His appeal to conscientious politics and nobility of spirit remains a strong moral response to political issues.
About 74 years after his death, Gandhi is the most widely known political leader of modern India. Gandhi’s stature as a prominent historical figure was confirmed by successful non-violent movement Against British rule in India. Yet, what makes Gandhi so relevant and meaningful to our world is that his political legacy and his philosophical significance continue to inspire millions of people around the world – to fight against inequality, injustice and historical wrongs. .
a mandatory
Accordingly, what sets Gandhi apart from all the politicians in today’s world is not only his simplicity and honesty – which have become rare traits for many men and women, who represent our wants and desires around the world. but also their belief in moral development. Humanity. Reading Gandhi in a world like ours which is plagued by politics and immaturity of politicians, either in atrocious conditions like Afghanistan, Myanmar, Syria, etc. or in democracies like USA, Spain, Poland, India etc. The lesson of political maturity is a moral imperative. In this way, and not strange, Gandhi believed in no divorce between politics and morality.
For Gandhi, politics was essentially a moral way of conduct. He never pretended to be a teacher of truth. However, others took him as a mentor, and there is no doubt that his efforts to encourage people to experiment with truth were both philosophical and educational.
culture of patience
Therefore, as a practitioner of sympathetic humanism and a pluralistic thinker, Gandhi was an example of a lifelong process of listening and learning. He actually served as an example in determining “patience” as a means of understanding and contacting another. The interactive nature of Gandhi’s culture of patience has its roots in the idea of epistemological humility as an essential method in understanding and understanding other cultures and religions. Thus, the entire Gandhian thought in the field of religion and politics revolves around this concept of epistemological humility. That is why Gandhi had a deeply ethical approach towards religions.
In other words, they recognized neither the infallible authority of the prophetic texts nor the sanctity of religious traditions. At the same time, he was the foremost critic of the epistemological arrogance of modern rationality and its authoritarian practices in the context of colonial thinking and imperial domination. It is because of his immense concern for the self-respect of individuals and nations that Gandhi incorporated the two concepts of truth and non-violence into the word Swaraj.
Read also | Mahatma and Empowerment of Others
Gandhi believed that all individuals had the right to self-government irrespective of their religion, caste and culture. Accordingly, what we might call the Gandhian moment of Swaraj was in fact a constant experiment for him with cross-cultural and inter-religious understanding and methods of dialogue.
In other words, the ability to engage constructively with conflicting values was an essential component of Gandhi’s practical wisdom and sympathetic pluralism. In fact, Swaraj was meant as a place of self-realization where the moral and the political became involved in Gandhian political philosophy. For Gandhi, politics, like spirituality, was a place to examine and experience truth, which he regarded not as a fixed process, but as an attempt to re-evaluate and reform reality.
a self-transcendence
In this sense, Gandhi did not regard freedom as merely a political act, but he defined it primarily as a moral enterprise. That is why Gandhi reasoned, “I am a seeker of truth. I claim that I have found the way. I claim to strive relentlessly to find it. But I admit that I have not yet found it. Truth.” To attain to the fullest is to know myself and my destiny, that is, to become perfect. I am painfully conscious of my flaws, and in this I have all my strength, because it is rare for a man to know his limitations. We have here a process of individual self-transcendence which Gandhi also applied to the idea of civilization, as he considered civilization an exercise of human maturity.
Gandhi firmly believed that the anthropological and moral origin of such maturity lay in the spiritual potential of man. But he also outlined this step toward maturity as a process of learning to be responsible to oneself and to others. Consequently, much of what Gandhi did and wrote during his lifetime was an attempt to bring out his own journey of intellectual and political maturity in the open. Therefore, he used the concept of maturity not only in a social context, but also as an expression of character formation, which he distinguished from literary training.
As he insisted, “Literary training by itself does not add an inch to moral height and character building is independent of literary training.” Therefore, according to Gandhi, character-building was an art of developing a sense of autonomy and authority over oneself.
In other words, for Gandhi maturity was a state of mind and a way of being, where a person had the ability to build his life in the social sphere. It was on the basis of this act of maturation that Gandhi established his political anthropology and academic complex. He believed that the autonomy formed by a mature judgment framed life according to morality. Therefore, Gandhi turned to pragmatic politics as a form of character building, not a struggle to get elected or gain power.
Gandhi’s acceptance of the moral imperative of maturity and his devotion to democratic transparency distinguish his political psychology from most other discourses in Indian and world politics. As such, Gandhi’s suggestion of moral excellence and spiritual maturity presents at the same time an invitation to self-respect and self-restraint.
a continuing relevance
As he argued, “Where there is arrogance, we will find rudeness and arrogance. Where there is no chivalry, there will also be a sense of self-respect… He who maintains his self-respect treats everyone with a sense of friendship, Because he gives as much importance to the self-respect of others as he considers his own. He sees himself in all and everyone else in himself, puts himself in line with others. The egoist is different from others And considering himself superior to the rest of the world, he takes [it] To judge everyone on himself and in consequence enables the world to measure his smallness. “
Therefore, it goes without saying that by reading Gandhi closely and correctly, we can come to the conclusion that, in spite of all his shortcomings, his appeal to the nobility of mature and conscientious politics and sentiment to political issues There remains a strong moral response and the challenges of our time. Perhaps that is why Gandhi is our contemporary, while he belongs to our future.
Ramin Jahanbeglu is the director of the Mahatma Gandhi Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies at the OP Jindal Global University, Sonepat, Haryana.
.