Gandhi as a Philosopher

John Perry
Coming up on Philosophy Talk: Gandhi as a philosopher.

Gandhi
I have never made a statement that the masses of India, if it became necessary, would resort to violence.

Ken Taylor
Gandhi articulated non-violence as a philosophy. He practiced non-violence as a leader

John Perry
He changed history through civil disobedience.

Gandhi
I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace. I know the value of discipline and truth.

Ken Taylor
Gandhi’s philosophy of brahmacharya meant control of the senses in thought, word, and deed.

Gandhi
The safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world, and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law—the law of truth and love.

John Perry
Our guest is Akeel Bilgrami from Columbia University.

Ken Taylor
Gandhi, the philosopher—coming up on Philosophy Talk.

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you live in the studios of KALW San Francisco.

John Perry
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus.

Ken Taylor
Today: Gandhi as philosopher.

John Perry
Mahatma Gandhi was a great spiritual and political leader. He was father of the Indian independence movement. He was the man who preached in practice non violence, and he inspired millions around the world, including America’s own apostle of non violence, Martin Luther King, but you don’t usually think of Gandhi as a philosopher.

Ken Taylor
But he was John. He was certainly all the things you just mentioned. And he was, but he was also a profound philosophical thinker. Now, he wasn’t an academic philosopher, like you and me, but he certainly wrote a lot that could be called philosophy.

John Perry
Academic philosophers like us will find his philosophical writings frustrating, at least at times. But when you realize that Gandhi’s spirituality, his approach to politics and his philosophical outlook are all interconnected, then you realize that if you want to understand this phenomenon, the phenomenon of Gandhi, you also have to understand his philosophical outlook.

Ken Taylor
So let’s have a taste of Gandhi as philosopher, and how that might help us better understand Gandhi, the spiritual and political phenomenon.

John Perry
Well take Gandhi’s views about morality. You might think that the leader of nonviolent non cooperation, as he likes to call it would be big on morally condemning his opponents and would be constantly claiming the moral high ground.

Ken Taylor
Well, most revolutionaries do tend to criticize the old order as morally problematic, even morally bankrupt.

John Perry
Well, I’m not sure it’s completely fair to call Gandhi revolutionary, he didn’t lead an armed rebellion, like most revolutionaries, and he and many of his followers were willing to be killed, but they weren’t willing to kill.

Ken Taylor
Well, I guess the term revolutionary does tend to connote violence. So I’m not sure we have a good word for exactly what Gandhi was, you know, you know, lexicon but But back to your point about Gandhi and morality, surely, though, he thought that he had morality on his side.

John Perry
Well, Gandhi was a deeply principled man who constantly strove to be on the side of morality, but he wasn’t big on claiming to know the absolute moral truth. And he actually thought that the ethical condemnation of one’s opponent was itself a form of violence, and he rejected all forms of violence.

Ken Taylor
I don’t get it. If you have morality on your side, what’s so bad about claiming that you do? Isn’t that just stating what you believe to be true?

John Perry
Well, first about the truth, Gandhi had a very complicated view about truth. He believed that there is such a thing as absolute truth. And he felt that he was on a quest to know the absolute truth, but he also thought that the quest for Truth was unending and uncertain. Only God knows the absolute truth. And it’s a form of arrogance to claim to have the absolute truth on your side and disputes among humans. We humans only know what Gandhi called relative truth.

Ken Taylor
So Gandhi was a relativist? Is that why he rejected moral condemnation as a form of violence have been relativist after all promote tolerance of competing points of view, and competing moral outlooks?

John Perry
Well, but relativist don’t really believe in absolute truth, even as the elusive object of an unending quest like Gandhi did. So Gandhi was an absolute is but some absolute is think they have a firm grip on the Absolute Truth, under the illusion that they alone know the absolute truth, they lorded over those who disagree with them. Gandhi never pretended to know the absolute truth, and didn’t lord it over anyone.

Ken Taylor
Now we got started down this road, when you said Gandhi rejected criticizing the behavior of others. He saw that as a form of violence. He said, I’m still not sure I understand.

John Perry
Yeah, well look at it from the perspective of the opponent. If you constantly criticize your opponent, he’ll see it as an attack, perhaps not as an attack on his physical person, but an attack on something that might be more important, more important, who’s spiritual person, and that will put your opponent on the defensive.

Ken Taylor
Well, if you put that way, I grabbed that moral condemnation is a kind of attack. But isn’t it only an attack in a metaphorical sense? I mean, why should we think of moral condemnation as literally and surely a form of violence?

John Perry
Well, violence takes many forms, not just physical. There’s economic violence, cultural violence. Even in our professional philosophy, there’s a certain kind of bullying in print that sort of violent think of moral condemnation is just another form of violence and Gandhi rejected all forms of violence.

