Gandhi in Our Times

Thomas Wallgren: I am Thomas Wallgren, Swedish. I come from Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam initiative for comprehensive democracy, its Finnish chapter of which I am co-chair. I also come from the University of Helsinki, where I teach Philosophy. I had been coming and going to India especially Delhi since 1987. I got to know some of the people of the Centre of Study of Developing Societies. One of those friends is here as the speaker of the session, Mr. Suresh Sharma, whom I am pleased to welcome in this session.

Before we go on, let us be organised a little bit. The first question, is the question of language. But is it not right if we just work in English? If we have difficulties, Suresh is capable of doing the Hindi. I am capable to do it in Finnish.

Person 1 (audience):- I can do it French.

Suresh: Since it is a small group we can do slowly and at leisure.

Thomas: That’s very helpful. Thank you very much. So, we have French simultaneous translation. Closer you move, the better we can hear each other. It is a rare occasion in World Social Forum to work in a small group. So let us enjoy.

Both of us are Academicians and political workers. But we thought it is a more of a session in which somewhat we might indulge in our academic vocabulary. But I would start with a very brief statement, which I hope will be available to all. And then we see how it goes? Suresh will be able to make a full statement. Then we can discuss. So is this all right? Any questions at this moment?

If I start, beginning from my arena of prospective, my interest in Gandhi has two roots. One is the fact that as an activist, I grew up in the movement for global solidarity and environment, which were important Forums, an intellectual and political factor in our society in late 70s and early 80s.

For instance Gandhi was one of the key sources of inspiration for our region in 1960s and for Finnish and Swedish environmentalists in 1970s, and also to some extent to Western European and the northern environment movement between 1960s and 1990s. Green parties grew from there. Some of founding members of Green parties are also members as well. So this is one of the roots.

The other is my perplexity. Since I come to study philosophy in 1976. I might perplex you with that. Now that brings in the question of dialectics of enlightenment and its relation to the tragedies of modernity, the tension between the success of modernity and the crisis and catastrophe of modernity on the other hand. So that is the question of dialectics of enlightenment. In this context, I am just completing a book on one aspect of dialectics which is on the conception of philosophy.

In that context Gandhi comes in a surprising way, which I have not worked out to my satisfaction, which I seek to work ahead mainly. The unity in Gandhi’s work between theory and practice and between the secular & the spiritual, this unity has not been there in western philosophy since Socrates times. The closest you can come in our philosophical tradition to a Gandhian perception for search for Truth, in our philosophical tradition or our academic tradition will be Socrates speech of defence, the so called apology of Socrates in 399 B.C., based on the impression he had. The speech Socrates made in Athens. In 399, he was sentenced to death by his followers. I think Socrates was an oral philosopher. A street philosopher. He is also seen as the founding father of western conception of reason. And the western conception that enlightenment i.e. commitment to reason will emancipate us all. The crucial line in the apology is that only the examined life is worth living, which is the line, which has great repercussions in Gandhi’s thinking. Another line, which is in the apology; which is usually passed over in our classes in western academy, is when Socrates says, I have not taken a political office. Later he says, I am the gadfly of Athens politics. I am a true politician, he says. So, my philosophical way is not only a philosophical practice of arguments. It is a way of life; a unique way of life of philosophical arguments for Socrates. But I think there is more to be worked out there. Connections perhaps between traditions, which I think, are not always observed. That’s one point I wanted to make.

Let me make three more points of my interest in Gandhi. You all may have other interests in Gandhi. We shall all share these interests. So these are all my interest coming from northern Academic work. So that was point number one of Socrates-Gandhi connection with respect to the dialectics of life and crisis of modernities.

Second point, I want to make Gandhi is from Swaraj 1909, which many of you have read. If you have not read, you should read and I should as well. One line of Gandhi’s diagnosis of modernity which is my favorite, is when he says, that most significant feature of the modern west is its aspiration to make science, technology, administration and economy so good that man doesn’t need to be good. If we work on that, I think we find this contains all of the critique of national democracies. I think we also hear the seed of all the critique of capitalist and socialist traditions. Moreover we have the Frankfurt school of critical theory, critique of instrumental reason as the heart of modernity. Then poverty of values of modern west as a critique of values at the heart of modern west. So that’s one.

