Gandhi’s Enduring Global Impact
Dr Jayaprakash Narayan*
Date: 17th Sept, 2019 for E-tv Bharat
Mahatma Gandhi was an exceptional figure of the twentieth century. He drew immense power by unifying thought, word and deed. It is this uncompromising integrity of purpose and action that made Gandhiji irresistible to the world. For oppressed people everywhere, Gandhiji’s ability to fashion the tools of truth, Satyagraha and non-violence as powerful weapons against the might of the oppressor became a refreshing and powerful example.
It is true that Gandhiji’s extreme pacifism and non-violence would fail in situations where with oppressor is pure evil and has no moral core. The Holocaust, mass genocide and ethnic cleansing, state-aggression unleashing war, terrorism – all these demand active resistance and use of force through all available means in order to prevent greater harm and suffering of the innocent. However, in most other situations the oppressor has a moral core and a sense of humanity, and Gandhiji’s methods worked admirably in such cases. Gandhiji always rejected oppressive status quo, as well as overt conflict and violence. Gandhiji’s genius lay in elevating issues to a plane of creative tension – neither meek submission to injustice, nor bloody conflict. It is the efficacy of this method in most situations of asymmetry of power and injustice that made Gandhiji relevant to most oppressed people and mass movements.
Gandhiji created a galaxy of leaders in the Indian subcontinent during the national movement. Naturally his message had a lasting impact in all nations of South Asia.
In the rest of Asia too his influence was profound. The struggle for democracy in the Philippines by Benigno Aquino Jr and after his assassination, by Corazon Aquino was deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s example. As a result, Philippines saw the emergence of true democracy through peaceful protest after decades of tyranny under Marcos.
In South Korea, the rise of the Sixth Republic after decades of autocratic, military rule was largely a result of the peaceful, popular resistance to dictatorship. The popular pressure forced revision of the constitution in 1987. Between 1987 and 2003 strong foundations were laid for democracy in South Korea. Popular pressure and the leadership of Kim Young-Sam and Kim Dae-Jung both influenced by Gandhiji example saw the emergence of the economic giant as a stable and peaceful democracy with respect for human rights.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese leader, has been profoundly influenced by Gandhiji’s work and example. She remained under house arrest for 15 of the 21 years between 1989 and 2010, and preferred incarceration to exile. She refused to leave the country to receive the Nobel Prize, or to meet her family and dying husband in Britain, for fear that she would not be allowed to return. She acknowledged repeatedly that Gandhiji was the major influence in her life and work. She said, “You must remember that change through non-violent means was not even thought of before Gandhi. He was the one who started it, he was the one who decided that it is possible to bring about revolutionary change without violence.
Nelson Mandela who became a global symbol of resistance to injustice in the Post-War World was deeply influenced by Gandhiji’s life, teachings and methods. He acknowledged that it was Gandhian Philosophy “that achieved the mobilization of millions of South African during the 1952 defiance campaign, which established the African National congress as a mass-based organization”. Mandela referred to Gandhiji is “the sacred warrior,” who combined ethics and morality with a steely resolve that refused to compromise with the oppressor, the British Empire.
Mandela always regarded the Mahatma as an inspiration. “In a world driven by violence and strife, Gandhi’s message of peace and non-violence holds the key to human survival in the 21st century,” said Mandela. Mandela described Gandhiji’s essence thus, “He rightly believed in the efficacy of pitting the soul force of satyagraha against the brute force of the oppressor and in effect converting the oppressor to the right moral point”.
Martin Luther King Jr liked Gandhiji’s idea that oppressed people could use truth and love as weapons in their struggle for justice; and found practical application of that idea in the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56, and in all his later struggles for the rights of the Black people. King said, “Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work”. He echoed Gandhiji’s views and repeatedly said it is possible to resist evil without resorting to violence, and to oppose evil itself without opposing the people committing evil. He wrote, “The non-violent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him.”
King referred to Gandhi as “one of the individuals who greatly reveal the working of the spirit of God”. He visited India in 1959 and wrote, “I left India more convinced than ever that nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.” King even during his Noble Prize acceptance speech in 1964, acknowledged the inspiration he drew from Gandhiji.
Dalai Lama, one of the most revered spiritual teachers over the past 60 years, has been profoundly influenced by Gandhi. Dalai Lama always held that the only way of bringing about constructive political change in through nonviolent means. He said, “Some people might say Gandhiji’s Ahimsa is powerless or pessimistic, but now the whole world is looking up to Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolence.”
Al Gore was influenced by Gandhiji’s “truth force”, as well as his deep concern for the environment. Al Gore said, “Gandhi’s view was that truth has force in human affairs and when it is passionately expressed, it can be the most powerful force for changing things for the good”.
