Gandhi & Modern Economy

This second of the two articles on the Swadeshi Movement published earlier in 'Gandhi Marg' brings into relief its symbolic impact with the help of a few theories from the vast field of nonverbal communication. As a result, Gandhi’s rare ability to invest clothing-related objects and events with extraordinary socio-political significance is amply demonstrated.

In December 1931, Mahatma Gandhi visited Rome with a desire to meet the Pope. It was Mussolini, however, who was eager to meet him. Could 'Il Duce' have seized the opportunity to boost his own image and to further his own devices? Whatever his intentions, history bears testimony to the adverse effects of that ten-minute encounter - for Gandhi and for India's march to freedom. In this paper the author reconstructs the intriguing turn of events based on the writings of the key persons involved, especially the diaries of Romain Rolland, Mahadev Desai and Gandhi himself.

The Gandhian Brahmdeo Ram Pandit and his J.J. Art-School trained son Abhay Pandit run a craftsman’s small-scale production unit as well as an artists’ studio in Bhayander, Mumbai. This article takes us into their studio, their working practice and the materials they employ. Through that, it analyses the economy they have created, their relationship to pricing art and views on labour. It ends with a reflection of the legacy of Gandhian values on the Indian small-scale industry and the necessity for continuing government support for this economy.

A discourse to peace educators and activists from Palestine and Israel on the techniques of 'Satyagraha', created and employed by Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for Indian independence. While the techniques are identified and briefly explained, a diagrammatic presentation of the context within which he acted reveals the courage and discipline required in a Gandhi-inspired subversion of structural and cultural injustice.
Date of discourse: 10, March, 2007.
Date of publication on Academia.edu: 2012

This is the PDF-PowerPoint which we used for our paper 'Gandhiji’s search for the individual’s moral foundations', exposed online on 18 February 2022 at the International Confererence 'Gandhi & Global Peace', organised by the Ram Lal Anand College, University of Delhi, 18-19 February 2022.

Ottant’anni fa, il Mahatma Gandhi visitò Roma con il desiderio di incontrare il Papa. Era Mussolini, però, che desiderava incontrarlo. Voleva cogliere l’occasione per rafforzare la sua immagine e per promuovere se stesso? Qualunque siano state le sue intenzioni, la storia testimonia gli effetti negativi di quell’incontro per Gandhi e per la marcia dell’India verso la libertà. In questo articolo l’autore ricostruisce questa vicenda intrigante basandosi sugli scritti dei principali soggetti coinvolti, in particolare i diari di Romain Rolland, Mahadev Desai e Gandhi stesso.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION 2

II. ANASAKTIYOGA AND APARIGRAHA IN PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE 4

III. SARVODAYA AND SWADESHI 9

IV. GANDHI’S THEORY OF TRUSTEESHIP AND THEORY OF RIGHTS 15

V. PROPERTY LAW AS PEACE: INTEGRATING GANDHI’S CORE CONCEPTS 21

La domanda sottesa all’articolo del prof. Peter Gonsalves su “Gesù di Gandhi” ricorda che cosa Gandhi accettò, rifiutò o reinterpretò per arrivare a una percezione di Gesù veramente sua, ma diversa dal “Gesù” in cui credono i cristiani. Gandhi si sentì attratto dalla vita e dagli insegnamenti di Gesù Cristo e nel 1926 accettò l’invito ad insegnare
la Bibbia al Gujarat National College di Ahmedabad, in India. Il prof. Peter dimostra che Gandhi ha rivendicato il suo diritto personale di essere ispirato da Gesù, ma senza aderire ad una denominazione cristiana e senza respingere la pari dignità di tutte le scritture. Ha creduto che “l’imitazione di Cristo o l’identificazione morale con lui” fosse l’imperativo universale, ma ha respinto il “cristianesimo” a causa della sua dipendenza dal potere imperiale, dalla cultura lassista e dalle pretese di salvezza esclusiva che ha offuscato la sua identità originale. Ha “respinto il cristianesimo per amore di Gesù”.

El libro muestra el proceso de descubrimiento y maduración de las ideas rectoras de Mahatma Gandhi, destacando la formación de su primer Ashram como estrategia de supervivencia a partir de la experiencia del  monasterio trapense de Frans Pfanner, el concepto de autorrestricción, el Sarvodaya "el bienestar de todos" de Ruskin,  enseñanza de Unto this last de Ruskin, el Satyagraha "lucha con la fuerza de la verdad o fuerza del alma", el Swaraj o liberación mediante el dominio de sí mismo, intuido de Krishnavarma , y el servicio a los más despreciados de la sociedad, a quienes rebautiza como harijans "hijos de Dios".
A continuación se revisan los principios básicos de la acción de Gandhi, y en los dos últimos capítulos se revisa brevemente su aplicación en el modelo lechero de la cooperativa AMUL en la India, y en el sistema alimentario de amaranto orgánico del Grupo Cooperativo Quali en México.

