Sudheendra Kulkarni
Can moral values, justice and non-violence guide economic progress? Insights from Gandhi
India has not heeded Gandhi’s criticism of Western development that foresaw the destruction of the environment and human life.
A good way to begin this essay on Mohandas Gandhi’s ideas about nonviolent ways of satisfying the basic economic needs of human societies is by recalling Joseph Cornelius Kumarappa (1892-1960). Most Indians do not know who he was. An economic philosopher and architect of the Gandhian rural economics programme, here was a Tamilian who obtained degrees in public finance and business administration at two prestigious American universities: Syracuse and Columbia. A lucrative professional career lay ahead of him. However, after his very first meeting with Gandhi in 1929 at Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, Kumarappa gave up his three-piece suit, took to wearing khadi and became a lifelong preacher and practitioner of Gandhian economics.
Religion is the chief source of Gandhian economics. And at the heart of his understanding of religion is the care of the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable members of society. Kumarappa, who crystallised Gandhi’s economic philosophy in his book The Economy of Permanence, lived his life by this religious diktat. In J.C. Kumarappa: Mahatma Gandhi’s Economist, his biographer Mark Lindley writes: “Kumarappa in his last seven years resided in a one-room house, the interior decoration of which consisted of a picture of a poor man. When asked who it was, he would say, ‘My master’s master. My master is Mahatma Gandhi, and Gandhi’s master is this villager’.”
Kumarappa’s quest in his book The Economy of Permanence, was “to relate our spiritual and higher self back to life so that the daily routine of mundane existence may be regulated in accordance with the dictates of our better self, and to find a way of life that will lend purpose for existence and action to such as have no use for the present-day traditional religion because of its other worldliness from humdrum everyday life.” He added: “An effort is here made to bring all walks of life into alignment with the universal order. What men of religion term ‘eternal life’ or ‘Union with the Godhead’ has been interpreted in relation to the everyday life of man.”
He added: “In studying human institutions we should never lose sight of that great teacher, Mother Nature. Anything that we may devise if it is contrary to her ways, she will ruthlessly annihilate sooner or later … A nation that forgets or ignores this fundamental process in forming its institutions will disintegrate.”
In his brief foreword to Kumarappa’s book, Gandhi posed a profound question in his inimitable manner: “Shall the body triumph over and stifle the soul or shall the latter triumph over and express itself through a perishable body which, with its few wants healthily satisfied, will be free to subserve the end of the imperishable soul? This is ‘Plain living and high thinking’.”
This question sums up the entirety of Gandhi’s life-transforming philosophy of nonviolent economic growth. Many great humanist thinkers in ancient and modern times have preached nonviolence. All of them are worthy of veneration. However, what is distinctive about Gandhi is that his “science of nonviolence” explored, among other things, the economic basis of violence. It also enunciated a new ethics-based and peace-promoting way of economic development consistent with the higher possibilities in human evolution.
The introduction of justice and moral values as a factor to be considered in regulating international commerce was, according to Gandhi, the touchstone of “the extension of law of nonviolence in the domain of economics”. He declares: “Economics that hurts the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and therefore sinful”. Much of what he said or wrote about economics negates the foundational principles of modern economic theory and practice. “True economics,” he affirms, “is the economics of justice”. He calls it the first principle of every religion.
His castigation of Britain and the other colonial powers of Europe was on account of the fact that the economics they practiced was a violation of the religion of Jesus that they preached. “I know no previous instance in history of a nation’s establishing a systematic disobedience to the first principle of its professed religion”. He reminds us that all the scriptures of the world, “which we (verbally) esteem as divine, denounce “the love of money as the source of all evil and as an idolatry abhorred of the deity”. They also declare “mammon service to be the accurate and irreconcilable opposite of God’s service”.
Unjust Economics
Gandhi located one of the major sources of wars and violence in economic systems that favoured the few by neglecting the majority. His 1908 essay Sarvodaya, or the wellbeing and progress of all, that paraphrased writer-philosopher John Ruskin’s Unto This Last, was written six years before the outbreak of the First World War (1914-18). In the essay, Gandhi accurately predicted that Europe was heading towards a catastrophic war. Moreover, he had pointed out that the main cause of the war would be the West’s industrialism, whose inherent predilection for overproduction created an almost limitless appetite for new sources of cheap raw materials as well as new markets for its finished goods.
