150 years after his birth, relevant or not, Gandhi remained the most interesting and inevitable figure in the global arena. It is an undeniable truth that he is one of the greatest human beings of this century or even for the centuries to come. Gandhi is a man of multitudes. For his most adherent followers, he is no less than a Prophet. To his dissenters, his methods seem to be forms of Anarchism. He can’t be owned by anyone completely and at the same time denied by any. He is venerated completely by many and also vilified by many more. There are people who shared a frank friendship with Gandhi and also who advanced forthright enmity to him. A very comprehensive understanding of what Gandhi means to people from different walks of life can be understood from the remarks made by a friend from his London days in 1934 and expanded by a contemporary biographer of Gandhi in 2018:
Gandhi ‘is a problem, To Rulers and Governors he is a thorn in their side. To logicians he is a fool. To economists he is a hopeless ignoramus. To materialists he is a dreamer. To communists he is a drag on the wheel. To constitutionalists he represents rank revolution.’ To this list we might add: ‘To Muslim leaders he was a communal Hindu. To Hindu extremists he was a notorious appeaser of Muslims. To the “untouchables” he appeared a defender of high-caste orthodoxy. To the Brahmin he was a reformer in too much of a hurry.
Gandhi almost touched all aspects of human life, East and West, Charka and Machinery, Hinduism and Christianity, Environment and Economics, Science and Humanity, Religion and Insanity, Celibacy and Passions, English and Mother tongue, etc. This diversity in his thoughts forms a very complex legacy of Kathiawar Bania, a failed lawyer, ‘Half-Naked Fakir’ (as described by Winston Churchill) who finally rose to become Mahatma.
Through his writings, speeches, and conversations, he reached to millions across the world. His collected works published by the Publications Division of India consists of 100 bulky volumes. Gandhi took knowledge from every corner of the world (his major influences include Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, English art critic and political economist John Ruskin, American essayist and poet Henry David Thoreau, Indian philosopher Raychandbhai and Freedom Fighter Gopala Krishna Gokhale) and gave in return knowledge and wisdom to the world. Gandhi’s contributions to the world are amassing. In this essay, I listed out what I believe are the three most significant contributions of Gandhi: Non-Violence, Warnings about the satanic nature of Western Civilisation, and openness to ideas.
More than anything, Gandhi showed to the world that there is a powerful and supreme alternative through which any greatest evil can be fought and won over: Non-Violent struggle. This is the single most significant contribution of Gandhi to the world. This message is adopted by movements across the globe that sought to attain emancipation from brutality and discrimination. This message is closely connected with another important Gandhi’s belief that ‘Ends don’t justify Means’. This anti-consequentialist and the anti-utilitarian assertion are explained in simple terms with an example by Gandhi in his seminal work, Hind Swaraj:
If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it. If I want to buy your watch, I have to pay for it; if I want a gift, I have to plead for it, and according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation. Thus, we see three different results for the three different means employed. Therefore, it is very clear that the means employed decide the nature of ends produced (Gandhi, 2015).
Gandhi led the struggle against the British with nonviolence and with well-thought means. He strongly believed that Independence in itself doesn’t lead to wonders; it depends on how citizens of a nation use it effectively. If the ends are attained with incompetent means, the situation can be compared to the “sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells” (Marx & Engels, 1969) and this is not the kind of Independence he wanted. The fruits of Independence and prosperity we bore today are fruits of Gandhi’s well thought means. Gandhi’s thoughtful means is one of his greatest contributions to political theory. Writing a tribute to Mahatma, Social theorist Charles Drekmeier said:
Gandhian philosophy postulates a universe very different from that governed by the law of the fish. History is as much the record of harmonious adjustment as it is the story of conflict. The technique for adjusting and reconciling differences, a method on which Mahatma Gandhi’s fame must ultimately rest, assumes the moral potential of the wrongdoer, the possibility of reasonableness in the adversary. In his political theory Gandhi concentrated on the means of achieving political ends to a degree uncommon in the history of Western thought. If there is a single theme in his philosophy it is that the character of the means determines that of the results (Cousins, 1969).
Another significant contribution of Gandhi, which is more relevant to the times we live in, is his thoughts on destructive, evil, and satanic western civilization. According to him, “The tendency of the Indian civilization is to elevate the moral being, that of the Western civilization is to propagate immorality” (Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, 2015).
We clearly see the effects romanticised western ideas had on people across this planet. Western ideas sought to create a greater urge for wealth, status, power and to attain a “commercial society of self-interested rational individuals that was originally advocated in the eighteenth century by such Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Voltaire and Kant…in which human beings are programmed to maximise their self-interest” (Mishra, 2017). Whether the universal romanticised ideals as stated above are attained? It’s debatable. But largely and clearly, those romanticised ideas failed humanity.
