Gandhism
Gandhism is a body of ideas that describes the inspiration, vision, and the life work of Mohandas K. Gandhi. It is particularly associated with his contributions to the idea of nonviolent resistance, sometimes also called civil resistance.
The term "Gandhism" also encompasses what Gandhi's ideas, words, and actions mean to people around the world and how they used them for guidance in building their own future. Gandhism also permeates into the realm of the individual human being, non-political and non-social. A Gandhian can mean either an individual who follows, or a specific philosophy which is attributed to, Gandhism.[1]
However, Gandhi did not approve of the term "Gandhism". As he explained:
In the absence of a "Gandhism" approved by Gandhi himself, there is a school of thought that one has to derive what Gandhism stands for, from his life and works. One such deduction is a philosophy based on "truth" and "non-violence" in the following sense. First, one should acknowledge and accept the truth that people are different at all levels ("truth"). Second, one should never resort to violence to settle inherent differences between human beings at any level: from between two people to two nations to two races or two religions ("non-violence").
Antecedents[edit]
Although Gandhi's thought is unique in its own right, it is not without ideological parents. Gandhi has in his own writings specified the inspiration for his saying certain things. It can be said that it is his exposure to the West, during his time in London, that compelled him to look at his position on various religious, social, and political affairs.
Soon after his arrival in London, he came under the influence of Henry Stephens Salt, who was not yet the famous campaigner and social reformer that he would later become. Salt's first work, A plea for vegetarianism turned Gandhi towards the question of vegetarianism and food habits. It was also around this time that Gandhi joined vegetarian societies in London. Salt eventually became Gandhi's friend too. Talking of the significance of Salt's work, historian Ramachandra Guha said in his work Gandhi before India: "For our visiting Indian, however, the Vegetarian Society was a shelter that saved him. The young Gandhi had little interest in the two great popular passions of late nineteenth-century London, the theatre and sport. Imperial and socialist politics left him cold. However, in the weekly meetings of the vegetarians of London he found a cause, and his first English friends."[3] Salt's work allowed Gandhi for the first time to take part in collective action. Salt later went on to write a biography of Henry David Thoreau, who had a profound impact on Gandhi. Although Thoreau's 1854 book Walden could as well have moved Gandhi, it was his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience that was of greater importance. Gandhi was already in the midst of a form of civil disobedience in South Africa when he read Thoreau. Not only did he adopt the name for the kind of struggle that he would become a champion of, but also adopted the means of breaking laws in order to call for their reform. In 1907, Thoreau's name first appeared in the journal that Gandhi was then editing, Indian Opinion, where Gandhi called Thoreau's logic 'incisive' and 'unanswerable'.[4]
Gandhi's residence in South Africa itself sought inspiration from another Western literary figure - Leo Tolstoy.[5] Leo Tolstoy's critique of institutional Christianity and faith in the love of the spirit greatly moved him. He would after becoming a popular political activist write the foreword to Tolstoy's essay, A letter to a Hindu. Gandhi exchanged letters with Tolstoy and named his ashram Tolstoy Farm. In Gandhian thought, Tolstoy's 1894 book The Kingdom of God Is Within You sits alongside A plea and Civil Disobedience.
Tolstoy Farm was Gandhi's experiment of his utopian political economy - later to be called 'Gram Swaraj'. One key source of this concept was John Ruskin's 1862 book Unto This Last in which Ruskin critiques the 'economic man' (this was written after Ruskin's retreat from Art criticism for which he was well-known). Gandhi tried in all his Ashrams a system of self-sufficiency and decentralised economies. Gandhi was gifted this book by his close associate Henry Polak in South Africa. The philosophy of Ruskin urged Gandhi to translate this work into Gujarati.
In Indian Opinion there is mention of Giuseppe Mazzini, Edward Carpenter, Sir Henry Maine, and Helena Blavatsky. Gandhi's first exploration of pluralism can be said to have begun with his association with the Jain guru near home, Raychandbhai Mehta.
To Gandhi, fasting was an important method of exerting mental control over base desires. In his autobiography, Gandhi analyses the need to fast to eradicate his desire for delicious, spicy food. He believed that abstention would diminish his sensual faculties, bringing the body increasingly under the mind's absolute control. Gandhi was opposed to the partaking of meat, alcohol, stimulants, salt and most spices, and also eliminated different types of cooking from the food he ate.
Fasting would also put the body through unusual hardship, which Gandhi believed would cleanse the spirit by stimulating the courage to withstand all impulses and pain. Gandhi undertook a "Fast Unto Death" on three notable occasions:
In all three cases, Gandhi was able to abandon his fast before death. There was some controversy over the 1932 fast, which brought him into conflict with the other great leader B.R. Ambedkar. In the end, Gandhi and Ambedkar both made some concessions to negotiate the Poona Pact, which abandoned the call for separate electorates in turn for voluntary representation and a commitment to abolish untouchability.
Gandhi also used the fasts as a penance, blaming himself for inciting Chauri Chaura and the divisive communal politics of both 1932 and 1947, especially the Partition of India. Gandhi sought to purify his soul and expiate his sins, in what he saw as his role in allowing terrible tragedies to happen. It took a heavy toll on his physical health and often brought him close to death.
Gandhi described his religious beliefs as being rooted in Hinduism as well and the Bhagavad Gita:
He professed the philosophy of Hindu Universalism (also see Universalism), which maintains that all religions contain truth and therefore worthy of toleration and respect. It was articulated by Gandhi:
Gandhi believed that at the core of every religion was truth (satya), non-violence (ahimsa) and the Golden Rule.
