it is that the blessed immortals care for your son/though he is nothing but a corpse; because in their hearts they/loved him. In wanting Hector’s body to be whole Priam wanted Hector to be as he was when he was alive. The wholeness of the corpse, the wholeness that Priam wanted, was not something acquired only in death: it was the wholeness of Hector. (Williams, 2008: 24)

But the living human is also puru´sa (masculine, but in a wider sense must be taken as including the feminine). Puru´sa is the living human being as in puru´sa¯ rthas, the proper ends of human kind. But puru´sa most crucially is also “the pure consciousness” which is referred to as the a¯ tman. The a¯ tman is beyond human cognisance, cannot be captured in the language of time and space, or truth and falsehood. It can only be “realized”, but such realization can come only as we reach a “stage of existence” which is beyond the “I”, the ego (ahamk¯ara), which is part of the living s´arira. (The Gita says of the atman: “Unmanifest (avyakto) he, unthinkable (acintyo)” he).2 It is clear that even a minimal “description” such as the preceding is already in danger of being caught up in logical oddities. It is best, I think, to follow here Wittgenstein’s adage, “whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent” (Wittgenstein, 1999, § 7). Or this is a point where philosophy must give way to poetry or music. Gandhi’s expression of the predicament is as follows: “… in truth the a¯ tman does nothing… nor does it cause anything to be done”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 208) But something must be said of the use of the pronoun “I”. It cannot obviously refer to the atman because the atman is not an agent. The only other thing that it can possibly refer to is the sarira, but it cannot refer to the sarira either, because the “I”, as it were, sets itself up apart from the body (“I am hungry”, “I am writing an essay on life”). Interestingly, in recent western philosophy, a view has been advocated to the effect that “I” is not a referring expression at all—it is a pronoun, as it were, by courtesy. In Sankhya philosophy, however, “I” is indeed a referring expression; and it refers neither to the sarira, nor to the atman, but to the ahamkara, roughly translated as the ego, which is a part of the physical complex, the other parts of which are, manas and buddhi. And the ego is a powerful self-aggrandiser and motivator of morally dubious actions. The centrality of the human body in Gandhi’s thinking—particularly his thinking about morality—has, therefore, deep roots in the Indian philosophical tradition. The living body, the person is the inescapable site of action. 2. It is against the background of the centrality of the body that we must understand the key Gandhian ethical concepts of fearlessness, the gift of fearlessness, and devotion. Underlying these concepts are the fundamental concepts of ahimsa (ahimsa paramo dharma) and its positive aspect, prem. But, as we shall see, fundamental as the concept of ahimsa is for understanding the idea of the moral, the negativity of the concept, as is indicated by the word itself, is extremely important to keep in mind. 3. I think a good way to begin may be to consider the idea of freedom. The idea is strongly evocative of the human body and is central to our ordinary ways of conceiving the moral-non-moral-immoral distinction. Gandhi agrees that one of

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the chief characteristics of ethical actions is that they are free—but free in a sense very different from the way the idea of free action is commonly understood. In this latter way of understanding, a free act is one that proceeds from the agent’s will and performed without coercion—physical or psychological—on the will. Let us take the following examples: (i) physical coercion includes force applied from outside, e.g. one leans on a person standing ahead of one having been pushed by a person from behind in the queue (physical coercion); (ii) security forces extracting “confession” from an innocent person by torture, psychological or physical, are a case of unfree action owing to coercion. (iii) A somewhat lesser degree of unfreedom might be a case of action resulting from persuasion by, say, media propaganda. We might also think of neurotic behaviour as unfree, because of the “coercive” activities of the “unconscious” although the ultimate coercive agent here is, supposedly, the “ego” of the person him(her)self. Gandhi would respond differently to these various examples of “unfree” actions. He would not regard (i) as a case of action at all quite in agreement with, maybe, his opponents; (ii) Gandhi would be doubtful about the unfreedom involved in such an action, because there is available to the agent a “counterforce” which would make the action totally unnecessary. This counterforce is the force of the satyagrahi. In this context, Gandhi’s view on the predicament of the Jews in Germany of the second world war is noteworthy. “Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible, and terrifying it looks in its nakedness. Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect and not to feel helpless, neglected, and forlorn? I submit there is. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end, the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France, and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 74: 240–241) Quite a few very distinguished European thinkers who were contemporaries of Gandhi, wrote in opposition to Gandhi’s view on the Jewish question including the philosopher Hana Arendt. But none of these compared with the stark power of

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Gandhi’s statement, which must have seemed to them to have come from a very different form of life and mode of thinking. (iii) Although Gandhi himself believed in the possibility of honest and effective communication of ideas via newspapers—as he edited newspapers himself—he would perhaps have judged media propaganda with the same yardstick as he did the British Parliament about which he famously said: “that which you consider to be the Mother of Parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. Both of these are harsh terms but exactly fit the case. That parliament has not yet of its own accord done a single good thing. Hence, I have compared it to a sterile woman. The natural condition of the Parliament is such that, without outside pressure, it can do nothing. It is like a prostitute because it is under the control of ministers who change from time to time. Today, it is under Mr Asquith; tomorrow, it may be under Mr Balfour”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 256) But, psychological coercion would include cases of what we call “brain washing”; the case of the death-embracing terrorist, for example. The “suicide bomber” who has been programmed, as it were, to perform his act of terror, is, one might think, fearless just as the satyagrahi is fearless. In truth, however, the latter’s fearlessness is ethically the opposite of the satyagrahi’s fearlessness. The satyagrahi’s fearlessness includes the unconditional gift of fearlessness to the opponent in the true spirit of ahimsa. The terrorist inspires terror in his prospective victims—quite radically the opposite of the satyagrahi’s gift of fearlessness to his/her opponent. But the question we are asking is: is the suicide bomber’s action free, and, therefore, is he accountable for it? I think it is pertinent here to consider Gandhi’s intriguing examples of the slave and his/her actions done in unflinching compliance to the master’s words and actions of the child done in unquestioning obedience to its parents. Gandhi regarded the slave’s actions as paradigmatic examples of virtuous action. There are two aspects to the slave’s behaviour; one is his/her unquestioning obedience to the master; and the other is the absence of attachment to the “fruits” of his/her actions. “Your right is to work, and not to expect the fruit”, (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 104) the slave-owner says to the slave. “Mind your work, but beware lest you pluck a fruit from the garden”. (ibid.) The two aspects are of course inalienably related. The slave’s action is strikingly reminiscent of the unreasoned devotion of the faithful and all his/her actions that come forth from this devotion. But on the slave’s devotion to his master, Gandhi of course adds that “the relationship between the slave-owner and his slave is an unhealthy one. It is based on [the owner’s] self-interest” (ibid.). This self-interest necessarily casts its shadow on the slave’s actions and detracts from their virtue, thereby making them “unhealthy” as well. But Gandhi’s point of the slave example is primarily to draw our attention to the totally unencumbered, spontaneous flow of his/her actions. This spontaneity ensures his/her detachment from the fruits of his/her action. The example of the child’s behaviour brings it out clearly. Once the child has totally absorbed or “internalized” its parent’s instructions, its activities take on a completely spontaneous playful character. “A child who lives in this manner is a brahmachari [celibate], a muni [saint], a sthitaprajna”. (ibid.) Spontaneity of action also suggests, “unpremeditated”, “free of any calculation of consequences”; therefore done without consideration of

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the future. Morality, therefore, is independent of future happenings. The virtues— as extolled in the vaishnovo janato3 hymn—come into play spontaneously in the present. “The eyelids certainly protect the eyes… by reflex action—that is, without conscious intention” (ibid.). So too, Gandhi believed, the relationship between the satyagrahi and his goal should be spontaneous, without the expectation of any reward. “When typing on a typewriter has become mechanical work with the typist, the finger will alight on the right letter even when he is not looking at the keyboard; he who is able to work in such a spontaneous manner and is fully alert, like the typist, in everything he does, may be described as the Buddha” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 188). It is crucial that Gandhi adds “fully alert” to “spontaneity”. The brainwashed terrorist is not “fully alert” to what he is doing at the time of doing it. Part of being fully aware involves his being aware of the enormity of the violence of his action—violence to his prospective victims as well as to himself. The violence of the terrorist killing himself is quite the opposite of the “self-sacrifice” of the satyagrahi. The terrorist is not fearless, because he is afraid of being hindered in his action and afraid of possible failure. What about the jihadi who embraces death in the hope of a place in heaven? Well, such an act cannot be considered self-sacrifice at all, because it is action done not to eliminate the self—but to, as it were, enhance the condition of the self—action done for its fruit. Also the terrorist’s or the jihadi’s action is the opposite of satyagraha’s gift of fearlessness to his opponent; the former aims to instil fear in those he considers his “enemy” and not to free him from fear. The interesting idea that derives from the examples of the slave and the child is that most of our adult actions and not just the above are marked by unfreedom because these are actions that are informed by “intention” or “the will” to achieve something that is in the future. The future is unknown or at least uncertain, and, therefore, cannot exclude violence. However, apart from the fact that action, aimed at a future end must always allow for the possibility of violence, it always involves, tacitly or openly, the idea of calculation or even manipulation because it requires the efficient, or not so efficient removal of foreseen or unforeseen obstacles. There is therefore always a shadow of unfreedom in such an action. What, then, for Gandhi, is the arena of the moral? Gandhi is, therefore, strictly opposed to utilitarianism in all its variety, because for the utilitarian, it is the future that ultimately determines whether an action has been a moral one. The moral man “… intends nothing to serve other ends”, (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 148) says Gandhi. The here and now of an action is the proper object of moral approbation or disapproval—not ends that may be in the future. “His is a lame truthfulness who speaks truth as a matter of policy, but he who is truthful in his thoughts will act aright though he is dumb”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 149) “Truth as a matter of policy”—powerfully reminiscent of the utilitarian’s “honesty is the best policy”! For Gandhi, morality must involve a disengagement from matters of policy in human affairs. The upshot of our consideration of the free and the unfree for Gandhi is as follows: (i) freedom of action is a necessary condition of an action being moral; (ii) physical coercion or even the prospect of physical coercion need not be a source of unfreedom; (iii) an action’s engagement with a future end deprives it of its freedom; (iv) the here

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and now is the proper arena of the moral; (iv) the body, its materiality, is an essential part of the here and now; and (v) the truly moral is the truly spontaneous. 4. The here and now is not just a matter of a momentary episode. Gandhi is talking about action just as the Gita does. Action is not instantaneous; it takes time— some more and others less. Spinning, the slave’s daily labour, the devout’s repetitive chanting of the name “Rama” or “Krishna” as he goes about his/her workaday life, the brahmacharya’s un-thinking—not thoughtless—“control” of his indriyas and Arjuna’s engagement in the great war of the Mahabharata. It is most interesting that when Gandhi speaks about actions of this kind, e.g. spinning and brahmacharya, he makes two related points which inform his thinking in a very crucial way. Consider the following statement: “following the path of non-violence, we discovered the value of the spinning wheel, as also of brahmacharya. Beyond the river (Sabarmati) is bhogabhumi, while this is karmabhumi”. (Gandhi, 1888– 1948, 37: 330) The death of non-violence and the value of action (karma) as opposed to passive enjoyment bhoga. The death of non-violence! “Arjuna’s plea [was] that it is wrong to kill one’s kinsmen, not that it is wrong to kill at all. He was asked to forget the distinction of kinsmen and outsider. The Hindu Shastras say that non-violence is the supreme dharma… Arjuna has observed the disciplines of yama-niyama, among which ahimsa is placed first. [Thus, Arjuna already knows that ahimsa is the highest principle of action] But ahimsa is an ideal which is impossible to realize to perfection. It may be possible to realize it in thought, but not in action. Sankaracharya has said that one seeking moksha should have far greater patience than one who would try to empty the sea, drop by drop with a blade of grass. One must have equal patience for realizing the ideal of perfect non-violence. It is impossible in this body to follow ahimsa fully… Violence is inescapable. While the eyes wink and nails have to be pared, violence in one form or another is unavoidable”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 86) Ahimsa qualifies action, albeit, only negatively; and action inevitably involves violence: hence “death of non-violence”! Himsa, willy nilly to a larger or lesser extent, displaces ahimsa in action. What, then, about actions such as spinning and those of the brahmacharya? Spinning as an activity in the ashram is not aimed at anything other than itself, e.g. trading its product for profit; it is disengaged from any “fruit”. Similarly, the practice of brahmacharya in the ashram is not linked to any end (e.g. gaining unusual power for oneself). The more stable criterion of morally acceptable action, therefore, is the action’s total disengagement (niskama) from any desired end. To return briefly to the theme of the body. It is clear that there cannot be action without the body; spinning, brahmacharya, winking of the eye, writing, listening, helping a fellow being, deceiving someone, being engaged in a discussion, drawing water from the well, praying, clearing the field, taking care of the sick, fasting, speaking, even keeping silence: it is the body that makes the performance of all of them possible. So Gandhi says, “it is the human body that is described as Kurukshetra, as dharma-kshetra”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 76) Even knowledge is “because of the body; otherwise, for an unembodied one, how can there be any question of

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knowledge? The highest knowledge of all in the world is knowledge of the self. Moreover, the idea of a human being having no body exists only in our imagination” (ibid., 141) Very importantly for Gandhi, the living body is the self, and it is the natural site of the genesis of ethical impurities. Self-purification is the purification of the body: so Gandhi says: “…self-purification is to be achieved through the body. We act through the atman to the degree that we act through the body. In truth, however, the atman does nothing, nor does it cause anything to be done”. (ibid., 210) It is unsurprising that Gandhi thinks that gods must also have bodies and can be represented only by material images. Gods are recognized and identified only through their bodies. Again, it is the materiality of the moral subject that makes disengaged action possible at all. Gandhi’s examples of the slave’s un-thinking daily activities, the child’s unpremeditated obedience to his parents’ injunctions, the spinner’s easy, flowing, but mindful, movements, the devout’s continuous, but once again, mindful, recitation of “Krishna, Krishna” are actions the basic quality of which moral actions must emulate—the quality that Gandhi calls, spontaneity. The spontaneity may even border on mechanical fluidity. When a man’s ears, nose, eyes, and so on, go on performing their functions naturally without conscious willing on his part— the winking of the eyelids does not need to be willed, there must be some disease if it is otherwise—we say of such a person that his sense organs, having become free of attachments and aversions, function spontaneously. (ibid., 118) When typing on a typewriter has become mechanical work with the typist, the finger will alight on the right letter even when he is not looking at the keyboard; he who is able to work in such a spontaneous manner and is fully alert, like the typist, in everything he does, may be described as the Buddha. (ibid., 188)

For Gandhi, then, ethics is a concern of: the here and now, the living organic body, its materiality, and its capacity for free (spontaneous) movement. What constitutes the goodness of an action are the virtues as beautifully extolled in the hymn Vaishnabo Janato. Two intriguing questions arise at this stage about Gandhi’s thinking about the moral: 1. What is the source of moral authority? What gives moral obligation its special character? And, 2. Isn’t the field, arena of the moral drastically reduced in Gandhi’s way of thinking. Let us consider them in order. In western moral philosophy, there are primarily four candidates: (i) the objective and “eternal” Idea or Form of Goodness (Plato); (ii) God (Christianity); (iii) autonomous universal reason (Kant); and (iv) the objective ideal of happiness (Utilitarianism). (i) For Plato, moral authority lies in the “particular” nature of the good and its knowledge. The good, as opposed to particular, therefore, transient entities of this world is eternal and indestructible, and its knowledge, achieved only by mystical apprehension,—a goal reached, if at all, only at the end of a long and arduous philosophical journey. Moral authority resides necessarily in the nature of the good itself, and to know the good is also to know its authority. In addition, to know the good is also at the same time to be good. There are very

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few takers of Plato’s moral philosophy in the West today. There are, however, traces—very feeble though—of Platonism in the Intuitionism of G.E. Moore and, surprisingly, in the prescriptivism of R. M. Hare. (ii) Christianity has been the most abiding influence on western moral thinking. For Christianity, God is the ultimate authority on the morality of man. God communicates his moral diktats to humans through either mystical communication or through his “son” Jesus Christ. Christianity is perhaps on the wane in the West; yet, Christian morality, in one form or another still holds sway. (iii) For the so-called age of reason, or the enlightenment project, initiated by the German Philosopher Kant, moral obligation derives its authority from human reason itself: reason in its most stringent application confirms the validity of an ethical maxim by showing it to be universally applicable. The enlightenment project is somewhat under a cloud at least for now. Philosophical theories don’t seem to disappear altogether in history. They reappear in different guises throughout history. The philosophical slogan that seems now to be raising a shrill voice is: “let thousand flowers bloom” (with apologies to Chairman Mao). (One modern Western theory [but it had made its early Greek appearance in the Platonic character Glucon in The Republic] that must be mentioned is that morality has no objective authority at all; it is just an elaborate cover used by the powerful in the pursuit of their own ends.) (iv) For utilitarianism, moral obligation or moral authority of an action, or of a course of action or of an institutional undertaking derives from its utility or instrumentality in maximizing happiness. There are several versions of utilitarianism. But for all versions, moral obligation is eventually a matter of future authentication. Morality of an action is to be determined by its consequences in the future. But the future is always uncertain; as Gandhi said, it is not in our hands. It is extraordinarily odd therefore that we are, in effect, told to withhold our moral judgement on an action until a future time when we shall come to know its consequences. Gandhi would regard this as a travesty of morality. We should not serve anyone with the hope that he, too, will serve us one day, but we may serve him because the Lord dwells in him and we serve that Lord. If we hear anyone crying in distress for help, we should immediately run to him and help him. We should help the Lord crying in distress. After doing what was needed, we should feel that it was all a dream. Would the Lord ever cry in distress? (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 202)

For Gandhi, the arena of morality is the reality of the here and now with its inalienable materiality; it is outside the ideality of the future (Devji, 2013: 121). What, then, is the authority of moral obligation? The slave example, taken without the qualification that Gandhi quickly makes, might suggest that the authority lies in obedience to an unquestioned “superior”. Since this is not the case, the slave’s spontaneous acts of obedience, cannot really serve as examples of what is truly moral. The slave-owner is driven by purely selfish motives and resolutely pursues his own ends; the slave’s spontaneous obedience to the owner’s commands is only an extremely convenient means for the latter to achieve these ends. The immorality of the slave-owner therefore casts its dark shadow on the slave’s actions themselves. The slave’s exemplary

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obedience is the consequence of the elaborate deception successfully forced on him by his owner. To be a victim of such deception is to be in the grip of an untruth— (like many Indians were under the grip of colonialism)—and the behaviour ensuing from such subjection is unfree, and, therefore, outside the sphere of morality. To free himself from such subjection is to tread the path of swaraj and to enter the life of morality. The case of the child is different. The child’s physical (including mental) needs are taken care of by its parents. It obeys its parents in the matter of what it must do and must avoid doing, and quickly, this obedience acquires a natural flow and spontaneity. The parents have no selfish instrumental motive in guiding the child towards virtuous behaviour. But does this selflessness bestow moral authority on the parents? It does not because parents are neither the source nor the basis of moral obligation. Their, as their parents and so on, sense of moral discrimination is derived from the great experience, with all its contingencies, of social living embodied in the tradition. For Gandhi, The Gita is the quintessential expression of this tradition. Parents, as the authoritative voices in the family, are assumed to be the upholders of this tradition. As children of such parents, they “live as a sthitaprajna does. They have their parents and teachers to look after their needs. They have therefore no need to take thought for themselves. [They act with absolute spontaneity]. … A child who lives in this manner is a brahmachari, a muni, a sthitaprajna”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 109) But tradition is fallible; there can always be arguments about tradition and, as a consequence, parts of the tradition, if not the whole, may have to be discarded. For instance, Gandhi did realize after almost a life-long dialogue with the tradition that the caste system in Hinduism must be abandoned. Tradition, even though it is perhaps our greatest teacher in moral matters, cannot be the authority from which moral obligation must flow. There are two other candidates which Gandhi frequently treats as one and the same: Truth and God. In Gandhi, The Truth-God equation (Truth is God, rather than God is Truth) is easier to understand than the idea of God taken by itself. We shall consider the latter in the next chapter. If morality is objectively grounded, then moral obligation must be rooted in truth. If moral judgments are objectively valid, then to know good—Gandhi might have said with Plato—is to be good. It is important, however, to take a closer look at how Gandhi uses the notion of truth. In a great deal of recent western philosophy, truth seems to have been given something like a mortal blow. The philosopher Rorty asserts with great flourish that there is in reality no such thing as truth. (But the question, “does this assertion itself have any claim to truth”? continues to be asked with a certain degree of nagging logical force.) It will, I think, be instructive to approach what has been happening in western philosophy with the concept of truth through one of the most mature voices in it—that of Professor Bernard Williams. Two currents of ideas are very prominent in modern [western] thought and culture. On the one hand, there is an intense commitment to truthfulness — or at any rate, a pervasive suspiciousness, a readiness against being fooled, an eagerness to see through appearances to the real structures and motives that lie behind them. Always familiar in politics, it stretches to historical understanding, to the social sciences, and even to interpretation of discoveries

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and research in the natural sciences. Together with this demand for truthfulness, however, or (to put it less positively) this reflex against deceptiveness, there is an equally pervasive suspicion about truth itself: whether there is such a thing; if there is, whether it can be more than relative or subjective or something of that kind; altogether, whether we should bother about it, in carrying on our activities or in giving an account of them. These two things, the devotion to truthfulness and the suspicion directed to the idea of truth, are connected to one another. The desire for truthfulness drives a process of criticism which weakens the assurance that there is any secure or unqualifiedly stable truth. (Williams, 2002: 1)

Williams here states as clearly as possible the post-modernist or deconstructionist conundrum arising from the insistence, on the one hand, on truthfulness (“accuracy” and “sincerity”) of the enquirer and the non-existence of truth, on the other. The denial of truth may not go as far as the denial of many everyday truths which everybody recognizes; truths such as “Delhi is a very crowded city”, “May and June are usually the hottest months in Delhi”, “football is a more popular sport than bird-watching”, “rice is the staple food for most people in Northeast India”, “most middle-class homes use electric power”, “Mahatma Gandhi died in the year 1948”, “there are fewer joint families in urban India now than in the past”. But it is important to realize that there is truth beyond everyday truths—truths, for instance, in the academic disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology the sciences, and even literature (e.g. fiction and poetry). As Williams says, “while truthfulness has to be grounded in, and revealed in one’s dealings with everyday truths, it must go beyond truth as displayed in everyday truths. That itself is a truth, and academic authority will not survive if it does not acknowledge it”. (ibid., 12) If Gandhi was a philosopher in the professional disciplinary sense of philosophy, he would have endorsed the distinction between truthfulness and truth, and very importantly, the view that truthfulness must “go beyond truth as displayed in everyday truths”. But he would also have gone further and said that not just academic authority would survive if it weren’t so, but the world itself—with its long past, most of its present and, of course, the future would completely dismantle itself into figments of man’s imagination. The future, particularly, is the domain of the unknown—and, as Nietzsche says, “…it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—…even we knowers today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still trade our fire too from the flame lit by then thousand-year-old faith, the Christian faith which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine” (Nietzsche, 1974: 283). (For Nietzsche, “science” would include all painstaking epistemic activity). Nietzsche here uses almost Gandhi’s language; but of course Gandhi would say that it is not just a thousand-year-old faith; but groundless faith in truth (God) that makes knowledge possible at all. Although Gandhi was critical of history as practised by professional historians, his criticism had to do primarily with the absence of truthfulness rather than the absence of truth itself. There is truth about the past, and yet the most diligent and truthful (“accurate” and “sincere”) pursuit of it cannot encompass the whole or delve deep enough into its recesses—that is, still a matter of faith. The future is necessarily uncertain—to know the future is to turn it into the present which is an absurdity. What the future holds therefore is much more clearly a matter of faith in truth (God). (This last has much to do with Gandhi’s distrust of politics.)

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The answer to the question, “What is the source of moral authority”? is, therefore, “truthfulness and truth”.4 The moral life is a ceaseless pursuit of the truth about the other (one’s fellow traveller, if you like) and of oneself. Ahimsa, which, in its positive mode, is love (prem) is the only way in this pursuit. To love the other is also necessarily to be certain that one’s love is not sullied by selfishness of any kind; selfishness in love turns love into what it is not. Truth about the other is thus inalienably connected with truth about oneself. There is no way other than ahimsa to the truth of the other and of oneself. Gandhi also says that ahimsa is “infallible”; failure of one’s moral pursuit is, therefore, not the failure of ahimsa, but the failure in the achievement of ahimsa. Ahimsa is not the goal. Truth is the goal. But we have no means of realizing truth in human relationship except through the practice of ahimsa. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 91: 59) Ahimsa is always infallible. When, therefore, it appears to have failed, the failure is due to the inaptitude of the votary. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 96: 307)

It should be clear that for Gandhi, the moral life is achieved only as a result of painstaking effort. It requires the mindful spontaneity of the spinner working at the spinning wheel, the spontaneity of the slave’s total obedience to the master’s commands, of the child’s obedience to its parents, and the brahmachari’s noninstrumental practice of celibacy. The virtues—as mentioned in the hymn, Vaisnabha Janato,—are the substance of the moral life. The virtues cannot be practised for any end other than themselves; to do so would be to turn them into what they are not. Service is not service if it is done with any extraneous motive; a gift is not a gift if it is done in expectation of a return—it becomes an exchange initiative, or worse, a step in the direction of a possible trade relationship, whether open or hidden; honesty is not honesty if it is practised as a measure for the improvement of one’s image—merely to appear honest might be of much use; but it is honesty in the service of dishonesty, therefore not honesty at all. It is obvious, therefore, that it is only the rare human being that can achieve the total spontaneity of the moral life. Tilak was quite right in suggesting that such a rare human being should be called a sadhu. Tilak crucially also said that sadhus have no place in politics. He meant Gandhi primarily. Gandhi might not have appreciated at all being called a sadhu, but he did accept that politics—modern politics—is a practice in which morality does not figure except as a cover for activities which can only be a moral at best. What is modern politics then? Modern politics is chiefly political practice that may be covered under the description “liberal politics”. Although there may be a variety of such political practice, it is commonly a practice “where rules enable groups or individuals to pursue their legitimate interests” (Williams, 2002). Parliamentary democracy is one such political practice. We already know Gandhi’s scathing criticism of British parliamentary democracy. Some of the characteristics of such politics are (i) open rivalry between parties claiming to represent the interests of all citizens, or just groups of citizens; (ii) manifestos promising the pursuit of these interests and outlining how; (iii) electioneering asking for citizens’ vote (mandate) for a party or combination of parties to form a majority based government for a legitimately given period. Given our human

