Gandhi, the civilizational crucible, and the future of dissent

Abstract

The recent nuclear tests by India have established that the possibilities for dissent in our times have dangerously narrowed. When a country that was led to its independence by the chief theorist and practitioner of non-violence, Mohandas Gandhi, must demonstrate to the community of nations that it is a `manly' power, that is an indubitable sign of how far any dissent from realpolitik has become merely a distant hope. But, there is still a future for dissent, where dissent will not be couched only, or even, in the various idioms with which the West is familiar. The life and teachings of Gandhi furnish the first clue for an emancipatory politics of knowledge. Gandhi had a profoundly ecological view of life: he recognized neither the infallible authority of texts nor the sanctity of imagined traditions, but he was also the foremost critic of modernity and its cultural practices. Gandhi was tethered, as well, to the ethos of Indian civilization, and in the deep mythic structuring of this civilization, which was more hospitable to plurality than is possible under any nation-state, lie other clues for a politics of knowledge that allows more room for genuine dissent. To move towards a politics of the future, where cultural difference is not compromised by a mere multiculturalism, a thoroughgoing critique of modern categories of knowledge is required.