Anthony Parel believes that Mahatma Gandhi's biggest contribution was to 'political philosophy'. This begs the question as to what political philosophy has contributed. I suppose, one might say that the Western Europeans formulated a theory of representative government under the rule of Law with a system of constitutional checks and balances. However, this was based on institutions which already existed. Here 'philosophy' was merely the propaganda of established factions struggling for political mastery.
Still, thanks to the British, there can be no question that India did become a constitutional democracy with a Republican form of Government which has many points of resemblance to those of Anglo-Saxon polities. Indian political parties- in so far as they are dynastic- however, seem more similar to the traditional 'durbari' courtly culture of the sub-continent. Nevertheless, in terms of 'political philosophy' it is difficult to see any lasting contribution Gandhi made. There had been non-violent protests of various types, in England and India, before he appeared on the scene and such agitations continue to exist all over the world. There have been three well publicized post-Independence Gandhian initiatives but, we must admit, they failed utterly. These were
1) Bhoodhan- i.e. voluntary donation of land. Vinobha Bhave's scheme was utterly useless when it wasn't mischievous simply.
2) 'Sampurna Kranti'- Jayprakash Narayan's 'total revolution' which was just as useless and mischievous as, his former mentor, Bhave's crackpot scheme.
3) Anna Hazare's 'Lokpal agitation'. Having 'ombudsmen' proved to be no panacea. This was theater of a absurdist sort.
Parel, in a memorial lecture delivered a decade ago, had this to say about 'Pax Gandhiana' which did not exist. Pax Brittanica did exist. It was based on the Indian Army kicking ass. Gandhi demanded again and again that Britain hand over control of the Army to him as head of the INC. It was this maximal demand that gave Gandhi salience. Pax Gandhiana could only mean Gandhi's promise to call off any agitation before it achieved anything or else to simply get his people to queue up and go to jail rather than create a public nuisance. But this was not enough to prevent violence. The Government still had to spend money shooting revolutionaries.
Gandhi’s nonviolence means different things to different people. To some it means a personal virtue,
I suppose, if you were brought up wolves, you might consider not biting or knifing random strangers to be a 'personal virtue'. The plain fact is, the vast majority of people are non-violent. True, in India, some young Revolutionaries did advocate the violent overthrow of the Government, but nobody seriously believed that the average Indian barrister/politician- however seditious- was capable of waging war on the King Emperor.
to others it means pacifism,
Though Gandhi recruited soldiers for the Army and approved of India's decision to intervene militarily in Kashmir.
and to still others it means living in small, isolated, stateless communes.
Where? As far as I know, all such communes exist within existing States.
There are those who believe that nonviolence means treating the state as the enemy or at least being ready to agitate against it at every turn.
This is antagonomia- or simply being a paranoid nutcase with nothing better to do than protest against everything.
A close examination of the evidence shows that it means something different from all this. It means first, a general principle of reorganizing society, polity and the international order;
What is the point of having such a principle if no reorganization actually occurs? True, if you believe in karma, you might get reborn on a paradisal planet where nobody has sex. That's worth giving up sex for- right?
and secondly, a praxis that translates the principle into action through private and public institutions, most notably the state. Seen in this light, what he wanted to achieve for India was much more than its mere political independence.
To be fair, other politicians at the time wanted India to be rich and secure, not independent but starving and unable to fight off a ruthless invading army- like that of the Japanese.
He wanted to introduce into India a new nonviolent social and political order, one seeking a new equilibrium between consent, coercion, nonviolence, and the state.
Towards this great end, Gandhi demanded that the British transfer all power- including control of the Army- to the Indian National Congress which, he later admitted, was a Hindu organization. Sadly, other parties or communities were not enthused by the prospect. In fairness, it must be said. non-Muslims were similarly reticent in demanding Islamic rule in Muslim majority areas.
Gandhi was nicer than Hitler who wished to introduce Europe to a new nonviolent social and political order where everybody anticipated his wishes and were beforehand in exterminating themselves or performing slave labour or raising up blue eyed, blonde, babies to serve the Fuhrer.
Let us call this Pax Gandhiana, seeking to replace Pax Britannica.
Sadly, without Pax Brittanica, Gandhi's program would have found no takers in India.
Juxtaposing Pax Gandhiana and Pax Britannica makes good historic sense. After all, it was Pax Britannica that created the historical conditions necessary for the possibility of Pax Gandhiana.
A thing may be possible but too fucking foolish for anybody to bother doing it.
Until Pax Britannica pacified India, the country remained more or less a collection of discordant, if not warring, political entities. But Pax Britannica was able to pacify India only by conquest,
unless there was no battle, the local people preferred British rule- as happened in Coorg- or else the Prince preferred a pension from the Brits to trying to make it on his own.
and the violence that went with it.
The humiliating truth is there wasn't much violence. As Disraeli said, India hadn't been conquered.
In the striking words of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen,
a barrister who spent a couple of years in India as Legal member of the Viceroy's council. No military operations were conducted during the period.
Pax Britannica represented “peace compelled by force.”
This could also be said of the British Isles at that time.
Peace and compulsion came together, stayed together and worked together.
This is true of any country with a standing army.
The question is whether Pax Gandhiana can be maintained by consent, instead of compulsion.
Disraeli, speaking in 1857, stated the obvious. The Brits ruled India according to its own customs though, no doubt, they introduced some innovations welcomed by certain classes of Indians. When they departed from this wise policy, unnecessary trouble and expense was incurred.
Pax Britannica was of course following a pattern of history according to which when the discordant units of a region fight among themselves, only external coercion could pacify them.
There is no such pattern to history. Europe fought two big wars in the last century. It wasn't pacified by external coercion. The Allies prevailed. America only came into the War after Hitler, very foolishly, declared war on it.
This role empires have always played, most notably the Roman Empire.
Nonsense! The Egyptians weren't fighting among themselves. Rome just wanted to grab its wealth and rich harvests of grain.
The foundations of Pax Romana, Machiavelli tells us, were arma and jura, arms and laws, introduced in that order. Arma or conquest had to come first, only then could jura or laws enforce peace.
Very true. The Romans would have looked silly if they kept promulgating laws for places they hadn't conquered.
Given this pattern of history, Gandhi’s attempt might seem idealistic if not quixotic.
Or it might look like the absurd claims made by the leaders of cults. On the other hand, Socioproctology isn't a cult. It is a scientific fact that only by donating money to me can you avoid death and live forever.
Is world history ready for a new equilibrium between consent, coercion, nonviolence and the state? There are of course two kinds of coercion: one based on conquest,
not necessarily. You can coerce a person by threatening them with dire financial or other such consequences.
the other on consent.
