Mahatma Gandhi

Key ideas

1. Truth as the end. Gandhi wrote that what he had been striving to achieve for thirty years was self-realisation, “to see God face to face, to attain Moksha”, and that all his ventures in the political field were directed to that end. Truth, satya, was for him the name of God.
2. Satyagraha. His name for nonviolent resistance, from satya, truth, and āgraha, firmness: “the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence”. It refuses to use force, accepts the penalty for breaking an unjust law, and aims to win the opponent over, not to defeat them.
3. Ahimsa. Nonviolence has a long history in Indian religious thought; Gandhi is described as the first to apply it in politics on a large scale. It was not passivity: he preferred violence to cowardice, though he held nonviolence to be infinitely superior to violence.
4. Swaraj. In Hind Swaraj he wrote that “Real home-rule is self-rule or self-control”. Political independence therefore needs personal discipline, and since the English “have not taken India; we have given it to them”, it can be won by withdrawing Indian co-operation.
5. Critique of modern civilisation. Hind Swaraj defines civilisation as “that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty”, and judges the civilisation of the machine harmful. Against it he set swadeshi, the use of what one’s own country produces, and the hand loom.
6. Sarvodaya. Ruskin’s Unto This Last, which he rendered into Gujarati as Sarvodaya, “the welfare of all”, taught him that the good of the individual is contained in the good of all, and that a life of labour on the land or at a craft is the life worth living.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948), called Mahatma, “great-souled”, was an Indian lawyer and political ethicist. He developed satyagraha, a method of nonviolent resistance grounded in truth, and used it to lead the campaign against British rule in India. He wrote no systematic philosophy; his thought is in a short political book, an autobiography and decades of journalism, but it argues for a view of political authority and of the moral limits of political means.

What was his life?

He was born in Porbandar, Gujarat, into a Hindu family. He trained in law at the Inner Temple in London, where he read the Bhagavad Gītā with Theosophist friends. Unable to establish a practice in Bombay, he went to South Africa in 1893 for a case and stayed twenty-one years. There he met racial discrimination, helped to found the Natal Indian Congress, started Indian Opinion, and began the campaigns that became satyagraha.

In 1915 he returned to India. After the Champaran and Kheda campaigns of 1917–18 he assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921. He led the Salt March of 1930, about 390 kilometres from Ahmedabad to Dandi, and the Quit India call of 1942. He opposed the partition of 1947, spent independence day fasting and spinning in Calcutta, and was shot dead by Nathuram Godse in Delhi on 30 January 1948.

What is satyagraha?

The first campaign began at a mass meeting in Johannesburg on 11 September 1906, against a law requiring Indians in the Transvaal to register. Only afterwards did it get a name, from a competition in Indian Opinion. Maganlal Gandhi proposed sadāgraha, firmness in a good cause, and Gandhi changed it to satyagraha because truth implies love, and firmness is a kind of force. He gave up “passive resistance”, he said, because it caused confusion and was a foreign phrase.

Hind Swaraj puts the method plainly: “If I do not obey the law and accept the penalty for its breach, I use soul-force.” The resister does not injure the opponent, accepts suffering, and aims to win the opponent over. Later campaigns used nonviolent protest and non-co-operation on a large scale.

What are truth and nonviolence for Gandhi?

His autobiography begins from a religious aim: self-realisation, “to see God face to face, to attain Moksha”. He drew his power for political work, he said, from his experiments in the spiritual field. Truth, satya, was his name for God. Ahimsa, nonviolence, was older than he was, in Jain and Hindu thought; his contribution was to apply it in politics at scale. It did not mean passivity: he preferred violence to cowardice. His recruiting of soldiers for the British war effort in 1918 raised the question of whether he was consistent, and the question has been discussed ever since.

What is swaraj?

Swaraj, self-rule, is the theme of Hind Swaraj, a dialogue between a Reader and an Editor, written on his voyage from London to South Africa. Real home-rule, the Editor says, is self-rule or self-control. A country that wanted “English rule without the Englishman” would not have it: “This is not the Swaraj that I want.” He also argues that “The English have not taken India; we have given it to them”. Their power rests on Indian co-operation, and if it were withdrawn it would collapse. That is a theory of political authority as dependent on the people governed, which is why the book is read in political philosophy. The library has it as Indian Home Rule.

What did he say about modern civilisation?

He defined civilisation as “that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty”, and by that test thought machine civilisation harmful: “It is necessary to realise that machinery is bad.” Later he added that he was not trying to destroy all machinery and mills. In its place he urged swadeshi, living on what one’s own country produces. From Ruskin’s Unto This Last, which he translated as Sarvodaya, “the welfare of all”, he took three lessons: that the good of the individual is contained in the good of all, that all honest work is of equal worth, and that the life of the tiller and the craftsman is the life worth living.

What are the criticisms?

In his early years in South Africa he distinguished Indians from black Africans in ways that scholars such as Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed regard as discriminatory; his views changed, and by 1910 Indian Opinion was reporting discrimination against Africans. Ambedkar disagreed with him over separate electorates for the untouchables, and in 1945 dismissed his ideas in strong terms. Jinnah accused him of reviving Hinduism through politics. His late experiments in celibacy were criticised by his own colleagues.

What was his influence?

His method inspired movements for civil rights and freedom elsewhere, and his birthday, 2 October, is the International Day of Nonviolence.

How should you start reading Gandhi?

Read Hind Swaraj first, in the chapters on civilisation and on passive resistance. Then read the autobiography’s Introduction and its chapter in Part IV on Ruskin, and chapters XII and XIII of Satyagraha in South Africa. The UGC NET syllabus lists Gandhi in Unit 5, and the UPSC Philosophy optional has “Gandhi and Ambedkar” on caste discrimination; see the UGC NET guide, the UPSC guide and Indian political thought.