Nonviolence and Gandhi's Truth: A Method for Moral and Political Arbitration

Review of Politics

Volumn 68, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 287-317

  Godrej, Farah ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 43249174118     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670506000118     Document Type: Article

References (128)

1. See, among others: John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)
2. Amy Gutmann, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992)
3. Michael Walzer, On Toleration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997)
4. Brian Barry, Culture and Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)
5. Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)
6. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)
7. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
8. Here, I do not claim to be offering a comprehensive account of Gandhian metaphysics or epistemology; rather, I seek to highlight those aspects of his vision most relevant to the topic at hand. For fuller, more detailed accounts of Gandhi's metaphysical and epistemological vision, see Raghavan Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Concord Grove Press, 1983)
9. Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi's Political Philosophy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989)
10. Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958)
11. Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969).
12. Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), xxvii.
13. Raghavan Iyer, ed., “Letter to Narandas Gandhi, July 22, 1930” and “Speech at Meeting in Lausanne,” in Truth and Non-Violence, vol. 2 of The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi [hereafter MPW vol. 2] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 162, 164-170.
14. Elsewhere he claims, “This Truth is … pure consciousness … that alone holds the universe together.” “Letter to Boys and Girls,” Iyer, MPW vol. 2,172. A word here on citation: Gandhi scholars are divided on the issue of which edition of Gandhi's collected works are the best. Although many claim that The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1958) is the most reliable and complete source, I have chosen in this essay to use Raghavan Iyer's 3-volume Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi. Although Iyer's collection is less comprehensive than the Collected Works, it is clearly indexed with reference to specific moral and political aspects of Gandhi's thought and is, thus, both more convenient and appropriate for use in a specifically political project such as this one. Iyer's collection is also based directly on the Collected Works itself and differs from it only in the organization of the material. Thus, it has been used by respected Gandhi scholars such as Ronald Terchek. Although it may be worthwhile to format this essay using citations from the Collected Works, such a project must be postponed until the resolution of a controversy regarding the reliability and completeness of the newest version of the Collected Works, revised and re-released on CD-ROM by the Government of India in 1999.
15. See Mohandas K. Gandhi, “What is Truth?” Navajivan, Nov. 20, 1921, Iyer, MPWvol. 2, 155–158. Here, Gandhi claims: “He … who understands truth … comes to know God and attains moksha [liberation] though still encased in the physical frame … He who strives … ever meditating on truth … will certainly have his whole being filled with truth.”
16. Gandhi, Autobiography, xxviii.
17. “Letter to Mrs. R. Armstrong and Mrs. P. R. Howard,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 160.
18. “Letter to Narandas Gandhi,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 163.
19. Gandhi, “What is Truth?” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 155–156.
20. Gandhi, “Letter to Narandas Gandhi,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 163.
21. Manfred Steger reminds us that Gandhi's views on the possibility of perfection are notoriously ambiguous. While “to say that perfection is not attainable on this earth is to deny God,” he also simultaneously held that “not one of us is perfect… [or] able to realize the whole of our spiritual ambition,” MPW vol. 2, 36-37; and that “only a rare person will succeed completely,” MPW vol. 2, 158. See also Manfred Steger, Gandhi's Dilemma: Nonviolent Principles and Nationalist Power (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 116.
22. In Gandhi's own words, “it is impossible for us to realize perfect truth so long as we are imprisoned in this mortal frame … one can realize Truth … only by ceaseless striving.” “Letter to Narandas Gandhi, July 28/31, 1930,” Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 229.
23. Gandhi, “Truth is One, Young India, April 21, 1927,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 189.
24. Gandhi, “The Alchemy of Thought,” Navajivan, November 4, 1928.
25. Gandhi, “Truth is One,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 189.
26. Gandhi, Autobiography, xxvii.
27. Gandhi, “Politics and Social Work,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 1, 445.
28. This social and moral progress came, for Gandhi, mostly in the form of what he termed the “Constructive Programme”—a project of social reform and public service that included the removal of untouchability; programs of rural education and reconstruction; schemes for the improvement of health, sanitation and diet; and the promotion of local handicrafts. “The constructive programme … alone is real politics,” Gandhi claims. See Iyer, MPW vol. 1, 425, 416, and 441.
