In each period of history, a few human beings change the course of events not by political machination or military conquest but through leading lives of absolute purity and resoluteness of moral purpose. Such a one was Gandhi, who altered the direction of Indian history with no weapon beyond an inflexible adherence to his moral, political and economic goals. Gandhi did not claim to be either a philosopher or a mystic, but there can be no doubt that behind his programme of action there lies a comprehensive worldview. Though this system of ideas does not follow exactly any of the classical patterns of Indian thought, it is clear that Gandhi’s deepest insights tend towards Advaita [nondual] Vedanta, blended with a profound admiration for the ethics of the Bhagavad Gita. On the basis of these beliefs, Gandhi formulated an ethical, political and economic programme which touched every aspect of life. Though he wrote and spoke in favour of this programme extensively – his Collected Works run to over seventy volumes – he never simply preached it at others. Everything he advocated he did: he believed firmly that the best recommendation for a philosophy or a religion is not a book, but the life it inspires.1
Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbandar, capital of the principality of Gujarat in western India. His father was chief minister of Porbandar, while his mother Putlibai divided her time between care for her family and religious devotion. Gandhi grew up in a religious ambience which compounded the worship of the Hindu god Vishnu with a strong element of Jainism, and thus from childhood was acquainted with the principle of ahimsa (love of all things or non-violence). After a local schooling in which he did not shine, and a child marriage at the age of 13, Gandhi’s family decided that he should become a barrister. To qualify he had to carry on his education in England, for which he set sail in late 1888, and where he remained until 1891.
Back in India, Gandhi found that his qualification did not open the door to a successful career. His natural diffidence did not help him to make a mark in an overcrowded profession. Offered a one-year post by an Indian law firm in Natal, Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1893, where his experiences were to change the course of his life. The racial oppression to which the Indians in South Africa were subjected by its European citizens transformed Gandhi into a political activist. He stayed there not for a year but until 1914, tirelessly campaigning against the legalized inequalities of the South African system, developing his technique of Satyagraha or non-violent resistance. True to his principles, however, during the Boer War Gandhi argued that Indians had a duty to the colony of Natal and organized an ambulance corps of over a thousand volunteers.
For the first few years after his return from South Africa, Gandhi took little part in Indian politics. He was finally provoked into action in 1919, in opposition to proposed legislation allowing the British to imprison without trial those accused of sedition. From that time until the end of his life, Gandhi was never to be far from the centre of the struggle for Indian independence. He used his technique of Satyagraha on a number of occasions to great effect, and transformed the Indian National Congress into a major political force. Not even he, however, could heal the rifts between Hindus and Muslims, and one of the greatest disappointments of his life was the creation of the state of Pakistan. His subsequent attempts to reconcile the conflicting elements in society did have some success, but equally attracted suspicion from both parties. It was a Hindu fundamentalist who shot him dead on 30 January 1948 in Delhi.2
At the base of Gandhi’s system of beliefs is his view of the nature of ultimate reality. This he refers to not as Brahman (as is usual in advaitism) but as Satya (S: Truth), a term derived from Sat, or Being. Satya or Truth alone can truly be said to be real:
It is That which alone is, which constitutes the stuff of which all things are made, which subsists by virtue of its own power, which is not supported by anything else but supports everything that exists. Truth alone is eternal, everything else is momentary.3
Being-as-is or Truth or God is nondual, and so beyond description in conceptual terms. Being nondual, it follows that it is false to assert that God has any properties since the possession of properties implies analysability and so non-unity. Hence Gandhi stresses that Truth is not a property of God, but is identical with God: ‘it is more correct to say that Truth is God, than to say that God is Truth.’4 Further, where there is Truth there is knowledge (S: chit), and where there is knowledge there is bliss (S: ananda), and so Gandhi can accept the classic Hindu description of ultimate reality as sat-chit-ananda.
Since Truth is nondual, it cannot be an object of normal human sense-experience or ratiocination, because both these modes of awareness are conceptual, and if it is to be experienceable at all, it must be so in some other way. Gandhi, unlike, for example, Vivekananda and Aurobindo, denied that he had had direct, mystical awareness of Truth, but he did claim to have had ‘glimpses’ of it,5 and these glimpses were by means of what he termed faith. By this term, he did not mean pure trust in authority or belief founded on no possible evidential experience, but rather a mode of awareness independent of either reason or the senses: ‘There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It transcends the senses . . . [and] Where there is realization outside the senses it is infallible.’6 Again, ‘Faith . . . does not contradict reason but transcends it. Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the purview of reason.’7 Reason and the senses are inadequate to the Truth: in their attempt to grasp it they must limit the illimitable. Any mode of awareness which bypasses them is more to be trusted and not less.8
The intuitions of faith are not awareness of something outside us but within us. Gandhi accepts the advaitist doctrine that the Atman or soul within us is identical with God: ‘God is not some person outside ourselves or away from the universe. He pervades everything and is omniscient as well as omnipotent . . . Atman is the same in every one of us.’9 A consistent advaitist metaphysic of this kind has implications for every other area of thought. Its fundamental consequence is that, if reality is one and divine, then to do harm to anyone or anything is to do harm to God, and this thought underlies the whole of Gandhi’s ethical and political stance.
