Tradition, modernity and Gandhi’s ‘Hind Swaraj’

SATISH C. AIKANT

ONCE asked by an English reporter ‘Mr Gandhi, what do you think of the modern civilization?’ Gandhi famously quipped with a smile: ‘I think it would be a good idea.’ That comment by Gandhi is his critique of ‘modernity’,1 or the kind of modernity which is predicated on a complete disjunction from ‘tradition’.

By modern or western civilization Gandhi meant that ‘mode of conduct’ which emerged from the Enlightenment, and more exactly, from the Industrial Revolution. ‘Let it be remembered’, he wrote in 1908, ‘that Western civilization is only a hundred years old, or to be more precise, fifty.’2 The industrial revolution for him was much more than a mere change in the mode of life, embracing a people’s outlook on nature and human nature, religion, ethics, science, knowledge, politics and economics. According to this outlook, nature was taken to be an autonomous entity operating according to its own laws, something to be mastered and possessed at will for the satisfaction of human needs, desires and ambitions.

Gandhi condemned the outward manifestations of modern civilization wherein man and nature became mere objects to be managed, manipulated and used. The material world came to be looked upon as devoid of any spiritual significance and value. It is the working out of this worldview in reality that made modern civilization a ‘Satanic’ civilization in Gandhi’s view. This outlook brought about an epistemological revolution, which in turn paved the way for the reconstitution of political theory. Gandhi fervently believed that every civilization was nurtured by a specific concept of human beings, and if that conception was flawed it corrupted the entire civilization. That was perhaps the case with the modern civilization.3

Granted that modern industrial civilization characterized by such features as rationalism, secularization, the scientific culture, individualism, technological mastery of nature and the drive towards globalization, had many achievements to its credit, it was fundamentally flawed, which inevitably showed it to be aggressive, violent, exploitative and above all devoid of a sense of moral purpose. It was all due to the underlying conception of man that denied him basic humanity, privileging the body by neglecting the soul. It was mainly driven by the spirit of materialistic reductionism and devotion to endless consumption with the attendant concepts of ‘development’ and ‘progress’.

Gandhi rejected the modern West primarily because of its obsessively secular and scientific worldview. To him a culture, which did not have a theory of transcendence, could not be morally or cognitively acceptable. The ideological core of the modern world was post-Galilean science that prided itself on being the only fully secular body of knowledge. The legitimation of the modern West as a superior culture came from an ideology which viewed secularized societies as superior to the non-secular ones. With the acceptance of this ideology, the superiority of the West became an objective criterion of evaluation of other cultures.

Out of this ideology emerged the assumptions and conclusions of a self-confident Orientalism, particularly its views about the inferiority of the East and the superiority of the modernity of the West. Even a liberal like J.S. Mill endorsed this civilizational partition of the world and used the very doctrine of liberty to justify imperial rule over the world. Such misrepresentation was challenged by Gandhi.

We should, however, remember that Gandhi’s major criticism was directed against the ‘modern’ West. He called it modern rather than European or western partly to highlight its historical specificity, and partly to emphasize that Europe itself had long nurtured a different civilization that had much in common with its non-European counterparts, including the Indian. He lived with the hope that the ‘other West’, which was prior to it and was not tainted by this misrepresentation would one day reassert itself. He did not believe in the East/West dichotomy. If we look into his western intellectual sources it would suggest that his attack was limited to certain undesirable tendencies in modern western civilization and that the attack was not motivated by any consideration of narrow nationalism or anti-colonialism.

On the contrary, in Hind Swaraj4 he joins forces with many concerned western thinkers in the defence of true civilizational values everywhere, East and West. He even hoped for the day when England would reappropriate modernity within the framework of traditional British culture.5 East and West regularly meet in his worldview so much so that John Middleton Murry, claimed that Gandhi was the greatest Christian teacher in the modern world.6

By his own admission Gandhi picked up the idea of non-violence not from the Hindu scriptures but from the Sermon on the Mount. His charge against the West is not that its religion is inferior but that by wholeheartedly embracing the dubious virtues of modern civilization, it has forgotten the true teachings of the Christian faith. He harboured no hatred for the British, whom he loved as he would any fellow human as he declared ‘I bear no enmity towards the English, but I do towards their civilization.’7 All he condemned was ‘the present-day civilization of Europe.’8 The fundamental problem for him was an uncritical assimilation of the civilizational elements that were dominant in the West.9

Before we consider Gandhi as a critic of modernity and since modernity has a strong conflation with the West, we should bear in mind that Gandhi’s thinking was deeply imbricated in western thought, apart from its generation in the eastern tradition. Even when he attacks modernization, his arguments parallel Rousseau’s reading of civilization in The Discourse on the Origins of Inequality. Rousseau begins his narrative by referring to a state of nature where everyone is free and equal. When we leave its simplicity and innocence and march down the road of complexity, degeneration and acquisitiveness, the individuals lose their equality and freedom. We are implicated in our own misery because we do not see the costs of the new order.

