Anurag Gangal
For Albert Einstein, generations to come will not believe that such a man like Gandhi ever walked on this spaceship earth! Yet, in 1897 January in Transvaal in South Africa, a rhyme was sung when Gandhi got down from his ship after ending his 24 days quarantine. This rhyme was: “Hang old Gandhi! Hang old Gandhi on the sour apple tree.” Mahatma Gandhi is a leader who is abused and admired both. Apparent contradictions in his life and philosophy are often pointed out especially about his family life and his personal preferences in political and public life. Gandhi himself says regarding such criticism that for him contradictions show the onward development of an individual towards better understanding.
Gandhi never wanted to be called a Mahatma. He is indeed not a Mahatma at all. Yes he seldom wore more than a ‘dhoti’ in summers and added a blanket in winters, especially after his return from South Africa in 1915. He received his diksha in Kriya Yoga by Gurudev Paramhansa Yogananda on 27 August 1935 at Wardha. He practiced Kriya Yoga daily. Gandhi has had several pointers towards sainthood yet he was not one in many senses. His person had so many normal human weaknesses like anger, violent reactions within the family, personal biases, bossism within the Indian National Congress and his own egotism of highest order. Humility and humbleness also remained integral part of his personality.
He is often called an ‘idealist’ whose thought cannot be put into practice in the modern world. Despite such criticism, his philosophy cannot be termed as ‘idealistic’. He is more a man of action. He has never propounded any systematic ‘theory’ or ‘ideology’. He called himself a “practical idealist” at best. His thought has also never been officially adopted by any political party or creed as the basis of their political framework. His ideas thus do not qualify to be called “Gandhism” or an “ideology”. His ideas do not – in ultimate analysis – serve any particular political party, community, group or interest etc. His thought and action, at large, serve the entire humanity.
His thought, strategies and action in terms of having launched several successful nonviolent movements against the colonial British rulers prove his practical and realistic credentials. Even after his murder in he is still so deeply and widely alive amongst us all over the world including the United Nations. His date of birth is now celebrated as the International Day of Nonviolence. The contemporary global civil society considers nonviolence as the very basis of civility and distinct sign of an educated being. The world and routine human activities are not sustained through armaments race and numerous wars but through nonviolence, mutual understanding and faith.
Mahatma Gandhi is known as a great critic of modern Western civilisation and industrialisation including technologicalisation. He has said in his Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule in 1908 that modern [Western] civilisation is such that it will be self-destroyed…..It is a nine days wonder. Thats what is happening the world over currently in the form of COVID-19. Other examples of such destruction are also at hand in ecological and nuclear threats; recurring ever new viruses, dangerous bacteria and so many other modern ailments; social disorders/incohesiveness; armaments’ race and terrorism; and unbridled pursuits of political power and financial scams, corruption and institutionalised narcotic and criminal activities; and innumerable other mental illnesses; and agricultural and soil related dispensations including food scarcities; and demographic challenges etc.
Despite Gandhi’s scientific predictions about these threatening realities of modern life and opposition to industrialisation, a practical reasoning is found in Gandhi’s outlook and thought. He wants only such machinery and technology which do not create unemployment and threaten human existence. He has his specific ideas anent individual, family, villages, towns, cities, metropolises, cosmopolites and megalopolises, provinces, State and international organisations. Like Gandhi, Lewis Mumford has shown that urbanisation in the form of ‘necropolis’ or ‘city of death’ will be the highest form of ultra-modern city-life. Such cities will be bereft of natural farms, trees and plants etc. Raw vegetables and other crops will not be grown in farms because of perennial infertility as a result of massive mechanized farming. People will go to movie theatres to see videos of natural trees, plants, farms, waterfalls and all such natural beauty. This is where the ‘modernity’ is leading us to. Gandhi is against such modernity.
Gandhi’s modernity is against blind folded mechanization, industrialisation, automation, education in foreign language, political and economic dependence, present-day comfort orientation, massive speed, obsolescence of technology and exploitative business oriented fashion etc. For him, modernity is self-reliance, self-sufficiency, near full employment, economic and political health, social cohesion, development, equality, peaceful life. He wants to live with nature and educated youth. Respect for physical labour for him is absolutely essential. He is not in favour of fast moving modern means of travel for they spread so many illnesses as well. COVID-19 is also the result of these modern ways of travel. Present-day governments are suggesting Gandhian methods and ways of living to save humanity from the menace of the current pandemic.
Gandhi wants individual centred polity and society emerging from self-reliance of family and village growing into a predominantly nonviolent democratic state quite like India at present. Several improvements and modifications are needed according to Gandhi in the India of today. As such, real political and economic power must flow and move out from villages, to cities and so-called capitals of provinces and the nation. For Gandhi, it is only the institution of State that has a legal right to use brute force when so required. None else. Any other type of violence is not allowed in this type of Gandhian State.
The highest ideal for Gandhi is a nonviolent society where there will be no need of the institution of state. But such a society is not realisable. It is an ideal only to be aspired for. Indeed, for Gandhi, until there is complete and fulsome faith and belief of every world citizen in the power of nonviolence, truth, non-stealing, non-possession and celibacy; cities will never have relief from their evils.
(The author is Professor, Political Science; and former Director, Gandhian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Jammu University, Jammu)
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