Broadening the Idea of Conflict Sensitivity Prof. John S. Moolakattu

 

Salt Satyagraha Campaign Prof. John Chelladurai

 

Gandhi's World View : Strategies Prof. Michael W. Sonnleitner

 

Principled and Strategic Nonviolence Prof. Prem Anand Mishra

 

Principled and Strategic Nonviolence

Prof. Prem Anand Mishra

I am very happy to see Dr. Siby K. Joseph and Prof. Michael Sonnleitner after a long time in this session. Of course, it is online, but you know, it gives a kind of courage to see the people of nonviolence, whether online or offline. Thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to interact with this edition of the international fellowship course, particularly based on Gandhian nonviolence and peace.

I will speak on what I have understood through different contexts and from people like Ravindra Varma and Narayan Desai. This is not just a theoretical explanation, but a practical understanding of nonviolence in life. Frankly, it is highly challenging to live a nonviolent life in today's context of intense socio-political changes and AI revolutions.

When we talk about nonviolence or we listen about it, there are certain images in our mind. Maybe the images of Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King Jr., and many people around the world. You see that these are the people who are the champions of nonviolence, who try to put nonviolent action into practice. Then, there are certain movements that come to your mind, and you think that this nonviolence is not just a personal virtue, but rather a movement, a campaign. So, let us start with these simple and very ordinary images and our understanding of nonviolence. Two or three principles emerge that can be clearly understood.

First one: nonviolence is a force—an active force. It is very important to understand that this is an active force. Nonviolence is a power. By "power," you understand that you can change or influence other people according to your choice, according to your values. So, it has to be understood as a force. It is not passive. Just because we are not being violent doesn't mean that we are being nonviolent, right? So, we have to understand that nonviolence is an active force, and Gandhi used it extensively in this way.

Secondly—and I think other speakers must have elaborated on this—this is a force that is not just individual. Sometimes it happens that we have charismatic leaders in the world, and we attach nonviolence strictly to them. We think that these are charismatic people, that they are very moral and spiritual people, and this is the reason they practiced nonviolence and lived it as a philosophy. But we have to understand that nonviolence is not something purely individual. If you just think about the work of all these people who come to your mind, you will find that nonviolence is a force that can be organized. It is not an individual virtue; rather, it is very collective. It can be mobilized. A force can be mobilized, whether it is a violent force or a nonviolent force. I am just drawing a parallel here: nonviolence is not an individual thing, but it can be organized. This was the beauty of Gandhi’s campaigns; he showed that nonviolence is a collective force that can be organized systematically for social and political change across the world.

Before we discuss principled and strategic nonviolence, let us reiterate the basic points we must grasp while trying to understand nonviolence. Primarily, nonviolence is an active force; furthermore, it can be organized for social and political change. Please do not be confused and think that just because we are not being violent, it means we are nonviolent. We should not take it for granted. We need to cultivate discipline, and we need to undergo training to be truly nonviolent.

I will share with all of you the findings from a highly significant study published in 2011 by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, titled Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (which followed their groundbreaking 2008 journal article on the same topic). In this book, they demonstrate the success rate of nonviolent resistance based on empirical data. They collected data on both nonviolent and violent campaigns, evaluating 323 major conflicts that occurred between 1900 and 2006. Their findings concluded that major nonviolent campaigns achieved a 53% success rate, compared to a 26% success rate for violent campaigns. The success rate of nonviolent resistance based on this empirical study is roughly double that of violent resistance. This study affirms the point we discussed here: that nonviolence is a force that can be organized for social and political change.
Therefore, we do not have to view nonviolence merely as a personal choice. Of course, it is very much personal because it demands individual practice. You also have to keep in mind that it has various dimensions and understandings—it can truly be a way of life. However, we will build our discussion on the premise that nonviolence is an active force that can be organized to achieve structural social and political change.

 

Dr. Siby Joseph has assigned me to discuss with you the theme of principled and strategic nonviolence. Nonviolence is both a profound philosophy and a highly practical technique and method of struggle. I am sure all of you are familiar with the work of Gene Sharp. It is highly likely that nonviolence has already been discussed in this forum primarily as a technique and a method for achieving socio-political change. Indeed, Gene Sharp's 1973 voluminous work, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, stands as a landmark study of nonviolent action across three comprehensive volumes: Power and Struggle, The Methods of Nonviolent Action, and The Dynamics of Nonviolent Action.

However, understanding nonviolence as a philosophy can be quite difficult, particularly for individuals coming from different cultural backgrounds. While I do not want to dive deeply into all of those diverse cultural backgrounds right now, let us look specifically at the Indian or Oriental traditions—the eastern part of our world, including India, China, and Japan.

In the East, understanding nonviolence as a core philosophy is very easy because it is deeply rooted in virtually all of our regional religions. These traditions focus on it intensely. In fact, nonviolence is revered as a cardinal virtue across Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism alike. Therefore, in the eastern part of the world, nonviolence as a philosophy and an active way of life is not a challenging concept to grasp; people understand and absorb it quite naturally.

We can even look at the concept of suffering. In the Indian philosophical tradition—across Buddhism and Hinduism—we use the word Tyaga, or sacrifice, to describe this. For many European and Western people, this idea of suffering is something very difficult to comprehend. I am telling you this based on my own experience teaching students in our international course. They often ask, "Why do you think that to be nonviolent we have to suffer? We can dance and still be nonviolent." I always reply, "Yes, of course, that can be true." But at a deeper level, nonviolence is very closely tied to detachment. Philosophically, you are detached, and this represents the very height of Satyagraha, which we will discuss.

So, step by step, we will try to understand the difference between the strategic technique and the philosophy. Gene Sharp listed 198 methods of nonviolent action. It is a wonderful resource, often called the bible of nonviolent action because it is so popular all over the world. People everywhere use these techniques. Even in India, during the Emergency, it was translated right here in Gujarat by Narayan Desai as "Methods of Nonviolent Protest."

Gene Sharp notes that Gandhi was a great person whose true beauty lay in his ability to combine several techniques of nonviolence to suit specific political and social challenges, and then apply them effectively. So, while Gene Sharp still talks about the technique, he acknowledges that this is the principle, but Gandhi possessed a unique quality that allowed him to turn a principle into a functional technique.

I understand that for students, this can be a little confusing. Let us take a very simple example: the sentence "Honesty is the best policy," which we all studied in school. Do you think honesty is a policy, or is it a principle? Is honesty a value, or is it a policy? There are two sides to this.

If you say honesty is merely the best policy, it implies that if you find the policy is no longer working, you can change it and choose to be dishonest instead. But do you really think honesty is just a policy, or is it a value? It is a principle. If it is a principle, then no matter the cost, no matter how much you suffer or how much you lose, you will adhere and cling to that honesty. That is what makes it a value.

This highlights the foundational difference between strategic nonviolence and principled nonviolence. Certain values can be used as a policy. As you know, corporate culture generally adopts these values as a strategy for its own benefit. You will find a lot of discussion around honesty, authenticity, and accuracy. These are all core values, but corporations use them for their own purposes within their business ethics. They talk about ethics, too. However, when we talk about a value in the context of nonviolence, we are not talking about corporate or business ethics. Rather, we are talking about a larger social and political good. A value is always understood within a context, and our context here is entirely focused on the greater social and political good.

This good can be global, national, or regional. It depends entirely on the framework in which you choose to work and discuss it. This is the first point that must be clear. When we talk about the principled tradition, we are treating nonviolence as a core value. Now let us proceed to the core differences between strategic nonviolence and principled nonviolence.

When you say "honesty is the best policy" but actually understand honesty as a value, your primary motivation is moral and ethical. It stems from a deep moral conviction—a spiritual conviction, if you will, though you do not have to worry about the term "spiritual." It is a moral conviction to uphold honesty as a principle. However, when you treat honesty strictly as a policy, your motivation shifts to effectiveness. You choose it simply because it works better than other policies, or because it is less costly.

The exact same logic applies to nonviolence. Nonviolence can be a value for you, or it can be a strategy. When we talk about principled nonviolence, we are talking about a moral and ethical conviction that we cling to, adhere to, and accept until our death. Mahatma Gandhi is a prime example of this. He went so far as to say that he would rather die than see the partition of India. That was his intense moral conviction. He stated very clearly that for him and a few others, nonviolence was a matter of faith and deep conviction; yet he also openly acknowledged that for many of his close associates, it was merely a matter of policy.

So, this distinction is not a new concept that I am introducing to you. Gandhi himself knew that nonviolence was often used simply as a technique. Even during the Indian freedom struggle, Gandhi understood by the time India was approaching independence that most people had used nonviolence as a method rather than as a core value. Had they truly embraced it as a value, the tragic situation that unfolded during the 1947 partition of India would not have occurred.

That is the historical context. What we must understand is that while nonviolence is a moral and ethical conviction, it is also highly effective as a technique because you cannot easily use violence against a state. This is one of the main reasons many people choose nonviolence in protests: they know that violence cannot successfully be inflicted upon the government or massive institutions. The state possesses far more violent power than any population. As Gandhi famously stated, the state is the concentrated and organized form of violence. Therefore, using violence against the state or large institutions is strategically incorrect. This pragmatic view explains why people choose nonviolent action, but it remains strategic; they are using nonviolence as a strategy, not as a value.

