Inverting the Discourse

Gandhi’s prominence and originality as an anticolonial politician and thinker can be attributed to the depth of his critique of the colonial enterprise. In its simplest form, in the colonial narrative the colonized were assigned a place of historical backwardness, thereby denying them the requisite attributes and potential for governing themselves. The markers for this backwardness could be found in all the various aspects of the colonized society: rom its underdeveloped economic organizations, to its “irrational” cultural practices. Given the supposed lack of inherent political potential of the Indian society, the state by necessity had to be something external. It had to stand above and at a distance, providing an orderly rule for a society that could not rule itself.

The predicament of the nationalist movement before Gandhi was that its possibilities of resistance were framed by the discourse produced by colonial power. The prevalent attempt was to bridge the gap between the indigenous society and its colonial masters, which would then allow the former to claim the same political freedom that was granted within the metropole. The nationalists would argue about the causes and nature of the Indian backwardness, as well as the time and the process of recovery, but the fundamental logic of spatial ordering of history by which India had to traverse the path to maturity remained unchallenged. Rather than attempting to enter the debate on those terms, Gandhi’s move was to challenge the very logic of this narrative.

Gandhi sought to invert the discursive dynamic of the relationship between state and society under colonialism, whereby the latter ceded absolute primacy and agency to the former. Gandhi countered this by conceptualizing the Indian society as a potentially autonomous entity that through the associative and moral resources inherent to it could generate its own principles of self-organization, thereby overcoming the need for an external authority. ^{Footnote 4} It was not some perceived deficiency of Indian society that legitimized colonial rule, but rather it was the imposition and intervention of the colonial state and its associated modern institutions that was the main source of that society’s ills. What was required was not to traverse the path towards a more “developed” society, but a process of moral development that could bring forth self-rule. ^{Footnote 5}

The Modern State and the Logic of Politics

Central to this vision was Gandhi’s well-known critique of the modern state and associated logic of politics—which is seen as a solution to the problem of an inherent potential for disunity and strife in modern societies. For modern theorists of state, the solution to the problem of dissension inherent to the modern social sphere is sought in the sphere of politics. The state is seen as necessary as it creates institutions and generates norms that can transcend the divisions produced by the material reality of social life. It is also desirable as it creates a sphere where a re-orientation towards unity and universality can be generated, thereby overcoming the particularities of one’s social life. It is this move, turning towards political institutions to generate a condition for unified collective existence, that Gandhi opposed.

The demand of the state for adherence to the norms it has generated in the form of laws is absolute, secured in the last instance through the coercive threat of punishments. The will of the state is formulated on the basis of certain larger “ends” or telos—e.g., territorial integrity, development, or security. ^{Footnote 6} The state subsumes the complex multiplicity of everyday social life and coercively coordinates it in ways that are amenable to this larger end. This determined march towards a desirable end—the public good—inscribes violence at the heart of modern political forms. I use the phrase modern political forms since Gandhi’s critique was directed not just at the state but other kinds of modern political institutions—such as the political party or revolutionary organizations. Hence Gandhi’s call to disband the Congress as a party after independence was won, ^{Footnote 7} or his opposition to the Bolshevik Revolution. ^{Footnote 8}

Gandhi—as has been oft-noted—sought to foreground means over ends. His name for this form of non-violent and means-oriented collective action was satyagraha. Ajay Skaria has offered an influential reading of the practice that was at the heart of satyagraha, which he calls “neighborliness.” ^{Footnote 9} Neighborliness was not a fixed set of normative imperatives, but rather an ever-ongoing praxis of being vis-à-vis another. It was based on acts of self-discipline ^{Footnote 10} and sacrifice that can remake both one’s own self as well as one’s adversary based on love rather than commands. ^{Footnote 11}

There were significant political stakes in such a reorientation. Gandhi’s principal contribution to Indian politics was to lead a popular movement against colonial rule by forging a contingent alliance between the disparate groups opposed to the colonial regime, most notably by mobilizing the rural peasant masses (the vast majority of the population) under the banner of Indian National Congress and its predominantly urban elite leadership. ^{Footnote 12} As Karuna Mantena has argued, contrary to its apparent idealism, Gandhian politics of non-violence could be understood as a realist reaction to the inherent potential for conflict in politics, which was exacerbated in moments of mobilization at such a massive level. ^{Footnote 13} Gandhi’s political thought was marked by a “contextual, consequentialist, and moral-psychological analysis of a political world understood to be marked by inherent tendencies toward conflict.” ^{Footnote 14} Approaching politics from the certitude of desirable ends necessarily led to violence and coercion. It had the possible effect of creating resentment amongst one’s opponents and further entrenching divisions and self-interests, thereby ultimately proving to be self-defeating. ^{Footnote 15} Even the act of persuasion by the force of reason was not sufficient to overcome these issues. Not just an “appeal to intelligence,” but “piercing the heart” was the object of satyagraha. ^{Footnote 16} To create a collectivity one had to do no less than convert one’s opponents.

