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Gandhi and the Emergence of the Modern Indian Political Canon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2008

Anthony J. Parel
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Abstract

This article explores Mahatma Gandhi's contributions towards the evolution of the modern Indian political canon. Beginning with the Arthasastra, classical India had a political canon of its own. It flourished for over a millennium, but it suffered near extinction with the introduction in the nineteenth century of the Western political canon by the colonial state. Gandhi in the twentieth century intervened and challenged the dominance of the Western canon. He updated the old canon by deleting what was obsolete in it, preserving what was viable, and adding to it what was new and modern.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 70 , Issue 1: Special Issue on Comparative Political Theory , Winter 2008 , pp. 40 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2008

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References

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 Kangle, R., The Kautiliya Arthasastra, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Delhi: Banarsidass, 1997)Google Scholar.

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); Niti Vakyamritam of Somadeva Suri, ed. Ramachandra Malaviya, with extensive Hindi commentary (Varanasi: Vidyabhavana Samskrta Grantamala, 1972); and Sarkar, B. K., The Sukraniti (New York: AMS Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

3 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 Ghoshal, U.N., A History of Indian Political Ideas (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1959), 83, 112, 121, 247, 348, 375, 428, 476–77, 496–97Google Scholar.

4 For a recent discussion of the meaning of anvikshiki, see Halbfass, Wilhelm, India and Europe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 263–86Google Scholar.

5 For more on this, see Parel, A. J., Gandhi's Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 5–6Google Scholar.

6 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.

7 See Kane, V., History of Dharmasastra, vol. V, part 2, 2nd ed. (Poona: The Bhandarkar Institute, 1977), 1623Google Scholar.

8 Pollock, Sheldon, The Ends of Man at the End of Premodernity (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005), 63–64Google Scholar.

9 See Sukraniti, chapter 4, section 111, 153.

10 Ibid., 156.

11 Ibid., 164.

12 Appadorai, A., ed., Documents on Political Thought in India, vol. 1 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1973), and vol. 2 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

13 Appadorai, A., Indian Political Thinking from Naoroji to Nehru (Madras: Oxford University Press, 1971), 151Google Scholar. 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.

14 Gandhi, M. K., Young India: A Weekly Journal, May 26, 1924, 210Google Scholar.

15 Gandhi, M. K., The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 100 vols. (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1958–1994)Google Scholar (hereafter CW), 51: 259.

16 CW, 59: 64, 66.

17 CW, 62: 121–22.

18 CW, 63: 153.

19 Gandhi, M. K., Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed., Parel, Anthony J. (hereafter HS) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 See Derrett, J. D. M., “Social and Political Thought and Institutions,” in A Cultural History of India, ed., Basham, A. L. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 124–40Google Scholar. 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 in Western 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. See Pufendorf, S., De Jure Naturae et Gentium (1688), vol. 2, trans. C. H. and Oldfather, W. A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), bk. 2, chap. 2, 159Google Scholar.

21 CW, 25: 481–82.

22 HS, 51–57.

23 CW, 85: 33.

24 CW, 19: 278.

25 HS, 52–57.

26 CW, 25: 481.

27 For the complete text see CW, 75: 146–66.

28 CW, 48: 304.

29 HS, 90.

30 Satyagraha was invented in 1906, a year before Gandhi read Thoreau, which took place in 1907. See CW, 61: 401.

31 Bondurant, Joan V., Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, revised edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 29Google Scholar.

32 CW, 16: 51.

33 Austin, G., The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1966), 56–57Google Scholar.

34 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.

35 CW, 39: 239.

36 See Gandhi, M. K., Ruskin: Unto This Last, A Paraphrase, translated from the Gujarati by Desai, Valji (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1989)Google Scholar.

37 CW, 74: 278–79.

38 This is a point well made by Rudolph, Lloyd and Rudolph, Susanne in Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 232–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 HS, 37.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid., 66.

42 CW, 39: 401.

43 CW, 44: 80. The dweller in the body is the purusha.

44 CW, 32: 350.

45 Ibid., 351.

46 CW, 32: 360.

47 CW, 79: 258.

48 Ibid., 433.

49 CW, 38: 64.

50 Among modern Indian writings on the theory of purusharthas, the following are especially relevant to the present discussion: Shah, K. J., “Of Artha and the Arthasastra,” in Comparative Political Philosophy, ed. Parel, A. J. and Keith, R. C., 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), 141–62Google Scholar; “Purushartha and Gandhi,” in Gandhi and the Present Global Crisis, ed. Ramashray Roy(Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1996), 155–61; and Sundara Rajan, R., “The Purusharthas in the Light of Critical Theory,” Indian Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1979–1980): 339–50Google Scholar; and “Approaches to the Theory of the Purusharthas: Husserl, Heidegger and Ricoeur,” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 6 (1988–1989): 129–47.

51 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.

52 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.

53 Gandhi, M. K., Sarvodaya, ed., Kumarappa, B. (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1984), 74Google Scholar. However, if “unavoidable,” “a minimum of state-ownership” may be accepted (74).

54 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).

55 CW, 72: 248–50; 271–72; 281–82.

56 CW, 71: 407.

57 A. L. Basham, ed., A Cultural History of India, 498–99.