Indian political thought had a canon of its own at least since the time of Kautilya's Arthasastra (end of fourth century BC).Footnote ¹ Consequently, there was a recognizably Indian mode of political thinking. However, this thought ceased by about the nineteenth century when the Western canon came into vogue in modern India. Modern Indian thinkers, whether of the liberal or the Marxist persuasion, began to produce a canon, as if the Indian canon had never existed. There were, of course, exceptions to this—M.K. Gandhi being the most important. He updated the old Indian canon and made the innovated version suitable for a recognizably Indian way of thinking about modern politics. This article is a critical examination of his achievements in this regard. It begins with a brief account of the old canon, which provides the necessary background for the present discussion.

The Ancient Indian Political Canon

By about the end of the fourth century BC, four ideas had attained canonical status in Indian political thought. First, a plurality of sciences (vidyas)—among them the science of politics (danda niti)—were recognized as being indispensable for human flourishing. Second, monarchy was accepted as the normal form of government. Third, a hierarchical order of society, based on the four varnas or “castes,” was endorsed as the right form of human society. And fourth, the overall aim of political science was to create the cultural conditions necessary for the pursuit of the four great ends of life, the purusharthas—ethical goodness (dharma), wealth and power (artha), pleasure (kama), and spiritual transcendence (moksha).

These ideas received their formal recognition in Kautilya's Arthasastra. Subsequent writers such as Kamandaki in the fifth century AD, Somadeva in the tenth century, and the author of Sukraniti in the fourteenth century, all followed the canon more or less faithfully.Footnote ² The great epics of India, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, were careful to pay due attention to the canon. So were the works in the dharmasastra tradition, such as Manu's Dharmasastra. The same was true even of the Kamasutra, a work on sexual pleasure. Major writers in secular Sanskrit literature, such as Kalidasa (fl. fifth century AD), were all mindful of the canonical status of these ideas. Given their importance and longevity,Footnote ³ examining them in some detail is necessary. For reasons of space, however, I shall limit the enquiry primarily to the Arthasastra.

The Arthasastra opens the discussion of the science of politics with a wider discussion of the necessity of the three other sciences known in its day. Such a holistic approach to political science is noteworthy in itself. The sciences mentioned, in the order presented, were philosophy (anvikshiki), the Vedas, economics, and, of course, political science. The implication was that political science, though necessary, was not sufficient to bring about all the conditions necessary for human flourishing. The latter required the contributions of the other sciences mentioned, and political science from the very start was necessarily mindful of this.

How many sciences were necessary for full human flourishing was itself a matter of debate. That these issues were debated tells us something about the level of intellectual vitality and sophistication of the times. Kautilya mentions three schools opposed to his position. Whether they were contemporary schools or schools belonging to the past is not clear. His lack of detailed analysis of their claims suggests the latter. In any case, the school of Manavah maintained that only three sciences were needed, since philosophy could be considered as an offshoot of the science of the Vedas. The school of Brahaspathi, on the other hand, held that only two sciences—politics and economics—were needed, since the other two sciences were “a cloak for those conversant with the ways of the world”(1.2.5). According to the school of Usanas, only one science was needed—the science of politics. “For, with it are bound up undertaking connected with all the sciences”(1.2.7).

Against this background Kautilya advances his own position: “‘Four indeed is the number of sciences,’ says Kautilya. Since with their help one can learn what is spiritual good [dharma] and material well-being [artha], therefore the sciences are so called” (1.2.8–9).

Philosophy was placed first on the list of sciences. By philosophy was meant the discipline that investigates “by means of reasoning” (1.2.11) the internal structure of all the sciences. Philosophy's business was not to question the basic assumptions of the sciences. To make reasonable and basic assumptions was the prerogative of the sciences themselves. The role of philosophy, by contrast, was to investigate whether the claims made were rationally consistent and intelligible. Thus, philosophy examined “the strength and weakness” of the three sciences, what was spiritual good and spiritual evil according to the teachings of the Vedas, what was material profit and material loss in economics, and what constituted good policy and bad policy in political science (1.2.11). That is to say, without the techniques of philosophy, no coherent understanding of any of theses sciences was possible. As such, philosophy was a precondition for a thorough and systematic understanding of any branch of knowledge.

It is not surprising that Kautilya is effusive in his praise of philosophy. It “confers benefit on the people, keeps the mind steady in adversity and prosperity and brings about proficiency in thought, speech and action” (1.2.11). Philosophy is “the lamp of all sciences,” a lamp that dispels the darkness of ignorance and inconsistency (1.2.12). He mentions by name the Samkhya, the Yoga, and the Lokayata schools of philosophy known in his day. The first two dealt with the issue of spiritual liberation while the third dealt with the issue of materialism—allowing the inference that philosophy was neutral and “secular” as far as the basic assumptions of the various systems of knowledge were concerned. Its distinctive role was to make the sciences argumentative in their procedure.

As modern scholars have noted, philosophy according to the ancient Indian canon does not mean what it means today in the modern West.Footnote ⁴ Modern Western philosophy (or at least certain branches of it) is liable to be hostile to spiritual philosophy generally—a liability that Indian philosophy, ancient and modern, does not carry. Philosophy according to the old Indian canon remains neutral between materialism and spiritualism. This neutrality becomes very clear when we turn to the role it plays in the science of the Vedas, second on Kautilya's list.

The science of the Vedas deals with “revealed truths,” that is, truths whose ultimate justification rests directly on the “seeing” of the seers and only indirectly on reason. Such truths are concerned with the ultimate meaning of existence, the nature of the immaterial atman or purusha or self and its relationship to the supreme Self. The science of the Vedas is an integral part of the human sciences. The Vedas also concern themselves with the ultimate basis of ethical values, worship, religious sacrifices, rituals, and chants used in worship and the like. The study of theses aspects of the Vedas depended on a host of subsidiary sciences, such as grammar, phonetics, prosody, and astronomy.