Ken Taylor
Complicated man, that Gandhi, and a complicated thinker too. I’m still not sure that what it all adds up to.

John Perry
I’m in the same boat, Ken. Fortunately, will be joined by a man who has thought long and hard about Gandhi: Akeel Bilgrami, author of “Gandhi, the Philosopher.”

Ken Taylor
And we’d also like to invite you our listeners to plumb the philosophical depths of this complex spiritual and political leader. The number is 1-800-525-9917.

John Perry
But first, our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Polly Stryker, talks to someone who’s been using elements of Gandhi’s philosophy to solve real world problems. She files this report.

Polly Stryker
It’s no coincidence that Gandhi’s grandson wrote the foreword to the book that explains nonviolent communication, or NVC. According to Arun Gandhi, his grandfather stressed the need to communicate non violently, because he saw passive violence, the kind brought about by harsh judgmental words as being an underlying cause of physical violence.

John Kinyon
You’re so selfish.

Polly Stryker
That’s John Kinyon, mediator and co founder of the Bay Area’s center for nonviolent communication, which is an approach developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg 40 years ago. NVC involves choosing to hear people’s unmet needs beneath hostile language, like what you just heard. So instead of stomping my foot and shouting,”I am not selfish!” I might hear…

John Kinyon
I have a need for consideration for care of others that isn’t being met. And I could focus on that as what the person is saying, instead of getting caught up and reacting defensively to the criticism. It’s the idea of seeing our interdependence of others needs aren’t being met the mind needs.

Polly Stryker
Nonviolence isn’t a technique to be used when you need it. And it’s not being passive. It’s really a philosophical worldview, based in compassion and connection. And Gandhi didn’t create it, he adopted the Hindu concept of Ahimsa, or doing no harm, and took it to new heights.

John Kinyon
It’s one thing to be loving and caring and kind to people. But can I do it when others are not being kind at all to me, or the opposite of kind and loving and cruel and oppressive? Can I still have love for that person. And nonviolent communication gives a way to do that by seeing the human needs that someone might be trying to meet, but in a very tragic way, in a very destructive way.

Polly Stryker
If you think this sounds touchy feely, think again, NVC is used all over the world in Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Rwanda without risk teens, between family members, John Kenyon wanted to do something positive after 911. So he went to a refugee camp in Pakistan filled with Afghan tribal members. He wanted to teach them nonviolent communication.

John Kinyon
I believe that if we don’t all come together and work together to solve these problems, from the local to the to the global, I don’t think we’re gonna make it.

Polly Stryker
He was talking with elders from different tribes. Some of them wanted to invite him to mosque, others didn’t. They started to fight.

John Kinyon
They were talking in terms of judgments of what’s right and wrong, and good and bad in a way it should be or shouldn’t be criticizing the other side, and I just kept translating that and hearing what their what their needs were.

Polly Stryker
After much listening, John identified that one group wanted to show him hospitality, the other wanted respect for their tradition of Islam.

John Kinyon
And then I turned to the whole group, after we got the needs on both sides. And I said, so. Does anybody in the room not share all of these needs, and needs for connection and sharing and hospitality and the needs for safety and protection and honoring traditions, and practices. There was kind of a stunned silence for a second. And then they all started smiling and nodding and could see that everyone was getting that. They all had those needs. It was really at that level, there was no conflict.

Polly Stryker
He suggested they work together to get all their needs met. One idea was to have John sit outside the mosque and hear the service. But that didn’t work for everyone. So what was the resolution?

John Kinyon
The last solution was to have someone sit with us that could explain what was going on in the mosque and what was happening and we could see and be really great part of it, but we’d still be outside the door and not inside.

Polly Stryker
The tribal elders recognized how John had teased out their common ground. They laughed and clapped and talk together for a long while. And maybe, just maybe, the seed of a non violent way to communicate was planted. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Polly Stryker.

John Perry
I’m John Perry, and with me is Ken Taylor.

Ken Taylor
Our guest today is Akeel Bilgrami. He’s a Johnsonian professor of philosophy at Columbia University director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities and author of the forthcoming book, “Gandhi, the Philosopher.” Akeel, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Akeel Bilgrami
Hi Ken, nice to be here.

John Perry
Akeel, your academic philosopher who’s published on a lot of standard subjects, all the boring stuff Ken and I publish on but you’ve also written about Muslim identity and of course, about Gandhi. As someone born and raised in India, I suppose you have a complicated relationship to the legacy of Gandhi, but how did you head down the road of of dealing with Gandhi, the philosopher?