Gandhi imagined a community where recognition and respect would be embodied and authentic, not mediated through the state and the law. In such a community, a practice of self-governance through reflexive self-regulation would be possible. Hence, there would be no place for the police, lawyers, or the parliament ^{Footnote 17} —no representative bodies, ^{Footnote 18} no modern state institutions as we know them. ^{Footnote 19} While Gandhi himself referred to this political vision as one of “enlightened anarchy,” ^{Footnote 20} it would be a stretch to call him an anarchist sensu stricto. Gandhi did not seek to provide comprehensive justifications as to why the authority of the state should not be obeyed. Rather, within the concrete political context of India, he sought to counter the claim that the modern centralized state is either inevitable or desirable as an institution that can guarantee a just social order. More narrowly, he sought to counter the idea that a modern centralized state had to be the primary instrument through which the necessary and desirable change in the Indian social order can be effected. Hence, while at times he was willing to countenance both the existence and the limited usefulness of modern state institutions, ^{Footnote 21} he was very clear that it was unlikely that meaningful social change and the construction of a desirable social order could be achieved through those institutions. ^{Footnote 22}

Kinship

Kinship and the family provided the necessary models of affection and cooperation that were required to reconfigure relations of conflict. Amongst “members of a family,” Gandhi wrote, “there is no feeling of mine or thine. That is why they are called co-operators. Similarly when we take a society, a nation or the entire mankind as a family all men become co-operators.” ^{Footnote 23} Satyagraha therefore had to be “the extension of domestic law on the political field.” ^{Footnote 24} The allusion to affective bonds of the family was a recurrent theme in Gandhi’s writings and speeches. These were placed in contraposition to the institutions of the colonial state. In Hind Swaraj he takes the example of a “quarrel” being litigated at the court. ^{Footnote 25} An “ordinary man” would have tried to settle their quarrel through conversation, like a good neighbor would. The lawyer on the other hand is a “stranger” to his client, who is further estranged by the abstract language of law. The quarrel, disfigured by the language of a legal dispute can now only be settled with the might of the state backing one or the other parties. Hence law “makes brothers enemies.” ^{Footnote 26} Law takes simple “quarrels”—a disagreement between two individuals familiar to each other—and subjects them to a verdict based on an abstract set of rules. The distance of the judge from the particular life of the dispute robs any possibility of overcoming through mutual understanding and affection. The rule of the stranger who promises justice by virtue of being distant from society was the essence of India’s subjugation. ^{Footnote 27}

Instead of the estrangement of legal rules, the ideal form of reconciliatory justice should be modeled on the affectionate wisdom of the father. Discussing his notion of Ramrajya, an idealized polity based on the widely popular mythology of king Rama, Gandhi states that the relationship between the ruler and the ruled should be “as good as that between a father and a son.” ^{Footnote 28} Such form of wisdom could be found in the council of elders known as the panch—from which comes the notion of the panchayat, the central institution of the village republics he went on to propose. Resolving disputes through traditional arbitration by the panch “presumes a distinctive horizon of reconciliation and resolution; one where unity is produced by deference to the wisdom and knowledge of the father.” ^{Footnote 29}

Kinship models also supplied one of the most significant proposals in Gandhi’s program for social change—trusteeship. Late colonial India was marked by increasing peasant mobilization against the exploitation of the semi-feudal landholding system known as zamindari. Faced with the growing specter of conflict between landlords and peasants, and between the rich and the poor in general, Gandhi—influenced by John Ruskin—proposed and propagated the concept of trusteeship. ^{Footnote 30} He suggested that the rich were “mere trustees” of the wealth that they owned, and had a moral obligation to voluntarily distribute the excess to the poor and the needy. ^{Footnote 31}