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world as it is, liberal politics also requires a nation (nation-state) within the territorial limits of which such politics can be practised, and this further requires the maintenance of the integrity of the territorial limits which would further be dependent on the provision of what is called “external” security—security from aggression by forces outside the territorial limits. The state would require internal security as well—security from conflicts within, which might threaten its integrity. External and internal security together may be necessary conditions for the sovereignty of the nation-state, and sovereignty is a much valued quality of every nation-state. Gandhi, as we know, was deeply immersed in politics of a somewhat different kind—the politics, we might say, of swaraj. Liberal politics touched this politics only tangentially. Swaraj had a twofold meaning: (i) complete freedom from colonial domination and (ii) total control over oneself—the achievement of a mindful spontaneity of one’s conduct that morality demanded (the kind of spontaneous control that the accomplished typist exercised over the keyboard). The second kind of swaraj is all important for a human being qua human being. It is not necessarily dependent on the first; it can be achieved, even if the latter is not. And the end of colonial domination does not imply that the second kind of freedom has also been achieved; but it may be an important first step. Colonial rule is based on the exploitation of the colonized people—exploitation of their land and their own (native) bodily, intellectual, and spiritual resources. To treat a nation and its people merely as means towards gains of the colonial power is morally unacceptable; and, it was, therefore, the duty of every Indian to oppose it and work towards its end, i.e. swaraj of the first kind. Politics—politics of swaraj—is therefore totally unavoidable. Gandhi believed that politics of swaraj is as liable to be morally tainted as the liberal politics of modernity. It was based on an ideal that lay in the future. The future is necessarily uncertain; and attachment to this ideal is likely to render violence as a means really possible. This was, of course, the reason why Gandhi opposed the political philosophy of Tilak. But he did think, pre-1920, that even this politics can be “purified” in a way for it to make it possible for a “sadhu” to engage in it. But post 1920, it was Gandhi’s stable position that politics as such is deeply implicated in what is morally unacceptable, and politics of swaraj is no exception. Purification of politics is therefore not a possibility. The big question, then, is: how is Gandhi’s deep immersion in politics to be explained? The explanation lies in the centrality that satyagraha acquired in Gandhi’s thinking and practice in the rest of his life. “Satyagraha” literally means “inflexible commitment to truth” and in Gandhi’s use it further means a practice that involves (i) total rejection of violence because violence necessarily obscures the truth, (ii) complete fearlessness on the part of the practitioner of satyagraha (satyagrahi), (iii) gift of fearlessness to the opponent, (iv) refraining from thought either of victory or defeat, and (v) unshakable faith in a new harmony. The satyagrahi can engage fully in the politics of swaraj without fear of being tainted by its inherent inclination towards corruption. Dipesh Chakrabarty and Rochona Majumdar say, “a satyagrahi’s duty to himself was therefore to ensure that he remained himself (emphasis mine) while fully immersed in political work. This protective work of “self on self”—in the same way as a fireman needs to know and wear his protective gear while dealing with fire—was the ever-incomplete exercise for which the Gita was a daily resource” (Chakrabarty &

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Majumdar, 2010: 346). I find the analogy with the fireman’s protective gear somewhat unfortunate. A satyagrahi’s commitment to his duty is not externally imposed, its fulfilment is internally perfected. Gandhi derived the concept of satyagraha from his close and, at the same time, creative reading of the Gita. The only protective shield needed is the Gita itself—the Gita in its internal presence as it permeates the space of the mind. The external sign of this is the physical Gita itself, a copy of which was carried by satyagrahi’s when they were part of a political mission. What about politics of the present day—liberal,—one might add—democratic, politics based on universal, adult suffrage with all its attendant requirements, e.g. a supreme law-making, and policy setting body like the parliament consisting of members periodically elected to it, political parties holding diverse visions of the ideal society putting up candidates for the membership of the supreme body; elected members carrying their respective party’s vision to the debates that take place in the parliament towards suitable laws for the society and policies towards the wellbeing of society and individuals. Gandhi was quite naturally profoundly sceptical of the politics of this variety. We have already noted his scathing criticism of British parliamentary politics of his time. But that apart from the fact that the primary motivation of politics of this kind is self-interest of individuals and groups, the accepted ways in which these interests are projected and the self-glorifications that accompany such projections—frequently verging on the vulgar—make politics quite plainly morally void. Besides, the frequent use of “satyagraha” as an epithet for protests of sundry kinds tends seriously to denude the idea of satyagraha of all its original meaning. If satyagraha has thus only a limited—if at all any—place in modern democratic politics, then, insofar as satyagraha is the central concept of Gandhi’s moral philosophy, Tilak’s dictum, “politics is not for sadhus” appears apt after all. Politics of swaraj, as we have seen, is different. Although it involved the awakening of the whole nation, and, therefore effective and wide spread communication, and, relatedly, it was directed at a future aim, and, thus, vulnerable to intrusions of ahimsa, satyagraha had a genuine place in it. The smaller and limited—although highly symbolic—protests which were part of the movement could include satyagrahis whose most stringent, yet free, self-discipline acted as examples to the rest of the protesters, and it was thus possible to keep the protests within ethical limits; and protests could be discontinued at the advent of violence whose lurking shadow was always unmistakably there. But modern-day politics is, as it were, hydra headed seeking fulfilment of multiple, frequently conflicting desires, which encompass the entire arena of political activity. It is impossible, as Gandhi realized, to purify this politics. Hence, Gandhi’s advice to the Congress Party to dissociate itself from politics and devote itself to a life of service. Everyday, here and now life of human relationships, lit by rays of light from the real past is the true arena of the moral life. The ideality, as opposed to the reality, of the future makes the future a dubious shadowy sphere which the light of morality cannot quite penetrate. This would be, I think, a correct summary description of Gandhi’s moral philosophy. But this would seem to exclude activities which are not quite everyday, activities which are somewhat extraordinary such as the creative act of composing a poem or a fictional work, or a musical work of extraordinary beauty, or

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creating an ashram of extreme simplicity and accommodation, or making a painting of great depth of meaning such as the Guerinika by Picasso—activities which Tagore would have assigned to the “surplus” in man, or Kant would have placed under the class of totally disinterested—(meaning free of any self-interest)—human creations. It would, I think, be fair to say that Gandhi was not deeply familiar with the complex world of the arts, but also that he felt in his heart the possibility of its great value. His deep respect for Tagore was proof of this. Tagore was the great Gurudev for him—a Teacher in whom he had complete trust.

Notes 1. In Western thought the difference between the mind and the soul—when this is accepted—is a matter of subtle difference within the same entity. 2. Bhagavad Gita, verse 25, Chapter II. 3. See above (p. 6). 4. While I have borrowed the idea of ‘truth and truthfulness’ from Williams, my application of it to the understanding of Gandhi is totally different from Williams’ own exposition of it. Williams takes a qualified (non-reductive) naturalistic view of it. My own view—no doubt via Nietzsche—is obviously non-naturalistic.

References Chakrabarty, D., & Majumdar, R. (2010). Gandhi’s Gita and politics as such. Modern Intellectual History, 7(02), 335–353. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244310000107 (Published online: 01 July 2010). Devji, F. (2013). Morality in the shadow of politics. In S. Kapila, & F. Devji (Eds.), Political Thought in Action (pp. 107–126). Cambridge University Press. Gandhi, M. K. 1888–1948. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (98 Vols). Accessed October 2022 from https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/collected-works-of-mah atma-gandhi-volume-1-to-98.php Nietzsche, F. (1974).The Gay Science: with a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs (with Commentary by W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Vintage Books. Williams, B. (2002). Truth & Truthfulness. Princeton University Press. Williams, B. (2008). Shame and Necessity. University of California Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1999).Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (C. K. Ogden With an Introduction by Bertrand Russell, Trans.). Dover Publications.

Chapter 6

Gandhi’s ‘True’ Politics and the Integrity of the Good Life: Satya, Swaraj, Tapasya, and Satyagraha Bindu Puri

Abstract This essay will suggest that Gandhi’s true/real politics can be best understood in terms of the integrity of his ideas. This integrity refers to the fact that Gandhi was a man of integrity but more importantly to the fact that there was an integrity between his ideas and practice and between his ideas themselves. The continuities that we read in Gandhi—between politics and religion, politics religion and morality, the human being and nature and the past and present—can best be unpacked if one were to understand this integrity. This essay will argue that one way to understand it would be to see that Gandhi’s arguments in economics, politics, religion, and even aesthetics drew from his fundamental moral convictions. Accordingly, the first part of this essay will suggest that Gandhi’s politics was premised on his integrity, i.e. on the idea that a human being ought to live an undivided life integrated around and by a commitment to his/her fundamental moral beliefs. The second part of the essay will argue then that a truly meaningful philosophical critique of Gandhi’s politics would only be one which could demonstrate how and where Gandhi’s politics failed to remain integrated with his fundamental moral convictions, i.e. which demonstrated how the integrity between Gandhi’s ideas themselves and between his ideas and practice broke so to say. In this context, the second section of the essay will bring in and philosophically examine Ajay Skaria’s, (Skaria, 2016) argument that satyagraha as a religion of the question (always seeking the truth which the satyagrahi did not know) involved the use of force and the imposition of the thekana/proper on the other. The essay will discuss this critique with a view to examine if it demonstrates that Gandhi’s practice disrupted his integrity both of his character and that between his ideas. Keywords Integrity · Continuities · Swaraj · Swabhava · Tapasya · Satyagraha · Thekana · Real politics · Power politics · Coercion · Death of God

B. Puri (B) Centre for Philosophy, School of social sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. Miri and B. Puri, Gandhi for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3792-9_6

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The opening essay in this book has suggested that the inseparability of ahimsa/ non-violence from truth, drawn (no matter how strange it sounds), from the warlike illustration in the Gita came to define Gandhi’s difficulty with (and rejection of) modern politics which he often described as “power politics” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 77: 376). The chapter had closed on the thought that Gandhi shared an emphasis on practise and indeed on a continuity between politics and ethics with Aristotle. Indeed like Aristotle, Gandhi argues that ethics and politics cannot be read as discontinuous with one another. This essay will suggest that the continuities which characterize Gandhi’s thought and politics (gestured towards earlier) drew from the integrity in his life, his ideas, and between his ideas and practise. Going further, the essay will argue that to understand Gandhi’s politics, as indeed to understand Gandhi at all, one needs to philosophically unpack this integrity. For as famously argued by Bilgrami (2006), “integrity” in Gandhi refers not only to his personal integrity and to the integrity between his practice and ideas; but to the fact that those ideas themselves were highly integrated; In reading Gandhi …I have been struck by the integrity of his ideas. I don’t mean simply that he was a man of integrity in the sense that he tried to make his actions live up to his ideals, though perhaps in fact he tried more than most to do so. I mean something more abstract: that his thought itself was highly integrated, his ideas about very specific political strategies flowed(and in his mind necessarily flowed) from ideas which were very remote from politics. They flowed from the most abstract epistemological and methodological commitments. (Bilgrami, 2006: 249)

I will suggest that Gandhi’s specific concepts and methods in politics were integrated with the rest of his ideas and drew from his fundamental insights into the swabhava/ownmost orientation of a human being and the nature of the good human life. This meant that Gandhi’s integrity referred to the fact that his ideas and practice flowed from his fundamental belief that human life ought to be lived from within an inner moral core which guided all the diverse pursuits of an individual moral agent. Perhaps one might articulate these moral convictions under the following points; 1. An unshakeable faith in the moral governance of the world well brought out by Gandhi’s famous equation between truth and God. Some words of explanation might be merited here even though the priority Gandhi gave to the truth was not anything strange or even new. Neither (to pre-empt the discussion in Sect. 6.2) did such a priority indicate an “apprehension of the death of God” (Skaria, 2016: viii) any more than the Upanishads which had described Brahman as sat/truth, chit/ consciousness, and anand/bliss indicated the death of Ishvara/God as a being transcendent to the world and to man. As Gandhi argued; …for me truth is the sovereign principle, which includes numerous other principles. This truth is not only truthfulness in word, but truthfulness in thought also, and not only the relative truth of our conception, but the Absolute truth, the Eternal Principle that is God. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 44: 91)

Gandhi had spoken of the distinction between Absolute truth as God/sat which was the end of the good human life; and relative truth, i.e. the virtue or yama of truth

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by which the individual lived out a good life progressing towards truth as an end/ telos. Like Aristotle who thought that eudaimonia/happiness was constituted by the practise of the virtues over a complete life, Gandhi too, thought that God/truth as the end of the good life could only be arrived at though a practise of the virtues of truth, non-violence, non-possession, etc., across a complete life. This Gandhian distinction between absolute and relative truth has often been misunderstood, and it lends itself to philosophical misreadings of Gandhi. In this context, it seems significant to anticipate some part of Ajay Skaria’s (2016) critique of Gandhi for he has argued that; It is not as though the satyagrahi, the practitioner of satyagraha, already knows or possesses satya and seeks only to enforce or spread it; rather, the satyagrahi is engaged in a “quest for satya”. And this quest is also a questioning because satyagrahis do not know what satya is—they are only constantly aware of being part of and yet abysally separated from satya, of striving to be seized by satya. (Skaria, 2016: ix)

This interpretation of the satyagrahi/soldier of truth is significant; because it demonstrates Skaria’s difficulty with, and inability to understand, Gandhi’s distinction between Absolute and relative truth. The satyagrahi—literally one who is firm/ agrahi on the truth—was to practise the virtues (relative truth in this case) consistently. Yet this did not mean that he/she did not know the truth and was “abysally separated from satya, of striving to be seized by satya” (Ibid.) any more than human beings who progress towards being better than they are could be described as abyssally/ unfathomably separated from goodness. Surely, there is nothing abyssal in this striving and some like Kant may say that such striving is what constitutes goodness; or in Gandhi’s case, truth. That which the satyagrahi and all moral agents strive to realize is truth/God/good, and this effort or striving is by the very nature of the case a progressive journey. For it seems a part of being good or truthful to be able to think that one can be better or more truthful than one is. Consider that if one were to think of having arrived at Absolute truth as a telos; a moral smugness might seem to dismantle one’s truthfulness/goodness itself. It might then appear misleading to argue (as Skaria does) that the satyagrahi practising truth as a yama/cardinal virtue, and thereby striving for Absolute truth or God as a telos; was to be understood as practising a “religion of the question” (Ibid., viii) since such a person did not know (and could not claim to have seen) Absolute truth as God. To understand the satyagrahi’s practise of truth in relation to the telos, i.e. Absolute truth/God, one might reflect on the relationship between Gandhi’s description of the yama/niyama as cardinal and casual virtues; and the word “vrata/vow” which was the word commonly used for them in the Jain and Yoga Sutras . Gandhian yamas and niyamas were the vratas/vows of classical Indian philosophy which he had reinterpreted by introducing the term “virtue” derived from the Greek word “arete”/ virtue. Gandhi spoke of the yama/niyama as “cardinal and casual virtues” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 33: 448) or dispositions of character. To bring out Skaria’s spectacular misreading of the satyagrahi’s “abyssal separation from satya”, one needs to go back to the connection Gandhi had made between the yama niyama as vratas and what he called cardinal and casual virtues. Gandhi had often employed the word “vrata/vow” traditionally used for the yama/ niyama in connection with them. However in Gandhian ethics, while the term “vrata/

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vow” enriched one’s understanding and practise of the yamas/niyama’s, “vrata” was not an exact translation of yama and niyama. One might of course ask why Gandhi should have related the cardinal and casual virtues to the taking of vows? And find the answer in another question: ‘how should a moral aspirant be inculcated into a life of virtue?’ Which Gandhi would answer ‘by taking a vow to practise the virtue concerned’: “To do at any cost what one ought to do constitutes a vow”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 50: 136)

It might appear then that Gandhi’s virtues were also vows; or rather that the moral aspirant could cultivate these virtues by taking vows so that the individual will to do the right thing was thereby strengthened. For Gandhi then virtues like truth were dispositions of character and it was essential to practise them by taking vows so as to progressively develop the ability to ‘see’ things and others clearly as they were/ existed in truth without the distortions caused by ego-driven deceptions. Skaria is perhaps wrong to think that satyagraha is a questioning because satyagrahis do not know what satya is. Satyagrahis engage in satyagraha precisely because they know what truth is in that context and need to firmly affirm it (practise truth constantly) so that such firmness/practise as a vrata/vow helps to confirm truth as a disposition of their character. At the same time, their non-violence (as the path to truth and as a humility/egolessness) prevents them from imposing it on the truth-untruths of the ‘other’ whom they face with agarha/respectful firmness. Satyagraha then is not, as Skaria thinks, a religion of the question rather it is a religion of agraha or respectful firmness on (truth as) the answer to the question which is posed by the absolutely equal other’s dissent/truth-untruth. One can understand this better perhaps if one would think of how one might remain firm upon telling the truth in the family when the absolutely equal siblings refuse to do the same. One might view one’s responsibility to truth in such a context as remaining respectfully firm on truth and owning up to the consequences of telling the truth oneself. 2. Gandhi’s second moral conviction was that human beings by their innermost nature/swabhava (and because they are made in the image/pratibimb of God) have a unilateral obligation to own kinship with each other and with the natural world. This led him to emphasize non-violence as coming natural to human beings; for by virtue of their very constitution, such beings would respond to the human and non-human ‘others’ as if they were part of the same family. As noted in an earlier chapter, Gandhi spoke of “what is natural to man” (Gandhi, 1888– 1948, 36: 3) and the “special virtue” (Ibid., 4) of the human “species” (Ibid.) in a set of two essays in Young India to which there will be occasion to refer later in this essay; The truth is that my ethics not only permit me to claim but require me to own kinship with not merely the ape but the horse and the sheep, the lion and the leopard, the snake, and the scorpion. Not so need these kinsfolk regard themselves. The hard ethics which rule my life, and I hold ought to rule that of every man and woman, impose this unilateral obligation upon us. And it is so imposed because man alone is made in the image of God. (Ibid., 5)

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3. Gandhi’s third moral belief was that a good human life is a life spent in the practice of the virtues (the yama/niyama of Patanjali and the Jain sutras) rather than in the holding of beliefs about absolute reality/God that need not be reflected across the practices of one’s life in the empirical world or the vyavaharika satta. Gandhi had specified that the moral agent’s practice ought to reflect a commitment to the virtues of satya/truth, ahimsa/non-violence, aparigraha/ non-possession, asteya/non-stealing, and brahmacharya/celibacy. He argued that these virtues were integrated with each other and needed to be practiced across religious, economic, and political activities in an essentially integrated human life. 4. The fourth Gandhian moral conviction was an uncompromising faith in an absolute equality between all manner of being. This Gandhian belief followed from his commitment to a metaphysics of oneness or non-dualism and it led to a conception of an equality significantly different from the liberal equality before law. For consider that a Gandhian equality was an equality which had to be practiced as an equal deference towards all. As already noted these four convictions specified Gandhi’s fundamental moral vision and he believed that human life ought to be lived (undivided by the public private dichotomy) in accordance with these commitments and that these would guide all of the individual’s diverse pursuits. In the spirit of this integrity, Gandhi emphasized a continuity between the past and the present, between the religious and the moral, between the moral-religious and the political, and between man and nature. Before philosophically engaging with what such an integrity could mean for Gandhi’s politics, one might consider why such integrity could matter in (and to) the contemporary world which on the face of it is marked by change, discontinuity, and disruption. One way in which the idea of integrity might seem relevant would be to consider what it might have to do with goodness. In a certain almost obvious sense, the good human life seems to be the opposite of the disintegrated, piecemeal, or sporadic. One might in fact think of such a life as a continuous engagement with moral ideals so that all of the good man’s actions flow from being at home in the life of goodness. One cannot, for instance, perhaps think consistently of goodness as episodic and reflected only in the private moments of a good person’s life. Consider Aristotle’s argument in the Nichomachean Ethics that one cannot judge a life good or happy without looking at it’s entire course for one swallow does not make a summer. Perhaps yet another way in which one might think of why integrity should matter to human life and to human life in our world; might be to consider how integrity matters to one of the pursuits that the human being engages with/in from his/her earliest years and indeed pursues to the very end of his/her days. This central enduring pursuit is education and again in a certain—almost obvious sense—integrity and continuity become important to the idea of an education. Consider that the value of education as a specific human practice lies in becoming able to unravel life’s complexities from within an integrated world view made possible by getting educated. By exploring issues, ideas and methods across the humanities and the liberal arts, and the natural

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and social sciences, a student learns to read critically, write cogently, and think broadly in a manner so as to become thereby enabled to navigate the human condition across the world’s most complex issues. Consider if this can be done by moving piecemeal between different disciplines-economics, art, history, political science, philosophy, literature—without being able to make connections between the disciplines of enquiry. Without so to say making connections and seeing complex issues in continuity with (and across) disciplinary boundaries so as to navigate the human predicament. Again consider what it would mean to live a life without becoming so able to unravel life’s complexities from within an integrated world view. Such a life would perhaps be one where one lived piecemeal and decided things on the basis of that which appeared best at the moment. Yet that best could not even be measured by utility; for a considered pursuit of utility would require integrity between that idea and the practises of one’s life. One might consider that a life lived without any sense of integrity between one’s ideas and between those ideas and one’s practise would be a life lived piecemeal and characterized by flux which is a word that perhaps that best describes modernity. As Joseph Margolis had put it the contemporary world is indeed the “most hospitable of ages in endorsing the theme of the flux” (Margolis, 1998). In this one might argue that the contemporary world has moved as far away from ancient traditions as it has (paradoxically enough) from Kant the father of modern philosophy. For recall that Kant too believed in integrity; in that, however, tempted by empirical history, he resisted the idea that reason has an intrinsically historical structure. Kant accepted in fact the complete transparency of the structure of the knowable world—a transparency which was guaranteed by the categories—he believed in the unitariness and universality of rationality and the transcendental unity of apperception as the essential centre of the human self. In philosophical divergence from Kant, the father of modernity, the dominant philosophical thinking in contemporary times endorses a world where flux replaces an integrity in ideas. This is a world which is most inclined therefore to embrace doctrines that suggest that the world is cognitively intransparent. It follows then, perhaps naturally enough, that in the contemporary world attributions of real structures are seen to indissolubly implicate the collective bias and collective resources of enquiring societies and horizontal prejudice and blindness are seen to be the feature of the natural history of human enquiry. This last idea, that attributions of real structures are seen to indissolubly implicate collective bias, is perhaps reflected in Skaria’s understanding (and critique) of Gandhi so that his critique fails perhaps to appreciate that Gandhi and Kant both stand at equi-distance from the idea of a cognitively intransparent world.

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6.1 Gandhi’s Integrity; the Practice of a Politics Integrated with Morality, a Moral Religion and the Natural World How then did Gandhi think of a politics which remained integrated with his fundamental moral convictions and which retained some continuity with the past of the community as much as with nature? I will suggest here that Gandhi had three fundamental insights about politics that made it possible for him to engage in a politics integrated with his fundamental moral notions. However before specifying these insights, it is important to recall that since Gandhi saw religion and morality as continuous—stating that truth is the best name of God—his politics was integrated with a moral rather than with any sectarian religion. This religion was largely built around what he considered the laws of the species, i.e. truth and non-violence and a belief in an ordered moral government of the interconnected universe. This integrity (between politics and a moral religion) somewhat dismantled the liberal divide between religion and politics which was contemporaneous with that between the private and the public in liberal polity. It was perhaps the continuity between religion and politics, between the private and public and between nature and the human world which put Gandhi at most distance from a liberal politics. This becomes evident if one would only recall the oft quoted liberal arguments confirming the division between religion and politics and relegating religion to private moments in individual life. One might recall for instance that Locke’s seminal essay in 1667 had argued that religious beliefs are “purely speculative opinions” (Locke, 1997a: 137) and religious worship “is a thing wholly between God and … the individual”. Locke was clear that being less than rational (and purely speculative) religion should be confined to an individual’s private affairs. Striking a philosophically contrary note Gandhi thought of an alternative politics which could be practiced across a life in which the private and public aspects (religion and politics) were not discontinuous after the Lockean liberal manner. It is important to note here that Gandhi’s politics was not only antithetical to the divide between religion and politics but also equally antithetical to the liberal divide of the rational from the non-rational which led to the powerful anthropocentricism of modernity and modern politics. To pre-empt the argument of the second part of this essay (which examine’s Skaria’s critique), one might recall that Skaria (among others) acknowledges this and notes that the absence of a divide between the human and natural world in Gandhi leads to the rejection of reason as a measure, and this had consequences on his understanding of equality; …: there can be no measure that sustains an equality between beings so different as the ant, scorpion, and human. This is why the equality of the minor is incomprehensible from within a liberal framework, which is premised on some shared measure, such as the concept of autonomy (Skaria, 2016: 11–12)

The following insights then became central to Gandhi’s practice of a moral politics (where the private and public were integrated together and which was therefore ) powerfully alternative to the predominant liberal politics of his (and our) times; 1. A distinction between “real” and “power” politics.

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2. A continuity between the past and present and between the human and non-human world. Many Gandhian concepts seemed to have drawn from this continuity— the swabhawa of the human being, swaraj/freedom, tapasya and an absolute and “immeasurable” (ibid., 7) equality of being. 3. The idea that there was no distinction between means and end. It is significant to note that this last insight implied that the method/means to be followed in arriving at the end/goal of this true/real politics had to be in keeping with the first two insights mentioned above. That is Gandhi’s method/means to engage in a true politics would have to be one that abjured power politics and remained continuous with moral insights shared across traditions but uniquely unpacked by the tradition of one’s ancestors. Gandhi identified these shared moral values as ahimsa and truth and described this method (one in which there was no distinction between means and end) as “satyagraha”. The following sub-sections will discuss the three critical insights that enabled Gandhi to practice a politics in continuity with his moral and religious beliefs and across a life undivided into distinct spaces by the private and the public.

6.1.1 Gandhi: Real Politics and Power Politics The integrity in Gandhi is evidenced from the manner in which his ideas in religion, politics, economics, and even aesthetics, followed from his fundamental moral and epistemological positions. Significantly, this integrity is at its most visible in the distinction Gandhi had made between his own real/true politics and “power politics”, i.e. the liberal politics of his day. This last (as already mentioned) was predominantly built around the idea of governance as the product of the social contract and no matter how differently that contract and state of nature were conceived (in Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes for instance) across the differences of interpretation; the contract itself remained purely political and negotiated between citizens in the public domain. Gandhi was familiar enough with the liberal understanding of politics as a subject of the British Empire and understood its close connection with the practices of securing power to regulate national life through elections and representative bodies. This familiarity makes it important to look into the reasons which could explain why Gandhi should have chosen to make such a distinction. Why should Gandhi have found it necessary to think of what politics meant and designate his own politics as “real politics”, thereby differentiating it from a politics of liberal democracies with which he was familiar? As already noted Gandhi was sufficiently well acquainted with the liberal politics of parliamentary democracy and during his years in South Africa, he had undertaken many lobbying missions to London to represent the interests of Indians living there. These visits had helped to acquaint him with the functioning of parliamentary democracy and liberal political institutions. Such familiarity was surprisingly well reflected in a vehement critique of liberal politics in 1909. In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi

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rejected the idea that free India should be built along the lines of a liberal politics which replicated colonial politics and systems of government. He had argued against the institution of Parliament, the practice of seeking power through elections, the role of newspapers in party politics, and the role of law and the courts as the central institutions to dispense third party justice in the state. Gandhi’s difficulties with liberal politics and with the professions that inhabited the liberal state became evident in his critique of modernity or “modern civilization” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 259) in the Hind Swaraj. Taking the stance of the editor in that text Gandhi associated liberal politics with modernity and modern civilization and stated clearly that his alternative politics had rejected the acceptance of “English rule without the Englishman” (ibid., 255); …the Government of England is not desirable and not worth copying by us. (ibid.)

At one level, this rejection implied that Gandhi was critical of the institutions of government in liberal democracies; and at another level, it meant (as Gandhi explained) that he was critical of liberal political practices which sought to regulate national life through a system of party politics and elections to centralized representative bodies; The condition of England is pitiable. I pray to God that India may never be in that plight. That which you consider to be the Mother of Parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. Both these are harsh words, but exactly fit the bill. That Parliament has never of its own accord done a single good thing, hence I have compared it to a sterile woman. The natural condition is such that, without outside pressure, it can do nothing. (ibid., 256)

However, these and other difficulties which Gandhi had identified with liberal democratic politics, its practices such as “the spur of petitions” (ibid.), and elections to serve “the public weal” (ibid.) were only symptomatic of a deeper malaise. Gandhi attributed that malaise as a “condition … due to modern civilization” (ibid., 258). It was in explaining the problem that infected modernity/modern civilization that Gandhi brought out his central arguments against modern liberal politics and the philosophical presuppositions of liberal philosophy on which such a politics (and liberal modernity) was based. Indeed Gandhi makes two important arguments in Hind Swaraj which explain why the practice of liberal politics seemed problematic to him and both are closely related to each other. The first Gandhian argument emphasized that liberal politics (and modern civilization on which such politics is based) takes a one-sided view of the self, thereby breaking the integrity or wholeness of individual life by denying the relevance of an inner life in/to life in the public domain. From the relegation of inner life and its religio-moral considerations (as speculative and less than rational) to private space it followed that modern politics should create a bonsai like compression of the self in the public domain so that the citizen came to be seen as a purely physical entity. Liberal politics of power (or “power politics” as Gandhi described it) revolved around such a self and naturally enough sought only the bodily well-being of citizens. Let us first consider what state of things is described by the word “civilization”. Its true test lies in the fact that people living in it make bodily welfare the object of life… (ibid., 259).