People consent to being coerced? Why? I suppose they might think it is for their own good. But if you need to be coerced to stay on the straight and narrow, a dose of Gandhian political philosophy probably isn't your most most pressing need.
Coercion based on consent is compatible with Gandhian nonviolence. Similarly, there are two kinds of state, one based on conquest and the other on consent.
India and Japan and China and Egypt and other such ancient polities are neither. Their first Kings or Emperors were legendary. They may have fought wars but they were not considered conquerors of their own countries.
The one based on consent is compatible with Gandhian nonviolence.
No it isn't. People may have sex with each other. That's just wrong.
To understand Pax Gandhiana then we have to understand the new equilibrium that is sought between consent, coercion, nonviolence and the state.
Everybody just did what Gandhi told them to, then that equilibrium might exist....till a more sensible species displaced ours.
Although from the very beginning of his career Gandhi had an intuitive grasp of the kind of nonviolence and the kind of state that he wanted for India, it was only towards the end of his career that he felt the need to give a philosophic account of it.
By which time it was clear that the INC would follow Nehru's path, not that of the Mahacrackpot.
The late epiphany is not surprising. For only when a great historic movement has passed its apogee do we grasp its philosophy.
Which was- surprise! surprise!- stupid shit.
This was true of Gandhi and the movement he initiated.
No it wasn't. He himself thought 'Hind Swaraj' was a masterwork.
The owl of Minerva, as Hegel reminds us, spreads its wings only at the dusk, not at the dawn.
Owls, as the Hindi expression 'ulloo ka patta' reminds us, are as stupid as shit. The same was true of Hegel. Prussia was a shitty polity. Large swathes of it are now Polish or Russian.
That is to say, only towards the end of his career did Gandhi make an effort to understand the philosophy of what he was doing.
Which suggests that understanding the philosophy of what you are doing is useless. Don't bother with it till you are utterly senile and have failed at everything you set out to do.
So in 1946, barely two years before his death, he reminisced how a few years earlier he had attempted to write a thesis on nonviolence: “When I was in detention in the Aga Khan Palace, I once sat down to write a thesis on India as a protagonist of nonviolence.
If you get drunk and pass out and wake up to find yourself bruised, battered, and coated in cum, you have been a protagonist of nonviolence. Why write a thesis about it?
But as I proceeded with my writing, I could not go on. I had to stop.”
The man wasn't utterly shameless.
(He does not tell us how far the writing had progressed or whether he left behind a manuscript of the incomplete thesis.) In any case, we have here one of the most remarkable statements found in all of Gandhi’s writings: the apostle of nonviolence finding himself unable to complete a thesis on nonviolence.
To be fair, he didn't really believe in that nonsense.
There is a hint, however, of why he stopped writing. He stopped because he realized that India in her present condition was not ready to become a nonviolent country, neither philosophically nor socially nor politically.
Indians objected to being beaten or raped or murdered. Sad. But for the Brits, Indians might have reconciled themselves to being incessantly beaten or raped to death.
This came as a shock to him. He saw with fresh clarity that Indian philosophy had made nonviolence such an esoteric virtue that the vast majority of the people were exempt from it.
Fair point. If you are an agriculturist you are committing violence to microbes in the soil. Not everybody can be an usurer or arbitrager.
And so long as this was the case, there was no way India could ever become a nonviolent country, let alone a model for others.
So, India first had to become a country exclusively inhabited by wealthy Jain financiers after which everybody could live a non-violent life. The now entirely celibate population would entirely die out with seventy or eighty years.
He explains: “There are two aspects of Hinduism. There is on the one hand the historical Hinduism with its Untouchability, superstitious worship of stocks and stones, animal sacrifice and so on. On the other, we have the Hinduism of the Gita, the Upanishads and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra which is the acme of ahimsa and oneness of all creation, pure worship of one immanent, formless imperishable God.
The Bhagvad Gita says you can kill people if that is your job. The Vyadha Gita depicts a fully enlightened dude who is a wealthy butcher or meat-vendor by profession.
'Ahimsa which to me is the chief glory of Hinduism has been sought to be explained away by our people as being meant for sannyasis only. I do not share that view.”
Sannyasis aren't allowed to sleep naked with young girls. Gandhi did not share this restrictive view.
The story of Gandhi’s failed attempt to complete his thesis has a lesson for all those interested in nonviolence. The lesson is three-fold. First, if you want to create a nonviolent social and political order in India, you need a new philosophy of nonviolence, one that can bridge the gap between the life of the yogi and that of the average citizen.
There are plenty of Indian people who have come up with new philosophies of nonviolence- mine consisted of a categorical imperative to scream and shit myself any time anyone suggested I get a job- but this didn't create a nonviolent social and political order because Mummy slapped me.
Secondly, you need a new cohesive India--a civic nation—
without separatist politicians- right?
one that is capable of unifying by consent all its discordant elements.
Minorities should be encouraged to fuck off.
Thirdly, you need a state that is coercive in some respects but nonviolent in others.
This describes all states. Even in Hitler's Germany or Mao's China the State did not use coercive means to compel citizens to piss and shit.
Gandhi felt that India in 1940s had not met these conditions.
About 100,000 Indians were arrested during Quit India. 25 times as many joined the British Indian Army.
So the first thing India needs is a new philosophy of nonviolence, one that would bring nonviolence within the reach of ordinary Indians.
Three million ordinary Indians could not escape starvation by getting arrested and thus fed by the Government in a nice Jail cell. Nothing but great wealth and robot jailors can bring Gandhian nonviolence within the reach of the great mass of people in any country.
Gandhi wanted ahimsa to be a civic virtue, and not merely a monastic virtue. This called for the de-saffronization of nonviolence or rescuing it from yogis and holy men.
But yogis and holy men aren't constantly making a nuisance of themselves and getting arrested. Plenty of Jains and Vaishnavas and so on were living a pretty non-violent life. They had skills and capital of various sorts and thus didn't need to engage in agriculture. It is perfectly acceptable to become a 'shravaka' without wholly giving up various types of employment in which some minimal harm to life-forms occurs.
Gandhi could bring about such a major change convincingly only if he had the support of Indian philosophy. For this he turned to the Bhagavad Gita.
He should have turned to Jainism. Srimad Rajachandra was a shravaka who didn't take full sanyas. He has inspired countless people to adopt the Jain lifestyle though some, no doubt, remain Vaishnav or Smartha or whatever.
His voluminous writings on the Gita—commentaries, translations and concordance—are of critical importance here.
They are ignorant, incoherent, nonsense. There's a good reason Indians don't regard Gandhi as a philosopher. Darshan Gyan is cognitively demanding. You can't just make it up as you go along.