He prophesied: “Western civilisation is a mere baby, a hundred or only fifty years old. And yet it has reduced Europe to a sorry plight. Let us pray that India is saved from the fate that has overtaken Europe, where the nations are poised for an attack on one another, and are silent only because of the stockpiling of armaments. Some day there will be an explosion, and then Europe will be a veritable hell on earth. Non-white races are looked upon as legitimate prey by every European state. What else can we expect where covetousness is the ruling passion in the breasts of men? Europeans pounce upon new territories like crows upon a piece of meat. I am inclined to think that this is due to their mass-production factories.”
A lot has changed in the world in the hundred years since Gandhi wrote this indictment of Western imperialism, the most notable change being the end of the colonial subjugation by European nations. Nevertheless, there has also been a striking continuity. The Western model of economic growth, with some variations, has spread to most parts of the world. The instinct of big and powerful nations to aggressively capture sources of raw materials, especially energy resources, near and far, and their equally aggressive attempts to seize markets for finished products, is welded to commercial culture in the age of globalisation. Slowly, India too is following the wrong footsteps of other powerful nations.
Gandhi not only foresaw the unsustainability of Western patterns of production, marketing and consumption, but he also warned India about the danger inherent in imitating them. He wrote in Young India on December 20, 1928: “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts”.
Environmental destruction
This essentially Western, but lately globalised, model of economic growth has also given rise to new forms of violence. Economic “progress” has resulted in – nay, it has actually necessitated – the most virulent attacks on the environment, the likes of which have never been seen in human history.
Forests, one of the most beautiful and benevolent creations of nature, have been felled with impunity. Oceans, rivers and other water bodies have been polluted with toxic effluents killing countless aquatic creatures. Even though we have not, fortunately, witnessed in the past few decades the mass killing of human beings on a scale seen during the two World Wars and other smaller conflicts during the 20th century, the savagery of human beings against other species on the planet can only be described as an unending holocaust. The irony is that other species are being exterminated for the “development” of human species.
The protection of the environment and sustainable development were not quite on the global or India’s agenda when Gandhi was alive. Nevertheless, we see how he was far ahead of his time in warning the world about the potentially disastrous consequences of the Western model of economic growth, which has, alas, now become, with some local variations, the globally accepted model.
When asked if he wanted India to enjoy the same kind of lifestyle as Britain, his incisive reply was: “It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve this prosperity. How many planets will a country like India require?”
Although technological breakthroughs during the past few decades have unleashed huge productivity gains in the global economy, Gandhi’s fundamental concern for the ecological health of the planet remains valid.
Gandhian environmentalism is integrally linked to his worldview of nonviolence. “It is an arrogant assumption,” he wrote, “to say that human beings are lords and masters of the lower creatures. On the contrary, being endowed with greater things in life, they are the trustees of the lower animal kingdom”. He wanted “to realise identity with even the crawling things upon earth, because we claim descent from the same God, and that being so, all life in whatever form it appears must essentially be so”. In a highly original re-interpretation of colonialism, he affirmed that lording over nature and over other “inferior” people are both manifestations of colonialism.
Let us turn to some irrefutable evidence to know the shocking extent of violence that human beings have perpetrated through this colonisation of other species on Earth ─ paradoxically, eco-colonialism gained momentum after the era of conventional colonialism came to an end in the second half of the 20th century.
A study published in 2010 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network, has concluded that nature’s very “backbone is at risk”. The most comprehensive assessment of the world’s vertebrates confirms “an extinction crisis” with one-fifth of species threatened. “On average, fifty species of mammal, bird and amphibian move closer to extinction each year”.
Clearly, nature’s greatest creation, human beings, turned out to be the worst destroyer of its other creations.
Family and community
Another new form of violence in the modern era has been the massive disruption of that most basic, civilising and naturally created institution of human beings: family. It is in the institution of family that one is most human. It is here that humanising values such as love, mutual affection, care and cooperation without seeking anything in return are more active than in other areas of social interaction.