It can be clearly seen, universally, that the manifestation of globalisation and individualism is far from the ideals it has set to attain. In contrast, what they have actually resulted in, as Indian Essayist Pankaj Mishra calls it, is an ‘Age of Anger’:
The crisis of recent years has uncovered an extensive failure to realise the ideals of endless economic expansion and private wealth creation. Most newly created ‘individuals’ toil within poorly imagined social and political communities and/or states with weakening sovereignty. They not only suffer from the fact that, as Tocqueville wrote in another context, ‘traditional ties, supports and restrictions have been left behind along with their assurances about a person’s self-worth and identity’. Their isolation has also been intensified by… junking of social democracy by globalised technocratic elites…. Individuals with very different pasts find themselves herded by capitalism and technology into a common present, where grossly unequal distribution of wealth and power have created humiliating new hierarchies (Mishra, 2017).
In this Age of Anger, universally, Humankind “has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order” (Benjamin, 2020). The situations that are stated above, which are globally observed are replicated in India. Gandhi was prophetic in predicting and foreseeing these effects of Western civilization. In 1928, Gandhi warned:
God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 millions took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts. Unless the capitalists of India help to avert that tragedy by becoming trustees of the welfare of the masses and by devoting their talents not to amassing wealth for themselves but to the service of the masses in an altruistic spirit, they will end either by destroying the masses or being destroyed by them (Gandhi, 1928).
Gandhi envisaged a world where there is “an extension from self-interest to group-interest and from acting on the immediate urge of present needs to planning for future requirements” (Kumarappa J., 1945) like honeybees that work for the benefit of many. He wanted to “resist the superficiality of mass produced, pop culture and the way it threatens to displace local indigenous cultural production. We must abandon imitative lifestyles that seek to replicate hedonism, waste and decadence of the West” (Patti, 1981).
Not much and not many paid enough attention to Gandhi’s warnings and his vision, and here we are now trapped in a world of perpetual fear, destruction, pollution, and inequalities. In the name of development and in the nation’s urge to become superpowers and dominate the world, the poor are exploited more, tribal people are forcefully displaced from their homes, traditional livelihoods and employment are made unprofitable, the environment is destroyed and inequality was made into a modern norm. Maybe the world would have been a much better place to live in than it is today if we have paid attention to Gandhi’s warnings.
The third and significant contribution of Gandhi is having a ‘great openness to ideas.’ In a letter to Rabindranath Tagore, Gandhi wrote:
I hope I am as great a believer in free air as the great Poet. I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any (Bhattacharya, 1997).
Gandhi was a great proponent of diverse viewpoints. He debated on many issues. He openly changed his views if they are proven wrong by others or if he finds them to be inconsistent. And he did all this openly. He always encouraged criticisms on his thoughts and methods. He published letters which are written criticising him in his journals and replied to them. This I believe is one of the most unique characteristics of Mahatma.
The notion of being ‘open to ideas’ is now under a serious threat. Indian government especially is turning intolerant towards diverse views. Dissent is crushed and dissenters are marked as anti-national, urban Naxal, ignorant, chamchas of opposition parties (sycophants), and agents of the CIA, and many are put behind the bars. If Gandhi would have been alive, maybe he will also meet the same fate. Having said that, I would like to reiterate the point I have mentioned above: we should look back to Gandhi and preserve and protect the culture of tolerance to diverse views.
These I think are the three most significant contributions of Gandhi. They stand relevant to our times of crisis. The solution to many current days problems lies in Gandhian methods. If not a solution, for sure, Gandhi offers us a framework to work with complex problems.
I would like to conclude with what J C Kumarappa (Gandhi’s student and possibly greatest Gandhian economist) said in 1948 while burying “an urn containing the Mahatma’s ashes in a pit in Sevagram Ashram: ‘Instead of burying Gandhi deep in our hearts, we are burying him deep into the earth’” (Nanda, 2002, p. 190). Today we shall rethink: Should we leave Gandhi just buried in the earth or bury him deep in our hearts?
REFERENCES
Benjamin, W. (2020, 01 17). Walter Benjamin Quotes Quotable Quote. Retrieved from goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8265064-mankind-which-in-homer-s-time-was-an-object-of-contemplation
Bhattacharya, S. (Ed.). (1997). The Mahatma and The Poet. New Delhi: National Book Trust.
Gandhi, M. (1928). DISCUSSION WITH A CAPITALIST. Young India.
Gandhi, M. (2015). Hind Swaraj. Rajpal Publishing.
Guha, R. (2012). Patriots and Partisans. Gurgaon: Penguin Random House.
Guha, R. (2018). Gandhi: The years that changed the world 1914-1948. Gurgaon: Penguin Random House
Kumarappa, J. (1945). Economy of Permanence. Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1969). Manifesto of the Communist Party. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Mishra, P. (2017). Age of Anger: A History of the Present. New Delhi: Juggernaut.
Nanda, B. (2002). Three Disciples. In In Search of Gandhi: Essays and Reflections (p. 183). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Patti, D. R. (1981). Gandhi and the Village. In S. K. Lal (Ed.), Gandhiji and Village (p. 52). Delhi.
Rosen, G. (Jan 1982). Gandhian Economics: A Schumpeterian Perspective. Journal of Economic Issues, 435.
Edited Version of this article was published in India Folk: https://indianfolk.com/relevance-gandhis-ideals-current-times/
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