The crucial issue in the science of the Vedas from the perspective of the present discussion is its epistemology. The knowledge of revealed truths is said to be derived from the internal spiritual “experience” (anubhava) of the “seers.” Such knowledge is not derived in the first instance from reason or empirical sources. As far as revealed truths are concerned, “seeing” has priority over reasoning. It may be said that in the beginning was “seeing.” Only after “seeing” do thinking, reasoning, speaking, writing, and acting come.

Even so, philosophy has a role to play in the development of the science of the Vedas. It delves into the data provided by the seers and helps produce systems of philosophy called “darsana” (literally, “what is seen”). The basic assumptions of the well-known six systems of Indian “philosophy”—Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Visesika, Mimamsa, and Vedanta—rest ultimately on the authority of the Vedas. But that is not the whole of it. These systems of spiritual “philosophy” can develop only when they become argumentative, which can happen only if philosophy as a neutral discipline intervenes. That is to say, the very development of the spiritual “philosophies” depends on anvikshiki, to use the original name for philosophy.

Two points are noteworthy here. The first is that according to the old canon the science of revealed truths does have a place among the human sciences. That the premier text of Indian political philosophy should say this makes the saying very striking. In comparative terms, it is as if Machiavelli were to say that theology is an integral part of the human sciences. However that might be, the revealed truths of the Vedas were open to investigation of human reason. What originates in “seeing,” is subjected to rational investigation. Only such investigation can establish their status as science (vidya). Indeed, from such investigation the six systems of spiritual “philosophy,” already mentioned, arose.

The second noteworthy feature of the old canon is the relationship of the science of the Vedas to philosophy. There is no hint in the Arthasastra of any incompatibility, much less of active hostility, between the two. Distinction does not imply or require opposition. The presumed harmony between the two is an important aspect of the ancient canon of Indian political thought. That political science, which is concerned with power interests, should recognize the validity of the science of the Vedas is something that would have a lasting impact on the entire history of Indian political philosophy.

The science of economics is third on Kautilya's list. It maintains its relative independence among the other sciences. He does not go into a detailed analysis of this science, being content with mentioning that agriculture, cattle breeding, and trade are the chief sources of wealth production. Most important, however, he points out that success in both domestic policy and foreign policy depends on the treasury and the strength of the economy (1.4.1–2).

Turning now to political science itself, the Arthasastra makes five points that are highly relevant to the present discussion. The first is that political science is the science of maintaining and protecting a wealthy and powerful political community or a territory inhabited by people. “The source of livelihood of men is wealth, in other words, the earth inhabited by people. The science which is the means of the attainment and protection of that earth is the Science of Politics [arthasastra]” (15.1.1–2). Second, political science is necessary for protecting humans from “the law of the fishes” (matsya nyaya), according to which the strong swallows the weak (1.4.13–15). The natural tendency of humans is to dominate one another unilaterally. The political order is a remedy against this tendency. The remedy consists of just punishment or the exercise of the Rod. From the symbol of the Rod, political science derives its other name, danda niti, the science of the just application of danda, or punishment. The political order, to this extent, is a coercive order, but coercion applied only in the interest of justice. Punishments, states Arthasastra, should be neither severe nor lax but “fitting” (1.4.7–10).

Third, monarchy is the accepted form of government. In his domestic policy, the monarch is obliged to enforce the hierarchical social order based on varna or “caste.” In his foreign policy, however, he is free to promote the power interests of the state. It is in the nature of states to seek to expand, conquer, and subjugate. It was the ambition of every king to become one day a king of kings or a conqueror. The symbol of conquest was the wheel (chakra), from which was derived the title of the conqueror, chakravarti —the wielder of the wheel. Once set in motion, the wheel moves in all directions—north, south, east, and west—until it conquers everything before it or is stopped by another wheel similarly in motion. Hence, the second title of the conqueror, digvijayi, or the conqueror of the four quarters. The state system as envisaged in the old canon was an imperial war-system.

The science of politics, then, is also the science of acquisition and expansion. It has “for its purpose the acquisition of things not possessed, the preservation of things possessed, the augmentation of things preserved and the bestowal of things augmented on a worthy recipient. On it is dependent the orderly maintenance of worldly life” (1.4.3–4).

Fourth, political science has an indispensable positive cultural role to play in society. Without political science establishing conditions of order and stability, the other sciences would not be able to flourish: “The means of ensuring the pursuit of philosophy, the three Vedas and economics is the Rod, wielded by the king” (1.4.3). Again, “the three sciences have their root in the just administration of the Rod” (1.5.1).

Finally and most important, political science is the indispensable means of creating the cultural conditions necessary for the pursuit of the great ends of human existence, the purusharthas (1.4.11). It is as if humans cannot attain their destiny, both material and spiritual, without the support of political science. Arthasastra considers this point so important that it takes the unusual step of repeating it several times. To begin with, the king himself should set an example to his subjects by demonstrating how the purusharthas may be successfully pursued. “He should enjoy sensual pleasures without contravening his spiritual good and material well-being; he should not deprive himself of pleasures. He should devote himself equally to the three goals of life which are bound up with one another. For, any one of the three, viz., spiritual good, material well-being and sensual pleasures, if excessively indulged in, does harm to itself as well as to the other two” (1.7.3–5). As far as political science is concerned, however, artha has relative primacy, because “spiritual good and sensual pleasures depend on material well-being” (1.7.7). Again, the pursuit of these goals being so important, the education of the prince should include training in the pursuit of the purusharthas (1.17.33). The same point is made in 15.1.64: “He [the royal preceptor] should instruct him [the prince] in what conduces to spiritual and material good, not in what is spiritually and materially harmful.”