The goal of life, in Gandhi’s ethics, is to serve God, and the only sure way to do this is to practise ahimsa: this means literally non-violence (S: himsa = violence), but a better English term for it is love, used in much the same sense as in the Christian injunction to love one’s neighbour as oneself. It is not correct to regard ahimsa as a means with realization of Truth as its goal. The distinction between means and ends is for a nondualist as unreal as other conceptual distinctions, and so Gandhi regards them as intersubstitutable notions:
when you want to find Truth as God the only inevitable means is Love, i.e. non-violence, and since I believe that ultimately the means and end are convertible terms, I should not hesitate to say that God is Love.10
In practice, to follow the path of ahimsa is to serve others: God is present in everyone, and so all must be the object of our service.11 If I am to serve others, I must eliminate attachment to my own ego and its desires. In other words, I must put myself absolutely last,
I must reduce myself to a zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.12
To put oneself last inevitably involves a good deal of self-discipline and self-restraint. One who has conquered the ego and is free of attachments Gandhi describes in the terms of the Gita as Sthitprajna or Samadhista (one stable in spirit). Such a one is unrufflable in adversity, and does not hanker after happiness.13
To follow the path of ahimsa will lead to the realization of one of Gandhi’s most cherished goals, Sarvodaya or the good of all, an ideal which follows directly from nondualism and ahimsa:14 since all there is is God, one must strive for the good of all. This doctrine brought Gandhi into conflict with many beliefs and institutions, both western and Indian, and he announced his views with a typical and unflinching regard for truth. Sarvodaya entails, for example, that utilitarianism must be rejected as an inadequate moral system, since it seeks to promote the good only of the greatest number, not of all:
[Utilitarianism] means in its nakedness that in order to achieve the supposed good of fiftyone percent, the interest of forty-nine percent may be, or rather, should be, sacrificed. It is a heartless doctrine and has done harm to humanity.15
Again, Sarvodaya entails a strict egalitarianism with regard to the treatment of others, and Gandhi was therefore bound to oppose all forms of unequal treatment of human beings. His campaign against racism in South Africa is one instance of this, but he had no more patience with the forms of inegalitarianism built into the institutions of his own country. It follows from the doctrine of the unity of Atman that women are to be valued as much as and are entitled to the same treatment as men, and this was far from being the case in Indian society:
My own opinion is that, just as fundamentally man and woman are one, their problem must be one in essence. The soul in both is the same. The two live the same life and have the same feelings. Each is a complement of the other.16
This does not mean that they have the same roles: Gandhi advocates a traditional division of labour with women as home-based raisers of the family and men as bread-winners, but he insists on the absolutely equivalent value of these roles, and on the need for chastity on the part of each partner. Again, Sarvodaya entails that Gandhi had to oppose the caste system in India, which relegated millions of his countrymen and women to the status of untouchables. These outcasts he preferred to call Harijans (children of God), and he argued tirelessly that this systematized inequality could not be ended quickly enough.17
The same absolute even-handedness moulds Gandhi’s views on religion. To anyone convinced of nondualism, the outward forms of the various religions are matters of little consequence. The same reality informs them all, no matter what names and forms are used to describe and worship it, and so such a metaphysic is a perfect ground for religious toleration. Any religion which binds us to Truth is of value, and this, in Gandhi’s view, is the function of them all:
I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world. I believe that they are all God-given, and I believe that they were necessary for the people to whom these religions were revealed. And I believe that, if only we could all of us read the scriptures of different faiths from the standpoint of the followers of these faiths, we should find that they were at bottom all one and were all helpful to one another.18
A further consequence of nondualism is that religion is not an optional component in human life: Atman and Brahman/Satchit-ananda are identical, and so God is part of our essence; therefore, ‘no man can live without religion. There are some who in the egotism of their reason declare that they have nothing to do with religion. But it is like a man saying that he breathes but that he has no nose.’19 The same Atman is present in us all: to deny the essentiality of religion is therefore blindness and error. Further, it follows from the principle of ahimsa and the goal of sarvodaya that religion must function for the good of all. Gandhi could not approve of any system of belief which recommended withdrawal from the ordinary world: ‘Religion which takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them, is no religion.’20
From this in turn it follows that politics, which has a considerable bearing on the well-being of individuals, cannot be independent of religion, and this is precisely Gandhi’s view. Positions in political thought follow from beliefs about metaphysics, ethics and religion in combination with beliefs about forms of government, the nature of the state, and related concepts. Gandhi believes in nondualism (and so the omnipresence of God), in ahimsa and sarvodaya. Therefore politics were of great concern to him:
For me, politics bereft of religion are absolute dirt, ever to be shunned. Politics concern nations and that which concerns the welfare of nations must be one of the concerns of a man who is religiously inclined, in other words, a seeker after God and Truth . . . Therefore in politics also we have to establish the Kingdom of Heaven.21
The Kingdom of Heaven on earth would come about if all people lived in the light of Truth. They would consistently put the desires of their own egos last, and therefore there would be no conflict of interests. Where there is no conflict of interests, there is no need for any political institution, including that of the state, and so Gandhi’s political ideal turns out to be an anarchy, i.e. the condition of society in which there is no government: ‘A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence [i.e. ahimsa] would be the purest anarchy.’22 Such a social order would not be anarchic in the secondary sense of the term, i.e. chaotic, since all its members would, in western vocabulary, be saints, and the interests of saints do not conflict.
