thoughts about Indian politics??
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here are Arthaśaūstra works, including several Jaina commentaries, which belong to the period following the decline of the Gupta regime, but few writers go beyond apology and justification and, as was true also of earlier theory, there is little attention to defenses of the individual against the pressures of society. Nor did the centuries of the sultanate contribute much to the heritage of Indian political philosophy, except, perhaps, for the area of legal theory. In Islamic thought the law, which is based on revealed principles, is the arbiter of the struggle which rages in man’s own soul and which constitutes a potential threat to the stability of society. The significance of the protective role of the monarch in this theory led certain theorists, Abu-l Fazl among them, to depict the king as the chosen instrument of God. Such an exaltation of royal authority left little place for popular participation in selecting rulers and determining policy.
Gandhism
Mohandas K. Gandhi (d. 1948) is, of course, the towering figure of modern Indian history and of modern Indian political theory, although his thought is often the response to a practical need and does not assume the form of an elegantly constructed treatise. Gandhi employed traditional concepts and symbols but without hesitation introduced interpretations and ideas foreign to Indian culture that evince the importance of Western humanism in his approach. He opposed Western technology on the grounds that the machine civilization brought with it the exploitation of men and the concentration of power. Here he followed Tolstoi, whose writings, with those of Thoreau and others, he studied while in South Africa. He described his twenty years there as a time of experiment—the trying out of different modes of political action and different types of political program. The influence of Gokhale on his thought is readily apparent, as is the impact of the strand of Indian nationalist political thought represented by Tilak. These influences are seen in Gandhi’s attempt to redirect religious individualism and his emphasis on native languages and the Swadeshi principle. Swadeshi puts first those duties nearest us in space and time: it is “that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote.” Humanity is served through service to our neighbor; our understanding of the world is only the understanding we have of those with whom we live.
This argument has major economic implications: those things produced at home are to be preferred. Its extension, the use of the boycott, is another legacy of Tilak. According to Gandhi, reconstruction begins at the local level, and the village is the basis of social planning. Village activity and an individual’s effort and initiative are stressed in his writings and speeches. He invariably favored small-scale organization and the use of simple tools and materials at hand. His campaign for the use of only hand-spun and hand-woven cloth (khadar) was of central importance to the larger program, and it was the spinning wheel that Gandhi chose as the symbol of social freedom. His ideas on land reform were radical, but he did not call for the abolition of private property. He hoped, rather, that the propertied class could be persuaded to accept the ideal of economic equality: the idea of wealth held in trust for the poor would make expropriation by legislative enactment unnecessary. Gandhi argued that the accumulation of riches beyond a man’s legitimate requirements is akin to theft. This additional wealth must be used for the welfare of the community. Gandhi also insisted on the importance of physical labor for everyone—what he called bread-labor. Constructive work, which he considered an essential part of civil disobedience and other political action, included also the removal of untouchability (which ranked with the spread of khadar as a goal of critical significance to the movement), communal unity (here he is closer to Gokhale than to Tilak), and basic education through the knowledge of a craft. In learning a necessary craft the young person not only acquires a skill but also intensifies his bonds with the community and thus comes to an understanding of purposes.
Gandhian philosophy postulates a universe very different from that governed by the law of the fish. History is as much the record of harmonious adjustment as it is the story of conflict. The technique for adjusting and reconciling differences, a method on which Mahatma Gandhi’s fame must ultimately rest, assumes the moral potential of the wrongdoer, the possibility of reasonableness in the adversary. In his political theory Gandhi concentrated on the means of achieving political ends to a degree uncommon in the history of Western thought.