An attempt has been made in this paper
to trace Gandhi's principle of `nonviolence' in the context
of `Enlightenment Rationality' on the one hand and `Globalization'
on the other. The ideas of freedom/independence, autonomy,
sovereignty, property (in Gandhi's case Trusteeship), maturity/adulthood,
public and private, tolerance, scientific rationality,
secularism, humanism, democracy, nation/state, universality
of moral actions, humanity as an end in itself, critique
of religion, etc., are the most operative terms of European
Enlightenment of the 19th century. Though these ideas evolved
and developed in Europe, yet they proliferated beyond Europe
to other continents and subcontinents. Gandhi appreciated
these ideas and like a genius, he interpreted them into
indigenous concepts and principles such as truth, simplicity,
faith, brahmacharya, purushartha, satyagraha, swaraj, karma,
compassion, trusteeship, vegetarianism/fruitarianism and
above all nonviolence with the aim of attaining swaraj—victory
over one's passions, lusts, greed, etc., and independence
and sovereignty of the country. I may point out, though
I shall not be in a position to develop it here, that the
basic concepts of the Enlightenment were questioned and
repudiated by Marx, Engels and Lenin on the one hand and
the critical theorists like Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse
and Habermas on the other. In the era of globalization,
the Enlightenment concepts have become almost obsolete.
But Gandhi's principles are still valid. These are the
only viable principles to resolve moral dilemmas that everybody
faces, being constantly confronted by equally valid alternatives
in globalization. Hence I'll propose a modest critique
of the Enlightenment and the globalization from Gandhi's
perspective of nonviolence.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, (October 2,
1869 - January 30, 1948), also known as Mahatma Gandhi,
was a major political and spiritual leader of India during
India's independence movement. He was the pioneer of Satyagraha—a
philosophy that is largely concerned with truth and `resistance
to evil through active, nonviolent resistance'—which
led India to independence and inspired movements for civil
rights and freedom across the world. In India, he is officially
accorded the honor of `Father of the Nation'. October 2,
his birthday, is commemorated each year as `Gandhi Jayanti',
a national holiday. On June 15, 2007, the United Nations
General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution declaring
October 2 to be the `International Day of Nonviolence'.
The range of Gandhiji's political practices
and philosophical theorizing is extraordinary. He deals
with most of the themes developed by earlier thinkers,
including economic critique of British imperialism, the
constitutional reforms, nationalist and the religious sentiments.
In addition, he has sought to achieve a thoroughgoing synthesis
of religion as a mobilizing force, the concept of nation
and national movement. It is not easy to assess the contributions
of Gandhiji whose professional competence extends from
Leo Tolstoy's `War and Peace' to the sociology of knowledge,
by way of Rousseau (even Marx), Enlightenment Rationality
and the more recondite sources of Indian spiritual heritage.
At an age when most of his political colleagues including
Nehru had painfully established control over one corner
of the field, he has made himself master of the whole,
in depth and breadth alike. There is no corner-cutting,
no facile evasion of difficulties or enunciation of conclusions
unsupported by research: whether he is refuting Marx and
Lenin, dissecting the pragmatist approaches, delving into
the medieval Bhakti movement, or bringing Hindu
sociology up to date, there is always the same uncanny
mastery of the sources, joined to an enviable talent for
clarifying intricate logical puzzles. He seems to have
been born with a faculty for digesting the toughest kind
of material and refashioning it into orderly wholes. |