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Gandhi in Political theory To the memory of Prof. K.J. Shah And to the future of the voices of swaraj. Gandhi in Political theory truth, law and experiment anuradha VeeraValli University of Delhi, India © anuradha Veeravalli 2014 all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. anuradha Veeravalli has asserted her right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company Wey court east 110 cherry Street union road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, Vt 05401-3818 Surrey, Gu9 7Pt uSa england www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Veeravalli, anuradha. Gandhi in political theory : truth, law and experiment / by anuradha Veeravalli. pages cm includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-2284-2 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-2285-9 (ebook) -- ISBN 978- 1-4724-2286-6 (epub) 1. Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948--Political and social views. 2. Po- litical science--Philosophy--History--20th century. 3. Civilization, Modern--20th century- -Philosophy. i. title. dS481.G3V37 2014 320.01--dc23 2014006156 ISBN 9781472422842 (hbk) ISBN 9781472422859 (ebk – PDF) ISBN 9781472422866 (ebk – ePUB) III Printed in the united Kingdom by henry ling limited, at the dorset Press, dorchester, dt1 1hd Contents Preface vii Glossary xi 1 Introduction: Truth, Law and Experiment in Political Theory 1 2 Presuppositions of War and Peace: The Mind, the World and the Law of Non-violence 23 3 Sovereignty: Individual, Civil Society and the State 49 4 Territory: Nationalism, Identity and Frontiers 75 5 The Science of Peace: Industrialization and the Political Economy 95 6 Presuppositions of Pluralism: Experiments in Unity, Equality, and Difference 119 Index 143 This page has been left blank intentionally Preface My claim that there is virtually no book that focuses on Gandhi’s theoretical presuppositions and method in a sustained and systematic way may have the unintended consequence of appearing to suggest that no one has worked on Gandhi’s theory/theories, or that other theories are incomplete or that they are not theoretical at all. I merely wish to argue that Gandhi’s theoretical presuppositions and method are not the focus of these works. What I have in mind, for instance, is that his insistence on the experiment as central to his theory and method, his focus on the laws of human existence as that which stand to be tested, and his clear insistence that his political vision is based on political method rather than on creed, and other such conscious engagement that Gandhi had with theoretical issues, have not been investigated. I believe and wish to argue that Gandhi not only has an incisive grasp of the foundational principles of post-Enlightenment political theory, the modern nation state and modern civilization but he also presents a systematic critique of and challenge to mainstream political theory on issues such as the nature of man, the relation between individual, society and the state, sovereignty, territory and technology. For those who think that there is no such overarching defining characteristic of post-Enlightenment thought I do believe that modernity as a point of view and method of classification, which differs fundamentally in its epistemological, metaphysical and cosmological presuppositions from medieval thought, began with the Enlightenment. The dominant mode of post-Enlightenment thought followed from the Cartesian dualism of mind and the world and mind and body. I have briefly explained why I think this is so and later drawn out the implications in terms of the dualism of private and public sphere, idealism and realism, universalism and relativism and most importantly, of means and ends. I consider Cartesian dualism as foundational to post-Enlightenment thought or its dominant mode. Viewed as a point of view of the dominant thought of post-Enlightenment age then, one can locate exceptions in what is characterised as modern Western philosophy, as indeed I have, in Leibniz and Hume. These are by no means intended to be exhaustive but help in understanding the genealogy of Gandhi’s epistemological position; more importantly, to see that their thought has met with a fate which, in many ways, is not very different from what Gandhi’s has. The discussion, in the Introduction, of how the readings of Gandhi fall short, in fact, demonstrates the significance of Gandhi’s intervention by showing how the positivist point of view that dominates much of post-Enlightenment methods of classification and analysis, including that of political theory, is ill equipped not viii Gandhi in Political Theory only to understand Gandhi but also to bridge the gap between theory and practice and the normative and the descriptive. Their limitations spring from the very presuppositions that Gandhi attacks. Therefore they are blind to the experiment and see it as hyperbole or as another word for Gandhi’s activism. While they are appreciative of his politics, they cannot understand, for instance, what place his experiments in celibacy have in his scheme. This is not a crisis merely in understanding Gandhi but is symptomatic of a recognized problem within the social sciences, in general, and political theory, in particular. The point I am trying to make is that the reasons for the limitations in the readings of Gandhi, in a sense, themselves reveal the significance of Gandhi’s experiments when looked at in the context of apparently irresolvable questions that have bothered social science theory. The social sciences (especially Political theory) do not envisage the possibility of any clinching experiment to establish the veracity of a theory since there is the question whether theory in social sciences can be at all value or ideology