Gandhian Politics Research Articles

Return of the native: Swades and the re-thinking of diaspora

This paper looks at Ashutosh Gowariker's film Swades: We the People (Homeland, 2004), a cinematic narrative dealing with a non-resident Indian's return to his homeland, to argue that this film challenges the paradigm Bollywood films have set for representing the Indian diaspora by questioning the idea of originary bond between the diasporic subject and his homeland. I argue that Mohan's return is not, unlike his Bollywood predecessors, determined by either a metaphysical cultural re-turn to an idealized homeland or an expression of what Aihwa Ong terms as ‘flexible citizenship.’ Rather, the filmmaker locates this narrative of return within the context of the material and the everyday. The paper argues that the filmmaker accomplishes this by destabilizing the discourse of oedipalic and homing desire that has been used by Bollywood cinema to dramatize the diaspora's belonging to the motherland. Deploying the character of a foster-mother and the spatial metaphor of a caravan, Swades brings in the element of praxis or thought-action to engage with the Gandhian politics.

‘Addressing the masses’: Gandhi's notion of ‘the people’ and Indian cinema's popular market

This article scrutinizes a seldom discussed relationship between the Indian nationalist movement's most charismatic leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the newly emergent cinematic medium at the high tide of the nationalist movement, from the 1920s till the country's independence. Despite Gandhi's stiff resistance against the use of this medium in his programmes to reach out to the masses, the film industry made an early effort to align itself with the nationalist movement, and Gandhi in particular, accommodating various thematic, stylistic and ideological components of the Gandhian principles and the Gandhian politics, which dominated the contemporary political culture. Film-makers often embodied the Gandhian political culture through ‘bio-pics’ featuring the medieval sant leaders whom Gandhi revered for their contribution in addressing social problems and issues like untouchability. Highlighting an indigenous critique of existing social issues, in line with the Gandhian project, the contemporary filmic media resonated swadeshi ideals, which, it was imagined, would be useful to balance the capital intensive, industrial enterprise, on the one hand, and get a wider popular response, on the other. The Gandhian paradigm of ‘people of India’ thus met a market-oriented conception of mass or ‘public’ (as used till date in the filmi jargon signifying audiences). This article focuses on this relationship to explore the linkage of political culture and cinema in a period when for the first time, ‘people's’ participation mattered in bringing success to both – the political movements and the newly emergent filmic medium in India.

Gandhi before Mahatma: The Foundations of Political Truth

This article aims to reconstruct Gandhi as a political thinker. In so doing it argues that truth rather than nonviolence was the central category of Gandhian politics. Truth for Gandhi was a capacity that broke with the consensual and took the form of an insistent visibility. Gandhi circumvented the dominant political languages of liberalism, historicism, and Marxism by focusing on sacrifice and the transformation of the self. This radical politics of truth, while impossible to institutionalize, nevertheless signaled the twentieth-century reevaluation of human experience. The Gandhian political subordinated the abstraction of nation and economy via the immediacy and visibility of embodied practice.

Who Shot the Mahatma? Representing Gandhian Politics in Indian Comic Books

Amar Chitra Katha (‘Immortal Picture Stories’) is the leading Indian comic book series, with 440 mythological and historical titles and sales of over 86 million issues. In 1989, after twenty years of publishing success, the producers of this series decided to release two issues on the world-renowned Indian politician and activist, Mahatma Gandhi. But Gandhi, best known for his technique of non-violent civil resistance, presented a formidable challenge: How to depict the Mahatma, paragon of peace and non-violence, in a visual medium that is notorious for its action and violence? This article examines the relationship between text and image in these comics, and draws upon interviews with authors and artists, to better understand the contested memory of Gandhi in India today as well as the contested concept of non-violence.

Meat–Eating, Masculinity, and Renunciation in India: A Gandhian Grammar of Diet

This paper focuses on the writings and the autobiography of one of the century’s most prominent vegetarians, who was almost as noted (or notorious) for his alimentary and sexual experiments as for his political ones. A consideration of diet is, I argue, in many ways central rather than marginal to a Gandhian gendered ethics and a Gandhian politics. The accounts of the eating and abjuration of meat in the Gandhian oeuvre can serve as a useful point of entry into the investigation of two linked loci of Gandhi’s dietary practices: the question of meat and modernity, and the question of meat in the context of the patriarchal vegetarian household. These accounts are fascinating for their profoundly conflictual ethical logic, and they help establish the intimate and unexpected links among meat–eating, modern formations of masculine identity, and the gendered dynamics of the patriarchal Hindu household. Using the evidence of Gandhi’s autobiography, correspondence, journalism, and public addresses, in conjunction with the writings of his contemporaries, I map therefore a trajectory of his gastropolitics, from the carnophilic mandate of the early years (during which he associated meat–eating with nationalist duty and access to a kind of culinary virility), to the diasporic discovery of vegetarianism in London, and finally to the carefully elaborated alimentary rigours and public fasts of the later years. All of this helps to underline how profoundly somatic Gandhi’s ‘experiments in truth’ were, and how pronounced was his belief that the purification of the body was inseparable from the purification of the mind necessary for swaraj (self–rule).