Barack Obama noted, “Throughout my life, I have always looked to Mahatma Gandhi as an inspiration, because he embodies the kind of transformational change that can be made when ordinary people come together to do extraordinary things”. When asked who was the one person, dead or alive, that he would choose to dine with?, Obama replied “Gandhi” and he continued, “He is somebody I find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired
Dr King with his message of nonviolence. He ended up doing so much and changed the world just by the power of his ethics”.
Mexican-American civil rights and labour leader Cesar Chavez was deeply influenced by Gandhiji and modeled many of his tactics on Gandhiji’s methods. Chavez said of the Mahatma, “Not only did he talk about non-violence, he showed how non-violence works for justice and liberation”. Chavez maintained his commitment to non-violence even in the face of violent attacks.
Gandhiji’s ideas, his steadfast adherence to those beliefs in practice, his compassion and humanity, and his unflinching courage in the struggle against injustice and oppression influenced the world for more than a century. His message and life continue to shape our attitudes and mass movements world over in the 21st century. The women’s liberation and environment movement among others have been deeply impacted by the work and teachings of Gandhiji. Modern World owes a debt of gratitude to this simple, half-naked man who taught us that we as a species should learn to coexist in harmony and resolve our differences peacefully, and we should learn to protect our flora and fauna for our collective survival and sanity. The humble, ordinary men and women everywhere intuitively recognize the truth of Gandhi’s life and teachings and their eternal relevance in shaping our lives and future.
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*The author is the founder of Lok Satta movement and Foundation for Democratic Reforms. Email: drjploksatta@gmail.com
Gandhiji, Gram Swaraj and True Democracy
Dr Jayaprakash Narayan*
Date: 19th Sept, 2019 for E-tv Bharat
Mahatma Gandhi’s greatest contribution to us was he welded many disparate peoples of different castes, languages, faiths, cultures and regions into one nation. He gave us a common purpose and a common identity. He always knew that the English would retire from India, sooner or later, as he said in his Benaras Hindu University speech on Feb 4, 1916, “either of their own pleasure or by compulsion, bag and baggage”. But his primary concern was not about the British leaving India giving us independence; it was about our capacity for self-governance. Gandhiji asked in the same speech as early as in in 1916 when very few in India talked of Independence, “If even our temples are not models of roominess and cleanliness, what can our self-government be?” He further admonished us, “Shall our temples be abodes of holiness, cleanliness and peace as soon as the English have retired from India…?”
Gandhiji realized that true self-governance means inculcating a sense of responsibilities along with rights, promotion of citizenship and civic duty, and a deep understanding of the relationship between the citizen and the state, between our taxes and services. That is why Gandhiji always talked about local governments. As India was more than 90% rural in those days, he laid emphasis on Gram Swaraj, and envisaged self-governing village republics as units of self-government.
Local governments are the best schools of democracy. Only in local governments is power exercised very close to the people on a daily basis, and the citizens understand the consequences to their lives resulting from the decisions, actions or inaction of the government at their door step. This allows people to establish a link between their vote and the resultant public good. If people make the wrong choice, they suffer the ill-effects of choosing bad or unwise leaders at local level and learn quickly that their vote has serious and lasting consequences. People also realize where their tax money is going at local level, and how decisions made by local leaders affect resource allocation and therefore their lives. Also at local level authority is fused with accountability, and people can collectively or individually raise their voice to set things right when they go wrong. In a local government with convergence of functions and accountability people know where the buck stops, and there are no alibis for failure.
That is the reason why Mahatma Gandhi always promoted the concept of decentralization and Gram Swaraj. With Gandhiji’s blessings, many of our national leaders led local governments in the 1920’s and honed their skills of leadership in government. Chittaranjan Das and later Subhash Chandra Bose in Calcutta, Rajendra Prasad in Patna, Vallabhai Patel in Ahmedabad, Jawaharlal Nehru in Allahabad – all led local governments with distinction. Prakasam Pantulu in Rajahmundry and C. Rajagopalachari in Salem made a mark in local governments even before that.
Gandhiji always conceived the state with the citizen and her family at its centre; the very purpose of the state is citizen’s wellbeing and giving them a measure of control over their life and destiny. He never thought of the federal government in Delhi as the ‘central government’. For him the state is not hierarchical with power flowing from the ‘top’ to the ‘bottom’. Instead he envisaged power flowing out in ever enlarging concentric circles from the citizen located at the centre. His conception of the state and self-governance is very close to the principle of subsidiarity enunciated in the catholic social thought of the 19th century, and was later incorporated in the German Constitution, and now is a general principle of European Union law. The very foundations of American civic life were built on this principle with local governments at the heart of politics and governance. As an extension of the subsidiarity principle, the principle of State’s rights is enshrined in the US constitution.