neutral. However, this is to define neutrality and objectivity as necessarily arising only from a separation from the subject i.e. from matters of value. By this view, involvement with the subject necessarily contaminates truth with subjectivity. Social scientists have accepted this as a handicap with which they need to work vis-à-vis the standards of objectivity set by modern science. However, what follows from this is a separation or dualism of subject and object and a separation of means and ends, thereby laying the ground for vivisectionist science where the end justifies the means just as much as desirable means justify the end. It is here that Gandhi intervenes, insisting on the unity of means and ends, of following the law of non-violence as a necessary means to truth and its objectivity based on conscience. Therefore the extent of success or failure of an experiment lies only in determining how much we have perfected the law of non-violence, i.e. the means. It is primarily in this sense that the one who experiments is witness and not mere observer and in this lies at once its objective subjectivity and subjective objectivity. Gandhi’s intervention is not, as is generally supposed, an intuitive, unsystematic, crude or experiential one (Dhareshwar 2010 and Bilgrami 2012). Dhareshwar talks of Gandhi’s concern being with the experiential occlusion that colonial thought has created which has prevented us from direct experience of our own life, ethical thinking, and culture. Akeel Bilgrami finds in Gandhi’s critique of modernity a questioning of some of the deepest commitments of the Enlightenment from an approach influenced by his Vaishnav background. However, he finds Gandhi’s treatment of modernity ‘encapsulated’, ‘unsystematic’ and ‘instinctive’. He finds Gandhi’s remarks blaming modern science for the evils of modernity ‘crude’ and as ‘conflating’ modern science with the metaphysics that grew around it. Bilgrami therefore attempts to find a genealogy in the dissenting tradition of the ‘early radical enlightenment’ to render Gandhi’s remarks more systematic. Few want to grant Gandhi his own engagement with theory and method. Consequently, attempts to systematize him look at his thought or his practice as representing an alternative Indian way of looking at certain issues in political theory, or as being akin to certain approaches that have existed in political Preface ix theory rather than as a systematic body of thought, presuppositions and method of analysis. My introduction and later chapters do refer to these readings and others as and when appropriate. However, the focus and thrust of the argument is towards understanding the theoretical context of the presuppositions of the counter perspective that Gandhi’s experiments provide from a reading of key and classic positions in modern thought with respect to the issues that the experiments raise. Absence of work in this area is then partly responsible for the glaring absence of Gandhi from mainstream political theory in particular and as a point of view to contend with in the university, in general. This book attempts to understand the point of view, presuppositions and method of Gandhi’s experiments with Truth with specific reference to political theory within a framework which I believe is crucial to understanding Gandhi, that of the necessary relation between science, religion and politics. From his analysis of modern civilization Gandhi concludes that it is built on presuppositions of war/violence, not simply that it is violent or materialistic in nature. His effort then is to work out the non-violent foundations, in other words, the very presuppositions of peace in society and in the political theory that would inform the institutions of society and governance, and to set before us some worked out illustrations in the form of his experiments. Since the Enlightenment, the course taken has been predominantly Aristotelian rather than Platonic. To my mind what was at stake in their disagreement over epistemology, metaphysics and politics was the opposition of the presuppositions of peace with the presuppositions of war. Post-Enlightenment, however, the debate is no longer between the presuppositions of war as opposed to presuppositions of peace but about restoring and sustaining peace in a society that presupposes war as a natural condition of man (Hobbes). I make this point to argue that in Gandhi we see a revival of this more fundamental question about the presuppositions of war, and peace and that for him it does not remain a question of policy as it does in Kant, or even in Rousseau. It is a matter of the law of non-violence as a necessary means to the Truth of existence. It seems to me that if we can characterize modernity and the dominant tradition of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought as following a point of view, as Gandhi did, then we are better able to understand Gandhi and what it is that he is opposing. The conviction underlying this effort is that this would present the possibility of the study of science religion and politics from a point of view of swaraj or self-rule, which lies at the heart of Gandhi’s life and thought. This is not an attempt then to recover from India’s colonial hangover, a thing of the past, something which many would argue is today, with her coming into her own, a needless exercise. Self-rule as Gandhi understood it is the very essence of human existence and civilization and is not confined to India or any moment in history. It places sovereignty in civil society and ultimately in the individual rather than the state. Each nation would however have to realize it in its own fashion suited to its custom, culture and political economy, in keeping with its own genius. Eschewing universalism, Gandhi envisages unity in difference. Each