Philosophy and Ideas of Mahatma Gandhi

Philosophy and Ideas of Mahatma Gandhi

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Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy shaped the moral and ideological foundations of the Indian national movement, extending well beyond politics into economics, education, social reform, and the everyday conduct of individual life. His thought evolved continuously through experience, introspection, and engagement with diverse intellectual traditions, from the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhakti movement to Tolstoy and Ruskin. This article presents a structured, section-wise treatment of Gandhi’s key philosophical positions — on truth, ahimsa, trusteeship, education, rural regeneration, and communal harmony — tracing how each idea evolved and the influences that shaped it.

1. Gandhi’s Vision of Khadi and Clothing for Indian People

• Gandhi wanted Khadi to become the national cloth of India.
  • He believed that if every Indian adopted Khadi, it would help bridge the economic and social gulf between the rich and the poor.
• However, this vision faced practical resistance from multiple sections of society:
  • His idea of simple, scant clothing did not appeal to those who could afford better attire.
  • Dalits and Christian converts largely rejected Khadi and Indian dress, as they associated Western-style clothing with liberation from age-old social prejudices.
  • Khadi was costly and difficult to maintain, which further limited its adoption.
  • Muslims, too, largely did not accept Khadi as everyday wear.
  • Elite women did not find homespun cloth attractive.
• Despite this resistance, Congress leaders who were relatively well-off did switch over to Khadi, giving it symbolic and political significance even where mass adoption fell short.

2. Gandhi’s Views on Western Civilization

• Gandhi’s social and economic philosophy evolved significantly out of his disillusionment with the Western way of life.
  • After an early infatuation with English manners during his stay in England, he abandoned the pursuit of external, superficial traits and turned instead toward a religious and spiritual quest, aided by acquaintances who introduced him to the fundamentals of major world religions.
  • He saw through what he called the “tinsel and glitter” of modern civilization and consciously turned away from it, beginning a journey of spiritual discovery and self-realization rooted in Indian culture and tradition.
• Comparing Eastern and Western civilization, Gandhi argued that Western civilization rested on two fallacious maxims:
  • “Might is right”
  • “Survival of the fittest”
  • He held that these maxims were insufficient for the full development of human personality, since the strength derived from the “heart” — which he also called “heart strength” or, borrowing from Ruskin, “social affections” — was far greater.
• Gandhi characterized the two civilizations in contrasting terms:
  • Western civilization: destructive, centrifugal, without a fixed goal, and marked by tremendous activity.
  • Eastern civilization: constructive, centripetal, goal-oriented (the goal of oneness with the Supreme Being), and marked by contemplativeness.
• He was not blind to the shortcomings of Eastern civilization:
  • He acknowledged that “contemplativeness” could be misused to justify idleness and an unwillingness to overcome obstacles.
• Gandhi was not dogmatic and recognized certain benefits of Western civilization.
  • He believed a healthy intermingling of the two civilizations was desirable, which would quicken the pace of Eastern civilization with the “western spirit.”
  • He concluded that the two were opposing forces, but both perhaps had a place in nature’s larger design.
• Sources and influences behind these views:
  • Gandhi’s critique of Western civilization is most clearly expressed in his 1909 booklet, Hind Swaraj.
  • He was influenced by Edward Carpenter’s Civilization: Its Cause and Cure.
  • Gandhi found Western civilization lacking in morality and religion, both of which he considered essential elements of any sound society; he had little regard for purely materialistic goals.
  • He believed Western civilization was built on a “foundation of sand” and would eventually self-destruct, though he did not consider it an “incurable disease” — foresight and enterprise could redirect it toward a more human and spiritual content.
• It was this concern for spiritual content in civilization that led Gandhi to consistently advocate swadeshi, the removal of untouchability, bread labour, and trusteeship — all grounded in his underlying belief in the oneness of all life.

3. Gandhi’s Views on the Principle of Trusteeship

• The principle of trusteeship evolved in Gandhi’s mind as a result of his spiritual development, owing partly to his study of theosophical literature and the Bhagavad Gita, and partly to his familiarity with the maxims of equity in Western legal tradition.
• On the individual plane:
  • Gandhi believed that those who sought God through social service, even while controlling vast possessions, should not regard any of it as truly their own.
  • Such possessions were to be held in trust for the benefit of the less privileged.
• On the social plane:
  • The wealthy could not justly claim their possessions entirely as their own, since wealth could not be accumulated without the labour and cooperation of workers and the poor.
  • They were therefore logically and morally bound to share their wealth fairly with workers and the poor — though Gandhi preferred voluntary surrender over enforcement through legislation.
• Gandhi defined trusteeship in his own words: “The rich man will be left in possession of his wealth of which he will use what he reasonably requires for his personal needs and will act as a trustee for the remainder to be used for society.”
• Key features of Gandhi’s trusteeship doctrine:
  • He did not believe in inherited wealth, holding that “a trustee has no heir but the public.”
  • He opposed compulsory dispossession of the wealthy, fearing it would deprive society of the talents of those capable of creating national wealth.
  • His preferred method was persuasion, with satyagraha as the fallback option; by the 1940s, however, he had come to accept that state legislation might be necessary to enforce trusteeship.
• Gandhi’s social ideas, in general, drew on the culture in which he was born and bred, stimulated and clarified by his contact with the West and his experiences in South Africa; he remained a lifelong learner who valued introspection and experimentation.
  • Though he maintained till the end that the ideas expressed in Hind Swaraj (1909) still held good, in practice he made many compromises over the years — a reflection of his pragmatism, which sought to adapt without sacrificing fundamental principles.