Gandhi of course realized that this vision is an ideal only, and that in practice a political system based on the notion of a state will be needed for the foreseeable future. Consistently with his ideal, however, Gandhi subscribed to Thoreau’s view that the best form of government is that which governs least, i.e. because it has least need to do so. The more extensive and interventionist the state, the worse it is, Gandhi argues, for the further it intrudes into personal life, the less morally developed are its citizens, since they are invited to become lazy and less self-reliant.23 This combined set of moral and theological presuppositions informed Gandhi’s support for Swaraj (self-rule) on democratic lines for India. Swaraj, for him, was not a means whereby India could maximize its political power and set about bullying its neighbours, but on the contrary was to be informed by the ideals of ahimsa. Self-rule would increase the self-reliance of all Indians, and so develop them morally in the direction of Truth. Swaraj based on ahimsa involves absolute egalitarianism towards all citizens (and so total religious toleration), and beneficent relations with other states.
The political technique which Gandhi developed, from his South African years onward, to allow him to further these goals was Satyagraha. This means literally ‘Truth-force’, or, more idiomatically, ‘holding fast to Truth’. In practice, it is a technique of absolutely nonviolent resistance: Gandhi coined the term to differentiate his technique from that of passive resistance. This latter was a phrase in vogue in English in the early years of the century, having been used, for example, by the suffragettes. The technique was unacceptable to Gandhi since it did not entirely forswear violent means, and the suffragettes had, on occasion, resorted to violence.24 Any violence is incompatible with ahimsa and sarvodaya, and is entirely excluded from Satyagraha. The aim of Satyagraha is to wean one’s opponent from error by patience and sympathy. The only way genuinely to change someone’s convictions is to touch them emotionally by taking suffering on oneself. The essential procedure of the Satyagrahi is to refuse to submit to unjust laws or other objectionable institutions and to take the consequences without flinching, whether they involve deprivation of property, rights, liberty or even of life itself.
Such a technique is not for the faint-hearted, and in Gandhi’s view required a long period of spiritual training. The Satyagrahi must become indifferent to pain, imprisonment and poverty, and so to the features of life dearest to the ego. One who is indifferent to the ego is one who realizes Truth and so satisfies a further condition for the Satyagrahi, perfect religious faith: Gandhi is at one with the classical Hindu and Buddhist traditions in holding that only those who do not live in the ego are fearless.25 Gandhi also contended that celibacy (Brahmacharya) is a necessary part of the conduct of a Satyagrahi, since without it there will be a deficiency of inner strength.26 The ideal of the Satyagrahi is in effect identical with that of the ideal human being or Sthitprajna (man of steady wisdom) described above. In Gandhi, metaphysics, theology, ethics and politics are inseparable: the good man, the saint and the ideal political activist are the same, the seeker after Truth.
From a technical point of view, this set of beliefs no doubt involves some difficulties: no real consideration is given to the problem of the one and the many, or the issue of the status of the ordinary world or the question of evil, beyond cursory remarks that God has left us free to make our own moral choices.27 Gandhi would probably have smiled at such considerations, since they would have appeared to him, not unjustly, rather remote from the urgent business of addressing sharp injustice. The focus of Gandhi’s interest is in the area of practical morality, and here the grandeur and sincerity of the vision is beyond question. Philosophy for him was dead as soon as it became merely academic: ‘All our philosophy is dry as dust if it is not immediately translated into some act of living service.’28
Works frequently cited in the notes are The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, ed. Shriman Narayam, 6 vols, Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House, 1968, hereafter cited as SW + vol. number + page; and Gandhi’s In Search of the Supreme, ed. V.B. Kher, 3 vols, Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House, 1931, hereafter cited as ISS + vol. number + page.