Akeel Bilgrami
Well, you know, John I, I, as you say, I was born in India and I from time to time right about Indian politics and society and culture and and I found when I was in India that philosophy was really not being done at all in the department’s of philosophy and in the academy, generally people, but merely doing the history of Indian philosophy and run doing philosophy has you and I and can do it so. So, it started to think who, who in India did philosophy, who in India actually tried to think about philosophical topics and forge views of their own and, and I found that, really Gandhi was the only serious person in, in philosophy that in the last century, there are few others like to go on and so on. But but Gandhi seemed to be a very deep and profound and creative philosopher, who had thought hard about the issues you and I think up but mostly about politics and tried to derive his politics as I think, John, you put it in your initial description, you try to derive as politics from very general, metaphysical conceptions of the world.

John Perry
And so you think that these different sides of Gandhi’s spiritual leader, political leader, philosophical thinker, you think they make a coherent whole?

Akeel Bilgrami
Well, you know, I’ve written often to say that, that there may not be as much integrity and coherence as Gandhi thought there was, but that was certainly his aspiration to, to provide an integrated picture of these different aspects.

Ken Taylor
That’s really I mean, Gandhi was not trained as a philosopher, as I understand it, although I guess when he was in Britain, he fell into kind of philosophical circles, but he never really had much formal training as a philosopher, right. So what led to him to want to derive a political strategy? And I also understood that this political strategy had its birth in South African resistance, right. But so what what, what drove him to try and derive a political strategy from kind of first philosophical principles?

Akeel Bilgrami
Well, just his philosophical instincts, I think, primarily, his view was, you know, he was a great critic of the Enlightenment. And in my own thinking, I think of him as being continuous with very radical critics of the Enlightenment in the romantic tradition, but even before that, in 17th century descent in England and Netherlands and Europe Spinoza, for instance, and he’s part of a tradition, not that he read those people, but he has serious affinities with them. So in that sense, he was a philosopher, I think in in the romantic tradition.

Ken Taylor
Right, so but I just want to understand from the beginning, from the days in which he started leading South African Indians resistance to various things that were happening there. Was he driven from the beginning by a kind of philosophical outlook? Or was it just gut instinct? I mean, a practical man doing practical things or what are philosophical side of him grow and deepen or what?

Akeel Bilgrami
Right, it grew, I think, early in the 20th century, when he wrote his book in Suraj, it was very deeply philosophical. So I think it began in the first decade of the of the 20th century. But initially in the in the 1890s, when he was very active in South African civil disobedience. He didn’t have very many philosophical, developed ideas,

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, our guest is Akeel Bilgrami, author of “Gandhi, the Philosopher,” a forthcoming book.

John Perry
We’ve been talking about Gandhi as a spiritual and political leader, who is also a philosophical thinker. We’ve been asking how the different aspects of this complex man added up to a unified whole. Next we’ll dig more into the details of Gandhi’s wide ranging philosophy. You can join us by calling toll free 1-800-525-9917.

Ken Taylor
Gandhi on truth, democracy, science and a whole lot more—along with your calls and emails, when Philosophy Talk continues.

G. Love & Special Sauce
Peace, love, happiness.

John Perry
Can peace, love and happiness help us solve moral and political disputes? This is Philosophy Talk. And I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. What Gandhi asked himself we want to ask you: what is truth? Is truth merely relative? Or is there such a thing as absolute truth? Is it arrogant to claim to know the absolute truth can appeal to moral principles help solve political disputes? Or do they just get in the way? The number is 1-800-525.9917.

John Perry
And you can email us at comments at philosophytalk.org. Our guest is Akeel Bilgrami, author of “Gandhi, the Philosopher.”

Ken Taylor
Akeel, in some of your writings, I read that you that you believe that Gandhi has what you call a moral notion of truth, not a cognitive notion. I’ve got a two part question for you. First, I want you to explain that distinction. And then we’ll then I’ll follow up. Well, what distinction Are you making when you distinguish between a moral and a cognitive notion of truth?

Akeel Bilgrami
Right. Gandhi thought that if you take truth to be a predicate that applies to sentences or propositions, and not that he would put it this way, but but if you thought of truth as a cognitive notion, along those lines, you would, you would have a overly intellectualized relation to the world. And that’s what he was really opposed to what he thought the world was shot through with value. In fact, he thought it was shot through with the sacred and that the world therefore made normative demands on us, including nature.

Ken Taylor
Wait, wait, let’s stop a minute. You’re going oh, so look, suppose I the is over intellectualize notion of truth. I think it’s no as white as either true or false? I say, Yeah, it’s true. And that’s something I can know and believe. Is that what you mean by a cognitive notion of truth? I can have this. Right.

Akeel Bilgrami
Right. That’s true. So truth is the truth of propositions, which are made true by properties in the world.

Ken Taylor
How the world is independently of me. Okay, that’s the cognitive notion of true, that seems pretty plausible. But tell me more about this moral notion of truth.

