01-05-2007, 09:29 PM
Pioneer, 4 jan., 2007
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Deciphering Mahatma
Each commentator in the book relates a different account of Gandhi but Weber does a commendable job in compiling all those facets of the Mahatma with sound algorithm, writes Sudhir Kumar
<b>Gandhi, Gandhism and the Gandhians, Thomas Weber; Roli Books, Rs 395</b>
Call it Gandhigiri or concocted satyagraha or an intelligent citizen's guide to experiments with (un)truth and (non-)violence, the charisma of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi lives on. It will not be an exaggeration to say that there are many versions of Gandhi today. To the billions of Indians, he is an important coordinate of their collective cultural and mythical consciousness. This mythical, folklore-like and commonplace Gandhi has a more powerful hold over people's worldviews than the almost ineffectual, textbookish one - the officially advertised mascot of Indian nationalism and a convenient political toy to peddle the crassly un-Gandhian policies to further vested interests. It is in this context that Gandhi, the proverbial politico-spiritual enigma, is the bunny of the global publishing industry - a perennial source of the inexhaustible grist to the print-mills worldwide to reproduce and rediscover newer and newer versions of Gandhi to fulfil people's perpetual eagerness to understand this "half-naked fakir".
Thomas Weber's Gandhi, Gandhism and the Gandhians is a welcome addition to the ever-increasing list of books on Gandhi. <b>It aims at analysing some of the hitherto unexplored aspects of the Mahatma's politico-cultural actions and their subsequent appropriation by later-day Gandhians.</b> Though most essays included in the volume have already been published in various journals, these are put together so well here that there is no discontinuity in the book.
Weber, an acclaimed Australian scholar on Gandhi, reinforces the need to reinterpret the Mahatma's philosophy of truth (satya) and non-violence (ahimsa) in the vastly changed circumstances of today. Rajmohan Gandhi, in his foreword to the book, stresses the obvious when he refers to the efficacy of Gandhi's non-violent satyagraha in troubled West Asia and its proven impact on Nelson Mandela's anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
Some of the essays, however, can disappoint readers. For example, "Kharag Bahadur Singh: The Eightieth Marcher" seems a non-starter for the reputation of the book, as it adds nothing to the central issue - the Dandi March. Moreover, the second essay, "Historiography and the Dandi March: The Other Myths of Gandhi's Salt March", aptly foregrounds the dynamics of the word of mouth and mythical imagination that played a crucial role in transforming a political event like the Dandi March into a historical milestone, thus unleashing the hitherto dormant political consciousness.
The Salt Satyagraha, in spite of its political failure, turned out to be a metonymic representation of the will of Indian people. Weber writes, "The march and the ensuing campaign also had several less tangible successes that the critics and the myth-makers ignore. The revolution Gandhi sought to achieve was not merely political, it was also social... The Salt March was about empowerment... It was about reforming society and about the self-reformation of the individual. For Gandhi, the two were inextricably linked - reform yourself and you have started to reform the world, reform the world non-violently and you have reformed the self." (p 23).
The popular perception of the Salt Satyagraha is based on the playful pulls of memory, imagination and desire producing and circulating, as Weber says, "as many Gandhis as there are people who write about him" (p 35). Responding to the critics of Gandhian experiment with truth during the Salt March, Weber writes, "While some people stress the myth of the total success of the Dandi March, care must be taken that an even bigger myth - that the Salt March failed - does not take its place" (p 41).
The next two chapters, "Gandhi Moves" and "Gandhi and the Nobel Peace Prize" are more archival than analytical in nature. Weber, however, succeeds in describing the significance of Polak and Kallenbach in setting up the Phoenix Settlement and the Tolstoy Ashram in South Africa and the sacrifices made by Maganlal Gandhi and Jamnalal Bajaj in establishing the Sabarmati and the Sevagram Ashrams in India. Why Gandhi was not given a Nobel Peace Prize is only of academic interest as a man of his stature could never be measured by a medallion, however prestigious it may have been.
The sixth chapter, "Gandhian Philosophy, Conflict Resolution Theory and Practical Approach to Negotiation," puts in context Gandhi's insistence on truth and non-violence in order to use satyagraha to end conflicts.
Weber discusses at length Bondurant's famous work, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, which inter alia proposes how a satyagrahi involves himself in an "ethical existence" in which "the operation of non-violent action and truth as judged by the fulfilment of human needs will emerge in the form of a mutually satisfactory and agreed upon solution" (p 147). Weber also delineates how Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher and conflict-resolution theorist, in his book Gandhi and Group Conflict, candidly employs Gandhian satyagraha as a sound strategy to abolish hatred and hostility among the warring groups or nations.