The laws of modern economics have no place within the family unit because human labour here is non-monetised and freely offered. Traditional societies in the past had ensured extension of this caring ethos of the family to neighbourhoods and communities to a substantial degree. Sadly, in modern times, this ethos has come under relentless attack by the forces of lopsided economic growth. The rapid disintegration of family and communities has led to the atomisation of society.
Paradoxically, countries where family and community values have been most eroded are regarded as “developed”, worthy of being emulated by the developing and underdeveloped countries.
This degenerative process is no longer limited to the countries of the West. It can also be seen in India and, to a lesser extent in, China, the two large, ancient civilisations that achieved high gross domestic product growth by following the Western model of development. The widening rural-urban divide, the forced separation of migrant workers from their families, the dehumanising living conditions of the urban poor, the separation of ageing parents from children in middle-class families, the inhospitable, and even hostile, nature of the urban environment for senior citizens, children and the disabled, and the growing scarcity of living space and basic amenities for all but a rich minority – are all of these not manifestations of violence?
Healthcare, a basic need and an inalienable right of every human being, now comes with a price tag, unaffordable even for the ordinary citizens of wealthy countries.
Is it not systemic violence when the sick go unattended, not for want of medical facilities in the vicinity but for want of money? And is it not systemic violence when the undignified and hazardous living and working conditions for a large section of the global population increases their vulnerability to disease and death?
The compulsions of crass commerce have brought violence even into the realm of culture. The function of culture is to refine the higher senses of human beings, enrich human relationships and thus enhance joy. However, by converting culture into a marketable commodity, tempting human beings into becoming consumers of this commodity, deadening their capacity for refined aesthetic experience and reducing joy itself to instant and yet fleeting gratification, the business of mass entertainment has only created an illusion of “good life”. Worse still, the giant entertainment industry in the West, which in turn is aped by entertainment businesses run by the westernised elites in India and other countries, has inflicted violence on a huge scale on the diversity of art, culture, literature, languages, dialects and spiritual traditions around the world.
All these multiple manifestations of violence have created a moral vacuum and alienation in modern societies. Crime in many new and sophisticated ways, which has increased in almost every part of the world, is also a form and an outcome of alienation.
There is another, oft-neglected, form of violence in the modern world: alienation caused by the economic and cultural tyranny of industrialism. There is growing loneliness, especially among youngsters, causing isolation, depression and unhappiness. Parent-children bonds are diminishing and connections between families are reducing. Atomised living in impersonal social and work environments is causing lower emotional stability, loneliness, addiction to drugs, depression and other mental disorders.
All this has also led to human being’s alienation from their past as well as from their future. Increasingly, we are obsessed only with the short-term considerations and aspirations of our finite existence on this planet: the here and now. We have little concern either for our ancestors’ expectations or for our own obligations towards the generations to come. This has resulted in a cognitive and behavioural disorder in modern human beings.
Edward Goldsmith (1928-2009), an Anglo-French philosopher of sustainable development and a passionate votary of the Gandhian model of development, remarks: “The notion that we owe nothing to posterity seems to justify, in the eyes of many people, our terrible egotism and the deliberate pillaging of the world’s natural resources to which our society is so committed in order to satisfy the requirements of the corporations that control it.”
Rebuilding economics
Gandhi repeatedly emphasises that his advocacy of nonviolence is a necessary by-product of his faith in satya, or the truth, which for him was the same as God. Ahimsa, or nonviolence, was the best – indeed, the only – way to worship God.
Since he recognised science as an important and reliable way of finding truth, he called his advocacy of nonviolence the “science of nonviolence”. He was one of the few saintly voices of peace who uncovered the economic roots of violence. His “science of nonviolence” was comprehensive. It addressed three fundamental questions that have agitated the minds of thinking people all over the world.
Firstly, are humans inherently violent? If violence is an inseparable part of human nature, then the dream of a nonviolent world remains just that – an unrealisable dream. On the contrary, if, as Gandhi believed, humans are not by nature violent, then the question that begets itself is: how can individuals, societies and nations progress along the path of peace?