The moral obligation to act as a trustee was generated through bonds of kinship. Landlords and peasants “should be members of a joint family in which the Zamindar is the head guarding their [the peasant’s] rights.” ^{Footnote 32} Landlords “must regard themselves, . . . as trustees holding their wealth for the good of their wards, the ryots [the peasants].” ^{Footnote 33} Trusteeship, if practiced properly could solve the antagonistic relationship over land holdings. “If [the landlord] has been discharging his function as a trustee honestly [the peasants] would come to him before long in contrition and seek his guidance and help.” ^{Footnote 34} He held the same to be true regarding industrial capitalists and factory workers, and sought to organize labor unions on the basis of trusteeship. ^{Footnote 35}

Trusteeship was Gandhi’s contribution to the fierce debate about property redistribution and land reform that was taking place as independence drew near. A more equitable property regime had to come about through moral and voluntary action on the part of the property owners—charity and renunciation, not land reform. “I do not want to dispossess anybody,” Gandhi emphasized. “I should then be departing from the rule of Ahimsa [nonviolence].” ^{Footnote 36} While on a few occasions Gandhi admitted being open to limited use of state power for property acquisition, ^{Footnote 37} there is little doubt—from both his words ^{Footnote 38} and his actions ^{Footnote 39} —that he felt such a scenario would be far from desirable. To Nehru’s explicit doubts regarding the effectiveness of trusteeship to achieve equitable property relations, Gandhi replied that “we do not seek to coerce any; we seek to convert them. This method may appear to be long, perhaps too long, but I am convinced that it is the shortest.” ^{Footnote 40}

The Village Community

If kinship provided the relational basis, the spatial site of the “constructive programme” had to be the village. The “real plague spots” in colonial India were urban centers like Calcutta and Bombay, corrupted by modern economic relations and the individuation that it engendered. ^{Footnote 41} Instead, the true soul of India was to be found in its villages—their lack of development a mark of resistance to the corrupting effects of modern civilization. The village, in its ideal Gandhian form, was to be self-sufficient economically, producing almost all of what it needs and thereby giving it autonomy from the outside world. ^{Footnote 42} The political decentralization and economic self-sufficiency would provide the necessary conditions for the development of individual self-governance. ^{Footnote 43}

Gandhi’s social imaginary of the village was formulated as a negative (and a negation) of colonial modernity. The village came to stand for an idealized social setting that could provide a reverse image of the individuated modern social life. This idealization of the Indian village did not originate from Gandhi. He derived it from circuits of ideas widely prevalent from the nineteenth century onwards. The most prominent influence was Henry Maine’s classic Village Communities in the East and West, which Gandhi radicalized towards anti-colonial ends. ^{Footnote 44} In making the village a symbolic spatial site of anti-modernity, this construction was part of a global anti-statist, anti-capitalist discourse. The notion of the “community” was often invoked as a resistive resource against the emergence of modern political and economic forms. In the colonies, as the formal domains of political and institutional powers were surrendered to the colonial masters, community and village came to signify the uncorrupted inner domain of the germinal nation that could be mobilized as a counter-narrative against that domination. ^{Footnote 45} Gandhi’s discourse was an exemplary version of this move.

In 1946 Gandhi presented the most detailed version of his vision for postcolonial India in an interview. The basic political unit was to be the village, which was to become a republic: self-sufficient and autonomous. ^{Footnote 46} Each republic would be joined together in “ever-widening, never-ascending, circles.” ^{Footnote 47} In other words, it was to be a loose and non-hierarchical federation of village republics, in sharp contrast to the pyramidal structure of the modern state. ^{Footnote 48} Decentralization would preserve the political autonomy of the villages, while a non-capitalist artisanal production system would preserve its economic autonomy.

Ambedkar: Critique of the Ruled

Gandhi symbolically exemplified the possibility of overcoming social conflicts through conscientious actions in his own personal life. Through his model of self-sufficient, ascetic living, he aimed to produce most of the bare necessities he required to survive thereby overcoming the exploitation integral to the process of production by withdrawing from consumption, at the same time providing poverty with the symbolic veneer of moral virtue. His ashram, formed as a simulation of village communities, was similarly free from the stratification and social antagonisms existing in actual villages. ^{Footnote 51} However, most landlords or upper caste Hindus were not Gandhi, and hardly any village in India resembled his ashram. Even Gandhi admitted, as late as 1941, that the constructive program was far from a success and that he had “nothing much yet to show by way of demonstration [of its results].” ^{Footnote 52}