1 As he puts it, ‘A rose does not need to preach. It simply spreads its fragrance . . . The fragrance of religious and spiritual life is much finer and subtler than that of a rose.’ SW, VI, pp. 270–271.
2 Gandhi’s own version of his life is set out in his An Autobiography, SW, I and II.
3 SW, VI, p. 96.
4 ibid. The same is true of any other alleged ‘properties’ of God, cf. ‘goodness is not an attribute. Goodness is God, (op.cit., p. 102); cf. also ISS, II, pp. 10–24.
5 SW, VI, pp. 95–96; cf. pp. 123 sqq.
6 op.cit., pp. 103–105.
7 op.cit., p. 106, cf. pp. 115 sqq.
8 This thesis in epistemology is more or less unavoidable in advaitism, cf. e.g., Radhakrishnan’s concept of intuition, which is very close to Gandhi’s notion of faith.
9 SW, VI, pp. 101 and 113.
10 SW, VI, p. 100, cf. ISS, II, pp. 25–59 passim.
11 SW, VI, p. 114.
12 op.cit., p. 125.
13 op.cit., p. 146, cf. Bhagavad Gita, Bk II, sections 55 sqq.
14 Sarvodaya is the term Gandhi used as the title for his Gujurati translation of Ruskin’s essay in economics Unto This Last (1860–1862), which he read as a young man and which crystallized many convictions to which he was to adhere for the rest of his life. cf. SW, VI, pp. 229–230; cf. also SW, IV, pp. 41–80; and An Autobiography, Pt IV, ch. xviii, SW, II, pp. 443–447.
15 SW, VI, p. 230; cf. a similar condemnation of utilitarianism by Vivekananda.
16 SW, VI, p. 480, cf. Constructive Programme, ch. 9, SW, IV, pp. 353–355.
17 cf. e.g. ISS, III, pp. 146 sqq.
18 SW, VI, p. 264, cf. ISS, III, pp. 3–60 for a detailed treatment of this issue. There are very similar views in the works of some other modern Hindus like Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan.
19 SW, VI, p. 117.
20 SW, VI, p. 264.
21 SW, VI, p. 435, cf. ISS, II, pp. 308 sqq.
22 SW, VI, p. 436.
23 cf., e.g. SW, VI, p. 438. For another defence of minimalist government, cf. the essay in this book on Lao Tzu (pp. 135–140). Thoreau’s point of view is set out in his essay ‘Civil disobedience’ (1849 and 1866).
24 cf. Satyagraha in South Africa, SW, III, ch. xiii: ‘Satyagraha v. passive resistance’.
25 cf. e.g. ISS, I, p. 53; SW, VI, p. 189.
26 cf. An Autobiography, SW, I, pp. 305–315; ISS, II, pp. 66–98; SW, VI, p. 198.
27 cf. e.g. SW, VI, p. 101.
28 Selected Letters, SW, V, p. 496.
Note: unless otherwise stated, these works were all issued by the Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad. Some are themselves composed of smaller pieces, which are again collected in the major selections listed below in ‘Sources and further reading’.
All Men are Brothers, Unesco, 1958
Caste Must Go, the Sin of Untouchability, 1964
Discourses on the Gita, 1960
Ethical Religion, 1969
Fasting in Satyagraha, its use and abuse, 1965
In Search of the Supreme, 3 vols, ed. V.B. Kher, 1931
Non-violence in Peace and War, 2 vols, 1960–1962
Satyagraha, Non-violent Resistance, 1951 and 1958
Truth is God, ed. R.K. Prabhu, 1955 and 1969
Badarayana, Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, Lao Tzu
Gandhi’s Collected Works, Government of India, Publication Division (publication began 1958, and is continuing), extend to more than seventy volumes, and most readers prefer to approach him via the several sets of thematically edited extracts now available. Principal among these are:
Bose, Niral Kumar, Selections from Gandhi, Ahmedabad, Navijivan Publishing House, 1948
Kher, V.B. (ed.), In Search of the Supreme, 3 vols, Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House, 1961 (1st edn 1931)
Narayam, Shriman (general ed.), The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 6 vols, Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House, 1968
Of the many books about Gandhi, the following dealing principally with his philosophy may be mentioned:
Datta, Dhirendra Mohan, The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1953
Richards, Glyn, The Philosophy of Gandhi, London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ, Curzon Press/Humanities Press, 1991
Shukla, Chandrashankar, Gandhi’s View of Life, Bombay, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1956
Verma, Surendra, Metaphysical Foundations of Mahatma Gandhi’s Thought, New Delhi, Orient Longman, 1970