In his interpretation, the central teaching of the Gita is its ethics, the ethics of right action, action that benefits the agent and society, both materially and spiritually.
This simply isn't true. God is revealed as the sole efficient cause. Devotional piety is the soteriological remedy available to all.
An action, to be right, had to meet the following five conditions.
Actions need not be right. The Supreme Lord takes on the sins of his devotee.
First, it had to restrain such vices as greed, aggression and egoism, and promote such virtues as detachment, devotion to duty, the work ethic and empathy for fellow human beings, regardless of religion or caste.
So, a surgeon should not operate on a patient to save her life. Why? Because that action does not restrain any of the vices listed above and promotes no virtue save in the sense that any other lawful action of the surgeon does so.
Secondly, the action had to be good in itself, i. e. good according to the requirements of one’s calling or profession (swadharma).
So, if you are an assassin, killing people is cool.
Thirdly, the benefit that accrues to the agent should not be allowed to interfere with the good that might accrue to the public also (lokasamgraha).
So, it should have no social 'opportunity cost'. But Gandhi's actions did have such a cost. If you take up other people's time by making them pay attention to you, they incur an opportunity cost. Gandhi & Co may have gained by going to jail. But the taxpayer suffered by reason of having to house and feed them.
Fourthly, the intention had to be free of selfish motives, the focus being “not on the fruit of one’s action” but on the goodness of the action itself.
In which case no action is good if doing it is good for you in some sense.
Finally, both the end and the means had to be good.
Means are good only if they realize the desired end. If the means are good-in-themselves, they are ends. It may be that one good end entails another good end or that one only does one good thing in order to get another good thing done. But, it is foolish to reject neutral means even if they have good ends.
Now Gandhi firmly believed that action that met these conditions would ipso facto be nonviolent.
The vast majority of actions are non-violent. The trouble is we can never be sure what the actual consequences of our actions will be. That's why God, in the Bhagvad Gita, takes on our sins. Otherwise morality might counsel paralysis. Occasionalism is a useful metaphysical doctrine in that respect.
There was nothing more that one needed to do to lead a nonviolent life than to practice the ethic of right action.
Though most of us manage to lead a non-violent life without practicing retarded shite.
This is a major break-through in the history of the philosophy of nonviolence.
No. The arguments re. the impossibility of non-violence were at least 2000 years old.
To act nonviolently, then, there was no need to be a yogi.
There was also no need to follow the nutter Gandhi who wrote an article demanding that everybody kill dogs because not killing bow-wows is a horrible type of violence.
The new nonviolence that he proposes is no longer a monastic virtue, but a civic virtue, the virtue of the good citizen and the good statesman.
Plenty of such existed in India. Srinivas Sastri wasn't exactly a serial killer.
One acts nonviolently, whenever one’s action meets the conditions necessary for acting well, irrespective of one’s station in life, and irrespective of one’s religion or ethnicity.
Gandhi thought Sarabhai acted non-violently when he got a whole bunch of dogs killed.
But Gandhi faced two major obstacles here. The first was the common belief that to act nonviolently one had to be a yogi who engaged only in other-worldly activities.
There was no such belief. You have to be a yogi to devote yourself to Yoga. But, Yogishvara, the Lord of Yoga, (i.e. Krishna) was a great warrior who killed plenty of demons and so forth.
Those engaged in this-worldly activities—the rest of humanity--were thought morally incapable of acting nonviolently simply because the activities were this-worldly.
No. They were thought capable of acting non-violently if that's what they really wanted to do.
Gandhi repudiates the distinction between this-worldly and other-worldly activities as being totally irrelevant to today’s conception of action.
This-worldly activities are things done to gain utility here and now. Other-worldly activities are things done which get you a better after-life.
Besides, the common belief had no standing in the Gita. He writes: “The common belief is that dharma and artha are mutually antagonistic to each other.
Not if you are earning money honestly.
‘In worldly activities such as trade and commerce. dharma has no place.
Yet, it had a reputational benefit. Millionaires are trusted more when they give lots of money to charity.
Let dharma operate in the field of dharma, and artha in that of artha’—we hear many secular people say. In my opinion, the author of the Gita has dispelled this delusion. He has drawn no line of demarcation between moksha and worldly pursuits.”
If you follow the path of devotional piety- sure. But then a devotional text is scarcely likely to say otherwise.
The second objection was that the ethic of Gita applied only to the Hindus. Gandhi’s response was twofold. First, if you could find an equivalent ethic in the religious texts of other religions, it would be enough. It was axiomatic to him that a common deep ethics underlay all historical religions. Many distinguished Muslims such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan agreed with Gandhi on this.
Lord Bhikku Parekh says Gandhi forced his wife to cook mutton chops for Azad. To deny a Muslim meat is violence. So is not killing dogs.
Gandhi went even further: the Gita, as interpreted by him, taught a universal, non-sectarian ethics.
Nothing wrong in that. We are welcome to interpret Scripture in a way that helps us become better people because, as better people, we can come closer to God- which is the whole point of reading Scripture.
Gandhi writes: “This is a work which persons belonging to all faiths can read. It does not favor any sectarian point of view. It teaches nothing but pure ethics.” What he means is that the deep ethic of the Gita, like the deep ethic of every great religious text, teaches a universal, non-sectarian ethic. As a universal ethics, it can bridge not only the sectarian divide, but also the secular- religious divide. Where universal ethic is involved, the distinction between the secular and the religious becomes meaningless. One is reminded here of St. Thomas Aquinas’ observation that the ethic of the Ten Commandments is comparable to the secular ethics of Natural Law.
Observing 'secular ethics' only gets you 'congruent' not 'condign merit' which, for Catholics, is not enough to get you salvation. If there is Natural Law, there may also be Natural Religion and who is to say my Religion is not more natural than yours?
Many non-Hindus agreed with Gandhi that the Gita taught a universal ethic. Muhamad Currim Chagla, a distinguished Muslim, was one of them. A jurist, diplomat, cabinet minister, and statesman, Chagla wrote the following in his Autobiography: “I have…never empathized with the sannyasi ideal
Chaghla knew the hadith- 'There is no monasticism in Islam'.
…The better and more satisfying philosophy is the one that the Bhagavad Gita teaches—the philosophy of non-attachment.
The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was not attached to any material thing. The purpose of reading Scripture is not actually to get you to buy more cool shiny stuff of the internet- or so I have been told.
One must not give up anything, one must do one’s duty in whatever stations of life one is placed; and having done one’s duty one must remain indifferent to the results. The doing of the duty is in one’s own hand—the achievement of results one must leave to Providence or whatever power it may be that guides our destinies.”