Similarly, Naess's ex-pupil and founder of modern peace research, Johan Galtung, in his seminal work, The Way is the Goal, underlines Gandhian satyagraha as a spiritual alternative to resolve human conflicts in a realm of peace and mutual understanding.
Weber rightly argues that for the Mahatma, "the process was about the achievement of self-realisation, nothing less. For him, the fundamental principle was that of the unity of existence. People are related to each other in a way that has a transcendental nature and conflict should be seen as a gift providing a rich opportunity, potentially to the benefit of all to realise a higher goal" (p 167-168).
Weber also scrutinises the reasons why Gandhism waned after Jayaprakash Narain and Vinoba Bhave passed away. <b>He highlights certain glaring contradictions in Gandhi's notion of satyagraha or non-violent resistance.
First, Gandhi's satyagraha presupposes an enlightened other party that is amenable to spiritual persuasion. His logic falls flat when it confronts Al Qaeda brand of Islamist terrorism, or LTTE's vicious bloodbaths.
Second, satyagraha, at times, coerces the other party that signifies a kind of violence. Even Gandhian fasting is tantamount to inflicting injury on one's own body.
Third, the spiritual significance of satyagraha is ruined once it is used for purely political gains. In the post-colonial contexts, it degenerates into frequent bandhs, hartals and strikes.
Fourth, the idea of a shanti sena replacing the armed forces to manage India's national security has no link with ground realities. Such ideas have reduced the relevance of Gandhism in the contemporary world.</b>
Weber should also have used the Gandhi-Ambedkar dialogue and Lohia's reconstruction of Gandhi in order to supplement Gandhi-Vinoba and Gandhi-JP discursive interfaces to look into the causes of the decline of the Gandhian legacy of political and cultural action.
Weber's book is a commendable effort to package many facets of Gandhi in a relatively constricted space. <b>At the same time, it brings together some of his stimulating essays on the application of Gandhian theory to such deeply interrelated areas as neo-environmentalism, conflict resolution theories, deep ecology, and Buddhist economics</b>.
The reviewer teaches in Punjab University, Chandigarh
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Deciphering Mahatma
Each commentator in the book relates a different account of Gandhi but Weber does a commendable job in compiling all those facets of the Mahatma with sound algorithm, writes Sudhir Kumar
<b>Gandhi, Gandhism and the Gandhians, Thomas Weber; Roli Books, Rs 395</b>
Call it Gandhigiri or concocted satyagraha or an intelligent citizen's guide to experiments with (un)truth and (non-)violence, the charisma of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi lives on. It will not be an exaggeration to say that there are many versions of Gandhi today. To the billions of Indians, he is an important coordinate of their collective cultural and mythical consciousness. This mythical, folklore-like and commonplace Gandhi has a more powerful hold over people's worldviews than the almost ineffectual, textbookish one - the officially advertised mascot of Indian nationalism and a convenient political toy to peddle the crassly un-Gandhian policies to further vested interests. It is in this context that Gandhi, the proverbial politico-spiritual enigma, is the bunny of the global publishing industry - a perennial source of the inexhaustible grist to the print-mills worldwide to reproduce and rediscover newer and newer versions of Gandhi to fulfil people's perpetual eagerness to understand this "half-naked fakir".
Thomas Weber's Gandhi, Gandhism and the Gandhians is a welcome addition to the ever-increasing list of books on Gandhi. <b>It aims at analysing some of the hitherto unexplored aspects of the Mahatma's politico-cultural actions and their subsequent appropriation by later-day Gandhians.</b> Though most essays included in the volume have already been published in various journals, these are put together so well here that there is no discontinuity in the book.
Weber, an acclaimed Australian scholar on Gandhi, reinforces the need to reinterpret the Mahatma's philosophy of truth (satya) and non-violence (ahimsa) in the vastly changed circumstances of today. Rajmohan Gandhi, in his foreword to the book, stresses the obvious when he refers to the efficacy of Gandhi's non-violent satyagraha in troubled West Asia and its proven impact on Nelson Mandela's anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
Some of the essays, however, can disappoint readers. For example, "Kharag Bahadur Singh: The Eightieth Marcher" seems a non-starter for the reputation of the book, as it adds nothing to the central issue - the Dandi March. Moreover, the second essay, "Historiography and the Dandi March: The Other Myths of Gandhi's Salt March", aptly foregrounds the dynamics of the word of mouth and mythical imagination that played a crucial role in transforming a political event like the Dandi March into a historical milestone, thus unleashing the hitherto dormant political consciousness.
