Thus, the question of relevance is deeply embedded in subjectivity and inter-subjectivity. Jayaprakash Narayan, a noted Gandhian, points this out: "In considering the relevance of an individual or an idea, what is of great importance is the point of view from which one is looking at the question."1 What does one really want? What are one’s convictions, ideas and ideals? As Narayan points out, for "a person having one type of idea and pursuing one set of ideals and objectives Gandhi may be entirely irrelevant. On the other hand, for another person who is interested in other ideals, who cherishes other sets of values of life, . . . Gandhi would be very deeply and intensely relevant."2

What is important to note is the fact that colonialism is a mental state rooted in the consciousness of both the colonizers and the colonized. Colonial power did not flow primarily from the barrel of guns, but from the mediation of potent ideological constructions by which the colonizer and the colonized were bound in a symbiotic relationship. Such ideological constructions involved a double dimension: representing the self (colonizer) and the other (colonized). Within the framework of this construction, colonial rule was seen as ‘willed by God’ such as benefitting the native. Indian intellectuals of the ninetieth century, such as Ram Mohun Roy shared the belief that India stood to gain from the colonial rule.3 K. N. Panikkar writes: "In pursuit of cultural hegemony the colonial state and its ideologues endeavored to create and propagate several myths about the character and capacity of the colonized which in course of time the colonized themselves began to believe."4 The basis of colonial authority rested on the mental attitude of the acceptance of subordination by the colonized.5

As Edward Said points out, colonialism is not a simple act of accumulation or acquisition. Colonialism is supported by impressive ideological formations that include notions that certain territories and people require and beseech domination.6 The colonizers had a sense of mission out of their moral superiority to civilize the natives, and such an attitude is crystallized in the opinions of colonial ideologue, Jules Harmand: "It is necessary, then, to accept as a principle and point of departure the fact that there is a hierarchy of races and civilizations, and that we belong to the superior race and civilization, still recognizing that, while superiority confers rights, it imposes strict obligations in return."7 For Harmand, the legitimization of colonial conquest is based on moral superiority: "The basic legitimization of conquest over native peoples is the conviction of our superiority, not merely our mechanical, economic, and military superiority, but our moral superiority. Our dignity rests on that quality, and it underlies our right to direct the rest of humanity. Material power is nothing but a means to that end."8 E. Said illustrates this `will’ to rule: "In India, for instance, by the 1930s a mere 4000 British civil servants assisted by 60,000 soldiers and 90,000 civilians . . . had billeted themselves upon a country of 300 million persons. The will, self-confidence, even arrogance necessary to maintain such a state of affairs can only be guessed."9 

It is not merely the brute power of weapons that assured the permanence, stability and continuity of colonial empires, but the cooperation B either active or passive - of the colonized contributed to it. Both the colonizer and the native are caught up in the web of a symbiotic relationship. As A. Nandy points out, "In the colonial culture, identification with the aggressor bound the rulers and the ruled in an unbreakable dyadic relationship. The Raj saw Indians as crypto-barbarians who needed to further civilize themselves. It saw the British rule as an agent of progress and as mission. Many Indians in turn saw their salvation in becoming more like the British, in friendship or in enmity."10 It is this symbiotic relation that Gandhi tries to address squarely in his fight against colonialism.

Let us focus on one of the basic assumptions of British colonialism in order to understand some of the ‘inversions’ effected by Gandhi in his fight against British colonialism. Colonial hegemony rested on the superiority of aggressive masculinity. Within the colonial framework, socio-political domination came to be seen as correlative to specifically male domination over femininity. As Nandy points out, the homology between sexual and political dominance which Western colonialism invariably used B in Asia, Africa, and Latin America B was not an accidental by-product of colonial history.11 According to Nandy:

The homology, drawing support from the denial of psychological bisexuality in men in large areas of Western culture, beautifully legitimized Europe’s post-medieval models of dominance, exploitation and cruelty as natural and valid. Colonialism, too, was congruent with the existing Western sexual stereotypes and the philosophy of life which they represented. It produced a cultural consensus in which political and socio-economic dominance symbolized the dominance of men and masculinity over women and femininity.12 

