Gandhi and the emergence of the modern indian political canon

Review of Politics

Volumn 70, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 40-63

  Parel, Anthony J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 57749135366     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670508000041     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. The date of the Arthasastra is disputed among scholars. According to Romila Thapar, parts of it go back to the fourth century BC, and the present form of the text goes back to about third century AD (Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 [London: Allen Lane, 2002], 184-85). The standard English translation of this work, which is used in this article, is R. Kangle, The Kautiliya Arthasastra, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Delhi: Banarsidass, 1997).
2. See Nitisara or The Elements of Polity by Kamandaki, ed. Raja Dr. Rajendralala Mitra, revised with English translation by Dr. Sisir Kumar Mitra (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1982);
3. Niti Vakyamritam of Somadeva Suri, ed. Ramachandra Malaviya, with extensive Hindi commentary (Varanasi: Vidyabhavana Samskrta Grantamala, 1972);
4. and B. K. Sarkar, The Sukraniti (New York: AMS Press, 1974).
5. For over a millennium these canonical ideas made their appearance in works in the arthasastra tradition. I make a distinction between Arthasastra the book and the arthasastra tradition that grew out of it. See U.N. Ghoshal, A History of Indian Political Ideas (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1959), 83, 112, 121, 247, 348, 375, 428, 476 -77, 496-497
6. For a recent discussion of the meaning of anvikshiki, seeWilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 263-286
7. For more on this, see A. J. Parel, Gandhi's Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 5-6.
8. The Nitisara of Kamandaki, II, v. 17, 41-42, adds moksha by name to the list of the purusharthas. It proudly states that it is an abridgement of "the mighty ocean" of the Arthasastra, 3; and calls Kautilya "our guru," 37.
9. See V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, vol.V, part 2, 2nd ed. (Poona: The Bhandarkar Institute, 1977), 1623.
10. Sheldon Pollock, The Ends of Man at the End of Premodernity (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005), 63-64.
11. See Sukraniti, chapter 4, section 111, 153.
12. Ibid., 156.
13. Ibid., 164.
14. A. Appadorai, ed., Documents on Political Thought in India, vol.1 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1973), and vol. 2 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1976).
15. A. Appadorai, Indian Political Thinking from Naoroji to Nehru (Madras: Oxford University Press, 1971), 151. The opening lines of this book verify my point here: "The object of this book is to survey the history of political thought in India from 1857 to 1964," xi. Italics added.
16. M. K. Gandhi, Young India: A Weekly Journal, May 26, 1924, 210.
17. M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 100 vols. (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1958-1994) (hereafter CW), 51: 259.
18. CW, 59: 64, 66.
19. CW, 62: 121-122
20. CW, 63: 153.
21. M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed., Anthony J. Parel (hereafter HS) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 87.
22. See J. D. M. Derrett, "Social and Political Thought and Institutions," in A Cultural History of India, ed., A. L. Basham (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 124-140 As Derrett at 140 points out, the famous "law of fishes" migrated to the West and found a place in Talmudic literature, "whence, via Spinoza," it found a place inWestern political thought. Pufendorf criticized Spinoza for speaking of it in terms of a moral law. Fishes, he pointed out, do not have a "right" but only "a faculty of acting," which by itself did not indicate a right.
23. See S. Pufendorf, De Jure Naturae et Gentium (1688), vol.2, trans. C. H. and W. A. Oldfather (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), bk. 2, chap. 2, 159.
24. CW, 25: 481-482
25. HS, 51-57.
26. CW, 85: 33.
27. CW, 19: 278.
28. HS, 52-57.
29. CW, 25: 481.
30. For the complete text see CW, 75: 146-166
31. CW, 48: 304.
32. HS, 90.
33. Satyagraha was invented in 1906, a year before Gandhi read Thoreau, which took place in 1907. See CW, 61: 401.
34. Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, revised edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 29.
35. CW, 16: 51.
36. G. Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1966), 56-57.
37. Of the twenty books listed in appendix 1 of Hind Swaraj, twelve were on economics. They were, besides the books of Ruskin mentioned, three by Leo Tolstoy, one by each of G. Blount, Robert Sherard, Edward Carpenter, Henry Thoreau, Thomas Taylor, D. Naoroji, and R. C. Dutt.
38. CW, 39: 239.
39. See M. K. Gandhi, Ruskin: Unto This Last, A Paraphrase, translated from the Gujarati by Valji Desai (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1989).
40. CW, 74: 278-279
41. This is a point well made by Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Rudolph in Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 232-239
42. HS, 37.
43. Ibid..
44. Ibid., 66.
45. CW, 39: 401.
46. CW, 44: 80. The dweller in the body is the purusha.
47. CW, 32: 350.
48. Ibid., 351.
49. CW, 32: 360.
50. CW, 79: 258.
51. Ibid., 433.
52. CW, 38: 64.
53. Among modern Indian writings on the theory of purusharthas, the following are especially relevant to the present discussion: K. J. Shah, "Of Artha and the Arthasastra," in Comparative Political Philosophy, ed. A. J. Parel and R. C. Keith, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), 141-62;
54. "Purushartha and Gandhi," in Gandhi and the Present Global Crisis, ed. Ramashray Roy(Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1996), 155-61;
55. and R. Sundara Rajan, "The Purusharthas in the Light of Critical Theory," Indian Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1979-1980): 339-50;
56. and "Approaches to the Theory of the Purusharthas: Husserl, Heidegger and Ricoeur," Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 6 (1988-1989): 129-147
57. The various steps that Gandhi took to realign the four purusharthas are discussed in A. J. Parel, Gandhi's Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony, 14-21.
58. These principles were nonviolence (ahimsa), truthfulness (satya), uprightness, freedom from malice, compassion, and forbearance. This list goes as far back as Arthasastra 1.3.13.
59. M. K. Gandhi, Sarvodaya, ed., B. Kumarappa (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1984), 74. However, if "unavoidable," "a minimum of state- ownership" may be accepted (74).
60. Gandhi had specifically warned modern India of the dangers of copying the nineteenth-century model of industrialization: "We can never industrialize India, unless of course, we reduce our population from 350 millions to 35 millions [Gandhi was writing in 1934, when India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were one political entity] or hit upon markets wider than our own and dependent on us . . . We cannot industrialize ourselves, unless we make up our minds to enslave humanity" (CW, 58 : 400).
61. CW, 72: 248-50; 271-72; 281-282
62. CW, 71: 407.
63. A. L. Basham, ed., A Cultural History of India, 498-499