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Gandhi saw clearly that liberal politics not only believed that it was possible—but also thought that it was necessary—to so break the integrity of individual life into the public and private. This might become apparent if one recalls that this divide in modern politics was philosophically grounded upon an uncertainty or scepticism about religious truths in liberal philosophy. Mill had made his argument for tolerance in On Liberty, on the grounds that the truths of religion are not certain and that believers ought to know they are not infallible about matters that concern them deeply (Mill, 2006: 24). Locke (as mentioned earlier) had also agreed that religion is less than rational; For faith can never convince us of anything that contradicts our knowledge. Because, though faith be founded on the testimony of God (which cannot lie), yet we cannot have an assurance of the truth of it greater than our own knowledge. (Locke, 1997b: 249)

It followed then that liberals should have argued that religion must not be brought into the public space and must be kept for the private aspects of individual life; Religious worship, being that homage which I pay to that God…being an action or commerce passing only between God and myself, hath in its own nature no reference at all to my governor, or to my neighbour, and so necessarily produces no action which disturbs the community. (Locke, 1997a: 138)

Coming back to Gandhi’s second argument against liberal politics, one finds that it was closely related to the first one. Having identified that the central premise of modern civilization and liberal philosophy was the differentiation of private from public life Gandhi insightfully argued that it was this differentiation which had banished religio-moral considerations from the liberal public space; This civilization takes note neither of morality nor of religion. Its votaries calmly state that their business is not to teach religion. Some even consider it to be a superstitious growth. ...there can be no inducement to morality. Civilization seeks to increase bodily comfort, and it fails miserably even in doing so. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 261)

Both of the above-mentioned Gandhian difficulties with liberal politics were intimately interconnected. For the relationship between the idea that an individual’s inner life was of no concern to public political space which was solely concerned with the self as a bodily being; and the banishment of religio-moral considerations from public life followed from each other. Gandhi brought out some of these connections in Hind Swaraj arguing that once religion was banished from the public life of the citizen whose inner life was confined to his/her private space, “there can be no inducement to morality” (ibid.) in public political space. This central Gandhian insight perhaps receives confirmation from the fact that despite Kant (and philosophers after him), there is little room for moral arguments in modern liberal public political space. Such an insight might indeed find support from a figure closer to our times—that of the philosopher John Rawls—who identified this difficulty and tried to address it in the formulation of political liberalism by making some room for religio-moral arguments in the domain of public reason and in liberal public space through the idea of the overlapping consensus (Rawls, 2005). However, Rawls’ distinguished between political and comprehensive moral conceptions1 restricting the scope and

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area of overlap in the overlapping consensus to purely political values which had no concern with values that governed human life taken as a whole. Since Gandhi saw the private and public aspects of a good human life as integrated around (and by) a devotion to truth, he sought comprehensive rather than purely political moral concepts/reasons to prevail in both the private and public spheres of an individual life; Devotion to this truth is the sole justification for our existence. All our activities should be centred in truth. Truth should be the very breath of our life… (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 49: 383)

Gandhi had argued that the conception of the liberal politics of his day (concerned with the material life of the citizen in public space); could not induce human beings to be moral so far as their life in the public, and the practice of politics was concerned. As he wrote in Hind Swaraj, Parliament does “things merely for party advantage” (ibid., 257) and members of Parliament “have neither real honesty nor a living conscience” (ibid., 258) though in their private lives, the “mode of thought” of the individual English man/women was “not inherently immoral” (ibid., 261). Gandhi’s arguments sought to identify a central difficulty with liberal politics, and with modernity, on which that politics was grounded; and this, simply put,was that such a politics was(in Gandhi’s view) based upon the disruption of the integrity of individual human life . It was this discontinuity and breaking up of what was essentially interconnected in human qua human life that led to the problem of modern politics. The problem was put clearly by Gandhi; Human life being an undivided whole, no line can ever be drawn between its different compartments, nor between ethics and politics. (Prabhu and Rao 2007: 101)

The question of course is how would life be lived (and politics practised) if it was not divided into compartments, after the modern fashion? Gandhi had thought about this and he believed that it would be integrated around a devotion to truth; To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of truth face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 44: 467)

Since Gandhi believed that it was not possible to conceive politics as divorced from a moral non-sectarian religion it became imperative for him to distinguish the politics that he was engaged in (based on the idea that human life was essentially integrated across its various pursuits) from the politics of liberal democratic practise. In a speech to the Gandhi Sewa Sangh on February 22, 1940, Gandhi explained the difference between “power politics” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 77: 376) and his own politics which he described as “real Politics” (ibid., 379); Hence, it is that we have deliberately abjured power politics. If while remaining in the Sangh, we wanted to enter into power politics we should have done so openly. For that matter, we ought to have changed even the character of the Sangh… We used politics to put our principles into practice. Now after some experience, we are renouncing politics. The

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politics which we are renouncing is the politics of acquiring positions of power within the Congress. We cannot take part in this politics. I am not talking about an individual; I am talking about the Sangh. Power politics has no place in the Sangh. An individual with a natural inclination and qualification may remain in politics. But this power politics is such a dreadful snare that even individuals may have to quit it. Their non-violence would be put to the severest test there. They too will quit when they have some bitter experiences. But what I am saying today applies only to the Sangh. The Sangh must definitely renounce the Congress Committees, that is, elections and power politics. …The Gandhi Seva Sangh has come into existence for the purpose of carrying on the constructive programme. That alone is real politics. We have to lend glory to this real politics by renouncing our rights. What do we care if they do not call it politics? We shall remain within the Congress fold but keep ourselves away from power and elections. (ibid., 376–379)

Gandhi clearly spoke here of a true/real politics which was different from the liberal “power politics”. Gandhi’s real politics was organized around truth and an engagement with service or (as seen above) the “constructive programme” (ibid.). He was clear that such an alternative politics, a “real politics”(ibid.), would be one where the participants would not have to live out an individual life in compartmentalized divisions. They would live their life through all its pursuits—religious, economic, and political—in devotion to truth. In Gandhian politics, this devotion would ensure complete transparency in all that the participants thought and did; and (as brought out in the case of the Gandhi Seva Sangh) such transparency would be reflected in an engagement with politics for its own sake as service (both a means and the end of real politics) rather than as a purely instrumental activity engaged in—not for itself as an end—but as a means to acquire power and wealth. This meant that real politics would be one in which participants did not seek goods external to politics, i.e. power won through elections and the goods brought by such power. Rather those engaged in real politics would seek goods internal to the practise of politics, i.e. service/sewa (and engagement in several aspects of nation building enumerated in the constructive programme) for its own sake. Gandhi had also spoken of the construction of representative institutions in free India around such a real politics; Parliament is indeed barren. I do not imagine that its nature can change in India. I live, however, in the hope that our Parliament will only remain barren and not give birth to a wicked son. I cannot abandon practical considerations. The ideal is one only, namely Ramarajya. But where can we find Rama? The journalist says, “whom the people approve”. People means Parliament and, in our view, whomsoever the Parliament approves a virtuous man or woman. I am suggesting many ways to ensure that the voice of Parliament is really the voice of the people and not that of hired voters. With this end in view, I am searching for a device which will enable us to listen to the voice of the entire people. All systems are bound to be defective. We are looking for a system which will yield maximum benefit to India. Good men can transform a bad system into a good one—like the wise housewife who transforms dust into grains. Wicked men can misuse the best of systems and make it defective, like a foolish housewife who allows bright food grains to decay into dust. I am therefore on the look-out for good men in India and employing devices to sort out such men. But what can a man do? He can only make an honest effort. The fruit lies in the hands of God. The efforts of many, and not one, are required for securing the desired fruit. Many other factors determine the fruit. Therefore, “one step is enough” for us. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 29: 36)

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The invoking of individual responsibility by the reference to the limitation of action to the context one was in (“one step is enough”) brought out Gandhi’s own efforts of engaging in politics as service and setting up an alternative system of government where decentralization became the “device which will enable us to listen to the voice of the entire people” (ibid.). In such a system, closeness to the context became central with the idea of representation in politics moving out in “oceanic” (Parel, 2010:181) circles from the village to the nation. One can get a sense of what such a politics meant for Gandhi only by going back to his central idea of life as an integral whole. It was because the different aspects of life were essentially interconnected and because the human being was seeking to see truth (significantly as a freedom from the ego and ego-directed projects of individual aggrandizement) through all the activities he/she pursued; that politics had to be rethought as “in terms of social and moral progress” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 92: 229) of the people/praja that made up the nation and thereafter of humanity. What could be signified by speaking about such a life and, in the present context, of a politics organized around truth? One might consider that quite apart from truth as a moral absolute or God, the idea that all life’s activities are organized around a search for truth, suggests an absolute translucency/transparency in one’s life. In that one is clear and indeed honest about one’s motives, means and the ends one pursues. Such transparency and clarity rules out all kinds of deception and therefore wrong doing. For it might seem apparent that wrong doing can only be sustained if one deceives both oneself and others about its presence. Transparency as seen earlier is aided by smaller institutions and attention to context and hence Gandhi’s real politics emphasized decentralization in institution building. For the very same reason and that of the dangers of inattention to the immediate context in the interest of truth—one might see that Gandhi was critical of the colonial courts and of “third party” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 276) justice. This interaction between politics and the rest of an individual’s pursuits, significantly, between politics, religion, and morality, was made possible not only because Gandhi had rethought what politics ought to mean but also (as noted earlier) because he had rethought the meaning of “religion”. On this view, the “religion” which “should pervade every one of our actions…does not mean sectarianism. It means a belief in ordered moral government of the universe… This religion transcends Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc. It does not supersede them it harmonizes them and gives them reality” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 77: 292). Or as he put it explicitly; My religion is Hinduism which, for me, is religion of humanity and includes the best of all the religions known to me... I am being led to my religion through truth and non-violence, i.e. love in the broadest sense. I often describe my religion as religion of truth. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 66: 112)

Gandhi’s moral religion which was to be followed alike in the private and public aspects of an individual life was understood (as already noted) as making for the integrity of that life by organizing all activities in consonance with the search for “truth or God”;

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I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part in politics. The whole gamut of man’s activities today constitutes an indivisible whole. You cannot divide social, economic, political, and purely religious work into watertight compartments. I do not know any religion apart from human activity. It provides a moral basis to all other activities which they would otherwise lack, reducing life to a maze of sound and fury signifying nothing. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 74: 307)

It was this notion of life as a “maze of sound and fury signifying nothing” (ibid.), i.e. as a flux; and the related notion of morality as concerned with a criterionless choice in such a flux that Gandhi was juxtaposing against his moral religion and religious politics. Of course this religious politics was contextualized in a life lived from within an integrated world view built around truth as a realism in all of life’s pursuits and ahimsa or non-violence/love as the only path to truth.

6.1.2 Continuity with the Past and with the Non-human World: Absolute Equality, Swabhawa, Swaraj, and Tapasya At the start of Sect. 6.1, I had identified three insights which became central to Gandhi’s practice of a moral politics as a politics which was powerfully alternative to the predominant liberal politics of his (and our) times. The first insight that of the distinction between real and power politics has been taken up in the last sub-section, and the second insight mentioned there, i.e. the sense of continuity between the past and present and that between the human and non-human world will be taken up in this sub-section. This last point has attracted much critique from those who have read Gandhi as exemplifying the cognitive intransparency and flux that best describes our times. Gandhi’s sense of an integrity between the past and present; and between humanity and the natural world has indeed been read by commentators (Skaria, 2016 among others) as dismantling liberal reason/autonomy as the measure of equality and confirming his complicity in cognitive intransparency, thereby imposing collective biases and, horizontal prejudice and blindness, as the tyranny of the “thekana [rightful place]” (Skaria, 2016: 23) on the minor. Accordingly, Gandhi’s sense of continuity with the past ought to be discussed in some detail, and Sect. 6.1.2.1 will examine this continuity with a view to evaluating if it could, as Skaria (ibid.) has argued, serve to compromise Gandhi’s moral integrity. In the course of this discussion, there will be reference to some of Gandhi’s fundamental moral conceptions which seem to have been framed in continuity with the past and tradition. It is significant that these conceptions—absolute immeasurable equality/samata, swabhava, swaraj, and tapasya—became somewhat central to his alternative moral politics. Section 6.1.3 will go on to discuss the third of the three insights which (as I have pointed out at the start of Sect. 6.1) became central to Gandhi’s practice of a moral politics, i.e. the relationship between means and end in Gandhi.

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The Past and the Present and the Human and Non-human World

At the very start of this section which looks at Gandhi’s politics as remaining integrated with the past of the community and with the non-human world, it seems important to emphasize that these continuities (like everything else in Gandhi) were interconnected in fairly intimate ways. Note that it was because Gandhi thought of the good life from within traditional accounts (belonging to the past of the community) that he had constructed his fundamental moral insights around the vedantic notion that human life was essentially one with the natural world. One might recall that the non-dualism of the advaita had influenced Gandhi’s metaphysics and ethics in many ways. It had influenced his concept of truth and understanding of the swabhawa/ innermost orientation of a human being. Consider that Gandhi spoke of truth, often enough, as a realism which inspired action in the light of an apprehension of the oneness of reality; God is Truth, but God is many other things also. That is why I say Truth is God… Only remember that truth is not one of the many qualities that we name. It is the living embodiment of God, it is the only life, and I identify truth with the fullest life, and that is how it becomes a concrete thing, for God is His whole creation, the whole existence, and service of all that exists. Truth is service of God. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 67:83)

In the same spirit, Gandhi spoke of the human being’s ownmost nature or swabhawa (as already noted) as the natural state of being human, i.e. of living up to the unilateral obligation of owning kinship with all manner of being in the light of such oneness; The truth is that my ethics not only permit me to claim but require me to own kinship with not merely the ape but the horse and the sheep, the lion and the leopard, the snake, and the scorpion. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 36: 5)

Gandhi’s relationship with the vedanta brought up in the consideration of “truth” and “swabhawa” above can be seen as an ideational continuity with the past with the caveat that this continuity was critical and sought perhaps to enrich the understanding of values such as truth and non-violence in the present. The same continuity was exemplified often enough in Gandhi’s conception of other moral values such as aparigraha/non-possession and tapas/voluntary acceptance of pain which he had read in a critical continuity with the ideational past of India. The significant question here is not whether there was a relationship with the past (which might seem fairly obvious) but rather whether this continuity with the past in Gandhi; had lent itself, to the imposition of the “fanaticism that religion is usually charged with” (Skaria, 2016:178) in the form of collective bias on society as a result of the blindness often enough engendered by “religious dogmatism” (ibid., 59). This section will argue that Gandhi had an interesting relationship with the past; one which safeguarded his sense of integrity between the past and present of a people from becoming that of an uncritical tyrannical imposition of collective bias on minors in the present. One might of course well ask how Gandhi could have sought continuity with the past—building his ethics on notions learnt from tradition—and yet not

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have subjected the present to the tyranny of the past? There were three arguments in the form of key Gandhian insights which prevented his integrity from becoming compromised in such complicity. The first relates to Gandhi’s truth, the second to the intimate relationship between truth and the other virtues in Gandhian ethics, and the third to his recommendation of present centred action and freedom from history. The following sub-sections will turn then to a consideration of these arguments.

Gandhi’s Truth As already noted in the first section of this essay, Gandhi had a dual notion of truth as both relative and absolute. Absolute truth was the end of moral life, and as Gandhi had said, it was more correct to say that “Truth is God” than to say that “God is Truth”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 25: 136). However, this end/goal was to be arrived at through a life of the practise of virtues and satya/truth was one of these “cardinal … virtues” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 33: 448). Gandhi’s “relative” truth or- truth as a virtue- became a constitutive part of the quest for the truth as the transcendent object of all moral endeavour. The virtue/yama of truth (that which Patanjali and the Jains had called the vrata/vow of truth) was indeed very important in Gandhi, and it was reflected in a constant return to the context, decentralization in politics, and in an interest in individual events in all their singularity. Note how Gandhi described this truth that informed everyday life; Generally speaking, [observance of the law of] Truth is understood merely to mean that we must speak the truth. But we in the Ashram should understand the word satya or truth in a much wider sense. There should be truth in thought, truth in speech, and truth in action... If we once learn how to apply this neverfailing test of truth, we will at once be able to find out what is worth doing, what is worth seeing, what is worth reading. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 49: 383)

This interest in singularity in the practise of truth in speech, thought and action— in the here and now; kept individual responsibility in place in Gandhian ethics and made it difficult to uncritically (and in all sincerity) impose collective (or indeed individual) bias of the past on a people in the present. Note Gandhi’s comments explaining how truth was to be sought; But how is one to realize this truth, which may be likened to the philosopher’s stone or the cow of plenty? By abhyasa, single-minded devotion, and vairagya, indifference to all other interests in life— replies the Bhagavad Gita…Then if there is a mistake on the part of anyone so following truth, it will be automatically set right… (ibid., 49: 383–384)

Such a single-minded devotion to truth in Gandhi (through, as one has seen, the practise of ahimsa/non-violence) makes it somewhat difficult to accept that he was all the while engaged with the ethics of “rightful places” as the notion of the proper/ thekana framed in continuity with the past and thereafter that he sought to impose it on both the satyagrahi self (in swaraj) and the dissenting ‘other’ in the present, in the name of Absolute truth/God, as a telos/end. For one might recall that truth as

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relative had to be sought by a complete clarity and transparency about one’s motives in the here and now and one step at a time; so that we would then have to conclude (if Skaria (2016) is right, and Gandhi was engaged in an imposition of rightful places on both the self and the ‘other’) that he was either delusional or committed to cognitive intransparency. The last commitment (if we can even call it a ‘commitment’) would make his avowed devotion to truth a lie/inauthentic; which might seem difficult to believe given Gandhi’s imposition of suffering upon himself for the sake of such a devotion to truth.

An Integrity Between the Yamas: Truth and Ahimsa in Gandhi’s Politics However while reading Gandhi as inauthentic might seem acceptable (to his critics) an insight into the relationship between truth and the other Gandhian yamas/virtues can take one to a second argument; one which could safeguard Gandhi’s integrity from the charge that he might have self-consciously subjected the present to the tyranny of the past. This argument simply put is one which accrues from the inseparable relationship between non-violence and truth in Gandhian ethics. One might now recall that the practise of truth as a yama or cardinal virtue was inseparable from the other virtues in Gandhian ethics-aparigraha/non-possession, asteya/non-stealing, brahmacharya/contentment, and most notably ahimsa as nonviolence and love of all other beings. It is significant to recall the relationship between truth and ahimsa in Gandhi—the being of ahimsa was seen as the being of truth which could only be arrived at through ahimsa as a universal love of all.2 Indeed as truth was inseparable from ahimsa; in a Gandhian life, a devotee could only arrive at the truth/God of his/her religion by practising a love for the most different other. Hence if the devotee sought/avowed to seek the God of his/her religion, he/she could not consistently and at the same time impose (an egoistic/self-directed) “thekana [rightful place]” (Skaria, 2016: 23) as collective prejudice on minors in the present in the name of truth/God. Consider that Gandhi’s equation between truth/God and non-violence meant that the religious person who sought God/truth could deviate from a love/non-violence towards for the different ‘other’ only by distancing him/ her self from the God of his/her religious quest. Any imposition by the nature of the case would involve violence and absence of love, and by such violence/absence of love, the devotee would at once be distanced not only from the ‘other’ but more significantly from the truth/god of his/her own faith. Perhaps it was such an appreciation of the inseparability of truth from ahimsa that led Gandhi to argue that only those portions of religious texts propounding moral values could be held in continuity with the past; where the values concerned had passed the tests of “reason and universal assent” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 30: 311) in the present. In his commentary on the Gita, Gandhi made such arguments often enough to make one question those who doubt his sincerity as a man. In the preface to the Anasaktiyoga, he said:

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On examining the history of languages, we notice that the meaning of important words has changed or expanded. This is true of the Gita. The author has himself extended the meanings of some of the current words. We are able to discover this even on a superficial examination... Thus, the author of the Gita, by extending meanings of words, has taught us to imitate him…. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 46: 174)

While Gandhi certainly established a continuity with the Hindu religious tradition, it becomes important to note that his emphasis on reinterpretation of religious texts in line with reason and universal assent; and his rejection of religious-moral norms that were in conflict with reason/universal assent brings in an element that many would see as discontinuous with the idea of the sanatan/eternal in tradition. I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 21: 74)

This last seems to leave little space for a resurrection of any notion of the thekana from religious texts to be imposed as the tyranny of the past on the present. For note that any such notion would have to pass the test of morality, i.e. truth and nonviolence in the present. Further, and more importantly, such a notion constituting that which is proper would have to be accepted not only by a majority but rather by “universal assent” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 30: 311), i.e. by the assent of those upon whom the proper was to be subsequently imposed.

History and Itihaas The Gandhian interest in relative truth, an interest in complete transparency in the immediate context one found oneself in and in individual events in all their singularity, was reflected in Gandhi’s third argument which safeguarded a continuity with the past from taking the form of an imposition of any notion of the proper/thekana carried over from traditions of/in past. This third Gandhian argument was in terms of the recommendation that the moral agent engage in present centred action and retain a swaraj/ freedom from history. Gandhi’s dual reading of truth kept truth in place in everyday life as an interest in singularity and in the context. Significantly, this interest was reflected not only in an engagement in present centred action as action whose truth conditions could reasonably be ascertained by the agent; but also in a freedom from history. Indeed while explaining, why satyagraha/soul-force could not find support from historical evidence, to readers of Hind Swaraj Gandhi made an explicit distinction between “history” and “itihaas”. Rejecting the term “history” in the sense in which that term is used in the academia and the role it played in western self-understanding; Gandhi chose the term “itihaas” composed by “iti” and “haas”. This term carried the meaning “thus it happened” or “it so happened”. Gandhi made a clear distinction between “history” and “itihaas”: The force of love is the same as the force of the soul or truth. We have evidence of its working at every step. The universe would disappear without the existence of that force. But you ask for historical evidence. It is, therefore, necessary to know what history means. The

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Gujarati equivalent means: “It so happened”. If that is the meaning of history, it is possible to give copious evidence. But, if it means the doings of kings and emperors, there can be no evidence of soul-force or passive resistance in such history. You cannot expect silver-ore in a tin-mine. History, as we know it, is a record of the wars of the world, and so there is a proverb among Englishmen that a nation which has no history, that is, no wars, is a happy nation. How kings played, how they became enemies of one another, and how they murdered one another is found accurately recorded in history, and if this were all that had happened in the world, it would have ended long ago. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 291)

Gandhi’s rejection of history (as a discipline which brackets off an interest in the truth as the “it so happened” in the singular) confers a peculiar freedom on the present and makes it possible to take from the past (in terms of his faith in truth) only that which lends value to the engagement with truth (for instance an account of ahimsa as love) in one’s immediate context. History as a discipline—one might recall—is interested only in that which is specific about individual events, and hence, history makes it impossible to negotiate one’s relationship to the past without a measure and a retrospective third party judgement of the past; History is interested in individualized events…but it is not interested in their individuality; it seeks to understand them-that is to find among them a kind of generality or, more precisely, of specificity…that is why “specific” means both “general” and “particular”. Such is the seriousness of history;…it does not deal in individuals but in what is specific about them for the good reason that, as we shall see, there is nothing to say of individual singularity. (Veyne, 1984: 56)

A word on how Gandhi’s understanding of the human being’s “swabhava” might have mediated his thoughts on the difference between “itihaas” and “history” could serve to indicate, once again, the powerful interconnection/integrity of Gandhi’s ideas. For Gandhi (as seen earlier), the human being only shares the non-human world on a status of samata/equality (and not inclusionary transcendence) if the human owns up to the unilateral obligation to recognize the human and non-human other as a kin. To recognize as kin involves the rejection of negotiating otherness through utility and through measure. On a Gandhian view, brothers do not require the law courts to mete out justice through a third party, they need only to understand each other through love. The human being needs to relate to the past along the same lines with ahimsa/love and without measure. History does violence to the past and to the human swabhava by approaching the past with measure. It also remains constitutively involved while framing the measure (whether Brahmin, Hindu, Dalit, Islamic, Economic, Subaltern, Marxist) with the organizing idea of utility. On both these counts, Gandhi rejects history in favour of itihaas. One might also consider that a historian collecting evidence to find what is specific about the past has to select a measure so as to frame an hypothesis about the past. In order to be able to do this, he/she has to make moral and political choices about which measure to select, which questions to ask, and which facts to select. There can be, as just noted, alternative measures and consequently alternative histories (Sikh, Hindu, Islamic, Liberal, Marxist, Subaltern, Dalit, Feminist, Economic to name but a few) running parallel to each other depending upon the choices the historian (as third party) has made. Consequently, there are possibilities for the historian to create

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alternative pasts and alternative memories of that past. One might ask what the historian’s measure directed retrospective, third party judgement on the past, has to do with this discussion on Gandhi’s imposition of the collective bias of the past as the thekana/proper in the present? As it turns out history has much to do with bias for the historian imposes bias in a choice of measure; no matter which measure he/ she might choose. Gandhi’s rejection of history and focus on individual singularity in the “it so happened” in the past then conferred freedom of a kind that imposed all responsibility on the moral agent and his/her present centred action. The continuity Gandhi sought with the past was one in line with individual singularity in the “it so happened” in the past. This was not a continuity which was located in identifying what was specific about the singular events in the past; but a continuity located in the singular individual events themselves, i.e. a continuity of everyday small singular happenings-love in families, the singing of songs, listening to folk stories,and the humming of the potters wheel. Note here that Gandhi’s interest in the singular rather than in what was specific about the singular was reflected in the interest he took in folk tales rather than in the histories of kings and empires; It was Shravana Pitribhakti Nataka (a play about Sharavana’s devotion to his parents). I read it with intense interest. They came to our place at about the same time as the itinerant showmen. One of the pictures I was shown was of Shravana carrying, by means of slings fitted for his shoulders, his blind parents on a pilgrimage. The book and the picture left an indelible impression on my mind. “Here is an example for you to copy”, I said to myself. The agonized lament of the parents over Shravana’s death is still fresh in my memory. The melting tune moved me deeply, and I played it on a concertina which my father had purchased for me. There was a similar incident connected with another play. Just about this time, I had secured my father’s permission to see a play performed by a certain dramatic company. This play “Harishchandra” captured my heart. I could never be tired of seeing it. But how often should I be permitted to go? It haunted me, and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself at times without numbers. “Why should not all be truthful like Harishchandra”? was the question I asked myself day and night. To follow the truth and to go through all the ordeals, Harishchandra went through was the one ideal it inspired in me. I literally believed in the story of Harishchandra. The thought of it all often made me weep. My common sense tells me today that Harishchandra could not have been a historical character. Still, both Harishchandra and Sravana are living realities for me, and I am sure I would be moved as before if I were to read those plays again today. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 44: 96).