Akeel Bilgrami
Right. So his, his idea was that we should, our relations to the world should be relations of practical engagement, rather than intellectualize detach study of the world. I’d say it was a shift of emphasis he wanted to do, too. He wanted to urge that, that our relationship to the world should be one of responding to its properties, which he thought were laden with value laden with the sacred, which made normative demands on our agency. And so engagement with the world for him was much more important than detached.

Ken Taylor
So the world, so here, let me try another glass and see if I’ve got you. So the world kind of, if we understand that, rightly, we understand how the world is it calls us to certain action, it calls us, it says, Do this, be this right? resist this cooperate here? So to understand the truth is to understand these demands that the world makes on us.

Akeel Bilgrami
Exactly, exactly. And, and, you know, Benny said that there’s no absolute truth, he thought, people, different people might respond differently. But the important thing was responsiveness via our practical agency to the world, he wanted to stress that over a detached attitude to other words, an attitude of explanation, study, and so on. So it was really a shift in emphasis. And let me try and say a little bit about why it was important for him to shift this emphasis. He thought that what happened when you stress science and detached, intellectual, explanatory forms of study was that you decentralized nature in the world, and he thought that was the beginning of a lot of social and cultural and political wrongs. He thought, if you saw the world is decentralized, you would want to conquer it with technology, you know, because it was something alien, it didn’t make normative demands on you. It’s something you’d looked at, from a very detached point of view.

John Perry
And he’ll I want to, I mean, I mean, I think you’re answering the question I’m gonna ask already, but I want to put it in certain context before you said, said he didn’t like the enlightenment. Now, come on. I mean, Obama likes the enlightenment, and McCain likes the enlightenment. And Bush likes the enlightenment. As far as I know, Sarah Palin likes the enlightenment. I mean, isn’t that kind of the range of acceptable opinion about the enlightenment, it was a great thing. I mean, who could be against the enlightenment?

Akeel Bilgrami
Right, sure. Okay, so So here, here is what he had in mind when he said that he he wasn’t particularly enthused by the enlightenment. He, you know, he was essentially a religious person. And he thought that he had a kind of pessimism that a certain sort of religious person has, which is the main thing he objected to in the indictment was that he thought the Enlightenment understood the social and political world in such a way that the worst tendencies in us were something that could be could be constrained by good politics by good codes and constitutions and principles. And, and that was really the deepest commitment of the Enlightenment. And Gandhi didn’t believe it. He thought that just politics of that kind was just simply not good enough, that we were capable of real harm, really evil, real violence and so on. And the idea that codes and constitutions were conceived as sufficient was simply unacceptable. I thought, people I just have to change themselves and their character and their commitments, moral commitments.

Ken Taylor
Let me let me so let me just frame what you said and see if I understand it. And then I’m gonna let some callers in here, right? So you said that Gandhi objected to the, what you call the de sacralization of the world, I mean, turns the world into brute dumb matter that has no soul, no spirit, no, no values inherent and things. I take it that part of that. Maybe I’m unintended. But part of that is it turns human beings into something weird to I mean, it turns the human beings into kind of self interest, self interest driven creatures that have to be constrained by politics of a certain kind, we get a Hobbesian state of nature and all that stuff, right, where the state doesn’t have any Annecy hold on us. Right? And we have to make it up but we constrain it and it’s supposed to constrain us. And he thinks none of that none of that works. It’s a complete misunderstanding of the human being in the world. Oh, that’s a profound criticism. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re talking about Gandhi as philosopher, and we’d love to have you join this conversation—1-800-525-9917. As always, you can email us at comments@philosophytalk.org. And we’ve got callers on the line now—Greg, and he’s Palo Alto. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. Greg.,

Greg
Hi, so my question was, the question was, well, in your early discussion, you talked about how Gandhi had rejected you he claim of moral superiority in any form of violence. And in that sense alone, regardless of its military actions, I would say the United States was perhaps the most violent nation in that sense, because we’ve claimed this enormous exceptionality except exceptionalism and moral superiority over basically everyone else in the world.

Ken Taylor
You okay, great. Thanks for comment. Do you want to react to that comment?

Akeel Bilgrami
Yeah, but you know, one of the things that you’ve got to understand is that, that Gandhi did not think that all violence came from individuals, he did think that built into certain institutions was was a tendency to violence. And one of the things he thought was, sort of built had built in violence was the cooperation and also the state. So in some senses, he was an anarchist. And he thought that, that you could, the only way to avoid violence was to make the centers of power, very local and decentralized. So so he would certainly say that governments, the United States, but many others, too, had a built in tendency to, to violence, and any thought only individuals were my religion. So he said, I’m not going to criticize the British imperial state, because the British imperial state does what it does. It’s built into it, that it will have the dispositions to certain kinds of violence, and, and it’s absurd to think that it will do anything else. So the only thing, only people, only individuals are moral agents.

