Although Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was the most admired human being in India and arguably in the entire world during his lifetime, he was also among the most controversial. This continues to Gandhi 150 in 2019, as he remains among the most admired and at the same time the most controversial figures in the contemporary world.
Today, there remain influential Gandhi dissenters, many of whom are descendants of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and other dissenters and non-Gandhian and anti-Gandhian developments during Gandhi’s lifetime. The relations between these dissenters and Gandhi and their contemporary descendants remain sources of controversy today. For example, while Ambedkarites and Gandhians usually focus on their significant differences, it is often overlooked how in their fundamental concerns, values and commitments, what Ambedkar and Gandhi shared was often more unifying than what divided them. In addition, while selectively rejecting some of Gandhi’s idealised caste justifications and recognising that the dissenting Ambedkar was often more INSightful, one can at least make the case that in his personal life and in the last years of his life, Gandhi was more revolutionary and more anti-caste than “the annihilation of caste” Ambedkar.
Of dissenters, or at least those who consider Gandhi irrelevant today, hundreds of millions in India and others in the US and elsewhere express approaches, views, and priorities of “modern” human beings critiqued by Gandhi in Hind Swaraj as adopting modern civilisation. These influential Gandhi dissenters, the modern human beings during Gandhi’s 20th century India and those who dominate India and the world today, usually identify with neo-liberal corporate capitalism, globalisation, profit maximisation, ego-driven consumerism and materialism, worship of technology, nuclear weapons and militarism, multi-dimensional and structural violence, and the domination of nature. While Gandhi is sometimes an irrelevant annoyance, these dissenting modern humans are usually able to ignore him. Particularly striking and alarming is how many of these elite modern humans are now so easily able to appropriate (misappropriate) Gandhi-expressed ideological justifications for their anti-Gandhian purposes.
There is also a wide range of other non-Gandhian and anti-Gandhian dissenters who rejected Gandhi and his message during his lifetime and reject the exemplary philosophy and practice of Gandhi 150 today. Some of these dissenters identified with and continue to identify with narrow, violent, chauvinistic nationalisms. This often takes various forms of national, religious, cultural, ethnic and moral ‘exceptionalism’. In such formulations, Hinduism and India are exceptional in not simply being distinctive, but in also expressing the superior values, culture, civilisation, social and political relations, ethics, and spirituality. Not unrelated are formulations of United States exceptionalism, going back to the founding of the nation, and most virulent and transparent today daily in dissenting, anti-Gandhi, expressions of tweets and narcissistic and chauvinistic ideological claims by Donald Trump. “America first” is the greatest nation in human history, the greatest military and economic and political nation today and for the future, and, in short, the greatest in every way.
In these dissenting claims of Hindu/Indian, American, and other exceptionalisms throughout the world, “the Other” is normatively devalued as backward, immoral, irrational, violent, impure, evil, and a threat to Hindu/Indian, American, or other exceptional superior culture, tradition, religion, ethics, and nationalism. Some of these anti-Gandhi dissenting positions embrace forms of religious and ethnic communalism, racism, male supremacy and other forms of sexism, exploitative classism, and oppressive casteism. Once again, it is both revealing and alarming how many of these contemporary dissenters with power in India have been able to reinterpret and reappropriate Gandhi as one of the greatest Hindu/Indian heroes. They use (really misuse) Gandhi and his selectively redefined philosophy and practice for their own anti-Gandhi caste, class, gender, militaristic, nuclear, environmental, Hindutva-valued and other purposes.
As he did during his lifetime and as a most adequate Gandhi-informed approach would do today, Gandhi is a great dissenter in critiquing and resisting such dissenting perspectives, values, policies, and actions. In his philosophy and practice of non-violence, truth, harmonious relations, and justice, Gandhi embraces the exact opposite approach to “the Other”. Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, atheists, moderns, and other human beings in their own developmental process of self-realisation, Gandhi felt, should recognise that what unites us is more basic than what divides us, and this is a unity with a respect for legitimate contextualised differences. In developing our human potential, we must control our ego-defined desires and attachments that invariably lead to hierarchical inequalities, violence, fear and insecurity, immorality, and untruthful relations. Instead, we should engage in disciplined selfless service, with unifying love and compassion, privileging and serving the needs of the others (especially those most disempowered, have the least freedom, and experience the greatest suffering), and realising that the Other is socially and integrally related to my own developing self-realisation of my deeper moral and spiritual self.
Similarly, the Dissenter Gandhi does repeatedly affirm the exceptional nature of traditional India and Hindu culture in his resistance to British colonial and other orientations that devalue Hinduism and India as inferior, idol-worshipping, superstitious, and uncivilised. However, he rejected and would reject today dominant versions of Hindu/Indian, US American, and other forms of superior exceptionalism with the devaluing of others. While being proud of what is exceptional and of the highest value in our own cultures and traditions, we are not to be arrogant and exclusivist, intolerant chauvinists. In fact, we must critique, resist, and overcome what is hateful, violent, oppressive, unjust, immoral, and untruthful in our own texts, scriptures, cultures, religions, and traditions. Other cultures, religious, traditions, and nations are both exceptional and flawed in diverse ways, and we must respect that they have their own legitimate, contextualised paths toward personal, economic, social, political, cultural, local, national, and global development.
In Gandhi’s organic, holistic approach with the interconnectedness of all of existence, we can learn from the Other. The Other is a necessary precondition and catalyst, allowing us to rethink and develop our own individual, social and national paths of self-development and greater realisation of truth and reality.
Finally, we have not focused on a wide range of non-Gandhi and anti-Gandhi dissenters during Gandhi’s lifetime and continuing today, who express the very diverse values, principles, philosophies and practices of those who are most oppressed and exploited. They often look at Gandhi and his philosophy of non-violence and truth, Swaraj (individual, national, and other forms of self-rule), Satyagraha (truth force, nonviolent resistance), sarvodaya (well-being of all), Swadeshi (self-sufficient economies), trusteeship, and the Constructive Programme. They do not see a great dissenter. What they see is a Gandhi who, at worst, is an oppositional reactionary and, at best, is complicit with oppressive dominant power relations. Some of these dissenters endorse anti-Gandhi separatist approaches, forms of identity politics, and/or the need for class struggle, caste struggle, and diverse forms of violent resistance.