Let me give you a very sharp historical example: Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920. By 1922, the movement was at its peak. However, a very violent incident occurred in a place called Chauri Chaura, where twenty-four policemen were burnt alive. Gandhi immediately withdrew the entire movement. He called it off, and many people criticized him harshly for it. They argued, "We were just about to succeed! We could have overthrown the British power right here in 1922. Why stop the movement now?"

Gandhi replied that the people were not yet ready for true nonviolence. He refused to allow a situation where violence succeeded, because if India achieved power through violent means, a culture of violence would prevail, the nature of power would remain violent, and the nation would be trapped in a vicious circle. He stopped the movement because it was designed to be nonviolent, yet violence had occurred. Even at the height of the campaign, when his own associates criticized him and called him a dictator for withdrawing it, he stood firm. This is the essence of principled nonviolence: even if you are on the verge of success, if violence breaks out, you stop.

If you achieve success through violence, you establish a culture where violence dominates. Today it might be one group using it, tomorrow it will be another, creating an endless vicious circle of violence. How long can that go on? When you treat nonviolence as a value, your goal is to build a society fundamentally rooted in a culture of nonviolence. It is not just about the temporary success of a movement.

Think of the many movements throughout world history. Do you think they really succeeded in their ultimate cause? We often succeed in changing the person in power, but what about the fundamental establishments? What about the core principles upon which the movement was based? We fight for equality, liberty, and fraternity—whether through violent or nonviolent means. But what happens ten years after a movement succeeds? You often find the exact same injustices occurring, and you have to fight all over again. Why? Because we only changed the person; we did not change the system.

Even when we do change the system—and the USSR is a historic example of a systemic change—the core values are often left behind. You can build a system according to structural values, but the value itself must be cherished, replicated, and repeatedly practiced in daily life for it to be preserved and normalized. Unfortunately, this did not happen in the USSR. This is why treating nonviolence as a social value is so vital.

Gandhi tried his absolute best to establish this. His associates, like Vinoba Bhave, carried this forward. Prof. Sonnleitner actually interviewed Vinoba Bhave and wrote extensively about this movement. Vinoba did tremendous work centred around the "change of heart"—changing not just the system, but the people and their core values. However, this is incredibly time-consuming work. It is not like an empirical study where you work for five or ten years, write a good thesis, and then you are done. No, it takes a lifetime of dedication, and very few people in the world are ready to dedicate themselves to that degree. This is why Gandhi insisted that nonviolence is not a temporary stance. You cannot just live a normal life and expect to be nonviolent on a whim; it requires rigorous training.

Therefore, to truly differentiate between the strategic and the principled, we must deeply analyse the relationship between means and ends—the process versus the outcome.

 Philosophically, this relationship between means and ends is highly complicated. To understand it in very easy terms, we must look at the process. We generally fixate only on the outcome. We think about how easily we can achieve a good outcome, and we completely ignore the process. But as Gandhi and the tradition of principled nonviolence argue, there is an intrinsic link—a deeply close relationship—between the process and the outcome. We often separate the two, thinking, "If the goal is good, I will just do whatever it takes to get it." You might get it, but failing to think about the process by which you arrive there causes immense trouble.

Gandhi asserts that the process itself is what matters. The end cannot justify the means. Even if you have a noble end or a larger objective, you cannot pursue that objective through just any means. Your process, your preparation, and your entire approach must be nonviolent; only then will you reach a truly nonviolent outcome.

This can be a little difficult to grasp because there has been a massive historical debate on the means-ends relationship, spanning from Machiavelli in the West to Kautilya in ancient India. There is a prevailing proverb that many political figures treat like a sermon engraved in their hearts: "The ends justify the means." They believe they must become great or powerful, so whatever means they choose to employ are justified. This is the great folly that nonviolent movements expose. In nonviolence, it is the means that matter, alongside the absolute purity of those means.

This truth applies not only to political philosophy but to your personal life as well. If you want to achieve something sustainable—you must look at the process. You cannot win genuine love through foul tricks. There is a highly unbreakable relationship between ends and means or the process and the outcome.

This is not a difficult concept to understand you can experience in practical life. What you have achieved through pure means sustains in the long run. Conversely, whatever unfair means you have used in this life—no matter your age—eventually crumbles, blocks your path, and collapses, forcing you to constantly redefine your position. Principled nonviolence is entirely focused on the means, the medium, the process, and the path by which you move forward.

The third basic difference between principled and strategic nonviolence centres on the concept of conversion, which many people find difficult to understand—particularly those outside the Oriental or Eastern traditions. By "conversion," I do not mean religious conversion; I mean a genuine change of heart. This was one of Gandhi's most vital ideas: changing the heart of the opponent.

 In this process: first you have to change mind of the opponent through negotiation and dialogue, second one is the most crucial element, a change of heart, which; and third, a resultant change of the situation. If you change the mind and the heart of theopposing party, the situation will change naturally.  The whole process relied on love, truth, and suffering.

In strategic nonviolence we follow pragmatic or utilitarian approach focusing primarily on the withdrawing consent. Here the goal is to use nonviolent technique to force coercion, accommodation, or the total disintegration of a massive power structure. Once that happens people feel happy and think the job is done.

However, the major flaw here is that you quickly find yourself trapped in the exact same vicious circle. A coercive power structure exists; you launch a strategic nonviolent movement against it, you succeed, and then you take over that power. What happens next? You end up doing the exact same things the previous rulers were doing. The names may change, but has the actual life of the people or the core cause for which you fought truly been addressed? Unfortunately, it rarely is.

Look at modern democracy. Democracy is a wonderful concept in terms of its institutions and practices. But why are the lives of ordinary people not changing? One party is in power, and the opposition claims, "This is all wrong, we believe in something better, we will fix it." The opposition gets elected to power, and the same patterns repeat. This reveals that the power structure itself is the problem. Whether it is you, me, Michael Sonnleitner, or Siby Joseph who enters that structure, the institutional framework remains.

This is precisely what Gandhi challenged. He did not just seek to replace the British rulers; he tried to establish an entirely new kind of power structure—what he envisioned as a nonviolent state power structure. That framework was not merely about holding political authority; it required a robust value system to develop within the society.

This brings us to the third and final part of our discussion: it is not enough to change the political and power structures alone. Granted, they must be changed because the current system is built upon a violent worldview. In that worldview, a few people will always reside at the privileged centre, while the vast majority remain excluded—either negotiating in the name of democracy or being dominated in the name of the market. Under such a system, exploitation continues unabated.

Today, exploitation is rarely direct; instead, it is imposed upon our democratic lives in the name of "development." Elaborate discourses are constructed to sustain this. Unless you understand the deeper power dynamics at play, you will never see how a positive word like "development" can be weaponized as a tool of exploitation. You must look at it and ask: "Development for whom, and at what cost?" Gandhi challenged this fundamentally.

Beyond changing the power structure, Gandhi insisted that we must actively cultivate a new value system within society. And I will tell you bluntly, with all my academic frustration and understanding, this is the exact reason why principled nonviolence faces such steep resistance. When we talk about changing core personal values, most people simply object because it requires immense sacrifice. By sacrifice, I do not mean that you have to kill yourself. I mean that most of us are simply not ready to step out of our comfortable lives. We refuse to sacrifice our comforts even in our personal lives, which makes changing societal values incredibly difficult.

Principled nonviolence demands that your entire life must have a core purpose and meaning. Gandhi was deeply influenced by Christian principles, in his journey of life. He was born in India, with Hindu and Jain traditions of Gujarat. He went to London, where he encountered Theosophy, studied Christianity, and studied Islam. He then moved to South Africa, where he studied these sacred texts deeply. From these experiences, he developed his profound ideas regarding service and the "love thy neighbour." While these concepts were very much in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions, it was the Christian concept of seva—of serving one's neighbour—that Gandhi adopted to enrich his value system.

Gandhi was working directly within the Indian context; his philosophical understanding was global in nature.

 

Look at the timeline of his life. From 1888 to 1891, he was in London, and then from 1893 to 1915, he lived and worked in South Africa. These experiences made global person who understood the primary intellectual traditions of his era.

When we talk about Gandhi's entire life's work, we must look at his constructive programme. Through it, he sought to fundamentally transform the social structure—what he envisioned as a clean, decentralized society in India. Yet, we must admit that he did not succeed in presenting a massive, structural challenge to the prevailing capitalist or socialist systems of the world. He envisioned a democratic framework that relied on a highly decentralized mode of governance, but he could not fully implement it.

His own political associates were deeply drawn to the state socialism of the USSR. Consequently, when they assumed power after independence, they opted for what they termed a "mixed economy," combining elements of both capitalism and socialism. As a result, Gandhi’s unique ideas, his philosophy, and his practices were largely left behind—relegated to subjects for us to study, discuss, and draw inspiration from, rather than models put into active practice. This is the exact reason why, although we enjoy many good things today, we are simultaneously confronted by massive structural challenges.

Before we conclude, I want to address a question that many students frequently ask: "Is this really the right time to discuss Gandhi’s philosophy, his value system, and systemic changes? The world has completely changed, and Gandhi's methods were fine for his era, but our modern reality is completely different."

To counter this, I would like to ask: Do you really believe Gandhi’s era was not challenging?

During Gandhi's lifetime, humanity witnessed two catastrophic world wars—from 1914 to 1918, and from 1939 to 1945. Within a span of just fifty years, the world witnessed gross violence and experimentation of weapons of mass destruction. In the middle of that bloodshed and violence Gandhi chose to talk about nonviolence. He spent forty years actively experimenting with nonviolence across South Africa and India.