Ken Taylor
So when it’s corporate, so it’s moral condemnation, by appeal to moral principles. Okay, then, I mean, because I understood that he he was he didn’t like criticism, because it was either lead to violence or was a form of violence itself. And, right, it wasn’t an effective weapon for fighting the things he wanted to fight. But what about moral condemnation of individuals, the supporters of the British imperial state?

Akeel Bilgrami
Right, so so, you know, his he had a very radical view on on that score, too. He he felt that it’s very important not to have a morality based on principles, but rather a morality in which you, you just act so as to try and influence people through setting an example through exemplary action. Now, this was, I think, an extremely subtle and curious sort of very creative counter to a very standard way of thinking that goes back centuries invest in philosophy. And I think it’s, it’s, you know, it’s very hard to make any sense of it unless you understood what kind of polity he wanted. I think it’s, it’s an utterly implausible idea when you have highly centralized forms of power. But if you have very local communitarian forms of rule, he thought it was quite sufficient to just try and set an example and never to have a morality based on principles criticism, contempt for people who failed to live up to principles and so on.

John Perry
So let me draw a kind of weird comparison here to see if I’m following you. So take Alan Greenspan, who was just had his worldview shaken. Now, as I understand it, Gandhi would actually have several things to criticize Greenspan about. First Greenspan Psychology was an enlightenment psychology that we all pursue our rational self interest. And secondly, he, he magnified that psychology and used it to characterize I mean, use it to form expectations about corporations, which are not not individual. So So it’s no wonder that we’re in the mess we are, if it’s based on on such a colossal mistake. And in addition, I suppose you’d say Greenspan was wrong to worry about principles all the time. Anyway, he should have just set a better example, maybe by driving a Hyundai instead of whatever he drives.

Akeel Bilgrami
But you know, it’s very, I think it’s very hard to apply some of Gandhi’s ideas to a scenario in which there’s so much sort of division of labor metropolitan views of life inside, I just just don’t think it works. And you didn’t want that kind of thing for India. So his modern philosophy was really geared to sort of not pre modern India, but but really, that the analogies with early modern sort of social life, which India had in the 1910s and 20s. And you didn’t want it to change to the kind of life that you know, Greenspan was part of and the entire morality that Greenspan worked with was a completely different scene. I think he would, of course, say that the principles of corporations and so on that, that Greenspan was was speaking to, are just principles that you know, this was inevitably going to happen it you can regulate it a little bit more than Greenspan wanted, but it was built into corporations that they seek profit, and that they will do whatever they can to seek profit. It’s not they’re not moral agents that just do that. That’s what they’re for.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re talking about Gandhi, the philosopher, we’d like you to join our conversation, 1-800-525-9917 or email us at comments@philosophytalk.org. And Alerto in Sausalito is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Alberto.

Alberto
Hi, good morning. I hope I’m, I’m on the cell phone. So unfortunately, I hope you hear me okay.

Ken Taylor
Okay, just hope you’re not driving.

Alberto
Yeah, um, you know, it’s something that we all be being raised in the US and being born in Cuba has given me a sort of abstract view of life, because on both sides of the border, each one of them has said to each other, that we are absolutely right. So we will continue to fight forever, against each other’s moral high ground, you know, political and moral high ground. And in my own life, I’ve seen that, you know, a case where we have two individuals who see things, see the world totally different, and have their, their their truth, to be to dictate what, you know what and how they should live their life, but yet, never the two shall ever meet. So is there a way that absolute world interpretation of truth can ever meet if consistent.

Ken Taylor
So you’re wondering, you’re wondering how, how we can apply Gandhian ways of thinking in a being to resolving what looked like intractable disputes. Akil, can you give us any thanks. Thanks for the call. Can you give us any real guidance here?

Akeel Bilgrami
Well, you know, Gandhi, didn’t. You, I think you’ve got to understand that Gandhi was not always convinced that rational argument was essential to public life. So for instance, take the fact that he thought that that fasting was a way of reaching people. Now, that is as irrational as violence. Yeah. I mean, you already worked. Yeah, that’s right. So he was really wanted to reach people’s conscience. And it didn’t necessarily mean that you have to reach it by logical persuasion. And so it I myself feel that, that violence and fasting are both completely irrational ways, because they they just finesse the path of logical argument and try and reach people through other means.

Ken Taylor
And Gandhi doesn’t really, I’m hearing you say, that Gandhi, in a way doesn’t really have a theory of political discourse, or at least doesn’t have a complete theory of political discourses we modern democratic liberals understand it is that I mean, it’s not That’s right.