For Rousseau the misery, alienation, and inequality generated by civilization can only be overcome with the smaller, simple, participatory communities, a vision of which he offers in the Social Contract.10 However, Gandhi parts company with Rousseau whose noble savage, defying tradition, stands alone rather than in a cosmos. Gandhi tries to revitalize tradition to protect autonomy of the individual. In fact, his legacy is all about autonomy, economic security, nonviolent resolution of conflict and participatory communities.11 His answer as to why modernity is an enemy of autonomy and not an ally is that he finds that with modernity, choices are driven by material factors such as productivity, consumption and conformity.12

Among the western thinkers it was Ruskin who had the most profound impact on Gandhi. In his Autobiography, Gandhi speaks of ‘the magic spell’ of Ruskin’s Unto This Last, which he had read in 1904 on a night journey from Johannesburg to Durban. It produced an instantaneous change in him. Ruskin had postulated ‘social affection’ as the basic principle of a humane economy, in place of self-interest and competition produced by modern political economy. Gandhi understood social affection in terms of the Hindu concept of daya (compassion). Thoreau remained a source of lifelong inspiration for him, though the genesis of satyagraha had occurred independently of him. Gandhi did find in him ample confirmation for his new philosophy. He paraphrased Principles of Civil Disobedience and published it in 1907 in Indian Opinion, the journal that he edited in South Africa.

Living through the era of British imperialism, and when the most insidious effects of colonialism13 were showing in India, Gandhi was anxious to teach the Indians that ‘modern civilization’ posed a greater threat to them than did colonialism and that in any case colonialism itself was a product of modern civilization. Gandhi repeatedly reminds us that the Raj, as exemplifying the priorities and structural features of Modern Civilization, illustrates the structural violence of the dominant status quo that must be challenged and overcome.14 It was in South Africa that he for the first time had become aware that modern civilization was at the root
of the colonial problem. If Lenin connected colonialism to capitalism, Gandhi went one step further and connected colonialism to modernity itself.15

Gandhi’s critique of modernity hinges on his view on obsessive materialism and doctrine of instrumental rationality and its imposition of these on the rest of the world. He sees modernity, unless unchecked, sweeping away everything that stands in its way as it tries to take charge of the world. At the heart of modernity is a questioning of and dissatisfaction with the present and a faith that reason alone, and the changes it fosters, will lead inevitably to a progressively better future. In his view modernity displaces other modes of thinking and moral points of reference, such as those found in religion, tradition, and the followers of rural societies. This is so, Gandhi believes, because modernity has only partial ways of organizing knowledge and guiding practice, at best it offers slices of knowledge but cannot collect its findings into a coherent whole.

Gandhi thought that each individual had his own distinct identity and was rooted in a specific cultural tradition. What was good for others was not necessarily good for him, and even when it was, he had to realize it in his own unique way. Rationalism ignored this vital truth and violated human integrity.16 While Gandhi’s critique of modernity was focused on modernist rationalism, it was equally opposed to a post-modern rejection of rationality. What Gandhi was pleading for is a richer concept of rationality. What he wanted was to contain excessive rationality within reasonable bounds without an irrational revolt against reason itself.17 Gandhi finds that modernity, fixed in present moment and unwilling to learn from the past, does not have the resources to correct its own defects.

What has shaped understanding of modernity in the West is a characteristic attitude toward history conceived as a metanarrative, which is in direct conflict with a cosmological outlook in places such as India where history is regarded in terms of its cyclic and mythic ramifications. History written as a metanarrative about progress carries the ring of objectivity and the aura of authenticity, as it tells its readers that what is recorded is truly important and what is discarded is simply irrelevant or unnecessary to the grand account of progress.18 Implicit in the metanarratives of progress is the claim that the present is better than the past and the future will be better still.