Transfer of Power and the Crisis of Dalit Politics in India, 1945–47

Ever since its beginning, organized dalit politics under the leadership of Dr B. R. Ambedkar had been consistently moving away from the Indian National Congress and the Gandhian politics of integration. It was drifting towards an assertion of separate political identity of its own, which in the end was enshrined formally in the new constitution of the All India Scheduled Caste Federation, established in 1942. A textual discursive representation of this sense of alienation may be found in Ambedkar's book, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, published in 1945. Yet, within two years, in July 1947, we find Ambedkar accepting Congress nomination for a seat in the Constituent Assembly. A few months later he was inducted into the first Nehru Cabinet of free India, ostensibly on the basis of a recommendation from Gandhi himself. In January 1950, speaking at a general public meeting in Bombay, organized by the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, he advised the dalits to co-operate with the Congress and to think of their country first, before considering their sectarian interests. But then within a few months again, this alliance broke down over his differences with Congress stalwarts, who, among other things, refused to support him on the Hindu Code Bill. He resigned from the Cabinet in 1951 and in the subsequent general election in 1952, he was defeated in the Bombay parliamentary constituency by a political nonentity, whose only advantage was that he contested on a Congress ticket. Ambedkar's chief election agent, Kamalakant Chitre described this electoral debacle as nothing but a ‘crisis’.

Myth and reality in the Bardoli Satyagraha ‐ 1928: a study in Gandhian politics*

Myth and reality in the Bardoli Satyagraha ‐ 1928: a study in Gandhian politics*

The mahatma and the mob‐“essays on Gandhian politics: The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919” edited by R. Kumar

(1973). The mahatma and the mob‐“essays on Gandhian politics: The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919” edited by R. Kumar. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 107-111.

Essays on Gandhian Politics: The Rowlett Satyagraha of 1919.R. KumarThe Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.Hanes Walton, Jr.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Section R. Kumar Essays on Gandhian Politics: The Rowlett Satyagraha of 1919. R. Kumar The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Hanes Walton, Jr. Robert S. RobinsRobert S. Robins Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 34, Number 2May, 1972 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2129379 Views: 3Total views on this site Copyright 1972 Southern Political Science AssociationPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Essays on Gandhian Politics; The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919. Edited by R. Kumar. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971. Pp. 347. $10.50.)

Essays on Gandhian Politics; The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919. Edited by R. Kumar. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971. Pp. 347. $10.50.)

Essays on Gandhian Politics. the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919.

Essays on Gandhian Politics. the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919.

Symbolism in Gandhian Politics

Larticle démontre que l'activité politique de Gandhi peut être expliquiée par les symboles auxquels il a eu recours. Pour Gandhi, la politique n'avait pas qu'une fonction utilitaire mais aussi un rôle de formation par la poursuite de valeurs, d'origine spirituelle sans doute, mais servant d'objectifs à l'action politique. Pour faire saisir ces objectifs, Gandhi a eu recours à divers symboles : le « khadi » (pièce d'étoffe du pays s'enroulant à la taille et faisant office de vêtement unique), la vache, leûne et le « harijan » (mot signifiant « peuple de Dieu » par lequel Gandhi désignait les « Intouchables » de l'Inde). Les valeurs représentées par ces symboles étaient la dignité du travail, la noblesse de la personne en soi, la bienveillance, la pureté de l'âme, la liberté naturelle et civile, ainsi que la poursuite du bonheur par des voies à la fois matérielles et spirituelles dont la pratique de certaines vertues telles l'esprit de pauvreté, la chasteté et la droiture du cœur.De tels symboles servaient à la propagation des idées de Gandhi. Ainsi, ceux qui portaient le khadi semblaient adhérer à ses valeurs et pratiquer les vertus appropriées. Par l'utilisation de ces symboles, Gandhi réussit à provoquer chez ses adhérents, quoique à des degrés divers, des changements d'éthique personnelle. Ces symboles aident également à comprendre les tâches politiques que Gandhi a pu assumer avec succès. Le jeûne, par exemple, lui a servi d'instrument pour améliorer la législation et les attitudes sociales à l'égard des « intouchables » De même, il a utilisé, mais sans succès, la vache comme symbole d'amitié entre Indous et Musulmans. L'auteur conclut que l'originalité du style politique de Gandhi s'explique largement par les symboles d'action qu'il avait adopté.