Gandhi then had little interest in finding out the general or the specific about singularities in the past which last indeed would be the subject matter of history. Without a historical interest in using a measure to judge that which was specific about singular events in the past, there could indeed be no Gandhian notion of the rightful place/proper/thekana to be retrospectively resurrected on the “it so happened” of the past. Since Gandhi was not interested in adopting a measure (Hindu, Islamic, Brahmin, Feminist, Dalit) to frame that which was proper on the basis of that which was first identified as specific in the appropriate individual events of the past; he could not really define and (thereafter) impose a notion of the specific as the proper (validated by measure driven historical accounts of tradition) on the present. In rejecting history, Gandhi then belied the imposition of the specific from the past as the tyranny of collective bias in the name of tradition. Since he took from religious

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texts only that which passed the test of reason and universal assent in the present (as seen in the immediately preceding section), he could not gather such a notion from a reading of such texts either. Note the following from Gandhi; Just as it is useless to brood over the past, even so, it is useless to speculate about the future. “One step enough for me”, says the voice of wisdom. What does it avail us to know the future? Or why not merge both the past and the future into the present? The present or the past does have a future. And when change confronts us from moment to moment, to think of some remote future is building castles in the air. And only a fool builds castles in the air. The present means our duty at this moment. If we put all our strength into doing our duty, as we know it at this moment, we shall have made the highest human effort. Sorrow springs from dreaming of the future and from lamenting the past. Hence, one who concerns himself with the present and does his duty has neither birth nor death. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 39: 119)

While he seemed to have positioned self and community in an unbroken albeit critical continuity with the past Gandhi clearly recommended present centred action gesturing towards a freedom from history. What then of the continuity that Gandhi sought with the past? It might appear that such a continuity was not sought to determine what was specific about the past so as to frame a notion of the thekana/proper to be imposed on the present but rather because Gandhi rejected the modern denial of the a priori unity of the self and the freedom to discard parts of the past as irredeemable without any loss to self-identity. Modernity here as elsewhere broke the integrity of the self so as to speak of flux and discontinuity as the only truth of the modern self. It is significant to note in this context that for Gandhi, it was not possible for the self to give up his/her past/itihaas as irredeemable without a corresponding loss in his/her sense of self-identity. Yet this continuity with the past did not have to be one of simply reaffirming/ reconfirming traditional notions or ways of life. Rather the continuity, Gandhi sought was critical and in the interest of enriching moral life in the present by recovering values from the past. Note in this context that Gandhi drew the value of devotion for one’s parents from the story of Shravan Kumar (related in the epic Ramayana); and this value was reconfirmed for his times as having passed the tests of reason and universal assent. Gandhi’s interest in a continuity with the past to enrich moral life in the present is best brought out perhaps by returning to his understanding of the niyama/casual virtue of swadeshi/literally “of one’s own country” which formed a part of his expanded list of niyamas/virtues. For Gandhi following the virtue of swadeshi meant making a commitment to one’s more immediate environment and in the matter of religion, this came to mean the duty to reform (rather than reject) the religion of one’s ancestors. Significantly, Gandhian swadeshi in the matter of religion was not to be taken as a reiteration of traditional text and ritual. Rather it was understood in terms of the duty of the devout to remain true to the spirit, and not the letter, of the religion of one’s ancestors in the times in which he/she lived; and this involved (as noted earlier) the effort to reinterpret religious texts in line with reason and morality. This duty of reinterpretation in line with reason and morality served to reconcile the more contemporary enlightenment values (liberty, equality and fraternity) with the traditional religious community of one’s forefathers. While Gandhi established a continuity with the Hindu religious tradition, it becomes

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important to note that his emphasis on rejecting religious-moral norms that were in conflict with reason/universal assent brings in an element that many would see as discontinuous with the idea of the sanatan/eternal in that tradition: If a man is not curious even to know what is wrong and what is right, what is the use of religion for him? (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 55: 34)

This is not to suggest that Gandhi’s efforts to establish a critical continuity in the interest of the somewhat unbroken and a priori unity of the self with the “it so happened” in the past of the community never went awry. It is only to assert that when that happened—as it did in the case of Gandhi’s own attempts to replace caste with an unrecognizable and idealistic reading of varna—this was not because he had resurrected varna as the proper/thekana on the basis of that which was specific about individual events of the past. Rather it was on account of his rejection of the modern quest to dismiss the past of the community in totality as irrelevant to the present. It is also essential to emphasize (in connection with this Gandhian interest in continuity) that there was a conceptual methodology in place in Gandhi—in terms of the inseparability of ahimsa from truth—to correct any mistakes that occurred in seeking continuity with the past and return to the path of truth. Indeed, Gandhi did this himself by emphatically rejecting varna once he realized how it had disrupted his own engagement with ahimsa (as love for the ‘other’), as the only path, to truth. Note that Gandhi clarified his own position on varna in November 1927; That is the lot of every reformer. He will be misquoted by interested parties, but you also know that some of them want me to relinquish Hinduism. Others would banish me if they could from the Hindu fold. I have gone no-where to defend varnadharma, though for the removal of untouchability I went to Vykom. I am the author of a Congress resolution for propagation of khadi, establishment of Hindu Muslim unity, and removal of untouchability, the three pillars of swaraj. But I have never placed establishment of varnashrama dharma as the fourth pillar. You cannot, therefore, accuse me of placing a wrong emphasis on varnashrama dharma. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 40: 486)

Quite clearly then Gandhi had framed his fundamental moral conceptions in a somewhat critical continuity with his tradition, and some of these (as considered above) became central to his moral politics-absolute equality/samata, swabhava, swaraj, and tapasya. While some reference has already been made to the first two of these conceptions, tapasya will be considered in the next section and swaraj in Sect. 6.3 which will look specifically at the connection between swaraj and Gandhi’s method in politics, i.e. satyagraha.

6.1.3 The Inseparability of Means and End: Tapas as the Means of Real Politics At the start of Sect. 6.1 in this essay, the inseparability between means and end in Gandhi’s ethics had been identified as the third (of the three insights) which became central to Gandhi’s practice of a politics powerfully alternative to liberal politics.

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Gandhi understood this relationship as constitutive often invoking the analogy of a seed and a tree; The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 287)

One might consider that this connection between means and end was quite in line with the integrity central to Gandhi’s ideas, which, this essay has brought in to understand his politics. Indeed, Gandhi spoke of the inseparability of means and end in politics often enough to bring out the significance of this relationship; They say “means are after all means”. I would say “means are after all everything”. As the means so the end. Violent means will give violent swaraj. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself. France obtained her freedom by violent means. She is still paying dearly for her violence. She will presently be at the mercy of her savage African army. I am a staunch believer in absolute equality between man and man, but my belief does not take me to the length that the French has gone. Their training of levies of Africans is not proof of her acceptance of the doctrine of equality but of her greed for absolute power. There is no wall of separation between means and end. Indeed, the creator has given us control (and that too very limited) over means, none over the end. Realization of the goal is in exact proportion to that of the means. This is a proposition that admits of no exception. Holding such a belief, I have been endeavouring to keep the country to means that are purely “peaceful and legitimate”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 28: 310)

This emphasis of the importance of pure means in politics was put clearly by another connection which Gandhi made (and which has already been noted)—that made by singling out the vrata of ahimsa—as the means to truth as the end of moral life; …without ahimsa, it is not possible to seek and find truth. Ahimsa and truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them. They are like the two sides of a coin, or rather of a smooth unstamped metallic disc. Who can say which is the obverse and which is the reverse? Nevertheless, ahimsa is the means, and truth is the end. Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa becomes our supreme duty, and truth becomes God for us. If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later. If we resolve to do this, we shall have won the battle. Whatever difficulties we encounter, whatever apparent reverses we sustain, we should not lose faith but should ever repeat one mantra: truth exists, it alone exists. It is the only God and there is but one way of realizing it; there is but one means and that is ahimsa. I will never give it up. May the God that is Truth, in whose name I have taken this pledge, give me the strength to keep it. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 49: 409)

Or again; Ahimsa may be deduced from truth, or may be paired with truth. Truth and ahimsa are one and the same thing. I am partial to truth, however. In the final analysis, there can only be a single reality. The highest truth stands by itself. Truth is the end, ahimsa is the means thereto. (ibid., 451)

The integrity between means and end and (as an instance thereof) between ahimsa and truth came home to Gandhi strangely enough at the moment of crisis in his life. It was when he realized the importance of rights to the human being in a very

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personal experience of injustice on a train in South Africa that Gandhi thought of the connection between non-violence and truth. He retells the story of being thrown out of the train on account of “the deep disease of colour prejudice” (Gandhi, 1888– 1948, 44: 174) in his autobiography. What is significant about the retelling of this story is how Gandhi chose a moment of crisis not only to overcome bitterness and anger (unlike many of us who face injustice with righteous anger); but also to think of the appropriate means to overcome the humiliation associated with a life without rights. The means which he identified involved an engagement with real politics in which non-violence would pervade the search for truth and in the case in question, pervade the assertion of equality/rights for Indians in South Africa. Gandhi came to the method which would provide the pure means for his real politics as one based on the inseparability of truth/satya (as an end) and non-violent firmness/agraha (as the means) in satyagraha; Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. When I refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, I use soul-force. For instance, the Government of the day has passed a law which is applicable to me. I do not like it. If by using violence, I force the Government to repeal the law, I am employing what may be termed body force. If I do not obey the law and accept the penalty for its breach, I use soul-force. It involves sacrifice of self. Everybody admits that sacrifice of self is infinitely superior to sacrifice of others. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 292)

Gandhi’s use of the term “satyagraha” as the appropriate designation for this method seemed to have been primarily guided by the insight that satyagraha/firmness on truth would maintain absolute non-violence (without non-violence one could not arrive truth as an end) as an equality of deference/respect between the victim of injustice and the oppressor. It was Gandhi’s commitment to absolute equality between all manner of being that made it imperative for him to engage in politics by a method that respected the equal rights (and the truth-untruths) of hostile others while pressing for one’s rights; all the while keeping a firm grasp on truth. It was such a respect for equality perhaps that led Gandhi to choose “self-imposed suffering” (ibid., 77) tapasya, rather than, (the other option available to victims) that of making the hostile other suffer when pressing for one’s rights; The sufferings of the Indians were the expression of that truth. Yet it would not have triumphed except for unflinching faith, great patience, and incessant effort. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 44: 209)

This “voluntary submission to suffering” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 98) was the “incessant effort” which Gandhi had chosen as the appropriate means/method to arrive at the end/telos of his politics, i.e. truth/justice/God. Yet, this submission to suffering in one’s own person was not chosen as a masochistic desire for pain but because the only other option available in the quest for justice was the “sacrifice of others” (ibid., 292). Self-imposed pain was also chosen because it was traditionally believed that as a form of tapas it could bring about a transformation in both the self and the other. Gandhi’s “tapas” was a belief held in continuity with tradition because it brought insights into an engagement with truth and non-violence in the present. One might recall that “tapas” has an ancient history in the past of India and

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Patanjali in Book 2 of his Yoga Sutra, (which is engaged with sadhana/means to self-knowledge), mentions three parts of sadhana/means to self-knowledge: tapas/ austerity, svadhyaya/self-study, and Isvara pranidhana/contemplation of God. It was believed that through tapasya a yogi can “burn off” or prevent accumulation of negative energies, thereby clearing a path towards a spiritual evolution.; “Tapas” comes from the root “tapa”, which mean, among other things, to cause heat, pain, and discomfort. Tapas is thus the practice of austerities (Ranganathan, 2008: 131).

Howard has translated “tapas” more recently as “(austerity; self-sacrifice)” (Howard, 2013: xvi), and she speaks of its miraculous powers. Gandhi stands in continuity with such insights recalling traditional Indian accounts of tapas as making for miraculous transformations: There was a certain rishi; the fire emitted from between his brows put an end to all suffering. The point of this text is that, when the soul becomes alive, all miseries end and so the injustices perpetrated by the government will be no more when we become alive in our soul. ...We want happiness in place of the present misery; if so we should suffer voluntarily and lay down our lives for the sake of truth. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 16: 414)

Anticipating some part of the discussion that will follow in Sect. 6.2 of the present essay, it is interesting to note that Gandhi’s use of the idea of voluntary submission to suffering has been read by Skaria (2016) as connected with his (Gandhi’s) extension of equality to the non-rational world, thereby making such equality immeasurable by the ‘reason’ of the liberals. Skaria (2016) argues that the link between the ability to suffer and Gandhi’s immeasurable equality translates into a re-enactment of the racism of the coloniser; The rights intimated by suffering thus do not involve autonomous reason or any other form of sovereignty. John Stuart Mill, son of James Mill, can thus say: despotism is a legitimate system of government in dealing with barbarians, provided that the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually achieving that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind has become capable of being improved. Inhabiting this anterior time, the colonized intimate their humanity in a more limited way: by suffering. Suffering thus names a distinctive realm in the discourse of rights—the rights exercised by those who are not quite human…These rights are never demanded by sufferers (who after all lack the agency that is required to make a demand). The demands are made rather on their behalf—by fully human subjects and of other such subjects. (Skaria, 2016: 38–39)

This Gandhian emphasis on “enacting the ability to suffer” leads Skaria to read Gandhi in line with Derrida and remark on; the abyssal apartness and infinite proximity between Derrida’s and Gandhi’s writing. Autoimmunity is too preliminary a word to describe the self-sacrifice involved in satyagraha. Gandhi will repeatedly insist on a distinction between suicide and self-sacrifice and will describe the former as duragraha (the force of or seizure by evil) and the latter as satyagraha. Yet the line between these two is not at all clear for him—even the satyagrahi’s self-sacrifice always risks becoming suicide. The self-sacrifice proper to satyagraha—the self-sacrifice that will be neither suicide, nor murder, nor sublation into a greater entity—he describes sometimes by drawing on the phrase “friendship with death”. (ibid., 63)

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It seems strange to seek to understand Gandhi’s emphasis on tapas as a “conversion” (Gandhi, 1888–1948: 68: 58)/transformation of the heart, by aligning him with Derrida and (as we shall see later) with Hegel. One need only turn to the ancient Indian tradition on “tapasya” to see why and how Gandhi should have brought it in to think of a method/means of his real politics. While it is indeed useful to draw parallels between traditions and bring together thinkers who might never have met or read each other as a method of learning about notions they espoused; such philosophical parallels are only useful when the notions are conceptually close; as, for instance, Gandhi’s views on austerity and moral notions of the Stoics (Sorabji, 2012). When one reads tapas/asceticism in Gandhi in “infinite proximity” (Skaria, 2016: 63) with the discussion on suicide and autoimmunity in Derrida one may run the risk of entirely missing what Gandhi set out to do or say. Note here Derrida on the September 11 events; But here is the first symptom of suicidal autoimmunity: not only is the ground, that is, the literal figure of the founding or foundation of this “force of law”, seen to be exposed to aggression, but the aggression of which it is the object (the object exposed, precisely, to violence, but also, “in a loop”, to its own cameras in its own interests) comes, as from the inside, from forces that are apparently without any force of their own but that are able to find the means, through ruse and the implementation of high-tech knowledge, to get hold of an American weapon in an American city on the ground of an American airport. Immigrated, trained, prepared for their act in the United States by the United States, these hijackers incorporate, so to speak, two suicides in one: their own (and one will remain forever defenceless in the face of a suicidal, autoimmunitary aggression and that is what terrorizes most) but also the suicide of those who welcomed, armed, and trained them.. (Derrida, 2003: 95)

Aside from the difficulty posed by the total/complete “apartness” of Gandhi’s satyagraha from the terrorist’s suicidal autoimmunity, one might find that the term “tapasya” is located in a tradition which has little parallel with the modern western philosophical tradition and Indian philosophical, and religious texts are replete with various forms of such tapasya. In Gandhi (as mentioned earlier), tapasya was not a form of self-suffering undertaken for its own sake as a masochistic exercise or in hopelessness; neither was it undertaken to destroy both self and others in an act in “infinite proximity” (Skaria, 2016: 63) to the terrorist’s suicidal autoimmunity. Rather it was undertaken precisely so as not to destroy either the self by hatred of the other or indeed the other, as the obstacle, in one’s search for truth. Rather tapasya as self-sacrifice was chosen as one out of two options available once the victim sought to demonstrate a seriousness in pursuing justice as truth. Gandhi often spelt out these options as that between the acceptance of suffering on oneself or imposition of suffering on others; Self-restraint, unselfishness, patience, gentleness, these are the flowers which spring beneath the feet of those who accept, but refuse to impose, suffering,… (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 159. The emphasis is my addition.)

The satyagrahi’s choice to suffer in him or herself as a form of tapas was accompanied by the belief that it was not only the option chosen in the interest of accepting an equality between one’s truth and the truth-untruth of the dissenting other; but also

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because of faith in the power of tapas itself. One might recall here that though the Indian tradition was replete with the descriptions that, paradoxically enough, associated the “other worldly orientation” (Howard, 2013: 3) of tapasya with its “potency and miraculous power …to acquire this worldly material goals” (ibid., 3); Gandhi associated tapas with the power of love to effect a change of heart and sought to understand such a power of the conversion of the heart, in line with Patanjali saying that; Mah¯ar.s.i Patañjali was responsible for the scientific discovery of Ahim . s¯a. (Gandhi, 1888– 1948, 59: 494).

He often cited a famous verse from the Yoga Sutras to prove his point: Ahim . s¯a-pratis.t.h¯ayam tat-sannidhau vaira-ty¯aghah.; means hate dissolves in the presence of love (Patañjali yogadarshanam ii.35). (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 48: 327)

Gandhi described the choice made by satyagrahis; They believe that self-suffering is the only true and effective means to procure lasting reforms. They endeavour to meet and conquer hatred by love. They oppose the brute or physical force by soul-force. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 10: 199)

Gandhi’s politics brought out the unity between the means/non-violence and end/ truth by using satyagraha as the power of love and tapas/acceptance of self-imposed pain; to defer to the opposing ‘other’ while seeking rights, equality, or justice, for oneself. Gandhi was clear that a real politics (based on an identity between means and end) could not arrive at rights for the self while destroying those of the absolutely equal ‘other’ who had the same (or equal) rights to his/her life and truth-untruth.

6.2 Gandhi’s Moral Politics: The Purva Paksa on the Restraint of the Self and Force There have been many critics of Gandhi’s true/moral politics in his times and in ours. He has been rejected by thinkers of all kinds of persuasion—whether from the right or from the left. However, a fairly important set of contemporary arguments attacks Gandhi’s “religious politics” (Skaria, 2016: vii) and Gandhi’s moral political practice, i.e. satyagraha as involving a “surrender of sovereignty” (ibid., xii) and a “vehement extension of force itself” (Kumar, 2015: 96). The object of philosophically evaluating the merits of such a critique might seem obvious enough if one only considers, for instance, the consequences of an argument which suggests that Gandhi’s satyagraha was based on an understanding of swaraj/self-restraint that demanded a surrender of sovereignty and was therefore almost a contradiction in terms. In as much as, the self would have to lose autonomy/right or condition of self-government in order to gain his/her freedom. It might seem obvious enough that such “incendiary implications” (Skaria, 2016: xiv) of Gandhi’s religio-moral politics would somewhat dismantle the integrity of that politics. Consider Skaria’s

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suggestions that Gandhian swaraj as self-rule sought to restrain the moral aspirant in the practice of self-sacrifice and the ‘other’ in the imposition of the rightful place/ thekhana; that the equality which Gandhi sought as “satya or the realization of being” (ibid., xv) was “constitutively obscured” (ibid., xvi) to become synonymous with justice and lead to a “never-ending dehiscence” (ibid.) of questions. Building on its etymology the term “dehiscence” suggests, one might recall, the splitting up of a mature plant along lines of weakness and sometimes leads to complete detachment of parts. Arguments of thinkers like Ajay Skaria (2016) and Aishwary Kumar (2015) who speak of the never-ending dehiscence of Gandhi’s truth then become important to any attempt to examine Gandhi’s politics. For such arguments suggest that the integrity Gandhi sought between politics and morality was, at best, inauthentic as much as his politics was amoral if not actually immoral. The following section will attempt to trace the steps of Ajay Skaria’s (2016) argument about Gandhi’s equation between truth and God as resting upon the death of God so that satyagraha was always “a religion of the question” (Skaria, 2016: xi). Section 6.2.2 will move on to the manner in which that argument lent itself to a reading of satyagraha as “the ability to inscribe non-violence indeed civil disobedience as the vehement extension of force itself…” (Kumar, 2015: 96). Such a force of which there “is the terrifying danger, a danger against which there can be no guarantees, that must always mark satyagraha” (Skaria, 2016: 277) is explained by Skaria; When confronted with something less than the principle, the use of force to impose the principle is itself principled. (Skaria, 2016: 227)

6.2.1 Reading Skaria’s Critique of Gandhi: of Truth/God and Gandhi’s Moral Politics Skaria sees that Gandhi was not content with the politics of his day and he speaks of Gandhi’s “struggles to think his politics” (ibid., vii). He attempts to bring clarity to this politics “by no means clear to” (ibid.) Gandhi himself by spelling out its arguments and presuppositions. Strangely enough, his reconstruction of Gandhi’s “religious politics” (ibid.), rests upon a reiteration of Hegel’s insight that the religion of more recent times is philosophically founded on “the feeling that God himself is dead” (ibid., viii). Skaria belies the apparent strangeness of his reconstruction by appealing to the non-presence of God in the various “negative theologies” (ibid.), one finds in some religions including the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Jain traditions. Indeed, he is emphatic that Gandhi’s writing occurs under the shadow of this apprehension of the death of God. He comes to his religion after crossing the sahara of atheism”. (ibid.) What then of Gandhi’s apparent Godliness? Inverting the intent of Gandhi’s philosophical equation between truth and God; Skaria argues that Gandhi brought truth and God together to replace God with truth and make for his Godless religion. There is some reason to believe, however, that far from being based on a denial of God, this equation had been intended to remind the religious (as noted earlier in the essay) that one could not accept any religious text as the word of God if it was in

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conflict with reason and morality. This seemed somewhat obvious to Gandhi since he believed that religion was primarily interested in guiding the devotee to live a good human life. Consequently, Gandhi’s “truth or God” was meant to remind devotees that religious doctrines which pertained to human moral life (as necessarily lived out in the phenomenal world) ought not be in conflict with central moral insights which, for him, were essentially shared across religions. Gandhi one might recall had identified these shared insights as truth and non-violence. Skaria, however, does not think that Gandhi brought truth and God together to make any such argument. Quite to the contrary he suggests that; Gandhi’s writing occurs under the shadow of this apprehension of the death of God. He comes to his religion after crossing the “sahara of atheism”. And while he considers “modern civilization” “godless” and thinks of his politics as striving for a godliness, his religion and godliness are themselves marked by reason… Moreover, he often stresses his affinities with atheists such as “Bradlaw” (Charles Bradlaugh, whom he admires greatly, and whose funeral he attends while a student in London), whose “atheism was only so-called. He had faith in the moral government of the world”. Most strikingly perhaps, Gandhi cannot conceive God as a sovereign or kingly being; God becomes a shorthand for sat or satya— words that can be glossed, respectively, as being and truth in the sense of the realization or accomplishment of being. ..he also insists that it is inadequate to think God in human terms and treats the very word “God” as an example of such humanization; for him, therefore, “satya is God”. Such formulations are symptomatic of how satyagraha is concerned not with the transcendent world, but rather with the immanent one (ibid., viii–ix)

Here then lies the source both of the apparent inauthenticity of Gandhi’s critique of modernity (for as Skaria argues, he is a modern, in so far as apprehension of the death of God is the mark of modernity); and (as I will argue) of Skaria’s interpretation of Gandhi’s religious politics. However, I will come to that later; for now, to follow this line of thinking, one needs to examine just how Skaria relates this Godless religion with “satyagraha” and Gandhi’s religio-moral politics. Skaria explains This immanent religion organized around satya is all the more intriguing given how his neologism satyagraha conjoins two terms: satya and agraha—force, firmness, insistence, or even seizing. It is not as though the satyagrahi, the practitioner of satyagraha, already knows or possesses satya and seeks only to enforce or spread it; rather, the satyagrahi is engaged in a “quest for satya”. And this quest is also a questioning because satyagrahis do not know what satya is—they are only constantly aware of being part of and yet abysally separated from satya, of striving to be seized by satya. All of this is symptomatic, I would like to argue, of how in Gandhi’s writing at its most intriguing, the apprehension of the death of God is accompanied by satyagraha as a religion of the question. (ibid., ix)

One needs perhaps to emphasize that (on this view) it is modernity’s key apprehension that religion must be godless that leads to Gandhi’s this worldly politics and its central method, i.e. satyagraha as a quest for truth (which the satyagrahi does not know and) which is concerned solely with the immanent world. Skaria goes on to explain how the piousness of the question has two modalities. The first of course is well brought out in the tradition of the enlightenment where the distinction between the public and the private ensures that the question is located in the public realm. Piousness is not thereby erased rather knowledge “provides both an ontology (it

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grounds the world) and a theology (it names what is highest: as Francis Bacon says in the sixteenth century, “the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge”)” (ibid., x). This modality of the piousness of the question provides the basis of modern secularism. As Skaria argues such a “theological secularism” which Gandhi rejects, sacralises, the citizen; Man as citizen worships the sovereign question as the essence of thought, as being, but this question he worships is himself. (ibid., xi)

Gandhi’s religion—a religion of the question—rejects the theological secularism of the enlightenment traditions. Perhaps then, one can trace Gandhi’s piety of the question, to the second of the two modalities which Skaria has identified in which questioning is the piety of thought. This tradition is concerned with the manner in which the self is a question to her/himself. In this context, Skaria suggests that one might think of the Augustinian quest (which predates enlightenment traditions) for man’s own being. Skaria speaks of how religions respond to this quest by becoming theological and claiming to ground themselves in either knowledge or revelation. However, he argues that Gandhi is not able to take this theological step in his religion for his philosophy is based on an insight into the death of God. Gandhi then affirms a “groundless faith” (ibid.). Here, there is a second important philosophical move in Skaria’s argument in as much as, he now affirms, that such a questioning of one’s own being and the seeking of answers in a groundless faith involves a surrender of one’s sovereignty/supreme power or authority; Here, to become a questioning being is to become bereft of one’s own sovereignty. (ibid.)

Gandhi like Augustine constructs a religious politics, but (as Skaria explains) his religious politics is built around satyagraha the religion of the question which involves the surrender of sovereignty; Even where secular conscience humbles itself before the sovereign question, it only humbles itself before man—this is the sense in which secular conscience remains sovereign. By contrast, the question that Gandhi’s religious experience humbles or surrenders itself before is the other experienced in groundless faith. But this humbling is also freely offered, and so it is never a subordination to the other. Religion bears always, in, however, obscured a manner, this surrender without subordination. (ibid., xii)

In order to understand the meaning of satyagraha as such a surrender without subordination to the other and as an attempt to seize a truth from which the satyagrahi is abysally/incomprehensibly parted; one needs to attend to Gandhi’s interplay of the two senses of swaraj, and Skaria argues that this interplay brings in the question of limit/hadh; Swaraj here names the rule of the self, and in the process wrestles with the questions: what is proper to rule? What is proper to the self? (ibid., 3)

This leads naturally enough to the position that; Even if satyagrahi’s claim no sovereignty over the other, this is so because they submit to the sovereignty of the proper over the self. That grounding violence also implicitly imposes the sovereignty of the proper over the other too. (ibid., 23)

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As the surrender without subordination to the proper (i.e. the rule of the proper over the self in self-restraint and the rule of the proper, experienced in a groundless faith, over the ‘other’ in satyagraha) satyagraha becomes the heart of Gandhi’s religious politics and indeed, it is the “religion that stays in all religions”. However, Gandhi makes this move by “the distinctive way he conceives satya as love”. (ibid., xii) One might recall that Gandhi thought of ahimsa as love as the only path to truth. This central Gandhian connection in turn leads Skaria to refer to Gandhi’s equation of ahimsa/non-violence with love and therefrom with truth. Skaria explains that Gandhi’s religion of the question becomes universal love; Religion now becomes “universal love” (ibid.)

Gandhi’s conceptions of universal love, satyagraha, and religious politics unfold in a manner so as to completely distance themselves from the second of the two modalities of the piety of questioning. Skaria explains that for Augustine’s pious questioning, the neighbour is loved as the creature of God. He/she is loved not for the sake of the self or for his/her own sake but as such a creature. In the case of equality too, it is the presence of God that makes for an equality before God. As Skaria explains Augustine in line with Arendt; What matters rather is that “in the being before God, all people are equal, that is, equally sinful”. (ibid., xiii)

However Gandhi’s love—inseparable as it is from satya—remains different from Augustinian love and equality; But his writing at its most intriguing is marked by irreconcilable differences from Augustine or other thinkers of a transcendent religion. In contrast to Augustinian Christianity, satyagraha is a religion that becomes immanent because of its apprehension of the death of God. Here, the segue from satya and religion to universal love is not mediated through a higher entity such as God. It is rather the very impossibility of God as a sovereign being that sustains the emphasis on a universal love. Because of this very different starting point, even same or similar phrases, such as “universal love” or “equality before God”, rotate away on very different trajectories. (ibid.)