Nothing wrong with that at all. Many an atheist has been led back to their ancestral religion by reading the Scripture of a different sect.
But according to Gandhi the person who best implemented the new philosophy of nonviolence was Gopal Krishna Gokhale,
who, strangely enough, wasn't a serial killer.
his acknowledged political guru. It was from him that he learnt the art of engaging in public life.
without stabbing people. This is an important work skill.
A college professor,
who didn't stab people? How strange!
editor of a learned quarterly journal,
who defied convention by not smashing in the skulls of little children
a member of the legislative council of Bombay and of the Viceroy’s imperial legislative council, president of the Indian National Congress, the founder of Servants of India Society, Gokhale spent his entire life in this-worldly activities.
Yet, strangely enough, he didn't rape or murder anybody. It was this valuable trait that Gandhi was able to gain from Gokhale.
Yet in all this, he maintained the highest ethical standard. Because of this, he was able to cross the sectarian divides of India, and treat every Indian fairly, regardless of religion.
Indians appreciated his abstention from stabbing or bludgeoning them.
Gokhale’s example, Gandhi claimed, had a normative value for every Indian.
Be like Gokhale. Don't set your mother on fire.
The yogis are no longer the models of nonviolence.
Speaking generally, Supermodels aren't notorious for beating people. If you want to wean yourself off homicide, you could do worse than emulate Heidi Klum.
The good citizen and the good statesmen have taken the place of the yogis.
And vice versa- at least in UP where Yogi Adityanath is the Chief Minister.
Gandhi paid Gokhale the highest tribute when he pointed out that Gokhlae’s ethics was comparable to the ethics of the 8th century BC Hebrew Prophet Isaiah.
There was no resemblance between them whatsoever. Gokhale was a moderate 'meliorist' interested in spreading useful education and progressive ideas. However, his determination to 'Indianize' the higher administrative echelons of the Raj earned him the enmity of successive Viceroys.
He concluded his encomium of Gokhale by citing two very famous passages from Isaiah. “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2, 4) and “the wolf and lamb shall feed together and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock” (Isaiah, 65, 25).
Britain is a Christian country. The quotations from Isaiah, interpreted through the filter of Virgil, referred to Pax Britannica. Under British King-Emperors, the world would become peaceful and prosperous. The British RSPCA would protect all animals from cruelty.
Writes Gandhi: “Gokhale’s ideal in his life was to labor to bring about this state of affairs.”
No. He wasn't a maniac. He was not incessantly lecturing lions on the virtues of a vegetarian diet. What he did was useful enough in its way but it wasn't glamorous and did not enthuse the young.
The two ethics—those of the Gita and Isaiah—Gandhi implies, can lead to comparable outcomes, viz., the reconciliation of historical enemies. The metaphors of the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the bullock, are applicable to today’s Hindus and Muslims. The reconciliation between them is possible only under the new ethic of civic nonviolence. Only civic nonviolence can pave the way for Pax Gandhiana.
Parel was speaking during the so called 'War on Terror' which killed or displaced millions of Muslim people. Whatever it was Gandhi was up to, it did not pave the way to Peace.
II
Pax Gandhiana in India required not only a new philosophy of nonviolence, but also a new cohesive Indian political community.
Implementing crazy ideas in India requires not only a new crazy philosophy but also the replacement of Indians by crazy robots of some specific type.
Such a political community Gandhi called a civic nation (praja).
Praja means the subject population ruled over by a Raja.
A civic nation is different from a religion-based nation and from an ethnicity-based nation.
A religion-based or ethnicity-based nation may be a civic nation- i.e. one under the Rule of law- while a 'civil nation' may get conquered and converted into a religion-based nation or one where a particular race is the ruling class. British India could be said to be a civil nation as could independent India.
Its basic unit is the individual considered as the citizen—a bearer of fundamental rights and a subject capable of swaraj, i. e., self-determination and self-development.
Everybody is equally capable of swaraj. However starving to death or getting killed by invaders tends to remove that capability.
The religion based nation regards the member of a religion as its basic unit;
No. It considers territorially defined diocese or congregations to be the basic unit. People of the dominant sect may be obliged to attend collective worship to retain suffrage or qualify to hold public office. Foreigners may belong to the right sect but foreigners they remain unless they undergo Naturalization.
and in an ethnicity-based nation, the individual as an ethnic is regarded as its basic unit.
No. A person may be of British ethnicity but may not qualify for British citizenship. Ethnic based nations are defined over specific, preferably geographically contiguous, territories where one particular ethnicity is dominant.
There was a in India a life and death struggle between these three forms of nationalism--civic nationalism, religious nationalism, and ethnic nationalism.
Nonsense! Religion trumped Language as, without much friction, first Buddhis majority Burma and then Muslim majority Pakistan went their own ways.
Not surprisingly, Gandhi found religious nationalism and ethnic nationalism standing in the way of Pax Gandhiana.
No. He saw the 'Garam Dal' and the Revolutionaries as standing in the way of Pax Britannica which he hoped to turn into the rule of the INC under his command. He thought he could disintermediate the barristocrats and Zamindars of the Muslim League by doing a deal with the Mullahs.
At the same time, he saw in the Indian National Congress a vehicle for civic nationalism.
No. He saw it as a vehicle for his own crackpot schemes. Congress still requires its members to be 'habitual' spinners of cotton. The bigger problem was that once Japan entered the War, Gandhi could not be sure Pax Britannica would prevail. So Congress had to launch 'Quit India' and go sulk in jail till the tide had turned in favour of the Allies.
But he found the task of keeping the Congress faithful to its civic nationalist principles truly daunting.
It had no such principles. Gandhi himself had said, in 1939, that it was a Hindu party. Nehru had refused to appoint a popular Parsi candidate as Premier in Bombay. In Bihar, a highly qualified Muslim was passed over. Also, Nehru refused to do a deal with Fazl-ul-Haq in Bengal. Later, it would be Nehru who pulled the trigger on Partition thus leaving independent India with no Muslim headache whatsoever.
“I can see my way of rebuilding the Congress with five true men, with whom there is neither Hindu nor Muslim nor any other. Religion is a personal matter. It ought not to affect the political field,” he writes in 1941, in near despair.
Gandhi had already been rendered irrelevant. His last Satyagraha- in the Princely State of Rajkot- had been a miserable failure.
This cry of the heart is a plea for both civic nationalism and a deep personal spiritual life. Only “true men”, Gandhi believes, can combine civic nationalism and deep spiritual life.
while sleeping naked with young girls and hitting up Birlas and Bajajs for money.