The problem, however, was not simply one of all men not being angels, as Madison would have put it. For B.R. Ambedkar, the problem with Gandhi’s ideas went far beyond a case of naive optimism. Ambedkar was one of Gandhi’s most significant contemporary antagonists. Unlike Gandhi who was born into a dominant trading caste, Ambedkar was born a dalit, considered “untouchable” by the dominant castes. He experienced first-hand while growing up the degradation and discrimination of the caste system. After academic training in the United States and England and establishing a legal career in Bombay, Ambedkar’s project was to organize the dalits into an independent political group, challenging the hegemony of the dominant-caste-led Congress. This brought him in direct conflict with Gandhi, who was keen to insist on his and Congress’s role as the representative of all Indians, irrespective of caste. Both his distinct social position (as a dalit) and political project (organizing dalits as an independent political force) motivated Ambedkar’s critique of Gandhi.

From this standpoint, the reality of oppression at the hands of social superiors was in no way less of a problem than the repression at the hands of the state. Ambedkar, in definite contrast to Gandhi, held that

The village, which Gandhi had sought to posit as a “direct counterpoint” ^{Footnote 54} to the modern state was the site where the tyranny of social power was at its most rampant. The village in reality was nothing but a “a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism,” ^{Footnote 55} riven with a hierarchical social organization that was the source of “social and moral evils.” ^{Footnote 56} For Ambedkar, Gandhi’s suggestion of basing the polity of an independent India around such a hierarchical structure was not just naive. Rather, the governing part of “self-governing village republics” was dependent upon the oppressive order such a hierarchical organization produced. Gandhi’s indifference was not a mere “accident.” He required the “class structure” of the village communities to function as a “living faith.” ^{Footnote 57} Hence, his apparently tacit acceptance of them was in actuality his “official doctrine.” ^{Footnote 58} Despite Gandhi’s denial to the effect, having disavowed the necessity of state institutions and legal norms, he fell back upon the traditional structures inherent to Indian society to construct some kind of collective order, with some modification at the level of customary conducts. However, as Ambedkar stressed in a response to Gandhi, “My quarrel with Hindus and Hinduism is not over the imperfections of their social conduct. It is much more fundamental. It is over their ideals.” ^{Footnote 59} The “depressed classes,” according to Ambedkar, therefore had no good reason to accept those ideals or ordering principles over modern institutions.

Gandhi had only two meaningful experiences of personally organizing a satyagraha in villages—in Champaran and Kheda in 1918—which he held up as ideal models to be followed. ^{Footnote 60} Historians have surmised that the particularities of those formative cases, where the major issue was not hostility between classes but common grievances against the colonial state, informed his view about the possibility for non-conflictual resolutions of social antagonisms. ^{Footnote 61} Crucially for Ambedkar’s critique, such experiences shaped Gandhi’s idea of a cross-caste and class harmonious solidarity within the context of the rural social order. Furthermore, it posited an antagonistic binary between the oppression of the colonial state, and resistive resources of the community. “The people of Bardoli could not secure justice as long as they were afraid of being punished by the Government . . . They freed themselves from its fear by surrendering their hearts to their Sardar.” ^{Footnote 62} It is precisely such a replacement of the Government with the Sardar (village notable) that Ambedkar was against, since he felt that it required the lower castes to acquiesce to their inferior status and material condition within such an arrangement.

Read this way, Ambedkar’s critique was not merely concerned with the Gandhian model of social change on the grounds of it being idealistic or ineffective. It was directed at the Gandhian idea of coalition building itself, since at the heart of that coalition lay a dependence on traditional social hierarchies as a mechanism to generate loyalty and acquiescence. The solution was to organize the lower castes independently of Congress. Institutionally, it meant demanding a system of separate electorates, whereby the lower castes would vote separately to choose their own political representatives. ^{Footnote 63} The distinction in political representation would reflect the disparity of social interests, and the resulting political empowerment would lead to the social emancipation of the depressed classes. Against this demand, Gandhi went on a hunger strike—the only time he took such an action against an Indian leader. With Gandhi’s health failing and pressure mounting on him as a result, Ambedkar was forced to sign the “Poona Pact,” giving up the demand for separate electorates. ^{Footnote 64}