The second point, I want to show is the clear tension between the presence in the western imagination even today of Gandhi and the overwhelming idea that modern west, is the primary carrier of universal aspirations, in the world today. I am talking about the usual Eurocentric or the northern chauvinism. Then come universal rights, universal values and universal aspirations. Europe is a bean of light and hope and other cultures learn from us. I know this is not the usual perception. But I think this is deeply connected with 500 years of colonialism.

It is impossible to one who is committed to humanist world-view, to a man centered word view, to accept Gandhi’s apologies. May be that is right. May be Gandhi’s thinking and his practice is for one whole for which it was not easy to cut into pieces. If this is true, then the main difficulty for us who read Gandhi in West, as secular person is that Gandhi goes transcendental, and speaks of God. I am a western secular person. I think, search for truth is a secular search, between human beings. And Gandhi has what we call in academic lines, a metaphysical transcendence perceptional truth. So the question I have, I wish to study perhaps with you here today; in the long conversation to come, is whether it is really possible to have a secular humanistic reception to Gandhi. And if not, I do not want to be fundamentalist about Gandhi. That one thing we want to avoid. So that is another question I wanted to share with you. Over to Subhash now.

I wish if you have any questions, shall I respond now other... So Suresh Sharma is different from me, because he knows much more about Gandhi then I do. He is much more of a Gandhian Scholar. I am trying to approach Gandhi, Suresh has been longer with Gandhi than I have. So please Suresh. My guess is that it will be more difficult for him than me to get heard. So if anybody wants to move closer it's welcome. My guess is it will be better if Suresh stands up to talk.

Suresh Sharma: Thank you. The beginning has been so well made by Thomas. It has been well made because of quality of engagement about what Gandhi said.

I want to begin with what Thomas said about Socrates. Indeed Socrates is one of the great masters to whom Gandhiji often referred, Gandhiji often evoked. He was also a master of conversation. He was a master to begin with a proposition and persuade as if it is a proposition in which every one present has a reason to be a part of that conversation. In this I would like to add, Gandhi was nowhere I think was uncomfortable. He was also spoken of as a European. He was also perhaps deeply uncomfortable to be spoken to as being a modernist. But I think he would have no problem as been spoken off as a European.

In this context, I would like to speak of two things. One is language as a life from and universality of words that are generally taken in narrow meaning. When I was reading Hind Swaraj. The word that I came across in English text said a 'True Christ'. I wondered if in Gujarati could the word had been ‘Sachai Sahi’ which was a literal meaning in Gujarati of a true Christian. As I move in depth, I find the word in that is 'Dharam Nisth' and the word ‘Dharam Nisth’ is translated as TRUE CHRIST. But in using and invoking this denomination of expression, he is, in a sense establishing a better transcendence? CHRIST is a sense about a language and meaning in which to be a true Christan in the most profoundest true sense also made for Gandhi to be seasoned to be a denomination of truth. To be seaside to be a Christian or member of church. To reach out to which Church has given some hope lovely path of truth. ……? I want to share with you something which came to me forcefully when I was in your country Finland.

Audience: Please be audible.

Subhash: All right! but controls are somewhere else, we have to bear with it.

This was a realization, which came to me powerfully when I was in Finland. Language as a form of life, the wave in modern situation, the unavoidability, the indispersibity of providing and creating institutional support from structures without which this form of life has no chance, This is something extraordinarily and qualitatively different from the experience of human life. Take the Finnish language for instance. Till the 19th century, middle of 19th century it only existed as a spoken language. And for me probably this itself was something tantalizing because I thought of Finland as part of Europe. As part of very modern West with all the modernity one can think of. Till the middle of 19th century the Finnish language only existed in its local from. In the middle of 19th century, one of few Finnish, decided to record this folk oral tradition ‘Kalavilla’. This is now recognised as the national dialect of Finland. Then it was published. All those who could understand, baring some exceptions, most of those who could understand Finnish could not read. And those who could read did not understand because either they had been educated in Swedish or in Russian. Their Finnish language was at a point a part of the modern apparatus of construction, learning and the production process. And with it was linked the prospects of survival of its oral transmission which are needed in small communities that are completely isolated, without too much of anxiety, without a sense of loneliness. This marks a coming together. It is in this context, I want to speak about Gandhi. I will take about 20 minutes. May be a little more.