29. “Politics, economic progress, etc. are not unconnected matters … they are all rooted in religion.” Gandhi, “Draft Constitution of the Satyagraha Ashram, Ahmedabad,” in Iyer, MPW vol 2, 517
30. “We needlessly divide life into water-tight compartments.” Gandhi, “Letter to Horace Alexander,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 619.
31. Gandhi, “Letter to Dr. Norman Leys,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 1, 408.
32. While this is by no means the only way to think about the Gandhian view of politics, it has been suggested that Gandhi's view of the role and nature of political life was determined by (or, at the very least, is in accordance with) the traditional Hindu theory of the four purusharthas, in which the pursuit of kama (pleasure) and artha (power) were to be informed by, and take place in accordance with, dharma (the imperative of ethical conduct) and moksha (spiritual liberation, or the quest for the ultimate meaning in human existence). There has been some debate as to whether the relationship between these four forces was to be hierarchical (i.e., moksha being the privileged force that provides the guidance for the other three realms of life) or interactional (i.e., each force being given its particular place, with all four complementing one another). On Gandhi and the purusharthas, see Anthony Parel, “The Spiritual and the Political in Gandhi's Philosophy,” Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), September 2-5, 2004; as well as “Gandhi on the Dynamics of Civilization,” Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Aug 29-Sept 1, 2002. See also K.J.Shah “Purushartha and Gandhi,” in Ramashray Roy, ed., Gandhi and the Present Global Crisis (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1996)
33. P.V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1977) 5, (part 2): 1620–1623.
34. See Iyer, MPW vol. 3, 548: “Is not politics too a part of dharma … Politics also requires purity of conduct.” Also see vol. 1, 375: “Political life must be an echo of private life and … there cannot be any divorce between the two”; vol. 1, 376: “I take part in politics because I feel that there is no department of life which can be divorced from religion”; vol. 1, 381: “My politics are not divorced from morality, from spirituality, from religion…. A man who is trying to discover and follow the will of God cannot possibly leave a single field of life untouched”; vol. 1, 391: “For me, every, the tiniest, activity is governed by what I consider to be my religion.”
35. It is worth noting here that Gandhi seemed not to make much distinction between the spiritual and the moral or ethical, while each of these realms seemed synonymous with truth-seeking: “I use the adjective moral,” he claims, “as synonymous with spiritual.” Gandhi, Harijan, January 1942. Religion, Gandhi claimed, “means a belief in ordered moral government of the universe,” Iyer, MPW vol. 1, 391, thus indicating that for him, the imperatives of ethics and spiritual seeking were linked, if not identical.
36. For a fuller account of the relationship between spirituality and politics in Gandhi's thought, see Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, chap. 3; Parekh, Gandhi's Political Philosophy, chap. 4; and Anthony Parel, ed., Introduction to Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2000).
37. On the relationship between truth and politics in Gandhi, see Partha Chatterjee, “The Moment of Manoeuvre: Gandhi and the Critique of Civil Society,” in Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed for the United Nations University, 1986)
38. Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), chap. 2-4
39. David Hardiman, Gandhi in His Time and Ours: the Global Legacy of His Ideas (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), chap. 2-4, 6-8
40. Ved Mehta, “In the Steps of the Autobiographer and His Biographers,” part 2 in Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)
41. Martin Green, Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolution (New York: Continuum, 1993)
42. Richard G. Fox, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989)
43. William Borman, Gandhi and Non-Violence (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986).
44. See Gandhi, Autobiography, xxvii: “As long as I have not realized [the] Absolute Truth, so long must I hold by the relative truth as I have conceived it. That relative truth must, meanwhile, be my beacon, my shield and buckler.”