Despite that setback which extinguished the possibility of a separate electorate, Ambedkar was insistent that the social emancipation of the “depressed classes” could only happen through their political empowerment. How could the depressed classes ever “accept” Gandhi as their “saviour”? ^{Footnote 65} Given the admitted failures of Gandhian “social processes” to help the cause of the least powerful in society, how could one agree with his anathema to “political processes”? ^{Footnote 66} Rather than relying on “charity” and “zeal”, Ambedkar argued, the “Untouchables feel that . . . their emancipation . . . can be secured by them by political power, and nothing else.” ^{Footnote 67} Through a constitutionalized sphere of legal and democratic equality there was at least the outline of a “common plane where the privileged and subject classes could meet,” a formal equality that would be non-existent in the Gandhian world of village republics. ^{Footnote 68} Despite the limits of formal constitutional equality, electoral politics and legal institutions at least provided forums through which these marginalized groups could mobilize and demand alterations to their condition.

Ambedkar went on to become the Chairman of the Drafting Committee for the Constitution. One of his major priorities in this role was countering any influence of Gandhian ideas in the Constitutional design, remarking that “I am glad that the Draft Constitution has discarded the village and adopted the individual as its unit.” ^{Footnote 69} There were many who argued for modified versions of Gandhian principles in the Constitution: e.g., devolution of some powers to village panchayats. ^{Footnote 70} Ambedkar opposed this on the grounds that the more localized the center of political power, the higher was the danger of it being corrupted and captured by local power relations. In opposition to Gandhi’s politics of proximity, the centralization would offer the necessary distance from locally entrenched hierarchies. ^{Footnote 71} The abstract neutrality of law courts, however imperfect, would be preferable to adjudication by panchayats embedded in local networks of social power. Finally, on the insistence of the Gandhians in the Assembly, certain Gandhian principles were included in the Constitution only in the Directive Principles of State Policy—an ideological portmanteau of desirable political goals without any legal enforceability. ^{Footnote 72} Outside of these provisions, the rest of the Constitution erected an architecture of a robust modern state, with centralized power structures and provisions facilitating decisive social interventions. Influenced by Ambedkar (and his reading of post-civil war reconstruction in America), ^{Footnote 73} it further included rights that could be enforced horizontally—that is, against fellow citizens rather than the State. ^{Footnote 74} It was a way for individuals to call upon state power to remedy the worst forms of domination caused by social power, in stark contrast of Gandhi’s worldview.

While Ambedkar offered the most detailed and influential version of the critique of Gandhi mentioned here, he was by no means the only one who advanced it. The communists, who were increasingly influential amongst the labor unions in the cities, and Sahajanand Saraswati, who through the Kisan Sabha had mobilized vast numbers of peasants in North India, ^{Footnote 75} expressed their opposition on broadly similar lines. What is common amongst these groups was their respective commitment towards mobilizing the different exploited groups in society (be it the dalits, the peasantry, or the workers) as distinct political forces. Hence their resistance to Congress’s attempt to claim hegemonic leadership over the entirety of Indian society irrespective of its internal cleavages. From their standpoint, Gandhi’s vision for postcolonial India was at best oblivious to existing hierarchies in society, and at worst complicit and dependent on them. His principles of social change were an extension of his principles for political mobilizations—both of which sought to undermine the political autonomy—and hence social emancipation—of the dominated castes and classes.

Nehru: Critique of the Rulers

As Gandhi’s chosen successor as the leader of Congress, and hence the presumptive Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru’s critique came from a very different place. Nehru was unfailingly loyal and admiring of Gandhi’s leadership of the anti-colonial movement, and shared an almost filial bond with him. Yet he consistently disagreed with Gandhi’s vision for a postcolonial India. Nehru’s critique of Gandhi has primarily been understood through the lens of their ideological difference on the question of modernity and development. As opposed to Gandhi, who sought to fundamentally question the precepts of modern socio-economic systems, Nehru was convinced of their desirability. The problem with India was not the disruption of traditional modes of being through the colonial imposition of modern political and social forms, but rather the fact that colonialism hampered and distorted the developmental trajectory of India’s society and economy. ^{Footnote 76} The need of the hour therefore was industrialization, not rural artisanship. This further meant that in contrast to Gandhi, Nehru was very much an end-oriented politician, and hence prioritized the desired end (modernization and development) over the means (satyagraha). These vast ideological differences between the two undoubtedly explain their deep disagreements as the moment of transition drew nearer. Yet there is another aspect to their debate that is of equal (if not greater) importance, since it reveals not just a personal ideological contrast, but a larger question facing the postcolonial elite at the transitional moment—and which Nehru as the most prominent member of that elite (along with most of the Congress leadership) felt Gandhi’s vision was inadequate in addressing.

