Gandhi was an obsessive letter writer, penning thousands of epistles. Asked what ideology he followed, he replied: “I have not read Smith, Mill or Karl Marx. When in doubt, a little voice tells me that when in doubt, turn neither left nor right but always follow the narrow straight path.” It’s a surprising statement as Smith was the father of classical capitalism, who wrote in his magnum opus ‘Wealth of Nations’ (1776) that “market forces, as if by an invisible hand, will promote welfare of all”. JS Mill added the pleasure principle to wealth creation. Marx, on the other hand, saw ‘seeds of destruction contained in capitalism’ as it was exploitative of labour. In his Communist Manifesto (1847), he gave a clarion call to the workers to revolt and usher in a classless society. Though Gandhi was witness to the Russian Revolution (1917) , he was more attracted by the work the British philosopher John Ruskin and his book ‘Unto This Last’ and the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and his book ‘The Kingdom of God Is Within You’. Both these books went against the tide of those times and were proscribed.
Ruskin was deeply critical of the market economics and wealth creation dictum of Adam Smith in “Wealth of Nations” and pleasure principle of John Stuart Mill. He was deeply concerned about the plight of working class after the Industrial Revolution and strongly pitched for equitable sharing of riches where men are treated and paid justly. He strongly believed that an economy must be based on the consideration of humanity and economics must have its roots in ethics. This philosophy sowed the seeds of Tolstoy’s farm which was founded by Gandhiji near Johannesburg in South Africa in 1910, where the residents lived self-sufficiently devoting their bodies to hard manual labour, their minds to the ideals of truth and nonviolence, and children exposed to the beauty of vocational education.
Nonviolence and passive resistance were the lessons Gandhi learnt from Tolstoy’s book. ‘Kingdom of God’ was a philosophical treatise where Tolstoy wrote that all those who waged wars are an affront to the teaching of Christ. He was anguished that the Russian Orthodox Church supported state’s policy for war. In 1908, Tolstoy wrote to Gandhi, “Only by using love as a weapon through passive resistance, the native Indian people can overthrow the colonial British empire.” Gandhi wrote, “Before the independent thinking, profound morality and truthfulness of this book, all the books seemed to pale into insignificance.”
When Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy as to whether he can name the firm after the name of the great novelist, he wrote back “I have known about your work in leading the Satyagraha movement in South Africa and your quest for equality. Nothing will give me greater pleasure than my name being associated with the community firm and high idealism that you propose to build”. The two major ideas in these two books, viz dignified living for all, and nonviolence as an unshakable article of faith remained the two lynchpins of Gandhian philosophy throughout his movement in South Africa & struggle for independence of India thereafter.
Gandhi returned to India and was in the zenith of his political career in the 20s, when he read Katherine Mayo book ‘Mother India’ in 1927. This book was a scathing attack on India’s religion, retrograde customs, pernicious practice of early child marriage, and lack of medical care for pregnant women. While many of the practice described by Mayo undoubtedly existed in India, she did not give credit to the effort of Indian reformers to end these evils and completely exonerated the British authority from any responsibility. The Britishers were delighted with the book and free copy was presented to every Member of Parliament. Gandhi described a book as “the report of a drainpipe inspector endowed with one purpose of opening the drains of the country”. He charged Mayo with a selective representation of facts. At the same time, he insisted that we must not overlook the dark side of the picture where it existed like child marriage and ill treatment of women.
When the socialist regime of USSR disintegrated by 1990 and the Berlin Wall got dismantled in 1989, Francis Fukuyama wrote in his book ‘End of History’ that this was end point of ideological conflict and acceptance of liberal democracy with free market economics as the ideal fusion of polity with economic system. However, this huge faith in market fundamentalism got a severe jolt when the US financial crisis, happened in 2007-2009 with a cascading impact on many countries who had close financial ties with the USA. The world realized the fault lines of unregulated markets, toxic effects of greed and conflict of interests. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate, wrote that market economics benefited only an unscrupulous few as against Smithsonian prognostication that it will bring welfare to all. Gandhi’s unequivocal adherence to the ideals of Ruskin and firm conviction that there is ‘enough for everybody’s need and not for everybody’s greed ‘found resonance in nurturing small and cottage industry and flagging the importance of sustainable development. His commitment to social justice, concern for villages where majority of Indians live and eschewing greed and mindless pursuit of wealth made Gandhian ideals extremely relevant to the present times.
One of the most definitive biographies written early on Gandhi was by Romaine Rolland, French novelist. Rolland heard of Gandhi in 1920 from the Bengali mystic Dilip Roy and Tagore. His book, published in 1924, covered the period ending with Gandhi’s arrest in 1922. He wrote, “His body is walled in as in a tomb, but Gandhi’s invisible soul still animates India’s vast body.” A man of faith, he was greatly upset by the wind of violence sweeping the world and believed that in the old crumbling world; 'there was no hope or great light except Gandhi.’ Einstein wrote, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a person in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.” Indeed, he is not merely an insignia of our national currency but India’s contribution to alternative ideology, reiterates the importance of sustainable development and abdicates violence as a weapon of power.
(Prof Misra is a Sarvodaya Foundation Trustee. E.mail-misra.sn54@gmail.com, Ph: 91-7381109899)