By “true men” he means humans in whom true humanity has fully developed.
as opposed to giraffes in whom true humanity was only partially developed- right?
True humanity or true humanism supplies the link between secular civic nationalism and deep spiritual life. To be truly free from religious prejudice, one has to be both truly human and truly spiritual.
No. It is enough to be wholly ignorant of religion to have no religious prejudice. If you are truly spiritual you are likely to be prejudiced against specific religions or sects which have a materialistic, not spiritual, eschatology- e.g. bodily resurrection and entry into a material Heaven from where you have a ringside seat on the equally material sufferings of the infidels who are being sodomized with flaming pitchforks in Hell.
Gandhi referred to the experience of his civic friendship with C. F. Andrews to make his point.
They were friends and colleagues till Gandhi quietly suggested that the fellow should fuck off back to Blighty rather than try to share the limelight.
“Andrews found in me not only a live Hindu but a live Christian. That was the secret of his nearness to me. He shared with me his innermost thoughts on religion. And he said that he must at bottom remain a true Christian if he was to be a true Hindu and Muslim.”
He was neither. Once Gandhi told the Brits to surrender to Hitler and to 'Quit India', many Anglicans turned against people like Andrews. The Quakers, too, shat the bed by introducing Quisling to Nazi nutters rather than strengthening resistance to Hitler.
What this tells us is that to be free of religious prejudice it is not necessary to embrace anti-religious secularism.
Religion is a source of social cohesion. It makes sense to support the Established Church of a country even if you are not yourself of that Faith.
The deep ethic underlying all historical religions is quite capable of nurturing genuine civic friendship across religious lines.
But civic friendships exist wherever there is friendship of any sort- including Northern Ireland during the troubles. Equally, no 'deep ethic' has prevented bloodshed if there is a disorganized type of exchange of population.
Here a distinction has to be drawn between the doctrines of religions and the deep ethics of religions.
Why? Those doctrines themselves have such a concept.
Doctrines tend to separate, ethics tend to unite.
No. What unites people is the need or the incentive to work together on mutually beneficial projects. Neither doctrines nor ethics matters in the slightest.
Doctrines are specific to religions,
unless the religion states that 'matam' (doctrines) are sublatable and of no fundamental significance.
while the deep ethics is common to them.
Unless it isn't. It is enough if there is a common 'vyavahara' or sittlichkeit or 'customary morality'.
Doctrines belong to the private realm of belief, while deep religious ethics (which embodies the golden rule) belongs to the public realm of common practice.
Fuck off! Common practice tells the golden rule to go get a fucking golden shower. We don't do unto others as we would have them do unto us. A waiter gets paid to serve food to customers. He does not want the customers to serve food to him. He just wants money so as to cook and serve himself a nice dinner.
Gandhi, cretin that he was, thought weavers must be forced to wear the cloth they wove. They preferred to sell it for a high price and to buy cheap mill-cloth for themselves. This is the principle of comparative advantage.
The true golden rule is 'don't be a fucking asshole- unless that's what you are getting paid to be'.
Here Gandhi falls back on his axiom that a common ethic or the golden rule underlies all historical religions. It is this ethic that provides the moral foundation for civic fraternity and civic nonviolence.
Gandhi was obviously wrong.
Gandhi and Andrews were divided by race and religion.
They were working on the same problem- viz. that of indentured Indian laborers in the colonies.
Yet they were able to become the best of civic friends;
because they were colleagues. However, Gandhi kept telling Andrews to fuck off to Fiji or wherever because he didn't want to share the limelight with him.
they were able to do so because they lived by the deep ethic of their respective religions.
No they didn't. Hinduism says- make money by practicing law, if you are a lawyer. Don't set up as a Sadhu-Mahatma while still living with your wife. If you are running an Ashram- make sure it earns a profit. Don't incessantly demand subsidies for your crack-pot schemes.'
Presumably, Gandhi lived by the ethic of the Gita
He didn't. He was a Bania. He should have stuck to making money instead of setting up as a commentator on Scripture even though he didn't even know Sanskrit.
and Andrews, by that of the Sermon on the Mount. They were able to do this, because they were able and willing to distinguish between the doctrines and the deep ethics of their respective religions;
How? Contra Parel, it isn't the case that the Anglican Faith says 'be nasty to darkies.'
and they were able to do this without undermining the integrity of the doctrines in which they believed. Doctrines were adhered to at the private, belief level,
Both published religious books. That's not a 'private' activity.
while ethics was practiced at the public, social level.
Only in the sense that everybody practices ethics at the public, social, level- which is why you don't see Rishi Sunak rudely pushing down King Charles and running off with his Crown.
It is when adherents of religion are unable or unwilling to make this distinction that civic friendship fails.
Nothing of the sort happened in India. Jinnah and Liaquat and so forth had plenty of 'civic friendships' with non-Muslims.
And when civic friendship fails, nonviolence also fails.
Nope. Nonviolence prevails so long as no fucking violence occurs. Thus, even if my civic friendship with you fails coz you keep telling me I'm a big fat loser who smells bad, there is no failure of nonviolence coz I remain very quiet and just cry myself to sleep at night.
The tragedy of Jinnah and Savarkar was that they were unwilling to make a distinction between the doctrines and the ethics of their respective religions.
No. The tragedy of Savarkar was that his political career was a dismal failure. The tragedy of Jinnah was that his descendants chose India and the Zoroastrian, not the Islamic, religion. Neither had any great interest in religious doctrines.
They looked upon religion as a seamless garment covering every aspect of life—ethics, doctrines, codes, customs, manners, dress, diet and the like.
No. The saw that once the age of Empires ended, the successor states would be confessional, not linguistic. This was the message of the Treaty of Lausanne and the partition of Ireland.
This is the tragedy of modern South Asia too.
No. The tragedy of modern South Asia is that stupid Socialistic policies were followed. India, Pakistan etc. should have got rural girls into giant factory dormitories and gone in for export-led growth.
What Jinnah said in his famous 1940 Lahore speech is applicable to Savarkar too. Hinduism and Islam, he said, were not “religions in the strict sense of the word” but “different and distinct social orders.” Religion as social order encompassed practically everything. Therefore, Jinnah concluded, to place Hindus and Muslims under the same state—as Gandhi’s civic nationalism wanted to do—could only lead to their “final destruction.”
Jinnah, like other politicians, talked bollocks. But, he was right. Nobody proposed a reversal of Partition after he died.
Final destruction is a terrible, but accurate way of describing the outcome of the inability to distinguish between religious doctrines and religious ethics.
There is no such distinction. Religious ethics are part and parcel of Religious doctrines.
Where religion becomes a complete social order, it becomes less and less personal, more and more national, and more and more violent.