It comes as no surprise that Arthasastra should end with a strong plea on behalf of the purusharthas. The connection between political science and the purusharthas could not have been better defended. Ostensibly, political science has no higher end than the defense of the theory of the purusharthas; Kautilya apparently wrote his work to establish this truth. One need only to read the penultimate sentence of the entire science to grasp this: “This work brings into being and preserves dharma, artha, and kama, and destroys spiritual evil, material loss and hatred” (15.1.72).

The Place of Artha among the Four Purusharthas

Given the importance that the old canon had attached to the theory of the purusharthas, it is useful to give, at this stage of our argument, a brief account of it and of the position that artha occupies in it. The term “purushartha” is made up of two Sanskrit terms: purusha, meaning “immaterial spirit,” and artha, meaning (in this instance), “for the sake of.” It, therefore, carries the literal meaning of “that which is done for the sake of the immaterial spirit.” In Indian philosophical anthropology, humans are understood to be composites of nature (prakriti) and spirit (purusha). The former provides the material/biological/psychological substratum of human personality, and the latter its spiritual foundation. Accordingly, human activities are seen, ultimately, as those that are pursed for the sake of the purusha. This reference to the purusha gives ultimate meaning to all human activities, material, psychological, ethical, aesthetic, as well as spiritual. Not that the body and its interests do not have their own relatively autonomous purposes, but that in ethical and philosophical terms those purposes acquire their full human significance only in so far as they retain a reference, however remote, to the interests of the purusha. Any human activity that deliberately excludes this reference is considered pro tanto, not beneficial to human well-being.Footnote ⁵

The position occupied by artha among the purusharthas varied according to the different intellectual traditions. In the arthasastra tradition, as we saw above, it had a very crucial role to play in the system of the purusharthas: it operated interactively with the other three, and there was no suggestion of any incompatibility between it and moksha (1.3.14). Later works in arthasastra tradition, such as the fifth century Kamandaki Nitisara, did the same.Footnote ⁶ However, in the moksha-sastra traditions, namely, in the six systems of Indian philosophy, artha had a very low status and was treated as though it was incompatible with the serious pursuit of moksha. The pursuit of moksha, according to these systems, was supposed to require a gradual withdrawal from the real world of politics and economics. As a result artha became marginalized to the point of being treated as a negative value. The consequences were disastrous. As V. Kane remarks, intellectuals from the eleventh century onward took no interest in the sciences of politics and economics, being totally committed to “mental gymnastics about logic, Vedanta, Poetics and similar subjects.”Footnote ⁷ Interest in artha became so low that, as Sheldon Pollock points out, “even commentarial literature” on the subject was stunted, and “the discourse on polity” was absorbed within the dharmasastra tradition.Footnote ⁸ The neglect of artha continued into the nineteenth century. The thinker who did more than others to rescue and modernize it was Mahatma Gandhi.

Stability and Change

No political culture can long survive without its canon. And no political canon can long continue without timely change. There is a subtle but real connection between canon, stability, and change. A political canon reflects stability, but to be relevant, it should also be open to change. However, because of the preponderance of the moksha tradition in Indian culture of the medieval period, the old political canon was unable to develop further. This case remained even after the fourteenth century, when a radically new political canon—the sharia—was introduced in Indian territories under Muslim rule.

This is not the place to raise the question of why the Indian political canon and the sharia did not enter into a creative engagement with one another. However, the fact that no such engagement took place needs to be noted. Indian political thinkers of the Middle Ages were not unaware of the sharia, but they chose to do nothing more than just take note of it. Sukraniti, for example, mentioned the “theory of the Yavanas” (medieval Indian name for Muslims) and included it in its list of thirty-two sciences.Footnote ⁹ “Yavana philosophy is that which recognizes God as the invisible creator of this universe, and recognizes virtue and vice without reference to Sruti [the Vedas] and Smriti [Tradition], and which believes that Sruti contains a separate religious system.”Footnote ¹⁰ The Yavanas, noted Sukraniti, did not follow the caste system. They “have all the four caste mixed together. They recognize authority other than the Vedas and live in the north and west. Their Sastras have been framed for their welfare by their own masters.”Footnote ¹¹

Totally different, however, was the reception accorded to the Western canon, introduced by the colonial state in the nineteenth century. It produced an unprecedented intellectual ferment in India that made Indians look critically at their social and political institutions. The role that the ascetic tradition played in Indian culture came under critical scrutiny. The same happened to the caste system and monarchy itself. Such Western ideas as individual liberty, equality, the right to self-determination, nationalism, and the religious neutrality of the state were warmly welcomed.

However, there was one striking aspect to this welcome. It was as if the welcome party was unaware of the existence of India's ancient political canon. Both Indian liberals and Indian Marxists seemed to suffer from cultural and intellectual amnesia. In the case of the latter, the forgetfulness was perhaps deliberate. Marxists forsook Gandhi and took after Mao, Gramsci, Lukacs, and others, believing that Marxism was the new universal canon superseding all the others, whether Indian, Chinese, or Islamic.

Without question, modern Indian political thinkers, including Indian Marxists, wrote about Indian political issues—theory of history, colonialism, nationalism, self-determination, socialism, class war, individual liberty, equality, and a host of other issues. But their writings produced what may be termed “political thought in India.” They did not produce “Indian political thought,” if by Indian political thought is meant a body of thought produced with the help of and within an Indian framework of thought and analysis. The framework of thought and analysis that these writers employed was normally either liberal or Marxist. Take for example A. Appadorai's classic two volume Documents on Political Thought in India. Footnote ¹² As the very title indicates, these volumes are about political thought in India, not about “Indian political thought.” The writers in question were, of course, writing about India, but only a few of them were conscious of the need to use an Indian framework of analysis. There is some truth in Sri Aurobindo's 1918 criticism that “the last generation merely attempted to imitate and reproduce with a servile fidelity the ideals and forms of the West.”Footnote ¹³

However that might be, India once had a political canon of its own. If it was to have a new canon, the old one had to be updated. Updating an old canon is no easy task. The charisma of the writer or writers has to respond to the needs of the times. India was fortunate to have had a number of great writers who contributed important elements toward the updating of a modern Indian political canon. Among them were Rabindranath Tagore, B. G. Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, S. Radhakrishnan, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, and B. R. Ambedkar. However, the thinker who pulled all the elements together and inaugurated the modern Indian political canon was M. K. Gandhi.