On the other hand, Gandhi complains that history, as the chronicle of violence, ignores the natural activities of individuals. History is ‘a record of an interruption of the course of nature. Soul-force, being natural, is not noted in history.’19

History does not record Truth, remarks Partha Chatterjee: ‘truth lies outside History, it is universal, unchanging.’20 Truth is moral, unified, unchanging and transcendental. It is not an object of critical inquiry or philosophical speculation and nor does science have any privileged access
to it. It can only be found in the experience of one’s life, by the unflinching practice of moral living and can never be correctly expressed within the terms of rational theoretical discourse, its true expression being lyrical and poetic. In his total commitment to personal ethic Gandhi refused to separate politics from religion. One could separate the two, he felt, only if one accepts Machiavellianism and realpolitik as the crux of politics and opted for unbridled instrumentalism leading to an artificial distinction between ends and means.

As against the modernity exemplified by a historical linearity, Gandhi extols tradition, which speaks to the moral, cooperative nature of man and challenges the self-interests that are lodged in every person and every society. Although each tradition is said to evolve from a common origin, he finds that each speaks in its own vernacular about the shared experiences, moral aspirations, and common problems that reside in their particular community. Western patterns of modernity are not the only authentic modernities, though they enjoy historical precedence and continue to be a basic reference point for others.21

Gandhi stressed: ‘My resistance to Western Civilization is really a resistance to its indiscriminate and thoughtless imitation based on the assumption that Asiatics are fit only to copy everything that comes from the West.’22 Every tradition was a resource, a source of valuable insights into the human condition, and part of a common human heritage. Gandhi wants individuals to work within their own tradition and, when appropriate, challenge what is defective in it since it can never be exempt from moral scrutiny. He knows as well as any critic of tradition that it can become corrupt and acknowledges that simply because something is ancient does not mean that it is beyond criticism or remains necessarily worthwhile.

Gandhi was not even interested in the historical underpinnings of texts such as the Gita or the Mahabharata. He remarked that ‘the persons therein described may be historical, but the author of the Mahabharata has used them merely to drive home his religious theme.’23 He regards the epics as ‘poetic’ describing ‘the eternal duel that goes on between the forces of darkness and light’ rather than as ‘historical documents.’ For him, ‘the shastras would be death traps if we were to regulate our conduct according to every detail in them or according to that of the characters therein.’24

He holds that the problem with contemporary Hinduism is that it has departed from its core principles. It has become moribund and weak, maintaining its presence through symbol and ritual, and retains little of the animating force that helps people morally locate themselves. As a corrective, Gandhi wants a reformed tradition to stand resolutely and to confront modernity on its way to expose its dangerous elements. His ideology therefore is of ‘critical traditionalism’. 25

Gandhi valorizes traditional India for as much as it was able to maintain a certain openness of cultural boundaries, a permeability that allows new influences to flow in and be integrated as a new set of age-old traditions. These two processes of inflow and outflow, rather than a rigidly defined set of practices, determine Indian culture at a given point of time. Since Gandhi’s Hinduism reaffirmed the non-canonical and the folk, his was a defence not of a religion or theology but of an open-ended way of life on the assumption that, with such a base, Indians would cope better with modernity. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj is not rejection of the liberative contribution of modernity. Rather his effort can be interpreted as an attempt to integrate these positive elements with a liberating reinterpretation of tradition thereby initiating critique within a tradition.

The appeal of Gandhi’s vision, in its advocacy of ‘critical traditionalism’ and the resultant debate between tradition and modernity engineered mobilization of social forces and inspired much of literature during the Indian freedom movement.

Gandhi contests the theory of colonial encounter as offering the originary moment of the arrival of Indian nation:

‘The English have taught us that we were not one nation before and that it will require centuries before we become one nation. This is without foundation. We were one nation before they came to India. One thought inspired us. Our mode of life was the same. It was because we were one nation that they were able to establish one kingdom. Subsequently they divided us.’26

The ideological inspiration for identity and nationhood was provided by what is by far the most significant document, Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, which is also Gandhi’s manifesto for ideological independence.27

Hind Swaraj is a civilizational text, in which Gandhi offers an innovative definition of civilization – one that draws upon the western notions of equality and social justice, and the Indian concept of good conduct, which is fundamentally associated with the idea of one’s ethical and social responsibilities. In advocating a balanced pursuit of material and moral values, Gandhi offered a ‘therapeutic solution’ to the crisis of modern civilization.28 In Hind Swaraj he put forward a different understanding of the term civilization: ‘Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty.’29

