The Hindu : Gandhi's altruistic individualism

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Wednesday, Oct 02, 2002

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Gandhi's altruistic individualism

By T. N. Madan

Gandhi was neither an uncritical traditionalist nor a dogmatic opponent of all aspects of modernity. The way he drew upon tradition in formulating his worldview was creative and owed much to his exposure to western values and institutions.

ONE OF Gandhi's outstanding contributions to social and political thought, I suggest, was the conception of altruistic individualism within a cultural setting that was generally considered group- centred. A key idea of 19th century western scholarship about eastern cultures was that individualism was absent and communitarianism prevailed. While India and China respectively were characterised as societies based on caste and the family, and clan and the family, western society was said to be built around the individual. Individualism valorised the individual as an end in himself, free to pursue self-chosen goals and to cultivate judgments irrespective of their being in conformity or conflict with prevailing social opinion.

Not that individuals were absent as actors in eastern societies, but everywhere they were embedded in groups (family, clan, caste, community) to an extent that rendered them virtually invisible. Moreover, the group received precedence in the traditional social ideologies of these societies. When the individual did move to the centre of the stage, he did so rather theatrically as a rebel who rejected or transcended the prevailing social norms and cultural values. The best-known example was, of course, the Hindu sanyasi.

The antiquity of group-orientation in the east has been emphasised even in our own times contrastively with the west. It is ignored that in the Christian West too the individual was originally located outside society: it was only after the Reformation, which delegitimised the individual or institutional intermediaries between God and the seeker of salvation, that the individual came to be relocated inside society. Various developments within the secular domain, most notably the rise of capitalism (incorporating the notions of individually owned property and entrepreneurial profit) and liberal democracy, contributed to the making of a full-blown ideology of individualism.

In India too, following the encounter with the west, and particularly since the middle of the 19th century, the individual became salient. In the modernisation of India (some scholars prefer to call it westernisation), the amenability of tradition to forces of change has been well documented by historians and sociologists. It has been a process of adaptation and juxtaposition rather than that of unqualified antagonism and displacement (of the old by the new). It is thus that some scholars have written about the modernisation of tradition or even the modernity of tradition. The thrust towards individualism of the western type originated in different arenas including those of modern occupations and professions and political activity, but it has been a steady movement rather than a clean sweep. The coexistence of traditional and modern idioms of politics is a good example of the juxtaposition mentioned above, and no one exemplified it better than Gandhi.

Contrary to what is sometimes said, Gandhi was neither an uncritical traditionalist nor a dogmatic opponent of all aspects of modernity. The way he drew upon tradition in formulating his worldview was creative and owed much to his exposure to western values and institutions. He consistently claimed to be a sanatani Hindu, but rejected the authority of even the scriptures on particular issues if tradition offended reason or morality. He wrote in 1921, "I do not believe in the exclusive divinity of the Vedas. I decline to be bound by any interpretation, however learned it may be, if it is repugnant to reason or moral sense" (collected works, 21, p 246).

The criteria of reason and moral sensibility are universal. They were available to Gandhi in his own tradition also. The Brahmanical tradition acknowledges four sources of dharma, namely, revelation (shruti), remembered tradition (smriti), the example of good people (sadachar) and `self-validation' or conscience (atma tushti). The last named notion is the same as Gandhi's `moral sense'. He also called it the `inner voice', and claimed that it often `spoke' to him in times of crisis.

In regarding reason and moral sense as the primary sources of good conduct, Gandhi asserted the right of the individual to arrive at judgments and, if necessary, to defend them against collective opinion, whether traditional or contemporary. His excoriation of the practice of untouchability was not merely an assertion of his own individual right to make moral judgments — indeed he considered this an obligation — but more importantly the assertion of the moral worth of every single human being, irrespective of his or her ascribed social status. Such moral worth is the basic premise of good society; whether it is enhanced or eroded depends on the dialectic of social pressures and individual agency.

The conflict between individual moral judgment and group (kula, jati) dharma is old and abiding: it is one of the principal themes of the Mahabharata. Yudhishthira, the embodiment of moral righteousness in the epic, places absolute moral values above group-specific norms and questions the morality of the dharma of his own Kshatriya varna. Victory in the war is more like defeat in his eyes because it involved many moral transgressions. Some scholars consider Yudhishthira Gandhi's exemplar.

The conflict between individual and group judgments is not resolved in the Mahabharata or in the Bhagwad Gita, a text Gandhi called his `mother', by which, one presumes, he meant the source of his moral sensibility. In the climactic 18th chapter, this text asserts (verse 63) that even in the light of revealed knowledge, the moral agent has the inescapable responsibility of pondering the same and making choices for action according to his or her own best judgment. But almost immediately the idea of surrender to God is introduced (verse 66), more perhaps to stress the possibility of human error than to invalidate the obligation to evaluate the available options and choose from among them.

As a guide to action the foregoing might seem cryptic. Gandhi elaborated what he derived from various sources (Jainism, Hinduism, Christianity) by emphasising the criterion of compassion and glossing social action as selfless service (seva), particularly of the needy and the oppressed. Gandhi's position may be called moral or altruistic (other-oriented) individualism as against amoral or utilitarian (self-oriented) individualism. In his worldview, the actor as a self-conscious choice-making individual is the foundation of a moral civil society. He is wedded to truth and non-violence: he is the satyagrahi. It may be recalled that Gandhi chose particular individuals to initiate collective movements (himself at the commencement of the 1930 salt satyagraha, Vinoba Bhave in 1940) and held every participant individually responsible for adherence to the principles of satyagraha (self-purification, personal courage, selflessness, etc.), which were as important as the collective goals (social, economic or political).

In the context of satyagraha as spiritual advancement (or moral refinement), which Gandhi considered intensely personal, the actor's psychological disposition was regarded as more crucial than his social persona. It followed that any external pressure that might erode one's autonomy had to be resisted. Whatever diminished one's capacity to act responsibly — whether caste prejudice, colonial domination or technological encroachment — was to be considered evil. Gandhi's individualism was not anti-social, but the community was not to be allowed to diminish the individual's autonomy.

Self-aware and responsible individuals with a capacity for altruism are, in Gandhi's thinking, the basic constituents of good society everywhere. The enemy of the autonomous individual and therefore of good society is the unbridled power of the state, the economy and the inward-looking social groups; hence, the need to assert the power of the individual against them without the use of force. Autonomy, it may be clarified, is not hostile to collective action through the voluntary association of individuals.

(The writer is Honorary Professor of Sociology, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi)

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