Gandhi’s Theory of Society and Our Times

GANDHI is a world-historical figure. Though he refused to formulate a religious or philosophical system, he did stand, throughout his life, for certain ideas, which are nothing if not of universal significance. In order to see this clearly, let us review, very briefly, the nature and context of the challenge to which his life and thought were a dedicated response. Within the limited scope of this essay, it is not possible to begin at the beginning of Gandhi's political career in South Africa; we cannot even review his role in the Indian independence movement in any systematic way. All that can be done here is to indicate some salient features of India's freedom struggle at the time Gandhi entered the scene as a major figure after World War I. The Indian freedom movement was a number of different things at the same time. It was a reform, a renaissance and a nationalist movement. At the same time it was also a movement for religious revivalism under the name of Hindu nationalism. At the time Gandhi came on the Indian political scene, it was dominated by Gokhale and Tilak: Gokhale leading the reformist and secularist or non-religious form of nationalism and Tilak leading the religio-social revivalist interpretation of the nationalist movement. The tension that developed between Gokhale and Tilak, as leaders of the Indian freedom struggle, reflected something far deeper than a clash of personalities. It signified the essential incompatibility between the idea of nationalism and Hinduism, and for that matter, Islam. In other words, while Hindu nationalism or Islamic nationalism is a contradiction in terms, both nationalism and Hinduism had necessarily to be emphasized by the anti-Imperialist forces in the Indian political and social movement. At one level, Hinduism and Hindu society are inseparable and hence to strengthen or weaken the one has profound significance for the other. Now Hindu society being a caste society, an outcaste, though a Hindu is really an outsider and hence he can be easily lured into other religions. For this reason certain reforms became necessary and urgent, for Hinduism at this time was being threatened not only by Christianity and Islam, but also by Western rationalism. But this reform of Hinduism had at the same time to be a kind of revivalism, for that was the only way to unify, to get a collective identity and to rouse and gear the society to act …