Frankly, today's world is in a far better state than it was during those two world wars. Remember that his contemporaries included Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Winston Churchill in Britain.

Therefore, do not mistakenly assume that Gandhi's time was easy and that our current situation is bad or completely devoid of nonviolent possibilities. The possibility for nonviolent change is always present. Even as the world was experimenting with extreme violence and constructing the first nuclear weapons—culminating in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in Japan—Gandhi stood firm in his conviction.

This brings me to my final closing remark on why Gandhi's principled nonviolence remains absolutely essential for us today. When Hiroshima was bombed questions were asked about the efficacy of nonviolence. Gandhi said “I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women and children as the most diabolical use of science.

"What is the antidote? Has it antiquated non-violence?" No. On the contrary, non-violence is the only thing that is now left in the field. It is the only thing that the atom bomb cannot destroy. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, ‘unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind.’ “H, 29-9-1946

Today, it must be clear to everyone that humanity will not survive unless we embrace the path of nonviolence. As Gandhi noted, the tragedy of Hiroshima is a powerful illustration of this truth. It serves as an example proving that if humanity is to survive, nonviolence is the only viable alternative to our current power structures and systems.

 

Q&A

1. How do you view the Gen Z protests happening all over the world in today's times from a Gandhian perspective?

That is a very good question. If you look at the Gen Z protests, they are using nonviolence primarily as a technique of mass mobilisation. They are approaching nonviolence strategically.

However, if you measure these protests against true Gandhian parameters, the very first requirement is respect for your opponent. In a Gandhian struggle, even when you oppose people, you must maintain a deep respect for them. You are fighting the evil itself, not the evildoers. When we look at current protests around the world, and particularly in India, we see substantial reasons and valid causes behind them. But if you analyze the methods from a Gandhian framework—knowing the core values that a nonviolent movement ought to possess—you will find that those values are largely absent.

Therefore, I do not see the Gen Z movements as strictly Gandhian. They are nonviolent, mass-mobilized, and highly strategic. In fact, I would clearly say that they represent a very effective, strategic use of nonviolent action—which is far better than turning to violence. But you cannot label them "Gandhian" because Gandhi demanded specific parameters: respect for your opponent's humanity, deep cultural context, concrete historical evidence, a long-term plan, and highly disciplined, trained soldiers. The tactics we see on the posters of the Gen Z movements lack this depth. I deeply appreciate that they remain nonviolent, but from a Gandhian perspective, they require an entirely different kind of orientation.

Facilitator: I am here to remind us of the reality of time. If we want to have our breakout groups, we need to begin quite soon.

Before we split up, I would suggest a synthesis of today’s excellent presentation, if he is willing to endorse this idea. A key element of his argument is that Gandhi actually believed in both principled nonviolence and strategic nonviolence. It is a "both-and" dynamic.

Think about it: if Gandhi had adhered exclusively to a strict definition of principled nonviolence, no real-world strategy would have ever been pure enough for him. He would have remained completely inactive, waiting to achieve a state of flawless, absolute purity before doing anything. Conversely, if he had operated purely on strategic nonviolence—guided solely by a pragmatic desire to win and take over the government—he would have fallen into the trap of coercion. He wouldn't have changed the underlying culture; he would have merely changed the faces in the seats of power.

The current movements use tactics such as fasting to force a change in policy. However, these movements are not truly Gandhian because they do not contain Gandhian principles.

In breakout groups you must discuss this question: Do you agree that a movement must balance both principled and strategic nonviolence? If you agree how can a movement navigate that struggle, in real-world circumstances?

 

Feedback from Groups

 Most of us are back. Let us share a brief summary of what you discussed in your group.

Group One
I will provide a brief summary. In our group, we spoke about fighting the good fight. It is very difficult to have the discipline and training required to practice nonviolence, whether it is used as a strategy or as a principle. Nevertheless, we need to fight the good fight. Another point we discussed was the changing of hearts. As we discussed today, a true change of heart and mind is the only way to achieve something permanent and sustainable.

We then discussed the question of means and ends. If we practice principled nonviolence, it defines who we are. It is not just about a specific situation or scenario; it also depends on us as individuals. We also spoke about how nonviolence is a discourse between two parties, meaning both sides matter during a dialogue or negotiation. It cannot be entirely universal, as we cannot always apply it the exact same way across various contexts.

Group Two
We had a fruitful discussion on today's topic, which is principled versus strategic nonviolence. We focused heavily on the relationship between means and principled nonviolence. One perspective focused deeply on principled nonviolence because their local government is brutal towards them, and they are trying to navigate their struggle through a principled framework.

Another fellow focused on both strategic and principled nonviolence, arguing that both are necessary when using nonviolent paths to achieve a goal. Interestingly, it was also noted that in today's world, it is highly necessary to follow a strategic approach because practicing purely principled nonviolence is quite difficult for us.

Lastly, regarding ends and means, if we want to achieve our goals, we must be mindful of the means we use. If we follow noble means, our results will be more universal and long-lasting.

Group Three
All of us actively discussed both aspects of nonviolence: principled and strategic. However, our primary focus was on the principled nonviolence that Gandhi followed, and we concluded that this approach is deeply needed to bring lasting peace to our troubled world. I must add that while emphasizing principled nonviolence, the participants also highlighted the significance of strategic nonviolence.

Group Four
In our group, we discussed using the idea of principled nonviolence to promote unity and peaceful coexistence across humanity. At the same time, we recognized a need for justice and structural reforms, which may demand the use of strategic nonviolence to achieve a peaceful society. As humans, we come from different backgrounds and hold diverse orientations regarding whether principled or strategic nonviolence is best.

Group Five
We discussed both principled nonviolence and structural nonviolence. Regarding principled nonviolence, we talked about how it must come from the heart and emphasized its importance for the betterment of humanity. We then discussed the importance of structural nonviolence and how it is severely lacking in the current political landscape. Essentially, we discussed the lack of core value systems within political structures and modern democracies, and explored how to address this issue. We concluded that nonviolence is a fundamental value rather than just a technique, and it is something we must actively promote.

Concluding Remarks: As we approach the end of our session, I am confident that many of the important issues raised today will continue to be discussed in our upcoming sessions. Thank you, everyone.

 

Gandhi's World View: Beliefs and Goals Dr. Michael W. Sonnleitner

Gandhi’s Worldview: Beliefs and Goals

Dr. Michael W.Sonnleitner

 In this session, we will be looking specifically at Gandhi's beliefs and goals. Now, let us turn our attention to beliefs specifically, Satya, Ahimsa, and Tapas.

If you come from a Christian background, this might sound familiar. Gandhi was heavily influenced by Christianity, and you can actually think of his core beliefs as a trinity—much like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For Gandhi, this trinity consists of Truth, Non-violence, and Voluntary Suffering. Fascinatingly, this triad also corresponds beautifully to the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu.

Let’s start with the first element: Satya, or Truth. As we touched upon the matter earlier, truth for Gandhi is both absolute and relative at the same time. It is a "both-and" reality. In Hindu philosophy, this absolute truth connects to cosmic order—what we might call Rita—rather than just a singular deity.

Relative truth, on the other hand, is best understood through the famous parable of the blind individuals and the elephant. We are all, in a sense, blind. We each touch a different part of the elephant—a leg, a trunk, a tail—and we think we understand the whole animal. But we don't. We only see our own small piece of relative truth.

This brings us to the Jain concept of Anekantavada, or the many-sidedness of truth. This principle was foundational for Gandhi. Because our individual vision is limited, we absolutely must communicate with the other "blind" people around us to build a better understanding of the whole elephant. To see the full picture, we have to learn to see through other people's eyes—through their cultures, their religions, and their unique traditions.

Later, we will see how this directly fuels Satyagraha, or non-violent resistance. Satyagraha is a journey where you constantly grow from truth to truth. It requires you to always listen to your opponent and actively learn from others. We must live, and we must learn.

You might ask, "Michael, what is the ultimate purpose of life? Why do I even exist?"

Well, the specific answer is for you to discover. But bottom line? When the dust settles, Gandhi would say you are here to learn who you are. Life is fundamentally a learning experience. Do not expect to possess the absolute truth at the beginning of your journey, and you probably won't possess all of it at the end of this lifetime either. Perhaps that is precisely why we return in another life—to continue the learning process.

Our primary duty in this life is simply to do our duty: to learn to be the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be. This is your individual Dharma.

For me, my vocation—my Dharma—is to be the best teacher I can possibly be. Some of you in this room might become fashion designers. If so, your Dharma is to be the best fashion designer you can possibly be. Others among you may have served, or are currently serving, as military soldiers. Your duty, then, is to be the best soldier you can possibly be.

Now, you might say, "Michael, you're starting to confuse me..." You might ask, "How can I be a soldier and still believe in this philosophy?"

Well, in this life, there are those who are naturally called to be protectors. In the Hindu tradition, we speak of this as a Kshatriya disposition—the warrior spirit. By the way, that is actually how I identify. I see myself as a soldier. As a younger man, I practiced violence. I was engaged in at least four major fistfights. The proof of it is right here: my nose was broken four times. Mind you, I lost every single one of those fights! It didn't work out very well for me.

But I was taught to fight. Eventually, I came to see Gandhi himself as a fighter—a Satyagrahi who used non-violence instead of physical force. That appealed to me greatly. My duty as a soldier now is as a teacher, seeking to fight the good fight and doing the best I can to make the world a better place. Our Svadharma—our individual, inherent duty—becomes our supreme duty.

