Modern India

Assignment

QUS: Discuss the political philosophy of Gandhi with reference to the

intellectual influences that shaped his ideas.

Mohandhas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 in the coastal town

of Porbandar, one of scores of tiny princely states and now part of the
Indian state of Gujarat. Although the Gandhis, meaning grocers, were
merchants by caste, they had risen to important political positions.
Mohandas’s father was the chief administrator and member of the court
of Porbandar, and his grandfather that of the adjacent tiny state of
Junagadh.

Gandhi grew up in an eclectic religious environment. His parents were

followers of the largely devotional Hindu cult of Vishnu (or Vaishnavites).
His mother belonged to the Pranami sect, which combined Hindu and
Muslim religious beliefs, gave equal honour to the sacred books of the
Vaishnavites and the Koran, and preached religious harmony. Her
religious fasts and vows, observed without exception all her life, left an
abiding impression on her son. His father’s friends included many Jains
who preached a strict doctrine of non-violence and self-discipline.
Gandhi was also exposed to Christian missionaries, but Christianity was
not a significant presence in his childhood. Like many Hindus he
unselfconsciously imbibed a variety of religious beliefs, but had no deep
knowledge of any religious tradition including his own.

Gandhi’s return from South Africa after his studies became a turning
point in Nationalist movement. His return in 1915 has been described by
Judith Brown as “politics of studied limitations” and by Ravinder Kumar
as “a movement representing the classes” as opposes to the masses.
One of the major reasons why Gandhi became so popular was because
of the social and economic environment of India during the World war
One, as it undoubtedly created a congenial context for his emergence as
an undisputed leader of Indian Nationalism.

Gandhi derived his political ideas from the various sources. He drew
inspiration from his reading of Western thinkers like Henry David
Thoreau, John Ruskin, Ralph Waldo Emerson or Leo Tolstoy. Gandhi
acknowledged traditional concepts and symbols but without reluctance
introduced interpretations and ideas from foreign to Indian culture that
shows the importance of Western humanism in his approach. He
contrasted Western technology on the basis that the machine civilization
brought with it the mistreatment of men and the concentration of power.
In this respect, he trailed Tolstoy. whose writings, with those of Thoreau
and others, he studied while in South Africa. He tried out of different
modes of political action and different types of political program. The
influence of Gokhale on his thought is enthusiastically ostensible, as is
the impact of the element of Indian nationalist political thought signified
by Tilak.

Gandhi was basically religious as well as the ethical personality. He

maintained highest moral standards in politics. As the most crucial
strategist in politics he evolved the political methods and campaigned
the movements to capture the state’s power through the prolonged mass
movement. Gandhi declared on politics that, “For me there is no politics
without religion- not the religion of the superstitious and the blind,
religion that hates and fights, but the universal religion of toleration.
Politics without morality is a thing to avoided.”69 In addition to that he
said, “For me politics bereft of religion are absolute dirt, ever to be
shunned. Politics concern nations and that which concerns the welfare of
nations must be one of the concerns of a man who is religiously inclined,
in other words a seeker after God and truth. Therefore, in politics also
we have to establish the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Gandhi was considered as the combination of prophet and a politician by

several political theorists as well as the activists around the world in a
highest caliber. Within himself Gandhi united the feature of the
Philosopher and politician. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, one of the
crucial admirer and detractor of Gandhi, once he said that Gandhi had to
play the roles of a world teacher as well as the Supreme leader of the
Indian National Liberation Movement. In a tone of censuring he
additionally said, often his former role is the role of a world teacher
became so prominent that he had to compromise with his other role. The
points of Netaji’s may or may not agreeable but it appears that in the
context of national liberation movement there is truth in it. But when we
go in the depth of Gandhi's Philosophy, we can realize that there is no
dichotomy in Gandhi's perception. It can be said that Gandhi considered
politics as an instrument for strengthening human beings in social,
economic, moral and spiritual fields. Gandhi himself admitted this to his
South African friend that his bent of mind was religious and not political.
In 1924 Romain Rolland in his biography of Gandhi had commented that
Gandhi might have chosen a religious life rather than a politician if Tilak
would not have died. To Gandhi politics was his religion. He was against
politicizing the religion. He spiritualized religion but he was basically a
universal man and never sought his own salvation secluded from the
world. For him politics encircled like the coil of a snake. He must wrestle
with the snake and there is no respite. He could have kept away from
politics, if food and work could be provided to the hungry unemployed
people of India. He strongly felt that it is a necessary condition to involve
himself into politics for the eradication of exploitation and subjugation in
spheres of socio-economic and political fields and thereby moral
degradation of the people unless he involved himself in politics.

