Understanding Individuality in Gandhi’s Moral Philosophy

- By Kumar Rahul* and Sanjeev Kumar^#

Abstract

This paper traces the notion of individuality in Gandhi’s moral philosophy and argues that his notion of individuality is tied with a ‘supreme principle of morality’. Swaraj is the epistemic venue from where spring up impulses of individuality. Further, this paper argues that the quest for self-knowledge and autonomy moralises Candhi’s individuality by guarding it against atomism and possessive individualism. By situating the self in an interrelated cosmos, Gandhi radicalises the notion of individuality.

Individuality has a philosophical pedigree. John Locke's ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ is one of the pioneering works on individuality. Before Locke, the idea of individuality had made a beginning in ‘Confessions’ of St. Augustine, and it travelled to Locke through Michel de Montaigne. Liberalism defines individuality in distinctly unique ways.¹ It is founded in the principle of equality of civil liberties, perceived in terms of ‘non-interference’ and ‘right to privacy’. ‘Individual’ alone is the unit-recipient of civil liberties, which allow them to have, preserve and celebrate ‘difference’ and ‘uniqueness’, Individuality is held as the most precious possession of all humans, hence inviolable. The career of ‘Individuality’ has remained tied to ‘individual liberty’ for a long time until Kant formulated it in terms of autonomy: the ability to be a law to oneself, to direct one’s life based on guidance derived from within.² In fact, the quest for self-knowledge is to facilitate the individual to explore her individuality.

Why locate individuality in Gandhi’s moral philosophy? In his seminal treatise, Hind Swaraj, Gandhi seems to have a moral project at hand: to set out the ‘supreme principle of morality’³, a yardstick for each individual to ordain her civic, social and political life. Gandhi's swaraj, as he postulates it, is not to be a readymade tool for accessing freedom. It is rather to be a climate of freedom. Hence, in Gandhi's philosophy, individuality is not as simplistic and atomistic as in liberalism. Swaraj as ‘self-rule’ lays out a self-other relationality framework. It is a ‘disciplined rule from within’⁴, the rule of the self over itself. It is “a sacred word, a Vedic word, meaning self-rule and self-restraint, and not freedom from all restraints⁵....” His expositions of swaraj in his writings radiate impulses of individuality. They provide a moral motivation to fathom how he understood individuality and to inquire if his notions of individuality are at variance with liberalism. Notwithstanding temptations to see him as a reformed liberal, this paper argues that his notion of individuality strikes a harmony between the self and the other rather than seeing them in adversarial or atomistic terms. Further, understanding Gandhi's individuality entails a cosmic framework. We maintain that applying a Western-liberal framework to fathom Gandhi's notion of individuality is an anachronistic and methodological mismatch.

Swaraj and Individuality

The core meaning of swaraj has been outlined above. Gandhi's notion of individuality draws from his theory of Swaraj as the rule of the self over itself. It transcends epistemological categories that have so far dominated the landscape of political theory. Swaraj is the quest for self-knowledge. The quest for self-knowledge rests on two premises.⁶ First, the individual-centric premise is that each of us is uniquely constituted. It is more of a question of ‘who I am’ than ‘what Tam’. Charles Taylor’s work, ‘Sources of the Self’ is instructive in this sense. He writes, “We seek self-knowledge, but this can no longer mean just impersonal lore about human nature as it could for Plato. Each of us has to discover his or her own form. We are not looking for the universal nature; we each look for our own being”.⁷ The second premise is that of individual autonomy. The mainstay of the second premise is that each person is the author of her own life, shaper of her own destiny, and ruler of her own self. This is made possible, however, only if one knows oneself in authentic ways. Modern autonomy theorists, such as Gary Watson, Harry Frankfurt, Gerald Dworkin, Joel Feinberg, and others, have elaborately worked on resolving the problem of authenticating self-knowledge. Gandhi, though not typically an autonomy theorist, would contribute significantly to the literature on autonomy studies. He would converse with them on the problem of authentication. And in the end, he would suggest to them a more comprehensive idea of autonomy based on an authentic notion of the self.