Speaking on Gandhi after sixty years, after he was killed, after he was murdered and nearly hundred years after he published ‘Hind Swaraj’ to which Thomas referred yesterday, my friend Sudhir, while speaking on Gandhi, Sudhir is a person having an acute sense of historical measure; said Gandhi in our times today is difficult perhaps impossible to annihilate. To that I would like to add. Yes! difficult and impossible to forget. This impossibility of forgetting rests on a ground. It is that ground I want to begin talking about. That is may reason. I recall in this context the conversation I used to have with a distinguished colleague of mine; historian of China. And he would asked me what is all this about Gandhi? It you go out in streets and ask somebody what do you know of Gandhi? What you understand of him? What you make of him? He would not be able to utter five sentences. He would not be able to speak for five minutes. And you walk the streets Beijing, you walk the streets of Pankong, anywhere in China, they will talk to you for two hours. They will be able to tell you. There is an engagement. There is a memory. There is inheritance. There is an engagement. It's like a footsteps that walked the beach perhaps. These are footsteps on sand, in different forms, I felt and said. Gandhi abides? Because it is abiding on a different kind of ground. And what is this ground? This comes to us in shape of a meeting between Tagore and Gandhi in Shantiniketan. In the evening peasants from around Shantiniketan are coming, singing the song that poet Tagore had composed. Tagore felt this was the ultimate tribute to him. Songs are being sung as they walked Shantiniketan. After the songs, Gandhiji in the dim-light brings out to these Bengali peasants Ram Charita Manas of Tulsidas. That was how Gandhi wanted to be remembered, to create a place in collective memory as a re-starter of the eternal truth, as a re-affirmer of the eternal truth, to which people spontaneously reach out. And this account comes to us from his pen. This is the ground in which Gandhi abides. This kind of ground! What are the prospects of this kind of ground in modern situations is the question, I think we have to ask.

The way we have to deal with Gandhi, certainly, we have to reach larger points in terms of certain paradoxes. And I want to begin with this word that Gandhiji consciously cultivated a mode of public functioning and public affiliation, which he called a local book. He was transparent. He was so transparent that he virtually sought to abolish the divide between the private and the public even to an extent that even when he sits on the Toilet he disliked partition. He was extreme in abolishing the private, personal and public concepts. I remember many years ago when I visited my friend Ramu Gandhi grandson of Gandhi. I was struck that the only thing that family has inherited from Gandhiji. were a few signed photographs, not even letters. Even the letters sit in museums. Even his most personal prosessions are public property. The only things that he passed on to his family were few signed photographs. This moved me deeply. In India, any other large commitment gets in family so easily. Perhaps one can say almost spontaneously, unchecked within family. But he specially cultivated this transparency. This abolishing of private and personal remained.

One more paradox, which I wish to speak on before Gandhiji as a Sanatani. Which means that surely there was nothing new to add, but there was much that had to be quarreled. There was much that had to be restated. There was much one had to say. As a Sanatani, as someone who believes in leveraging the eternal traditions, a quest for truth, a service of truth. Now I would come to the point which Thomas had invoked about reading Gandhi as secular. And to that I may add as a secular.

So, I would read out a quote from Gandhiji “Even in atheism of an atheist, it transcends speech and reason. He is the greatest democrat, the world knows. He leaves untreated to make our own choices between evil and good.” I read this out for two reasons. One in Gandhiji’s critique of modern civilization. Within that critique is built a most powerful recognition and a most profound recognition of the idea of democracy, even when he is understanding a critique of its contemporary historical form of representative democracy. Let me formulate the problematic of modernity also in terms of a paradox. Modernity is a term which begins with a very grand assertion of the idea of the individual. It is a civilization and a form of imagination, very powerfully based on the idea of an individual. And yet it is a time, it is an age, which breeds forms and facets of collective loneliness of extraordinary dimensions. The claim to universality rests precisely on the idea of an individual which is an agency with a capacity to reason with a capacity to rationalize and create national structures. But it is also an age where species is endangered within a true form of collective loneliness. Collective loneliness …….

