The Paradox of Gandhian Secularism: The metaphysical implication behind Gandhi's ‘individualization of religion’

Abstract

AbstractThis article will examine the relationship between Gandhi's two major intellectual developments in his last years: his insistence on political secularism (‘individualization of religion’) and his controversial religious experiments withbrahmacarya(sleeping naked with his 17-year-old grandniece, Manubahen). Contrary to the prevalent interpretations, I will argue that Gandhi's political principle of secularism during the last years of his life entailedimplicitlyhis radical religious belief, which he thought worth risking his life to present before the public. There was an intimate relationship between the concepts ofbrahmacarya, individuality (vyaktitva), and religion (dharm) that constituted his principle of secularism—these concepts were integrated by Gandhi in his distinct Hindu metaphysics ofātmā. Although Gandhi's ideas onātmāwere initially influenced by Śrīmad Rājcandra's Jainism, he later repudiated the latter's views and revised them by incorporating some ideas from Western Orientalists, including Sir John Woodroffe's tantric thought. Gandhi's concept ofātmāwas considered to inhere with the cosmological spiritual power ofśakti, ultimately identified with God (Īśvar, Brahm): this concept ofātmāwas one of the fundamental components of Gandhi's eventual ideas of individuality and religion. Gandhi attempted to realize his ‘unique individuality’ (‘anokhuṃ vaktitva’) in his last religious experiments withbrahmacarya, which were conducted contemporaneously to his increasing political valorization of secularism. Gandhi's secularism was virtually a political platform to universalize religion, paradoxical in that he meant to go beyond the impregnable hedge of privatization by making religiondeeplyindividualized—that is to say,ātmā-centred.