Several Ideas Deleted

No doubt Gandhi wanted to be an innovator of the old Indian political canon. He could become one, however, only if he were prepared to delete what was obsolete, add what was new, and preserve what was essential. This undertaking was exactly his strategy. “My swaraj is to keep intact the genius of our civilization,” he had written. “I want to write many new things but they must be all written on the Indian slate. I would gladly borrow from the West when I can return the amount with decent interest.”Footnote ¹⁴ At the same time, he did not want to drown himself, as he put it, “in the waters of our ancestors' well.” Preserving everything from the past would indeed be suicidal. The innovator's task was to increase the patrimony of the past and make it productive. “I believe that it is our duty to augment the legacy of our ancestors and to change it into current coin and make it acceptable to the present age.”Footnote ¹⁵ His efforts to update the old political canon are best seen in the light of these sentiments. I shall sketch below the process of deletions and additions that was involved.

Deleted from the old canon were ideas relating to the monarchy and the caste system. The “law of fishes,” the old justification for the political order, was dropped in favor of the idea of swaraj or self-rule. Likewise, the idea that political power was something that had to expand, conquer, and subdue was replaced by the idea that political power was the legitimate means of coercion solely for purposes of internal order and external security.

Disposing of the monarchy was relatively painless. It did not require civil war, revolution, or regicide. By mid-twentieth century, the rajahs and maharajahs were pensioned off and their territories integrated into republican India. Gandhi's political theory in general and his theory of non-violence in particular contributed greatly to India's transition from monarchy to republic.

Dealing with the caste system was an altogether different matter. Although by the 1890s Gandhi had become convinced of the illegitimacy of the system, he was painfully aware of the fact that the system had its sanction in the Vedas (Rg Veda, 90: 11–12) and the Bhagavad Gita (4: 13; 18: 41–48). He, therefore, had to tread cautiously. He first took the position that “caste” in its original form as varna was egalitarian and that its corruption into jati (the assignation of caste by birth) was “a hideous travesty of the original.” Instead of the original four divisions, there was now a multitude of castes—clear evidence “that the law of varna [had] become a dead letter.”Footnote ¹⁶ By 1935 he took a firm stand against the caste system: “Caste Has to Go” was the title of an essay that he published in that year.Footnote ¹⁷ The campaign against the practices of “untouchability” soon became one of the most important projects of the new canon.

However, the scriptural justification of the caste system raised its own difficulties, which forced him to examine the rules of interpretation of the scriptures. The issue became critical as B. R. Ambedkar, the leader of the so-called untouchables (and the future draftsman of the new Indian Constitution), threatened to abandon Hinduism altogether, arguing that nothing less than the rejection of the scriptures themselves was needed.

Gandhi sought to find a way of both getting rid of the caste system and safeguarding the integrity of the scriptures. A correct interpretation of the scriptures, he argued, would show that the caste system had only a historical, not permanent, validity. This position followed from the criteria of the interpretation of the scriptures that he employed. The criteria he chose were conscience, reason, learning, holiness of life, and the inner experience of the truths to be interpreted. “The scriptures properly so called can only be concerned with eternal verities and must appeal to any conscience, i.e., any heart whose eyes of understanding are opened. Nothing can be accepted as the word of God which cannot be tested by reason or is capable of being spiritually experienced… Learning there must be but religion does not live by it. It lives in the experiences of its saints and seers, in their lives and sayings. When all the most learned commentators of the scriptures are utterly forgotten, the accumulated experience of the sages and saints will abide and be an inspiration for ages to come.”Footnote ¹⁸

One “eternal verity” that the Hindu scriptures taught was that humans were capable of self-determination, self-development, and spiritual liberation. All other facts about humans had to be interpreted in the light this truth. The interpretation of the scriptures by saints and seers was more reliable than those by mere scholars: for the former had spiritual experience of the truth they were interpreting, while the latter lacked it altogether. Gandhi's point was that the Hindu scriptures, rightly interpreted, could favor the evolution of an egalitarian society. Seen in this light, the caste system as it had evolved in India had only historical, not permanent, validity. The scriptures, reinterpreted, would call for the end of caste system. As historical awareness changes, so would the attitude toward caste. A combination of historical knowledge, spiritual experience, and sound reasoning led him to delete the caste system from the old Indian political canon.

As for the “law of fishes,” he replaced it with the idea of self-rule or swaraj: all humans were free and capable of self-determination, self-development, and self-transcendence. According to the new canon, the justification for a democratic political order arises from this principle.

Deleted also was the notion that state power, of necessity, required expansion and conquest. According to the old theory, power was antinomian, a law unto itself, recognizing no other law. States tended to invoke national interest (prajana swartha)Footnote ¹⁹ as their supreme law of conduct. Gandhi's theory of nonviolence, which is not a pacifist theory but a theory of the legitimate use of coercive force, challenged the antinomian character of state power. The “law of fishes” did not constitute a moral law. It merely referred to a mode of behavior, a “faculty of acting,” as Samuel Pufendorf in the seventeenth century was to point out.Footnote ²⁰ Gandhi, going further, argued that the law of humanity required that states in their mutual relations could use power only for internal order and external security, and never for external expansion and imperial domination. What the world needed today was not “absolutely independent states warring one against another but a federation of friendly interdependent states.”Footnote ²¹ His demand for the end of modern colonialism, which was an integral part of his theories of swaraj and nonviolence (ahimsa), was simultaneously a demand for a change in the old Arthasastra conception of state power.