These very different trajectories—as it turns out—lead to the “incendiary implications” (ibid., xiv) of Gandhi’s religious politics resting on universal love and absolute equality. These terms are quite transformed in Gandhi’s godless religion. So it is that Skaria argues that “universal love” in Gandhi is trapped within swadeshi and reinscribed in the local “quite at odds with Augustinian love” (ibid.). Equality too (as discussed earlier) becomes fairly incendiary; In satyagraha, as I will indicate at greater length, we encounter an equality that comes after the death of God; we now have creatures without a sovereign creator. Their absolute equality, moreover, is irreducibly and tumultuously plural because it must include all being (not only humans but also animals and things). (ibid.)

While most radical traditions of political thinking including the far left excludes from equality those incapable of citizenship with “equaliberty… restricted to humans” (ibid., xv) Gandhi (as noted earlier) in “departure from secular traditions

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of thinking the political, then… insists on the absolute equality of all beings; indeed, this absolute equality is satya or the realization of being” (ibid.). This move it turns out is pernicious. For one thing once the liberal measure of reason has been discarded, equality becomes immeasurable and one between very different beings, ranging from ants to humans. It then rests upon a sharing of “finitude itself” (ibid., 14), and from such sharing, it becomes an equality of limits. One might recall that Kumar (2015) had argued that the “agraha” in “satyagraha” is about a force and imposition of such limits/maryada dharma on the ‘other’. For another thing without God, satya is internally marked by “incommensurable multiplicity” (Skaria, 2016: 179); and the devotee of a groundless faith must nourish the irreconcilability of truths. This means that justice now becomes synonymous with such an irreconcilability of truth. As Skaria argues; That insistence makes satya synonymous with justice—now the seizure by the demand for equality and against inequality is ownmost to being. To this seizure, Gandhi gives the name satyagraha. (ibid., xv-xvi)

Since satya is constitutively obscured (always a quest and never known) and there is a multiplicity of irreconcilable truths; justice can no longer be thought in the “usual terms” (ibid., xvi), i.e. usual liberal terms that are of course more appropriate to thinking justice. For as it turns out “what is now required is a justice without sovereignty. It is only satyagraha as a religion of the question that can apprehend, in trembling and without knowledge, this other justice—satya as the equality of all being”. (ibid.) As Skaria explains; Moreover, as these formulations also insinuate, relinquishing the third party does not in itself lead to non-violence—those who fight may still “expect to be injured”. The remarks on the Bhils and Pindaris also refer to the unavoidability of violence. To be with the Bhil or Pindari: this is to accept the possibility of even death at their hands, and to envision a community and justice that begins from that acceptance. While it is originary, two-ness or finitude can be as violent as non-violent. This impossibility of justice or non-violence may be why “true civility” is not portrayed in utopian terms—fights still take place, justice is only “theek theek” or about right, and courts, lawyers, and doctor will also not be erased, only brought within proper limits. (ibid., 80)

This leads (according to Skaria) to the end of justice for there is in this moral politics a “never-ending dehiscence of the answer, satya, into the question, satyagraha” (ibid., xvi) something that “those … who find it impossible to abandon their faith in secularism” (ibid.) find, makes it impossible, to think of Gandhi’s religious politics. There are to my mind three stages in Skaria’s argument; 1. Gandhi is modern in a fundamental philosophical sense. He apprehends that religion is built around the death of God, and this key insight influences his concepts of truth, satyagraha, the “agraha”/firmness in satyagraha, universal love, equality, and justice. 2. Satyagraha as the religion of the question demands the surrender of sovereignty without subordination and as freely given. 3. Since a constitutively obscured satya (multiple and irreconcilable) is synonymous with justice there is in Gandhi’s religion of the question a never-ending dehiscence

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of satya into satyagraha. Such dehiscence (if we recall the etymology of the term “dehiscence”) suggests the dissipation of the integrity of the community along the lines of it’s own weakness. The next section will attempt to bring out Skaria’s interpretation of the incendiary/ inflammatory implications of these presuppositions on Gandhi’s religious politics. These (as he argues) play out chiefly in the surrender of sovereignty demanded in/by satyagraha, in the idea that a subaltern politics must refuse subordination by relinquishing autonomy and sovereignty, in the idea that self-sacrifice is self-limitation and that the satyagrahis must submit to the sovereignty of the proper over the self and seek to impose the proper/thekana on the ‘other’ most notably on the minor. As Skaria puts it; …the thekana involves a policing of both self and other to keep both in their rightful places. Gandhi’s disquiet with the warrior is often because the latter maintains the thekana wrongly— through mastery and domination. The satyagrahi’s task, then, is to maintain the thekana, or the sovereignty of the proper, in a way that is organized by daya or compassion and prem or love. (ibid., 155)

Significantly, it is the death of God that makes absolute equality a matter of faith (rather than a matter of institutions) which in turn, in the absence of God, is a groundless faith. As Skaria says; Such equality, given the incommensurability of differences, cannot be made present or substantive. It can only remain a matter of faith; it can only be sustained through faith. Where satya or being is absolute equality, the groundlessness involved in faith in God is required to affirm sat; this too is why Gandhi must say not “God is Satya” but “Satya is God”. (ibid., 178)

Finally, it is not surprising that the Godless religious politics becomes one of coercion and cruelty; Surrendering to this force involves giving it to one’s interlocutors, who will all too often experience it as cruel and violent. (ibid., 277)

6.2.2 Reading Skaria’s Critique of Gandhi: of Enacting Equality as Tapasya/Ability to Suffer Skaria’s interpretation of Gandhi’s equation between truth and God as signalling an affirmation of an acceptance of the death of God influences his understanding of other Gandhian concepts, i.e. satyagraha, equality (as seen earlier), and tapas. Skaria agrees that satyagraha comes from the conjoining of “satya” and “agraha”; But agraha is not just any force—it carries the connotation of overpowering force. Agraha is thus the force that occurs as a seizing, a taking hold, or a firmness. While there is a long tradition of thinking about satya, whether as being or truth, the neologism satyagraha broaches a new question, perhaps never before asked in quite this way: how would the force proper to satya work? (ibid., 2)

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Skaria thinks that satyagraha is connected to swaraj (of which there will be some discussion in the next section) but thinks of both “as cruel and violent”. (ibid., 277). He explains for instance that; …even where fasts are neither practiced by satyagrahis as a form of coercion nor experienced by other offenders as such, satyagraha is cruel. (ibid.)

Again swaraj as self-rule is a self-restraint that demands the rule of that which is “proper to the self” (ibid., 3). Skaria explains that it is a part of our suspicion of religion that much scholarship until recently regarded Gandhi’s interventions as a romanticism, a critical traditionalism, as symptomatic of the communitarian ideology of precapitalist agrarian societies, or in the most sophisticated readings as enabling the “political appropriation of the subaltern classes by a bourgeoisie aspiring for hegemony in the new nation-state”. (ibid., 5) He traces this attempt of hegemony to the fact that in satyagraha (like in most religions), there is a demand for self-surrender. Only as there is no God to surrender to such a surrender is “the struggle of being to emerge from its obscuring in formal or theological religions, to open instead onto a freedom, equality, and universality organized around what he calls pure means”. (ibid., 4–5). As pure means satyagraha becomes a passive activity that must proceed as a form of self-surrender to a state of the self which persists thereafter without sovereignty or autonomy. One needs to unpack how Skaria is able to connect satyagraha as drawing on “the trope of suffering” (ibid., 52) to a means that enacts a “displacement of liberal equality” (ibid., 53) enforcement of hierarchy and the destruction of “every sovereignty” (ibid., 64). Skaria explains how this happens by speaking of Gandhi’s awareness “of who and what secularism and abstract equality excludes” (ibid., 32). He argues that this last insight led Gandhi to redefine equality not by referring to reason but to “those who can suffer” (ibid., 33), thereby extending this equality to animals. In emphasizing Gandhi’s extension of equality to animals Skaria fails to note that since such a (Gandhian) equality is based on an advaita metaphysics of oneness, it is extended not only to animals but to the natural world imbued as it is with God/Brahman. Nature unlike animals cannot enact an ability to suffer. One might then ask how, Gandhi’s (and Tagore’s) extension of equality to nature/natural would ever fit in, with Skaria’s argument that Gandhi’s alternative notion of equality rests upon the enactment of an ability to suffer? Skaria of course makes no mention of (and indeed completely disregards) Gandhi’s (and Tagore’s) notion of an enchanted cosmos and extension of absolute equality to nature; as he argues that “now abstract equality is extended even to those who lack autonomous reason” (ibid., 32) on the basis of their ability to suffer. One might recall here the role of intelligent suffering in Gandhian satyagraha and the manner in which he drew on the ancient Indian understanding of tapas which has been discussed earlier in Sect. 6.1.3 of this essay. That discussion notwithstanding it seems important to dwell on Skaria’s argument here if only to bring out his somewhat spectacular misreading of Gandhi’s argument for equality and indeed of tapas as the choice to suffer in oneself rather than impose suffering on others. Skaria believes that Gandhi’s use of tapas in the translation of equality is pernicious for it links, in his mind, and for him in Gandhi’s mind, with the

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“profoundly colonial concept of suffering” (ibid., 39) of Bentham, Mill, and Salter; whose Ethical religion Gandhi had reinterpreted/recast in 1907, and published in Indian Opinion. The key to these readings of equality as operative between those who were able to suffer (rather than to reason) was their “exclusionary and violent hierarchies” (ibid., 40); while the emphasis on suffering questions gratuitous violence, it allows for instrumental relations with animals and practices that calculated responsibility and peculiar equality known as colonial rule. (ibid., 39)

Skaria interprets the reference to tapas in Gandhi as implying that enacting the right to suffer earns the minor the right to be colonised to relieve suffering; In the grand narrative of colonialism suffering names a particular right to be colonized and relieved of suffering. (ibid., 38)

Referring to what he describes as “Salter’s responsible racism” (ibid., 41), Skaria explains that this racism where the ability to suffer; …organizes the “claims upon us” that Salter’s American Indians have. On the one hand, because American Indians lack in reason and speech, it is just to take land away from them. On the other hand, American Indians can still claim equality in the ability to suffer. This equality makes a claim on the more civilized and rational segments of society—the claim to now practice a benevolent colonialism, colonialism as a civilizing mission; By insisting, moreover, on equality in a religious spirit, Salter makes this benevolent colonialism an inescapable responsibility. (ibid., 39)

In terms of Skaria’s argument, Gandhi’s reconstruction of equality (drawing upon the ancient Indian idea of tapas/asceticism), on the basis of a being’s ability to suffer is no less pernicious. It leads “in the years after his return to India” (ibid., 41) to a translation of remarks about “Kaffirs” to “his remarks about and to Dalits” (ibid.). This argument about equality between those who can suffer makes it possible for Gandhi to displace liberal equality before law and do something even more pernicious in insisting that equality involves “an enactment, and to enact it involves the ability to oneself suffer” (ibid., 53). This move leads Skaria to read Gandhi (as noted in Sect. 6.1.3) in line with Derrida and speak as already noted of “the abyssal apartness and infinite proximity between Derrida’s and Gandhi’s writing”. (ibid., 63) What then does satyagraha amount to as a religion that stays in all religions but stays as a departure “from the immeasurable equality of the warrior for the absolute equality of the satyagrahi—the equality that strives to destroy every sovereignty”? (ibid., 64) Consider that the satyagrahi can only enact the self-sacrifice which consists in his/her ability to suffer and thereby earn absolute equality by relinquishing his/ her sovereignty in (as there is no God) “a groundless faith, a faith that accepts that it cannot find grounds for itself—this is why he becomes a question to himself” (ibid., xii). This of course is terrifying in itself but it is also pernicious because rejecting the measurable equality of the liberals and their conception of freedom for swaraj as selfrestraint; Gandhi is able to argue that a subaltern politics that refuses subordination can “do so only by relinquishing autonomy and even sovereignty” (ibid., 9). Skaria

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explains that Gandhi manages to ensure this by conceiving his method in politics as satyagraha which remains a religion of the question, i.e. tentative and uncertain; and the satyagrahi as the one who surrenders autonomy by suffering. What is accomplished by this is accomplished not by the violence of the conventional warrior but by the “immeasurable pity” (ibid., 33) of the major for the minor who in turn surrenders his/her sovereignty by remaining a minor; How might a subaltern politics not only refuse subordination, but do so by relinquishing autonomy and even sovereignty? Such a religion must strive for an equality of and with the minor—an equality that does not make the minor into a major that becomes and remains minor. (ibid., 9)

The key to the practise of Gandhi’s real politics with its emphasis on tapas then is minority as a condition of being; Relinquishing sovereignty, satyagrahis must strive for an equality of and with the minor. As that phrase suggests, the minor is never simply an individual—minority names here rather the community that perdures without sovereignty, and yet without submitting to majority or sovereignty. Central to Gandhi’s equality of the minor is what could be called surrender without subordination…“every lover of India” should “keep faith [shraddha]”, and “cling to Indian civility even as a child clings to the mother”. These lovers, thus, do not autonomously and as mature adults arrive at a love for India that makes them stand by India and loyally critique it. Rather, their love makes them minors, surrender as a child would, and in that surrender offer “passive resistance”—… (ibid., 9-10)

For Skaria in Gandhi’s politics, there is, what might be called, an absolute loss of/to the self. While the satyagrahi surrenders autonomy/self-rule in an attempt to attain his/her freedom as self-restraint; the different ‘other’ looses autonomy and sovereignty by the satyagrahi’s imposition of the thekana over him/her as the ‘other’ to the satyagrahi’s self; …given that self-sacrifice is always what is proper to sacrifice, what is the most proper self-sacrifice? What self-sacrifice would relinquish sovereignty over both self and other, and sustain an unconditional equality? His (Gandhi’s) response emphasizes a self-sacrifice conceived in terms of self- limitation. For him, an emphasis on the limit [hadh, maryada] is constitutive of religion. (ibid., 12.) (the term “Gandhi’s” in the bracket is my addition)

As it turns out, it is the philosophical foundations of Gandhi’s ideas, in their rejection of a God-centred ethics and acceptance of a religion without God; that demands the absolute loss of self-sought by Gandhi’s “real politics”; …self-sacrifice or willing surrender is not, moreover, to another infinite or sovereign entity such as the nation or even a sovereign God—it must be to finitude itself, to self-sacrifice. Also, the willing surrender at work in non-possession must not be a willed surrender. Satyagrahis should rather be so possessed by non-possession as to perform an involuntary surrender—they should surrender so automatically as to not require a conscious act of the will. (ibid., 14)

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Such self-limitation and surrender to the limit in Gandhi’s politics is inspired by compassion, and such compassion or “daya is to give oneself to the limit and in this limitless sense limit oneself”. (ibid.) Section 6.3 will look at the tenability of Skaria’s interpretation (Skaria, 2016) with a view to dismantling the pernicious incendiary implications which he read into Gandhi’s “real politics”.

6.3 Debating Skaria Skaria’s critique of Gandhi (discussed in the last two sections) is important for it brings Gandhi’s integrity into question-both as a man and that between his ideas. The critique brings Gandhi’s integrity into question because Skaria argues that though Gandhi real politics is avowedly organized around a devotion to truth pervaded by ahimsa/love expressed in service rather than in a search for power; it turns out that the practise of this politics is neither filled with love, nor about truth, nor indeed one of service. Consider that the method of Gandhi’s politics, satyagraha, i.e. a non-violent firmness on truth; unleashes a force on the other as an imposition of the thekana/ proper. The satyagrahi who practises a religion of the question is also subjected to force in that, in the name of a truth, he does not know, a groundless faith demands a self-restraint and surrender of his/her sovereignty to “the proper” (ibid., 3) in a limitless self-limitation. The devotion to truth described as “truth or God” is based on a blatant untruth. For Gandhi, Skaria believes, had an insight into the death of God which of course turned Gandhian satyagraha into a surrender inspired by a groundless faith. Skaria argues that Gandhi speaks of an absolute equality which as immeasurable, destroys liberal equality; which in turn is the hinge that holds the plurality and sovereignty of citizenship together. Gandhi is then led to demand the destruction of both the autonomy and the sovereignty of the citizen; and he seeks to keep a section of Indians in perpetual minority by rejecting violence in favour of a non-violence that enacts the ability to suffer as a demand for the right to be colonised. Thereby Gandhi’s equation between tapas/ability to suffer and equality lends itself to a racism of a kind that Skaria reads in Bentham and Mill. This set of arguments might then seem to dismantle Gandhi’s integrity as a man. What of the integrity between his ideas? I had argued that this integrity meant that all of Gandhi’s positions in politics, religion, and economics; derived from fundamental convictions about truth and non-violence. In the context of the central argument of this chapter, I had traced such an integrity in Gandhi’s politics to three key moral insights; 1. A distinction between “real” and “power” politics. 2. A continuity with the past and with nature. 3. The idea that there was no distinction between means and end. Skaria rejects such an understanding of Gandhi and argues that his politics was about a power that was exercised after the manner of the benevolent colonizer who

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was drawn to speak and take responsibility for/over the minor. This was a politics that exercised the force of the thekana/collective bias over the different ‘other’ and over the self itself in self-restraint as a surrender of autonomy in/before a groundless faith. Gandhi’s politics was then after all a politics of power for it called for the surrender of autonomy by both the satyagrahi self and the opposing other. It was not then (as Gandhi had claimed) a real politics of service. Gandhi’s relationship with the past too was not (as he had claimed) one that kept the integrity of moral insights in place making for the a priori continuity of the self but rather one that tyrannised the minor by traditional notions of thekhana/proper. Most important here perhaps is Skaria’s belief that there was little integrity between Gandhi’s ideas themselves; because the very devotion to “truth or God” around which Gandhi avowed that human life (and real politics) could be integrated was groundless. For in the manner of moderns, Gandhi had affirmed the death of God and declared that truth (which as multiple and irreconcilable in its multiplicity could not be known) took the place formerly assigned to God. I will argue that there are certain key points/insights around which Skaria had built his somewhat spectacular misreading of Gandhi; 1. The argument that Gandhi’s equation of God with truth (and a politics which was built around the priority of satya over God) was based on the death of God; 2. The idea that Gandhian equality was based upon the ability to suffer and grounded upon a “profoundly colonial concept of suffering” (ibid., 39); 3. An understanding that Gandhi’s notion of Swaraj/freedom qua self-restraint is/ involves the surrender of an individual’s sovereignty to the proper; “Surrender” or “self-surrender” must thus mark the resistance that satyagrahis offer. Here, to practice satyagraha is not only to refuse to take up arms, but to surrender as a way of refusing subordination, of giving and receiving a freedom and equality that is secreted in the very act of surrender. As subjects, satyagrahis are not agents—they do not exercise autonomy or sovereignty. (ibid., 10)

4. An understanding of Gandhi’s satyagraha as force itself. For Skaria Gandhian satyagraha /firmness on truth was not about truth at all but a “profound violence of the insistence on rightful places” (ibid., 155); Skaria’s account could present a challenge to the argument of this paper which has suggested that Gandhi’s politics would be best understood around the idea of integrity; that his ideas flowed from fundamental moral conceptions and were organized around a devotion to truth. Skaria argues, to the contrary, that Gandhi’s integrity fell short of his practise which was about the most invidious self-deception; The violence of the thekana is all the more invidious because all those involved regard their actions, at least by Gandhi’s account, as a tender and solicitous care of those protected, as non-violence. (ibid.)

While Skaria’s rendering or rather rending of Gandhi’s tapas in its connection with an immeasurable equality has already been discussed in Sect. 6.1.3 (thereby pre-empting the second point enumerated above), the following sections will attempt

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to bring out why there are problems with Skaria’s key insights into Gandhi and argue that there could be spectacular difficulties with these interpretations of Gandhi.

6.3.1 Debating Skaria: on Gandhi’s Truth or God Skaria has recalled Hegel writing in 1802 that “the religion of more recent times rests” (ibid., viii) on the idea that “God himself is dead”(ibid.). He argues that the “apprehension of the death of God” (Skaria viii) is of great importance in modernity. God-centred ethics are on the decline among philosophers, and many philosophers think about morality and ethics in secular terms, without reference to God. Despite his critique of modernity, Gandhi is assimilated to modern thinkers because Skaria believes, that like Hegel he has insights into the death of God. Though (as is well known) Gandhi speaks and writes as though God exists; all the while, he really believes that there is no God, which (as Skaria argues), is the point of his equation between truth and God. The consequences of such a concern with immanence have already been discussed in line with Skaria’s account in the immediately preceding section. However, it remains to be seen if the equation between truth and God made by Gandhi evidences that his writing (like Nietzsche’s) is indeed so based upon an insight into the death of God; one which brings him close to Hegel as Skaria has pointed out. To begin with (as already noted at the start of this essay) if the equation between truth and God is in itself sufficient to conclude that Gandhi rejects the notion of God as transcendent and thinks of ethics in entirely immanent/secular terms; one would have to affirm that God has been dead in ancient Indian thought from its earliest beginning. Recall that the Upanishads spoke of Brahman as truth/satyam, consciousness/jnanam, and Bliss/anandam. Gandhi one might emphasize, equated God with truth, from within this same tradition which spoke of Brahman as both, immanent in and transcendent to, the world. However, there is another argument against Skaria’s reading, and this comes from noting much that Gandhi himself wrote and did. One might recall in this connection that though Gandhi had emphasized that moral life ought to be seen as independent of religion and religion ought indeed to be seen as dependent on morality; he not only spoke of a devotion to a personal God writing in his commentaries on the Gita of Sri Krishna’s divine form but also made references to having heard such a God as an inner voice. Recall Gandhi’s account of the eleventh chapter of the Gita where Arjuna asks to see the divine form of Sri Krishna; This is regarded as an important chapter. The Gita is a poem with a profound meaning. If we wish to learn true bhakti, we should know this chapter by heart. If we do so, we shall feel when reciting it, that we are bathing in a sea of bhakti. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 271)

Gandhi comments on verse 14 from chapter eleven; The whole universe, despite its manifold divisions, is gathered there in Him (Like a tree and its leaves. The tree is like the cosmic form of the Lord, the root, and the leaves being one.

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The root contains the whole world of the tree, and the leaves represent that world divided into many forms). Arjuna saw thus the [cosmic] form of the God of gods. (ibid., 273)

Not only was Gandhi clear about the importance of the devotee’s faith in a personal God he spoke (as noted above) of having heard the voice of such a God himself as an inner voice at many critical times of his life; A person falsely claiming to act under divine inspiration or the promptings of the inner voice without having any such, will fare worse than the one falsely claiming to act under the authority of an earthly sovereign…A humble seeker that I claim to be has need to be most cautious and, to preserve the balance of mind, he has to reduce himself to zero before God will guide him. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 58: 10)

However, it is significant that the place of God in Gandhi was not only a matter of what he said about a personal God or how he acted once he had heard the voice of God. Rather the presence of God provided the philosophical foundation to Gandhi’s religion and ethics; and thence to his politics, economics and his critique of modern civilization. This will become apparent if one considers that Gandhi’s central insights were grounded in a belief in a transcendent reality; one that both granted reality to and made for the moral government of the immanent world. Gandhi’s emphasis on the human being’s innermost nature/swabhawa as constituted by the unilateral obligation to own kinship with the non-human world was an expression of a nonanthropocentric world view where the human being was not at the centre of the universe. Recall Gandhi argument that since a human being is made in the image of God, his/her innermost nature/swabhawa is constituted by the unilateral obligation to own kinship with the human and non-human world; The truth is that my ethics not only permit me to claim but require me to own kinship with not merely the ape but the horse and the sheep, the lion and the leopard, the snake, and the scorpion. Not so need these kinsfolk regard themselves. The hard ethics which rule my life, and I hold ought to rule that of every man and woman, impose this unilateral obligation upon us. And it is so imposed because man alone is made in the image of God. That some of us do not recognize that status of ours makes no difference, except that then we do not get the benefit of the status, even as a lion brought up in the company of sheep, may not know his own status and, therefore, does not receive its benefits; but it belongs to him, nevertheless, and the moment he realizes it, he begins to exercise his dominion over the sheep. But no sheep masquerading as a lion can ever attain the leonine status. And to prove the proposition that man is made in the image of God, it is surely unnecessary to show that all men admittedly exhibit that image in their own persons. It is enough to show that one man at least has done so. And, will it be denied that the great religious teachers of mankind have exhibited the image of God in their own persons? But, of course, my correspondent even contends that it is not natural to man to find and know God and; therefore, he says “man makes God in his own image”. All I can say is that the whole of the evidence hitherto produced by travellers controvert this astounding proposition. It is being more and more demonstrated that it is the worship of God, be it in the crudest manner possible, which distinguishes man from the brute. It is the possession of that additional quality which gives him such enormous hold upon God’s creation. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 36: 5)

This fundamental insight that the human being was made in the image of God as the creator/moral governor of the cosmos came from Gandhi’s faith in what was essentially a world view of the ancients. One might recall that in ancient world views,

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it was indeed philosophically fundamental to recognize that the human being was a part of a wider cosmos where order emerged from a ground other than the human. Many things followed once this was accepted as the basis of one’s thought and action. Witness that one would then think quite differently about equality between the human and non-human world. Indeed like Tagore, one might think of a fellowship between the human being and the natural world with nature mediating the relationship between man and God. For Gandhi indeed, there could be no faith qua faith which was held by the faithful to be “groundless”. Consider how (for Gandhi) Faith to be faithful had to be grounded in a humbling belief in that which was beyond itself and transcendent to human reality. Note the following philosophically dense paragraph from Gandhi; Even as my denial or ignorance of the existence of an earthly power will avail me nothing, so will not my denial of God and His Law liberate me from its operation; whereas humble and mute acceptance of divine authority makes life’s journey easier even as the acceptance of earthly rule makes life under it easier. I do dimly perceive that while everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates. That informing Power or Spirit is God. And since nothing else I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is. And is this power benevolent or malevolent? I see it as purely benevolent. For I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, truth, light. He is Love. He is the supreme good. But he is no God who merely satisfies the intellect if he ever does. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. He must express himself in every the smallest act of his votary. This can only be done through a definite realization more real than the five senses can ever produce. Sense perceptions can be, often are, false and deceptive, however, real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses, it is infallible. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 43: 96)

It seems clear enough that the equation of truth, love, life, light with God was not intended to affirm the death of God. Indeed Gandhi had explained his own assertion (the one that Skaria refers to argue that Gandhi believed that God is dead) quite clearly; I have come to the conclusion that for myself God is Truth. But two years ago, I went a step further and said Truth is God. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 54: 268).

This last statement from Gandhi (one might recall) is all the evidence that Skaria needs in support of his own affirmation of Gandhi’s belief in the death of God. However, Gandhi had explained why he had made an equation between God and Truth arguing that if one seeks evidence of God it can only be found in transformations in the moral life of those who have felt “the real presence of God within” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 43:96). Since there is no evidence for faith external to the moral life of the devotee, one must assert the moral governance of the world by equating God with truth which therefore cannot be taken to deny that God exists; but only to affirm that the evidence for this lies within the faith (and moral transformation) of the devotee. The passage from Gandhi initiated in/by the quotation above (which Skaria has quoted) goes on, in fact, to explain this; I have come to the conclusion that for myself God is Truth. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence

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of God within. Such testimony is to be found in the experiences of an unbroken line of prophets and sages in all countries and climes. To reject this evidence is to deny oneself. This realization is preceded by an immovable faith. He who would in his own person test the fact of God’s presence can do so by a living faith. And since faith itself cannot be proved by extraneous evidence, the safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of truth and love. Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to truth and love. (ibid.)

Given that Gandhi had thought so much of God and of faith in God, it seems difficult to align him with Nietzsche and say, as Skaria does, that; All of this is symptomatic, I would like to argue, of how in Gandhi’s writing at its most intriguing, the apprehension of the death of God is accompanied by satyagraha as a religion of the question (Skaria, 2016: ix).

This of course would bring in to question much of what Skaria says of Gandhi’s understandings of equality, satyagraha, and swaraj for he grounds his arguments on his fundamental insight into the groundlessness of Gandhi’s faith.