No. Religion as a complete social order is perfectly compatible with peaceful co-existence in a multi-confessional Empire or World Order. But contrast, there can be very violent nationalistic or ideological wars of conquest.
The final destruction of pluralistic societies inevitably follows.
No. That destruction happens by demographic replacement.
Only the civic virtue of nonviolence can prevent this from happening.
It is wholly useless. Britain would not have been able to preserve its pluralism if, as per Gandhi's advise, it had surrendered to Hitler.
So far we have spoken of nonviolence as a civic virtue.
It is nothing at all. The vast majority of people are non-violent. Curbing the nuisance posed by 'Civil Disobedience', however, may involve some minimal violence. It also imposes an 'opportunity cost' on society. Still, the thing must be done from time to time. As happened with Gandhi & Co, nutters quickly quieten down after a spell of porridge.
But no account of Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence would be complete without a mention his idea of heroic nonviolence--in his terminology, “nonviolence of the brave” or “nonviolence as creed”.
This is like the marvellous mathematics of the innumerate or the great wealth of the drunken beggar.
Heroic nonviolence is based on the principle that sometimes it is better to endure violence, even when innocent, than to retaliate.
Queuing up to get hit on the head is plain silly. Gandhi stopped doing it.
Towards the end of his life, he spoke of heroic nonviolence more and more frequently. “We shall never learn the art of mutual forbearance and toleration till some of us, though perfectly innocent, have staggered Indian humanity by losing our lives.”
Lala Lajpat Rai did lose his life when he was hit on the head. That was what provoked Bhagat Singh into killing a policeman.
Just three months before his death we find him saying the following: “Today we have come to regard each other as enemies….But we do not want to regard anyone as our enemy, nor do we want to become enemies. I have already said that I shall do or die in Delhi. I have come here with that intention.”
He died. The percentage of Muslims in the population plummeted. Nehru brought in an ordinance preventing those who had fled in panic from returning to claim their property.
Gandhi said that he had discovered the idea of heroic nonviolence in what he called the Jesus tradition. “The idea is that you appropriate to yourself and assimilate the essence of His sacrifice. His sacrifice is symbolically represented by the bread and wine of the Eucharist. A man who was completely innocent offered Himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies….Whether the Jesus tradition is historically true or not, I do not care. To me it is truer than history because I hold it to be possible and it enshrined an eternal law—the law of vicarious suffering taken in its true sense.”
Jesus rose again after 3 days. In the next 40 days he performed so many miracles that a Book which recorded each of them would be larger than the World.
I mention heroic nonviolence here mainly for the record. It must be emphasized that civic nonviolence, not heroic nonviolence, provides the moral basis of Pax Gandhiana. Heroic nonviolence is available only to rare individuals, while civic nonviolence is within the reach of the average citizen.
Breathing is available to the average citizen. Breathing heroically is a rare gift. But, since everybody breathes, it is foolish to claim to be a Great Sage just because you have devoted your life to breathing heroically or farting in a virile and vigorous manner.
But there was another obstacle that was standing in the way of nonviolence and civic nationalism, viz., Untouchability and caste prejudice.
No. Neither poses any obstacle at all. However, Gandhi needed to crush Ambedkar and other independent Dalit leaders so as to keep his obligatory passage point status. Thankfully, he failed miserably.
Untouchability for him was a metaphor for what was wrong with the Indian society.
Everything was a metaphor for what was wrong with an Indian society which didn't worship Gandhi to the exclusion of all else.
Since the subject is well known, I shall limit myself to examining how Gandhi managed to overcome his caste prejudice and discovered his true humanity.
His Mummy told him- 'if a Dalit boy touches you while playing then be sure to touch a Muslim so as to pass on the evil rather than bring it home with you.'
He approached the problem at the personal level and the social level. At the personal level he sought to overcome caste prejudice by overcoming its root cause-- fear of ritual pollution. To this end, he devised a very ingenious method: members of the Gandhi household would clean the chamber pots of house guests: and on one occasion it so happened that the guest was an Indian Christian of Untouchable descent. Mrs Gandhi strongly objected to this method, so strongly indeed that the fight that ensued threatened to wreck their marriage. This was in 1898, in South Africa. Two decades later, in 1915, in India, a similar thing happened, this time in his ashram. He invited an Untouchable family to join the ashram, to which Mrs Gandhi once again objected, and she was joined now by his cousin, and the deputy head of the ashram. They threatened to quit. Although the matter was later resolved amicably, the incident showed how difficult it was even for members of the Gandhi household and ashram to overcome caste prejudice.
Still, the big takeaway from the above is the news that if you want to get on the right side of a Gandhi, offer him your chamber-pot to clean. No doubt, he'd also be very grateful if you piss on his face.
The odd thing is that people who didn't bother to clean chamber pots had already changed the ritual status of numberless Dalit castes. It turns out that economic success and an upper middle class habitus is what actually determines status. Whether some virtue signaller wiped your bum or sucked you off does not matter in the slightest. Similarly, a leper remains a leper even if the Pope washes his feet.
At the social level the task was even more daunting. He had to face the criticism not only of Hindu Orthodoxy but also of Dr. Ambedkar, the great leader of the Untouchables. Even his own city of Ahmedabad refused to open its temples to Harijans. The same was true in Wardha and Sevagram, his adopted village. The barber in Sevagram refused to cut his hair in retaliation for his hiring an Untouchable as his cook. (So he learnt to cut his own hair). There was partial success in Travancore, where, thanks to the state, a few temples were thrown open to the Harijans. The conclusion was inescapable: the battle against caste prejudice could never be won without the support of the coercive state. Ethics alone was not enough.
No. The inescapable conclusion was that Maharajas and Mahatmas and Snake Charmers were useless. Industrialization, Urbanization, a mass-consumerist culture, was what got rid of a feudal type of social stratification.
Come to think of it, conscription into the Army and fighting a total war was another way to get rid of bigotry. Americans from the South accepted increased de-segregation in the Army because it was preferable to have a 'coloured' officer leading your platoon to victory, then a good ol' boy who got you massacred.
III
Gandhi’s distinctive contribution to the theory of civic nonviolence is
telling stupid lies about its efficacy. It simply isn't true that he achieved anything whatsoever. In South Africa, Smuts had to climb down over the poll tax because the alternative was Westminster having to pay for the repatriation and resettlement of Indian 'coolies'. In India itself, Gandhi's contribution was to unilaterally surrender in 1922 just when the Irish and Egyptians and Afghans were getting what they wanted.
that its effectiveness depends on the coercive state.
Every state is coercive. India hanged Gandhi's assassin.