He made the Indian National Congress a people's congress and the

national movement a mass movement. He made people fearless and
bold and taught them the non-violent methods for rebellious against the
troubles of caste system and unfairness. He had a strong desire for
individual liberty which was thoroughly bound with his understanding of
truth and self-realisation. That Gandhiji was evident from his erstwhile
nationalist colleagues when he launched his satyagraha movements in
distant areas of Champaran (Bihar), Kheda and Ahmadabad (Gujarat)
instead of towns and cities that had so far remained the hub of the
nationalist activities. His political policies brought about drastic change in
the Congress that now extended its sphere of influence even in the
villages. These three movements projected Gandhi as an emergent
leader with different kinds of mobilising strategies. While explaining the
growth of Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru thus contended, Gandhiji knew
India for better than we did, and a man who could command such
tremendous devotion and loyalty must have something in him that
corresponded to the needs and aspirations of the masses. Besides
these local movements, Gandhi led three major pan Indian movements. 

The 1919-21 Non-co-operation Movement was the first one that gained
considerably with the merger of the Khilafat agitation of the Muslim
against the dismantling of the Khalif in Turkey. The Civil Disobedience
movement in which Gandhi reigned supreme. The 1942 quit India
movement, also called the open rebellion, was the last of the three Pan-
Indian campaigns that Gandhi spearheaded.

Judith Brown’s Gandhi: prisoner of hope is a sequel to her earlier works

on the rise of Gandhi as a political leader in the context of the Non-
Cooperation and Civil Disobedience Movements. On the basis of her
extensive research into Gandhi’s political life, Brown attributed the
Mahatma’s success to his perennial optimism, believing in a better life.
As a true satyagrahee, the Mahatma followed ‘a vision of truth and tried
to deploy the strength of truth and love in daily life’. Despite frustration
and episodes of depression , Gandhi never lost hope. In fact, that was
the hallmark of his political philosophy. An essential aspect of this was
his firm belief that human beings and the situations in which they were
placed were bound to change. Thus he always remained, as Brown
argued, ‘a prisoner of hope’ who never felt insecure in his mission
despite uncertainties all around. Whether this left an imprint in his
political style is debatable. What is clear is the fact that Gandhi’s
alternative vision for India and her struggle for freedom certainly
galvanized the masses into action in contrast with the loyal consti-
tutionalism of the Moderate era and the revolutionary terrorism of the
Extremist phase.

Gandhiji had highly objected for both western civilisation and western
democracies. He challenged the practicalities of modern western
civilisation. The stylish, aggressive and dissolute aspects of modern
western civilisation resisted him. According to him, the modern
civilisation was equal to darkness and disease. He condemned severely
western democratic politics because they were plague-ridden with
threefold contradiction. They believed in limitless enlargement of
capitalism and this resulted in exploitation of the subjugated sections of
society. Some of them even took resource to fascist or totalitarian
techniques. He honestly spoke that it was not through democratic
methods that Great Britain had conquered India. He also condemned the
policy of racialism followed in South Africa and the southern parts of the
USA. Gandhi concentrated that non-violence could lead to exact
democracy. Democracy and violence could not be reconciled. As an idea
and strategy, swaraj gained unusually in the context of the nationalist
articulation of the freedom struggle and the growing democratisation of
the political processes that already brought in hitherto socio- economic
and cultural differences . Underlying its role in a highly divided society
like India, swaraj was explicated in :National independence ,Political
freedom of the individual, Economic freedom of the individual ,Spiritual
freedom of the individual or self-rule.

Gandhi’s vision was intensely moralistic, and yet it remained remarkably

free from the utopianism, romanticism, fanaticism, and despair that have
often shadowed moralism. This was so because he took great care to
ensure that his vision was not itself pervaded by the spirit of violence. He
did not think of it as an ideal to realize but as a moral compass with
which to navigate one’s way through life. This not only left room for but
required a firm grip on reality. It also made ample allowance for the fact
that different individuals were bound to interpret and articulate the vision
differently and thus avoided dogmatism and fanaticism. Gandhi’s vision
was also sensitive to the limitations of the human condition, and
encouraged compromise and accommodation. It was striking that when
his countrymen disappointed him, as they did during the inter-communal
violence, he did not become bitter, condemn them for not being worthy
of him and his ideals, despair of them, or withdraw from the scene. He
persisted in his task, patiently appealed to them, rebuked but rarely
blamed them, never flew into a rage or felt self-righteous and superior,
and generally succeeded in evoking the desired response.

As for the content of Gandhi’s vision, it had its strengths and limitations.
He rightly argued that human beings were interdependent in ways they
did not often appreciate, that in brutalizing and degrading others they
brutalized and degraded themselves as well. This led to a fascinating
theory of social criticism and change. He showed that it was far more
coherent and effective to criticize an unjust system from the standpoint
of not merely its victims but all involved, to appeal to their common
humanity and interests, and to show that it diminished and damaged
them all. Rather than polarize the battle against injustice and place the
onus of struggle on its victims, Gandhi’s view turned it into a shared
moral task to which all alike had a duty to contribute.