1. "If by strength is meant brute strength, then indeed is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior."13 

2. "Man and woman are equal in status, but are not identical. They are a peerless pair being supplementary to one another, each helps the other, so that without the one the existence of the other cannot be conceived."14 

3. "Just as fundamentally man and woman are one, their problem must be one in essence. . . . Each is a complement of the other. The one cannot live without the other’s active help."15

Why does Gandhi go in for such an ordering? Is it not enough to stress the equality of man and woman? According to Nandy’s analysis, this is a creative Gandhian political statement. Gandhi challenges the hyper-masculinity of colonial domination by inverting the priorities. Nandy writes: "To put this awareness to political use, he challenged first the ideology of biological stratification acting as a homologue of B and legitimacy for B political inequality and injustice."16 The colonial culture’s ordering of sexual identities assumed: Manliness is superior to Womanliness. Those sections of Indian society which tried to take on the British on their own terms, namely, masculinity vs. masculinity or through violent means, were doomed. In the history of colonial India, there are many examples of this sort of failed attempts to drive the British away: Netaji Subash Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh, to name but two.

But Gandhi’s solution was radically different. According to Nandy, Gandhi used two sets of orderings, each of which could be invoked according to the needs of the situation. The first borrowed intact from the great and little traditions of saintliness in India: manliness and womanliness are equal, but the ability to transcend the man-woman dichotomy is superior to both, being an indicator of godly and saintly qualities.17 To quote Gandhi: "A man should remain man and yet should become woman; similarly, a woman should remain woman and yet become man. This means that man should cultivate the gentleness and the discrimination of woman; and woman should caste off her timidity and become brave."18 In Harijan he pointed out: "Languages proclaim that woman is half of man and, by parity of reasoning, man is half of woman. They are not two separate entities, but halves of one."19 Gandhi’s second ordering was invoked specifically as a methodological justification for the anti-imperialist movement. There is a radical reversal involved here: The essence of femininity is superior to that of masculinity, which in turn is better than cowardice. Interestingly, the Sanskrit expression for cowardice translates as "failure of masculinity" or Kapurusatva.20 Gandhi wrote: "Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. . . . A coward is less than man. He does not deserve to be a member of society of men and women."21 Gandhi constantly emphasized the superiority of self-sacrifice, non-violence, love and courage which he termed as qualities of woman.22 By such reversal, Gandhi made the colonial assumption of masculine superiority stand on its head.

Nandy spells out some of the implications of these relationships which are culturally defined and could be missed by an outside observer: (1) The concept of femininity (naritva) which was constantly stressed by Gandhi nearly fifty years before the present feminist movement started, went beyond the dominant Western definition of womanhood. (2) The feminine principle is a more powerful cosmic principle than the male principle. (3) The centrality and primacy of maternity over conjugality in feminine identity, namely, woman as a source of motherliness (caritas) is superior to the view of woman as an object and source of sexuality.23 Gandhi’s inversion negated the very basis of the colonial culture which was rooted in hyper-masculinity.

The second Gandhian inversion consisted in ahimsa or non-violence in neutralizing the violence which was at the very basis of colonial domination. In Young India Gandhi wrote: "The only way to conquer violence is through non-violence, pure and undefiled."24 As a strategy of countering colonial domination, time and again Gandhi emphasized the path of non-violence. For him non-violence is more powerful than violence precisely because it is based on love. As interpreted by Gandhi, ahimsa entails several shades of meaning: `non-injury,’ `harmlessness,’ `reverence for life,’ and `concern for the well-being of all living things.’ According to Gandhi, "ahimsa is not merely a negative state of harmlessness, but it is a positive state of love, of doing good even to the evil-doer."25 Gandhi, who was influenced by the Sermon on the Mount,26 equated ahimsa with the Kingdom of Heaven.27