In Hind Swaraj the critique of modern civilization and the plea for a return to the simple self-sufficiency of ‘traditional’ village life were based on the idea that it was the very changelessness of Indian civilization, its timeless ahistoricity, which was proof of its truth. In its qualified resistance to change its civilization had found the true principles of social organization. Gandhi attacked the common view that civilizational process could be judged in terms of the sophistication of machines, technology and weapons, and standards of material comfort enjoyed by a society.’30

The attainment of swaraj was the immediate task facing colonial India. But here Gandhi draws a subtle distinction between ‘swaraj as self-rule’ and ‘swaraj as self-government’ (or home rule). Swaraj as self-rule is the rule of the self by the self. More precisely it is the rule of the mind over itself and the passions – the passions of greed and aggression. In particular self-rule enables one to pursue artha and kama within the bounds of dharma. As swaraj is something that is capable of being experienced within oneself, the inner experience of self-rule enables the citizens to reinforce their political ethics by their aesthetic feelings.

Gandhi very clearly gives priority to self-rule over self-government, and to both over political independence. Swaraj carries a sense of self-respect that is an antidote to the colonial rule. For Gandhi freedom in its most fundamental sense had to mean freedom for self-realization. But it had to be a freedom for all, right upto the last Indian. For him patriotism meant sarvodaya that focused on people’s welfare rather than on national pride. He emphasized that ‘By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, and, if I could secure it at the hands of the English, I should bow down my head to them.’31 He believed that swaraj was not something given by the leaders – Indian or British – it was something that had to be taken by the people for themselves.

Gandhi rejected even the dominant Indian approaches to swaraj since they were not built on approaches independent of the violent and oppressive modern civilization of the West with no understanding of the deeper ethical values that would inform them. Swaraj, he contended time and again, had to be grounded in morality, self-control, and selfless service to humanity which had been the cornerstone of the traditional Indian wisdom.

Gandhi argues that far from achieving the objectives of human needs, what modern civilization does is make man a prisoner of his craving for luxury and self-indulgence, release the forces of unbridled competition and thereby bring upon society the evils of poverty, disease, war and suffering.
It is precisely because modern civilization looks at man as a limitless consumer and thus sets out to open the floodgates of industrial production that it also becomes the source of inequality, oppression and violence on a scale hitherto unknown in human history. The fetishizing of technology and science and the consequent belief in the material advancement, in his view, compromised the great achievements of western civilization, such as the doctrine of human rights.

The ultimate aim before Gandhi was not simply to present a condemn-ation of the modern civilization but to suggest an alternative path, a critique and a blueprint of the civilization in the true sense of the word. Mass production, standardization, robotization, urbanization, speed and multiplication of wants through artificially induced desire for more and more has been the hallmarks of the modern civilization. Each of these postulates were forcefully demolished by Gandhi as nothing but the creation of Satanic civilization. He said: ‘If I preach against the bodily enjoyment, and ask men and women to go back to the simple life epitomized in the Charkha, I do so because I know, that without an intelligent return to simplicity, there is no escape from our descent to a state lower than brutes.’32

As a general rule Gandhi was against technologies, which replaced the uniquely human aspect of man. In advocating the use of a machine like the charkha, his argument would have been that the charkha was a morally superior and a techno-economically more effective machine than the cotton mill because it did not supplant human beings. Hind Swaraj, however, is not a rejection of the liberative contribution of modernity. On the other hand, it is an attempt to integrate these positive elements with a liberating reinterpretation of tradition.33

Gandhi has no doubt at all that the source of modern imperialism lies specifically in the system of social production which the countries of the western world have adopted. The spirit of ruthless competitiveness, which keeps the entire system going, impels these countries to seek colonial possessions, which can be exploited for economic purposes. But it is largely true that the British domination in India was secured by a comprador elite. As Gandhi observes, ‘The English have not taken India; we have given it to them. They are not in India because of their strength, but because we keep them.’34 He agrees that ‘no ideology legitimizing superior-inferior relations is worth its salt unless it wins at least a grudging assent in the minds of the dominated.’35 It is on such ideology that the theory of imperialism rests and any move for decolonization has to reckon with this fact.

It is evident that colonialism does not end with the end of colonial occupation. However, the psychological resistance to colonialism begins with the onset of colonialism. Thus, the very notion of a ‘colonial aftermath’ acquires a doubleness, inclusive of both the historical scene of the colonial encounter and its dispersal.36 Gandhi repeatedly insisted that the country must rid itself not only of British rule but also of the traditional forces of domination, such as untouchability, as well as tame the forces of modernity and modernization, which he believes, leave millions of Indians unemployed and destitute.