Akeel Bilgrami
That’s right. He really didn’t think that codes constitutions, logical argument, etc, where he thought you, you reach people by by touching their conscience about what is right you respond to the world’s normative demands on you. And, and he was modest, he thought that the world might be seen to make different amounts to different people. But but the fact is that that was for him. Morality, it was and there was no absolute truth. Only in this I mean, I think it’s wrong to raise the question of relativism versus absolutism. He used those words from Time to time. But what he meant was really that you shouldn’t think of truth in, in. In cognitive terms, you should really see the world as making demands on you. And it’s our right people that come from different cultures and so on and see what demands are differently. And and the way to do just do what your conscience tells you and set an example.

Ken Taylor
Right, right. I mean, I find that intriguing, but in the contemporary, complex world, I wonder how really effective that is. And we’ll take that question up. After a break. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re discussing Gandhi, the philosopher with Akeel Bilgrami, author of the forthcoming book “Gandhi, the Philosopher.”

John Perry
We’ve been exploring Gandhi’s philosophical ideas. In our next segment, we’ll take a closer look at Gandhi as a political force. Just what made the strategy of nonviolent non cooperation so successful? Is it an idea that can be exported? Can it work everywhere? Can it work here and now? If not, why not?

Ken Taylor
Exploring the cost and benefits of nonviolent non cooperationm and a discussion of the Academy Award winning film “Gandhi”—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Plastic Ono Band
All we are saying is give peace a chance.

John Perry
Political leaders aren’t always willing to really give peace and non violence much of a chance. But Gandhi made it the basis of his political platform. I’m John Perry, this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. We’re talking about Gandhi, the philosopher. Our guest is Akeel Bilgrami from Columbia University. And we’ve got callers on the line—Sue and Oakland, welcome to Philosophy Talk. What’s your comment or question?

Sue
Having been a political activist for about 25 years or so and some of the movements were informed by Gandhi’s philosophies, but I’m, I think that a lot of groups aren’t using it anymore. So my question is, is Gandhi’s philosophy still relevant for today’s politics?

Ken Taylor
What do you think, Akeel? Thanks, Sue.

Akeel Bilgrami
Well, I think that the deepest point in in Gandhi’s political activism and the philosophy from which it flows is that one cannot have contempt for ordinary people. And I think that that, actually, let’s just talk about America for the moment. Gandhi converted what was basically a movement of lawyers into a mass movement within three or four years of landing up in India, from South Africa, it was a remarkable achievement. And the lesson to be learned from it, I think, is that is that some of the attitudes we have that that is people of the Metropolitan liberal left, like you and me, have towards ordinary people towards the electorate, let’s say, of the red states, which votes in large numbers for for views that we don’t like for people with views that we don’t like, and as conservative Christian religion, religiosity and so on, it’s natural for us to show contempt for them. Virtually every dinner party I go to, there’s contempt expressed by my friends for and Gandhi, I think, thinks that that is just there. That’s just incompatible with democracy, with belief in democracy to have a contempt for ordinary people. And so he tried to analyze why it is that people have views which many of us find distasteful and always attributed to a certain kind of influence of things like media and education and so on, that the people were instinctively he thought to be trusted in their moral and political judgment. And if there was anything that we disagreed with, it always came from the distortion of institutions and sort of cognitive warping of them. And this book went very deep with him. So he thought the only place where you could expect public education was not in universities, not in the media, but in popular movements desire.

John Perry
Akeel, just following up a bit on Sue’s question, so we had, we had Gandhi’s in the 30s and 40s. And we had Martin Luther King in the 60s, different times different problems, but non violence seems to have been an effective if not completely successful solution in both cases, right. Just could you draw some comparisons and then connect that with, with the current world we happen to live in?

Akeel Bilgrami
Right, but I think we’ve been so spooked by the aftermath of the French Revolution that the Jacobean aftermath of the French Revolution that We think of mass movements in popular movements with some anxiety. And I think what Gandhi wanted to say was, and I think this was King’s vigor, too, was that once you have a, you know, all the liberal apparatus set up, unlike in the aftermath of the French Revolution, once you have all the apparatus setup, then popular movements are the sites where people really get educated and where real change can take place. And I think that’s absolutely true. If you look at how late changes in labor policy were made in this country, it was entirely a result of popular movements. If you look at how civil rights came about, it was entirely a result of popular movements. Lyndon Johnson didn’t promulgate anything, he simply signed on to something that he was forced to sign on to by a popular movement.

Ken Taylor
Akeel, I want to amplify your point, because not I think you’re right about what popular movements have done. And I think the other side of that is what, let’s call them Vanguard movements have done, you know, but the revolutionary Vanguard, a Lenin, they’ve produced in the 20th century, at least, many, many horrors, right. So the elite Vanguard who says it knows the future and sees ahead of the people often leads us not always, but often leads us to utter disaster. Would Gandhi agree with that?

