The problem

IN the last years of his life Gandhi was plagued by doubt. These were no ordinary doubts. On 20 November 1946, he publicly declared; ‘I am unable to discover the truth. There is terrible mutual distrust. Oldest friendships have snapped. Truth and ahimsa, by which I swear, and which have sustained me for sixty years, seem to fail to show the attributes I have ascribed to them.’1 On that day he wrote to the ashramites at Sevagram that he may never return to the ashram, reminiscent of his earlier decision to leave the ashram at Sabarmati. He wrote of the darkness that enveloped him. ‘Is the satyagraha of my conception a weapon of the weak or really that of the strong?’2 Henceforth, his quest would be to realize the latter or lay down his life in an attempt to attain it. He decided to ‘bury’ himself in a devastated village – Srirampur.

This was probably the darkest hour for Gandhi. Never before had he spoken of being so completely uncertain of everything that sustained him. Snapped friendships, not just between Hindus and Muslims, but his own; and worse, deep distrust among his co-workers had eroded his affective universe which had become frayed with the passing away of Charlie Andrews, the only person to address him as Mohan, of Gurudev Tagore who constantly reminded him of the meaning of the term Mahatma, and Kasturba and Mahadev Desai whom he had left behind in Aga Khan Palace prison.

His despondency, however, was not rooted in just this. He was experiencing an essential doubt. Hitherto, he had spoken of his own inabilities, inadequacies. In this instance, he doubted the very attributes that he had ascribed to truth and ahimsa. Earlier, the source of doubt, of darkness, was always within, rooted in the incomplete nature of his quest. He saw himself as unable to attain the measure of truth and ahimsa that kept growing taller like the lathi that he carried in his hand. But, in this instance, he questioned the very nature of truth and ahimsa to attain the attributes that he had ascribed to them. The inadequacy, he seemed to suggest, lay not in him but in the inability of truth, ahimsa to measure up to the ideal that he had set for them. If satya lacked the attributes ascribed to it, so would satyagraha. Gandhi seemed to suggest that satyanarayan had failed him and so had daridranarayan by turning against each other in a rapacious orgy of death and devastation. The moment of darkness soon passed, as Gandhi began to question his own inadequacies. His quest led him to brahmacharya, as conduct that leads one to Truth, and eventually to a death that he desired.

Why speak of Gandhi’s darkness so many decades after his passing? Let us consider the possibility that the doubts that Gandhi expressed in his moment of darkness persist. His doubts live vicariously in and through us; if dreams and aspirations can, so can darkness.

These doubts are of three kinds: (i) In our lack of belief in the efficacy and attributes of ahimsa as the only true measure. (ii) In our lack of belief in Gandhi’s quest to be a devotee of, a bearer of truth and ahimsa. (iii) Gandhi remains friendless, as he was in 1946. We distrust not only his method and intent, we have come to distrust the man himself.

Given these doubts and questions, a problem arises. This could be posed as a question of method as also that of self-practice. How does one think with Gandhi? Because think of Gandhi we must. For no other reason but as someone who sought answers about the very structure that upholds life, society, civilization and our relationship with Truth.

Thinking against Gandhi is easy. It would suffice to say that he was not an aptavachana, that the divide between his words and deeds was purposeful. This kind of doubt refutes and denies his claim to be a devotee of truth. This is different from saying that he had many failings, but his striving to overcome them was truthful.

We often think of Gandhi. In moments of crisis, both personal and civilizational, not necessarily as the only true measure but as someone who could be an ally in our own struggles, we think of a man who so fervently sought and cultivated friendships as a friend. It is another matter that we usually do not think of him in moments of triumph; he somehow has become dreary in our imagination and hence not fit for celebration.

Is it possible to think with Gandhi? Would it require submission, surrender? What is meant here is not a suspension of disbelief, or a surrender of either critical distance or proximity. Rather, what we fear is the surrender of self-volition. There are two domains where surrender could be required: one is the acceptance in the final analysis of the quest for Truth in all domains, including and perhaps primarily in politics. The other is a personal surrender, not in an act of imitation but in an ashramic way. Does one have to aspire to live an ashramic life to think with Gandhi? The question of surrender is of some significance. Gandhi saw his life as one of prayer which required submission to satyanarayana and his constructive work was in the form of surrender to daridranarayana. His desire was that he should be able to listen to his inner voice, an act that required total surrender of self-volition.

Surrender often suggests a loss of critical ability; in fact, it might give one a greater capacity for evaluation of the ideal. One is tempted to give the example of philosopher Kishorelal Mashruwala, an ashramite of long years, one of finest interlocutors of Gandhi’s ideas and along with Mahadev Desai, an enduring example of the robust intellectual tradition of the ashram. He was the man who challenged the fundamental grounds of Gandhi’s quest for brahmacharya. So the answer to the second question is a simple no. A personal surrender to either the person of Gandhi or his practice is not necessary to think with Gandhi.

What is required to both think with and against Gandhi is a desire for a moral universe. The person who exemplifies this like none other is Babasaheb Ambedkar. Neither Ambedkar nor Gandhi wanted either the past as lived or the possible future within an order that denied humanity to the last person. Equality is fundamentally a moral idea. The conception of equality that Gandhi posited was unacceptable to Ambedkar just as his notion of equality remained incomprehensible to Gandhi and yet both strove for a moral order. Annihilation of Caste is located on a moral ground that is outside the structure of attention of Hindu savarna society, to which it was addressed in the first instance. It lies outside the structure of attention not because it denies and denounces the Hindu caste order, but because it posits a radically new, unprecedented notion of equality. What Ambedkar posits is a new morality. This morality is based on equality of humiliation. Consider this possibility before rejecting it. The only true equality that is possible for him is that all of us – men-women, savarna, dalit – experience equal humiliation. Humiliation is an experience in time and space; it is also one of the most subjective of human experiences. Humiliation necessarily requires a hierarchical relationship. Ambedkar’s striving was to create a moral order wherein we are all equal in our humiliation.

What Gandhi failed to understand about Ambedkar’s argument and the inhumanity of caste is that there is a fundamental moral difference between humiliation and shame. One can experience a deep sense of shame at the humiliation of others, but this experience, however deep, is not the same as the experience of humiliation. Similarly, a shared sense of shame is morally not the same as an equally felt sense of humiliation. Gandhi who understood self-volition as few others have, did not see that humiliation is not a matter of self-volition. It cannot be willed on to the self; it can only be inflicted. The moral community of co-sufferers who shared the historical and particular experience of humiliation remained outside Gandhi’s grasp.

And despite this failure to have a moral conversation, both Gandhi and Ambedkar thought through the imperatives of the structure of moral categories. To think with either requires submission to the necessity of virtue, not just the virtues of justice and autonomy and equality, but the virtue of care.

Thinking in a caring way is thinking with Ambedkar, as is thinking with Gandhi.

TRIDIP SUHRUD

 

Footnotes:

1. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), vol. 86, p. 138.

2. Ibid., p. 143.