The 1960s brought another fresh theoretical perspective on Gandhi with the original psychological insights of Lloyd and Susanne Rudoph and of Erik Erikson (1969), as well as a more conventional but solid theoretical analysis by J. Bandyopadhyaya (1969). The 1970s spawned two more substantial yet sharply contrasting theoretical approaches: R. N. Iyer’s rigorous, unsurpassed theoretical analysis in The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (1973) and Gene Sharp, an early and illustrious theorist of nonviolent power (1973) who published Gandhi as a Political Strategist (1979). Iyer reinforced his earlier book with what Judith Brown called “an immensely valuable three volume selection of Gandhi’s Works” (1986—87). Coterminous with these came the historians, with the scrupulous research in 1970 of Stephen Hay (exploring the profound Jain influence on Gandhi), Judith Brown on Gandhi’s power (1972, 1977), and James Hunt on Gandhi’s experiences in London (1978). Once again came the juncture of history and theory with Arne Naess’s Gandhi and Group Conflict (1974). This was followed by a return to psychological analysis by Ashis Nandy in At the Edge of Psychology (1980) and The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (1983). Nandy’s imaginative approach was nicely complemented by Partha Chatterjee, whose Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (1986) offered its powerful interpretation of Hind Swaraj as “the most crucial theoretical foundation” of Gandhi’s method for attaining swaraj (87). Later came two important systematic philosophical works on Gandhi by Bhikhu Parekh (1989, 2001), the first in the same year as Brown’s biography.38 Thomas Weber produced a unique work of historical research on the salt march as well as a theory of Gandhian conflict resolution.39 He has become a noteworthy unifier of historical and theoretical analysis of Gandhi with recent works like Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor (2010) and Gandhi, Gandhism and the Gandhians (2011).
In the 1990s came first, and at long last, the definitive biography of Subhas and Sarat Bose (1990) by Leonard Gordon, who has devoted over half a century of intense scholarship to the intellectual history of India and published incisive comparisons between Bengali nationalists and Gandhi in Brothers Against the Raj. Gordon’s grasp of Subhas Bose’s life set a gold standard for understanding a biographical subject’s complex motives and ideas as well as the precise political context of nationalist India, especially during Bose’s feud with Gandhi throughout the 1930s. In 1993 I offered additional theoretical analysis about ideas of freedom and power in the first edition of this book, and Anthony Parel provided a trenchant examination of Hind Swaraj. Gandhi scholars feed on continuously updated references to writings about him, especially bibliographical volumes, of which there are many. The best is by Ananda Pandiri, a remarkably dedicated researcher who published in 1995 and 2011 a two-volume annotated bibliography that is as rich in sources cited as it is thoroughly reliable in its commentary.
The pattern of interdisciplinary studies of Gandhi noted here continued in the new century with a second enlarged edition of this book (2000) and a substantial biography by Rajmohan Gandhi, together with the intricate historical analysis of S. R. Mehrotra and an overview of Gandhi’s meaning and relevance by David Hardiman entitled Gandhi in His Time and Outs (2003). Hardiman sought to “understand the reasons why Gandhi’s ideas continue to resonate in the world today” and presented a perfect definition, in his preface and introduction, of Gandhi’s theory and practice of inclusiveness. His analysis of Hind Swaraj disagrees at one point with my interpretation of the text (pages 20—21). He comments that I view Hind Swaraj as an “immature” representation of Gandhi’s thought. He is correct; I do hold that this early treatise contains, to reiterate Parel’s metaphor, “the seed from which the tree of Gandhian thought has grown to its full stature.” An understanding of Hind Swaraj is unquestionably indispensable for any study of Gandhi, and Hardiman is right that it presents a dramatic, compelling critique of Western civilization. Yet even after the renewed attention that scholars like Parel and Mehrotra have recently given it, let us not overstate its place in the whole corpus of Gandhi’s thought and practice. This tract is still no more than the seed that needed nearly forty more years of Gandhi’s experience as a political leader and inspirational figure in India to fully ripen.
