Douglas Allen Reviews Ramachandra Guha’s ‘Arguments with Gandhi’

Influential Indian public intellectual Ramachandra Guha authored a two-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi Before India, published in 2013, covers Gandhi’s early life and his years in South Africa. Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 1914-1948, published in 2018, covers the remainder of Gandhi’s life in India, ending with his assassination in January 1948.

As Guha emphasises throughout Arguments with Gandhi, this is a follow-up to his two-volume biography, but a radically different kind of book. It is based on his meticulous research and reading, not only the 97 volumes of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, but also hundreds of other works, including influential and obscure writings by Gandhi, his contemporary admirers and critics, and others, over the decades. This book is meant to go far beyond the usual kind of biography. Guha wants to open spaces for reflections by Gandhi and his argumentative supporters and critics, and new spaces for Guha’s own imaginative speculations.

Arguments with Gandhi is structured into four parts that Guha repeatedly presents as anchoring his entire study: Violence vs. Non-violence, Pursuit of Justice, Debating Faith and Questioning Progress. Key to the 11 chapters and brief epilogue (‘Arguments Continued’) is examination and reflections on open-ended, dialogical, dialectical, ongoing arguments with Gandhi (with Gandhi himself, with diverse and contradictory supporters and critics, also often with Guha himself in terms of his own journey).

Arguments with Gandhi is well-written, scholarly but also easy to read, engaging scholars and others unfamiliar with the literature. Consistent with Guha’s approach, it will make readers more well-informed, but also leave them with unanswered questions open to further reflections.

Of the numerous topics in the book, consider Guha’s chapter ‘Gandhi in America’ and the ‘American Gandhi’, focusing on Martin Luther King and his appreciation for Gandhi, addressing violence and the strengths of non-violence. Guha emphasises King’s first book, Stride toward Freedom and his account of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott. In the key chapter ‘Pilgrimage to Non-violence’, King shares why in Gandhi he found the answers lacking in earlier educational, and religious training and practices. Guha insightfully shares all kinds of valuable information on well-known and extremely obscure influences on King and others in the Montgomery boycott experience, as King emerges as the ‘American Gandhi’. At the same time, what is evident is that Guha often ignores or marginalises what is significant about King, Rosa Parks, the related Civil Rights students and other movement leaders, thus leaving this open for our ongoing reflections.

Similarly, Guha offers valuable presentations of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Gandhi, and Ambedkar versus Gandhi relations and legacies. To achieve desired effects, he oversimplifies, and omits complexities and contradictions, in presenting clear binary contrasts of untouchable/Dalit Ambedkar versus Gandhi, focusing on caste, and sometimes relating this to other topics. In furthering his project, Guha abstracts from contextual complexities, focusing on Ambedkar-Gandhi differences and ignoring similarities. This has many positive results. Guha is then able to focus on the radical (not bourgeois, liberal, Constitutional, Cabinet Minister) Ambedkar of ‘The Annihilation of Caste’, how Ambedkar is later embraced and glorified, and recent decades of militant Ambedkarites and other Dalits who hate Gandhi. Once again, this leaves Guha and his readers with openings for unanswered questions, timely issues and ongoing reflections. For example, are past and current Ambedkar-Gandhi relations much more complex, diverse, contradictory, meaningful and creative, going beyond Guha’s minimal proposal of a very weak synthesis? Has Guha left us with significant room to reimagine and reapply Ambedkar-Gandhi dialectical relations with regard to caste, violence and non-violence, socialism, capitalism, the state, religion, culture, environmentalism, multi-dimensional sustainability, and other pressing contemporary topics?