Four Ideas Added

Updating the old canon required the addition of new ideas that came mostly from the West. They included ideas of civic nationalism, the limited constitutional state, fundamental human rights, and modern political economy.

Nationalism for Gandhi was a theory of political community. The nation was to take the place of caste. Though a Western ideology, it had its cultural antecedents in Indian history. Already the Arthasastra had spoken of India as a sphere of imperial expansion (a chakravartin sphere) stretching from the Himalayas in the north to seas to the south and a thousand yojanas across (9.1.18). In Hind Swaraj he vigorously defended the view that Indians constituted a nation, arguing that all Indians—Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jainas, Christians, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Jews, and others—had a shared sense of history and culture.Footnote ²²

The old canon was no longer adequate to deal with the modern reality of a multireligious and multilingual India. The viability of modern India depended on the availability of a modern theory of political community that could weld the country's multiplicities into a working unity. Gandhi believed that civic nationalism was that theory. Its defense became part of the new canon.

Nationalism, however, was not a monolithic ideology, as Gandhi was soon to learn. The separatist Muslims wanted a nationalism based on religion; a minority of Hindus wanted a nationalism based on hindutva (Hinduness); and the vast majority of Indians, under the banner of the Indian National Congress, wanted civic nationalism. The political history of modern India was a struggle for supremacy by these three forms of nationalism—M. A. Jinnah (1875–1948) taking the leadership of religious nationalism, V. D. Savarkar (1882–1966) taking that of ethnic or hindutva nationalism, and Gandhi taking that of civic nationalism.

What distinguished civic nationalism from the other two was its universalistic core. According to Gandhi, a civic nation is a people who, in addition to inhabiting a specific territory and sharing a common history, share a sense of justice, rights, and duties. The civic nation attaches the greatest importance to the individual as a self-determining and self-developing being and as a bearer of certain inalienable rights. Of the three forms of nationalism, only the civic nation recognizes and respects these rights. This recognition and this respect constitute its inner core. A civic, national identity alone could transcend all prepolitical identities, whether based on religion or language or caste or ethnicity. Civic nationalism recognizes and respects these identities, too, but within a broader context of a pan-national identity. Briefly, civic nationalism is a component part of the new Indian political canon.

Hind Swaraj (1909) is the primary text of Gandhi's civic nationalism. However, in 1946, on the eve of national independence, he discovered the wonderful metaphor of the “oceanic circle” for India as a civic nation. Contrasted with the “oceanic circle” (the new India) was the pyramid—the metaphor for the old, hierarchical India. The term “oceanic” signified inclusiveness, and the term “circle” signified the formal distinction of the “oceanic circle” from other nations. The center from which the “oceanic circle” is drawn is the individual. From the center as many concentric circles as the individual wishes may be drawn, so long as they do not break the outer circumference of the “oceanic circle.” That is to say, Indians may belong to as many small, inner circles as they wish: there would be room for all in the “oceanic circle.” To whichever circles they belong, the individuals are not a collection of isolated atoms but are held together by a “free and voluntary play of mutual forces.” “Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units. Therefore the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength from it.”Footnote ²³ The “oceanic circle” has a special place in the new canon.

Gandhi's notion of the state would be compatible with the “oceanic circle,” a “parliamentary swaraj according to the wishes of the Indian people”—a mixture of the Indian idea of self-rule and the Western idea of representative government.Footnote ²⁴ The phrase “according to the wishes of the Indian people” emphasizes the notion of a government based on consent. The state according to the new canon would be neither the old Arthasastra type nor the new Hobbesean/Machiavellian type: it would be a constitutionally limited democracy.

The Gandhian state has four additional characteristics. First, it would be secular: artha (the category to which the state belongs) is a secular, not religious, category. Religion had nothing to do with the structure of India as an “oceanic circle.”Footnote ²⁵ Second, state sovereignty is not absolute but relative to the needs of peace between states. What “the better mind of the world” desires is “universal interdependence” rather than absolute independence.Footnote ²⁶ Third, as explained in his short treatise Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place (1941), the state would work in tandem with the organs of civil society, namely, nongovernmental organizations.Footnote ²⁷ Finally, it would operate according to the general principles of Gandhian nonviolence. Those principles recognize the right of the state to self-defense even by means of military means, if necessary. As he stated at the constitutional conference of 1931 held in London (the only such conference he ever attended), a state that did not have the control over its defense could not be a responsible state. The ability to defend itself is “the essence” of a state's existence.Footnote ²⁸ At the same time, the Gandhian state also has the obligation to develop civilian means of self-defense and to engage in progressive disarmament. What the new canon is trying to achieve is a reasonable balance between moderate political realism and the imperative of world peace.

Turning now to fundamental human rights—the third addition that he made to the modern Indian canon—they are quintessentially part of modernity. They had their historical origin in Western thought. Yet when transferred to Indian conditions, Gandhi managed to give human rights a recognizably Indian face—that of satyagraha. As he famously defined it, satyagraha was “a method of securing rights by personal suffering: it is the reverse of resistance by arms.”Footnote ²⁹ The Gandhian method of civil disobedience is different from the Western method, even from that made famous by Henry David Thoreau in the mid-nineteenth century.Footnote ³⁰ The Western method was open to the use of violence in defense of human rights even in internal politics. Gandhi's method, by contrast, made “personal suffering” a means of defense. As Joan Bondurant has pointed out, of all the elements that constitute satyagraha, self-suffering is “the least acceptable to a Western mind.”Footnote ³¹ Historically, the Western mind had accepted violence—such as the violence involved in street riots or in political revolutions, such as the French Revolution—as a means of asserting human rights. Gandhi's method marks an advance on the Western method. Accepting “self-suffering” does not mean seeking it in a pathological manner. It simply means accepting peacefully “the consequences of disobedience.” This practice, he pointed out, “was what Daniel did when he disobeyed the laws of the Medes and the Persians.”Footnote ³² What makes civil disobedience “civil”—not violent—is precisely the peaceful acceptance of the penalty attached to civil disobedience.