Not only did Nehru think that modernization and economic development was necessary for India, he thought that they were urgent necessities. Not only would Gandhi’s vision of social change eventually leave India underdeveloped and lacking in basic amenities of modern life, the postcolonial leadership could ill afford the time required for the slow patient work of “constructive programme”. The rationale for this urgency reveals the contrast between Nehru and Ambedkar’s position. If Ambedkar was concerned about the (potential) success of Congress’s claim to represent the oppressed sections of the society, Nehru was concerned about the (potential) fragility of such a claim. Hence time was of the essence for addressing the undercurrent of social dissensus that could destabilize the nascent political order. To understand this concern, and why a critique of Gandhi arose out of it, we need to briefly return to the anxieties of representation in Gandhi’s own politics.

Gandhi was ambivalent about representation as a central tenet of modern politics. He famously described the British Parliament as “a sterile woman and a prostitute,” ^{Footnote 77} and remarked that “if the money and time wasted by Parliament were entrusted to a few good men, the English nation would be occupying today a much higher platform.” ^{Footnote 78} Yet as a leader of a nationalist movement Gandhi could not completely avoid the problem of legitimate representation. To successfully confront the colonial rulers, Gandhi and the Congress had to claim that they represented—spoke for—the nation-to-be that was India. The stakes of Congress's claim for being a sole and unified representative were high leading up to the independence, when several groups in Indian society proposed their separate and distinct assertions of representation. The colonial government was only too glad to enable and encourage such a multiplicity of representative claims. Faced with this potential for fracturing, Gandhi was forceful in asserting that the Congress had an exclusive claim on representing Indians. ^{Footnote 79} While attending the Round Table Conference for political reforms in London, sharing the space with “representatives” of various social groups, he stated that “Congress is only one of the many parties that are said to be represented here. The organic fact, however, is that it is the only representative body speaking for the vast masses in India.” ^{Footnote 80}

The claim to speak for the whole—and nothing but the whole—was crucial to Congressional control of the nationalist movement. However, the success of that representational claim was contingent upon the solidarity enabled by the common opposition to the colonial regime. When the focus shifted to the postcolonial regime transition and the social and political aspirations that such a possibility generated, the efficacy of that claim was no longer a given. Rather, the slippages between Gandhi’s words and the aspirations of even those who claimed to follow him became evident much before the transition to the postcolonial regime was imminent.

Shahid Amin, in his seminal work studying the reception of the Gandhian message by the peasants of Gorakhpur in 1921, found that “the popular notion of ‘Gandhiji’s Swaraj’ appears to have taken shape quite independently of the district leadership of the Congress.” ^{Footnote 81} Gandhi’s visit there, rather than imparting any specific plan of action, triggered the political imagination of the peasantry, making it possible to think of overturning relations of power and domination that had seemed inviolable. ^{Footnote 82} “Though deriving their legitimacy from the supposed orders of Gandhi, peasant actions in such cases were framed in terms of what was popularly regarded to be just, fair and possible.” ^{Footnote 83} Amin’s findings were not unique to Gorakhpur. Gandhi’s message was often creatively appropriated for numerous militant peasant struggles, at times against Indian landlords, and in explicit conflict with his ideals of political action. ^{Footnote 84} Gandhi’s anxiety about the creative possibilities of popular imagination was expressed in his reflection on the need for “disciplining” the masses. ^{Footnote 85} “Before we can make real headway,” Gandhi wrote, “we must train these masses of men . . . who want to be taught and led. But a few intelligent, sincere, local workers are needed, and the whole nation can be organized to act intelligently, and democracy can be evolved out of mobocracy.” ^{Footnote 86}

Gandhi’s acknowledgement of the need for imposed discipline and training was an expression of his anxiety about the gap between his ideas and those of the masses—and what they regarded as “just, fair, and possible.” ^{Footnote 87} As the masses creatively appropriated Gandhian tropes, they could no longer be viewed as passive receptors of nationalist ideology. In their persistent, rebellious expression of their political subjectivity they simultaneously demanded that independence should also include a plan for an end to their exploitation and threatened Congress’s ability to plausibly speak for the nation—not immediately, but potentially.

