Emerson-Thoreau-Gandhi: A Cycle of Ideas

- By Ayushi Bansal*

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of coloured glass that have been in use through all the age.”(Twain 1332)

The above quotation comes out to be so true when we read about the thinkers or philosophers of the previous ages. One such thinker that I am going to talk about in this paper is Mahatma Gandhi. While reading about Gandhi and reading his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth as well as Hind Swaraj one could make out how his ideas are influenced by the American Transcendentalists of the Nineteenth Century. Gandhi had himself written to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942, “I have profited greatly by the writings of Thoreau and Emerson” (Hendrick 462).

In this paper, I am going to discuss how the ideas of the transcendentalists were taken up by Gandhi and were moulded and adopted by him to place them in the context of Modern India as well as Gandhi's stay in South Africa.

Gandhi is known as a devout follower of Truth. Through his autobiographical accounts one can get ample examples where he shows how truth has given him power and a sense of self. For him the belief in himself and Truth which he further called God was the soul force in becoming self-reliant.

The writings of Mahatma Gandhi provide us with his view on the importance of self-reliance. For him to be self-reliant was not just in the material and physical terms but also in a spiritual way. This idea comes very close to RW Emerson's essay “Self-Reliance.” Emerson in his essay brings forward his idea of a “self-helping man”. He writes, “Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul” (“Self-Reliance” 13). This idea can also be seen in Gandhi's idea of a man who would build his own empire on his own. Gandhi every now and then emphasizes on the ability of man to govern himself. A man who is capable of taking individual actions without bothering about what others would say of them. Gandhi's idea of “self-rule” and “self-government” is sometimes misunderstood. He is a man like Emerson who focuses on individual power and contribution. A society formed by self-governing man would last long and would thrive much more effectually than a society which is governed by an individual solely. By self-rule he means complete rule over self; over one's body and mind. Gandhi in his seminal work Hind Swaraj brings forward the banes of modern civilization and modern machinery. One of the major emphasis of his work is on the use of man's own body to meet his basic necessities. He says there is no better machinery than a man's body and emphasized on the proper use of this invaluable machinery. Gandhi was a “nonconformist” and followed Emerson who writes, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature” (“Self-Reliance” 4).

But this is not what Gandhi really meant about the Swaraj or Emerson's “self-reliance”. He adopts the readings of Emerson and Thoreau and combines them to form a new idea that operates within an Indian context. When Emerson says, “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man” (“Self-Reliance” 8) in 1841 he supported it by saying how individual perception can be transmitted to the whole generation and then to the whole world. Gandhi believed in the power of the individuals like Emerson did, he believed in it and used it in his political venture. Self-reliant people, who could come together, rise and form a government would then lead a government which Thoreau talks about in 1849. Thoreau says, “There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly” (27).

Gandhi brought the idea of these two transcendentalists into his own practices. He devised his famous method of Satyagraha in 1907; there are evidences that show Gandhi's prior knowledge of the essays by these two transcendentalists. In Indian Opinion there has been found ample number of extracts from Thoreau's essay. (Hendrick 465)

Gandhi's idea of Swaraj and Satyagraha go hand in hand. Which one developed first cannot be said of. Being a satyagrahi, one needs to be a devotee of Swaraj. One must follow self-reliance in order to be a satyagrahi. The importance of integrity of one's self and the power of non-conformity makes a person satyagrahi. Gandhi writes,

In every great cause it is not the number of fighters that counts but it is the quality of which they are made that becomes the deciding factor. The greatest men of the world have always stood alone. Take the great prophets, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed - they all stood alone like many others whom I can name. But they had living faith in themselves and their God, and believing as they did that God was on their side, they never felt lonely (All Men are Brothers 194).

Gandhi, through his knowledge built his own army to fight against colonisers— an army, which believed in self-reliance and practised non-violence. The great Salt March of 1930 and the Swadeshi Movement led by Gandhi are examples where the power of “civil disobedience” and “nonconformity” combined to give rise to such revolutionary movements. These ideas found its way from Emerson as he writes,

Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. (“Self-Reliance” 7)

A satyagrahi has to be pure both in mind and action. Self-reliance is true and complete when a person not only masters his body but also his mind. His mind is equally virtuous as his actions. Even Emerson writes, “Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.”(7)

One can hence see how Gandhi has adopted ideas from these transcendentalists and has used it in an apt and subtle way to develop his idea of Swaraj. The Swaraj which Gandhi dreamt of for India seemed to be a utopia. He writes in the Preface to Hind Swaraj,

I would warn the reader against thinking that I am today aiming at the Swaraj described therein. I know that India is not ripe for it… I am individually working for the self-rule pictured therein. But today my corporate activity is undoubtedly devoted to the attainment of Parliamentary Swaraj, in accordance with the wishes of the people of India.

There is no doubt in the fact that Gandhi was influenced by Thoreau and Emerson but one should not ignore the fact that these transcendentalists were themselves influenced by the Indian religious teachings, especially Emerson who was an admirer and a devotee of Bhagavat Gita and Vedanta (Riepe 115).This clearly shows how the philosophers and writers are inspired by the ancient works of literature. They follow the footsteps of the great minds from the past, read them again and again and give a new perspective to their writings. The transcendentalists followed the Gita even when there was little communication and migration between the two lands. The ideas and knowledge know no boundaries and can be transmitted via miraculous ways. The new reader hence revives it and shed a new light upon them. Gandhi too followed the same rule and read the transcendentalists of the previous century and gained a lot from them. The constant interdependency of the East and the West, the cyclicality of the exchange of ideas gives more strength to my very first quotation. Gandhi might have borrowed from the transcendentalists but one cannot deny the fact that this act of adopting and then adding his own learning to it helped him develop Satyagraha which started at a smaller scale in South Africa and expanded to Swaraj in India to fight against the British rule.

Works Cited

1. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance.”. Accessed on 25 April, 2020
2. Gandhi, Mahatma. All Men Are Brothers (Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as told in his own words). Accessed on 23 Apr. 2020.
3. Gandhi, Mahatma. Hind Swaraj, Accessed on 25 Apr. 2020
4. Hendrick, George. “The Influence of Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience' on Gandhi's Satyagraha.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, 1956, pp. 462–471. JSTOR. Accessed 22 Apr. 2020.
5. Riepe, Dale. “Emerson and Indian Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 28, no. 1, 1967, pp. 115–122. JSTOR. Accessed on 22 Apr. 2020.
6. Thoreau, Henry David. “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.”, Accessed on 25 Apr. 2020.
7. Twain, Mark. Mark Twain's Own Autobiography, Accessed on 25 Apr. 2020.

* Ayushi Bansal is an SEO Freelance Content Writer. | Email: ayushibansal2019@gmail.com