Apart from transforming the Western mode of civil disobedience into satyagraha, Gandhi made an additional contribution to Indian political thought: he formally introduced fundamental human rights into the political discourse of modern India. This introduction was accomplished in 1931 by means of the famous resolution on “Fundamental Rights and Economic Changes.” Jointly drafted by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi personally presented the resolution at the annual meeting of the Indian National Congress—which assured its easy acceptance. As Granville Austin has pointed out, this resolution is the “spiritual antecedent” of the Directive Principles of the new Indian Constitution.Footnote ³³

Gandhi's fourth addition to the modern Indian canon, strictly speaking, is not an addition but a reintroduction. For, as we saw above, economics had a canonical status in the arthasastra tradition. What he did was to give modern economics its due place in the new canon. His initial access to modern economic thought was mostly through the economic writings of John Ruskin—The Political Economy of Art (1857), reissued in 1880 under the title ‘A Joy for Ever’: And Its Place in the Market, and Unto This Last (1860)—and of a host of other friendly critics of nineteenth-century-industrial capitalism.Footnote ³⁴ The Gandhian economic corpus—writings on khadi (cloth manufactured by cottage industry), rural economic development, options for the poor, appropriate technology, the relationship of economic development to moral development, and the like—is very substantial, indeed. The scale of Indian poverty so affected him that in 1921 he took the dramatic step of changing his bourgeois attire to the much despised loincloth of the poor villager. The gesture was meant not to glorify but to critique poverty. The economic emancipation of the poor was as important to him as the political emancipation of the nation itself. Political emancipation without economic emancipation would be nothing more than a cruel joke played on the poor. Swaraj (self-rule) had to come in all its four forms—political, moral, spiritual, and economic.

Ruskin was the single most important influence on Gandhi's economic thought. Unto This Last produced, Gandhi tells us, “an instantaneous and practical transformation” in his life.Footnote ³⁵ He wanted Indians to understand Ruskin's basic orientation and to this end, in 1908, he published a paraphrase of that book in his weekly newspaper, Indian Opinion. Later it was published as a booklet under the title Sarvodaya (“the well-being of all”), a name that he gave to his economic philosophy as well.Footnote ³⁶

Ruskin's overall aim was to fight the antihuman elements that had crept into nineteenth-century-British capitalism and to bring a reformed capitalism into the mainstream of Western civilization. This is not the place to go into a detailed analysis of Ruskin, but the main points that Gandhi took from him may be briefly noted. The good of the individual is contained in the good of all. Labor is an equalizing activity, and even in the industrial age, the labor of the artist, the craftsman, and the peasant has great economic as well as civilizing value. Given humans are body-soul composites, soul-force is as much a motivating force in economic activities as is enlightened self-interest. Granted that economics is the science of wealth, it is a mistake to see wealth only as possessions of exchangeable value. The wealth of a nation consists above all in its people who enjoy health, freedoms, and moral dispositions that enable them to use their wealth fittingly. It is necessary, therefore, to shift the focus from wealth as possessions to wealth as people. The aim of a sound political economy should be to meet the material needs, not just of the greatest number, but of every member of society. A reformed capitalism can accomplish all this only when it integrates principles of ethics and virtue into its economic practice.

Applying these ideas to India, Gandhi became convinced that the elimination of mass poverty was a primary task of political independence. In general terms, this called for investments into areas that would foster development from below. It required production by the masses rather than mass production. The right to private property was to be respected, but within the bounds of social responsibility. What was surplus to an individual's reasonable needs was to be treated as if one were its trustee. Modern industrial capitalism had two defects that needed urgent remedies. The first was the damage it was doing to nature, the urban areas, and the countryside, and the second was its inability either to satiate the greed of the rich or to alleviate the misery of the poor. The first required “appropriate technology,” and the second required economics with a social conscience that could humanize the forces of the market.

Gandhi is not Gandhi unless he is able to write on the Indian slate. Regarding modern economics, he managed to find enough room on that slate to write something Indian. Quite ingenuously, he found support for the views mentioned above in the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Yoga Sutra. He interpreted the first verse of the Ishopanishad as teaching a lesson of great economic significance: God alone is the sovereign of the material world. Humans may enjoy it as its trustees, renouncing any claim to absolute ownership. In doing so, they should avoid coveting what belongs to fellow human beings. The Gita according to Gandhi taught a lesson in work ethics: no one was entitled to food unless he or she had worked for it. Two virtues listed in Yoga philosophy—astea (prohibition against theft) and aparigraha (moderation in possessive desires)—with due modification were converted into economic virtues necessary for healthy, modern economic activities.

Two Ideas Retained

Gandhi retained two pivotal ideas from the old canon—with some modification, of course. The first concerned the need for a plurality of sciences for the good life, and the second, the need for a plurality of life-goals or the purusharthas.