4. Gandhi’s Views on Truth

• Gandhi regarded truth as the foremost of all moral principles, calling it the “sovereign principle” encompassing numerous other virtues.
  • For him, truth was not confined to truthfulness in speech but extended to truthfulness in thought — “not only the relative truth of our conception, but the absolute truth, the eternal principle, that is God.”
  • He equated God with Truth: “I worship God as truth only… Often in my progress, I have had faint glimpses of the absolute truth, God, and daily the conviction is growing upon me that the above is real and all else is unreal.”
• Sources shaping his concept of truth:
  • His deep attachment to Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas and his faith in the Ramanama appear to have been the predominant influence, according to historian A.L. Basham.
    • Basham notes that the popular North Indian Vaishnava phrase “Rama naam sach hai” (the name of Rama is truth) likely underlies Gandhi’s distinctive, non-Western emphasis on truth.
    • The Ramayana episode of Dashrath honouring his promise to Kaikeyi at the cost of his life and family happiness illustrates the same ideal of fidelity to one’s word — an ideal likely imprinted on the young Gandhi.
  • As a youth, Gandhi went through a brief phase (about three years) of mild secret rebellion against parental authority, but his native honesty prevented a complete fall from these ideals.
  • He drew another moral precept — repaying the smallest service with the utmost generosity — from a Gujarati didactic stanza by Shamal Bhatt, which deeply “gripped” his heart and mind.
• Gandhi’s conclusion on the primacy of truth: “One thing took deep root in me… the conviction that morality is the basis of all things, and that truth is the substance of all morality. Truth became my sole objective.”
• Truth as a unifying vision of life:
  • Because Gandhi equated truth with God and universal reality, he viewed life as an interdependent, unified whole rather than divided into “watertight compartments.”
  • In a letter to Horace Alexander, he wrote that “the slightest irregularity in sanitary, social and political life is a sign of spiritual poverty,” and that ashram life was based on this conception of fundamental unity.
• On his own contribution, Gandhi modestly claimed: “I represent no new truths. I endeavor to follow and represent truth, as I know it. I do claim to throw a new light on many an old truth.”
• Reflection in social action: Gandhi’s conception of truth translated into his consistent emphasis on the purity of means to attain desired ends — reflected in his methods of non-violence, civil resistance, and honourable cooperation, which he believed held relevance not just for India but for the whole world.

5. Gandhi’s Views on Ahimsa (Non-Violence)

• For Gandhi, non-violence (ahimsa) was second in importance only to truth — indeed, he called it “the first article of my faith and also the last article of my creed.”
• Cultural roots of ahimsa:
  • He traced this attitude to the childhood influence of Vaishnavism and Jainism in Gujarat, where opposition to meat-eating was, in his own words, stronger than anywhere else in India.
  • Bhakti poets such as Narasinha Mehta and Shamal Bhatt — lay, mostly non-Brahmin preachers who communicated through devotional hymns in indigenous languages — spread messages of brotherly love, renunciation, and non-violence, and deprecated ritualism.
• The gold-theft episode — an early lesson in ahimsa:
  • At about the age of 15, Gandhi once stole a bit of gold to help repay a debt incurred by his brother.
  • Unable to muster the courage to confront his father verbally, he wrote out a confession, asking for his own punishment while requesting that his father not blame himself.
  • His father, though bedridden, read the note with tears rolling down his cheeks, then tore it up and lay down without a word of reproach.
  • Gandhi described this as an object lesson in ahimsa: the “pearl drops of love” from his father’s tears “cleansed my heart, and washed my sin away.”
  • The episode shaped his later social precepts: hating the sin, not the sinner; patience and perseverance in social reform; and a willingness to forgive.
• Religious influences on ahimsa (England, 1888 onward):
  • With two theosophist friends, Gandhi first read the Bhagavad Gita in Sir Edwin Arnold’s translation, The Song Celestial.
  • He also read Arnold’s The Light of Asia (on the life of the Buddha), which he found even more absorbing than the Gita.
  • Madame Blavatsky’s Key to Theosophy stimulated his interest in Hinduism and dispelled missionary-fostered notions that it was rife with superstition.
  • He was introduced to the Bible; while unimpressed by the Old Testament, the New Testament, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, “went straight to my heart.”
  • Rajchandra Mehta, a scholarly businessman-poet, taught Gandhi the lesson of religious tolerance by studying and explaining the excellence of every faith to its own followers.
  • Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You, read in South Africa, “overwhelmed” Gandhi with its thought, morality, and truthfulness; Gandhi later summarized Tolstoy’s ideas — denunciation of wealth accumulation and political power, the principle of returning evil with goodness, and agriculture as man’s true occupation — in his South African journal, Indian Opinion.
  • During the 1890s in South Africa, he further deepened his religious study through Rajchandra’s Dharma Vichar, Theosophical Society translations of the Upanishads, and Max Mueller’s India — What Can It Teach Us, alongside works on Islam and Judaism.
• Philosophical basis: Gandhi’s belief in ahimsa was tied to his belief in the fundamental unity of the universe — all beings were children of the same creator, so “to slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers.”
• Ahimsa tested by moral dilemmas:
  • On his own participation in the First World War, Gandhi argued that while the true votary of ahimsa should try to stop a war, one incapable of that duty “may take part in war, and yet wholeheartedly try to free himself, his nation and the world from war.”
  • He permitted the mercy-killing of a suffering calf and the destruction of dangerous dogs near an Ahmedabad factory, defending both decisions on the grounds that ending unavoidable suffering could itself be an act of religion.
• Conclusion: Gandhi’s ahimsa was multidimensional — not merely abstaining from physical injury, but actively caring for and loving all beings, forming the moral foundation of his use of satyagraha in the freedom struggle.

