SECULARISM

K.G. Ramakrishnan on Gandhi and Ideology of Nationalism

During the Hunter Commission enquiry, he was asked: "Is it not because many indignities were visited on the Indian people by an irresponsible foreign government that you started the non-cooperation movement?

"No, my Lord, replied Gandhi, "A foreign government has nothing to do with my decision".

Lord Hunter then said that in a democratic national government, there would be no need for a movement to force the government to respect people's wishes".

"I am not so sanguine," replied Gandhi.

He said that even in Britain under so-called democracy the people were often ignored. He went on to add that civil disobedience was more valid under Home Rule than under foreign rule because a foreign ruler did not have the advantage of using democracy as a convenient cloak for suppressing the people.

Gandhi often used to say that he did not want the British Army of occupation to be replaced by a National Army of occupation.

Gandhi was as much opposed to the national idea as to franchise-based Western models of democracy, buttressed by the checks and balances system.

European nationalism was the inevitable corollary of the Industrial Revolution, Big industry and small states went ill together. Larger states and direct democracy also could not coexist. The answer was either absolutism or representative democracy which gave the people authority to confer on the "Representatives" authority to rule over them. In such a situation vote or non-vote meant nothing for the people who in any event were becoming irrelevant to governance, statecraft or economic development which was why Gandhi felt that if people were to become masters of their destiny, the first attack must be on large industry. His last words in his correspondence with Henry Ford were in reply to Ford's question, "Is it not that you are against monopoly?"

Gandhi said: "That is all."

He was against monopoly of power, political or economic. He was convinced that any large government, national or foreign, democratic or despotic, would necessarily be an oligarchy.

He said: "I am not against capital but against capitalism. I am not against industry but industrialism". That is, if capital and industry had a function, he did not object to either but he could not grant them an extra functional role of imposing their will on the people. He could have gone on to say that he was not against justice or democracy but against institutionalized or systemised and mandatory forms of either. Though he was a tremendously organized person he recognised the tyranny that inhered in every organization. His Hind Swaraj written in 1908 contained much of his message. He came back to it in his letters to Nehru in 1945. To identify Gandhi... with narrow nationalist ideas is the result of not understanding him.

The continuity of Indian wisdom in social and political matters was maintained by Gandhi. India alone was in a position to challenge the Western concepts of a nation-state built on large industry and sustained by expansionism Though Nehru deviated from Gandhi's prescriptions, he was too sensitive not to acknowledge his fault during his last days as he did in two speeches, one in the Lok Sabha and the other in the NDC, But Nehru was succeeded by Philistines and profligates and later by pigmies and prevaricators. Today India seems to have already been overwhelmed by the cultural and economic waves of mercenary American expansionism. It looks at the moment that India may not be able to prevail against this menace.

(Source: The Mainstream, 2 March, 1996)

M.S. Sondhi on Religious Pluralism

Prof. T.N. Madan's exploration of the meaning of religious pluralism is most welcome, stimulated as it is by the 'pluralist definition currently favoured in India'.

The task of complementing minimal state neutrality by dialogue in civil society to overcome religious divisiveness is indeed a positive suggestion. (This was) advocated... in my 1993 monograph, Hindu-Muslim Dialogue. I had outlined several preconditions for dialogue (between religious parties) which would integrally include the secularists. These include (i) a mutual recognition of strict equality amongst the various religious and ideological systems - not an equality of substance but of endeavor and a common untenable claim to absolute truth - or incompleteness; (ii) an agreement to refrain from conversion, which is an implicit assertion of one's own faith over another's; and (iii) to abstain from conflict of any kind. In other words, pluralistic egalitarianism, not so radical as to engender mutual incomprehension, but grounded in a presumed common background, could provide the philosophical or ideological basis for a national multi-cultural society. indeed for an international society.

It may not always be possible to love one's neighbor or to identify with his beliefs but one may come to know, accept and respect him. Prof. Madan also suggests as part of the dialogic process, not only understanding but, idealistically, as he himself admits, experience of one another's faiths. Indian history shows that intermingling of religious experience can take place at folk and popular levels. However, the partition of India and modernization have further contributed to the refirming and hardening of separate religious identities. In such a situation, inter-community dialogues, via the articulation of both commonalties and differences, might be the most practical way to get started on the road to religious pluralism.

 (Source: The Times of India, 6 September, 1996)