The divergence between Gandhi and Nehru could be framed through the lens of this problem. The most direct expression of their disagreement can be found in Nehru’s reply to a letter from Gandhi in 1945, arguing for the Congress to adopt the latter’s vision. ^{Footnote 88} Nehru responded that the crucial issue before the Congress was not the means oriented question of “non-violence versus violence,” but rather how to “achieve” a new political and social order. ^{Footnote 89} The village could not be the basis of such an order. “A village, normally speaking, is backward intellectually and culturally . . . . Narrow-minded people are much more likely to be untruthful and violent.” ^{Footnote 90} The vision that Gandhi had laid out in Hind Swaraj, Nehru said bluntly, was “completely unreal.” ^{Footnote 91} Rather, the proper question in front of Congress was how to achieve certain “objectives” like “sufficiency of food, clothing, housing, education, sanitation etc.” and crucially, to find ways “to attain them speedily.” ^{Footnote 92} India had to become a “technically advanced country.” ^{Footnote 93}

These were well known ideological differences between them. But Nehru then continues to present the high stakes of these differences. Implicitly pointing out that Gandhi’s ideas are far from being a consensual common sense regarding a new vision of collective existence, Nehru writes that taking them up at the eve of independence would “create a great confusion in people’s minds resulting in inability to act in the present.” ^{Footnote 94} More worryingly, it “may also result in creating barriers between Congress and others in the country,” jeopardizing its ability to speak for the entire nation. ^{Footnote 95} Hence, Nehru argued, this was no longer just a difference of opinion between him and Gandhi. “Ultimately of course this and other questions will have to be decided by representatives of free India.” ^{Footnote 96}

Nehru’s deployment of the notion of “representation” against Gandhi was deeply significant, and reveals an ambiguity about his assessment of Gandhi’s place in the anti-colonial movement. In an otherwise excessively admiring account of Gandhi in his book Discovery of India, there lies a crucial passage that is worth quoting at length:

Nehru here subtly alludes to the fact that Gandhi’s unrivalled leadership position was not necessarily due to a wide consensus on the substantive aspects of his social or political imagination, but the symbolic register of his politics. Gandhi’s deployment of the symbolism of community and kinship created a “close correspondence” between his rhetorical repertoire and the traditional “peasant-communitarian” language of resistance. ^{Footnote 98} Gandhi emerged therefore as an all-important “hinge” in a contingent alliance between the masses and the elites that gave the anti-colonial movement its formidable character. ^{Footnote 99} Nevertheless, as Nehru hinted, it was an alliance “contingent” on the existence of a common enemy to struggle against. In the absence of that contingent condition, as the postcolonial transition drew near, there was no inevitable reason for the Congress to set aside their “disagreement” with Gandhi. He represented the “unyielding opposition to those that sought to enslave” India, not necessarily the political and social vision of Indians who have now broken those chains.

By the time Nehru wrote the letter in 1945, the decision of the “representatives of free India” was not an abstract hypothetical. Since it fought and won by a landslide its first election in 1936, the Congress got a sense of the aspiration of the “people” beyond the removal of colonial rule. The experience of building an electoral organization, and addressing concerns in meetings and rallies, gave the congressional leaders a sense of the challenges the material conditions of the country posed in creating a stable basis for popular government. An increasing majority in the Congress began to acknowledge that the “people” could not be presumed to exist independent of their necessities, especially when those necessities were so acute. In a 1937 speech demanding the convening of a constituent assembly for Indians, Jawaharlal Nehru said that “they cry aloud for succour, these unhappy millions of our countrymen . . . . We talk of swaraj and independence, but in human terms it means relief to the masses from their unutterable sorrow and misery.” ^{Footnote 100}

A new postcolonial polity for India, in this telling, necessarily addressed the material conditions of Indian society. The language of development and modernization was to be the nationalist language through which Congress could plausibly claim to speak for the people of independent India. It could promise an “ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity,” thereby “attaining [India’s] rightful place in the world.” It was to be the basis of its postcolonial legitimacy, once the fight against colonial rule was over. The Congress's program in the years leading up to independence included central planning, state-led industrialization, and land reform. ^{Footnote 101}

These goals required a strong and centralized state machinery, especially if one had to address the problem of underdevelopment and inequality; one needed a state powerful enough to overwhelm what Ronald Herring has called “the embedded particularities” at the local level. ^{Footnote 102} Congress would therefore preserve much of the infrastructure of the immense colonial state machinery—two-thirds of the Constitution was derived from the colonial 1935 Government of India Act. The argument contra Gandhi was that it was not the state itself that was the problem, but by whom and for what ends its powers were used. ^{Footnote 103}

