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GANDHI ON DEMOCRACY, POLITICS AND THE ETHICS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2010

UDAY SINGH MEHTA
UDAY SINGH MEHTA*
Affiliation:
Political Science Department, Amherst College E-mail: usmehta@amherst.edu
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Abstract

This paper is about Gandhi's critique of politics, of which his ambivalence towards democracy was a part. I argue that for Gandhi the ground of moral action is fearlessness, while that of political reason is security and self-defense. Gandhi sees the context of moral action in the mundane fabric of everyday life, in places such as the family and the village. For that reason he does not believe that moral action requires being supplemented by the particular kind of unity which politics and the state call for and necessitate.

Type
Forum
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 355 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Gandhi, M. K., Hind Swaraj, ed. Parel, Anthony J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (New York: Penguin Classics, 1985), 81Google Scholar.

3 Desai, Mahadev, The Gospel of Selfless Action or The Gita According to Gandhi (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Publishing House, 1956), 132Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.

5 Gandhi, M. K., The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, ed. Iyer, Raghavan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991), 242Google Scholar.

6 Gandhi, M. K., Essential Writings, ed. Murti, V. V. Ramana (New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1970), 147Google Scholar.

7 Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, 73.

8 M. K. Gandhi, Harijan, 11 Jan. 1936 (emphasis added).

9 The entire speech is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020618-1.html. It should be pointed out that President Obama makes precisely this point in his Nobel Prize speech on 12 Oct. 2009.

10 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter, rev. edn (New York: Mentor, 1965), 311Google Scholar.

11 Ibid.: “Everyone as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully; so by the like reason when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice to an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.” Also see II, #16.

12 Ignatieff, Michael, The Lesser Evil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), xiiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, 80.

14 Gandhi, Essential Writings, ed. Raghavan Iyer, 250.

15 Gandhi, M. K., Non-violence in Peace and War, vol. 2 (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Publishing House, 1942), p. 170–172Google Scholar.

16 Among those who responded to Gandhi's views on Jews in Germany, the Nazis and migration to Palestine were Hannah Arendt, Joan Bondurant, Martin Buber and Judah Magnes. Gandhi's views on these matters have been very thoughtfully considered by Gangeya Mukherji in “Gandhi: Calling to Non-violence Joined by a strong Pragmatism” (unpublished). Also see Dalton, Dennis, Nonviolence in Action: Gandhi's Power (New Delhi: Oxford Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

17 “Let us suppose that Arjuna flees the battlefield. Though his enemies are wicked people, are sinners, they are his relations and he cannot bring himself to kill them. If he leaves the field, what would happen to those vast numbers on his side? If Arjuna went away, leaving them behind, would the Kauravas have mercy on them? If he left the battle, the Pandava army would be simply annihilated. What, then, would be the plight of their wives and children? . . . If Arjuna had left the battlefield, the very calamities which he feared would have befallen them. Their families would have been ruined, and the traditional dharma of these families and the race would have been destroyed. Arjuna, therefore, had no choice but to fight.” Gandhi, M. K., The Bhagvadgita (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1980), 20Google Scholar. I thank Faisal Devji for drawing my attention to this passage.

18 M. K. Gandhi, Harijan, 11 Jan. 1936.

19 M. K. Gandhi, Harijan, Feb. 1937.

20 Bilgrami, Akeel, “Gandhi: The Philosopher,” Economic Political Weekly 38/39 (2003), 4163Google Scholar.

21 Gandhi, M. K., Soul Force: Gandhi's Writings on Peace, ed. Geetha, V. (Chennai: Tara Books, 2004), 99Google Scholar.