One is modern unification as the basis of modern university as the aspirations and expectations of democracy and the tension between the two. The fact that we have gathered here today, the fact that we are for the most part communicating in the English language is because a certain process which in its historical details has been ruthless, brutal, driven by reasons of power in greed, has forcefully linked the world together, and the connectedness of human artifact in this process in which exists my ability to speak in English and your ability to comprehend it. For those for who English is not a natural first spoken language, a historical detail of coercion. It is a historical detail which is the very anti -thesis of the idea of democratic participation and democratic essence. And yet, the fact that I use English language speaks of a relationship that is possible, that happens and perhaps is desirable with an English language that they have nothing to do, that has nothing to do with power. They may have everything to do with this grand schema called democracy and its aspirations. This problem of unification, which is a process that begins with this tremendous overcoming, abolition of distance, the conquest of distance. But it is a process driven by greed. Now this abolition of distance itself is a double edged thing. Because traditionally the ability to retain distances was also creating the space, insulating yourself from encroachment from the world without. But in the modern situation the whole idea of redefining the universality is founded on two facts. One is that the natural grid of resources is systematically segmented. Distance ceases to be a barrier and become a simple field of activity. So from a barrier and impediment, it is transformed through technology into a field of activity. And in doing that the grid of natural resources is segmented. And this segment is then re-constituted in terms of universal goods. And the promise that this re-constitution can increasingly and more and more effectively be virtualised, for everyone or everything that lies on any part of globe through this process of segmentation and relinking can be potentially made available to, can be potentially made accessible to everyone around. And that induces a powerful disturbance, at one level, in the modernity itself. But that itself is the main justification of a modernistic project.

I have a felling that I have gone for too long. So I will conclude the address that one looks at the modern enterprise in terms of what its position is, on a question which is dedicated to Gandhi’s way of thinking, what his position is on the possibility of knowing truth. Whatever conditions in which truth seeking can be done, when it is the first civilization in human history in which the entire range of productivity activity is seen as a legitimate and necessary site for truth seeking. So the very exercise of making complexity is seen as a legitimate site in which truth seeking can be pursued. For the pre-modern imagination, I think this will hold for different civilizations, the seeker of truth will engage in activities of making things clear. Some would say it is desirable. Some would say it is not desirable. But it would engage. Truth seeking is something, which belongs almost entirely to aesthetic and modern wealth. This business of making things is something, which is not seen as an intrinsic ingredient in truth seeking. And even then there are exceptions and we can come to that, they are seen as merely a technical device you know. But this has given rise to the idea that locus of production, the locus of power is also the locus of truth. And the only legitimate idea within this universe in which, through which one can resist the using of production, power and truth is the idea of democracy. I think, I will stop.

Thomas Wallgren: I want to mention. One thing you mentioned over and over again in Mumbai, also in next two to three days, picking up the word resistance which came up in this last address on truth mentioned by Suresh. I think one of the dimensions of World Social Forum is that WSF is the creator of non-violent resistance today against injustice of the times. And one liner which is promising, which I heard so far in the last three days is infact one liner given by Arundhati Roy in the opening session of the forum when she says that we must not support the resistance in Iraq, we must be the resistance in Iraq. So I just appeal to you as one follow up of this discussion to be the resistance in Iraq in whatever way you can and suggest that boycotting of companies who are the primary supporters of Goerge W. Bush administration is a good way. But atleast beginning an engagement with Goerge Bush which infact is a beginning of an engagement in former non-cooperation movement and non-violence resistance. So, I just want to mention that today’s action proposes a platform devoted for action on specific dates against those companies who provide for Bush and who Bush provides. So I want to mention that. I see this workshop also as a group for mobilising against the unjust, illegal, immoral U.S. occupation of Iraq. So that was a separate matter. But very connected to what we are talking about. Now the floor is open. I invite your comments on what we have said or whatever. So please if you like please present yourself.

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