The Gandhian notion of non-violence is intrinsically related to his vision of human nature. As far as the root of violence is concerned, he did not believe in a deterministic view of human nature. He wrote: "Man is superior to the brute inasmuch as he is capable of self-restraint and sacrifice, of which the brute is incapable."28 He firmly believed in the perfectible and malleable dimension of human nature. In a letter to Esther Faering, Gandhi expressed this belief:

To say that perfection is not attainable on this earth is to deny God. The statement about the impossibility of ridding ourselves of sin clearly refers to a stage in life. But we need not search scriptures in support of the assertion. We do see men constantly becoming better under effort and discipline. There is no occasion for limiting the capacity for improvement. . . . After all, what matters is that our capacity for loving ever expands. It is a slow process.29 

 

Gandhi believed that both the colonizer and the colonized need to be liberated. The colonial discourse, which invariably included infantalizing and feminizing the colonized, metamorphosed the colonizer as well as the colonized. To quote Nandy: "Not only did he sense and `use’ the fundamental predicament of British culture caught in the hinges of imperial responsibility and subjecthood in victory, but he implicitly defined his ultimate goal as the liberation of the British from the history and psychology of British colonialism."30 Gandhi wrote in Harijan: "The real `White Man’s Burden’ is not insolently to dominate colored or black people under the guise of protection; it is to desist from the hypocrisy which is eating into them. It is time White men learnt to treat every human being as their equal."31 As Nandy points out, "the colonial culture depended heavily on Western cosmology, with its built-in fears about losing potency through the loss of activism and the ability to be violent."32 In Nandy’s view, Gandhi was clear in his mind that activism and courage could be liberated from aggressiveness and recognized as perfectly compatible with womanhood, particularly maternity.33 This implied a change of consciousness in the rulers and in the ruled.

To understand the Gandhian notion of non-violence we need to take note of an important Gandhian strategy, namely, non-cooperation, which he used effectively in the Indian freedom struggle. He wrote in Young India: "I consider non-cooperation to be such a powerful and pure instrument that if it is enforced in an earnest spirit, it will be like seeking first the Kingdom of God and everything else following as a matter of course."34 In his view, "non-cooperation is not a passive state, it is an intensely active state B more active than physical resistance of violence. Non-cooperation, in this sense used by me, must be non-violent and, therefore, neither punitive nor vindictive nor based on malice, ill-will or hatred."35 Non-cooperation in the Gandhian sense is directed against an unjust system, and not necessarily against individuals. Thus, in the Gandhian scheme, the basis of "non-cooperation lies not in hatred but in justice, if not in love."36 Gandhi was constantly questioning both the victimized Indians and the unjust system of the British through powerful symbolic actions.

Gandhi’s approach was inclusive; he invited the British for a soul searching. For Gandhi, the British were an adversary who should leave Indian shores; but he did not consider them as enemies. As Nandy points out, "Gandhi’s partiality for some of the Christian hymns and Biblical texts was more than a symbolic gesture of a Hindu towards a minority religion in India. It was also an affirmation that, at one plane, some of the recessive elements of Christianity were perfectly congruent with elements of Hindu and Buddhist world views and that the battle he was fighting for the minds of men was actually a universal battle to rediscover the softer side of human nature, the so-called non-masculine self of man relegated to the forgotten zones of the Western self-concept."37 From his inclusive perspective, Gandhi pointed out that the inspiration for his life vision came from the Sermon on the Mount as well as The Gita.38 

The third inversion Gandhi effects is about power. As we have already seen, he reverses the colonial ordering which equated power with masculinity. According to Gandhi, "Power can be acquired only through ceaseless, loving service, and waiting upon God."39 One can discern here what is usually termed as feminine qualities of `loving service,’ and `waiting.’ He also speaks of two kinds of power which are qualitatively differentiated, namely, physical power which is ephemeral and the power of the spirit which is enduring: "Power invariably elects to go into the hands of the strong. That strength may be physical or of the heart, or, if we do not fight shy of the word, of the spirit. Physical force is transitory, even as the body is transitory. But the power of the spirit is permanent, even as the spirit is everlasting."40 What is interesting to note here is the contrast he makes between the masculine notion and the feminine notion of power; for Gandhi, feminine power is far superior. "Woman is the incarnation of ahimsa. Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. Who but woman, the mother of man, shows this capacity in the largest measure?"41 