45. M. K. Gandhi, Speeches and Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, 4th ed. (Madras: Natesan, 1934), 506.
46. Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 219.
47. Although he did not clearly set a specific standard for such exceptions to nonviolence and only made isolated and unsystematic reference to them in his writings, for the most part, Gandhi seemed concerned with instances where nonviolence arose as a result of cowardice or dishonor: “I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence…. Hence it was that I took part in the Boer War, the so-called Zulu rebellion and the late War.” Gandhi, “The Doctrine of the Sword,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 298.
48. See also 222: “It is my firm conviction that the principle of clinging to life in all circumstances betrays cowardice.” See Ronald Terchek, Gandhi, Struggling for Autonomy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), chap. 6, 204–209.
49. Gandhi, “On Ahimsa: Reply to Lala Lajpat Rai,” Modern Review, October 1916
50. in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 212.
51. Gandhi, “On Ahimsa: Reply to Lala Lajpat Rai,” Modern Review, October 1916, in
52. Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 212.
53. Gandhi, “Problems of Non-Violence,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 217.
54. Gandhi, “Discussion with G. Ramachandran,” Young India, March 1922.
55. Gandhi, Young India, June 4, 1925, in
56. Iyer, MPW vol. 2 216.
57. Gandhi, “Letter to Narandas Gandhi,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 230.
58. Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 218.
59. Gandhi, “How to Observe Ahimsa,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 237–238.
60. Anthony Parel remarks that Gandhi took five of these—truth, nonviolence, nonstealing, nonpossession, and celibacy—from Patanjali's Yogasutras, while the rest were “introduced on his own initiative, reflecting the moral needs of his time.” Parel, “The Spiritual and the Political in Gandhi's Philosophy,” 20.
61. Gandhi, as is well known, imposed the strictest standards of truth-seeking on himself, standards that were applied to the realms of diet, sex, spiritual practice, economic life, and nutrition, none of which Gandhi believed were exempt from the requirements of total ahimsa. The variety of self-disciplinary attitudes and strategies that went into Gandhi's own pursuit of ahimsa are well known, and his lifestyle has been described as “sometimes obsessive” in its relentless pursuit of total moral virtue. See Sissela Bok, foreword to An Autobiography, by Mohandas K. Gandhi, xvi. For a fuller account of the role of asceticism and self-restraint as a tool for Gandhi's political effectiveness, see Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pt. 2. See also Joseph S. Alter, Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000)
62. “Nonviolence, Brahmacharya and Goat's Milk,” in Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles.
63. “Non-violence is a perfect state. It is a goal toward which all mankind moves naturally though unconsciously,” Gandhi, “Non-Violence,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 301.
64. Gandhi, “All about the Fast,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 131.
65. Gandhi, “Note to Gope Gurbaxani,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 128.
66. Gandhi, “Speech at Meeting in Lausanne,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 167.
67. Gandhi, “Note to Gope Gurbaxani,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 128.
68. Gandhi, “Under Conscience's Cover,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 125.
69. Joan Bondurant hints at this distinction between theoretical and practical truth when she states that “Gandhi, in search of an absolute truth, concerned himself more intensively with the means whereby the realization of such truth might be advanced…. As he pursued his experiments with satyagraha the relative character of truth as an operative principle became the stronger.” Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 17.
70. Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 321.
71. Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 302–303.
72. Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 321.
73. Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 302.
74. See Raghavan Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, 196–204.
75. Parel, “The Spiritual and the Political in Gandhi's Philosophy,” 7.
76. Humility, Gandhi explicitly stated, “is the goal which we … have set before ourselves; all our observances and activities are calculated to assist us in reaching it.” Letter to Narandas Gandhi,” in
77. Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 147.
78. In the Apology, Socrates claims: “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.” Plato, “Apology,” in G. M. A. Grube, ed., Five Dialogues (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 27.