One can makes similar responses, appreciating Guha’s valuable presentations, interpretations and applications, while leaving open opportunities for new meaningful and relevant reflections, with regard to his consideration of Gandhi, his supporters, and critics related to Indian and anti-Indian racism, including violent views of racialised superiority and hierarchical domination, and to complex gender issues of violent sexist views of patriarchal oppression and hierarchical domination, and much more. Guha leaves himself and readers with openings to imagine, construct and apply creative meaningful possibilities, say, for a Gandhian-informed and non-Gandhian-informed life and world embracing gender and racial equality, non-violence and democratic empowerment in which all have voices that are heard and make a difference. Such openings challenging us are one of the most unusual and most valuable features of Arguments with Gandhi.

Guha concludes with a brief summary of the four parts, the four themes that anchor and structure his book.

Part I: Theme of Violence vs. Non-violence. While granting Gandhi’s diverse complex relations with Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose, Nehru, and others and serious qualifications or extreme rejections by Savarkar, Godse, Orwell, Arendt, Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and others, Guha leaves us with Gandhi’s enduring legacy. He raises our consciousness about Gandhi’s critique of violence, the need today to engage in struggles for resisting violence, providing values, structures and action-oriented policies of ahimsa/non-violence, and developing human potential so all beings can survive and flourish. We are left with openings for reflecting on Gandhi’s strongest legacy, in which selective reimagined and reapplied Gandhi-informed non-violence is essential for moving toward greater equality, peace, mutual respect, diverse legitimate pluralism, democracy and realisation of our essential interconnected unity with respect for contextualised diversity.

Part 2: Theme of the Pursuit of Justice. Gandhi evolved from earlier racist views to racial equality, from earlier sexist views to gender equality, but perhaps has little to offer those today suffering from racism and patriarchal oppression. However, his ideas may still have relevancy in relating to caste, especially current extreme caste oppression with rising violent expressions of Hindutva and neo-Brahmanism. Guha then briefly mentions Ambedkar-Gandhi dynamic relations, with appropriate elevation of Ambedkar and Dalit perspectives, but he refers to several Indians who caution against a wholesale rejection of Gandhi, against viewing Ambedkar and Gandhi as rigid adversaries, and for current ‘synthesis’ of their relevant legacies. Once again, this leaves us with openings for reflecting on possibilities for new creative Ambedkar-Gandhi relations but also for questioning whether Gandhi-informed perspectives have so little to offer relating to racism and sexism, and whether the proposed Ambedkar-Gandhi ‘synthesis’ is much too weak and limited.

Part 3: Theme of Debating Faith. There isn’t much in this brief summary of Gandhi’s extensive writings and actions promoting interfaith dialogue and religious pluralism. Guha refers to well-known views of Akbar, Ashoka and Vivekananda. He notes that when one examines what is happening today in India, it is easy to judge Gandhi’s theme of interfaith ideologue and religious pluralism a hopeless failure. On the other hand, in leaving us with openings for further reflection, Guha proposes that this makes Gandhi’s ideas even more relevant to the present.

Part 4: Theme of Questioning Progress. In this brief summary, fragmented and skimming along the surface, Guha notes and critiques dominant modern beliefs of ‘progress’ promoting unlimited economic growth, ever-expanding materialist consumerism, and control and exploitation of nature. He notes several Gandhi-informed struggles resisting such views of progress: the Chipko movement, environmental activists concerned with climate change and the need for a strong environmental ethic. In challenging dominant modern positions on progress, and many oppositional positions, Guha proposes that Gandhi offers a non-violent moderating voice. Guha again leaves us with valuable openings, for reflecting on some of the most relevant challenges to the contemporary world, including those of us left somewhat unsatisfied with Guha’s rather limited proposals.

Arguments with Gandhi is highly recommended for all readers: pro-Gandhians finding some chapters too critical of Gandhi’s imperfections and too sympathetic to diverse anti-Gandhi critics; anti-Gandhians finding chapters too sympathetic to Gandhi and his perspectives; other scholars and general readers finding this well-written and engaging book a splendid introduction to arguments with Gandhi and as raising most significant issues for the present and future.  

(Douglas Allen is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Maine)