Despite his belief in Hinduism, Gandhi was also critical of many of the social practices of Hindus and sought to reform the religion.
He then went on to say:
Gandhi was critical of the hypocrisy in organised religion, rather than the principles on which they were based.
Later in his life when he was asked whether he was a Hindu, he replied:
Gandhi's religious views are reflected in the hymns his group often sang:
"Without truth, nothing"[edit]
Mohandas Gandhi's early life was a series of personal struggles to decipher the truth about life's important issues and discover the true way of living. He admitted in his autobiography to hitting his wife when he was young,[41] and indulging in carnal pleasures out of lust, jealousy and possessiveness, not genuine love. He had eaten meat, smoked a cigarette, and almost visited a hustler. It was only after much personal turmoil and repeated failures that Gandhi developed his philosophy.
Gandhi disliked having a cult following, and was averse to being addressed as Mahatma, claiming that he was not a perfect human being.
In 1942, while he had already condemned Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and the Japanese militarists, Gandhi took on an offensive in civil resistance, called the Quit India Movement.
Gandhians[edit]
There have been Muslim Gandhians, such as Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as the "Frontier Gandhi";[42][43][44] under the influence of Gandhi, he organised the Pathans of the Northwest Frontier as early as 1919 to support the independence movement.[45] Christian Gandhians include the Briton Horace Alexander[46] and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.[47] Jewish Gandhians include Gandhi's close associate Hermann Kallenbach. Atheist Gandhians include Jawaharlal Nehru. Bangladeshi writer, columnist Syed Abul Maksud is a notable Gandhian in Bangladesh.
Promotion of Gandhian ideas[edit]
Many committees were formed to promote Gandhian ideas, one such committee was "Committee for the promotion of Gandhiji's teaching and his way of life" in 1957. In its meeting committee recommended to the Ministry of Education to prepare three books incorporating Gandhiji's contribution in important fields one each for primary, secondary and University stage. Ministry of Education was recommended by the committee to celebrate Gandhi week at school level etc. Committee worked hard for collection of work on Mahatma Gandhi and many journals have also been published to promote Gandhian ideas. One of the most well-known is Gandhi Marg,
an English-language journal published since 1957 by the Gandhi Peace Foundation.[48]
Harold Dwight Lasswell, a political scientist and communications theorist, defined propaganda as the management of eclectic attitudes by manipulation of significant symbols. Based on this definition of Propaganda, Gandhi made use of significant symbols to drive his ideal of an independent Indian nation.[49]
His ideas, symbolized in propaganda, stated that India was a nation capable of economic self-sufficiency without the British, a unity transcending religion would make for a stronger nation, and that the most effective method of protest was through passive resistance, including non-violence and the principle of satyagraha. In the "Quit India" speeches, Gandhi says "the proposal for the withdrawal of British power is to enable India to play its due part at the present critical juncture. It is not a happy position for a big country like India to be merely helping with money and material obtained willy-nilly from her while the United Nations are conducting the war. We cannot evoke the true spirit of sacrifice and velour, so long as we are not free." On his ideas towards a unified India he said: "Thousands of Mussalmans have told me, that if Hindu-Muslim question was to be solved satisfactorily, it must be done in my lifetime. I should feel flattered at this; but how can I agree to proposal which does not appeal to my reason? Hindu-Muslim unity is not a new thing. Millions of Hindus and Mussalmans have sought after it. I consciously strove for its achievement from my boyhood. While at school, I made it a point to cultivate the friendship of Muslims and Parsi co-students. I believed even at that tender age that the Hindus in India, if they wished to live in peace and amity with the other communities, should assiduously cultivate the virtue of neighbourliness. It did not matter, I felt, if I made no special effort to cultivate the friendship with Hindus, but I must make friends with at least a few Mussalmans. In India too I continued my efforts and left no stone unturned to achieve that unity. It was my life-long aspiration for it that made me offer my fullest co-operation to the Mussalmans in the Khilafat movement. Muslims throughout the country accepted me as their true friend."[50] Gandhi's belief in the effectiveness of passive, non-violent resistance has been quoted as being the "belief that non-violence alone will lead men to do right under all circumstances."
These ideas were symbolized by Gandhi through the use of significant symbols, an important proponent in the acceptance of the ideals he expounded in his speeches and movements. On 3 November 1930, Gandhi gave a speech before the Dandi March which possibly could have been one of Gandhi's last speeches, in which the significant symbol of the march itself demonstrated the exclusively nonviolent struggle to empower a self-sufficient India. Beginning in Ahmedabad and concluding in Dandi, Gujarat, the march saw Gandhi and his supporters directly disobey the Rowlatt Act which imposed taxes on salt production and enforced the colonial monopoly on the salt market.[51]
The Khadi movement, which formed part of the larger swadeshi movement, employed the symbol of burning British-made cloth imports in order to manipulate attitudes towards boycotting British goods and rejecting Western culture and urging the return to ancient, precolonial Indian culture. Gandhi obtained a wheel and engaged his disciples in spinning their own cloth called Khadi; this commitment to hand spinning was an essential element to Gandhi's philosophy and politics.[52]
On 1 December 1948, Gandhi dictated his speech on the eve of the last fast. Using the fast as a form of significant symbolism, he justifies it as "a fast which a votary of non-violence sometimes feels impelled to undertake by way of protest against some wrong done by society, and this he does when as a votary of Ahimsa has no other remedy left. Such an occasion has come my way." This fast was conducted in line with his idea of a nation's communities and religions brought together. Gandhi's fast was only to end when he was satisfied with the reunion of hearts of all the communities brought about without any outside pressure, but from an awakened sense of duty.[53]