The state and civic nonviolence
not to mention breathing and farting
are compatible for two main reasons. First, a coercive power structure is necessary for human well being. Without the state, civil society descends into chaos.
No. Either there is a Thymotic society where Clans practice vendetta or else a Town- a Polis or 'Civil Society'- hires guys to fuck up troublemakers and curb nuisances. If there is no Civil Society, then a bunch of rich guys from abroad, or a smart pirate or other type of gangster, sets up as a 'Stationary Bandit'.
Perfect nonviolence is possible only in the disembodied existence.
No. If you don't have a body you can't be either violent or non-violent.
In the embodied existence the state is indispensable.
Unless it isn't.
“All life in the flesh exists by some violence
No. Violence only occurs under certain circumstances- e.g. extreme scarcity, genetic malfunction in the case of maniacal serial killers, etc, etc.
…violence is an inherent necessity for life in the body…None while in the flesh, can thus be entirely free from violence because one never completely renounces the will to live.” “No doubt, destruction in some form or other of some life is inevitable.”
This is a rehash of arguments made some 2000 years ago. The question was whether certain spiritual adepts could gain supernatural 'siddhas' such that they rose above the 'aashrav' or ingress of such karma-binding properties. Gandhi, poor sap, thought sleeping naked with young girls might grant him such powers.
The second reason why civic nonviolence needs the state is this: it alone can make the peaceful enjoyment of human rights available to every citizen.
But no State has in fact done any such thing. Even as I speak, it is likely that there are female sex-slaves within a mile's radius of my home. They have been trafficked into the country. Human rights are ineffective if the remedies are incentive incompatible. It must be the case that criminal gangs can either bribe or intimidate the authorities such that this scandalous situation continues to obtain. Indeed, it may be that Human Rights law is an effective shield for the traffickers, not their victims.
Without the mediation of the state, the pursuit of rights leads to violence.
This happens even with the mediation of the state. Police officers get shot all the time. At the margin, this discourages their presence in 'no-go' areas. The pretence that the 'pigs' are all 'Fascists', can contribute to the collapse of basic entitlements in poorer neighborhoods.
The good state prevents this from happening. And the good state uses coercion legitimately, when coercion is based on consent, and when it is exercised by the institutions of representative government. But consent and representative institutions alone are not enough to give legitimacy of the Gandhian state. To be legitimate, the state should also recognize that the citizen has a spiritual soul and that citizens have the right to exercise soul-force in their dealings with the state. Satyagraha is based on this assumption.
This is meaningless. Citizens have rights whether or not they say they are exercising soul-force or the super-power of breathing heroically or, indeed, if they are Socioproctologists inching closer to Heaven by reason of the propulsive power of their super-smelly farts.
This is an important stipulation, for it distinguishes Gandhi’s state from the Machiavellian and the Hobbesean state.
Why stop there? Why not distinguish the Gandhian state from the Rahulian state which is constantly opening the grocery store of Lurve in the bazaar of Hatred?
Machiavelli boasted that he preferred the state whose citizens loved the state more than they did their souls.
He failed. The Papacy prevailed.
Hobbes’ state had no room for the soul; it had room for everything else--the senses, imagination, the passions, speech, and instrumental reason, but not for the soul.
But the Brits don't give a fig for Hobbes or Locke or any other such tosser.
Gandhi’s reintroduction of the soul into political theory alters the theory of the state and the conception of politics itself.
No it doesn't. It has no effect whatsoever because it is stupid shit.
Consent makes obedience to the coercive state necessary.
No. Consent does not involve obedience. It is limited in scope to a particular action or set of actions of a transactional type. I may consent to undergo a medical procedure. I am not swearing allegiance to the Surgeon.
Soul-force makes disobedience also necessary.
No. It may make a refusal to consent to a particular action or set of actions necessary. But obedience or disobedience is never entailed by compliance or even consent.
The reality of soul-force makes satyagraha a part of Gandhi’s theory of the state.
What reality? Gandhi's 'soul-force' was useless. Telling lies about it can't alter facts.
There are two things which cannot be done without the coercive power of the state. The first is the maintenance of internal order or the nonviolent enjoyment of human rights.
This can be wholly decentralized- as, indeed, it was in England and most other polities in the eighteenth century. There need be no standing army or central police force. Keeping the peace can be a wholly parochial affair. Indeed, in much of Gandhi's India this remained the case.
The second is external security. What is perhaps most surprising to many is Gandhi’s endorsement of the right of the state to self-defense by military means.
Unless Hitler was attacking them in which case they should surrender.
Here two cases deserve mention. The first is his support for World War I and his active recruiting campaign for the Indian Army. He wrote two Bulletins explaining why he did this, for which he was heavily criticized most fiercely by his friends, including C. F. Andrews. Gandhi’s reasoning here is of great philosophical interest.
No. The plain fact is, Gandhi had participated as an Ambulance man in two British wars and had volunteered to serve in the Great War. Indians should join the Army to learn how to fight. Unlike silly Christians who misunderstood the Sermon on the Mount, Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs knew that being a soldier is glorious. Warriors slain in battle gain Heaven.
First, there are certain things that make a country fit for swaraj, and the ability to defend itself militarily is one of them. Secondly, it was the absence of this ability that led India to the colonial subjugation in the first place. Thirdly, joining the Army is a quick way of acquiring this ability. Finally, and here he attacks the old philosophy of nonviolence: in the name of other-worldly pursuits, the old philosophy of nonviolence had put on shelf the duty of self-defense by military means. The political decline of India was the inevitable result. And unless this pseudo-philosophy was rooted out from the Indian soil, he asserts, there can be no lasting peace in the land. Wars in certain conditions may be a necessary evil, and when that is the case, the practitioner of nonviolence does not have the luxury of standing by the side lines.
Gandhi's mistake was to babble this nonsense to his fellow Gujaratis some of whom were aware that the British Army (and those of the Princely States) were doing poorly in East Africa. Some innocent Indians in Kenya were made scapegoats and hanged as collaborators with the Germans.
But his weightiest defense of the right to self-defense by military means comes from his formal statement at the Second Round Table Conference here in London in 1931. This is the only conference on a constitution for India that he ever attended. “I think that a nation that has no control over her own defense forces and over her external policy is hardly a responsible nation. Defense, its army is to a nation the very essence of its existence, and if a nation’s defense is controlled by an outside agency, no matter how friendly it is, then that nation is certainly not responsibly governed…Hence I am here respectfully to claim complete control over the army, over the defense forces and over external affairs….I would wait till eternity if I cannot get control over defense. I refuse to deceive myself that I am going to embark upon responsible government although I cannot control my defense….That is my fundamental position.”