Specifically, how can the world rid itself of wars and weapons of mass destruction? Can science and technology, which have so far come to the aid of human instinct to kill fellow beings, become the means to promote the virtue of non-killing? Can the rhetoric of “a world without nuclear weapons” become a reality – and how soon? Peace-lovers in all ages have dreamt of beating “swords into plowshares”. Realisation of this dream demands a drastic reduction in military expenditures of national governments, especially big powers, and diverting the saved resources to eliminate poverty, hunger, disease and homelessness from our beautiful planet. How can this be achieved?
Secondly, how can we protect the priceless eco-wealth of our planet? In other words, can human beings become nonviolent towards the natural ecology of which he is an integral part? Can homo sapiens become a reliable trustee to other living species that are cohabiting this beautiful but fragile planet? Like the challenge of nuclear disarmament, this challenge too has become far more pressing in the post-Gandhi era.
Indeed, the biggest task is to first heal the wounds humans have already inflicted on “Gaia”, Greek for Mother Earth. Science and technology can no doubt serve as healing agents, but human beings need something more: the wisdom to know why they committed the crime of assaulting the environment in the first place, the readiness to repent and the knowledge to save themselves and the wondrous web of life on this planet.
Thirdly, are women more capable of making our world a safer and better place than men? Are they inherently more predisposed towards peace and caring than men? Gandhi’s answer was resoundingly in the affirmative. Since he regarded women to be more kind and hence more nonviolent, he believed in the power of women’s leadership to create a more peaceful future for humanity. It is for this reason that he regarded “survival of the kindest” as against the theory of “survival of the fittest” as the future law of human evolution. Nevertheless, the challenge remained: how to empower women in economic and non-economic spheres in societies that continued to be dominated by patriarchal, religio-cultural dogmas?
Ethical guidelines
Does Gandhi’s philosophy offer readymade answers to these questions? Does he provide formulaic solutions to overcome the multiple maladies of the modern world? No. However, his ideas do help us understand that the source of these maladies lies, to a large degree, in the reigning economic system, which in turn has distorted the systems of politics, education, science and technology and even religion, in countries around the world. It also provides a useful set of ideas and ethical guidelines that can help cure many of these maladies.
One can find a good selection of them engraved on the walled enclosure surrounding Raj Ghat, Gandhiji’s serenely verdant cremation site in New Delhi. Among them is this pithy but profound aphorism, penned by Gandhi himself, explaining the “seven social sins”, which he regarded as the roots of all kinds of violence in society:
Wealth without Work,
Pleasure without Conscience,
Knowledge without Character,
Commerce without Morality,
Science without Humanity,
Worship without Sacrifice,
Politics without Principles.
Gandhi questions the absurd assumption of capitalist economics that inequity and injustice are inevitable. He likens the circulation of wealth in a nation to the circulation of blood in the natural body. Using this scientific analogy, he explains how inequalities of wealth, “unjustly established”, are harmful to the health of society and its members, both rich and poor. It is necessary to record here that he makes a distinction between inequalities of wealth “justly” and “unjustly” established. He considers wealth “justly” established to be natural.
Using the language of mathematics, Gandhi explains the moral and immoral ways of wealth creation:
“The real value of acquired wealth depends on the moral sign attached to it, just as sternly as that of a mathematical quantity depends on the algebraical sign attached to it. Any given accumulation of commercial wealth may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful industries, progressive energies and productive ingenuities; or on the other hand, it may be indicative of mortal luxury, merciless tyranny, ruinous chicanery.…Therefore the idea that directions can be given for the gaining of wealth, irrespective of the consideration of its moral sources, is perhaps the most insolently futile of all that ever beguiled men through their vices.”
As in everything else, Gandhi places greater responsibility on major world powers – which now includes India and China, besides the United States and other rich nations – than on small and weak nations to promote nonviolence and peace in international commerce. “Great nations (must cease) to believe in soul-destroying competition and to multiply wants and thereby increasing their material possessions”.
The United Nations declared October 2, Gandhi’s birthday, as the International Day of Nonviolence. This is a befitting tribute to the greatest promoter of peace in the modern era. However, do leaders of India and other powerful nations pay heed to his philosophy of nonviolence while devising their policies and strategies for economic growth? The answer is painfully obvious.
