Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-29T23:55:18.310Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Gandhi and social relations

from Part II - Gandhi: Thinker and activist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2011

Judith Brown
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Anthony Parel
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
Get access

Summary

Much of recent scholarship on Gandhi is propelled by three urgent contemporary concerns. First, the growth of Hindu communalism, making secular historians turn to histories of tolerance and hence to Gandhi, a Hindu martyr to Hindu communalism. Second, post-colonial scholars, anxious about what is authentic and what is derivative in Indian modernity, search for moderns like Gandhi who were firmly anchored in Indian tradition. Finally, discontents with modern developmental paradigms renew the significance of Gandhi, a forceful critic of industrialism. For all three, Gandhi offers a resolution for the ills of modernity. All, moreover, identify an essential Gandhi, seeking him in his moral discourses rather than in his political and social work: discourses founded on an unwavering certainty about Truth. There is a strong tendency for icon making at work, rather than historical reassessment. The present chapter, in contrast, regards Gandhi’s political thinking and moral-ethical ideas as interactive, carrying profound social implications. Gandhi, moreover, never made absolute Truth claims. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of his life was his capacity for changing himself, his openness to experiences, his ‘experiments with Truth’. His life would, at any given moment, constitute a shifting and open totality: imbibing contradictory elements and transforming its praxis continuously.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×