The main thrust of my book, regarding its assessment of Gandhi’s theory and practice, is that two principal ideas are introduced in Hind Swaraj that gradually came to fruition in Gandhi’s mature system. These are the concepts of freedom (swaraj) and power (satyagraha), ingeniously enforced by his emphasis on the relationship of means and ends. Gandhi’s experimentation with the theory and practice of nonviolence ultimately produced original contributions to political thought. A long lifetime of intense engagement was utterly essential to this result. His evolving views on the institution of caste (pages 49—58), for example, show how greatly his mind changed during the decades after writing Hind Swaraj. This is only one instance. In terms of his essential ideas and their antinomies such as purna swaraj versus mere political independence, or of satyagraha versus duragraha, an exciting story unfolds of the intellectual transformation of a revolutionary thinker who could firmly declare that “it is the whole of Hinduism that has to be purified and purged” (see page 49). This is Gandhi writing about politics and religion in 1933. He had called satyagraha “a banyan tree with innumerable branches,”40 and after 1917 the seed sown in South Africa did indeed blossom.
An excellent example of history well informed by theory is Mithi Mukherjee’s “Transcending Identity: Gandhi, Nonviolence, and the Pursuit of a ‘Different’ Freedom in Modern India.”41 Mukherjee examines not only the distinctiveness of the Gandhian concept of freedom but also differences between Western ideas about freedom and those of several prominent modern Indian theorists. As this overview of the literature indicates, there is now a staunch company of Gandhi theorists from India, Britain, Australia, and the United States. Many of these join in the method of comparative theory with Bondurant and Iyer, albeit developing with their own distinctive variations by comparing Gandhi’s thought with a range of Western political philosophers. Thomas Pantham, for example, wrote a resounding critique of liberal democracy and secularism in India that drew from Habermas and other Western philosophers, while Fred Dallmayr, in one of his articles on Gandhi, sought a definition of swaraj in part through Kant and Arendt. This philosophical analysis of Gandhi often profits from a fruitful exchange of ideas between historians and political and social theorists because the context of his activism is so crucial.
In 2006 a superb collection entitled Debating Gandhi, edited by A. Raghuramaraju, presented in one volume the extraordinary range of Gandhi analysis over the last four decades. It begins with A. L. Basham, historian of ancient India, who wrote in 1971 about Gandhi’s debt to classical Hindu texts that he read and admired. There follows an array of wisdom on Gandhi in splendid articles by Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, and a pro and con exchange by Madhu Kishwar and Sujata Patel on the question of Gandhi’s empowerment of women. Kishwar’s contribution to the subject of Gandhi and feminism came in 1985 (see pages 118—119). Its superiority to the relatively superficial commentary by most American feminists came from her intimate knowledge of the historical context of Gandhi’s India. It established her work as the standard against which all other writing on the subject should be measured. Hers is only one of the thirteen vital voices heard in this valuable selection.
This edition is followed by a prestigious collection, The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi (2011), appropriately edited by Brown and Parel—one the leading British historian of Gandhi, the other an outstanding political theorist. Their edition confirms the pattern noted earlier by offering a blend of philosophers and historians, including first-rate Gandhi theorists like Ronald Terchek—who excelled, like Raghavan Iyer and Bhikhu Parekh, in comparing Gandhi’s thought with major Western political philosophers, focusing on the idea of autonomy—and Akeel Bilgrami, also included in Raghuramaraju’s collection, who in 2002 published a challenging essay contrasting Gandhi and John
Stuart Mill on the idea of truth. The assembly of historians is equally formidable: in addition to Thomas Weber and David Hardiman, the collection includes Yasmin Khan, who wrote a riveting study of partition, and Tanika Sarkar, author of the acclaimed Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation (2001).
A classic complement to the Cambridge companion is chapter 6 in the third edition of Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. II, which is on Gandhi (Columbia University Press, 2012). This is edited chiefly by Rachel McDermott, whose profound understanding of Hinduism is matched by her stellar teaching, with a team of experienced South Asia specialists: Leonard Gordon, Ainslie Embree, Frances Pritchett (Columbia’s treasured Hindi and Urdu authority), and me. Suffice it to say that, as a member of this group for the last several years, it has been a genuine pleasure to learn from the expertise of these renowned scholars; just to witness Embree’s intellectual range and vast personal reservoir of recollections from his long career as America’s preeminent historian of India is an education on South Asia in itself.