Sudheendra Kulkarni
Source : Scroll.in
The time is ripe for Gandhi’s philosophical alternative to capitalism and communism
‘Sarvodaya’, the well being of all, is shaped by Gandhi’s spiritual ideas of nonviolence and the rich being mere trustees of surplus wealth to help the needy.
Mohandas Gandhi lived in an era when the world witnessed a clash between two big ideas, both essentially western in their origin: capitalism and communism. Between the 17th and early 20th centuries, European powers – later joined by the United States – had become fabulously wealthy following a capitalist model of economic growth, spurred by technological advances by the industrial revolution. In the case of European powers, their capitalist path to prosperity was also paved by the colonial pillage of the nations they had subjugated.
Communism was born as a reaction to capitalist exploitation of the working class. Backed by the theory of Marxism, it seeks to overthrow the capitalist state, by violent means if necessary, and usher in revolutionary transformation of the economy from private enterprise into public ownership, promising a future of equality, abundance and justice.
India’s freedom movement could not have been immune to the influence of these two big ideas. In the political sphere, few leaders and organisations were votaries of capitalism. Communism also did not find many adherents outside the fold of those who either belonged to, or were sympathisers of the Communist Party of India. The Communist Party of India, formed in 1925, was inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917.
The chief reason that a large part of Indian society and polity remained uninfluenced by communism was the violence and brutal suppression of democratic rights and freedom in Russia under the leadership of authoritarian Joseph Stalin. Nevertheless, the ideas of equality, justice and a society free of exploitation – loosely described by the term “socialism” – found strong supporters in India, both in the political establishment and among the people at large.
Gandhi rejected both capitalism and communism, the former because it was exploitative and the latter because it was not averse to violence. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a minority capitalist class was abhorrent to him. Equally repugnant was the communist theory of class struggle, which regarded the interests of entrepreneurs and workers to be inherently and irreconcilably antagonistic.
However, as someone whose world-view harmoniously encompassed every aspect of human life, he could not have been indifferent to the need to provide his own economic concept as an alternative to capitalism and communism. His alternative was “sarvodaya”: the wellbeing and progress of one and all in society. This was the title of his 1908 essay based on John Ruskin’s book on political economy, Unto This Last. In his autobiography My Experiments With Truth, he describes the electrifying effect Ruskin’s book had on him during his 24-hour train journey in South Africa, when he could not sleep at all. “I determined to change my life in accordance with the ideals of the book,” he wrote.
The essence of sarvodaya lies in a principle similar to the one embedded in socialism: “The good of the individual is contained in the good of all”. Realisation of this ideal makes three demands on societies and individuals. First, a key requirement is the adoption, in all economic activities, of the virtue of cooperation in the place of an unhealthy class struggle and destructive capitalist competition. Those who acquire more wealth than they reasonably need have a moral and social responsibility to become “trustees” of the surplus wealth to be used for the wellbeing of the needy. This is the operative meaning of the Sanskrit maxim “sarvajan hitaaya, sarvajan sukhaaya”, wellbeing of all, and happiness of all.
Second, both societies and individuals should move away from an economy of acquisition to an economy of healthy fulfilment of the human needs of everyone without discrimination. As Gandhi famously said, Mother Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not for every man’s greed. Third, Gandhi attached the highest importance to the voluntary limiting of man’s material needs through self-control. “Our civilisation, our culture, our Swaraj depend not upon multiplying our wants – self-indulgence, but upon restricting our wants – self-denial. That you cannot serve both God and Mammon is an economic truth of the highest value”.
Trusteeship
It is necessary to emphasise here that Gandhi enlarged the meaning of two key principles of Hinduism through his economic philosophy: asteya (non-stealing) and aparigraha (non-greed). He held that if a man accumulates more than what he and his family reasonably require for the fulfilment of their needs, it amounts to greed and stealing from society. Out of this understanding arose his concept of trusteeship.
Gandhi’s belief in trusteeship came from a pearl of wisdom in the first verse of the Isha Upanishad, which states: “Everything animate or inanimate that is within the universe is controlled and owned by the lord. One should therefore accept only those things necessary for oneself, which are set aside as one’s quota, and must not accept other things, knowing well to whom they belong”.