The old canon had held that there was no necessary incompatibility between revealed truths and truths based on reason. With this in the background, Gandhi had no difficulty in accepting modern science and its methods. In all his activities—as lawyer, political activist, social reformer, religious thinker—he scrupulously applied the methods of modern science. One example out of many would suffice—the advice that he gave to the workers engaged in the cottage industry of khadi (home-spun cotton cloth). This was not a highly educated group—most of them were barely literate. Yet he urged them to learn modern scientific methods. The passage, despite its length, is worth citing:

Gandhi's problem, then, was not with modern science and its methods,Footnote ³⁸ but with the ideology of science, the ideology that asserted that scientific truths and spiritual truths based on revelation were incompatible. He was deeply concerned about the impact that this ideology had had, and was still having, on modern Western civilization. It was promoting, he felt, a culture of unbelief in the name of positivistic reason. “This civilization is irreligion, and it has taken such a hold on the people in Europe that those who are in it appear to be half mad,” he wrote in 1909.Footnote ³⁹ His explanation for this phenomenon was that Western civilization was no longer able to maintain the right balance between the material aims and the spiritual aims of human life. In his language, the West was interested only in the pursuit of wealth, power, and pleasure (artha and kama), and not at all in that of dharma and moksha. This was a dangerous course to take: “This civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be self-destroyed.”Footnote ⁴⁰

He was anxious to protect modern Indian civilization from the onslaught of modern materialism. He believed that India was still “sound at the foundation.” “What we have tested and found true on the anvil of experience, we dare not change.”Footnote ⁴¹ The “foundation” and “the anvil of experience,” he is referring to, are of course the “experience” (anubhava) by the seers of the divine. From the experiences of the seers, the sages, and the prophets, humanity comes to know the ultimate meaning of life. The new canon that he was trying to introduce sought to reconcile aspects of modernity with spirituality, science with religion, rational knowledge with spiritual experience. If Gandhi had anything to say about it, there would, indeed, be an Indian version of modernity.

An assumption present in Gandhi's philosophy is that “seeing” or “experiencing” has epistemological validity. His theory of compatibility between revealed truths, modern science, and the truths of political science, rests on this assumption. And he claimed such compatibility is evident from his life and writings. His Autobiography, for example, spoke of his desire “to see” the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face-to-face. This desire for “seeing,” he said, had brought him to the field of politics, the field best suited in modern times to the pursuit of the highest vision of Truth.Footnote ⁴²

Thanks to Gandhi, the assumption of the harmony between the science of revealed truths and natural sciences became a distinguishing feature of the new Indian political canon. Indian theologies belong to the broad field of the human sciences. In his view, the Western notion that science alone is sufficient for human well-being is something that emerged from a particular direction that modern Western thought had taken. Such a notion does not apply elsewhere. The modern Indian political canon stands squarely against the claim that modern science (and philosophies that are subservient to it) is the only knowledge sufficient for human well-being. This is monism in the disguise of science. He rejects it in favor of a plurality of sciences. Two epistemologies would produce two types of knowledge—knowledge based on “experience” and knowledge based on positive reason.

Turning to the theory of the purusharthas, the second element that he retained from the old canon, Gandhi soon discovered that the concept of purushartha was in need of redefinition. Over the centuries, it had acquired a somewhat misogynist connotation— not in high culture, but in popular culture. Since the term “prusuha” meant “a man” as one of its meanings, purushartha in popular culture came to be associated with manliness, with its perceived misogyny. This corruption of meaning greatly bothered him, and he wanted to remedy it. He sought advice from his female friends. The outcome was that he was able to provide a gender-neutral meaning to the concept. “The word purusha should be interpreted in its etymological sense,” he wrote, “and not merely to mean a man. That which dwells in the pura, the body, is purusha. If we interpret the word purushartha in this sense, it can be used equally for men and women.”Footnote ⁴³ He went further: purushartha signified a specifically spiritual power common to men and women, a power that enabled them to unify all human activities into a working harmony— activities directed toward the values of wealth, power, pleasure, aesthetics, moral integrity, and spiritual transcendence. This power distinguishes humans from the rest of the material universe. “All human beings, and animals too, struggle. The only difference is that we believe that behind our struggle there is an intelligent purpose.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Only activities of the purushartha type can rise to the level of genuine human activities. “Only effort aimed at the welfare of the atman can be described as purushartha. … All else is futile expenditure of energy.”Footnote ⁴⁵

Gandhi continued with his exploration of the meaning of purushartha. Not only could it unify the diverse strivings of humans, it could also help humans in their struggle against fate, destiny, and karma. “In one sphere, fate is all powerful, and in another purushartha.”Footnote ⁴⁶ “Fate is the fruition of karma. Fate may be good or it may be bad. Human effort [purushartha] consists in overcoming the adverse fate or reducing its impact. There is continuous struggle between fate and human effort [purushartha]. Who can say which of the two really wins? Let us, therefore, continue effort [purushartha] and leave the result to God.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Again, “Between destiny [bhagya] and human endeavor [purushartha] there is incessant struggle. Let us continue to endeavor [purushartha] and leave the result to God. Let us not leave everything to destiny [bhagya], nor be vain about our endeavor [purushartha]. Destiny will take its own course. We should only see where we can intervene or where it is our duty to do so, whatever the result.”Footnote ⁴⁸

Reflections such as these show how profoundly the concept of purshartha had penetrated Gandhi's mind. In the final analysis, purushartha for him is the ability “to overcome whatever weaknesses we see in ourselves.”Footnote ⁴⁹ What modern Indians needed most was the recovery of their faith in the humanism of the purusharthas.Footnote ⁵⁰

The four canonical purusharthas are now seen as four different modes of being human and of exercising inner power.Footnote ⁵¹ The high calling of modern Indian political science is to help humans acquire this inner power, not as its efficient cause, but as the cause that creates the material conditions necessary for its acquisition.

The New Canon

Deletions and additions prepared the way for the emergence of a new set of modern ideas that have canonical status today—swaraj, satyagraha, sarvodaya, swadeshi, ahimsa, nationalism, constitutionalism, selfless public service (anasakti yoga), and the like. The concept of purushartha has been rethought, and the relationship of the four purusharthas inter se redefined in interactive rather than oppositional terms. The need for a plurality of different sciences for human well-being has been reaffirmed. Gandhi, in other words, has given India a modern arthasastra—a recognizably Indian way of thinking politically. Its other features may now be summarized.