All of these distinguished books on Gandhi, and many more too numerous to mention, attest to the phenomenal significance of this man, his thought and role as a leader. When the vast collection of works about him is joined to those relating to leaders that he inspired, especially Martin Luther King Jr., one realizes that the depth and range of material on nonviolent theory and practice rivals that of any other subject in the political history of the last century. Since the first edition of my book, there has been an explosion of literature by and about King. It is odd, though, that relatively little has been published comparing the ideas and leadership of Gandhi and King. Now a monumental project is underway with the publication of The Papers of Martin Luther Ring Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson.42 This source alone makes a higher-quality Gandhi-King comparison more feasible than before.
In addition, the subject of the so-called Americanization of Gandhi, or the preparation in the United States for a nonviolent movement before the emergence of King, must include journalists who descended on Gandhi, especially those from the United States, beginning with his civil disobedience campaign in 1930. They came mainly because they saw a good story. Gandhi himself still ranks among history’s most prolific and widely read print journalists. So he not only welcomed his kind but also gave them what they wanted.43 Until recently, the best biography by a journalist had been Louis Fischer’s in 1950. Now another distinguished American journalist, Joseph Lelyveld, a Pulitzer prize—winning New York Times correspondent who started covering India in the late 1960s, has published Great Soul (2011). This is a predictably fluent and fair story of the Mahatma’s life, warts and all—hardly a hagiography—but like Fischer’s book, it skillfully connects personal with political experience.
Serious scholarship on the Americanization of Gandhi began with Sudharshan Kapur’s Raising Up A Prophet: The African American Encounter with Gandhi (1992). A decade later Leonard Gordon published “Mahatma Gandhi’s Dialogues with Americans” in Economic and Political Weekly (January 2002). Although Gordon is known mainly for his intellectual history of modern Bengali thought (1974), once he turned his mind to Gandhian studies, he again provided valuable insights, especially into the significance of Gandhi’s relationships with American missionaries and journalists. Joseph K. Kosek’s Acts of Conscience (2009) has already been examined here. An excellent complement to Kosek is Sean Scalmer’s Gandhi in the West: The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest (2010). It details with scrupulous documentation the rise of nonviolent activists from the aftermath of World War I to the early 1960s, in both the civil rights movement and the anti-nuclear campaign. It is a testimony to the reservoir of material on this period and subject that the works of Gordon, Scalmer, and Kosek are complementary, each valuable for understanding the theory and practice of nonviolent power in America before King. The philosopher Kwame Appiah’s The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (2010) evokes the idealist spirit of satyagraha without mentioning Gandhi, King, or nonviolence, but his argument still reinforces an optimistic theory of change that offers a persuasive counterbalance to the realism prominent in the discipline of international relations.
Another large category to be distinguished in Gandhi studies is what Thomas Weber calls the relationship between his “thought/praxis and conflict resolution.”44 The theoretical roots of the discipline of peace and conflict studies are found in the writings of Johan Galtung, a Norwegian sociologist who published with Arne Naess an analysis of Gandhi’s “political ethics” in 1995. As noted above, Naess proceeded with Gandhi and Group Conflict (1974), but Galtung has been the more influential theorist by focusing on the means-end relationship and continues to dominate the field among Europeans.
By far the most prominent American theorist of conflict resolution is Gene Sharp, whose early work on Gandhi (1960), followed in 1973 by an encyclopedic examination of nonviolent tactics (noted earlier), has become legendary for his direct influence on revolts around the world. From Dictatorship to Democracy, which has been translated into thirty languages and is now in its fourth edition, has inspired dissent in Myanmar, Bosnia, Tunisia, and Egypt.45
Contemporary theorists-cum-activists in nonviolent conflict resolution include George Lakey, whose ideas of “waging nonviolence” have, like those of Phil and Daniel Berrigan in the 1960s, been consistently translated into praxis. Other inspired and committed efforts in this field are by Glenn Paige, an admirably unorthodox political scientist who, with Sharp, set forth a program of nonviolent conflict resolution called Nonkilling Global Political Science46 Paige, whose contributions to political theory predate even Gene Sharp’s, established the Center for Global Nonkilling in 2009.