Subsidiarity is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the principle that a central authority should have subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level.” In other words power is delegated to a larger tier of government by the smaller tiers only on grounds of economy of scale, or need for complexity and skills, or need for coordination. Power should flow from the citizen, family and community outward based on the need, and the powers of the citizen and community are primary and intrinsic, not derived from a ‘higher’ authority in a hierarchical system.
Mahatma Gandhi’s conception of Gram Swaraj perfectly fits this idea of subsidiarity and is in consonance with our own historical tradition. Over 5000-years ago, the Harappan (Indus Valley) civilization was home to organized urban life – wide streets, market places, public offices, community baths, drainage and sewerage system. Though we have no definitive proof as the Harappan script has not yet been deciphered, the available evidence and the vast geographic spread indicate that each Indus valley city was a self-governing city-state with local decision making. In the early Vedic age 3500 years ago, political organization was around tribes rather than kingdoms, and therefore governance was essentially local, centered around the community. Around the period of Gautama Buddha, Licchavi republic epitomized a system of local government and a confederacy of all local tribes was organized on the principle of equality. Similarly other confederations – Videhan, Vajjian and the sixteen Maha-Janapadas – were organized with self-governing local institutions coming together as equals in confederations. Chola period in 10th century AD saw remarkable, highly systematized local governance at village level, as seen from the Uttaramerur inscription. Even during British rule, municipalities were self-governing and powerful. Around the time of freedom, District Boards played a powerful role in decision making.
Given this remarkable role of local governments in all our 5000-year history, the high degree of centralization in independent India is an aberration. Our Constitution is a remarkably humane, liberal document. Gandhi’s vision of limited, decentralized government with people having a significant measure of control of their lives clashed with Dr Ambedkar’s concerns about transferring power to the panchayats that were ‘dens of casteism and corruption’. Both had strength in their arguments. Gandhiji’s fierce antipathy to centralization and state control were at the heart of his opposition to colonial rule. Ambedkar’s aversion to the caste system and institutionalized inequality by birth raised legitimate fears about local upper caste elites monopolizing power and perpetuating caste rigidities.
The failure of our nation builders to reconcile the opposing views of Gandhiji and Ambedkar has proved very costly for democratic India. The resulting centralization in a society that had no understanding of citizenship and the links between vote and consequences, or taxes and services, democracy degenerated into vote buying, a culture of freebies at the cost of basic functions of government and perpetuating caste and other divisions for mobilizing vote through emotion and sentiment. In the absence of local governments functioning as schools for democracy, people did not acquire the necessary skills of self-government and decision making. As a result democracy has been reduced to voting and protest, without the mechanisms for self-correction or constant improvement.
In a centralized system mistakes are very costly for the whole country, and innovation and implementation of new ideas are very difficult. In a decentralised system the cost of mistakes is limited to the local government and the benefits of innovation and new ideas can spread as other local government units imitate successful best practices. Only then can citizens be partners in government, and people’s lives can be improved quickly in a measurable way.
The extraordinary success of self-governing dairy cooperatives is a testimony to the transformation that is possible with sensible devolution of power and genuine self-governance. Similarly some of the great successes in school education and community infrastructure in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have been possible through the leadership and innovation of local government leaders. My own experience in mobilizing local people in successful and speedy implementation of small lift irrigation projects, and in creating successful, self-governing Industrial Local Authorities demonstrates the power of decentralisation with proper design and safeguards.
We, as a nation, need to swiftly reconcile the ideals of Gandhiji and Ambedkar, and build powerful and effective local governments that empower all people and that break down caste barriers. We already have reservations in local governments empowering dalits, backward classes and women. In addition if we create a cluster of villages with a population of about 20-25,000 into panchayats, the traditional caste hierarchies of a habitat will be diluted in a large panchayat and democratic power of vote will liberate the depressed classes. Once at least 25% of the state budget along with responsibilities for all basic functions like school education, primary health, infrastructure, sanitation, drainage etc is transferred, the community will quickly learn to make choices that improve their lives. A system of powerful independent local ombudsmen to quickly identify and punish abuse of power, and citizen’s charters with guaranteed, time-bound delivery of services will ensure accountability.
The larger tiers, the State and Union will continue to discharge the functions assigned to them under the Constitution. In this model we can reconcile Gandhiji’s ideals with Ambedkar’s caution, and ensure that people can improve their lives locally in a responsible and accountable way. People will master the art of self-governance, and true democracy will flourish. That is when we will go beyond transfer of power, and Swaraj will be real and meaningful as Mahatma Gandhi envisaged.
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*The author is the founder of Lok Satta movement and Foundation for Democratic Reforms. Email: drjploksatta@gmail.com