All human beings are capable of swaraj, self-determination, self-development, and spiritual liberation. Indians in the past had belonged to a monarchy-based and caste-oriented political community; today they belong to the “oceanic circle.”

Political science is a secular science, whose proximate ends are internal order, material prosperity, and external security. Its specific means is legitimate coercion according to the terms set by the constitution, statutes, principles of human rights, and universal dharma.Footnote ⁵² The state, being part of the sphere of artha, is a secular institution. Its coercive power is limited to maintaining internal order and external security; it does not extend to achieving domination over other states. The state is a member of a community of independent and interdependent states. The new arthasastra puts an end to the old chakravartin concept of the imperial state. In doing so, it has changed the very notion of political power from one that seeks to expand limitlessly to one that limits itself to the requirements of internal order, world peace, interdependence. and universal dharma. The state that the new arthasastra envisages is a “parliamentary swaraj.” It recognizes the fundamental rights of citizens and their freedom to protest nonviolently through the practice of satyagraha. It also recognizes the need for organizations of civil society with which it coordinates its own activities.

The economic system that is compatible with the new arthasastra is sarvodaya, a reformed form of capitalism that recognizes the principle of private property within the limits of social responsibility. Corresponding to the obligation to work is the right to the fruits of one's work. The creation of wealth, a requisite of purushartha, has a positive human value, and poverty is a sign of human degradation, being the outcome of the mismanagement of the nation's labor. What is surplus to one's reasonable needs should be held in trust for society. The centralization of economic power in the hands of the state does “greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the root of all progress . . . the violence of private ownership is less injurious than the violence of the state.”Footnote ⁵³ The mode of wealth production should be consistent with the use of appropriate technology, the needs of natural environment, and the requirements long-term sustainability. Though India needs industrialization, the kind of industrialization that it embarks upon should be consistent with principles of universal justice. It should learn from the past mistakes of industrialized societies.Footnote ⁵⁴

A new conception of dharma as ethics corresponds to the new arthasastra—the ethic of nonviolence. Two caveats save this ethic from becoming utopian. The first is the need to adapt it to the four different “fields” (communities) of nonviolenceFootnote ⁵⁵—the family, the state, the religious community, and the world community of states. Nonviolence works differently in these fields. What works in one may not work in the others. It, therefore, needs constant adaptation to the requirements of the given field. The second caveat concerns the “vast majority principle.” The ethic of nonviolence would work only when the vast majority in a given field had the habit of practicing it. Thus, “a state can be administered on a nonviolent basis only if the vast majority of the people are nonviolent.”Footnote ⁵⁶ The vast majority can become nonviolent only if conditions of justice and political stability prevail. The responsibility for bringing these conditions about rests as much with the state as with the political culture of ordinary citizens. There is a subtle link, then, between the public behavior of the state and the private behavior of its citizens. If the citizens want the state to behave nonviolently, they themselves should behave nonviolently toward one another. That is the implication of Gandhian nonviolence. And if there is a circle of nonviolently administered states, only then, can the relations between such states become nonviolent.

There is also a new conception of moksha, corresponding to the new arthasastra. Gandhi modernized the mode of pursuing moksha, making it less ascetical and more compatible with action in the political and economic fields. The minimum, necessary condition for its pursuit is commitment to Truth (in the Gandhian sense), supported by a reflective, spiritual life-style. The pursuit of moksha should not interfere with the secular character of the state.

Gandhi's unique contribution to the new Indian canon has been to bring the pursuit of moksha into a dynamic relationship with the pursuit of artha—a secular activity. As A. L. Basham, the great interpreter of Indian civilization in the twentieth century, has remarked, “The theoretical purpose of the whole social and political structure of classical India was to promote moksha—to help as many individuals as possible to achieve it.” The Indian seer, unlike the Chinese sage or the Hebrew prophet, “thought not in terms of the salvation of the whole people,” but of individual human beings. The “fundamental individualism” involved in this, Basham thinks, is “perhaps the reason why India, unlike most other colonial countries, has taken enthusiastically to parliamentary democracy.” Those who pursue moksha in the Gandhian mode exemplify the harmony between all human strivings. Few perhaps actually attain this harmony, “but the secret of the good life is to travel hopefully towards it.”Footnote ⁵⁷ Such is the distinctive requirement of the new Indian political canon.

There is, however, a lacuna in Gandhi's political thought. There is no creative dialogue in it with Marxism, which is in contrast to his fruitful dialogue with liberalism. Perhaps this is due to Marx's own all-knowing dogmatism. He made an either/or offer that Gandhi had to decline. Indian Marxists, in their turn, have not helped matters: they were and are bent on changing India on Marx's terms; they simply refuse to change Marxism on India's terms. This reluctance explains why Indian Marxism remains outside the modern Indian canon—why it belongs to the category of “political thought in India,” rather than, strictly speaking, to Indian political thought.

As for the view of the modern Indian canon that basic human goals are compatible with one another, it stands in contrast to the Western liberal canon that they are incommensurable. Difference between the two canons is unavoidable. The best one can do here is to study the difference comparatively.

Gandhi's evaluation of India's colonial experience has been exemplary, for it did not produce any cultural schizophrenia in him. His sense of identity was so authentic that he could integrate Western ideas without undergoing postcolonial angst that afflicts so many today. The remedy against such angst lies in adopting the canon that he has inaugurated. Here his metaphor of the “slate” is helpful. He had no problem writing many new things so long as the slate on which he was writing was Indian. So is his other metaphor of “capital and interest.” If he borrowed the idea of human rights from the West, which he did, he paid back the capital with interest—in the form of satyagraha. If the new Indian political canon has borrowed certain ideas from the West, as it has, it is now in a position to pay something back to the West.