He extolled this verse for conveying a message of universal brotherhood – not only brotherhood of all human beings, but of all living things. Indeed, this Upanishadic verse, which inspired him to formulate the idea of trusteeship, can be called the kernel of Gandhian socialism: “When an individual has more than his proportionate portion, he becomes a trustee of that portion for other creations of God”. We can see here how beautifully ancient Indian philosophy has linked the concepts of non-stealing, nonviolence, trusteeship and socialism (“each for all and all for each”). The same virtue of trusteeship – the ethical obligation to help others with what one possesses – is also postulated in all other religions in their own ways.
Trusteeship was Gandhi’s creative application of the spirituality and science of nonviolence in the economic sphere. “Economic equality,” he argued, “is the master key to nonviolent independence. Working for economic equality means abolishing the eternal conflict between capital and labour. It means the levelling down of the few rich in whose hands is concentrated the bulk of the nation’s wealth on the one hand, and the levelling up of the semi-starved naked millions on the other.”
Gandhi made a distinction between capitalism and the capitalist: “By the nonviolent method, we seek not to destroy the capitalist, we seek to destroy capitalism”. He invited the rich to become trustees by telling them that “it is possible to acquire riches without consciously doing wrong”. At the same time, he also emphasised that labour must be regarded as an equal partner of capital. “If capital is power, so is work. Either is dependent on the other. Immediately the worker realises his strength, he is in a position to become a co-sharer with the capitalist instead of remaining his slave”.
He put his enlightened views on trade union activities into practice when, in 1918, he organised the textile workers of Ahmedabad. He called trusteeship “a laboratory of human relations” and succeeded in winning the hearts of both workers and employers.
As seen in the first part of this essay, he extended the concept of trusteeship beyond economics to the realm of the environment. Human beings, he declared, “are the trustees of the lower animal kingdom”. Striking a note of warning, he wrote: “It is an arrogant assumption to say that human beings are lords and masters of the lower creatures. On the contrary, being endowed with greater things in life, they are the trustees of the lower animal kingdom”.
Gandhi and socialism
As mentioned earlier, the broad concept of “socialism” had influenced a large section of India’s political establishment and Indian people during the freedom struggle. The question naturally arises: where did Gandhi’s idea of trusteeship stand in relation to socialism? From his writings and actions, it is obvious that he was a socialist at heart, but he was against some of the policy demands of socialist leaders and organisations – such as their demand for the nationalisation of big businesses.
Gandhi was in favour of less state action and more societal action to promote trusteeship. He believed that societal action would promote behavioural transformation, strengthen the spirit of mutual cooperation and solidarity, and enrich the culture of fraternity.
Speaking at the Delhi Provincial Political Conference in July 1947, he said:
“It has become a fashion these days to call oneself a socialist. It is a mistaken notion that one can serve only if one carries a label of some ‘ism’. ... I have always considered myself a servant of the workers and peasants but I have never found it necessary to call myself a socialist. ... My socialism is of a different kind. ... If socialism means turning enemies into friends I should be considered a genuine socialist. ... I do not believe in the kind of socialism that the Socialist Party preaches. ... When I die you will all admit that Gandhi was a true socialist”.
Because of this ambiguity, he faced criticism from both communists as well as socialists – including Jawaharlal Nehru and others within the Congress. The criticism was on two counts. First, it was well known that Gandhi was on good terms with all the leading Indian business groups of his time – Tata, Birla, Bajaj and others. Many of them financially supported the Congress and also Gandhi’s Constructive Programme, which included the campaign against untouchability, the promotion of khadi and village industries, awareness about sanitation and cleanliness, establishment of a new type of value-based education, and “self-purification” and “self-reform” of those engaged in these activities.
Many critics saw no merit in these “non-political” activities and, instead, blamed him for his dependence on big business houses. Gandhi was unfazed by this criticism because he scrupulously tried to raise the bulk of funds through small donations from a large number of common people. Moreover, he regarded his Constructive Programme to be an inseparable part of his politics. Without social transformation and the self-cultivation of individuals, even political freedom for India would not have much meaning, he cautioned.