Politics, individuality, and religiosity

Bracketing Gandhi within a single account will be a methodological error. Instead, we argue that he appears to suggest his own methodology. Given his metaphysical commitments, it will be a mistake to understand Gandhi in a reductionist manner. For, a reductionist methodology constricts interpretative freedom. Gandhi never claimed he was a philosopher, yet his writings problematize established methods of philosophical inquiry. Gandhi would agree with Marx to the extent that alienation leaves a jeopardizing effect on the person’s self, He emphasized the inevitability of manual labour for everyone, regardless of howsoever intellectually genius the person may be. He believed that manual labour engenders a liberating effect on the person’s senses. It accounts for his hatred for commodity fetishism. His critique of it is evident in ‘Hind Swaraj’ and his other writings. However, Gandhi and Marx recede from each other on the question of determining the most fundamental cause of self-indulgence, which, in his view, is an obstacle to self-knowledge. Gandhi warns against the vice of self-indulgence. “Literature, full of the virtues of self-indulgence, served out in attractive forms, is flooding this country from the West and there is the greatest need for our youth to be on their guard.⁸”

In Gandhi's view, then, neither the family, capitalism, nor even colonialism was the fundamental cause of self-indulgence. Rather, it was the spectre of modern civilization which was at the root of it. Colonialism and capitalism were products of modern civilization, creating a creed and self-indulgent culture. The biggest damage was that it prohibited the fundamental possibility of the persons knowing themselves, for it produced, propagated, and domesticated a false notion of the self, engrossed an insatiable desire for multiplying wants, and derelict persons from duties to the self and the God. It debased humans from the metaphysical roots of the self, therefore, from self-knowledge. It is fair, therefore, to conclude that Gandhi's quest for the realisation of the self involves a liberation from the arbitrary identity imposed on persons by the Western modernity and its nemesis, which humans often accept, because these identities appeal to their desire to escape from the real question of ‘Who I am’. Hence, the moral terrain of the idea of individuality in Gandhi is much wider than in liberalism.

It is worth noting that Gandhi’s quest for Swaraj does not entail complete withdrawal from the ‘world’ (worldly pursuits), in particular, political and economic affairs. Instead, drawing from the Bhagavad Gita, Gandhi’s pursuit of Swaraj recommends active engagement with the ‘world’ and ‘principled mixing'⁹ of religion with politics. The project of principled mixing of religion and politics is fraught with dangerous repercussions. Such advocacy is also prone to be misunderstood by critics. The core of ‘principled mixing’ is that while Gandhi does not allow the political apparatus to control persons’ unhindered right to religious freedom, he recommends the purification of politics by deriving sanctity and universality of human welfare which all religions of the world propagate. Also, at the individual level, he wanted individual persons to spiritualise his will, which, in another form, is akin to Kant's intellectual product- ‘the good will’¹⁰, directing oneself toward the welfare of the entire humankind. By acquiring the capacity to direct the self toward human welfare, one can do good politics. The quintessence, as we put it, is to bring ‘religiosity’ to politics by this proposition. Thus, we argue that autonomy, for Gandhi, is a route to doing good politics. Politics, for him, is a constant search for a new definition and widening the horizons of human welfare without losing sight of informed individuality. Liberal realists conventionally define politics as the pursuit of power. Gandhi's ‘principled mixing’, as argued above, would redefine politics as ‘pursuit of emancipatory power’, where the self of the person doing politics will be overwhelmed by the ‘religiosity’ to direct itself to the welfare and amelioration of all humankind, generally, and of the ordinary and the ignored, especially. Gandhi's unique way of weaving individuality with social welfare is what the contemporary practitioners of politics could learn.

