By Saji Varghese
The first part of the title of this article brings to mind a process of struggle the nation underwent for the attainment of ‘self rule.’ It is used in a different connotation and in due course the description would become clear. The pre-colonised India, more genealogically ancient India is romantically, in Gandhi’s anti-vanguardist vocabulary described as a site of ‘innumerable moral values’. However, the advent of materialism which Gandhi claims as the cause for its erosion points to the ill effect of colonialism. In the first decade of the last century Gandhi wrote his remarkable work, Hind Swaraj and countless editorials in ‘Young India’ aimed at fortifying the vision he had of India, which was distinct from the popular vision of the larger section of what modern India should be.
Gandhi envisioned a cultural/moral space that extends beyond the bounds of India and permeates to the entire globe. There are instances where he wanted the rest of the world to learn and practice what India has been spontaneously nurturing for centuries – the age old traditions. Gandhi believed that we can identify a community with a particular moral outlook. Thus, more than physical features, what characterises a nation is its identity linked to a set of values associated with its cultural traditions. Both Plato and Gandhi are concerned with establishing a moral identity that prevails under any given condition among a people, but in a certain sense, it is cosmopolitan. The defence of an ancient cultural tradition is cosmopolitan as it aims at extending to the entire humanity. A similar line of argument is perceived in justifying the spread of British/western civilisation as being cosmopolitan. However, the apparent paradox here can be removed by viewing what is grounded on morality. There are reasons to show that the argument favours the former as it is based on moral claims which can be extended well beyond the borders of this country and throughout the globe.
Gandhi’s thoughts are in a genealogical order, expression of his aversion towards the practice of colonialism and western civilisation in general. This is the historical background against which he endeavours to ‘reclaim’ the glorious tradition of ‘ascetic India’. The term ‘reclaim’ conveys a sense of loss, since only what is lost is reclaimed. The erosion of a culturally rich tradition is implied here. The ethical ideals that Gandhi wished Indians to revisit and make their own yet again, are the best, in the entire globe. Gandhi’s translation of Tolstoy’s ‘Letter to a Hindu’ contains a view on the loss of freedom of Indians to the British where the fault lay with the Indians. The British could not have attained the political and economic control of India without the willing participation and concurrence of Indians. We have ceded to a foreign way of life, an ethical outlook that privileges material accumulation as the highest good. This aspect has affected the condition of the mind of Indians. True freedom, then, fundamentally lies in regaining the ethical outlook based on duty and service to humanity.
Gandhi included the concept of Swadeshi as one of the eleven vows that he stipulated for his followers who lived in his ashrams. By highlighting this concept, Gandhi wanted to counteract some of the harmful consequences of globalization. The vow of Swadeshi means the spirit, which restricts persons to the use of services available in the immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote. In other words, it implies production for neighbours. However, he was quick to add: “A votary of Swadeshi will never harbour ill-will towards the foreigner; he will not be actuated by antagonism towards anybody on earth. Swadeshism is not a cult of hatred. It is a doctrine of selfless service that has its roots in the purest Ahimsa, that is, love.” His idea of Swadeshi if applied to the world at large with his theory of Antyodaya (the last man), which speaks of providing every individual with the basic necessities, can counteract the undesirable effects of globalization by ensuring that everyone benefits from the fruits of development.
Another aspect of Gandhi’s criticism towards industrialisation was directed towards the preservation of India’s rich natural resources. With the onslaught of globalization there is a tendency to exploit every possible resource in the country to increase the Gross Domestic Product. Rapid deforestation has occurred throughout the developing world and the most developing countries are facing serious environmental hazards today. Moreover, corporate power has undermined governmental efforts at curbing environmental loss, as seen from the way the United States of America withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol. However, conservation processes led by the United Nations and echoed at the national and even local levels, are gradually gathering speed in the second phase of globalization, wherein most of the evils of globalization are now being questioned and checked.
With the rapid progress in science and technology contributed largely by globalization, contemporary human beings claim that they have conquered nature. But sadly, the modern globalized world is in the throes of an ecological crisis – a tragedy inflicted by humans themselves when they deviated from nature and began to exploit it to the extent of disturbing its normal functioning. Nature manifests itself in various factors – sentient and insentient – that cooperate with one another to complete the cycle of life. Unfortunately, human intervention has broken this cycle and so we are in for a great environmental crisis. For Gandhi, the best possible way of restoring the balance in nature is by limiting human wants, which are unlimited in character. His call and example to return to nature has influenced a number of movements that aim at protecting the environment.
The development vision M.K. Gandhi envisaged for the emerging Indian nation in the first decades of the twentieth century, despite its several dilemmas and predicaments, must be seen as a radical historicization of the notion of development as modernization. Gandhi was pronouncedly against independent India following the economic development path of the West for two reasons: (i) the sheer non-sustainability of such a path to progress and, more importantly, (ii) the lack of conviction that such a way was indeed “progress.” According to him competitive materialism was not the cultural ideal of India. For Gandhi, history is to be lived in the spirit of history’s ideals, and not in merely recalling its past glory. “Instead of boasting of the glorious past, we [must] express the ancient moral glory in our own lives and let our lives bear witness to our past,” Gandhi had said.
Certainly, Gandhi did not sufficiently historicize Indian cultural ideals but saw them too homogenously, and we might also say today that he too had an essentialist notion of Indian culture. However, in the context of the development narrative, his interrogation of the universal ideals of modernity should be seen as one of the earliest challenges to cultural imperialism. Much of the Gandhian development dream did not hold sway in the Nehruvian independent India. But, one might say something of the Gandhian political ethos survived too, for example, in the Indian interpretation of secular pluralism, which advocates respect and political provisions for every citizen’s religion. In the precariously poised multi-religious modern India, born out of a bloody partition on religious grounds, it is unclear what other alternative would have served every Indian better, given the constraints of a functioning democratic polity. In any case, it would not be right to say that what survived of the Gandhian heritage in India’s democratic political ethos was a less historicized account than the economic model India adopted, for the sense of history and context with which Gandhi worked on and literally constructed India’s nationhood in the first half of the twentieth century .
Gandhi presents to the world through his principles of truth and nonviolence in order to fight for the civil rights of the people. In the face of oppressor nations, Gandhi exhorted the people to just withdraw cooperation with the conqueror, and accept the consequences. Though some will be butchered, they remain martyrs in the movement. He was able to organize truth and non-violence into a powerful movement, organised to withstand evils of hatred and violence. Gandhi named the movement Satyagraha. It was a powerful movement, a social weapon to inspire the masses with self-confidence in resisting all tyranny. While Gandhi aimed at fortifying and strengthening the age old cultural traditions of India as they were founded on moral ideals, the Nehruvian and subsequent ideologies with modernist perspective saw an opening of the ‘doors of India’ to the materialistic west and its civilisation.
(The writer teaches at Lady Keane College, Shillong)