Terrorism and Violence

Ever since 9/11 in the US and 26/11 in India, terrorism has been a central concern. Gandhi is generally assumed to be of little value when confronting terrorism today. At best, he is irrelevant; at worst, he is complicit and contributes to the crisis since he opposes necessary violent responses. This essay argues that while Gandhi does not have all of the answers for dealing with terrorism today, he provides us with a complex analysis essential for understanding and responding to the multidimensional structural crisis. After analyzing the nature and meaning of terrorism, we focus on the following topics: Gandhi’s interactions with terrorists; his means-ends analysis and his short-term and long-term preventative approaches to terrorism; his analysis of absolute truth and relative truth in approaching terrorism; and his general analysis of the status of “the other” in transforming our relations with violent, terrorizing, and terrorized others.

Is Gandhi’s Approach to Technology Irrelevant in the Modern Age of Technology?

Gandhi’s most important work on technology, Hind Swaraj, seems hopelessly ignorant, anti-modern, and anti-technology. This essay focuses on Gandhi’s perplexing writings on technology, maintaining that Gandhi’s critiques and alternatives are very significant today, but only if we are creatively selective in appropriating, reformulating, and reapplying what remains insightful. It presents a detailed analysis of Hind Swaraj and technology and Gandhi’s debates with Nehru, Tagore, and others. This essay then considers Gandhi’s positions on “modern civilization,” true civilization, and technology, and the future significance of Gandhi’s approach to technology. Included are contributions from Herbert Marcuse and other twentieth-century scholars and formulations of contemporary crises such as climate change and growing inequality with the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the power elite. We consider the insights of a dynamic, contextually relevant Gandhian position on the appropriate role of technology in addressing such personal existential and global crises.

How Can Gandhi Interpret His Favorite Bhagavad-Gita as a Gospel of Nonviolence?

The Bhagavad-Gita is Gandhi’s guide to daily living. Scholars and Hindu followers of the Gita have found Gandhi’s readings and commentaries of karma-yoga and especially of a nonviolent Gita surprising, inadequate, and a hermeneutical disaster. What distinguishes Gandhi’s interpretation of karma-yoga is his emphasis on the karmic world of relative truth. What is really remarkable is Gandhi’s interpretation of the central message of the Gita as a gospel of ahimsa. How can Gandhi justify such a seemingly bizarre claim? I examine usual interpretations of this claim that one must not take the Gita literally, but must instead read and interpret it as highly symbolic, mythic, allegorical text. More significantly, I attempt to analyze Gandhi’s approach and dramatic nonviolent interpretations by regarding the Gita as a dynamic open-ended text that is always contextualized and involves a key, creative, insightful hermeneutical move of greatest relevance today.

Introduction

This chapter provides an introduction to the book. The first section analyzes how the title, Gandhi After 9/11: Creative Nonviolence and Sustainability, reveals the purpose and structure of the book and examines whether Gandhi is irrelevant today. It talks about the prominence of those that Gandhi classifies as “modern Indians,” who identify with the worldview and values of Western “Modern Civilization”. The chapter outlines the author’s own approach to Gandhi as a major inspiration who provided him with many, but not all, of the answers when addressing personal, existential, psychological, economic, political, environmental, and other contemporary issues. This is followed by a delineation of seven major topics revealing Gandhi’s extreme contemporary relevance: morality, nonviolence, truth, egalitarianism, democracy, the need for transformative action, and the need for a radical paradigm shift.

Personal Reflections on Reading Hind Swaraj and Indian Reactions

Hind Swaraj is often regarded as Gandhi’s most important work. This rather brief review of my reactions to my reading and rereading of Hind Swaraj, starting with my youthful year of 1963–4 in Banaras (Varanasi) and at Banaras Hindu University and continuing to the present, is not only personally instructive, but also reveals changing attitudes of influential Gandhians and anti-Gandhians in India and in the contemporary world. This personal journey of encounters with the text and its changing contextual situatedness discloses contradictions and dramatic changes within India and the world and with peace and justice scholars and activists.

Rewriting Marginality

Focusing on American minority literature, as well as Indian minority literature, how do we understand “marginality,” contextually informed rewriting of marginality, and invaluable contributions of Gandhian hermeneutical challenges? After acknowledging the perspectival nature of rewriting marginality, we examine dynamic open-ended interrelations of literary and other texts, contexts, and interpretations of meaning. We then formulate key Gandhian challenges and contributions in rewriting marginality in both hegemonic and subaltern marginalized contexts. Using major values, concepts, and principles from Gandhi’s philosophy and practice, we analyze how a Gandhian approach to minority literature and rewriting marginality privileges the perspectives of the marginalized oppressed and downtrodden. Most significantly, we analyze how Gandhi’s insightful approach to violence and nonviolence, means-ends relations, and relative-absolute relations of truth and reality is invaluable for challenging us to approach minority literature, multiculturalism, inclusive interrelated pluralism, and rewriting and transforming marginality in way of greatest contemporary significance.

Gandhian Philosophy

Gandhi is not interested in abstract theoretical philosophical formulations, but rather philosophy as engaged practice. He focuses on living a philosophy of satya (truth) and ahimsa (nonviolence). Gandhi’s primary concern is with developing moral character and practice and with ethics as first philosophy. This is different not only from the history of Western philosophy, but also from traditional Indian philosophy. Gandhi's greatest contribution is his moral and philosophical focus on ahimsa in greatly broadening and deepening our understanding of nonviolence and its integral relations with truth. Usually unappreciated is Gandhi's invaluable analysis of the distinction and integral relations between relative truth and Absolute Truth that challenges philosophical alternatives of essentialism and absolute foundationalism versus modern unlimited relativism. Gandhi's philosophy challenges us with a qualitatively different philosophical view of freedom and human development, critiquing dominant modern models and offering an alternative philosophical paradigm and approach.

Gandhi and Socialism

Gandhi, along with other leaders in India’s Freedom Movement, clearly identifies himself as a socialist. We now live in an India and world dominated by finance capital and big corporate capitalism. It has seemed to most that Gandhian socialism is dead and irrelevant in our contemporary world of economic, social, political, and other power relations. Disagreeing with this view, this essay examines the relationship between Gandhi, capitalism, and socialism and asks what Gandhian socialism might mean today. After examining the nature of socialism and Gandhi’s writings on socialism, we delineate the major distinctive characteristics of Gandhian socialism. After analyzing serious weaknesses and confusion in Gandhi’s approach and strengths that are invaluable for what socialists and others can learn from a creatively developed Gandhian socialism, we conclude with a section on Gandhian socialism today, formulating the significance of such a new developing philosophy and practice for the contemporary world.

Is Gandhi a Vedantist?

There is a strong tendency among many scholars to claim that true Hinduism is Vedanta and its highest form is Advaita. Many scholars claim that Gandhi is a Hindu Vedantist and especially an Advaitin. Gandhi does identify with Advaita Vedanta, but also with Hindu and other approaches that reject nondualistic Vedanta. The proposed answer to the question of whether Gandhi is a Vedantist is a qualified yes and a qualified no. Gandhi's philosophy and practice cannot be understood without recognizing the essential contributions of Advaita. However, Gandhi is not a traditional Advaitin and, in many respects, he is not a traditional Hindu. He embraces many presuppositions, values, principles, and practices that are radical critiques of traditional Vedanta and Hinduism. Is Gandhi’s approach to Vedanta hopelessly muddle-headed, uncritical, and incoherent or is he challenging us to rethink traditional religious, ethical, and philosophical positions of greatest significance today?