Individual and Community

The argument that knowing the self involves withdrawing from family, society, and politics is central to some schools of Indian and Christian philosophy for contemplative life. Gandhi, though he imbibes a great deal of insight from classical Indian philosophy, departs from this canon on this count. The problems of self-knowledge and the value of self-knowledge have been accounted for. Before we conclude this section, it is imperative to visit Gandhi's critique of modern civilization again to substantiate the argument that self-knowledge is Gandhi’s vantage point of conceptualizing individuality.

First, the logic of Western modernity has overpowering universalizing impulses. Thus, it doubts the efficacy of the locale, whether community, tradition, or culture, to evolve its own paradigms of modernity. It is dismissive that tradition can be a viable source of supplying morality by which individual persons would judge themselves on their progress of self-knowledge. There has to be a standard to judge the progress of the pursuant of self-knowledge. This standard cannot be alien to one’s tradition and culture. Thus, Gandhi recommends tradition to be a good ally of persons questing for the pursuit of self-knowledge.

Second, given the above argument, critics fear that Gandhi would perhaps give in to the community in the tussle between individual and community. This would be a hasty conclusion. Gandhi spells out a cognitive process for pursuing swaraj in which the individual is the key agent. The self is the unit agency, the key to the quest for Swaraj at every step. The pursuit of Swaraj by the individual begins with ‘self-examination’, which enlightens one with ‘self-knowledge’. The knowledge of the ‘self’ red flags the areas to work on, leading to ‘self-transformation’. Finally, a transformed self experiences Swaraj, the ultimate state of inner and spiritual freedom, where the self begins to treat ‘other selves’ as an organic constituent of one’s own self. We describe this as ‘cosmopolitan self’, which is obligated to follow the cosmopolitan dharma.¹¹

We wish to underscore two imports to lay out a conceptual framework of Gandhi's individuality. One, Gandhi keeps the individual and the community in a tensional balance. Swaraj is a predicate of a considered role of the self at each step of its pursuit, indicating that individuality has to remain a non-negotiable value. Hence, the question of subordinating it to the community, which rank communitarians do, does not arise. Thus, individuality stands tall in Gandhian philosophy. Second, the nature and purpose of the liberal notion of individuality are entirely at variance with that of Gandhi’s. We should recall that in his critique of modern civilization, Gandhi considers utilitarianism as a Western morality, which glorifies the pursuit of happiness conceived broadly in terms of the hedonistic index of bodily pleasure. Gandhi grounds his propositions against materialism and utilitarianism in the revised version of spiritualism that allows active engagement with worldly affairs. Although product of the Western scholarship, Kant and Rawls have shown us that a teleological theory, such as utilitarianism, does not mind treating some individuals as a means to attending the telos of overall happiness. Such a philosophical theory is unacceptable for both Gandhi and Rawls, hence worthy of outright rejection. The value of individuality has to be the same for everyone. Subjecting some to sacrifice their individualities, which entitles one to realize the worth of life, in the trade-off for general happiness, is unethical, hence unjust. At least in this common place, Kantian and Gandhian ethics share the same moral terrain.

Last point that we wish to argue is liberalism defines individuality in terms of entitlement to liberty and the right to self-realization, which is perceived, as Mill tells us, in terms of the ‘self-development’ of intellectual and creative faculties. It is also perceived as the right to privacy and to preserve one’s identity. However, it lacks a vision of the self, as to where the person would derive morality from, what the person will do with their freedom and privacy. It has little to do with the community and the least with humanity. Thus conceived, it promotes a constricted vision of morality, limiting its scope to justifying individually defined conceptions of the good, privacy, and a notion of identity which valorises atomism. In sharp contrast, Gandhi’s individual is placed in a cosmos. There is a metaphysical system dwelling on the Gita that encourages the individual to attain self-knowledge and liberate oneself from materialistic and egoistic constraints that prevent the individual from ethically relating oneself with the entire humankind. There is a craving to liberate the self and undertake the emancipatory project. Thus, the very essence of individuality is spiritual, as against teleological. Mill and Rawls, perhaps the two greatest philosophers of individuality, though with antithetical justificatory frameworks, fall short of both Gandhi’s ethical framework, in which individuals are invested with moral purpose and Gandhi’s methodological framework, which transcends the individual from asocial atomism. Gandhi does not dwell on either teleological or contractarian method to conceptualise his idea of individuality.