6.3.2 Debating Skaria; Coercion, Satyagraha, Swaraj, and Gandhi’s Groundless Faith Skaria has argued that since Gandhi has insights into the death of God; Gandhi’s satyagraha is a religion of the question and of imposition of force on the other. As he argues and as seems fairly obvious Gandhi’s conception of satyagraha was connected powerfully to his understanding of swaraj; In order to elicit what satyagraha entails, we could begin by attending to the curious movement in Gandhi’s writings between two senses of the word swaraj. The editor goes back in effect to the etymology of the word: swa—self, but with connotations of proper and ownmost; and raj—rule. Swaraj here names the rule of the self, and in the process wrestles with the questions: what is proper to rule? What is proper to the self? What would the rule of the ownmost involve? Perhaps because of these unfamiliar senses, the word swaraj acquires, the editor’s use of the word swaraj often remains untranslated in Gandhi’s English rendering… The editor describes swaraj by drawing on two words with which Gandhi is inextricably associated—ahimsa and satyagraha. Ahimsa, etymologically non-violence [a, non; himsa, violence], is a storied term with long and complex genealogies in Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain texts. Satyagraha is described also as “love-force” [prembal] and “soul-force” [atmabal]… (ibid., 3)

Skaria argues that the truth/satya in satyagraha is constitutively “obscured”(Skaria;6), and the agraha in satyagraha is about the cultivation of force and loss of both sovereignty and autonomy; while the ownmost orientation of all beings is to attend to satya, it is also obscured from them, so that agraha here involves not only insistence and force (the more conventional renderings of the word) but also resistance. This resistance or force is moreover “passive” in the sense that all beings suffer it without having chosen to do so. Satyagraha is the active

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cultivation of this passive force; this is why Gandhi on occasion describes satyagraha as the most intense activity. (An intense activity, one might add, that must proceed without sovereignty or autonomy) (ibid., 6)

Perhaps one might take Skaria’s words made in another context and argue that “a rending has taken the place of the rendering…” (ibid., 16) in Skaria’s understanding of Gandhi’s conceptions of truth/God, satyagraha, and tapas. Note for example that Gandhi has clearly argued that satyagraha is not passive “in the sense that all beings suffer it without having chosen to do so” (ibid., 6) and had firmly rejected the translation “passive resistance” for satyagraha; Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the force which is born of truth and love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase “passive resistance” in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing, we often avoided it and used instead the word “Satyagraha” itself or some other equivalent English phrase. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 34: 93)

As Gandhi wrote to his critic Reverend Boyd Tucker: “Resist not evil”, with me has never meant passive resistance. I have described the word “passive resistance” as a misnomer for “resistance” which I have known and offered. The paraphrase of “resist not evil” means “resist not evil with evil” and therefore necessarily means “resist evil with good”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 41: 221).

Far from conceiving that “all beings suffer it (satyagraha) without having chosen to do so” (Skaria, 2016: 6. The addition in brackets is my own) Gandhi thought and argued that a moral agent who believes in the force of goodness must choose to suffer in his/her own person; Satyagraha means fighting oppression through voluntary suffering. There can be no question here of making anyone else suffer. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 16: 438)

This rending of satyagraha in Skaria is in conversation with another rending, one by Kumar (2015), who has argued that satyagraha involves the imposition of reciprocity, limits and the proper/thekana on both oneself and the other; and that “satyagraha allowed Gandhi to conceptualize force as the fulcrum of everyday virtue and action…” (Kumar, 2015: 61). Kumar speaks of a “satyagrahi fanaticism” (ibid., 87) which appropriated and silenced the other by “the imposition of limits on the unequal’s faculties” (ibid., 90). Satyagraha itself remained “an ethical demand rooted in the … groundless recesses of faith” (ibid., 91). Going back to Skaria’s (2016) reading, one might recall that to him, Gandhi’s faith was groundless because the philosophical foundation of his faith rested on the death of God which necessitated “a self-sacrifice conceived in terms of self- limitation. For him, an emphasis on the limit [hadh, maryada] is constitutive of religion”. (Skaria, 2016: 12). Kumar argues that Gandhi’s “rhetoric of spirit” (Kumar, 2015: 69) made for another integrity (one not related to the integrity of a person) between the idea of the state and the injunctions of the moral law. It turned out then that Gandhi’s soulforce was modern and very much in the lineage of the European tradition and that Gandhi’s “spirit” was in company with Hegel’s phenomenological understanding of

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the “modern autonomous self” (ibid., 72) which acquired its form “in the shadows of force alone” (ibid., 73). On this rendering (or rending), the critique of modernity in Hind Swaraj was not—indeed could not—be authentic for: “Gandhi was most modern, even if not decisively humanist, in ascribing this spiritual invincibility to force. For he had placed himself consciously or otherwise, within an early modern tradition in which the discourse on spirit had returned…” (ibid., 79) and had been given “at least since Hegel, a spiritual sanctity” (ibid.). Section 6.3 (of this essay) had opened with four key points/insights which grounded Skaria’s understanding of Gandhi. The first of these had identified Gandhi’s equation of truth and God as affirming the death of God, and this has been found problematic both at the start of the essay and in terms of the argument in Sect. 6.3.1. The second key insight was concerned with the argument that Gandhian equality was based upon the ability to suffer and with the “profoundly colonial concept of suffering” (Skaria, 2016: 39), and this was preemptively discussed in Sect. 6.1.3 of the essay. The third and fourth insights are concerned with Skaria’s reading of Gandhian swaraj as demanding a surrender of an individual’s sovereignty to the proper and that of satyagraha as force itself. The following sub-Sects. 6.3.2.1 and 6.3.2.2 will accordingly discuss swaraj and its close connection to satyagraha in Gandhi.

6.3.2.1

Debating Skaria; Gandhian Swaraj

This section will argue that Skaria had somewhat misunderstood both Gandhi’s notions of swaraj and satyagraha. His rendering of Gandhian swaraj as a state which involves the rule of the “proper” (ibid., 3) over the self might seem to have been a somewhat spectacular misreading of Gandhi. This might seem apparent if one considers that swaraj as “the most crucial stake of Gandhi’s politics” (ibid., 10) was for Skaria connected with a “surrender without subordination” (ibid.). He argues— one might recall—that satyagrahi’s enacted a “distinctive swaraj” (ibid.) where it was the relinquishment of sovereignty itself which opened on to another freedom/ swaraj. (ibid.) Skaria’s rendering of satyagraha as coercive and the related idea that “the satyagrahi’s self-sacrifice always risks becoming suicide” (ibid., 63) might also seem problematic. It might be appropriate to begin then, with Gandhi’s swaraj/freedom which one might recall (from a reading of the Hind Swaraj) could be spoken of in terms of self-rule and also as a state of collective political freedom or home rule. Quite in line with the integrity that pervaded his ideas, these two states were interconnected in a Gandhian understanding of freedom. As in, one could not attain collective freedom from the colonial rule unless every individual in that collective was progressing in / to swarajya as self-rule; Self-government depends entirely upon our own internal strength, upon our ability to fight against the heaviest odds… I have therefore endeavoured to show both in word and deed that political self-government, that is, self-government for a large number of men and women is no better than individual self-government, and therefore it is to be attained by precisely the same means that are required for individual self-government or self-rule, … (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 40: 418)

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One might ask what Gandhi could have meant by self-rule and how he could have connected such a state of being with the freedom of both the individual self and the nation? To begin with one should note that the idea of individual freedom as a state of being described as self-rule is not without precursors in the Indian tradition with which Gandhi had positioned himself in a somewhat critical continuity. That tradition had thought of freedom both in term of rights and in terms of self-rule as a state that would lead to moksha/mukti.3 Gandhi was clear that a state of self-rule was quite in line with the kind of freedom that was pictured in the state of moksha/ mukti; I adhere to all I have said in that booklet and I would certainly recommend it to the reader. Government over self is the truest swaraj. It is synonymous with moksha or salvation, … (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 22: 63)

That the individual freedom/self-rule Gandhi sought should be in line with the idea of mukti brings home the point that Gandhi accepted the traditional argument that individual freedom required a concern with overcoming both external and internal obstacles to freedom. It followed, for Gandhi at least, that swaraj as a state of self-rule of an individual should be concerned with removing internal obstacles to individual freedom; and that, it was only subsequent to the removal of such obstacles that the satyagrahi (and the collective) could move to remove external obstacles to freedom by the acquisition of political rights and freedom. Gandhi saw clearly that internal hindrances to individual freedom did not arise from the coercion of another but from the presence of obstacles to freedom within the individual’s own inner life. They emerged perhaps from the individual’s fear for/attachment towards the self, and fear of any possible loss to the ego and ego-directed desires and projects; It is my certain conviction that no man looses his freedom except through his own weakness. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 53: 354)

Both Gandhi and indeed Tagore had thought that ego-directed passions, attachments, and (insecurities about) and fear for the sake of such attachments; could be a source of weakness and as much of an impediment to individual freedom as restrictions on political liberty posed by a coloniser. Note in this context that Tagore had portrayed the coercion involved in ego-driven desires and passions in a person which he/she found no good reason to support and which would not have been freely chosen by him/her as good reasons for beliefs and actions; but for the presence of the dazzling ego within. In The Home and the World, Tagore portrayed the coercive nature of the passion and desire for Sandip that quite destroyed the freedom to respond to reasons in the mind of his heroine Bimala. She experienced the passion as an absolute loss of autonomy and had a sense of being a slave to it and yet could not overcome that slavery: This demon in the guise of a God had come with his ruddy torch to call me that day, saying: “I am your country. I am your Sandip. I am more to you than anything else of yours. Bande Mataram”! And with folded hands, I had responded.... Whatever else is mine shall be swept away before my love for you. Bande Mataram! (Tagore, 2012: 355)

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Tagore used the vignette of Bimala’s experiences to bring out the idea that there could be an intimate connection between the passion/desires of an individual and his/her ego-directed self-deceptions. He drew a verbal picture of Bimala’s passion showing that it was often ignited by Sandip’s attempts to flatter her by calling her the “Queen Bee” or a “living flame” (ibid., 246). As Tagore relates the story, Bimala’s passion was intensified by Sandip’s flattery only because such flattery reiterated her own ego-driven self-image. She was then enslaved not so much by Sandip as by her own ego which projected her as much more dazzling than she was. This compromised Bimala’s freedom so much that she felt coerced to steal from her husband’s safe even without wanting to will herself to commit such a theft. Gandian Swaraj or self-rule being concerned with self-restraint rather than self-indulgence; was interested in a freedom from such an enslavement to individual desires, insecurity, and fear, by the “fat relentless ego” (Murdoch, 1970: 51). Consider in support of the last point that the other Gandhian virtues, i.e. aparigraha/non-possession, asteya/non-stealing better translated perhaps as non-aquisitiveness, and brahmacharya/celibacy; were each related to restraint rather than indulgence. One might reflect upon why Gandhi should have chosen to speak of home rule as connected to such an ethics of individual restraint. Some insights could emerge if one would recall that colonised India was characterized by terrible poverty and economic, religious, and social divides. Consider that in such a diverse collective of individuals self-restraint of ego-directed aggrandising projects would perhaps be the only way to live together in peace. That Gandhi should have chosen to speak of swaraj/freedom (in line with the Indian tradition) as individual self-restraint was perhaps more closely related to such considerations than any which (Skaria (2016) had identified and which) could have arisen from a terrifying and masochistic desire of the self to impose the tyranny of the proper over itself. To go back to the connections spoken of earlier between Gandhi’s (and Tagore’s) understanding of the connection between the ego and self-deception, Gandhi had brought out these connections quite clearly; The body exists because of our ego… He who has achieved …extinction of ego becomes the very image of truth. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 26: 365)

For Gandhi, a restraint of the relentless individual ego (and it’s projects of aggrandizement) in swaraj as self-rule was certainly not an imposition of the thekana/proper on the self (in the manner that Skaria thinks it to be); rather it was a restoration of the self to its innermost nature/swabhawa which (as noted earlier in this essay) was an ahimsanat state and one of owning up to a kinship with all being. This connection (that Gandhi has made) between being free of the demands of an over assertive sense of oneself and being in a state natural to the human qua human might find some support if one only thinks of the strain imposed on an individual by the “egocentric mechanism” (Murdoch, 1970: 53) of passion and desire. Gandhi spoke of the natural state of being human as being self-ruled/free of the “fantasy” (ibid., 65) brought on by “self-centred aims and images” (ibid.) and thereby ahimsanat/non-violent. One might of course see that passions, desires, attachments, and fear born of such could be powerful sources of violence; and correspondingly that a state of being self-ruled would indeed be ahimsanat/non-violent;

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When doing anything, one must ask oneself this question; “Is my action inspired by egoistic attachment”? If there is no such attachment, then there is no violence. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 35: 324)

It might also seem apparent that the progress towards truth made possible by the progressive freedom from self-deception in a move “away from self” (Murdoch, 1970: 58), and a restraint of ego-driven attachment and passions would further confirm the self in its own innermost/natural state of ahimsa/non-violence; Standing as he does in the midst of himsa, he can retire into the innermost depths of his heart and declare to the world around him that his mission in this world of himsa is ahimsa, and only to the extent that he practises it does he adorn his kind. Man’s nature then is not himsa, but ahimsa, for he can speak from experience, his innermost conviction, that he is not the body but atman, and that he may use the body only with a view to expressing the atman, only with a view to self-realization. And from that experience, he evolves the ethics of subduing desire, anger, ignorance, malice, and other passions, puts forth his best effort to achieve the end, and finally attains complete success. Only when his efforts reach that consummation can be said to have fulfilled himself, to have acted according to his nature. Conquest of one’s passions therefore is not superhuman, but human, and observance of ahimsa is heroism of the highest type, with no room therein for cowardice or weakness. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 35: 359)

One might realize the significance of such an understanding of individual swaraj/ self-rule as an individual’s progressive effort to arrive at the state which Gandhi argued was natural to being human. This was a state (as seen earlier) of owning up to the unilateral obligation to “treat all as of ourselves” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 47: 61) responding to the most different other as one would to a member of one’s own family who appeared most distant to oneself. The progress to self-rule in Gandhi as a state of being progressively free of self-occupation was then intimately linked with the idea of humility, and it’s inevitable co-relate, samabhava/attitude of equality to things as they are or exist. Consider that humility as a restraint of one’s own ego would bring home the idea that one was not better than any other person/being and therefore that others were equal to oneself. Gandhian swaraj with its emphasis on the restraint of self-assertion was one where the human being would accept absolute equality between all beings and thereafter make no discrimination between one’s own and others. This state of self-rule/swaraj was also (and consequently) a state in which the individual would respond with an equality of deference to all manner of being. Gandhi often traced this equality to the Gita; Almost every page of the Gita advises us not to make any distinction between our own people and others. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 48: 439)

Such freedom/swaraj as self-restraint and humility (as might seem obvious) somewhat directly harmonized the individual’s freedom with the freedom of the ‘other’. It also served to protect the individual as part of the collective from exploitation of different kinds. Consider how in capitalist societies consumerism becomes a manner of exploiting human beings by insighting all manner of desires in the name of the freedom of citizens to trade, sell and buy. For Gandhi swaraj in its second sense, i.e. as home rule could only be founded on such individual swaraj as self-restraint4 , and the latter then, became the ground for

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securing political rights as home rule. This then brings in the question of the choice of method for the colonised Indians to arrive at such a state of collective freedom as swaraj/ home rule. Gandhi had brought out the connections between swaraj, satya, and ahimsa, and this argument made it somewhat inevitable that satyagraha could be the only choice for a self-ruled individual who sought freedom for both him/her self and equally for his/her “neighbour too” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 66: 253); Truth and love have been jointly the guiding principle of my life. If God the indefinable can be at all defined, then I should say that God is Truth. It is impossible to reach him that is truth, except through love. Love can only be expressed fully when man reduces himself to a cipher. This reduction to cipher is the highest effort man or women is capable of making. It is the only effort worth making, and it is possible only through ever-increasing self-restraint. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 39: 24)

Quite aptly then satyagraha/or non-violent firmness in the interest of truth/justice became the appropriate method to arrive at Gandhian swaraj as home rule. The satyagrahi’s, on their part, were required to be aspirants of individual swaraj/self-rule without which they would not be able to progress towards home rule/swaraj. Gandhi therefore insisted that satyagrahis/soldiers of truth must fulfil what he saw as the pre-requisites for swaraj as self-rule. He spoke in 1916 of “the secret of satyagraha” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 15: 242); … if we want to put this body in the service of truth and humanity, we must first raise our soul by developing virtues like celibacy, non-violence, and truth. Then alone may we say that we are fit to render real service to the country. In brief, the aim of the satyagraha struggle was to infuse manliness in cowards and to develop the really human virtues, and its field was the passive resistance against the Government of South Africa. (ibid.)

What then of Skaria’s argument that raises the questions posed by Gandhian swaraj; Swaraj here names the rule of the self, and in the process wrestles with the questions: What is proper to rule? What is proper to the self? What would the rule of the ownmost involve? (Skaria, 2016: 3)

Skaria one might recall had spelt out a possible Gandhian answer to the questions (he had himself) posed above by saying that Gandhi had defined the rule of the proper in self-rule/swaraj by understanding the proper in terms of the thekhana/ rightful place; It would be easy enough to indicate the many occasions on which Gandhi’s interventions institute such sovereignty over both self and other. His explicit formulations draw heavily on the trope of the thekana [right-full place] in thinking of the role of women or varnadharma [the fourfold caste order]. He cannot envisage any significant role in the Congress for prostitutes—women who exemplify the abandonment of rightful place—and his explicit formulations cannot conceptualize a political role for insurgent untouchables or “Dalits”, only for deified untouchables or “Harijans”. In all these cases, even though satyagrahis give themselves aneconomically, by doing so they establish only an economy of the proper— a sovereign social order centred on propriety and appropriation. In the process, what is destroyed is Gandhi’s insistence on the equality of all being. To the extent that Gandhi works within the terms of the proper, then even on the most generous reading, he can only appear the way he does to Jawaharlal Nehru or, even more,

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Dr. B. R. Ambedkar—as thoroughly unable to even recognize the demand for equality from the margins. Where caste, gender, or the Indian villages are understood in terms of the sovereignty of the proper, existing relations of power are naturalized. (ibid., 24)

One must ask then if Gandhian swaraj as self-rule/self-restraint implies that the moral agents give themselves over to their rightful place one determined (as seen in Skaria’s passage above) by varna as a “social order centred on propriety and appropriation” (ibid.)? One which, as it turns out (according to Skaria) confines them within a limit/hadh? Skaria’s point is not that this is what Gandhi’s philosophy lent itself to at the hands of politicians or even that, no matter what he said, Gandhi’s politics was one of doing things differently from what he said. Rather Skaria’s point is that “swaraj” as “self-restraint” in Gandhi’s philosophy connoted the rule of the proper, i.e. of the rightful place over the self of an individual. This rule of the rightful place on an individual then according to Gandhi (Skaria’s Gandhi) went on to determine home rule as the independence of the nation. If one were to accept Skaria’s argument, one might find little to differentiate Gandhi from the orthodox, from Tilak perhaps; and yet if we turn to Gandhi’s Discourses on the Gita and Tilak’s Gita Rahasya, one might find that their interpretations of Arjuna’s opening question to Sri Krishna at the very start of the Gita are very different. Note in this context that in the Discourses on the Gita, Gandhi speaks of Arjuna’s question to Sri Krishna at the very start of the Gita recounting that: Arjuna requests Sri Krishna to station his chariot between the two armies, so that he may see the warriors on the field. He sees that all of them are relatives and friends, whom one cannot easily bring oneself to kill. Arjuna says: “I do not see any good in killing one’s kinsmen”. The stress here is on “kinsmen”. He says “I would not fight against them, even for the kingdom of the three worlds; how could I, then, fight against them for a few clods of earth”? (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 79)

Gandhi takes this occasion to remind the Hindu’s of the ethical implications of a metaphysics of a vedantic oneness in sacred Hindu texts rather than speak (as he should if Skaria’s reading is correct) of rightful places and the dharma that they obligate the moral agent to perform. Quite to the contrary Gandhi argues that: The first thing to bear in mind is that Arjuna falls into the error of making a distinction between kinsmen and outsiders. Outsiders may be killed even if they are not oppressors, and kinsmen may not be killed even if they are....The Gita permits no distinction between one’s relations and others. (ibid., 83)

One might now recall how Maharaj Tilak has interpreted Arjuna’s despondency and Sri Krishna’s advice to him: The blessed Lord is telling Arjuna to fight, having regard to what his “dharma” is,… it is better to die performing one’s caste duties; following the duties enjoined on another caste is dangerous. (Tilak, 1935, 89)

There is clearly a fundamental philosophical difference between Tilak’s interpretation that Sri Krishna asks Arjuna to shake off his despondency to perform the

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duties enjoined by his caste/rightful place in society and; Gandhi’s alternative understanding that Sri Krishna asks Arjuna to abjure the discrimination between kinsmen and others. Skaria, however, takes no notice of such differences and refers instead to Gandhi’s insistence that the prostitutes of Barisal “must give up sex work before joining the Congress”. (Skaria, 2016: 156) as confirming that Gandhi’s swaraj as self-rule was about the rule of the rightful place over the self. Skaria has argued that Gandhi thinks that; The prostitutes of Barisal cannot offer self-sacrifice since they have abandoned the thekana of womanhood. (ibid., 157)

This is taken to confirm the violence of the rightful place in the rule of the proper over the self in Gandhian Swaraj as self-rule (and therefrom in satyagraha) and Skaria asks; In what conceptual sense are the prostitutes of Barisal incapable for Gandhi of offering self-sacrifice? (ibid.)

The difficulties in Skaria’s reading can become clearer if one goes back to Gandhi’s discussion of the qualifications for satyagrahi’s which he had laid out many years before he had been involved in the debate about satyagraha at Barisal. If one looks at the 1916 speech on the secret of satyagraha in South Africa Gandhi speaks of the requisite training for satyagrahi’s and makes a intimate connection between selfcontrol and satyagraha; All of which goes to show that we can gain everything without hurting anybody and through soul-force or satyagraha alone. He who fights with arms has to depend on arms and on support from others. He has to turn from the straight path and seek tortuous tracks. The course that a satyagrahi adopts in his fight is straight and he need look to no one for help. He can, if necessary, fight by himself alone… For the battle of satyagraha, one only needs to prepare oneself. We have to have strict self-control. If it is necessary for this preparation to live in forests and caves, we should do so. The time that may be taken up in this preparation should not be considered wasted. Christ, before he went out to serve the world, spent forty days in the wilderness, preparing himself for his mission. Buddha too spent many years in such preparation. Had Christ and Buddha not undergone this preparation, they would not have been what they were. Similarly, if we want to put this body in the service of truth and humanity, we must first raise our soul by developing virtues like celibacy, non-violence, and truth. Then alone may we say that we are fit to render real service to the country. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 15: 241–242)

The point I want to make is not that Gandhi was right in imposing celibacy on male and female satyagrahis. Indeed if we are to judge his actions from the standpoint of the present of course, he must be judged as mistaken for sexual restraint might be found to have little to do with the moral journey. The only point I seek to make here is that the reason that Gandhi had insisted that the prostitutes must give up sex work before joining satyagraha was not that he thought that swaraj meant the rule of the proper over the self, and that, by virtue of their profession the prostitutes had failed to be true to the thekana or rightful place of women. Rather the reason that Gandhi was against their participation “as delegates to the district and provincial conferences or the like representative bodies” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 32: 48) and against their joining “with all

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other institutions, which have satyagraha and non-violence at their creed” (ibid., 47) was that they were participating in satyagraha while at the very same time as “carrying on their sinful trade” (ibid., 48). Gandhi’s difficulty was on account of the fact that all satyagrahis and indeed all participants in his real politics of service—male and female including himself—were bound to the vows of celibacy. This vow which he took himself in 1906 as a yama/cardinal virtue meant at the very least the restriction of sexual activity to the desire for progeny. The satyagrahis were also bound to vows to observe the other virtues concerned with self-restraint such as satya/truth, non-violence as a dispassionate love of all being, aparigraha/non-possession, asteya/ non-acquisitiveness all of which (as Gandhi had argued) would help to restrain “selfaggrandizing and consoling wishes and dreams” (Murdoch, 1970: 57) and restore the self to its natural/ahimsanat state. This insistence on celibacy in the case of the women at Barisal might have been misguided or retrospectively judged to be mistaken but it was not made on account of the violence of the thekhana or on account of the fact that prostitutes had violated the thekhana/rightful place of women. Gandhi made it clear that what he was against, was a state of affairs, where; they may join all organizations which have satyagraha and non-violence as their creed all the time they are, by their trade, doing violence to truth and non-violence! (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 32: 47)

Recall that for Gandhi truth meant complete transparency in all that one did and said and non-violence meant a dispassionate love of all manner of being with nonpossession (as strict limitation of possession) as it’s inevitable co-relate. The reason that this point must be made to counter Skaria’s critique is to show that this critique does not quite dismantle the integrity of Gandhi’s ideas. In that it fails to show that Gandhi’s politics was not grounded in his fundamental moral convictions. Note that Skaria suggests that such integrity is indeed disrupted by Gandhi’s argument that prostitutes could not be satyagrahis because they had departed from/abondoned the thekana rightful place; And that vehement denunciation of the prostitutes of Barisal—what happens here? If a distinguishing mark of satyagrahis is that they give themselves aneconomically, then a paradox follows. Going by Gandhi’s understanding of their lack and even refusal of thekana or rightful place, the prostitutes of Barisal would in their double abandon—abandoning their thekana and abandoning themselves to satyagraha—have given themselves more aneconomically to it than those who do not abandon the thekana. Is his vehemence, then, also an anxiety-ridden recoil from the possibility that the prostitutes of Barisal may be the true satyagrahis and true warriors, not him? And if this is so, what is the satyagraha that he does not (as we in our turn do not) know whether he ever practices? What is this other radical conservatism? How else can the figure of the arms-bearing warrior be destroyed? (Skaria, 2016: 169)

One might recall that contrary to Skaria’s argument that Gandhi made a vehement denunciation of the prostitutes, Gandhi had thought (and said) that all moral blame lay completely with their male customers; It is a matter of bitter shame and sorrow, of deep humiliation, that a number of women have to sell their chastity for man’s lust. Man the law giver will have to pay a dreadful penalty for the degradation he had imposed upon the so-called weaker sex. When woman, freed from

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man’s snares, rises to the full height and rebels against man’s legislation and institutions designed by him, her rebellion, no doubt non-violent, will be none the less effective. Let the Indian man ponder over the fate of the thousands of sisters who are destined to a life of shame for his unlawful and immoral indulgence. The pity of it is that the vast majority of the men who visit these pestilential haunts are married men and, therefore, commit a double sin. They sin against their wives to whom they have sworn allegiance, and they sin against the sisters whose purity they are bound to guard with as much jealousy as that of their own blood-sisters. It is an evil which cannot last for a single day, if we men of India realize our own dignity. If many of the most respectable among us were not steeped in the vice, this kind of indulgence would be regarded as a greater crime than the stealing of a banana by a hungry man or the picking of a pocket by a youngster who is in need of money. What is worse of more hurtful to society—to steal property or to steal the honour of a woman? Let me not be told that the public woman is party to the sale of her honour, but not the millionaire on the racecourse whose pocket is picked by a professional pickpocket. Who is worse—an urchin who picks a pocket or a scoundrel who drugs his victim and then makes him sign away the whole of his property? Does not man by his subtle and unscrupulous ways first rob woman of her noblest instinct and then make her partner in the crime committed against her? Or are some women, like Panchamas, born to a life of degradation? I ask every young man, married or unmarried, to contemplate the implications of what I have written. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 31: 168–169)

Perhaps then the self-restraint Gandhi spoke of in swaraj as self-rule was, as he said, a restraint of the self (the ego and it’s aggrandizing desires for the sake of the self) and not the rule of the rightful place on the self. On reflection, one might see a difference between these two states, i.e. a self who rules over his/her desires and selects which to pursue from a state of equanimity/balance; and a state where the self is ruled by the idea of collective bias/thekhana. What then of Skaria’s notion of the “surrender without subordination” and loss of both autonomy and sovereignty in self-rule and subsequently in satyagraha? Consider that Gandhi argues that “swaraj” is a state where the self becomes progressively free of the terrifying tyranny of passions, desires, attachments, and fear for the sake of loosing one’s pursuit of these. One might argue that a person who is able to progressively gain some perspective on these extreme states of want for the sake of an exaggerated sense of the self, might to that extent, gain both autonomy/the right or condition of self-government and sovereignty/supreme power or authority. Consider that a person who is under the spell of passion or accumulation of possessions for the greedy mechanism of the self is to that extent neither self-governing nor holding supreme power over his/ her own life for the object of passion both holds supreme power and directs his/ her actions. One might recall that in Kant’s moral philosophy to be autonomous meant that an agent was free to act in accordance with the law of reason rather than under the influence of inclination. Skaria then might be off the mark in thinking of Gandhian swaraj/self-restraint as a loss of autonomy and sovereignty over the self; and consequently as leading in satyagraha to a surrender without subordination. Indeed, Gandhian swaraj might lead us to the contrary position where swaraj as selfrestraint restores freedom to an individual to act without tutelage to inclinations and in accordance either with that which comes naturally to him/her or with that which is in accordance with reason once such tutelage has been removed.