For Gandhi, any independence worthy of its name must be comprehensive. Above all Indians be self-governing as he lays particular stress on autonomy, since complete independence means the consciousness in the average individual that he is the master of his own destiny. In Gandhian view ‘If we become free, India is free. And in that thought you have a definition of swaraj.’37 If we have to decolonize our mind, we cannot do so with intellectual tools fabricated and honed in the western academy. Gandhi, one of the most original minds of the 20th century, would keep the windows of his house open but refused to be blown off his feet. If some of his prescriptions seem redundant his mode of resistance to the western domination retains its validity. Hind Swaraj is a text that speaks to our times by inviting us to rethink our dominant modern values.

Footnotes:

1. Modernity as understood in the West refers to the paradigmatic philosophic and scientific worldview that emerged in the wake of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Gandhi didn’t altogether reject this view of modernity and indeed endorsed many of its liberal key aspects such as its democratic aspect, freedom of the individual and respect for human rights.

2. M.K. Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Navjivan Trust, Ahmedabad, 1967-1984, hereafter CWMG, Vol. 8, p. 374.

3. Gandhi defined civilization as one that is characterized by ‘good conduct’ and enables one to master one’s own passions and observe one’s duties. Modern civilization with its colonial culture was aimed at the mastery of the world rather than mastery of the self.

4. M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj. Navjivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 2000. Hind Swaraj was written in Gujarati in1905 and was first published in an English translation in Johannesburg in 1910 after the original edition was proscribed by the Government of Bombay.

5. Anthony J. Parel (ed.), Gandhi: Hind Swaraj & Other Writings. Cambridge University Press, New Delhi, 1997, p. xlvii.

6. See Ashis Nandy, Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness. Oxford University Press, Delhi,1992, p. 128.

7. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, p. 90.

8. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 14, p. 157.

9. David Hardiman, Gandhi in His Time and Ours. Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2009, p. 70.

10. Rousseau’s critique of civilization parallels Gandhi’s observation that modern civilization brings its own forms of degeneration.

11. Ronald J. Terchek, Gandhi: Struggling for Autonomy. Vistaar Publications, New Delhi, 2000, p. 237.

12. Ronald J. Terchek, ‘Gandhian Autonomy in the Late Modern World’ in Anthony J. Parel (ed.), Freedom and Self-Rule. Vistaar Publications, New Delhi, 2002, p. 56.

13. Modernity in India is connected to colonialism since our contact with the modern West was through colonialism. But it also has components which resist the alien. As such it should draw upon the dynamic of culture itself, a dynamic that engages constantly with old and new, inside and outside, to create regenerative cultural forms.

14. Douglas Allen, ‘Hind Swaraj: Hermen-eutical Questions of Interpretation, Mythic Construction, and Contemporary Relevance’, Journal of Contemporary Thought 30, Winter 2009, pp. 24-25.

15. Parel, Gandhi: Hind Swaraj & Other Writings, p. xxi.

16. Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997, p. 69.

17. Rudolf C. Heredia, ‘Interpreting Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj’, Economic and Political Weekly 34(24), 12-18 June 1999, p. 1498.

18. Raghavan Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1973, p. 102.

19. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, p. 68.

20. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1986, p. 94.

21. S.N. Eisenstadt, ‘Multiple Modernities’, Daedalus 129(1), Winter 2000, p. 3.

22. Hardiman, Gandhi in His Time and Ours, p. 71.

23. Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, p. 94.

24. Quoted in Terchek, Gandhi: Struggling for Autonomy, p. 64.

25. Nandy, Traditions, Tyrrany and Utopias, p. 153.

26. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, p. 40.

27. Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Non-violent Power in Action. Columbia University Press, New York, 1993, p. 16.

28. Tara Sethia and Anjana Narayan (eds.), The Living Gandhi: Lessons for Our Times. Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2013, p. 6.

29. Hardiman, Gandhi in His Time and Ours, p. 68.

30. Ibid.

31. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, ch. 15.

32. Gandhi, Young India, 21-7-1921, p. 228.

33. Heredia, ‘Interpreting Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj’, p. 1497.

34. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, p. 34.

35. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph, Gandhi: The Traditional Roots of Charisma. Orient Longman, Bombay, 1987, p. 13.

36. Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999, p. 17.

37. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, p. 56.