Those of you from a Hindu background who are familiar with the Bhagavad Gita know the story of the warrior Arjuna, who is guided on the battlefield by Krishna as his charioteer. The typical, mainstream interpretation of the Gita is that Arjuna is advised to look past his emotions. He is told to overcome his sorrow at seeing his own family and friends on the opposing side of the battlefield. The message is: "You must do your duty, Arjuna. You must fight, and you must kill."

But Gandhi reads the Gita with far more sophistication. He sees that Arjuna's true challenge is to transcend his ego, his emotions, and his attachments. Eventually in the text, Krishna reveals ultimate reality to Arjuna in a sudden flash. In that cosmic vision, Arjuna realizes that we are all one.

Gandhi argues that our supreme duty is to recognize God in all of creation and in all human beings—whether they are your opponents on the battlefield, people off the battlefield entirely, or even the trees and the animals. Once you possess that deep, spiritual realization, you can do no violence. Gandhi is ultimately advising readers of the Gita not to be superficial soldiers who blindly carry out violence, but to be enlightened like Arjuna. Practice your supreme duty to bring non-violence and good to all of creation. That is a very different kind of soldier. It is a profoundly creative function, closely aligned with Brahma, the creator.

This brings us to Ahimsa, or Non-violence—the second element on our list of beliefs. Like truth, Ahimsa operates in both absolute and relative terms. It is a "both-and" reality. In this life, we are always operating as both violent and non-violent at the same time.

For Gandhi, perfect non-violence is something you may be able to achieve, but only at the exact point of death. It happens when you no longer rely on any form of violence to survive. If you are able to completely forgive the person who is killing you, and your soul leaves your body with an attitude of absolute love for all of creation, that is the moment of perfection. At that exact second, your individual drop of water merges back into the godhead. Perfect non-violence yields perfect liberation—Moksha—where you cease to be reincarnated and become one with God.

But again, for Gandhi, that ultimate state only occurs at the moment of death. Before that, while we are alive, we are a mixture of both.

Now, imagine a scale. On one end, you have perfect non-violence. On the absolute opposite end, you have perfect violence. How do you achieve perfect violence? Gandhi would tell you that it is a completely unworthy goal, but the way you get there is by being a coward. A total coward.

To achieve perfect violence, you must be so frozen in your fear of death and pain that you completely cease to function. I began to understand this deeper meaning when I read a book called The Informed Heart by Bruno Bettelheim, a Jewish psychiatrist who was interned at several concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

As a trained psychiatrist, Bettelheim observed human behaviour under extreme trauma. He saw that some prisoners became what he termed "zombies"—the walking dead. He wrote about how these individuals allowed their self-respect to be so utterly destroyed, and their fear to become so completely internalized, that they stopped eating and sleeping. They would walk around aimlessly until they literally dropped dead.

This text helped me understand exactly what Gandhi meant. Gandhi would say: "Never allow anyone to harm your self-respect." Your self-respect is your reverence for your own soul—the God within you. When you lose respect for that inner truth, you are no longer capable of learning. You have reached a state very close to perfect violence.

This understanding gives us Gandhi’s true continuum, stretching from perfect violence all the way to perfect non-violence. Most of us live in the long range in between, where we are simultaneously violent and non-violent. The challenge is to look at where you stand on that scale and consciously choose to move a little higher.

If you are trapped at the bottom, facing a choice between absolute cowardice and terrorism, Gandhi makes a statement that heavily confuses the binary Western mindset. He suggests that it is better to violent than to be a coward.

Now, a binary thinker might jump to the conclusion: "Gandhi is endorsing terrorism! He is encouraging the intentional killing of innocent non-combatants!" See, that's a binary thinking. Gandhi was saying if in your mind the choice is between cowardice and terrorism, choose terrorism. Now, if you are disposed to terrorism, Gandhi would say, "Hey, consider tactical non-violence." No, don't go that far just yet. Consider just being a regular soldier. Move from terrorism to being a regular soldier in the Indian army or the US military. They abide by much higher standards. US soldiers are told that it is wrong to kill non-combatants. They can be punished even for following orders to kill children and women. US soldiers have standards. They don’t always follow them, but the bottom line is that they are above terrorism. So, Gandhi would say if you are disposed to terrorism, then think about going one step higher and being a regular, principled, disciplined soldier. Once you are there, you have gone up the ladder.

Now, from that point, consider tactical non-violence. Read Gene Sharp. Look at strategic non-violence simply as a strategy; you don’t have to accept it in principle. The best practitioners of tactical non-violence are people who have self-discipline, are willing to suffer, hold firm to the truth as they see it, and are tough. They are willing to be out in exceptionally cold winter weather, like we had in Minnesota last January when regular citizens of Minnesota were out protesting against Donald Trump and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement federal officers who were arresting allegedly undocumented people in the streets. Regular people can use tactical non-violence, but you must be disciplined, and you must be committed to strategic non-violence.

Once you have that commitment, you have climbed from coward to terrorist, to regular soldier, to tactical non-violence. Now, consider principled non-violence: beat your sword into ploughshares and your spear into pruning hooks. If there are enough of you, nation will not rise up against nation, nor will they make war anymore. That is from the Old Testament of the Bible, from Isaiah.

Gandhi sees stages of non-violence. He sees levels of non-violence. He never claims to be a perfectly non-violent person himself because perfection is an ideal, and for Gandhi, ideals really cannot be achieved in this world. They are still vitally important to guide us; they are our moral compass. We do the best we can to achieve our ideals.

But again, for Gandhi, being a perfectly non-violent person is achievable only at the point of death. That might not sound like good news to you. On the other hand, Gandhi is not here to give you good news; he is here to give you a way to bring about a better world.

So, you might ask, "Well, if Jesus was so close to perfectly non-violent, why didn't Jesus, or Buddha, or even Muhammad—why didn't they just give us peace? Why didn't they very simply use their soul-force power to make life heaven on earth?"

 And Gandhi's response is because the purpose of Jesus and most other saints is not to give us salvation. It is to show us the way to salvation. It is for each of us individually to learn for ourselves why we are living on this planet.

When Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father but through me," Gandhi interprets it to mean that no one can come but through truth. That's kind of what he means. Jesus wanted to become the way; he wanted to become the truth. Even though he might not have had absolute truth in his life, he was working towards it. And he wanted to show us the way of the cross, which is the way of suffering love.

Now, let us get to Tapas. It is voluntary suffering, and it is always also on a continuum. There is voluntary and involuntary suffering. There is voluntary poverty, and there is involuntary poverty. Voluntary self-sacrifice for Gandhi is redemptive. It is what Christians would call the way of the cross. Involuntary poverty and suffering, however, are problematic. It is distracting. It is very difficult to focus on spiritual development if your stomach is hungry and you are shivering in the cold.

For Gandhi, we must be willing to sacrifice ourselves so that others may more effectively live and learn and become more enlightened. I am moving a little fast, but Tapas can be seen as something positively good. Most Western thinkers—and I would include Martin Luther King Jr., who was also largely a very binary thinker because it was in his tradition—try to minimize suffering tactically and otherwise. They want to avoid suffering. As we will see later, they will try to have even the military protect a protest demonstration so that opponents, like the Ku Klux Klan or other racist elements, may be restrained from harming us.

Gandhi himself did not look at his strategy that way. As we will see, voluntary suffering is the essential component of love. You might ask, "What? What is he? A masochistic, crazy person?" No. I would say Gandhi is actually very practical here.

Imagine two groups of people in American folklore. They could be called the Hatfields and the McCoys—two families that had a bitter feud. The Hatfields would kill a member of the McCoys. The McCoys would retaliate by killing a Hatfield. Kill a McCoy, kill a Hatfield, kill a McCoy. This dynamic can relate to all sorts of other contexts: communal strife in India, the India-Pakistan conflicts, or the struggles between Palestinians and Zionists.

But for Gandhi, here is the practical, simple reality: if we are truly to practice Ahimsa, or non-violence, towards others, we must be willing to love those who do not love us. And that requires Tapas. It is like the love of a mother for her child—even if the child is abusive, she is a family member who continues caring for them.

It's practical. To use the example of the Hatfields and McCoys again: a Hatfield hits a McCoy. A McCoy hits a Hatfield. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The karmic cycle continues until someone has very red cheeks, maybe a traumatic brain injury, or maybe even death. And then the cycle goes on and on and on. We reap what we sow.

For Gandhi, non-violence—Ahimsa—is an essential part of Tapas because if you love those who don't love you, you must be willing to suffer their violence. It is the only way to end the cycles of violence and hatred in the world. It is the only way. If we reap what we sow, we must sow something different to stop the endless cycles of violence. Or as Buddha would say, "Hatred cannot destroy hatred; only love can destroy hatred."

Gandhi didn't only believe this; he believed that it was part of absolute truth. It was the law of karma put into practice in this world. If we reap what we sow, we must sow love. If we sow love for those who do not love us, we must be willing to voluntarily suffer the consequences. This is not ideological for Gandhi. It is simply practical. It is pure pragmatism. It is reality.

Now, let's address goals in our remaining time. This is near-impossible, but it's okay.