Akeel Bilgrami
That’s true, that was there was not a trace of Vanguard ism in Gandhi, in fact, he was very deeply opposed to it. And so as I was saying that that is why he thought that you just simply got to trust the people’s judgment on things. And if you disagree with them, you should try and analyze what it is that makes them. So you know, the attitudes of contempt we have towards ordinary people, is something that he just would have thought is incompatible. He, in fact, he once said, If I thought one person was very enlightened, and I thought everybody else was contemptibly, sort of stupid and vile, why wouldn’t I believe in an enlightened monarchy? Right? So he thought, If you believe in democracy, you simply cannot have the attitudes we have towards the electorate of the red states, for example, or to the ordinary working people of India in his state.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got one last caller on the line—Leroy in San Franciso, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Leroy
Thank you. Well, I wanted to make a comment on this thing that’s always put forth that the reason that Indian won its independence was Gandhi’s tactics of non violence. And frankly, the Second World War, the outcome of that had much more to do with India’s independence than anything that Gandhi did.

Ken Taylor
So okay, thanks for the thanks for the challenging comments. What do you think about that? Akilah? Then I want to I want to ride on Leroy’s question. I mean, even if it did play a huge role in India, it’s a limited number of places, isn’t it where non violence could actually bring about the subsidy if you couldn’t have stopped the Nazis through non violence? Could you have?

Akeel Bilgrami
Well, I think that’s probably right. You couldn’t have stopped the Nazis through non violence. But you know, if you take would take Israel and Palestine today, I mean, I think it is, it is quite insane to think that the Palestinians, despite the brutalization and subjugation that that they could possibly have any effective violent action against a state as powerful as Israel and backed by a much more powerful state like the United States. So so I can see that desperation may make people violent, and so on, but, but it just is hopeless to think that, that violence is good, good. So I think it may just be strategically in most parts of the world when, when there’s such powerful states that there isn’t any hope for a violent revolution of violent change of any kind.

Ken Taylor
But back to Leroy’s initial point that it was the World War Two and the exhaustion of Britain that really under did the British undermine the British Empire in in, in Asia? What do you think?

Akeel Bilgrami
Wt’s perfectly possible that the British would have left anyway, in fact, they left in a in a big rush, partly because of what you call exhaustion, but but all sorts of economic sort of compulsions to but, but that doesn’t mean that Gandhi didn’t have a, I mean, I think Gandhi’s influence in showing how Empire can be opposed anywhere in the world was remarkable. Even so, you know, who knows historically what, you know, the British left India or France left Algeria, or whatever the these things turned on a lot of different things, possibly over determined but, but that doesn’t mean that guarantees. Movement didn’t have an enormous, both ideological intellectual as well as practically fit.

Ken Taylor
So I want to try it one last thing on you, you’ve kind of convinced me that Gandhi as political strategist for undoing oppression was brilliant. But Gandhi as what the polity should be, like, post, undoing the action Right. And that’s, he seems to me a man of a different time a man out of time, pre modern.

Akeel Bilgrami
That’s right, early modern. He was living in a context of relatively early modern society. And so he still had desperate hopes that India wouldn’t go the way of, of capitalist modernity, basically. And, and, you know, a lot depends on what your views are. I mean, I think if, right now, most of the world except perhaps Cuba is just caught up in a financial global system. And it’s very hard to to oppose it. You know, once you caught up in it, it’s very hard to oppose it. And I think you’re probably right.

Ken Taylor
Well, Akeel, on that note, I’m going to thank you for joining us. It’s been a really fascinating conversation.

Akeel Bilgrami
All right, very nice to talk to you.

Ken Taylor
Our guest has been Akeel Bilgrami. He’s the Johnsonian professor of philosophy at Columbia University. He’s director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities and author of the forthcoming book, “Gandhi, the philosopher.”

John Perry
Now, let’s take Philosophy Talk to the movies.

Ken Taylor
John, we’ve been talking about the philosophy of Gandhi. Let’s talk about the movie “Gandhi.”

John Perry
Ken, one of the things I had forgotten about the movie was the sense it gives you of of India, how how many people there are in India, how rural it is, in spite of the huge population now all that’s changing now, but it was definitely true at the time, Gandhi was fostering Indian independence,

Ken Taylor
I should say about this. Richard Attenborough. So Richard Attenborough, who directed this movie had been trying to make it for a very long time, it’s a, it turns out to have been a true labor of love. He was very gripped by the story of Gandhi. And he wanted to make this a movie, I can’t remember for how long he was trying. But it took him so long to get the movie made, that all the people we had originally thought of playing Gandhi were too old. By the time he made it to play the young Gandhi. So he settled on this young, amazing actor, Ben Kingsley.

Gandhi
Mahandas K. Gandhi, attorney at law. I’m on my way to Pretoria to conduct a case for an Indian trading firm, didn’t you hear me that a no color attorneys in South Africa, sir, I was called to the bar in London, and enrolled at the High Court of Chancery. I Am, therefore an attorney. And since I am in your eyes colored, I think we can deduce that there is at least one colored attorney in South Africa.