Such a view runs the risk of degenerating into a sentimental and

politically naive humanism attacking such vague and abstract targets as
‘the system’ or ‘the evil in the human heart’. Gandhi avoided that
mistake. Since the dominant groups upheld and benefited from an unjust
system, they formed the immediate targets of struggle and had to be
fought. However, since not they personally but the system was the real
source of injustice and imposed constraints on all involved, it was the
ultimate target of attack. Unlike sentimental humanists Gandhi identified
enemies and showed who to fight against, but unlike conventional
revolutionary theorists he also saw them as potential partners in a
common struggle. Gandhi’s thought thus had room for both indignation
and love, both struggle and co-operation. This enabled him to stress the
unity of means and ends, the moral dimension of politics, and the need
to avoid naive Manichaeism in politics, all of which lay at the basis of his
remarkable theory of satyagraha.

The two major critiques on Gandhi’s political theory are by M.N. Roy,
Rabindranath Tagore and B.R. Ambedkar simply because not only are
they refreshing theoretical interventions, but they also helped Gandhi
reformulate some of the ideas that he had held so dear in his earlier
writings. While Roy provides a Marxist critique of Gandhi, Ambedkar
evaluates Gandhi on the basis of his conceptualization of distributive
justice that privileged ‘the untouchables’ or dalits over others. Tagore’s
critique of Gandhi is perhaps the most creative response, which is both
indigenous and Western-influenced. These varied critiques influenced
Gandhi dialectically and on occasions transformed his ideas. So the
blueprint for a future India that the Mahatma sought to articulate was
reflective of various different but authentic influences. Just like Gandhi,
Jinnah too carved out an independent place in the Indian freedom
struggle that culminated in the bifurcation of British India following his
two-nation theory.

Ideas do not emerge in a vacuum. The context seems to play a

significant, if not determining role in the dialogue that unfolded in
pursuance of the freedom struggle in India. In other words, the political
ideas of Gandhi, Roy, Tagore and Ambedkar were rooted in the larger
socio-economic and political processes in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The socio- historical and cultural perspective of British India
remained, for obvious reasons, a constant reference to M.N. Roy,
Rabindranath Tagore and B.R. Ambedkar. Gandhi conceptualized a
model that, for a variety of reasons, gained currency both as a nationalist
strategy for political mobilization and a blueprint for India’s future.
Drawing on their respective beliefs and ideas, Roy, Tagore and
Ambedkar put forward their views both in contrast and juxtaposition with
that of Gandhi and in that sense, the Mahatma appears to have broadly
set the discourse and its articulation. Although the ideologically inspired
critiques of Gandhi by Roy, Tagore and Ambedkar articulated different
voices, they were nonetheless largely theoretical because none had
been involved in the nationalist movement as organically as Gandhi.
What was unique about Gandhi was his ability to guide the nation
towards a goal following a model which the Mahatma articulated on the
basis of his experience as a practitioner of different kinds of politics.

To summarize, the political ideas of Gandhiji has remarkable

consistency and continuity. He considered man as exemplifying the
spiritual principle in him which is divine. He discussed that the divine
nature of man makes religion to engage itself positively with the world.
Gandhi was an activist. He worked for the enhancement of society. In
the field of politics, he comprehended the issues with special
consideration based on Indian nature of socio-economic and politics. He
defined politics as the best means to regulate the national life and also
he determined that its power should decentralize in unbiased manner.
According to Gandhiji, the happiness of every individual is the end. He
found different types of satyagraha and non-violence as the best way to
attain the ends. He articulated the noteworthy theories in politics in order
to attain his ultimate end of welfare of all. He thought that the state in
concentrated form of power structure is more coercive than individual.
So he recommended the political power decentralization in the
democratic form of governance. Because decentralized democracy gives
the possibility to the public contribution and representation. It guarantees
the liberty and autonomy to the individual, village and nation in its
extensive application of the welfare world will be attainable.

He was not convinced and opposed the notions that religion should be
separated from politics. Politics empty of religion is meaningless. He
thought that politics offers great opportunities to serve others and such
service is an essential attribute of religion. He considered that ends and
mans are integral to each other. He applied this belief to the pursuit of
truth as well, which he considered as God himself. Truth as end and
non-violence as means are inseparable. Gandhiji was a moral
revolutionary. He believed that violence disturbed the real revolution of
the social structure. He believed that violence would spell the fate of
mankind. He believed that a non-violent solution of problems of people
was not only possible but was the only way to have a real solution. He
considered the villages as the centre of Indian economic organisation.
His economic radicalism is brought out in his contest of the concept of
equality of wages for the lawyer, the doctor and the scavengers. His
notion of Panchayat raj remained a distant dream, but his arguments for
people's participation in governance motivated and also consolidated
movements for extending of egalitarianism in India.
Bibliography :

1. Bipin Chandra :- From Plassey to partition and after

2. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay :- Nationalist Movement in India

3. Bhiku parekh :-Gandhi’s political philosophy: A critical examination

4. Bidyut chakrabarty :-Social and Political thought of mahatma Gandhi

5. Sumit Serkar :- Modern India, 1885-1947

6. Academia.com : Gandhi, Political strategy ; oxfard international

encyclopedia of peace

Name : Beenish zehra

Roll no. : 171393

Course : History Hons 3rd year