79. Gandhi, “Speech at Meeting in Lausanne,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 170.
80. Gandhi, “Truth is One,” in Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 189: “[T]he claim to infallibility on the part of a human being would … always be a most dangerous claim to make.” Similarly, Socrates claims, “[E]ach of them, because of his success at his craft, thought himself very wise in other most important pursuits, and this error of theirs overshadowed the wisdom they had.” Plato, 28.
81. “Seeing that we will never all think alike and that we shall always see Truth in fragment and from different angles…. imposition of [one's] conduct upon all will be an insufferable interference with everybody else's freedom of conscience.” Iyer, MPW, vol. 2, 126.
82. See Iyer, MPW, vol. 3, 54.
83. Gandhi, Autobiography, 350.
84. N. Pyarelal, Gandhi: The Last Phase (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1956) 1: 10.
85. Here, see Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture,” Social Research, no. 38 (1971): 441–444, on the role of rational discourse with the self as a crucial component of moral reasoning. Here, too, the structure of this moral reasoning has no attachment to any metaphysical presumption.
86. Gandhi, “Notes,” Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 48.
87. Through this conscious suffering, Gandhi claims, “we realize the greatness … of Truth. Our peace of mind increases… we become braver and more enterprising; we understand more clearly the difference between what is everlasting and what is not; we learn to distinguish between what is our duty and what is not. Our pride melts away…. Our worldly attachments diminish and … the evil within us diminishes from day to day.” Gandhi, “Letter to Narandas Gandhi.” Bodily penance, according to Gandhi, is a “remedy to get rid of untruth,” for through such penance, the seeker “becomes more alert, examines the innermost recesses of his own heart and takes steps to deal with any personal weaknesses he may discover.” M. K. Gandhi, Ashram Observances in Action (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1955).
88. See also, Iyer, MPW vol. 2, 163, 577, 212; vol. 1, 508; vol. 3. 439.
89. For more detailed treatment of the notion of “self-suffering” in Gandhi's work and its role as a political tool, see also Margaret Chatterjee, Gandhi's Religious Thought (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), chap. 5.
90. Iyer, MPW vol. 3, 41.
91. See also M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1938), 131–132: “No man can claim to be absolutely in the right or that a particular thing is wrong because he thinks so; but it is wrong for him so long as that is his deliberate judgment. It is, therefore, meet that he should not do that which he knows to be wrong, and suffer the consequence whatever it may be.”
92. M. K. Gandhi, India's Case for Swaraj (Yeshanand, 1932), 369
93. Iyer, Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, 287.
94. Joan Bondurant argues, “Satyagraha allows for several stages of winning over an opponent. The first stage is characterized by persuasion through reason. The subsequent stages enter the realm of persuasion through suffering.” Bondurant, 11.
95. For a detailed account of the use of the body in Gandhian politics, see Alice Ristroph, “Gandhi's Violence and the Power of Bodies Politic,” Paper presented at the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, September 2 -5, 2004.
96. Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, 276.
97. Certainly, Gandhi identifies this faculty as the conscience and endows it with an explicitly metaphysical status, calling it the voice of Truth or God. However, Gandhi's conceptualization of the conscience is not incompatible with the notion of an internal faculty of moral judgment and choice. In our efforts to detach Gandhi's model of political nonviolence from its metaphysical roots, it is equally possible to view this faculty in secular, rationalist terms, similar to the terms on which the conscience is described, say, by thinkers such as Kant, Rousseau, or Hannah Arendt. Each emphasizes, in different ways, the notion of an inner voice, representing an internalization of moral authority which, in turn, provides some purchase on access to moral and political truths. For instance, Kant characterizes the conscience as “this marvelous capacity within us,” Critique of Practical Reason, in Walter de Gruyter, ed., Kants gesammelte Schriften (KGS) (Berlin: Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1902) 5: 98
98. found “originally in everyone as a moral being,” (Metaphysics of Morals, in KSG 6: 400); an “authority watching over the laws within” (Metaphysics of Morals, in KGS 6: 438); an “innate judge” of humans over themselves, a “court” before which they stand (Metaphysics of Morals, in KGS 6: 437 ff., Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, in KGS 6: 77). Notice that Kant's own account of the origin of the conscience is not quite fully secular: conscience is thought of as “the representative of God, who has [erected] His sublime seat over us, but who has also set up a judgment seat within us.” On Pedagogy, in KGS 9: 495. See also Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture,” Social Research 38, no. 3 (fall 1970): 441–444, as well as The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 180-97. What distinguishes Gandhi, of course, is the idea that this faculty can be trained through sustained efforts that discipline the consciousness. Thus, it is not inappropriate to think of it as a faculty of moral judgment or choice that can be further developed.