Gandhi's metaphysical commitments

Gandhi lays out a cognitive process for acquiring self-knowledge. It draws from the Advaita metaphysics in which Brahma’s fundamental reality is the universe. According to the Upanishads, Brahma is completely a real ‘Being’. “It is pure ‘Being’. It is apriori, that is, the ‘Being’ is necessary in order for anything to be; it is not a posteriori, that is, a being discovered by empirical experiences. It is the basis of the empirical world, although it cannot be experienced itself.”¹² The Upanishads, described the Brahma from two points of view: the higher knowledge (para vidya) and the lower knowledge (apara vidya). In other words, ‘para vidya’ means the world under the aspect of eternity and ‘apara vidya’ means the world viewed under the aspect of time.

“The Brahma of the higher form of knowing is the Brahma without attributes (Nirguna Brahma). The Brahma of the lower form of knowing is the Brahma with attributes (saguna Brahma). Nirguna Brhama cannot be described as good or evil, just or unjust, or loving ornon-loving, All attributes are inadequate. Because all such attributes denote an order of reality but less than Absolute reality. Nirguna Brahma is sometimes described as satchitanand (being-consciousness-bliss.”¹³

The Brahma is the transcendental unity behind all plurality. The Brahman is the essence of consciousness. It is not consciousness as minds can be conscious. It is the foundation of knowledge. So, if we are cognate to know the Brahma, we cognate to know the ‘Truth’. Since Brahma is the Absolute reality, which causes all plurality to exist, knowing the ‘Truth’ will amount to directly knowing the self. Thus, the cognitive process of self-knowledge will not prescribe separating subject and object. Brahma is, above all, duality, both metaphysical duality and epistemological duality.¹⁴

“Brahma is the essence of Happiness. Brahma is not happy as men may be happy, but Brahma is the foundation of Happiness. The uniqueness of satchitanand stems from Brahma’ lack of all limitation. If Brahma is the only reality, what sort of reality does world have? In dealing with this problem, Shankara seized upon an Upanishadic expression ‘iva’ (as it were) and developed the doctrine of ‘maya’. The term ‘maya’ first appeared in the Rig Veda to denote a kind of magical power. Later in the Upanishads-as they are interpreted by Shankara, ‘maya’ became the power of Brahma to manifest itself in a world which has ‘iva’ reality. The world itself is then said to be ‘maya’, and ‘maya’ is often translated as illusion or unreality¹⁵". Max Muller'¹⁶ writes, “Brahma is true, the world is false, and the soul is Brahma and nothing else. In Advaita metaphysics, thus we see that the Brahma is God. It is the Being of all existence, the Knower of all knowledge, Foundation of all bliss. Brahma is beyond space, time and causality.”¹⁷

The above expositions cast Gandhi’s view in the web of relationality, from where one can understand the thread of connection and complementarity between the self and the other, the Absolute truth and relative truth, unity and plurality, and above all, transcendental self, empirical self, and cosmopolitan self. This exposition also suggests what Gandhi had in mind as to how he wanted to execute and justify ‘self-rule.’ As suggested earlier, this journey begins with ‘self-examination,’ followed by ‘self-knowledge,’ followed by ‘self-transformation,’ leading to ‘self-rule,’ i.e., Swaraj as autonomy. Thus, it is not the idea of Swaraj that by itself constitutes a notion of autonomy; rather, it is the cognitive process implicit in the individual pursuit and practice of Swaraj that makes it a good candidate for individual autonomy. It is, at the same time, both a process of transcendental and empirical knowledge; it guides both relationality and rationality. This is, in large part, the Gandhian idea of individuality.

