Gandhi's politics: Liberalism and the question of the ashram

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 101, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 955-986

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EID: 60950479464     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-101-4-955     Document Type: Review

References (56)

1. Mark Thomson, Gandhi and His Ashramas (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1993)
2. Ajay Skaria, Rendering Gandhi: Liberalism and the Question of the Neighbor (book manuscript in preparation)
3. Gandhi's works are available in English (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi; henceforth CWMG)
4. William Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 19
5. Gandhiji, Mangalprabhat (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Prakashan, 1930), 1
6. M. K. Gandhi, From Yeravda Mandir (henceforth Yeravda) (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Prakashan, 1932), 1; translation modified
7. October 14, 1926, in CWMG, vol. 36:401
8. Akshardeha, vol. 31:463
9. For a discussion of these two regimes, see Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 80. I explore their relationship to liberalism at greater length in Skaria, Rendering Gandhi
10. P. Deusen, cited in Patrick Oliville, The Asrama System: The History and Hermeneutics of a Religious Institution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 32
11. Satyagraha-ashramno itihas, in Akshardeha, vol. 50: 221
12. CWMG, vol. 56: 180
13. My discussion of Tagore draws heavily on the thoughtful essays by Prathama Banerjee and Dipesh Chakrabarty. See Prathama Banerjee, "The Work of Imagination: Temporality and Nationhood in Colonial Bengal," in Subaltern Studies 12, ed. Shail Mayaram, M. S. S. Pandian, and Ajay Skaria (Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
14. and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)
15. October 14, 1909, in CWMG, vol. 10:168
16. Hind swaraj, in CWMG, vol. 10:257. The Gujarati original to this English translation - by Gandhi - has no equivalent to this phrase. In Rendering Gandhi, I discuss at greater length how the category discipline, so prominent in his English writings, is quite elusive in his Gujarati writings, and yet, how its distinctiveness only emerges from the latter. This is symptomatic of how his critique of liberalism is available to us through an interplay of Gujarati and English writings and translations
17. Hind swaraj, in Akshardeha, vol. 10:26,31
18. Hind swaraj, in Akshardeha, vol. 10: 41
19. This understanding of "civilization makes it impossible to rely on history, politics, the tutelage of one community by another, and more generally the work of power as engines and instruments of civilization" (Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999])
20. "Growing Distrust," May 29, 1924, in CWMG, vol. 28: 53
21. "Arya Samaj," in Akshardeha, vol. 24: 134
22. See Akshardeha, vol. 29: 341
23. CWMG, vol. 33: 411
24. Compare Rabindranath Tagore, "Reflections on Non-cooperation and Cooperation," May 1921, in The Mahatma and the Poet, ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (New Delhi: National Book Trust, India, 1997), 62
25. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 153
26. February 9, 1922, in CWMG, vol. 26: 125-27
27. Akshardeha, vol. 22: 333
28. "Letter to Sahebji Maharaj," December 25, 1934, in CWMG, vol. 66: 29
29. March 28, 1930, in Akshardeha, vol. 43: 169
30. compare CWMG, vol. 48: 495; translation modified
31. Anasaktiyoga, in Akshardeha, vol. 41: 125
32. CWMG, vol. 46: 201. In this book, Gandhi audaciously reads the Bhagvad Gita as a text on neighborliness
33. As this suggests, our current antisecularist affirmations of Gandhi's religiosity - which paint his Hinduism as an extension of folk traditions, and oppose it to the BJP's communalist and monolithic Hinduism - are somewhat misplaced. Gandhi affirmed the folk traditions of Hinduism not because of populist faith in rural traditions, but because they conformed to his criterion of religiosity - disciplined devotion. "The people of India have drunk of the nectar of devotion [bhakti-ras]. This great people overflows with faith [shraddha]. It is no difficult matter to lead such a people on to the pure path of satyagraha" (Akshardeha, vol. 13: 490
34. CWMG, vol. 16: 13)
35. CWMG, vol. 84: 266
36. Tracy Strong, foreword to Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)
37. Leo Strauss, "Notes," in ibid., 84
38. Cited in Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994)
39. "Letter to C. F. Andrews," February 25, 1919, in CWMG, vol. 17: 300
40. December 15, 1920, in CWMG, vol. 22: 96
41. August 4, 1925, in CWMG, vol. 32: 244
42. Ernest Renan, "What Is a Nation," in Homi K. Bhabha, Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), 19
43. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991)
44. June 14, 1928, in CWMG, vol. 42: 109
45. I thank Alon Confino for discussions of these points. See also Alon Confino and Ajay Skaria, "The Local Life of Nationhood," in National Identities (Spring 2002)
46. and Ajay Skaria, "National, Popular, Historical: The Curious Loves of Indulal Yagnik," Indian Economic and Social History Review 38.3 (June-September 2001)
47. Michael Oakeshort, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 417
48. Satyanaprayog, athava atmakatha (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Prakashan, 1927)
49. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, trans. Mahadev Desai (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 19. Desai has rendered sarkha gunvada as "similar natures"; I believe it is more appropriate to stress the other connotation of sarkha - "equality."
50. Akshardeha, vol. 8
51. "New Natal Bills," in CWMG, vol. 8: 314
52. January 30, 1921, in Akshardeha, vol. 19: 270
53. CWMG, vol. 22: 289; translation modified
54. August 4, 1920, in CWMG, vol. 21: 119
55. I draw heavily here on Faisal Fatehali Devji's brilliant essay, "A Practice of Prejudice," in Mayaram, Pandian, and Skaria, Subaltern Studies 12
56. Compare Ajay Skaria, "The Primitivism of Development," in Regional Modernities, ed. Arun Agrawal and K. Sivaramakrishnan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002)