In the Gandhian notion of ahimsa there is an inversion of the standard understanding of power. His philosophy of non-violence, truth and love provided an alternative paradigm of power. Mahajan Mani writes on the dialectics of non-violence and power: "Gandhi’s non-violence acquires greater meaning now as an alternative to power. The Gandhian technique rests on elements of influence in contrast to the ingredients of power. The whole theory and practice of Gandhian thought are based on non-violence."42 Power which is attained through and based on love is what Gandhi advocates; and this power is not a power to dominate. According to him, such love has enduring power: "The law of Love, call it attraction, affinity, cohesion, if you like, governs the world. Life persists in the face of death. The universe continues in spite of destruction incessantly going on. Truth triumphs over untruth. Love conquers hate. God eternally triumphs over Satan."43 In short, the Gandhian notion of power is informed by love, non-violence, self-sacrifice and truth. It is antithetical to colonial domination, injustice, oppression and violence.

By his language of truth and non-violence, a language which both the British and Indians understood, Gandhi established the pre-eminence of his method. In doing so, he also sowed the seeds of self-doubt in the British. Gandhi in a way demolishes the colonial myth of moral superiority which had been the legitimizing foundation to rule the natives. As Nandy points out, Gandhi "recognized that once the hegemony of a theory of imperialism without winners and losers was established, imperialism had lost out on cognitive, in addition to ethical grounds."44 Gandhi’s multi-pronged inversion strategy negated the very basis of the colonial assumptions and presuppositions which were rooted in aggressive masculinity.

As we have seen, Gandhian strategy is set within the framework of binary oppositions: defining and redefining; violence and non-violence; brute power and power to love. There is some sort of adversativeness about such oppositions.45 From a Gandhian perspective such adversativeness need not be destructive; often it can be supportive, creative, and more importantly, it can be corrective to male assumptions and presuppositions. Time and again Gandhi showed through his praxis that the adversary need not be necessarily an enemy. Though Gandhi may not be a feminist in the modern sense, his vision and strategy show a remarkable affinity to the concerns of contemporary feminism.

Far from being a monolithic doctrine, contemporary feminism entails wide-ranging and often conflicting perspectives.46 Irrespective of these differing horizons and interpretations, if there is one theme that cuts across various feminist perspectives, it is the critique of patriarchy. From the feminist perspective, patriarchy denotes a societal system which legitimizes and authenticates the predominance of the male, and brings about a concentration of power and privilege in the hands of men. According to a considerable number of feminists, in almost all cultures patriarchy has served to legitimize male domination through the mediation of religious, political, social, economic and familial structures. Feminist scholars further point out that androcentrism which is intrinsically related to patriarchy, has resulted in asymmetrical power relations between the male and the female in the human species.

Researchers have chronicled violence against women to be the result of such asymmetrical power relations.47 Many societies have gone to remarkable lengths to control and punish women. From a historical perspective, rape, sati (widow-burning), foot-binding, drowning, whipping, hanging, clitoridectomy, dowry-deaths, female infanticide and purdha (veil) may be pointed out as institutionalized forms of control and punishment of women which involve varying degrees of violence. Against such a background it is not entirely surprising that when asked what was the worst aspect of being female, the participants in a twelve-country workshop held in China unanimously pointed to male violence.48 

The causes of violence are clearly multiple and cannot be explained using a single set of determinants.49 Male domination manifests itself in a variety of ways and from the recent anthropological perspectives, male violence has been described as culture specific. If this is true, then violence as a culturally embedded concept may not have commensurable salience cross-culturally.50 However, this should not be construed as radical relativism, lest we overlook the dehumanizing manifestations of violence. "Violence against women and their children remains all-pervasive. It is found in all religions of the world. Violence cuts across social, race, and class-status lines, cultural differences and religious denominations."51

One of the essential acts of domination is defining52 B defining the Self and the Other. In The Second Sin, Thomas Szasz writes succinctly:

Define or be defined.53 

From the Gandhian perspective, the subjugation of women in its complex forms amounts to a negation of truth.54 Woman has been defined by the male as inferior, temptress, evil, destructive, and weak. There are too many such definitions which legitimize the subjugation of women.55 By these male ideological constructions of falsehood, women have been relegated to the very margins of society. From the Gandhian viewpoint, such ideological constructions of falsehood degrade both men and women. If violence against women constitutes a negation of truth, then the recovery of truth requires a negation of negation. As we shall see shortly, since an authentic disclosure of truth is also transformative, the recovery of truth requires transformation both in men and women.

It is precisely at this level of human intentionality that Gandhi tries to address the question of male aggression. This was one of the significant and novel experiments he brought to the political and public sphere. Within the Gandhian vision, violence in its varied manifestations amounted to the negation of truth. In this context, it is important to note that the Gandhian praxis of self-purification, which he termed a ‘spiritual weapon,’ also entails a transition from untruth to truth.56 He was convinced of the contagious nature of such purification: "Self-purification must mean purification in all walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one’s surroundings."57 For Gandhi:

This spiritual weapon of self-purification is the most potent means for revolutionizing one’s environment and for loosening external shackles. It works subtly and invisibly; it is an intensive process and though it might often seem a weary and long drawn out process, it is the straightest way to liberation, the surest and the quickest, and no effort can be too great for it. What it requires is faith, an unshakable, mountain-like faith, that flinches from nothing.58 

 

As we have already indicated, from a Gandhian perspective, violence against women ultimately amounts to untruth. Feminists have unearthed many forms and faces of this untruth. History is replete with chronicles about male cruelty against the female and about the immense trouble men have taken to control, torture, silence and violate women. Rather than see violence as the idiosyncratic behavior of a few deranged men, feminist theorists tend to view male violence as a key element in male power over and control of women.59 Perhaps, for the male, the female remains mysterious and more importantly, unconquerable. If females are unconquerable, then the next best alternative is to make them invisible. In most parts of our male-dominated, shared history women have been made faceless non-beings. Feminists have drawn our attention to the ‘invisible presence’ of women in history written by men. Various cultures have invented ingenious methods to make the female invisible. The feminist consciousness has felt it imperative to address male domination embedded in the patriarchal system. An increasing number of feminist writers have begun to explore the ways in which social institutions and the traditional relationship between sexes can interact to produce and sanction violence against women. They point out that the violence against women is not merely ‘private trouble’ and should be made public in the political platforms.60 If violence against women in its various forms amounts to untruth, then the recovery of truth is a daunting task.

Gandhi saw non-violence (ahimsa) and violence (himsa) as two generating principles that are diametrically opposed: "One who hooks his fortunes to ahimsa B the law of love B daily lessens the circle of destruction and to that extent, promotes life and love. He who swears by himsa B the law of hate B daily widens the circle of destruction and, to that extent, promotes death and hate."61 In his practical realism, Gandhi did acknowledge the existence of both good and evil: "If there is good, there must also be evil, just as where there is light there is also darkness."62 In the Gandhian scheme, the reversal of the circle of destruction can be achieved only through the mediation of non-violence, truth, and love. The evil of violence can be reversed only by goodness. And he was convinced that it was within our capacity to do good: "The power to do good does not come from without. It exists always within us, and we have only to develop it by proper means."63 "Good is self-existent, evil is not. It is like a parasite living on and around good. It would die of itself when the support that good gave was withdrawn."64 Gandhi made use of this practical wisdom in the form of non-cooperation in his political struggle.