Moksha is self-realization. It is a religious goal to be liberated from the pain of this world and allow one's soul to merge into the godhead. You become free from the cycles of reincarnation, or Samsara. It involves enlightenment—having learned, perhaps at the point of death, the full realization of how natural and moral laws interact, much like Krishna giving Arjuna enlightenment toward the end of the Bhagavad Gita. For Gandhi, Moksha involves servant leadership—helping others to better understand Rta, Ram, or Sat, which are parts of ultimate reality. You are accessing soul force as you practice Moksha and try to move towards the godhead.

I am going to give you a story from the Christian Old Testament: Daniel in the Lion's Den. Some of you may have heard it, but basically, Daniel was a Jewish person who would not abandon his faith in God, which was truth for him. The king of Babylon was influenced by a woman—there is always a woman causing a problem in these stories—and the ruler required Daniel to renounce his God. Daniel refused. The ruler threw Daniel into a den of hungry lions, a very horrible form of death. Daniel prayed to God in the story, and the presence of God came into the midst of Daniel and the lions. Consequently, the lions would not attack him. Daniel emerged from the den of lions unharmed. It was a miracle.

From Gandhi's point of view, this is not miraculous. If we surrender to the Atman—the soul, the life force within us—and we are willing in our minds to sacrifice our bodies for the sake of the Atman to understand and realize truth, we can appeal to the Atman, the soul, the life force in any other person or any other creature, including a lion. From a Gandhian point of view, Daniel surrendered to God. God's light shone in his presence, and the lions would no longer attack Daniel. Instead, they would chew on their own paws because the barrier between Daniel and the lions had been broken. They had realized that they were one together.

This is soul force. It is non-physical. It is not strategic. It is not a matter of tactics. For Gandhi, soul force is real. And yes, most relatively weak human beings who are not spiritually developed are going to be eaten by the lions. But if you are a sufficiently developed Satyagrahi, if you are sufficiently surrendered to the God within you, what might appear to be miraculous can still happen because nothing is impossible for God. Gandhi would say that over and over: nothing is impossible for God. When you surrender to the God within you, soul force may become manifest in you to a matter of degree. And again, it might not look exactly like Daniel, but you may still touch the heart of your opponent, even if they are not a lion.

For Gandhi, this is the highest goal of principled non-violence. And by the way, it corresponds to Maslow's hierarchy of needs because Moksha, or self-realization, is very similar to Maslow's self-actualization. It is a religious counterpart to the secular Maslow hierarchy. I hope some of you will look at that carefully and find some insight in it.

Swadeshi is self-reliance. It is Gandhi's primary economic goal, and it involves levels of the individual, family, community, nation, and even worldwide. The spinning wheel serves as a symbol here because he believes that we should have a decentralized economic system. This perspective would later inspire the book Small Is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, a British thinker. Gandhi believed in economic empowerment, the decentralization of power, and technology appropriate to what you want to accomplish. Let's briefly look at this a little further.

First, as a Hindu person of culture, Gandhi always thinks in a "both-and" manner, but he also looks at things in a hierarchical way, from highest to lowest: perfect non-violence to perfect violence, the highest level of Swadeshi to the lowest level of Swadeshi. Swadeshi can also be conceptualized as concentric circles. This diagram I have here is a very poor piece of art, but it relates to the concept.

You can see that at the centre of all the circles is the self—your individual person, which ultimately is God for Gandhi, your Atman. So, you should seek to surrender to yourself, your soul, and to be self-reliant as an individual person to the extent that you can. The spinning wheel allows you to cultivate that mentality by spinning your own thread from cotton. It is a mental exercise which will then be used to make your own clothing. It is almost the ultimate symbol of self-reliance, which is Swadeshi.

Now again, the individual at the centre does their best, but you know I cannot do everything. I am not an engineer, I am not a medical doctor, and I cannot repair shoes very well. There are all sorts of functions that are not my Dharma. And so Gandhi would say then the next level is your family. Contribute to your family, and your family should be as self-reliant as possible, having different members fulfilling different functions. And by the way, you as a person should be willing to sacrifice and die if necessary for the sake of your family.

Now, another level would be your village, and this is Gandhi's image that will merge into Swaraj of village self-reliance. Imagine 400,000 or more independent villages where all the basic necessities of life are accomplished and produced locally. Now, you can survive. Typhoons may happen; earthquakes may happen; there are still issues way beyond your control. But in normal times, you should be able to produce and take care of your own village. And by the way, your family should be willing to sacrifice and die if necessary for the sake of the village, in the same way as you as a person should be willing to sacrifice and die if necessary for the sake of your family.

Now, go broader. Beyond the village, there is the region; there is the nation. So if, in fact, a horrible typhoon strikes Kolkata and there are tens of thousands of people dead and starvation happening, then for Gandhi our duty is for every region, every village, and every family to sacrifice and share what they can to help the people of Bengal, of Kolkata. Help them as they would help us. It is the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It operationalizes a decentralized vision to a much larger context.

And similarly, a nation based upon this sort of decentralized power is truly nationalistic according to Gandhi if they are willing to help Mexico in their time of need when Mexico has an earthquake, or the Philippines when they have a volcanic eruption and there is mass harm done. India, the US, tiny little Costa Rica—all should do what they can according to Swadeshi to help Mexico and the Philippines. You understand?

So ultimately, for Gandhi, being nationalistic is, even to the extreme, being willing to die for the sake that the world may live. Even as a person must be willing to die for their family, their family for their village, their village for their province, their province for their nation, the nation must be willing to die if necessary for the sake of the world. This is an exceptionally different kind of Swadeshi, isn't it? Where self-reliance is taken to an extreme level.

There is a similar logic, and you can see it, for Swaraj, which is the political goal of self-rule. There is Hind Swaraj—the name of Gandhi's book from 1909 on Home Rule—which is about creating independence for the country against British colonialism. But beyond Hind Swaraj, there is village rule: participatory democracy at the level of the 400,000 villages. There is also individual rule, where you have individuals within each village taking personal responsibility beyond Hind Swaraj at the highest level.

If every country on Earth—all 197 countries—achieves real home rule and self-reliance within their own country and is willing to sacrifice the necessary help to others throughout the world using Swadeshi, then the whole world can move towards the perfect ideal, which is not possible to fully achieve. But for Gandhi, that ideal is Ram Rajya—the kingdom of God.

Gandhi said Ram Rajya. But he did not express that in the sense of Hindutva, as Ram being the supreme ruler as an entity. He meant it generically as God. Gandhi's goal was not simply independence for India. Do you understand? His entire life and worldview had as an ultimate, perhaps unachievable goal, the kingdom of God. He wanted to achieve, in matters of degree, the kingdom of God on earth.

We have done the basics of assumptions, beliefs, and goals. We need some time to process a little in small groups here. I will leave it to you. But if you want to focus simply on just one issue, perhaps you can look upon this question: what do you think the kingdom of God would be for you ultimately? How would you like the world to be organized? How would you like the world to be?

And once you have that, think about how might we work towards achieving it? How might I individually work towards achieving that ultimate goal of world citizenship—a world at peace with itself, a positive peace with justice? What would the kingdom of God be for you?

Group Feedback and Q&A

Moderator: Welcome back, all of you. We exactly have eleven minutes left. It is better to briefly share the discussions from your groups so that we can have some time to discuss, and so that the professor can share his thoughts on that later. Okay, group number one.

Group One: In our group discussion, when we were talking about the Kingdom of God, one of the fellows said that freedom with responsibilities could be seen as something that is within the Kingdom of God. In that space, there is justice—even justice that is inclusive of all people, not just the selective best ones, but everybody. Somewhere that also means it doesn't support violence, and it is a place where humility comes before pride. Another fellow also mentioned that understanding what others are going through brings in peace, and that can also be one of the features of the Kingdom of God. The ways to achieve it would be to get involved with the world like a family, and to forgive—even if there have been instances of violence, to forgive and forget, and then build a new life every day so that we learn from a new life. Yes, we must have faith in each other so that we can make the world a better place. We cannot erase all of the past wrongs; we must move forward and be peaceful about it. That was the discussion we had in my group.

Group Two: I will give you a brief summary of what we discussed. The Kingdom of God was our primary concern. We noted that it starts at the individual level, where we must be ready to suffer. That is the initial first step that we can and should take. If we dream of it, the Kingdom of God itself is a perfect idea. As for perfection, we can only pursue it; it is not very easy to achieve, but we can pursue perfection only through these kinds of steps that we take. We also spoke about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which was very well connected by the professor, showing how Maslow's concepts can be connected at an individual level to form a secular idea of how to reach that level of maturity at a socio-political level. Additionally, we spoke about what the professor told us about how it is better to be a disciplined soldier than to be a coward. We concluded by discussing that everything we think of starts with breaking the loop of the cycle of violence. We can only talk about this when we are ready to break the cycle of violence; only then are we well-deserving to talk about the Kingdom of God. This is what group number two discussed.

Group Three: We were concerned about justice, giving to each their due, basic needs, and all of the rest that are fundamental to Maslow. That would be part of justice and the Kingdom of God. Respect for life and animals was brought up and emphasized as being just as important as human beings, and one of our members said that it's important to think of the environment as a whole and have respect for the environment. I raised the issue that all of this would need to exist within a decentralized system according to Gandhi, and I agree with the Kingdom of God being very decentralized, with individual people empowered, and families, nations, and others all being self-reliant and self-contained within themselves.