A critique of the Western-liberal framework

It would be worthwhile to juxtapose Gandhi's ideas with the Western-liberal framework, which tends to conceptualise individuality in oppositional frames and binaries. Much of liberal discourses are caught in the tension between the negative/positive binary. A vast corpus of political theory literature is devoted to justifying the binary or critiquing it. A major limitation of this approach is that it makes individual freedom contingent on the state. The absence of the state or its presence in varying degrees is considered a condition of freedom. Even in contemporary Western discourses, the state continues to be the most important site of inquiry on philosophizing individual freedom.

A second philosophical antinomy centres around the ‘self-other’ relationship. John Stuart Mill tried to rescue liberalism against charges of brute individualism. He offered a powerful corrective of equating freedom with the absence of external constraints. Mill’s conception of freedom emphasizes the necessity for individual autonomy. Exercise of individual autonomy opens access to various choices and possibilities. It facilitates one with means and opportunities for realizing the full range of values, considered formative for self-development and self-government. However, even Mill could not bridge the antinomies of self-regarding and other-regarding freedom. Mill had an enormous influence on subsequent thinking about individual freedom. Many subsequent writers have misleadingly cast Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ as a classic statement of the negative view of freedom. Liberal freedoms empower individuals to be authors of their choices and preferences. Gandhi would ask, how do we form our choices? Where do we get moral motivations to form our principles?

Gandhi would also call for a gender-centric inquiry into liberal individuality. Although this is too ambitious a research subject to be discussed here, a brief mention is worthwhile.

Philosophical inquiries into liberal ideas of freedom and their exercise in the real world are institutionally gendered. The realm of the private is an impregnable forte. The intimacy of personal and civil liberty is closely associated. Liberals construe the intrusion into the realm of the private as a violation of civil liberty. In practice, what we witness is a gendered exercise of freedom. The gap between the self and the other becomes prominently visible. Men automatically assume the role of the self, whereas women are relegated to ‘the other’ domain, When we say ‘individual freedom,’ it is foremost the men’s freedom. When we say ‘civil liberty,’ it is primarily men’s liberty. Far from making it a binary subject, Gandhi radicalises his notion of individuality by foregrounding it in the individual's agency. Swaraj, for him, is more of an enabling agential instrument rather than a structural ingredient. Given Gandhi's ethical importance to the other, his swaraj would be more agentially enabling for women than men.

We find that liberal individuality borrows heavily from the literature on rights. Everyone is a rights carrier. Critics fear that rights concepts have become so loose that almost anything can plausibly be advanced as a rights claim. And, when class interest is promoted in the name of rights, there is a potential danger of getting the claims of those commanding greater resources and influences recognized as valid. Consequently, there is a danger for those without power to flounder and remain unrecognized and unattended. In societies where social ranks and privileges are sharp, the historically deprived remain unattended in the allocations of individual freedom.

Gandhi conceptualize his idea of individual freedom around the word ‘Swaraj.’ Swaraj, for him, is not to be understood in terms of demands for the independence of India. Gandhi interprets Swaraj as self-rule or spiritual freedom to be attained individually. The novelty of Gandhi lies in the fact that he made the attainment of self-rule, which was hitherto understood as apolitical activity, compatible with the pursuit of politics and economics. The attainment of self-rule no longer demanded withdrawal from political and economic activities.

Thus, the notion of individuality ingrained in Hind Swaraj echoes the voice of Gandhi’s ordinary persons, including women, who undergo debasement by many forms of domination, subjugation, and exclusionary practices. It takes on all forms of domination- individual, social, cultural, and colonial, and finds them detrimental to persons’ individuality. “For just as a free civilization demands mastery over mind and our passion, so freedom for individual consists of each person establishing self-rule. If we become free, India is free. And in this thought, you have a definition of Swaraj. It is a Swaraj when we lear to rule ourselves. It is, therefore, in the palm of our hands... But such Swaraj has to be experienced, by each one for himself.”¹⁸ This is the core of Gandhian idea of individual freedom from where his notion of individuality springs up.