“I am not ashamed to own that many capitalists are friendly towards me and do not fear me,” he wrote in 1939: “They know that I desire to end capitalism almost, if not quite, as much as the most advanced socialist or communist. ... My theory of ‘trusteeship’ is no makeshift, certainly no camouflage. I am confident that it will survive all other theories.”
Gandhi’s confidence that his theory of trusteeship would “survive all other theories” stemmed from his belief that “it has the sanction of philosophy and religion behind it” and also because “no other theory is compatible with nonviolence”.
Second, his critics also argued that his appeal to businessmen to follow the concept of trusteeship fell mostly on deaf ears. To this, he retorted: “That possessors of wealth have not acted up to the theory does not prove its falsity; it proves the weakness of the wealthy… The question how many can be real trustees is beside the point. If the theory is true, it is immaterial whether many live up to it or only one man lives up to it. The question is of conviction. If you accept the principle of ahimsa, you have to strive to live up to it, no matter whether you succeed or fail. There is nothing in this theory which can be said to be beyond the grasp of intellect, though you may say it is difficult of practice”.
He used a scientific concept to drive home his point. “Absolute trusteeship is an abstraction like Euclid’s definition of a point, and is equally unattainable. But if we strive for it, we shall be able to go further in realising a state of equality on earth than by any other method”.
Inequality, ‘bloody revolution’
Despite his differences with socialists, Gandhi had warned, in the sternest possible language, about the serious consequences of the rich-poor divide in independent India. “A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility, so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists. The contrast between the palaces of New Delhi and the miserable hovels of the poor, labouring class nearby cannot last one day in a free India in which the poor will enjoy the same power as the richest in the land… A violent and bloody revolution is a certainty one day unless there is a voluntary abdication of riches and the power that riches give and sharing them for the common good”.
Has India heeded Gandhi’s warning? The answer is obvious. On one hand, India today has attained a level of material prosperity that was perhaps unthinkable during the freedom struggle. Even though our population has increased, a large section of it enjoys better living standards than in the past. This undeniable achievement is something we can be proud of. On the other hand, the wealth gap in today’s India, compared to what it was in the colonial era, has widened to an extent that was unimaginable in Gandhi’s time. Concomitantly, violence of various kinds due to economic inequality, social injustice and regional imbalance in development has also increased. “A bloody revolution” may not have happened, but that cannot make either our government or our society complacent. The numerous mass protests resulting in bloodshed in the nearly eight decades since independence have proved Gandhi right in his prognosis that inequity inevitably breeds violence.
Independent India never made a serious attempt – rather, it made no attempt at all – to constitutionally introduce trusteeship in economic planning and legislation. The business class and the political-bureaucratic leadership colluded in burying this key Gandhian concept. The blame rests not only with the Indian state but also Indian society, especially Hindu society.
Although Hinduism has inherited the timeless wisdom of the Vedas, Upanishads, epics and other scriptures, the elites – the economic, socio- political and religious leadership of Hindu society – have chosen not to be awakened and energised by this wisdom. They have also not heeded the exhortation by Vivekananda, the greatest Hindu monk of the modern era, who said: “I do not believe in a God or religion which cannot wipe the widow’s tears or bring a piece of bread to the orphan’s mouth.” Vivekananda had also angrily declared: “So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.”
This elite reluctance to follow the diktats of religion in economic life is evident from the slow pace of reforms in Hindu society, the disinclination of the rich to cast away the influence of Western consumerism, and their failure to practice “trusteeship”, a quintessentially Indian economic thought that Gandhi came up with and is rooted in Hinduism.
There is no point in simply diagnosing the problem and apportioning blame. It is far more important to strive to resurrect the philosophy of trusteeship in the conduct of individuals and institutions. Such efforts have a chance to succeed because of two helpful developments in the post-Gandhian history of India and the world.
First, communism has collapsed – and this is something Gandhi had foreseen as early as in the 1930s. Second, capitalism has not proved its success in fulfilling its own promises. Hence, this historical experience has placed the search for an alternative, nonviolent economic system on top of the agenda of the 21st century. A large part of the answer to this search can be found in the concept of trusteeship, whose validity is universal. Gandhi was, perhaps, far ahead of his time in advocating it. The time for trusteeship was perhaps not then. But it certainly is now.
Sudheendra Kulkarni
Source : scroll.in