Group Four: I am from group four, where our initial discussion focused on dharma, moral duty, and ethical laws which belong to the Kingdom of God. These present us with a supreme sphere where you can see a peaceful world. Another point was making a comparison between our world and the Kingdom of God. As we can see, in our world, we can find inequality, violence, disturbance, and hunger; but in the Kingdom of God, we expect that all inequality will vanish, and the society or world will be equal, where everyone will get a peaceful and required life. Then, we focused on Swadeshi; if we start to do good things in our society, our village, and our religion, then that good work will return to us in other ways. If we see everything through the lens of love, we see the vision of God, and that might be nearer to the Kingdom of God. Lastly, the Kingdom of God is a place near to the path of non-violence.

Group Five: In group number five, we spoke about the concept of Ram Rajya. It is a place where whatever religion I want to practice, I am free to practice it, and everybody should love each other—meaning everybody loving one another. We spoke about gender equality, and then Swadeshi and peace, meaning a war-free society. Then, we spoke about the ability to live on one's own values, meaning everybody should live according to his or her own values. Then, we spoke about giving a fair opportunity to everyone, which is also Ram Rajya. I also spoke about how Ram Rajya is based on truth, non-violence, equality, justice, and peace. Swadeshi was also discussed from the point of view of the wars which are going on, like for oil. We depend so much on oil and a lot of things are happening in the world, wars are happening. So if we have the Ram Rajya, the Kingdom of God, we will produce our own things and we will not depend on others. So, that economic independence is very much necessary as per Swaraj.

Moderator: Thank you all. And another fellow has raised their hand. Let us listen.

Question: The Yoga Sutras say that to achieve this, we have to have the mindset of Maitri, Mudita, Karuna, and Upeksha. Maitri means friendship; we have to make friends with good people with good behaviour and all that. Then Mudita means being happy looking at happy people; if people have money and they are enjoying it and all that, we should not actually look down upon them, rather we should be happy that they are happy—that is Mudita. And then Karuna; those who are suffering, we must have pity on them, take pity on them, and as far as possible help them to come out of their grief. And then finally, Upeksha. Upeksha means ignoring evil. But I have heard that even Chanakya has said don't fight evil. Even Christ has said don't fight evil. So I was just wondering, if we should not fight evil, then should we protest about evil or should we not protest? I think the professor will be able to elaborate on this point. Thank you.

Answer: Well, we're out of time, but I think it is very dualistic to think in terms of "shall we fight or not fight"—either/or. It's very dualistic, and again, Gandhi is not looking at the world mostly that way. So, I think it's important to consider that from his point of view, we're always both violent and non-violent, and fighting may be more non-violent or violent depending upon how we fight. We need to have fighters who are willing to be more and more non-violent—fighters for justice, fighters to reduce suffering, fighters for liberation. Becoming more and more non-violent is the key issue.

 

Gandhi's World View: Assumptions Dr. Michael W. Sonnleitner

  

Gandhi’s World View: Assumptions

  Dr. Michael  W.Sonnleitner

Welcome to everyone. Today we are focusing on Gandhi's worldview—particularly the foundations of that worldview, which would be his assumptions. To understand many of Gandhi's concepts, though, I believe we need to see how they are part of a very powerful worldview. They are interrelated with one another. Oftentimes, we speak about concepts like karma, satyagraha, moksha, and ahimsa individually, but we don't see them as interrelated. Because I am a visual person—not just an auditory person—I don't want to just talk, talk, talk, talk. I want to also visualize, show, and demonstrate, and this is what I will begin to do today.

It is helpful for me to understand Gandhi by having an analytical framework. That may be partly due to my Western-educated background, but let me share this framework with you so that you can see its strengths and its weaknesses, and then we can apply it to Gandhi. I gained this framework from one of my professors at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. At that time, it was one of the top ten ranked political science graduate programs in the US, and one of the top five ranked South Asian studies programs in the US.

Edwin Fogelman knew little about South Asia, but he was a specialist in ideologies and idea systems. So, I did not create this framework; I'm crediting my professor, Edwin Fogelman. He provided a framework in which any idea system or worldview could be seen and literally visualized.

There we go. Four levels: assumptions, beliefs, goals, and strategies. And we could, of course, make them eight or ten, but this is complicated enough. He defined a political philosophy as a presentation of assumptions and beliefs; a political theory as assumptions, beliefs, and goals; and an idea system—a complete worldview or ideology—as assumptions, beliefs, goals, and strategies. I found this analytically very helpful.

The assumption level of any worldview or ideology, including Gandhi's, is not proven. It consists of elements that are assumed to be true. Now, we won't get too silly with this, but you look at me and you see Michael Sonnleitner. But maybe I am a spider dreaming that I am a human being. Can I prove that I am not a spider dreaming that I'm a human being? I can't prove that. I assume that what I am touching now is real and that I am not dreaming.

We all have fundamental assumptions that cannot be proven, and these may include, for example, that the Bible is the word of God. Okay, that is an assumption, and that is fine. I have some difficulties with it, but I cannot disprove it, you understand? If that is part of my assumption level, there will be consequences later in my beliefs, goals, and strategies. So, I won't beat that horse too far—we don't want to kill the horse—but I want you to understand that assumptions are foundational.

If you want to disagree with any person, including me, you can say, "Michael, I disagree with this basic assumption." Or to Gandhi, "Gandhi, I don't fully accept this basic assumption." You don't prove it, and Gandhi would say, "You're right. I don't prove it. I am Gandhi, and not a spider dreaming that I'm a human being." We all have basic assumptions. Okay?

But it is important to understand this because the power of, let's say, an Adolf Hitler is very strong if you grant him his basic assumptions. We won't get into Nazism today, but Nazism is an ideology that is very cohesive and very powerful if you grant the assumptions.

I am hoping that I may encourage you all to reflect upon your own basic assumptions in relation to Gandhi, and come to have a foundational idea of whether you more agree or disagree with him. That will impact your attitude and your response to everything else that he says—from Satyagraha to Sarvodaya to Ahimsa to everything.

Is Ahimsa an assumption rather than a belief? We can debate that. But I'm going to suggest that the beliefs—Satya, Ahimsa, Tapas—the goals—Moksha, Swadeshi, Swaraj—and the basic strategies—Brahmacharya, Sarvodaya, Satyagraha—allow us to cover almost all of Gandhi's basic concepts and begin to see their interrelationships.

In the first column, we have Rita, Satya, Moksha, and Brahmacharya. These are all labelled number one, which represents the philosophical or religious category.

Number two includes the Golden Rule, Ahimsa, Swadeshi, and Sarvodaya. I see those as primarily economic—not exclusively, but that is their primary category.

And then number three is political: the Law of Karma, Tapas (which is voluntary suffering), Swaraj, and Satyagraha.

So, if ever I personally am giving a lecture on Gandhi's political views, while I may refer to some of the other concepts, I will focus on the Law of Karma (cause and effect, you shall reap what you sow), Tapas (voluntary suffering), Swaraj (self-rule), and Satyagraha (which is soul force, truth force, or holding firm to the truth as you see it). Those four concepts make for a cohesive way of looking at his political views.

Of course, his political views are not separate from his economic views, or from his philosophical and religious views. So, it is helpful for us to look at these twelve different concepts across different levels as interrelated. All right, that is enough perhaps for that.

But I think you will find that by utilizing Edwin Fogelman's categorizations—and maybe improving upon them yourselves—you can then compare Gandhi's worldview with that of John Locke's traditional liberalism, Karl Marx’s Marxism, Edmund Burke’s Organic Conservatism, Eugene Debs’s Democratic Socialism, Adolf Hitler's Nazism, Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda Islam, Martin Luther King Jr’s  Militant Nonviolence,  Mark Satin’s green ideology  and many others. You can compare Gandhi in a sophisticated way with any other political thinker who holds a worldview. I find this tool to be extremely empowering.

Someone like Adolf Hitler was not a crazy person. If you grant him his assumptions, his beliefs, goals, and strategies become very—sadly—powerful. As you would see when comparing Hitler with Gandhi, they have radically different assumptions, which lead to radically different beliefs, goals, and strategies. They all might be blind people touching the elephant in different ways, but I do believe that Gandhi had a better, clearer vision of the elephant than Hitler. We should listen to those who disagree with us and learn from them, and yet, we can still make choices. Truth is not entirely relative. The elephant does exist. Truth does exist. And as we will now see for Gandhi, Rita does exist.

Let us go ahead and go to the beliefs. Now, when it comes to assumptions, Rita—or Rta, which might be written differently in translating from Sanskrit to English—is all that is unchanging, as we'll see later. It is related to absolute truth. It is related to seeking Moksha, which is understanding absolute truth. It is related to Brahmacharya, the yogic discipline associated with seeking Moksha. It is religious and philosophical, but it is essential for Gandhi. You can talk about tactical nonviolence all you want, but you will not understand Gandhi unless you understand his assumptions. And most people, like Gene Sharp, don't really bother to analyze Gandhi's assumptions.

Now, looking at Rita as all that is unchanging, it is the sum total of the natural and moral laws of the universe. Natural laws include things like inertia and gravity. Moral laws include what Gandhi would call the law of love, for example. For Gandhi, natural laws, which are more empirical, and moral laws, which are not, are interconnected. If you violate a moral law like the law of love, there will be consequences, and they will manifest in nature.

Empirically, if you violate the law of love, you will lay the foundation for inequality and war. If you violate the law of love and disrespect the environment, this can lead to global warming, ice caps melting, sea levels rising, and entire islands disappearing. In other words, we can cause natural calamities by violating moral laws. This is Gandhi's way of looking at this foundational concept.