Gandhi once declared: "The message of the [Indian] spinning wheel is much wider than its circumference." When he shared this metaphor with American friends in September 1925, no one ever imagined that people from all over the globe would one day embrace his nonviolent political philosophy to dismantel colonialism, apartheid and dictatorships. This article briefly describes the impact Gandhi still has on the world 72 years after his assassination. 
NB: This article was submitted for publishing in November 2019, a month before young people in universities across India woke up to protest against a discriminatory law in the style and manner of a Gandhian 'satyagraha'. This fact alone is a welcome corrective to my negative impression expressed in the introductory part of the article.

To conclude the 150th year of Gandhi's birth, this brief article highlights the great regard and admiration (Saint) Pope John Paul II had for the Mahatma. It places on record his efforts to promote Gandhi's 'Satyagraha' among members of the "Solidarność", the Movement that freed Poland from Communist rule.
Published also in «Gandhi Marg» 41/4 (2020) pp 465-472.

Certificate of Participation in the International Webinar on "Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Martyrdom, World Emancipation and Alternative Planetary Futures”, jointly organized by School of Humanities, Raffles University, Neemrana, Rajasthan, India, RAYS Global Foundation, USA & Vishwaneedam Center for Asian Blossoming, Puducherry, and Chennai on January 30, 2022.

An interview on Gandhi and Pope Francis published in
+ the Spanish version of Aleteia.org <https://es.aleteia.org/2021/01/30/papa-francisco-y-gandhi-5-claves-de-liderazgo-con-el-ejemplo/>
+ the Italian version of Aleteia.org <https://it.aleteia.org/2021/02/05/papi-e-gandhi-papa-francesco-2/>

We are constitutively split between two different experiences.  In the experience of “intimacy,” the differentiation that we typically presume of self from other and of fact from value is not operative; such intimacy is distinctive of the formative experience of children.  This formative experience, however, precisely gives rise to the experience of “economics,” the experience, that is, of discrete subjects who work upon an alien world.  Our challenge is to live in a way that acknowledges both forms of experience without resorting to the authoritative terms of either.  Overall, I argue that money, which is roughly the collectively recognized medium for recognizing the universality of exchange value, in principle misrepresents the lived nature of value.  Hence, the more money defines our frame of reference (“economics”), the more the non-universalizable values that are essential to our existence (“intimacy”) are effaced.

This chapter explores the parallels in the conceptualisation of freedom in critical theory and Gandhian philosophy.  This seeks to highlight the global relevance of the idea of freedom as the basis for social struggle.  The chapter argues that global society is characterised by a struggle between competing conceptualisations of freedom as the negative individualistic framing of freedom asserted within capitalism clashes with an emergent idea of social freedom as a concern of the collective of humanity. 

The chapter highlights the way in which the conceptualisation of freedom as an inter-subjective concern of the individual forms the basis of a critique of capitalism within both critical theory and Gandhian philosophy.  The inter-subjective nature of freedom is highlighted in both schools of thought as the means and the end to swaraj as self-determination.  Such a conceptualisation of freedom as an inter-subjective concern of the social also serves as a challenge to the negative framing of freedom within capitalism.  The chapter explores the centrality of non-violent protests in promoting and securing the conceptualisation of social freedom as an inter-subjective and institutional concern.  This forms the basis of Gandhi’s theory of satyagraha, and the model of democratically legitimate political will-formation developed by Habermas. 

The chapter adopts the theorisation of freedom in both schools of thought to explore the way in which the idea of social freedom is being promoted by transnational movements in resistance to the risk society described by Beck (2009).  It is argued that these movements seek to re-assert the inter-subjective nature of freedom as a challenge to the risks associated with the negative individualistic framing of freedom being diffused globally through neoliberal capitalism. Through such global activism, the significance of the collective of humanity is asserted as both the means and the end of freedom.  It is argued that these global movements represent a nascent global legitimation process which has crucial epistemological and ontological implications for a world at risk.

In the 150th year since Gandhi's birth, this article commemorates the 'Live Encounter' of (Saint) Pope Paul VI with the Mahatma through the latter's value-laden legacy of writings and sterling example of 'right against might'.
Also published in 'Gandhi Marg' vol 40/1-2, 2018, 91-96.
https://gandhimargjournal.org/2018/04/05/volume-40-issue-12-april-september-2018/

A look at the relevance of Gandhiji’s thoughts on the Indian economy, rural and urban, in relation to India’s development policy. His thoughts have assumed great relevance as a direct commentary on and a critique of current proto-colonial policies pursued by the Indian Government and for their bearing on the origin of the ongoing pandemic and environmental crisis. Care needs to be taken that Gandhiji is not sacrificed at the altar of globalisation, corporatisation and commercialisation.

