The Common Theoretical Terrain of the Gandhi and Nehru Periods: The Ethic of Reconciliation over Revenge in Nation-making

Abstract

This article identifies the continuity linking the Gandhi and Nehru historical periods in specific discursive and practical formations. The Indian national movement and the post-Independence period constitute a comprehensive historical entity comparable to the twentieth century’s major revolutions. We find a specific discursive/practical paradigm with identifiable features, since reproduced in other nation-making experiences. Its intellectual coherence is in the principle of non-violence or an ethic of reconciliation over totality. The dominant paradigm of modern nation-making was grounded in total assimilation and positivism’s dichotomous rupture with the ‘traditional’ past, focused on the instant of seizing state power. The practical coherence of the Gandhi–Nehru period is in non-violent conflict resolution based on a temporal horizon of growth over final ends. The Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements were participatory mass movements fostering public self-reliance and traditional structures reconstructed towards democratic ends. The Nehru era shifted the non-violence principle from a mass movement to a political party within a democratic framework, with political freedom and economic development joined in an unprecedented fashion. Pluralist and non-interventionist solutions were applied to civil society dilemmas in an open ethic of reconciliation. Difference rather than homogeneity was privileged for secular national cohabitation in an open non-violent ethic.