This claim about the necessity of the modern state, voiced by Nehru and various other leaders of the Congress, can be divided into two related arguments. In the first version, elimination of poverty and economic development was the major—or even the primary demand—of the Indian masses; demands that congressional leadership became increasingly aware of through the electoral campaigns in the last decade of colonial rule. Given the advent of universal franchise and electoral democracy after independence, the postcolonial regime had to be able to fulfil those demands. The consensus amongst the Congress elites was that they could only be met through a project of state-led investment and growth. Only a strong centralized state could execute such a program. Hence, Congress would not be transformed into a “society to serve the people” advancing the “constructive program” at the village level, as Gandhi had wanted, ^{Footnote 104} but would be a modern political party, asking for votes on a platform to deliver material wellbeing. ^{Footnote 105} Building a centralized state was the necessary first step towards fulfilling that mandate. We can call this version the “democratic argument” for the state.

The second version was a significant variation on this theme. In this version, the demands for eradication of poverty and better material conditions reflected not a realized consensus on a path of economic development, but a yet inchoate dissatisfaction amongst the masses about the social condition. These dissatisfactions could transform themselves into rebellious uprisings, destabilizing the nascent regime. These were not idle speculations. In the years leading up to independence, India witnessed both the biggest labor strike and the biggest peasant rebellion in its history, not to mention the extraordinarily bloody religious strife leading up to the partition of the country. To the administrators—roles that Nehru and Congress leaders were stepping into, leaving behind their role of movement builders—the cacophony of contending interests and the potential threat to regime stability was too risky to ignore. A strong centralized state not only had the capability to deliver the change that people demanded (per the “democratic argument”), but also the capacity to manage this potential for unrest. We can call this the “managerial argument” for the state. This line of argument provided a justification for the repressive apparatus of the state—in part explaining why the Constituent Assembly was unwilling to repeal some of the more notorious provisions of colonial law like preventive detention and sedition. However, its scope was considerably wider than that. It also foresaw a vast regime of technocratic bodies that could undertake precise calculations and planning for necessary social reengineering, as well as a pedagogical role for the officers of the state, inculcating values of democracy and rule of law amongst the subjects newly turned citizens. The managerial argument was a response to the anxiety about democracy and mass action that we have already noted regarding Gandhi, and which continued to haunt his successors to the leadership of Congress. Instead of Congress volunteers as Gandhi had envisioned, Nehru felt that the task of managing the masses was better suited to the tried and tested mechanisms of the modern state.

Both the democratic and the managerial argument supplied justifications not just for the state but also for its centralization. With the former, the higher the degree of centralization of the institutions of the state, especially its deliberative and decision making aspects, the greater is the centripetal force it exerts on the democratic process—thereby preventing the fracturing of the diverse coalition. With the latter, a centralized state is better able to perform both the repressive as well as technocratic-planning functions that are required of it to effectively manage dissensus.

The democratic argument and the managerial argument often overlapped in their justification for the state and its form (both requiring a high degree of centralization). Their crucial distinction was in their starting point. While the former was made primarily from the point of view of a political party, the latter was primarily from the standpoint of a government. In the context of the postcolonial transition, where the Congress party and the government was in effect one and the same—with Nehru being the leader of both—it is not surprising that they flowed into one another. The distinction between them would become more significant in the subsequent years after the independence. ^{Footnote 106}

The managerial argument also responded to an objection that could have been raised against the democratic argument. Against the latter one could justifiably claim that there was no reason to suppose that Nehru (or other presumptive rulers) possessed a superior knowledge vis- à -vis Gandhi as to what the “people” really wanted, or that in politics any such unambiguous and unalterable set of programmatic aspirations even exist around which to build an end-oriented project. Yet, it was precisely as a response to such an uncertainty and lack of consensual aspiration that the managerial argument became necessary. While the Gandhian model required a level of neighborly love amongst citizens, a modern state did not. What the state offered instead was the necessary ideological and institutional apparatus to address the conditions of contending aspirations and conflicting interests that marked the moment of independence. The Constituent Assembly sought to create institutions that could manage the multiplicity of social life, and provide forums for contestation and deliberation among conflictual interests. This has been an enduring justification for the modern state—one that Gandhi had sought to counter, and one that Nehru and the Constituent Assembly reaffirmed.