Around this time there was an Islamic insurrection against the Maharaja of Kashmir. The Indian Army went to his rescue just as it did in 1948. In this context, Gandhi demanding that the Brits hand over control over the Army to the Hindu Congress was completely unacceptable to the Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Non-Brahmin Tamils, Dalits, etc.
In 1939, Gandhi explained that without the Army the Hindus- and Congress was a Hindu party- would be at the mercy of aggressive Muslims and Punjabis.
Gandhi’s position on war and nonviolence changed considerably after World War II. Its horrors including the holocaust and the introduction of nuclear weapons forced him to rethink his position on self-defense by military means. He began to think in terms of developing means of nonviolent national civil self-defense, and progressive disarmament.
Not really. At a later point, people like Rajaji did jump on this bandwagon but, the fact is, Nehru & Co were already thinking of getting nukes for India.
In June 1946, Nehru announced- ' As long as the world is constituted as it is, every country will have to devise and use the latest devices for its protection. I have no doubt India will develop her scientific researches and I hope Indian scientists will use the atomic force for constructive purposes. But if India is threatened, she will inevitably try to defend herself by all means at her disposal.'
Still, these changes did not mean any change in his belief in the right to self-defense. As a statesman and political thinker, he believed in the right to self-defense by military means, although as an individual, and as one capable of heroic nonviolence, he would no longer participate in any war.
Because he was very very old and, in any case, wholly useless.
For all his defense of the state, Gandhi was firmly opposed to the tendency of the modern state to over-extend itself and stifle individual initiative.
Where? Perhaps in Socialist shitholes, 'individual initiative' and private enterprise are stifled. But America isn't exactly a Communist country is it?
He looked upon this tendency, he said, “with the greatest fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress.”
Gandhi did favour quickly lifting price controls. He was, after all, a Bania. Indeed, when not gassing on about 'soul-force' he could be sensible enough.
He was a minimalist as far as the extent of state power was concerned. His “good state” (surajya) would meet the welfare needs of citizens with the help of Non-governmental Organizations. Citing Thoreau’s dictum, “that government is the best which governs the least,” he asserted that a country that ran smoothly without much state interference was truly democratic and truly nonviolent.
No doubt, Gandhi thought the First Nations were treated very nicely in Thoreau's America.
Gandhi’s position on legitimate self-defense by coercive means sets him apart from traditional pacifists, including Leo Tolstoy.
But Tolstoy had gone mad. Still, he was a writer of genius.
For Tolstoy the state was the big enemy of nonviolence.
Coz Cossacks aint violent at all. Still, he didn't live to see the greater violence unleashed by the Bolsheviks.
The members of his nonviolent society would live in small communes, isolated form the state. In other words, nonviolence for Tolstoy was a luxury that only a small spiritual minority could afford.
No. At the time, it seemed reasonable to suppose that the majority of Russians would live in self-managing village communes.
Not so for Gandhi. He would engage with the coercive state and, with it as a partner, would seek to bring civic nonviolence within the reach of every citizen.
By getting them to do stupid shit like spin cotton. This failed.
He saw the state as the indispensable building bloc of Pax Gandiana.
He wanted to take over the machinery the Brits had put in place. So did his rivals.
A nonviolent international order should be an organization of independent but interdependent states,
Like the League of Nations- right?
not warring one against another, but cooperating with one another. If states were nonviolent in the sense we have described here, a coalition of such states would create a regional zone of peace. There is something in Gandhi’s civic nonviolence that is comparable to Immanuel Kant’s republicanism.
No. Gandhi's retarded shite was just rehashed Wilsonism from 1918.
Kant believed that a league of republican states could create a zone of regional peace.
As could a League of Emperors.
There is something common between Pax Gandhiana and Pax Kantiana. Each
is stupid shit.
favors the creation of zones of peace in the international system.
Even though such zones of peace have always existed.
To conclude: I have been arguing that the success of Pax Gandhiana in India will depend on a new philosophy of nonviolence, on civic nationalism, and a limited coercive state.
So, the thing will fail as it has failed. It is useless shit.
The greatest threat that it faces comes from prejudices that originate in religion, caste and ethnicity.
No. Being as poor as shit and having babies like crazy is the big problem India faces. The solution is to get rural girls into big factory dormitories and let demographic transition occur.
To combat these prejudices we need a universal ethic that has the sanction of all historical religions.
No. We need to pursue sensible economic policies.
I have presented Pax Gandhiana as a secular, social and political order, one that gives citizen identity priority over religious identity or ethnic identity.
But this is what Britain and America and so forth already do.
But a purely secular ethic can neither bring Pax Gandhiana into being nor sustain it.
Nor can anything else. So what? The thing is shit.
It can be brought into being and sustained by an ethic that has its roots in a transcendental source. This can be found, I maintain, in the golden rule that is common to all historical religions.
No it can't. The golden rule is stupid. There should be specialization and trade on the basis of comparative advantage. Do unto others as they pay you to do. You don't have to let them to anything unto you unless that's what floats your boat.
But today’s India, generally speaking, does not seem to see religious prejudice and caste prejudice as the greatest threats to peace and stability.
Today's India, like yesterday's India, and tomorrow's India, wants to get rich and more secure. So does everybody else. Still, as a matter of 'vote-bank' politics, people will continue to mention religion and caste and the superiority of the mother tongue.
This may explain why it is far easier for someone like Anna Hazare to mobilize the masses against the corruption of politicians than it is to mobilize them against the violence that they practice daily on the basis of religion, caste or ethnicity.
This is silly. Hazare got financial backing and the support of RSS cadres. The aim was to delegitimize UPA 2- which was unravelling in any case. The big surprise was that it was Kejriwal and not Bedi who became CM of Delhi. Will he continue to rise? Perhaps not. Kharge could make Congress the anti-corruption party. If he can repeat his success in Karnataka in MP then AAM will decline. Punjab doesn't seem to be doing too well under the drunkard Mann.
Gandhi would remind them that even after the last corrupt politician has been punished, India will still remain an unstable and a violent society unless it can find ‘five true Indians’ “with whom there is neither Hindu nor Muslim nor any other”, or with whom there is neither high caste nor low caste nor out-caste. Pax Gandhiana depends on them. May their tribe increase.
This is nonsense. Stability and Non-Violence cost money to provide. A country pursuing sensible economic policies has more resources to provide both. There is a virtuous circle. There is no need for 'five true Indians' or 'ten little Indians' or any such shite. On the other hand, in the North East, some political solution must be found such that different ethnicities can peacefully co-exist. But, for that to happen, the Seven Sisters must have a more orient economic horizon.
