Being in the World: Dialogue and Cosmopolis

10. Political Self-Rule: Gandhi and the Future of Democracy

151 10. Political Self-Rule Gandhi and the Future of Democracy To see the universal spirit of truth face-to-face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. —Mahatma Gandhi, Satyagraha For students and friends of Gandhi, 2009 was an important year.1 As we know, it was a hundred years ago, on a long sea voyage, that Mohandas Gandhi penned his book Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule—a text justly famous because it has stood the test of time. The book was Gandhi’s opening salvo in his attack on colonialism and imperialism and his first public plea for Indian independence, freedom or liberation from foreign domination. Surely, there is ample reason for commemorating and celebrating this anniversary. Yet celebration here cannot just mean a nostalgic retrieval of the past or a rummaging in literary archives. What is urgent and imperative today is an effort to recover the guiding spirit of the text, the message pervading its pages. And this spirit or message is not confined to 1909 or to the twentieth century. It is as relevant today as it was then, and it will remain relevant and even gain in salience in the present century and future years. In my view, the significance of the text can be found on two levels : one overt and directly accessible, the other more recessed and of longue durée. The first level has to do with India’s struggle for independence and subsequent struggles more or less directly inspired by Gandhi’s example. It is this level that tends to capture immediate political attention. In a sense, Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj can be seen as a “classic” of anti-imperialist literature, a handbook of struggle not only 152 Being in the World for Indians but for oppressed and colonized people around the world. The handbook has galvanized people in many continents and led ultimately to the demise of the traditional European empires . It also became a primer in America for African Americans involved in the civil rights struggles led by Martin Luther King Jr. It served as an inspiration for the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, as well as for several “velvet revolutions” in Eastern Europe against Soviet imperialism. As one needs to add right away, this level of significance is by no means exhausted or obsolete. In the words of the Palestinian American Edward Said, imperialism or imperial ambitions have not come to an end but only resurface in new guises or constellations. What mainly characterizes such ambitions today in comparison with earlier empires, Said writes, is “the quantitative leap in the reach of cultural authority” and “the unprecedented growth in the apparatus of the diffusion and control of information.”2 The other level is more recessed or shielded from view, mainly because of its ethical and even ontological (or metaphysical) connotations . As I shall argue in these pages, Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj captures the basic meaning or idea of democracy—a meaning that is not restricted to subjugated or colonized people but to friends of democracy everywhere. Basically, his text formulates a conception of “self” and “self-rule” (swaraj) that is constitutive for genuine democracy or democratic politics—in contradistinction from forms of monarchical, aristocratic, or theocratic tutelage. While constitutive in this sense, the conception also differs sharply from prevalent reductions of democracy to individual self-seeking or the unhampered pursuit of private self-interest. What surfaces behind this contrast is a different or starkly revised understanding of democratic “freedom” or the status of “being free.” In the following I proceed in three steps. First, I shall discuss Gandhi’s notion of “self-rule” (swaraj) and its connotations. Next, I shall delineate the political implications of Gandhi’s conception, chiefly by distinguishing it from current ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism (what I call “minimalist democracy ”). Finally, I shall highlight the central contributions that Gandhi’s conception makes to political theory or philosophy in our globalizing age. Political Self-Rule 153 Gandhian Swaraj Gandhi’s text ranges over a number of issues, all discussed in dialogue form (between an “editor” and a “reader”). For present purposes, it must suffice to highlight briefly passages relating directly to self-rule or swaraj. Following a discussion of the present condition of India— the state of ferment and unrest pervading the subcontinent due to British imperial rule—Hind Swaraj turns immediately to the central issue...