Concluding remarks

Tracing individuality in Gandhi's moral philosophy entails, in the first place, an inquiry into the nature of the self. Acquiring self-knowledge is the starting point. Self-knowledge enables one to remove the cloud of illusion and ignorance. It allows one can see oneself and one’s place in the cosmos. The need for true self-knowledge thus has particular urgency for Gandhi because modernity tends to present distorted pictures of the true self. Modernity considers all desires worth pursuing so long as those desires are freely chosen and so long as no harm is done to others in their pursuit. This self roams around a vicious circle of rational egoism and rational choice. Such distorted pictures of the ‘self which modernity offers, torments Gandhi and prompts him to call into action his own doctrine of Swaraj. Gandhi’s emphasis on developing the cognitive capacity to achieve Swaraj and help others in this pursuit is urgent for him. As against utilitarian individuality, self-rule does not allow human nature to become individualistically voracious. Gandhi's individuality is, therefore, not characterized by enticement, temptation, and voracity of power and utility. Also, contrary to the atomistic or contractarian self, Gandhi espouses a relational notion of the self, where the self is socially situated. Gandhi radicalizes the notion of individuality by situating the self in an inter-related cosmos and by according ethical primacy to ‘the other’.

Notes and References:

1. Taken from Kumar Rahul, “Gandhian Swaraj: A Theory of Self-Knowledge”, in Sanjeev Kumar, ed., Gandhi and the Contemporary World (London: Routledge, 2020)
2. Ibid.
3. Kant uses this term in the preface of The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals.
   Immanuel Kant, The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
4. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, herein after CWMG, Vol.45, pp. 263-64.
5. Ibid.
6. Kumar Rahul, “Gandhian Swaraj: A Theory of Self-Knowledge”, in Sanjeev Kumar, ed., Gandhi and the Contemporary World (London: Routledge, 2020)
7. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 181.
8. D.G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: The Life of M. K. Gandhi, Vol. 2 (New Delhi: eR an Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1961), 31
9. Coinage of this term is inspired by Rajeev Bhargava's term ‘principled distance’.
10. Immanuel Kant, The Moral Law, Special Indian edition (London & New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 8.
11. Kumar Rahul, “On the Self-Other Relationship: Lessons from Gandhi for an Alternative Cosmopolitan Framework”, Gandhi Marg, Vol. 37, No.2 (July-September 2015), p.351.
12. Ibid. p. 337
13. 13. Ibid. p.337
14. Ibid. p. 338
15. Ibid, p. 338.
16. Max Muller, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912), p.122.
17. Kumar Rahul, “On the Self-Other Relationship: Lessons from Gandhi for an Alternative Cosmopolitan Framework”, Gandhi Marg, Vol. 37, No.2 (July-September 2015), p. 338.
18. Anthony J. Parel, “The Doctrine of Swaraj in Gandhi's Philosophy” in Crisis and Change in Contemporary India, eds., Upendra Baxi and Bhikhu Parekh (New Delhi: Sage, 1995).

Courtesy: This article has been reproduced from the Gandhi Marg, Volume 44, Number 3, October-December 2022.

“Excerpts of this article have appeared in the chapter: Gandhian Swaraj: A Theory of Self-Knowledge, authored by Kumar Rahul, in Sanjeeo Kumar's edited book, ‘Gandhi and the Contemporary World’, London: Routledge, 2020.

* KUMAR RAHUL is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ramjas College, University of Delhi. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Global Affairs, New Delhi. Email: kumarrahul12@gmail.com

# SANJEEV KUMAR is Associate Professor of Political Science at Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Global Affairs, New Delhi. His recent work ‘Gandhi and the Contemporary World edited) is published by Routledge in 2020. Email: sanjeevkumar78@gmail.com