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Debating Skaria; of the Coercion and Force in Satyagraha

Having brought out some of the misreadings involved in Skaria’s understanding of Gandhian swaraj, one might move on to look at another of his related understandings/ misreadings, regarding satyagraha. Earlier sections have attempted to indicate several flaws in Skaria’s arguments about the constitutive obscuration of truth in satyagraha; and the connection which he has made between the satyagrahi’s self-sacrifice/tapas and the terrorist’s suicide. However as noted at the start of Sect. 6.2.2, the idea that coercion and force is involved in satyagraha and that this force is akin to “the use of force to impose the principle” (Skaria, 2016: 227) remains to be considered. Returning to Gandhi for insights into his conception of satyagraha, one finds that he has argued that satyagraha is the most important part of moral education and that children should learn how to exercise “soul-force or love-force” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 14: 217) to resist injustice with the power of love; Thus viewed, passive resistance is the noblest and the best education. It should come, not after the ordinary education in letters of children, but it should precede it. It will not be denied that a child, before it begins to write its alphabet and to gain worldly knowledge, should know what the soul is, what truth is, what love is, what powers are latent in the soul. It should be an essential of real education that a child should learn that, in the struggle of life, it can easily conquer hate by love, untruth by truth, violence by self-suffering. It was because I felt the force of this truth, that, during the latter part of the struggle, I endeavoured, as much as I could, to train the children at Tolstoy Farm and then at Phoenix along these lines, and one of the reasons for my departure to India is still further to realize, as I already do in part, my own imperfection as a passive resister, and then to try to perfect myself, for I believe that it is in India that the nearest approach to perfection is most possible. (ibid., 218)

The best place to begin a discussion of Gandhian satyagraha then is to consider Gandhi’s argument that satyagraha (as a method/means to earn rights) is an extension of the love which works to solve conflicts in private space, i.e. within the family to the public domain, i.e. to conflicts outside family life. This is not merely a matter of considering its universal applicability, which of course Gandhi makes a point of asserting, but more significant than that; It may be used as well in political as in domestic affairs. Its universal applicability is a demonstration of its permanence and invincibility. It can be used alike by men, women, and children. (ibid., 217)

Gandhi attempts to understand how love works to solve conflicts in intimate relationships which are always pervaded by conflict; and then, he uses these insights to employ the same love-force (“force” meaning here perhaps something quite different from what the term is taken to mean in Skaria, Kumar and Hegel) to solve conflicts outside of the circle of one’s immediate intimate relationships. Consider that Gandhi’s writing is replete with examples of such a working of love in intimate relationships and the extension of that love to others; A little hard thinking will show us that the standard that we apply to the regulation of domestic relations is the standard that should be applied to regulate the relations between

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rulers and the ruled and between man and man. Those men and women who do not recognize the domestic tie are considered to be very like brutes or barbarous, even though they in form have the human body. They have never known the law of satyagraha. Those who recognize the domestic tie and its obligations have to a certain extent gone beyond that brute stage. But if challenged, they would say “what do we care though the whole universe may perish so long as we guard the family interest”? The measure of their satyagraha, therefore, is less than that of a drop in the ocean. When men and women have gone a stage further, they would extend the law of love, i.e. satyagraha, from the family to the village. A still further stage away from the brute life is reached when the law of satyagraha is applied to provincial life, and the people inhabiting a province regulate their relations by love rather than by hatred. And when as in Hindustan, we recognize the law of satyagraha as a binding force even between province and province and the millions of Hindustan treat one another as brothers and sisters, we have advanced a stage further still from the brute nature. In modern times, in no part of the earth have the people gone beyond the nation-stage in the application of satyagraha. In reality, however, there need be no reason for the clashing of interest between nation and nation, thus arresting the operation of the great law. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 17: 449)

Why should Gandhi have argued that the love which works to solve conflicts within intimate relationships which are no strangers to bitter conflicts-can work in the same way to solve conflicts in the world outside of those intimate relationships and in the last even to solve conflicts between nations. This point goes back to the argument with which this essay started namely that the idea of integrity between morality and politics is central to understanding Gandhi’s “real” (Gandhi, 1888– 1948, 77: 376–379) or true politics. Since Gandhi rejected the liberal divide between the public and the private, it was quite plausible that he should have believed that love which worked to resolve conflicts in private would work in the sphere of the public. Again since equality was also based on the absence of distinction between one’s own and others (brought home as seen above by Sri Krishna’s answer to Arjuna’s opening question in the Gita), it was clear that one should/ought to so respond to ‘others’ in conflicts just as one would to one’s own people that is with love-force rather than physical force. Indeed, the human beings natural orientation (as seen earlier at so many points in this essay) was that of owning up to such kinship; so that others with whom one was in a conflict (who were just like one’s own family members) could only be convinced and transformed by love and it’s force. Gandhi thought that the self-suffering/tapas in satyagraha would convince the other about the seriousness of one’s commitment to truth; and the non-violence in satyagraha as a dispassionate love would transform both the heart of the self and that of the opposing other. Satyagraha was pervaded by both such self-suffering and such love so that there could indeed be no room for malice of any kind. This absence of malice/rancour/bitterness pervades Gandhi’s writing about satyagraha. One might then ask if such an absence of malice in itself constitutes a force and a coercion on the other? Consider that this is the force of goodness which an interlocutor (as the ‘other’ in a conflict) might perhaps feel is wholly undeserved by his/her self and therefore feel as coercive. Consider also that to be treated as his/ her own by the satyagrahi might put pressure on the interlocutor to be kinder or at the very least to actually ‘see’ the satyagrahi as a person outside of the circle of the conflict between them. It is likely that this could possibly be the source of the

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coercion that Skaria sees (and points out); for as already pointed out, Skaria’s other argument about the coercion in satyagraha coming in part from the imposition of the proper on the self which the self then seeks to impose on the other; has seemed misleading. This (as seen earlier) seems simply mistaken given that swaraj is not about the imposition of the proper or the rightful place; but rather about restoring the self to it’s natural innermost state of owning kinship with all manner of being. Does coercion then come from the idea of converting, persuading, and transforming with love the position of another with which (rather than with whom) one is in conflict? Recall here that Gandhi had made a distinction between the position of the other with which one might be in conflict and the ‘other’ as a person who was always more than his/her unjust position. Skaria’s arguments quoted earlier emphasize that the ‘other’ experiences the love of the satyagrahi as cruel and violent which suggests in turn that the love without malice is coercive. Skaria says as noted earlier; that ahimsa and satyagraha are not non-violent if by that we refer to the attenuation of force. They are non-violent only in that they reject the force of general responsibility and seek to abide instead by the force of prayaschitta—the forgiveness-repentance that is proper to absolute responsibility. Surrendering to this force involves giving it to one’s interlocutors, who will all too often experience it as cruel and violent. (Skaria, 2016: 277)

Why should “the forgiveness-repentance” (ibid., 277) owned up to by the wrong doing satyagrahi, seeking for instance, to accept (and make other perpetrators recognize their part in) responsibility for the sin of the self and community of the past and present; be experienced by the interlocutor as “cruel and violent” (ibid.)? This certainly could not have been intended by the satyagrahi (either when he/she was seeking to gain rights or seeking to make good the wrongs of the past) for Gandhi himself was at great pains to keep the love in satyagraha free from any hint of the satyagrahi’s egoistic self-concern. This last could be tantamount to a moral smugness which in turn might have led to such feelings of imposition/cruelty/violence on the part of the other. Consider that a loving repentance of the sinner/love filled resistance of the victim coming from a self-assumed moral high ground, i.e. self-righteous position; can lead the interlocutor to feel weighed down. Gandhi was at pains to ensure that satyagrahis were not acting from such self-righteousness, and this becomes clear from several of his arguments about satyagraha. To begin with consider that the satyagrahi seeking rights or alternatively seeking for perpetrators to assume responsibility for sins in which the satyagrahi is him/ her self-implicated; chooses satyagraha from the two options open to him/her. The satyagrahi’s choice of the option to suffer in him/her self over that of making others suffer in itself rules out the coercion of the other. Whether these interlocutors be co-implicated in a collective sin, the victims of such sins or colonial oppressors, the satyagrahi must always, choose love and its magical transforming force/possibilities; There are two ways of countering injustice. One way is to smash the head of the man who perpetrates injustice and to get your own head smashed in the process… A nation does not rise that way, it only falls further. In fact, what comes to it is defeat, not victory. And if, perchance, either our act or our purpose was ill-conceived, it brings disaster to both belligerents… But through the other method of combating injustice, we alone suffer the consequences of our mistakes, and the other side is wholly spared. This other method is

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satyagraha. One who resorts to it does not have to break another’s head; he may merely have his own head broken. He has to be prepared to die himself suffering all the pain. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 15: 239–240)

One may also note that Gandhi reiterated at many places that the self-suffering in satyagraha must be totally free of malice for the so-called enemy (as noted earlier this ‘enemy’ could be an intimate other, as in one co-implicated in a collective sin, or at the opposite end, a distant oppressive other); In 1917 Gandhi wrote; Satyagraha is not physical force. A satyagrahi does not inflict pain on the adversary; he does not seek his destruction. A satyagrahi never resorts to firearms. In the use of satyagraha, there is no ill-will whatever. Satyagraha is pure soul-force. Truth is the very substance of the soul. That is why this force is called satyagraha… If someone gives us pain through ignorance, we shall win him through love. “Non-violence is the supreme dharma” is the proof of this power of love... Ruled by love, the world goes on. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 16: 10)

Again, in his Instructions to volunteers in 1918, Gandhi had declared that; “2. In satyagraha, there can be no room for rancour; which means that a satyagrahi should utter no harsh word about anyone, from a ravania to the Governor himself; if someone does so, it is the volunteer’s duty to stop him. 3. Rudeness has no place in satyagraha. Perfect courtesy must be shown even to those who may look upon us as their enemies, and the villagers must be taught to do the same”. (ibid., 436–437)

In this connection, it is significant that Gandhi ruled out inflicting any kind of embarrassment on the interlocutor as incompatible with the satyagrahi’s ahimsa and love for truth; Then, it is often forgotten that it is never the intention of a satyagrahi to embarrass the wrongdoer. The appeal is never to his fear; it is, must be, always to his heart. The satyagrahi’s object is to convert, not to coerce, the wrongdoers. He should avoid artificiality in all his doings. He acts naturally and from inward convictions. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 75: 196)

However, the most significant insight in this connection perhaps emerges from the consideration of an important Gandhian distinction that between the doer and his/her deed. This distinction can perhaps serve to dismantle some part of Skaria’s argument that the interlocutor (the oppressive colonial other/the wrong doing kin/the victim of wrong doing in a collective sin) could feel the satyagrahi’s “forgiveness-repentance” (Skaria, 2016:277) or (love filled) resistance (as the case may be) as cruel /violent. Consider that Gandhi reiterated time and again that the satyagrahi or indeed any person in a conflict needs to make a distinction between the positions of others with which he/she may be in conflict and the other herself/himself who was always much more than that unjust/evil position; Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. “Hate the sin and not the sinner”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 44: 295).

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Given that the satyagrahi (at least) was to keep the distinction between the deed and the doer in mind and respect the interlocutor as a being whose reality was not co-terminus with his/her position with which the satyagrahi disagreed/sought to transform; the satyagrahi at least would not have intended for the interlocutor (who was much more than his/her position) to feel the love as cruel/violent. There were also other reasons which might explain why satyagraha could not be unintentionally coercive to its interlocutor. Consider in this connection that satyagraha itself never sought to enforce but rather sought to convince and transform the other. Satyagraha is a method of conversion and conviction, it seeks never to use the slightest coercion. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 30: 378)

Yet another consideration might emerge if one were to think (in this connection) of family life and consider its intimate conflicts. One might think for instance of a conflict in which a spouse wants the other spouse to appreciate his/her contribution in the home. He /she now seeks to convince such a spouse (the interlocutor-spouse) of his/her injustice by satyagraha in the family of which Gandhi spoke often enough. In the light of Skaria’s argument, one might now question whether the satyagrahi spouse is seeking an appreciation in the manner of a convincing verbal admission no matter if the interlocutor-spouse makes it because he/she feels coerced to make it? Would this coerced admission not entirely miss the point of the satyagrahi’s interest in solving the conflict with love that transforms? Perhaps the satyagrahi spouse wants something in the nature of a transformation in the relations in the marriage for which he/she seeks to change the heart of the interlocutor-spouse through love. Consider that this will simply not be achieved if such a verbal coerced admission is made as an olive branch, so to say. Gandhi himself saw this inconsistency between transformation and compulsion and noted that; The training for satyagraha is meant for all irrespective of age or sex. The more important part of the training is mental, not physical. There can be no compulsion in moral training. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 90: 43. The emphasis is my own addition.)

Satyagraha as a method of conversion of self and other was therefore by it’s very conception contrary to coercion. In fact, “coercion” and “satyagraha” could almost be taken to be contradictory to each other as the presence of coercion, one might see would dismantle satyagraha. Another reason why satyagraha could not be unintentionally coercive to its interlocutor might emerge if one considers that if one accepts the argument (such as the one that Skaria (2016) seems to lend his position to) that a love without malice is coercive because it puts pressure on an interlocutor to be “morally better” (Murdoch, 1970:51) than he/she is; one might have to countenance the complete dismissal of moral life. The nature of moral life and the point of moral education is after all to progressively transform a human being so that he/she might become morally better than he/she was at the start of such a life/education. Such an acceptance of moral transformation as in itself coercive would make the discipline of modern moral philosophy somewhat empty of content, and therefore, it would not be welcomed by moral philosophy. Consider what remains of the moral life and of moral philosophy as a discipline if moral encouragement is to be understood as an

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exercise of power and not of goodness. Ethical theories, justice, and virtue theory would be casualties and removed from syllabi as coercive, cruel, and violent, for their imposition of expectation on the reader. Gandhi himself saw this and therefore responded to critics who accused him of coercion: If my fast …is to be interpreted as pressure, I can only say that such moral pressure should be welcomed by all concerned. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 75: 136)

One might then end this section on the note that Gandhi’s satyagraha might well have protected swaraj/self-rule as “as the eye lashes automatically protect the eyes” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 16: 127).

6.3.3 In Conclusion: Gandhi’s Integrity This essay had started out to examine Gandhi’s real politics and had argued that the best way to do this was to see that Gandhi’s politics was premised on an integrity between his fundamental moral commitments and his practise. Accordingly, the first part of this essay went on to explore Gandhi’s politics with a view to show that it was built around certain key moral insights—that there was a distinction between real politics and the power politics, i.e. liberal politics, that conceptions on which a real politics was based should retain a continuity with the past and with nature; and that, there could be no distinction between the means and end of such an alternative politics. This meant that the method of such a true politics would have to be one that abjured power politics, made no distinction between means and end sought, and retained a continuity with the non-human world and with the past of the community and moral insights enunciated in that past, i.e. (for Gandhi) the values of truth and ahimsa. The second part of the essay argued from here that a truly meaningful philosophical critique of Gandhi’s politics could then only be one that could demonstrate that Gandhi’s politics was not integrated with his moral insights. In this context, this essay examined Skaria’s critique and argued that it was not a philosophically disruptive critique because it failed to show that Gandhi’s politics and political practice broke the integrity between his ideas and between these ideas and his practice. Skaria’s rending cannot then perhaps quite displace/break the hope and somewhat “radiant” (Bilgrami, 2006: 259) romance of the “morality” (ibid.) that Gandhi’s integrity holds out to a disenchanted modern world where chaos seems the only way to describe the politics and indeed practise of our times. Consider how different the destiny of India and of the world might have been but for Gandhi’s example holding out the hope that anger might yet be overcome by love; and conflicts might serve to transform conflicting parties as long as they held on to an abiding faith in human goodness. Consider also, how far this example could go to make the psychology surrounding our morals (and politics) a more compassionate one. This essay might

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then leave readers with Gandhi’s words as he recounted the strain of his thoughts on being pushed out of a train in South Africa; The constable came. He took me by the hand and pushed me out. My luggage was also taken out... I went and sat in the waiting room, keeping my hand-bag with me, and leaving the other luggage where it was... It was winter, and winter in the higher regions of South Africa is severely cold. Maritzburg being at a high altitude, 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. There was no light in the room... I began to think of my duty. Should I fight for my rights or go back to India, or should I go on to Pretoria without minding the insults, and return to India after finishing the case? It would be cowardice to run back to India without fulfilling my obligation. The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial— only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process. Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent that would be necessary for the removal of the colour prejudice. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 44: 174)

Notes 1. Rawls’ distinguished between a political conception of justice and other moral doctrines which could be general or comprehensive. He argued that “a political conception tries to elaborate a reasonable conception for the basic structure alone and involves, so far as possible, no wider commitment to any other doctrine…A moral conception is general if it applies to a wide range of subjects, and in the limit to all subjects universally. It is comprehensive when it includes conceptions of what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our life as a whole.”(Rawls 2005: 13) 2. “Ahimsa means universal love”. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 49: 420) 3. One might confirm that the Indian tradition had the idea of the rights of the human being by looking at the Arthasastra by Kautilya also known as Visnugupta. This text has been placed as having been composed between (371 B C and 283 B C) 2000 or 2500 years ago and is only one of several niti shastra’s many of which are in regional languages and long ignored by academia. One might note that Babasaheb Ambedkar referred to Kautilya’s text as one of the earliest texts in India which had emphasized the rights of women to equality, remarriage and legal rights. 4. Swaraj for Gandhi was to be attained by the progressive engagement with virtues and these were specified in accordance with the vratas or vows of Indian philosophy; “Yamas, the cardinal virtues, according to Yoga Shastra are: ahimsa (non-violence), satya (truth) asteya (non-stealing) brahmacharya (celibacy), aparigraha (non-possession); and the niyamas or the casual virtues are, according to the same authority: shaucha (bodily purity) santosha (contentment), tapa (forbearance), swadhayaya (study of scriptures), Iswarapranidhana (resignation to the Will of God).” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 33: 448)

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References Bilgrami, A. (2006). Gandhi’s integrity: The philosophy behind the politics. In A. Raghuramaraju (Ed.), Debating Gandhi: A Reader (pp. 248–266). Oxford University Press. Derrida, J. (2003). Autoimmunity: Real and symbolic suicides: A dialogue with Jacques Derrida. In G. Borradori (Ed.), Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogue with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. University of Chicago Press. Gandhi, M. K. (1888–1948). Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Vols. 1–98). Publications Division Government of India, 1999. Accessed online in October, 2022 from https://www.gandhiash ramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/collected-works-of-mahatma-gandhi-volume-1-to-98.php Howard, V. R. (2013). Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action. State University of New York Press (SUNY Press). Kumar, A. (2015). Radical Equality: Ambedkar, Gandhi, and the Risk of Democracy. Stanford University Press. Locke, J. (1997a). An essay on toleration. In M. Goldie (Ed.), Locke Political Essays (pp. 134–159). Cambridge University Press. Locke, J. (1997b). Faith and reason. In M. Goldie (Ed.), Locke Political Essays (pp. 248–249). Cambridge University Press. Margolis, J. (1998). The flux of history and the flux of science. Human Studies, 21(1), 71–77. Mill, J. S. (2006). On Liberty and Subjection of Women. A. Ryan (Ed.). Penguin Classic. Murdoch, I. (1970). The Sovereignty of Good. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Parel, A. J. (Ed.). (2010). ‘Hind Swaraj’ and Other Writings. Cambridge University Press. Prabhu, R. K., & Rao, U. R. (Eds.). (2007). The Mind of the Mahatma. Navajivan Publishing House. Ranganathan, S. (2008). Patañjali’s Yoga S¯utra. Penguin Books. Rawls, J. (2005). Political Liberalism Expanded Edition. Columbia University Press. Skaria, A. (2016). Unconditional Equality Gandhi’s Religion of Resistance. Permanent Black. Sorabji, R. (2012). Gandhi and the Stoics: Modern Experiments on Ancient Values. The University of Chicago Press. Tagore, R. (2012). The home and the world. In Rabindranath Tagore Omnibus (Vol. III, pp. 205– 425). Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd. Tilak, B. G. (1935). Sri Bhagavad Gita-Rahasya or Karma-Yoga-Sastra (English Translation) (First Edition, Vol. 1). Bombay Vaibhav Press. Veyne, P. (1984). Writing history: Essays in epistemology. Wesleyan University Press.

Chapter 7

Gandhi’s Religion Mrinal Miri

Abstract Liberal politics relegates religion to the sphere of the private. The public world is secular. “Privacy”, however, cannot imply “private to a person”; it must mean “private to a community”. Religion must be public at least within the community. Spiritual experience, part of most religions, though private in an acceptable sense, is something that takes place within the trappings of a religious culture, sustained by the religious community. The only criterion of the authenticity of a spiritual experience is its moral manifestation. Gandhi’s “Truth is God”, taken with the seriousness that he intended, yields interesting consequences about (i) the concept of truth and truthfulness, (ii) the distinction between religion and religious culture, and (iii) “equality” of all religions and, most importantly, religious conversion. Religious conversion, as Gandhi believed, is neither necessary nor possible. Keywords Privacy · Spirituality · Religious culture · Truth · Truthfulness · Faith · Equality · Conversion · Fellowship

7.1 Privacy and Spirituality It is usual for liberal political secularism to relegate religion to the personal—even private—sphere of the individual practitioner of a religion. It serves two purposes: (i) it enables politics to have room for “respect” for religion, since liberalism respects what is strictly personal or private to the individual citizen; and (ii) it allows politics to leave religion out of its calculations for the future wellbeing of its citizens, because what is strictly personal or private to an individual falls outside the concerns of liberal politics. Gandhi would have disagreed with this characterization of religion— because he believed that religion essentially involves a community and a culture (see below, page: 3) and that it is inalienably connected with ethics or morality which is a matter of the public life. But let us see in what way religion can at all be regarded as a strictly personal or private matter. M. Miri (B) North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. Miri and B. Puri, Gandhi for the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3792-9_7

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In some religious traditions, the highest value of religion consists in the spiritual (mystical) experience of divinity. This experience is rare and usually afforded to one who is especially beloved of the divine. Such an experience is intensely private, and although it usually takes place within the ritualistic trappings of the religion in question, its privacy is unquestionable both in its incapacity of being linguistically communicated with clarity and in no other individual having any direct access to it. In her splendid essay, “Love and Attention”, Janet Martin Soskice (1992) describes the Catholic Christian idea of the spiritual life centred on a spiritual experience of an intensely private encounter with God thus: I believe we can speak of a ‘received view’ of spiritual life which in its Catholic Christian form might involve long periods of quiet, focused reflections, dark churches and dignified liturgies. In its highest reaches it involves time spent in contemplative prayer, guided or solitary retreats, and sometimes painful wrestlings with God… Above all it involves solitude and collectedness. It does not involve looking after small children. (Soskice, 1992: 61; emphasis mine)

Or, take the great Sufi tradition: This implosive knowledge of self as lord contains an unknowing, a deliberate uprooting of sense knowledge and a rejection of cognitive knowledge. In Sufi terms, this is called fana; annihilation. … In Sufi terms, divine love holds out the hope that beyond personal annihilation there will be divine restoration or permanence (baqa’). Yet it will be permanence without comfort, medicine without cure. Such love can be imagined and experienced only as burning. …The same dialectic of fana’ and baqa’ pervades Sufi verse, but what is distinctive to the Chishti outlook and practice is the use of such verse. First it is introduced by a qawwal or musical performer, then it is highlighted by a prominent master or senior devotee, then it becomes the focus of constant repetition to the point of transforming both consciousness and physical existence, and then in some cases the result is a shift from ritual engagement to mortal disengagement. The verse, the music, the mood render the listener/devotee blank to any mood save that of the calling, and the call, once heeded, leads to death. To outsiders, it appears as suicide, but to insiders it is surrender to love. The death of the second major Chisti master, Shaykh Qutbad-din Bakhtiyar Kaki is attributed to such a verse and music. (Ernst & Lawrence, 1994: 15–16)

While private experience of divinity that is inaffable, incommunicable in ordinary language, is accepted in most religions, spirituality and the spiritual life is also quite clearly a part of the religious form of life. In fact there are religions in which the importance given to spiritual experience of the exclusive private kind is looked upon with much suspicion. Thus, in the words of the Islamic scholar, Oliver Leaman: Going further and seeking through special practices to extend one’s emotional religious range risks falling into all kinds of dangers. One may end up identifying oneself with God, separating oneself from society and forgetting the ordinary religious obligations, which are so important a part of life that we ought to live. Along with these personal dangers, there exists a conceptual danger, that of identifying the private mystical experience with the meaning of religion. Such an identification would suggest to those, not able or uninterested in attaining such experience that they were not part of the religious community at all. Mysticism can result in limiting the scope of religion to only a few people, whereas it is the purpose of religion to widen the possibility of sharing in knowledge and practice to as many people as are available to hear the message. What lies at the heart of religion, then, cannot be some sort of experience, however important or impressive in nature, since that would be to exclude the majority of the population from religion. (Leaman, 1992: 185)

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The received view of spirituality and the spiritual life in Christianity seems sometimes to lay supreme emphasis on the centrality of the private experience: thus, the famous Gregory of Nyssa, writing sometime around A.D. 368, says: “How can the soul which is riveted to the pleasures of flesh and busied with merely human longings turn a disengaged eye upon its kindred intellectual light. The eyes of swine, turning naturally downwards, have no glimpse of the wonders of the sky; no more can the soul whose body drags it down look any more upon the beauty above; it must pore perforce upon things which though natural are low and animal. To look with a free devoted gaze upon heavenly delights, the soul…will transfer all its power of affection from material objects to the intellectual contemplation of immaterial beauty” (Gregory of Nyssa, 2017: 351). Religion, however, necessarily involves the religious community. It is the community that sustains the religious form of life. The criteria of authentic spiritual experience and the genuine as opposed to the false spiritual life must be found within the community’s religious life. Private experience needs public authentication. This Wittgensteinan dictum is incontrovertible. The examples from Islam and Christianity that I have taken clearly assume that it is within the framework of the practices of religious community that spiritual experience takes place. And it is in this framework of practices that the spiritual life must find its place; spiritual life is life lived within the community. The only way to recognize the spiritual life, for what it is, is to discern, in Gandhi’s words, the “moral purity”, that permeates it. “Morality, religion and mysticism”, as Janet Soskice says, “are of a piece” (Soskice, 1992: 67). “…if we are trying to understand something we aim to be not disengaged [from society] but ‘fully there’, imaginatively present to that which concerns us. It is by this kind of attending that we are characteristically drawn out of ourselves (ecstasis) and come to understand ourselves fully as selves. Central to this are our physical bodies, with their affective and passible characteristics” (ibid.). Objects to which we can be fully present are not just other human beings, but must also include other creatures of affection, e.g. animals, and many would be tempted to add, trees, also perhaps, the starry heavens. Gandhi would say that spirituality consists just in this ability spontaneously to attend to something that demands our attention. But here we necessarily enter the arena of morality, for to be fully moral is to respond fully with love to something that demands our response. My countrymen are my nearest neighbours. They have become so help- less, so resourceless, so inert that I must concentrate myself on serving them. If I could persuade myself that I should find Him in a Himalayan cave, I would proceed there immediately. But I know that I cannot find Him apart from humanity. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 69: 321) I do not believe that the spiritual law works on a field of its own. On the contrary, it expresses itself only through the ordinary activities of life. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 32: 373)

Working on the spinning wheel, looking after an injured calf, being engaged in satyagraha for a particular end, and keeping one’s own home clean and tidy—each one of these activities can be touched by a joyous spirituality, a sense of being in touch with the real order of things. (See Miri, 2020.)