99. Bondurant, 194.
100. Bondurant, 196. Bondurant is also careful to point out why satyagraha is not based on, and is, in fact, qualitatively different from compromise. The satyagrahi, Bondurant says, “is never prepared to yield any position which he holds to be the truth. He is, however, prepared … to be persuaded by his opponent that the opponent's position is … the more nearly true position…. When persuasion has been effected … there is no sacrificing of position” (Bondurant, 197).
101. For a more detailed description of the sorts of nonviolent actions that are included within the umbrella of satyagraha, including the fundamental rules and code of discipline governing nonviolent action, see Bondurant, 36–41.
102. Bondurant, 36.
103. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 13.
104. Rawls, Political Liberalism, xviii.
105. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 152.
106. Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical” (JFPM), in Samuel Freeman, ed., John Rawls: The Collected Papers (Cambridge, Harvard University Press: 1999), 390.
107. For more on the overlapping consensus, see Rawls, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” Political Liberalism, Lecture 4
108. Rawls, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus” (IOC), in Freeman, ed., 421–448.
109. Rawls, IOC, 437.
110. Rawls, IOC, 434.
111. Rawls, JFPM, 395.
112. Rawls, JFPM, 394.
113. Rawls, JFPM, 410–411.
114. Rawls, IOC, 424.
115. See also Rawls, JFPM, 390.
116. On the idea of reason-giving in constitutional democracies, see Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” in Freeman, ed., 573–615.
117. See Rawls, JFPM, 405: “Citizens in their personal affairs … may regard their final ends and attachments in a way very different from the way the political conception involves…. These convictions and attachments are part of what we may call their ‘non-public identity.'”
118. Two of the best critiques on this matter are Jean Hampton, “Should Political Philosophy Be Done without Metaphysics?” Ethics 99 (July 1989)
119. Michael Sandel, “Political Liberalism,” Harvard Law Review 107 (1994): 1765–1794.
120. On this point, see also Hampton, 807–810.
121. In fact, Sandel argues that the cost of the Rawlsian vision is even greater, in that it may inadvertently contribute to the rise of precisely the sort of intolerance it is designed to avoid: “A politics that brackets morality and religion too completely soon generates its own disenchantment. Where political discourse lacks moral resonance, the yearning for a public life of larger meanings finds undesirable expression … it thus creates a moral void that opens the way of the intolerant and the trivial and other misguided moralisms” (“Political Liberalism,” 1794).
122. See Sandel, 1768: “[O]ur reflections about justice cannot reasonably be detached from our reflections about the nature of the good life and the highest human ends.”
123. Sandel, 1778–1782.
124. See also Hampton, 811.
125. Rawls calls this the “Burdens of judgment,” Political Liberalism, 54–58.
126. Here, see the famous dialogue between Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore in B. K. Ahluwalia and Shashi Ahluwalia, Tagore and Gandhi: the Tagore-Gandhi Controversy (New Delhi: Pankaj Publications, 1981).
127. See also Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action, chap. 3.
128. On this point, see Hampton, “Should Political Philosophy Be Done without Metaphysics?”