Michael Nagler, founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote The Search for a Nonviolent Future (2004). This work is grounded in a long career of Gandhian activism and intimate knowledge of Gandhi’s relevance for movement politics in America. Nagler’s online Webinar on October 21, 2010, which explored Gandhi’s significance for the environmental movement, is also pertinent (www.non-violent-conflict.org). Another prominent scholar of peace studies who has written about Gandhi’s legacy is David Cortright at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Peace Studies. His Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for a New Age (2009) offers constructive appraisals of the roles taken by leading American Gandhi activists such as Dorothy Day and Barbara Deming. In three cogent chapters of the book Cortright presents balanced judgments of the role of women in nonviolent movements, an often controversial topic (pages 203—204, 223—224). This topic has been addressed, too, by Weber in Going Native: Gandhis Relationship with Western Women (2011), which features his characteristic in-depth and original mode of research.
I conclude this essay on a brief personal note. When I first arrived in India in 1960, Gandhi had been gone only twelve years. Many of his associates were alive and eager to discuss their reasons for joining the nationalist movement and choosing him as their leader. First and foremost among them were Pyarelal and Sushila Nayar, his personal secretary and physician, respectively. For over four decades I lived in their homes and corresponded with them, commenting on their publications, regularly until their deaths. They not only inspired and read what I wrote about Gandhi, but through them, I was able to enter a network of Gandhiwallahs. What vivid memories I have of interviewing Vinoba Bhave, C. Rajagopalachari, and Maurice Frydman, as well as many of the Dandi marchers and former Congress leaders like Archarya Kripalani. This extraordinary group had dozens of unforgettable stories about the Mahatma, and it extended throughout the cities and villages of India and beyond, from Abdul Ghaffar Khan in Kabul to Mira Behn in Vienna, Horace Alexander in England, and Haridas Muzumdar in America. Everyone I interviewed had worked personally with Gandhi—some, like Frydman, Mirabehn, and the Dandi heroes having lived with him in his ashrams, joined him on the salt march, or like Nirmal Kumar Bose, observed his Calcutta and Delhi fasts, central dramas in his career.
It was my good
fortune to be able to meet them, yet it saddens me to think that all of these participants in India’s glorious freedom movement are now gone. Because of them, as much as any archival material or other literature that I have consulted, a strong affection for Gandhi runs through this volume. This sentiment was expressed eloquently by one of my informants, William Shirer, an American journalist who joined Gandhi in 1930 and wrote a memoir (see page 8). As he told me, Gandhi’s thought and significance chiefly surrounded two vital human experiences: the power of love and the passion for liberation. This is one reason why I have made satyagraha and swaraj the twin themes of my book.
Notes
1. Originally published in Foreign Affairs in 1993, it has been frequently reprinted, first with a collection of seven critical assessments followed by a response by Huntington (1996), and most recently in James Hoge, ed., The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate, 2nd ed. (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2010), 1—32. This single article provoked a fierce and enduring debate both in and outside the field of political science and international relations, so that by 2010 two volumes devoted to the debate, including Huntington’s reply, were published by Foreign Affairs. Hoge notes that the tide of commentary has not subsided, with Huntington’s article remaining the most requested reprint from Foreign Affairs. Even these two anthologies on the debate do not include such exceedingly sharp critiques as, for example, Edward W. Said’s “The Clash of Definitions” in Reflections on Exile (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), pages 569—589. Three years after his initial article, Huntington developed his thesis at length in a book with the same title but without the question mark: The Clash of Civilisations and Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). His argument engaged a wide range of political thinkers. Gandhian thought was missing from the debate until Martha Nussbaum’s The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). Although Nussbaum astutely employs Gandhi’s example, her focus, as the subtitle indicates, is on the threat of Hindu extremism in India after his death.
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