In the Gandhian philosophy of societal transformation, violence, untruth, and domination can be countered only through the praxis of love, truth and non-violence. In the Gandhian vision, there is an intrinsic unity between truth, non-violence and love: "Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them. They are like the two sides of a coin . . . who can say which is the obverse, and which is the reverse? Nevertheless, ahimsa is the means; Truth is the end."65 "In its positive form, ahimsa means the largest love, greatest charity."66 And again: "The universe continues in spite of the destruction incessantly going on. Truth triumphs over untruth. Love conquers hate."67

The very notion ‘empowerment of women’ implies that women do not yet have power over their own destiny, or, as a corollary, it presupposes that there is an asymmetrical power relation between male and female. Here, empowerment may be understood as a process by which marginalized persons gain some control over their lives and their destiny. Although there is a broad consensus among the feminists about the need to empower women, the precise meaning and import of power is far from unanimous given the differing feminist interpretative horizons. If power means an hegemonic value system in the feminist discourse of empowerment, then it would not be any different from the ideological underpinnings of patriarchy. However, we must note the fact that the deprivation of power which women experience is relative. History shows that women in most societies did have power, and they still do have power though that power belongs to a different order. Indeed, it is an intriguing paradox: women are and have been powerful; women are and have been powerless.68

From the Gandhian perspective, the possibility of the empowerment of women rests on the cessation of cooperation with male domination. To quote Gandhi: "Violence dies when it ceases to evoke response from its object."69 In withdrawing support from male ideological constructions of falsehood, it symbolizes a refusal to cooperate in androcentric hermeneutics and interpretations of untruth. Such non-cooperation is part and parcel of the process of reversal of untruth. In the context of non-cooperation, Hervé Ott writes: "It is the passivity of non-resisting subjects that gives strength to tyrants. The same is true of violence. The victim collaborates in the oppression. Our point is not to judge such behavior, but to see that only by questioning it can we make way for another kind of behavior."70 

I learned the lesson of non-violence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her and, in the end, she became my teacher in non-violence.71

 

Many of us want changes to take place sooner rather than later, and perhaps feminists are no exception in this regard. Perhaps the urgency felt by many feminists is quite understandable. Women have endured male domination for far too long and have tolerated patriarchal structures for too many centuries. Women have put up with androcentric interpretations of reality too long. But whether we like it or not, we need to recognize the fact that it takes time to change mental frames which have been embedded in the collective consciousness for centuries. As Rekha Pandey points out, women’s oppression is not only widespread but also the deepest, in that it is the hardest to eradicate; abolition of women’s subjection cannot be effected like the abolition of a class society.72

We are dealing with mental frames when we deal with patriarchy. We are dealing with mental frames when we deal with male domination. We are dealing with mental frames when we deal with various forms of injustices committed against women. If we want changes that are meaningful, then we need to be patient when we deal with change. Mental frames and consciousness of groups and societies take time to change. It takes time to bring about changes in the mental frames of both the oppressor and the oppressed. Gandhi was keenly aware of the dimension of interiority in the transformation of society: "All true change comes from within. Any change brought about by pressure, is worthless."73 

Time magazine asked a select group to tell whom they would choose as the ‘person of the century.’ Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer Inc., responded to the query: "Mohandas Gandhi is my choice for the person of the century because he showed us a way out of the destructive side of our human nature. He demonstrated that we can force change and justice through moral acts of aggression instead of physical acts of aggression. Never has our species needed this wisdom more."74 Human beings possess freedom, consciousness, and meaning systems that enable us to transcend violence, something that differentiates us from the animals. In a way, that is what Gandhi did: he moved beyond the endless spiral of violence and destruction. It required the creation of a new consciousness and new meaning systems. It needed redefining a violent masculinity.

The direct or indirect object of (male) violence is the death and destruction of the other (female).75 In its broadest sense, violence symbolizes negation of life. Ultimately is not collective male violence tantamount to thanathos, a death wish, as the human species will have a minimum chance of regeneration? Who in the human species is better equipped than the females with their self-giving caritas to counter male thanathos? The life-giving female matrix (literally, womb) of caritas symbolizes the power of women in inverting the destructive principle of thanathos.76 The Gandhian paradigm of non-violence or love stands as a viable alternative to the destructive side of humanity: he showed that masculine thanathos can be transcended by caritas, a feminine prerogative. Notwithstanding the controversies and myths surrounding him, this paradigm of non-violence seems to be one of the enduring, and so relevant, aspects of Gandhian legacy.