This essay attempts to open up a conversation between M.K. Gandhi and contemporary ecological thought. Unlike ecologists, who think through the human and then reach for a wider post-human ecology, in the 1930s Gandhi journeyed in the reverse order, arriving at an emphasis on human withdrawal into nothingness after initially thinking through the withdrawal into nothingness of an infinitely extended, non-human, celestial being. The essay explores Gandhi's emerging anthropocentric conception of the piety of nothingness in the context of a household plan designed for him in 1936–37 by Madeline Slade, in the village of Segaon in Maharashtra. The essay draws out the architectural and political entailments of Gandhi's anthropocentrism and his emphasis on varnashramadharma.

Certificate of Participation in the International Webinar “Gandhi and Fascism”, organised by the Swadhyaya Sahachkara (Circle for Creative Co-Learning), Vishwaneedam Center for Asian Blossoming, Puducherry and Chennai in Collaboration with Raffles University, Neemrana and RAYS Global foundation - USA -.

Announcement and programme schedule of the International Webinar Series 'Spirituality, Satyagraha and Pragmatism: New Dimensions in Gandhian Philosophy', 18th September, 25th September, 2nd October 2021, jointly organised by Mahatma Gandhi Center for Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies Lady Keane College, Shillong, Meghalaya, India &
North East Institute of Social Sciences and Research, Dimapur, Nagaland, India &
Peace Channel, Dimapur, Nagaland, India & St. Xavier College, Jalukie, Nagaland, India.

The paper presents the lives and the credos of Saint Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi. It deals with the approach of Saint Francis to peace and with the approach of Gandhi to non-violence. These two concepts are interrelated, and they have analogous aspects. Both of them are suitable to be used as the main characteristics of business strategies to transform modern economic practices to a more sustainable, more humanistic form. After his early years as son of a prosperous merchant at the turn of the 12th century, a vision moved Saint Francis to give up his worldly life and dedicate himself to carry out the work of Christ, in Christ’s own way. The essential virtues and lifestyle for him and his followers were peacefulness, poverty, simplicity, humility and intimate relationship to nature and all creatures. They preached the duty of men to protect and enjoy nature as both the stewards of God’s creation and as creatures ourselves. Saint Francis totally rejected money symbolizing wea...

Gandhi wanted the Indian economy to center around autonomous village republics rather than work on the back of large-scale industries or consumption expenditure. Gandhi's principles for formulating his economic thoughts were based on a call to 'return to the nature'. He would have liked people to reduce their wants in lives and to concentrate instead on development of their faculties for achievement of spiritual goals. This would not require people in villages to madly rush to cities in search of work. All people would live more fulfilling and meaningful lives. He would justify use of machines and industrial production systems in the economy only when the outcomes serviced the fundamental and most basic needs of people. This paper describes Gandhi's economic principles in order to analyze how they contrast with the free operation of the market today which has created multiple new inequalities in society. The liberalized rapid economic growth model in India has made development of the rural sector secondary to rapid growths in trade and manufactures of consumer commodities in the urban centers. This has gone the opposite way from the paths Gandhi outlined for his country, and it has exacerbated the same societal inequalities he wanted to see reduced. RESUMEN La influencia de los pensamientos económicos de Gandhi en la economía india Gandhi quería que la economía india se centrara en las repúblicas de pueblos autónomos en lugar de trabajar sobre la base de industrias a gran escala o de costos de consumo. Los principios de Gandhi para formular sus pensamientos económicos se basaron en una llamada a "regresar a la naturaleza". Le hubiera gustado que la gente redujera sus deseos mundanos y se concentrara en cambio en el desarrollo de sus facultades para el logro de metas espirituales. Esto no requeriría que la gente de las aldeas haya de apresurar locamente a las ciudades en busca de trabajo. Todas las personas vivirían vidas más satisfactorias y significativas. Justificaría el uso de máquinas y sistemas de producción industrial en la economía solo cuando sus resultados satisfagan las necesidades fundamentales y más básicas de las personas. Este artículo no se detiene en los principios económicos de Gandhi, sino que analiza cómo se contrastan con el libre funcionamiento del mercado que hoy en día crea múltiples desigualdades en la sociedad. El modelo liberalizado de rápido crecimiento económico en la India ha hecho que el desarrollo del sector rural sea secundario al rápido crecimiento del comercio y la fabricación de productos de