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7.2 Truth and God Gandhi made somewhat different claims about religion at different times of his life. But at the very centre of his understanding of religion was his equation of truth and God. God, Gandhi said, is truth; but, much more importantly, Truth is God. To revisit the distinction1 that I made in the preceding chapter, i.e. the distinction between truth and truthfulness. Truthfulness is a quality of language-wielding creatures. Animals— if they are not language using beings—are neither truthful nor untruthful. They cannot lie. A is lying successfully to B by saying that p involves: (i) A believes that not p, (ii) but intends B to believe that p; (iii) B believes that p as a result of A’s saying to him that p. If B believes that p as a result of A saying that not p, then either he has not heard A properly or A has been caught lying: he has not lied successfully. It is obvious that truthfulness or its opposite cannot be attributed to non-language-wielding creatures except as something like extension by anthropocentric sentimentality. Truthfulness is an ethically desirable quality that may be ascribed to human beings. However, we must here remember Wittgenstein’s aphorism: “No one can speak the truth, if he has still not mastered himself. He cannot speak it—but not because he is not clever enough yet. The truth can be spoken only by someone who is clearly at home in it” (Wittgenstein, 1989: 35e). To be at home in the truth is to have achieved the spontaneity in truthfulness that is Gandhi’s criterion of ethically motivated conduct. Wittgenstein’s words, “mastered himself”, are strikingly similar to words that Gandhi might have used himself. [“…the nationalist term for self-rule and the term for the mastery and freedom of the self are one and the same, namely swaraj” (Kapila, 2013: 184).] While truthfulness is within man’s reach, truth, as we have seen, goes beyond truthfulness of everyday reality: even the positivist’s truth of science; the positivist’s switch from verification to falsification as criterion of meaningfulness is a case in point. Verification is, as it were, not reachable goal, while falsification is. This is the beginning of modernity’s—post-modernity’s, more correctly—distrust with the concept of truth itself. The distrust finally culminates in the denial of truth itself. (E.g. Richard Rorty and many others. Rorty famously refused to affirm the truth of his position “liberal irony”.) The denial of truth removes all authority from our intellectual as well as moral search; no truth would mean no truth of the past or of the present and the future; nor would there be either good or bad and there would be no mutual trust, and without trust, there would be no language either. But, as Nietzsche says in The Anti-Christ: Truth has to be fought for every step of the way, almost everything else dear to our hearts, on which our love and our trust in life depend, has had to be sacrificed to it. Greatness of soul is needed for it, the service of truth is the hardest service. For what does it mean to be honest in intellectual things? That one is stern towards one’s heart, that one despises ‘fine feelings’, that one makes every Yes and No a question of conscience! (Nietzsche, 1977: 50),

It is but a small step from this to “God is truth, …truth is divine” (Nietzsche, 1974: 283) of the passage from The Gay Science quoted earlier.2 Truth deniers should, therefore, think many times before they count Nietzsche as one among them.

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“God is truth…that truth is divine” (ibid.)—almost the same words as Gandhi’s (“God is Truth and Truth is God”); but Gandhi’s writings are not quite as aphoristic as Nietzsche’s3 —they are mostly in the dialogical form. Take the following: (here Gandhi is speaking to an audience which consisted of listeners from different faiths and perhaps expecting responses from them): We should, however, know what the followers of this religion, Hinduism, believe. This is what they believe: God exists. He is without any beginning, immaculate, and without any attribute or form. He is omnipotent and omnipresent. His original form is Brahman. It neither does or cause to be done. It does not govern. It is bliss incarnate, and by it all this is sustained. The soul exists and is distinct from the body. It is also without a beginning, without birth. Between its original form and the Brahman, there is no distinction. But it takes on, from time to time, a body as a result of karma, or power of maya and goes on being born again and again into high or low species in accordance with the good or bad deeds performed by it. To be free from the cycle of birth and death and be merged in Brahman is moksha or liberation. The way to achieve this moksha is to do pure and good deeds, to have compassion for all bings and to live in truth.…[But as long as we have a body], we will…have to continue to act, only we should not cherish any attachment to our actions. Action should be undertaken for its own sake, without an eye one the fruit. In short everything should be dedicated to God. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 4: 246–247)

Gandhi here describes the common beliefs of the Hindus. There are, of course, numerous other beliefs of the Hindus. But many of them are temporal, culturally conditioned, and can be given up without the Hindu losing his religion. Even what can be called Hindu scriptures may become the subject of critical assessment by a devout Hindu. The Gita, at different places, soundly criticizes some of the Vedic in junctions. Thus, Verses 42, 43, and 44 (in Gandhi’s translation): The ignorant, revelling in the letter of the Vedas, declare that there in nought else; carnally minded, holding heaven to be their goal, they utter swelling words which promise birth as the fruit of action and which dwell on the many and varied rites to be performed for the sake of pleasure and power; intent, as they are, on pleasure and power their selling words rob them of their wits, and they have no settled attitude which can be countered on the supreme goal. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 37: 101)

The elements of Hinduism that Gandhi considered essential may be stated as: (I) God is Truth and Truth is God (this formulation came somewhat later than the long quote above); (ii) the “individual” soul (not mind) attached to an individual body is atman; (iii) atman is identical with Brahman or Paramatman; (iv) the atman does not act; nor does it refrain from action (“it neither does nor cause to be done”); (v) action is the domain of the mind–body complex; (vi) the self—a construct of the ego (ahamkara)—is the prime motivator of action; (vii) achievement of liberation, the ultimate aim of religion, consists in total freedom from all actions performed at the dictates of the self (selfish actions), or the ego (abandonment of the “sovereignty” of the self); freedom from all self-dictated actions also means freedom from himsa; (viii) total detachment from the self (ego) is not possible, as long as the body is alive and needs to be kept alive; (ix) keeping the body alive involves minimum necessary violence (himsa); (x) total liberation, therefore, involves dissolution of the body; and (xi) ahimsa, along with all the virtues that it involves, is the only way to truth and eventually to moksha.

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7.3 The heart of a religion In the light of the above summation of Gandhi’s view of the Hindu religion, it would be interesting to assess his repeated claim that the centre (heart) of all religions is the same. It is worth noting that within the extraordinarily articulate Hindu philosophical tradition itself, there are three different positions taken about the relationship between atman and Brahman: (i) avaita of Adi Shankara (complete identity—nondualism), (ii) vishistadvaita of Ramanuja (“qualified” identity); and (iii) davita of Madhavacharya (non-identity—dualism). While there is serious debate in the philosophical tradition among the adherents of these three positions, in religious practice itself, they seem to live in perfect harmony. Gandhi never entered into this debate himself—it did not perhaps seem to have much significance for either faith or devotion (bhakti). If we look at the Abrahamic faiths, particularly Christianity and Islam— religions that mostly interested Gandhi—it would be useful to revisit the mind–body dualism that pervades the Christian theological tradition and western philosophy generally. The mind–body dualism implied that the mind is a totally and uniquely different entity from the body—the body is destructible and disintegrates into dust after death, while the mind is indestructible and permanently survives bodily death. The mind, moreover, is the same as the soul, and the soul leaves the body after death, and its fate is decided by God who is the creator of the entire world. Man is God’s special creation; man is created with the ability to choose the life of morality of which God is the source and ultimate authority. The theological differences between Abrahamic religions and liberation-centric Hinduism might encourage somewhat different interpretations of morality in the two traditions. It might even be suggested that in the Abrahamic tradition, morality is considered as instrumental: one must lead the strictly moral, sinless life here in this world, if one’s wish to achieve heavenly existence with God, after one’s death is to be fulfilled. But it is arguable that, in spite of the idea of heaven and existence in the company of God, morality, i.e. non-instrumental morality, can be seen as a core idea of Abrahamic religions. Many religious thinkers and interpreters would agree that the virtues used instrumentally would not be virtues at all: helping somebody while expecting help from that person in return is not help at all; to be grateful to someone in order, hopefully, to be able to use him in the future is quite the contrary to being grateful; to be truthful in order just to seem to others to be honest; and so on. The most comprehensive example of a person using virtues as instrumentalities for purely selfish benefits is perhaps the character of Glaucon in Plato’s Republic. Glaucon is the paradigmatically immoral person who pretends to be totally virtuous while, in reality, being vicious and who, at the same time, is clever enough to be always successful in covering up his virtuous pretensions and deriving selfish benefits from it (Miri, 2014: 41). But perhaps in real life, such deep instrumentality and cunning will be hard to find. What is most common is perhaps to expect reciprocity with respect to some of the virtues, e.g. helpfulness, gratitude, kindness, ahimsa, and love. Reciprocity makes for harmony between individuals and in the community. But reciprocity, like

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morality itself must be free, spontaneous without coercion of any kind; coercion, including emotional coercion, is himsa. Perhaps, it may be safely said that in spite of certain theological compulsions—in practice, religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism would regard non-instrumentality as an intrinsic character of the moral life. However, the accoutrements of religions are incredibly multilayered, and before modernity swept our planet, religion of a community coincided with its culture. Religion touched every aspect of the life of its people. The culture of a community is temporal and is the product of the community’s encounter with numerous and frequently unpredicted and unpredictable contingencies of life. Religion could be said to be the community’s articulation of its culture—it encompassed, if you like, the entire life of the community. It was the community’s form of life. Rectitude of personal conduct, interpersonal relationship, relationship with strangers belonging perhaps to a different religion, economic activities, relationship with nature and non-human animals, variety of expressions of piety, modes of worship and prayer, sacrifice, the sacred and the profane, the relationship of humans to the transcendent or the quasi-transcendent, sacred locations, e.g. temples, forest groves, birth, marriage, and death, and rituals connected with these events, wars, and many more were the domain of religion. Modernity, however, has dealt with a crucial blow to this domain. The modern secular/sacred distinction requires that much of our public life must be deterged of religion. Institutions dealing with public life such as law-making and law-dispensing bodies, governance and administration structures, commercial and industrial organizations, education, and public security both internal to a nation and external to it must be free from any religious affirmation. Religion is thus reduced to the sphere of the private, inevitably though—private not just to an individual practitioner but private to a community as well. The liberal democratic state which is what most modern states aspire to be, thus, would allow private practice of religion to the individual and to the religious community. But the private must have public manifestations: what would piety, love mercy, pity, humility, devotion be like if these had no public manifestation? It may be said that their public manifestation would then be confined to the life of the community, and the community life of a religion is public to the extent that it requires public participation of individuals in its own life. But it must not impinge on public life as defined by the secular state. It must remain self-enclosed—private within itself. Remaining self-enclosed is, of course, not something that would be mandated by a secular democratic state: different religious communities may interact, and there can be mutual exchange of ideas and thought, perhaps mutual appreciation and even friendly mutual criticism; but these must not, in any way, interfere with public life that is the legitimate domain of the state and its governance and administration. Provision of civic amenities to its citizens, ensuring economic wellbeing and growth for the nation, putting an education system in place that will enhance intellectual growth and creativity in the life of the mind of its people—all these require administrative and governance structures that can effectively function only in a climate of peace and co-operation. Differences within religious communities have a potential of turning into sources of mutual violence that may seriously hinder the state in carrying out its responsibilities. The

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state must therefore equip itself with the means to deter, prevent, and put an end to such violence when it actually occurs. So much may perhaps be yielded to the liberal democratic state. But religious cultures have survived the liberal state’s (frequently unsuccessful) elimination of it from its domain; but they have survived perhaps even an assault of a subtler and, therefore, more powerful kind, i.e. the efforts of some proselytizing religions attempting to submerge or eliminate the cultures of other religious communities. Cultures are, if you like, a community’s life force; temporal and subject to change as they are, they provide members of the cultural community with a sense of identity that can be a potent source of strength for them to navigate through the extraordinary contingencies and travails that life might have in store for them. They can also be the source, through time, of the creative effluence of the community or individual members of the community. Think of European civilization—its literature, music, and the arts of painting and sculpting—without Jesus Christ being born and, therefore, Christianity not happening. Or, European thought on ethics and morality and science without the Christian idea that man is a unique and extraordinarily special divine creation and that all other creations are God’s gift to man to be used by him for his own wellbeing. Think of Hindu civilization without the Upanishads and the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, or of the great traditions of Hindusthani and Karnataki music and the canonical traditions of dance. And what would the religion of a Naga tribe be like shorn of the rhythm of its music and dance, the invocations of the elders, its tales of bravery, sacrifice, generosity, love, and its rituals relating to the hunting expeditions, its ways of dispensing justice, settling conflicts, preparing for wars, training of adolescents and preparing them for life ahead, and so on. Gandhi’s abiding belief was that the moral truth, or simply truth, is the heart of “every religion”. This is the religion that lives in every religion. Religious cultures are temporal adornments of this central force of religion. But cultures are temporal and extraordinary human constructs. They are, as it were, the home within which a religious community lives. Gandhi was fond of the metaphor of home. He “love[d]” Hinduism because it was his home; but he said also that its windows were always wide open for winds from all directions to blow into it, for him to gratefully accept what he wanted and allow the rest to drift out. Home is associated with intimacy of relationships, spontaneous give-and-take, and entirely quotidian transmission of traditional ethical advice. Home is also a natural source of emotional strength, a deep sense of security, and a place to return to for stable relief—to be, as we say, AT HOME. But cultures—even religious cultures—change. And, there can be, over time, transformations that are quite remarkable. Think of the great changes that have taken place in the practice of Christianity, and in the practice of Hinduism, particularly in relatively recent times. The immediate impulse for such changes might have been the recognition of salutary practices in other cultures whether religious or purely secular (in the modern sense). Gandhi wrote as early as 1905: …Christianity had a very considerable influence on Hinduism, Christian priests imparted education of a high order and pointed out some of the glaring defects in Hinduism, with the result that there arose among the Hindus … great teachers who …began to teach the Hindus what was good in Christianity and appealed to them to remove these defects. To this

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category belonged Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Devendranath Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen. In Western India we had Dayanand Saraswati. And the numerous reformist associations like the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj that have sprung up in India to day are doubtless the result of Christian influence. Again, Madam Blavatsky came to India, told both Hindus and the Muslims of the evils of Western civilisation and asked them to beware of becoming enamoured of it. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 4: 245–246)

Gandhi would, however, insist that the advent of Christianity to India was an impulse that activated critical resources available within Hinduism itself which led to outstanding reforms in Hindu practices. Bridges of communication between cultural traditions of different religions can generate deep mutual understanding and a creative and constructive awakening within them—at least a sincere urge in them to live in mutual peace and harmony. Thus Gandhi: “Hinduism and Islam…the two principal religions of India today… live together in peace and amity and are considerate enough not to hurt one another’s feelings saved for bitterness caused by political machinations and excitement” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 4: 245). “Political machinations and excitement” was of course a handy tool for the colonial administration, but even in liberal democratic polity of today, it is rampant enough. However, left to themselves outside the public sphere of the secular state, religious communities can and have lived a life of peace and creative friendship. “Truth is God”—truth not of this or that but truth as such or, if you like, truthin-itself, although the way to truth-in-itself is only through truth of this and that. Gandhi’s God, therefore, is unimaginably abstract. Imperishable faith in this abstract being (sat) and unshakable devotion to it is the religion that lives in every religion. What then about the innumerable Gods and goddesses who are palpable beings that are pervasively present in the human world and represented by images of clay, stone, and metal? Their presence in the human world is not quite like the presence of physical objects around us, but they are nonetheless present abidingly in time and can be in communication with humans. The images representing them have mostly human shapes, but some may have elements of other animals (Lord Ganesha), and some like Lord Hanumana may be in the shape of totally non-human animals. This pantheon of Gods and goddesses is the citizens of Hindu culture. Monotheism is the equivalent of secular post-cultural (Enlightenment) Reason; and polytheism (e.g. the Hindu pantheon) is the equivalent of the diversity residing within a religious culture. Even monotheistic Christianity is embedded in a culture that palpably includes the polytheistic trinity of God, Jesus, the son, and Mary, the mother; but also the numerous saints touched by divinity. Polytheism validates a freedom of imagination and an affective faith in a diversity of powers (Marquard, 1989): to understand the depth of these powers is to be in touch with the real and the genuinely possible. Gandhi’s God is not monotheistic; God is not a unique singular being; Brahman cannot be enumerated; it is neither one nor more than one. It is sat, but beyond particularity. The Gods on the other hand are temporal centres of power and active elements of a religious culture.

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7.4 Conversion Gandhi’s views on religious conversion, like some of his other views on religion, are somewhat stark, but quite convincing. My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith [by persuading him to abandon his faith] but to make him a better follower of his own faith. This implies belief in the truth of all religions and therefore respect for them. It again implies true humility, a recognition of the fact that the divine light having been vouchsafed to all religions through an imperfect medium of flesh, they must share in more or less degree the imperfection of the vehicle. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 45: 145) One sordid motive violates the whole preaching. It is like drop of poison, which fouls the whole food. Therefore, I should do without any preaching at all. A rose does not need to preach. It simply spreads its fragrance. The fragrance is its own sermon ...The fragrance of religious and spiritual life is much finer and subtler than of the rose. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 66: 324) To me all the religions are equal, so I would not feel unhappy if one changed one’s religion with deliberate knowledge and in a sincere spirit in order to cultivate more detachment and attain God sooner. However, there is one thing: one who believes that all religions are equal will have no need to change his religion as it includes other religions. One who has grasped this has no need to change his religion. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 70: 137) I’m against the modern method of proselytizing. Years’ experience of proselytizing both in South Africa and India has convinced me that it has not raised the general moral tone of converts who have imbibed the superficialities of European Civilization, and have missed the teachings of Jesus… The indirect contribution, on the other hand, of Christian missionary effort is great. It has stimulated Hindu and Mussalman religious research. It has forced us to put our houses in order. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 33: 312)

Gandhi’s views on conversion spring from the following beliefs of his: (i) all religions are true; (ii) preaching towards conversion is almost invariably flawed by ulterior motives; (iii) all religions are equal; (iv) changing one’s religion involves changing one’s religious culture; and (v) religious cultures, while they are temporal, are home to specific religious communities and are a source of a stable sense of identity and strength for them and determines their specific humanity. Gandhi, as we have seen, believed that the core of all religions is the unshakeable faith in truth. And since this needs no further validation, all religions are the same. Any attempt to change another person’s religion is therefore a total misunderstanding of religion itself. Religious conversion is thus a misnomer. Those who are still in the business of conversion either suffer from a serious delusion, or they are motivated by desires which are other than “conversion”. Gandhi had this to say about such motivated conversion: “One sordid motive violates the whole preaching. It is like drop of poison, which fouls the whole food. Therefore, I should do without any preaching at all. A rose does not need to preach. It simply spreads its fragrance. The fragrance is its own sermon …The fragrance of religious and spiritual life is much finer and subtler than of the rose” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 66: 324). Gandhi mentioned two of these ulterior motives: (i) increasing the number of people within a particular religious community at the cost of the “victim” community and (ii) making the intended “convert” abandon his religious culture and embrace

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an alien culture. But this involves a serious condemnation of one culture by another and a correspondingly serious comparative commendation of another. The first kind of motive has to do with the pursuit of purely demographic superiority of one culture in relation to another, and this has nothing to do with either religion or religious culture. Thus Gandhi: “There has been [no] more fallacious idea than that the strength of a religion depends on the number of those who profess it. Even but one person remains a true Hindu, Hinduism will not perish if, on the other hand, the crores of Hindus in the country adopt the ways of hypocrisy and evil, Hinduism will not live long but it is certain to be destroyed” (Gandhi, 1888– 1948, 30:240). “Today we see competition and conflict among different religions for counting the number of their followers. I feel deeply ashamed of this and, when I hear of people’s achievement in converting such and such number to a particular faith, I feel that, that is no achievement at all, that on the contrary it is a blasphemy against God and the self” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 31: 444). About the second kind of motive of wanting a person or a whole community to abandon its culture in order that they may embrace another culture, Gandhi’s main argument was that all human ways of life, i.e. cultures, are temporal and human creations; they may, therefore, be flawed or erroneous in many ways and subject to criticism. Criticism—primarily moral—may lead to far-reaching changes within the culture, without altering the very foundations of the culture; foundations of a culture, Gandhi might say, consist of those elements or aspects of the culture that give it an abiding unity, integrity, and a sense of intrinsic, deep-rooted belonging. (Once a Quaker, Michael Coates, urged Gandhi to discard his beads, which he was wearing around his neck. Gandhiji did not oblige, saying it was a gift from his mother given with love and faith. When his Christian friends said to him that he would find redemption only if he believed in Jesus, he asked them, in response, whether God was prejudiced against non-Christians?)4 Changes have taken place within, say, Hinduism, undoubtedly throughout its history, but, very prominently in recent times (as Gandhi acknowledged). But Gandhi believed, quite correctly, that criticisms can be effective and salubrious if they arise within the culture itself, even if the impulse for them might come from its association with others. Recognition of faults within a culture cannot be a good reason for abandoning it and embracing another.5 Cultures are embedded in their history—they are the sum of practices that arise organically within them through their very particular history. A culture denuded of its history is not a culture at all. Conversion from one religious culture to another requires giving up one’s cultural past and acquiring that of another. Imagine then an entire tribal community of India giving up its past (if that were possible) and owning up the past of Christianity or of Islam. For Gandhi, this would amount to imperialism of as unacceptable and disagreeable a kind as imperialism of the political sort. “…Conversion nowadays has become a matter of business like any other. I remember having read a missionary report saying how much it cost per head to convert and then present a budget for ‘the next harvest’” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 51: 414).

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7.5 Fellowship of Religions If conversion is really not possible—(all religions being the same at the core)—that is, if conversion is really exploitation by another name, then what should be the most appropriate relationship between different religions? Religions can of course remain cocooned within their own bounds. This does not, as a matter of fact, happen. Cultures can and do meet and converse with no motives other than to understand one another, and, in an all-too-human mutual gesture of humility, learn from one another. Gandhi said: All faiths are equally dear to their respective votaries. What is wanted therefore is living friendly contact among the followers of the great religions of the world and not a clash among them in fruitless attempt on the part of each community to show the superiority of its faith over the rest. Through such friendly contact it will be possible for us all to rid our respective faiths of shortcomings and excrescences. (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 51: 414)

To say that my religion determines my identity is to imply that I value my religion above everything else that I also value in my life. But this must be so for another person who values his religion above everything else in his life. However, the core of all religions, so Gandhi insisted, is the same: the religion that lives in every religion. What differentiates one religion from another is, therefore, the culture in which any particular religion becomes embedded through time. My relationship with my religion (faith, as Gandhi is prone to call it) is, therefore, very special. I claim an ownership to it which is different from my ownership of most things. My ownership of most things is transferable, e.g. my car, house, laptop, potted plants, and, with the progress and great innovations in surgery, even at least some of my bodily parts. But my ownership of my religious culture is not transferable in the same way; even if it were, it would at best be a common ownership: I would still retain my ownership of it. Also, the ownership of a culture is that of the community. A community cannot transfer this ownership to another community nor can another community receive this ownership by transfer. One can perhaps be inducted into another culture—but this may be much more difficult than it would appear. Imagine an anthropologist studying a native culture by living among the people whose culture it is. He learns their language which is the constitutive element of their culture; the process of learning the language is the first and necessary step towards genuine access to the culture. Language can take him deep into the community’s past and to the meanings and their subtleties that permeate their actions and relationships. For him to become a participant in their culture is for him to internalize these meanings and their subtleties. This could be a much longer and painstaking process than one might imagine. To acquire mastery over the language is also to be well on the way to becoming a genuine participant in the community’s cultural life and acquiring an understanding of it from the inside, as it were. He would thus become a native himself. But another crucial difficulty looms in the background—the anthropologist still retains the mastery over his own language and thus remains a possible participant in the form of life of his original culture. And this involves the possibility of different kinds and degrees of combinations of distinct cultural worlds in him. The seriousness

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of the imponderables involved in imaginings of this kind is beautifully summed up in Gandhi’s response to a missionary’s urging him to accept Jesus in preference to the modern Indian saint Ramakrishna Paramahansa: “But when you say I must accept Jesus in preference to Ramakrishna Paramahansa, you will have to go into deep waters” (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 71: 130). Gandhi’s judgement on a half-baked and purely extraneous induction into an alien culture was the following: “Years’ experience of proselytizing both in South Africa and India has convinced me that it has not raised the general moral tone of converts who have imbibed the superficialities of European Civilization, and have missed the teachings of Jesus…” (Gandhi, 1888– 1948, 33: 312). But it would nonetheless be fascinating to explore the idea of various degrees of combinations of multiple cultures in a single individual. What then would be a proper relationship between different religious cultures? In view of his passionate acceptance of the diversity of religious world views and the possibility for every religious world view of learning from others, Gandhi would have welcomed the idea of a fellowship of all religions. There was, of course, the Parliament of World’s Religions, which met for the first time in Chicago in 1983 where Swami Vivekananda made his famous speech; the Parliament has met several times since, until 2021. However, it is obvious that the “Parliament” has not at all succeeded in achieving the kind of mutual understanding between religions that Gandhi envisaged. Gandhi was, in any case, wary of large organizations in which it was always difficult to keep attention firmly focused on the real purpose for their existence. Think even of an organization like a university in our country where its primary purpose is almost always submerged in the fiercely conflicting interests of individuals and sections constituting it. The idea of a fellowship however may suggest an arrangement and a relationship that is intimate, informal, motivated by mutual good-will, and thus enabling discussion and conversation of a much more purposeful and uninhibited kind. Fellowship envisages an enviable array of qualities in a relationship: mutual support, mutual respect, mutual appreciation, amiability, amity, geniality, cordiality, and solidarity.6 Gandhi could have envisaged a fellowship of religions beginning at the level of the village and spreading in “oceanic circles” to the entire country and perhaps even beyond.

Notes 1. For details, refer “C: Body, Action, Authority, Ethics and Politics”. 2. Those who believe that Nietzsche was a nihilist who denied truth altogether should remember that. 3. It is doubtful if Gandhi ever read Nietzsche. 4. The story is taken from Gandhi ji on Religious Conversion, compiled by Sandhya Mehta, Mani Bhavan, Gandhi Sangrahlaya. 5. Every living faith must have within itself the power of rejuvenation if it is to live (Gandhi, 1888–1948, 68: 20). 6. With the help of O.E.D.

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References Ernst, C. W., & Lawrence, B. B. (1994). Sufi Martyrs of Love. Palgrave Macmillan. Gandhi, M. K. (1888–1948). Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi (98 Vols). Accessed October 2022 from https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/collected-works-of-mah atma-gandhi-volume-1-to-98.php Gregory of Nyssa. (2017). On Virginity (W. Moore, & H. A. Wilson, the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Trans.). Second Series (Vol. V). Grand Rapids. Kapila, S. (2013). A history of violence. In S. Kapila, & F. Devji (Eds.), Political Thought in Action (pp. 177–199). Cambridge University Press. Leaman, O. (1992). Philosophy vs. Mysticism: an Islamic Controversy. In M. McGhee (Ed.), Philosophy, Religion and The Spiritual Life (pp. 177–188). Cambridge University Press. Marquard, O. (1989). In praise of polytheism. In Farewell to Matters of Principle. Oxford University Press. Miri, M. (2014). Philosophy and Education. Oxford University Press. Miri, M. (2020). Spirituality and plurality of religions. In S. K. Srivastava, & A. Vohra (Eds.), Gandhi in Contemporary Times. Routledge. Nietzsche, F. (1974). The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (with Commentary by W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Vintage Books. Nietzsche, F. (1977). The Anti-Christ (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Penguine. Soskice, J. M. (1992). Love and attention. In M. McGhee (Ed.), Philosophy, Religion and The Spiritual Life (pp. 59–72). Cambridge University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1989). Culture and Value. In G. H. Von Wright, & T. Peter Winch (Eds.). Basil Blackwell.