The Maya is often misunderstood. Maya is illusion—the idea that everything in this world is an illusion. Well, that is kind of true and not true at the same time. Obviously, if I knock on my head, I feel it. It's not an illusion. And yet, it is, because this head, this body, will turn to dust sooner or later. In my case, sooner, because I'm 77 years old and it's not likely to last too much longer. And so, it will cease to be.

My body, my mind, and my senses all bring in data that is involved in change. Ocean levels rise and fall. All of these things change. The seasons change the appearance of a tree. And yet, that doesn't make the tree unreal. It's not an illusion. It is, in fact, real, but it is a changing reality.

Gandhi wants to focus more on unchanging reality: gravity (scientifically verifiable), inertia, \(E=mc^2\)—laws that we can discover, including moral laws which may not be empirically verifiable yet.

The life force is part of Rita. For Gandhi, Paramatman—the supreme soul—is the ocean, and we are just individual drops of water within it. Your soul, the Atman within you, is that which is unchanging in your nature. Your emotions change, your mind changes, your body dies, but your soul, for Gandhi, is unchanging. It has no sex, no gender. It is not male or female. It does not grow young or old; it is that which is unchanging.

It is the life force that embodies everything. The soul or life force within you is the same as in the tree, is the same as in the algae in the ocean, and is the same as in Adolf Hitler. And you're beginning to see, if you understand this, why Gandhi has no 'enemy' concept. Because ultimately, Adolf Hitler has God within him also. The same Atman that is within myself is myself. And so ultimately, Hitler and I cannot be enemies because we are of the same life force—just with a different body, different emotions, and certainly a very different mindset.

So, understand that for Gandhi, human nature ultimately is your soul. It is unchanging. It cannot be harmed. If you are able to mentally focus upon that—that God is within you, that God is throughout all of creation, that you are God and not God at the same time, that you are a little drop of water but also the ocean in microcosm—you will begin to understand Gandhi's view of human nature and its relevance to the rest of his worldview.

Now, we often hear of Gandhi as being an Advaita Vedantin—a monistic, theological Hindu who sees everything as one. The basic image being a mountain with many, many paths up the side. They all arrive at the same summit at the top of the mountain. So ultimately, it makes no difference whether you're a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or Jew, or whether you're an atheist following Karl Marx, or an agnostic like the British thinker Bertrand Russell. It makes no difference. There are many paths to truth up the mountain. And at the top, it is Gandhi's view that ultimately, we are one. We will all come to see the same insights, the same truth at the top of the mountain. So, there's really no need to evangelize or to convert you to anything. I don't need to go door-to-door and try to make you a good Christian, a good Jehovah's Witness, or a good whatever it might be.Be the goodness within your own tradition, and we will see one another at the top of the mountain. That is Gandhi's view of the unchanging nature of the mountaintop.

And yet, there is data showing that we are separate from others. There are differences between religions and different people; there is a dualism. So, there is a monism and a dualism. There is an idealism and a materialism. For Gandhi, we always come back to this 'both/and' perspective: we are both one with God and not one with God at the same time. Ideas are ultimately real, but material reality is also real. The idea of the chair and the chair itself are both real—both the idea and the material reality.

So, I would suggest that Gandhi is both monistic and dualistic at the same time. That can, of course, stimulate some good academic research on anyone's part, and you can have fun debating those questions. But that is how I see Gandhi, and you are welcome to disagree with me.

Let us go on to the Golden Rule and spend a little bit of time with that. Well, the Golden Rule is simple: you do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Q.E.D.—mathematically done. I don't prove it; I assume it.

Well, it is, of course, a little more complicated than that.  Now we see  the slide relating to the different formulations of the Golden Rule, and then we will come back to this.

Well, you can look at this as I am looking at it on my own screen now, and you can see that virtually every religious tradition in the world has a form of 'do unto others.' We don't need to go through each of them, but you can see Hinduism: 'Do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.' Fair enough. Buddhism: 'Treat others in ways that you yourself would not find hurtful.' And you can go around to Islam: 'Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself.' And, of course, Christianity: 'In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, for this is the law and the prophets.'

You can meditate upon these different traditions. Perhaps a particular rendition from Jainism or Zoroastrianism may not be fully to your liking. Again, it was a 'blind person' touching the elephant who created this, but they were doing their best.

Fundamentally, if we go back to the original presentation ,we can see that the Golden Rule can be approached through both positive and negative formulations.

The typical example of a positive formulation is found in Christianity: you do to others as you would have them do. You don't do to others before they do to you. You don't do to them because they do to you. You don't do to them in retaliation for what they have done. It is a unilateral positive: you do to others as you would have them do. Gandhi was heavily influenced by this positive formulation.

The negative formulations—'do not do'—sometimes leave the door open for an 'eye for an eye' mentality. People think, 'If someone harms me, I can harm them back as they have harmed me; I am doing to them as they have done to me.' That kind of interpretation puts a foot in the door for a wide-open descent into conflict and violence.

And yet, there is truth to be navigated in both the positive and negative formulations, isn't there? We struggle with this in life. To retaliate or not to retaliate is often the question. It might have been raised by Shakespeare, but it is raised in our lives on a daily basis. If someone screams at me, my first impulse may be to scream back. Okay, but what is the consequence of that? It is often an escalation where people are screaming and screaming, and pretty soon you can't even hear yourself. So, I suggest you consider both positive and negative formulations, and I, like Gandhi, tend to emphasize the positive. That can be your choice or not.

For Gandhi, the Golden Rule is also the categorical imperative. That comes from Immanuel Kant, the German thinker: you should so live as you would have everyone else live. Live by example, always. Well, that's impossible; you're not a perfect person. Well, do your best, because otherwise, you're a hypocrite—you criticize other people for your own weaknesses. Live as you would have everyone live. Consume as you would have everyone consume.

This directly relates to Gandhi and the environment. If I should live using only my fair share of the world's resources, that has massive consequences. In the green movement, there's the slogan: 'Live simply so that others may simply live.' With over 8 billion people on the face of the planet, there is enough for us all to live comfortably. However, if you choose to be among the 5% of the world's population—which is the United States—and consume 40% of what the world produces, that will create extreme conflict, starvation, and war. It's a direct consequence.

It will also create global warming. As you rape the planet of trees, you destroy one of the major vacuum cleaners for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, creating a blanket around the globe that produces a greenhouse effect. We now know that worldwide global warming—manifesting at different temperatures and levels from the equator to the poles—is heavily influenced by the human creation of carbon dioxide as well as sulphur dioxide, methane, and other major greenhouse gases. If we are not living as we would have the world live—if we are over-consuming and raping the planet, if we are destroying the forests—these matters of physicality that are empirically verifiable are violations of the law of love and the Golden Rule, and they will have consequences. I'm trying to help you see that Gandhi is an interrelated, integrated thinker, even on the assumption level.

Now, this also relates to trusteeship, which is a concept worthy of an hour-long lecture or more by itself. Gandhi ultimately would say we are soul; we belong to God. In a sense, we are God. Self-defense is the defense of the life force within us being respected, which means respecting life throughout the entire planet and in every human being. If we possess more than our fair share of the world's resources, we create massive starvation, conflict, and other problems. Let us be trustees of that which we possess.

Suppose I'm a billionaire. No, let's say I'm Elon Musk—I'm a trillionaire. How far up can we go before we collapse of our own weight? Gandhi would say, 'Whatever you possess, Michael—this pen, this computer, all of these trinkets that you have lit up by your lamp preserving memories of your past—all that you possess is not owned by you.' In fact, your own body is not owned by you. Gandhi doesn't have a concept of private property. Everything belongs to God. Everything.

Whatever you have in your possession for use—this body until it dies, your trillion dollars, Mr. Musk, until you die and cannot take it with you—whatever you possess should be used for the common good. All of it should be used for the common good. You take for your personal use only that which you need. You do not satisfy your greed. You share whatever you have certainly beyond the basic surplus that you need to eat and so on. You share it with your children—oh, I just saw your beautiful little child on the screen there. You share it with your family. Think of the entire world as your family. You share it.

If a typhoon hits Bangladesh and people are suffering, you share what you can to help the Bangladeshis. If you have a situation in Gaza, which is genocidal, being carried out by another ideological system—which we might discuss later as Zionism—you must fight it, resist it, and help those individuals protect themselves from genocide. Whether harm comes through genocide, which is the ridiculous premeditated killing of an entire group or culture by another, or whether it comes through starvation because I am consuming 40% of the world's supplies, it comes to the same thing. We are harming others because we are not being trustees of our possessions.

We need to use our own bodies for constructive work as well as for resistance, as circumstances may require, and be willing to die in this body for the sake of life, so that others may live. And by the way, this is not a great sacrifice. Sooner or later, this body is going to die anyway. So, if it is going to happen sooner or later, it may as well be for a purpose. Martin Luther King Jr. lived to age 38, less than half of Gandhi's age, and yet he lived his life well. He was willing to die for what he believed. He did die in the body, and yet his spirit lives on. That is karma.

Now, let us get to karma. Karma: you shall reap what you sow. Well, yes, you can think of it in that sort of simple way, but Gandhi did not. Who are you? What are we? We are all inextricably linked. So let us think of this Law of Karma on four distinct levels.

The first level is the individual level: I shall reap what I sow. If I work hard, I should get rich. Well, there's something wrong here because I'm not rich! The Law of Karma must not be right, then. But that's not the way it works, because we are interrelated with everyone else and with all of creation.