John Perry
So whenever we look at a past historical era, we do so in terms of what turned out to be the case, how it ended up. When you when you look at the Civil War, you think of Lincoln just as being in charge, when you look at the independence of India, you think of non violence and Gandhi. But the film makes clear what we often forget that everybody who was involved in the action didn’t know how it’s gonna turn out. The original leaders of the independence movement didn’t know that Gandhi was going to be the one that stood out and and the one that became famous and the one that solidified India, they thought he was maybe a peripheral useful figure, because he had a reputation from his work in South Africa.

Gandhi
We hope you’re’re going to join us in our struggle for home rule, Mr. Gandhi. Well, excuse me, may I. Mohan, there’s someone I would like to meet. Excuse me. He told the press he’d support the British in the war. That’s nonviolence for you.

John Perry
And I think one thing the film Gandhi does is really bring forward bring home that sense of non inevitability about the fact that he became the leader and that his ideas of non violence prevailed.

Ken Taylor
You know, in the movie “Gandhi,” it’s important to look at the dynamics that the movie represents this debate over whether to be violent or nonviolent, has I mean, there are lots of times when violence breaks out, there’s a massacre, a famous massacre, in which 1000s of Indian women, children and young men and older men are killed, just cold bloodedly killed. And you might think that would bring the whole thing tumbling down. And it threatened to bring the whole strategy of non violence tumbling down. But it didn’t. And a lot of it has to do with Gandhi’s will.

Gandhi
What if they don’t arrest you? Or if they don’t react at all? The function of a civil resistor is to provoke response. And we will continue to provoke until they respond or they change the law. They are not in control. We are. That is the strength of civil resistance.

Ken Taylor
I mean, I wonder about the historical accuracy in one way, I have no scholar but I’d love to have some scholar tell me mean was it really the force of will of Gandhi that held this nonviolent revolution together?

John Perry
I’m sure that that behind every great person, great leader, there’s always some good luck when it comes to lieutenants and you might say behind every disaster, there’s always some bad luck. But you have Nehru who became The first prime minister of India was was Gandhi’s lieutenant in all things and He I think was an excellent organizer and a firm disciplinarian. But no movie can really portray all of the all of the work behind the hero or the main character and I suspect in the case of Gandhi, that’s especially true.

Ken Taylor
Look, for a three hour movie I forgotten how extremely good Ben Kingsley who won an Academy Award for this movie, how extremely good he was in this movie, I can show you in a DVD that was released a way after the movie was made. There’s some footage of the actual Gandhi there’s some newsreel footage and I watched all the newsreel footage. And Ben Kingsley just nails Gandhi to the tee, his mannerism, his looks the way he walks, the sound of his voice, the cadence of his voice. It’s amazing. It’s an amazing performance.

John Perry
So in in today’s world, there’s there’s two good reasons to go see see Gandhi apart from just the fact that it’s a good movie in the first place. Politically, relations between Pakistan and India aren’t very good. And that’s an extraordinarily important fact that needs to be dealt with before a lot of other facts, like the presence of terrorists in Pakistan can really be dealt with, and to understand that how they’re came to be to countries in the first place. This, this will be a very helpful educational lesson for you. The second reason is that now when you go to the movies, you’ll see kind of a steady diet of either violence or sophomore male humor. And this movie is a good reminder of the great days of cinema.

Ken Taylor
So if you go rent the DVD of “Gandhi,” you can see philosophy in action through non violence.

Gandhi
You didn’t think we were just going to walk out of India? Yes. In the end, you will walk out because 100,000 Englishmen simply cannot control 350 million Indians if those Indians refused to cooperate. And that is what we intend to achieve: peaceful, nonviolent, non-cooperation. Til you yourself see the wisdom of leaving, your Excellency.

John Perry
Ken, it’s fun talking about movies, but it’s also fun to help our listeners talk about the philosophical problems that arise in our own life.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, if you’ve got a conundrum, you can send us an email at conundrums@philosophytalk.org. We won’t promise to solve your problem, but we will give you lots of new ways to think about it.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben anillla productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University copyright 2008.

Ken Taylor
Our executive producer is David Demarest.

John Perry
Our production coordinator is Devon Strolovitch. Daniel Elsteon is our director of research. Lael Weis our webmaster. Also thanks to Zoe Corneli, Corey Goldman, and Mark Stone.

Ken Taylor
Support for philosophy top comes from the Templeton Foundation.

John Perry
And from various groups at Stanford University, the friends of Philosophy Talk, and the members of KALW San Francisco where our program originates.

Ken Taylor
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) in this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University, or of our other funders.

John Perry
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

John Perry
And thank you for thinking.