The Salt Satyagraha, in spite of its political failure, turned out to be a metonymic representation of the will of Indian people. Weber writes, "The march and the ensuing campaign also had several less tangible successes that the critics and the myth-makers ignore. The revolution Gandhi sought to achieve was not merely political, it was also social... The Salt March was about empowerment... It was about reforming society and about the self-reformation of the individual. For Gandhi, the two were inextricably linked - reform yourself and you have started to reform the world, reform the world non-violently and you have reformed the self." (p 23).
The popular perception of the Salt Satyagraha is based on the playful pulls of memory, imagination and desire producing and circulating, as Weber says, "as many Gandhis as there are people who write about him" (p 35). Responding to the critics of Gandhian experiment with truth during the Salt March, Weber writes, "While some people stress the myth of the total success of the Dandi March, care must be taken that an even bigger myth - that the Salt March failed - does not take its place" (p 41).
The next two chapters, "Gandhi Moves" and "Gandhi and the Nobel Peace Prize" are more archival than analytical in nature. Weber, however, succeeds in describing the significance of Polak and Kallenbach in setting up the Phoenix Settlement and the Tolstoy Ashram in South Africa and the sacrifices made by Maganlal Gandhi and Jamnalal Bajaj in establishing the Sabarmati and the Sevagram Ashrams in India. Why Gandhi was not given a Nobel Peace Prize is only of academic interest as a man of his stature could never be measured by a medallion, however prestigious it may have been.
The sixth chapter, "Gandhian Philosophy, Conflict Resolution Theory and Practical Approach to Negotiation," puts in context Gandhi's insistence on truth and non-violence in order to use satyagraha to end conflicts.
Weber discusses at length Bondurant's famous work, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, which inter alia proposes how a satyagrahi involves himself in an "ethical existence" in which "the operation of non-violent action and truth as judged by the fulfilment of human needs will emerge in the form of a mutually satisfactory and agreed upon solution" (p 147). Weber also delineates how Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher and conflict-resolution theorist, in his book Gandhi and Group Conflict, candidly employs Gandhian satyagraha as a sound strategy to abolish hatred and hostility among the warring groups or nations.
Similarly, Naess's ex-pupil and founder of modern peace research, Johan Galtung, in his seminal work, The Way is the Goal, underlines Gandhian satyagraha as a spiritual alternative to resolve human conflicts in a realm of peace and mutual understanding.
Weber rightly argues that for the Mahatma, "the process was about the achievement of self-realisation, nothing less. For him, the fundamental principle was that of the unity of existence. People are related to each other in a way that has a transcendental nature and conflict should be seen as a gift providing a rich opportunity, potentially to the benefit of all to realise a higher goal" (p 167-168).
Weber also scrutinises the reasons why Gandhism waned after Jayaprakash Narain and Vinoba Bhave passed away. <b>He highlights certain glaring contradictions in Gandhi's notion of satyagraha or non-violent resistance.
First, Gandhi's satyagraha presupposes an enlightened other party that is amenable to spiritual persuasion. His logic falls flat when it confronts Al Qaeda brand of Islamist terrorism, or LTTE's vicious bloodbaths.
Second, satyagraha, at times, coerces the other party that signifies a kind of violence. Even Gandhian fasting is tantamount to inflicting injury on one's own body.
Third, the spiritual significance of satyagraha is ruined once it is used for purely political gains. In the post-colonial contexts, it degenerates into frequent bandhs, hartals and strikes.
Fourth, the idea of a shanti sena replacing the armed forces to manage India's national security has no link with ground realities. Such ideas have reduced the relevance of Gandhism in the contemporary world.</b>
Weber should also have used the Gandhi-Ambedkar dialogue and Lohia's reconstruction of Gandhi in order to supplement Gandhi-Vinoba and Gandhi-JP discursive interfaces to look into the causes of the decline of the Gandhian legacy of political and cultural action.
Weber's book is a commendable effort to package many facets of Gandhi in a relatively constricted space. <b>At the same time, it brings together some of his stimulating essays on the application of Gandhian theory to such deeply interrelated areas as neo-environmentalism, conflict resolution theories, deep ecology, and Buddhist economics</b>.
The reviewer teaches in Punjab University, Chandigarh
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->