Well, at least I'll be saved; I'll go to heaven, won't I? When you die, Gandhi would say your soul will live on, and it will come into the presence of an all-encompassing divine light, which will ask you how well you have lived. God does not punish you; you may punish yourself as you reflect upon how you have lived. So, heaven or hell may actually be more of a state of consciousness when coming into the presence of an all-encompassing, loving Creator. The life force that keeps us all animate asks us, 'Have you lived well?' That might be an awfully hard question. I'm working my best to try to be fairly positive in my response.

So yes, we reap what we sow individually, but we also reap what we sow socially. If we treat others as we would not want to be treated—if we treat our employees like dirt, don't allow them to unionize, and exploit them—we see the social consequences. I can give so many examples. Walmart in the United States exploits their employees and opposes their unionization. As a result, the owners of Walmart, the Walton family, are multi-multibillionaires. They provide cheap goods for poor people to buy, but they are helping to keep those people poor by not paying them well as employees. So, socially, we reap what we sow. And with Walmart, I could say the same potentially of Reliance Industries in India, or other corporations which are becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. By centralizing power, they may very well destroy local businesses where they happen to be operating. That is typical of Walmart in the United States and most other huge corporations. It is also true of Amazon Corporation, which too many people today rely on far too much. So think about that—the social consequences of how you spend money, how you invest, and how you buy and sell.

There is this historical karma also. We don't just reap what we sow individually and socially; we reap what others have sown historically. Our speaker, Nehla Harb, talked about trauma and generational trauma. When she was speaking, I was thinking that this is karma from a historical perspective, where your great-great-grandfather might have been a slave owner who treated people as property and as subhuman.

Today, that has rippling effects in the United States, where wealth distribution is dramatically divergent. Between white and black families, for example, the average white family in the United States has ten times more generational wealth than the average black family. Over half of black children in the United States live in poverty, while only one out of eleven white children lives in poverty. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons and the daughters. The historical ripples of what has been done in the past come down to us in the present.

You might say, 'But I am not a slave owner. I shouldn't be suffering these consequences.' Well, Michael, you're not—you're white. But imagine if you were a Black American. Imagine that. Do they deserve less because of the historical ripples of the past? Or ought we to have policies in the present that seek to redress those historical injustices of the past? We must at least admit that they exist as an injustice, and then we need to address the lingering effects of colonialism, neocolonialism, and the rest.

Yes, the Israelis today are engaging in a genocide, but it is not anti-Jewish to say that Zionism is an ideology. We must understand the historical, generational trauma of many Jewish people—not just from the Holocaust of World War II and the six million killed in the gas chambers of Adolf Hitler, but from previous generations of Christian pogroms in Russia and elsewhere, reflecting an anti-Semitism that ran deep even in my own family. These things need to be admitted and redressed as well as we can. I am not excusing current Israeli policy; I am simply saying that rather than simply condemning it, I want to understand it. In understanding it, hopefully, we can help others see that they are simply perpetuating more and more generational trauma. The genocide of Palestinians today will come back to haunt us for many years to come globally.

Lastly, and for Gandhi essentially, there is an organic relationship of means to ends. Organic. If you want an apple tree, you plant an apple seed. You are not going to grow apples from a banana tree. If you want democracy, you must plant the seeds of democracy and respect whichever democratic tradition you want to endorse. Gandhi himself believed far more in decentralized, participatory democracy. But whatever it is—even representative democracy—you need to sow it if you want to reap it.

This is a fundamental disagreement between Gandhi and Marx, for example, because Marx does not believe in any absolutes; everything is always changing. And so, for Marx, and particularly for Marxist-Leninists of different kinds, you can sow a dictatorship and reap a democracy. You can get an apple from a banana tree. Gandhi fundamentally says no.

Now, he doesn't prove no; he assumes no. He sees the consequences of the past in the present, and he infers that you reap what you sow—not just individually and socially, but historically. And if you want a world at peace with itself—a just peace, a positive peace—you must sow the seeds of that now. Do not compromise your means, because your means become the end.

You might say, 'No, no, no, no. I believe that the ends justify the means.' Gandhi would say you can, of course, believe what you want, but it is going to have consequences. For Gandhi, the means justify the end. The apple seed becomes the apple tree. Democratic processes breed democracy. You reap what you sow. So always, and at all times, do your best to be pure in your means—as pure as you can be—because it is not just you who will reap the results. It will be future generations.

If what you are doing today is sufficiently contrary to Rita—the laws of God, the law of love—the human species may destroy itself. Don't blame that on God. You will have reaped what you have sown. Change now so you can start new traditions and new cultural norms within the dying carcass of the old. You can always start now with yourself. Surrender your body and your mind to the Self that is your soul within you, and you may find miraculous possibilities in the future. They are not miraculous; you may simply be reaping much better fruit than what you now see being consumed.

We are now finished. I have rambled long and hard on assumptions. In our next session tomorrow, we will not be talking so much about tactical nonviolence, but about Gandhi's beliefs in principled nonviolence, which will flow directly out of these assumptions.

For our breakout sessions,I would like you to reflect on Rita, the Golden Rule, and especially the Law of Karma. Do you more agree or disagree with Gandhi's worldview on the assumption level?

Fundamentally, if you just need to focus on one thing, ask yourselves: do the ends justify the means, or is it more true that the means justify the ends? They both may be true—non-dualism. And yet, where do you stand if you want to lean to one side or the other?

Feedback from Group Discussions

 Moderator: I think everyone has rejoined the main group now. May I request Group Number One to share your thoughts on whatever you discussed in your breakout room?

Group Number One: Regarding today's session, what you delivered was so broad that it was very difficult to encapsulate in a very short breakout session. Still, we discussed a few things. Mainly, we were talking about the Golden Rule and karma. We know that especially people in power, who have the capacity to make a change, often know exactly how things should be done. But when it comes to walking the talk, it just doesn't happen. People speak one way and act another; that is the stark reality of the world. Even though we know Rita—the cosmic rule—and we know what is good, those good things don't always manifest on the ground. That was one major thing we pondered upon.

We also discussed the Gandhian principle of simplicity, which you also mentioned—not just as simplicity in a direct sense, but as actively incorporating one's beliefs into actual work. We concluded by discussing what you mentioned at the very end: the incredibly thoughtful and deep concept of 'the means becoming the end.' We usually separate those two things; we think the means simply lead to the end. But the idea of the means becoming the end is something entirely new to me personally. It was highly insightful, and that is what we spoke about. Thank you so much.

Group Number Two: In Group Two, we discussed the Law of Karma and its effects on society. Mainly, our participants had a big question. Common people genuinely believe in the Law of Karma, but the politicians in many countries do not seem to believe in it based on how they treat others. That remains a massive question mark for us, and we feel we need an answer to that. We also spoke about the Law of Karma in relation to Gandhiji's core principles of nonviolence and Satyagraha.

Group Number Three: We discussed the Law of Karma and Gandhi's specific understanding of it. We related this to the current situation in the Middle East, noting how terrific the war is and how many innocent lives are being lost due to non-state activities and actions causing harm to humanity. Looking at the Law of Karma, if we want peace there, we need to develop peaceful activities and strategies so that peaceful thoughts can develop in the minds of the people who are causing this harm.

We also discussed the oneness of God and how, if we consider that everything belongs to God—a core Gandhian philosophy—then greed will not overcome us. Whatever we achieve in life, we will do so without greediness. Keeping ourselves away from greed makes our individual path and humanity's collective path much easier.

One fellow gave a beautiful example of karma that is deeply rooted in Indian and Hindu philosophy: if you throw mud, the mud will always get on you as well. If we want to keep dirt, greed, and impurities away from ourselves, we just need to keep ourselves away from those negative actions.

Group Number Four: In addition to what the other presenters have mentioned, we think Gandhi also made us realize that the Law of Karma is not merely a religious or ritualistic practice; it is simply a moral and spiritual law of life. It applies categorically across individual, social, and historical perspectives, as well as through an organic relationship, making it a universal law.

We also realized that one cannot escape karma. If you do good, you receive good. If you want peace, you must be peaceful. If you want freedom, you must give freedom to others. Equally, if you want honesty from the world, you must be honest yourself. That is what the Gandhian perspective brings to the concept of karma.

Group Number Five: In our last breakout group, we discussed Rita—the all-encompassing cosmic order that represents everything unchanging, natural, and moral. We correlated this concept with the Pramanas (the means of valid knowledge) of Indian philosophy. As we noted, Mahatma Gandhi did not approach Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism) as a purely text-bound or abstract academic exercise. Instead, he contextualized these traditional Pramanas through his own personal experiences and his 'Experiments with Truth.'

For Gandhi, validating structural reality relied heavily on Pratyaksha (direct perception), which was his direct observation of systemic violence and human suffering. This was blended smoothly with Anumana (logical inference), allowing him to infer the unseen moral laws of the cosmos, or Rita, by observing the tangible, natural consequences of systemic greed and hatred. Ultimately, his personal conscience functioned as a living epistemological tool, beautifully bridging spiritual Advaita—the fundamental unity of all existence—with immediate, compassionate social action rooted in day-to-day life and modern realities.

Concluding Remarks from the speaker

My goodness, and we have done it! Excellent timing. Thank you, everyone. In our next session, we will be looking specifically at Gandhi's beliefs and goals, and I look forward to sharing that with you and to having an even better discussion tomorrow.