6. Gandhi’s Views on Women

• Gandhi assigned women a fundamental role as instruments of social change, given their influence over the upbringing of future citizens and their numerical strength (half the population).
  • His unconscious guide was his mother, Putlibai, revered for her “saintliness.”
  • His intellectual guide was the ideal Hindu wife — described as ardhangana (the better half) and sadadharmini (the helpmate).
• His view of women rested on two assumptions — that they were conservative and non-violent by temperament — which, in his framework, were seen positively rather than negatively:
  • Their conservatism, he believed, allowed them to better discriminate between the good and the bad in tradition and to preserve the good.
• Gandhi held that women were morally and spiritually superior to men, possessing greater capacity for self-sacrifice and suffering, representing an infinite strength waiting to be realized.
• Role within the family: Since the family was the “crucible of society,” mothers could mould the values of future citizens; the ultimate aim was to raise children who were self-reliant rather than dependent on family resources.
• On equality between the sexes:
  • Gandhi opposed gender bias in the upbringing of children.
  • He believed girls should not be trained to adorn themselves, as this reduced them to objects of desire rather than individuals with distinct human qualities.
  • He advocated equal division of housework between boys and girls and equal vocational training for both, to secure future livelihoods.
• Political role envisaged for women:
  • Gandhi urged women to extend their sense of family to the wider human family and to rise against centuries of suppression.
  • He believed education and political rights would allow women to influence national decision-making and promote social and economic equality.
  • He called for women to agitate for legislation according them equal status, supplemented by sustained public agitation through the press to shape public opinion.
• Contribution to the national struggle:
  • Women responded overwhelmingly to Gandhi’s appeals to join the freedom movement.
  • In the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22), their contribution of personal jewellery to the satyagraha fund was significant; they also propagated khadi in defiance of government orders and took part in picketing liquor shops.
  • Gandhi saw women as central to his programmes for communal harmony, removal of untouchability, and Basic Education.
• Addressing women-specific social evils: Gandhi called for a sustained campaign against child marriage, dowry, sati, purdah, and prostitution, including the rehabilitation of victims of prostitution.
• In sum, Gandhi not only urged women toward their own upliftment but also directly criticized the scriptures and social customs that had devalued their status, seeing them as potential mainsprings of revolutionary thought and action.

7. Gandhi’s Views on Equality of the Sexes

• The lesson of equality of the sexes was reinforced by life on Tolstoy Farm and the satyagraha movement in South Africa, and was later reflected in ashram life in India, where men and women shared the same work.
• The 1913 marriage judgment and its fallout:
  • Justice Searle of the Cape Supreme Court, on 13 March 1913, ruled that marriages performed according to Indian rites would not be recognized unless registered in South African courts — effectively branding the wives of all Indians married in India as “prostitutes” or “concubines.”
  • In response, the Indian community organized an “invading army composed mainly of women and some men” to cross the Natal–Transvaal border in defiance of immigration law, with identities concealed to ensure arrest.
  • The Phoenix party, which included Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, was arrested on 23 September 1913 and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour; the “Transvaal sisters” received the same sentence.
• Impact of women’s participation:
  • Gandhi praised the bravery of the mostly illiterate women satyagrahis, who acted out of patriotism and faith in his leadership.
  • Valiamma, an 18-year-old girl, died shortly after her release from prison due to illness contracted there, becoming a heroine among South African Indians.
  • The arrest of the women satyagrahis triggered a spontaneous strike by thousands of Indian miners in Natal.
• The Great March (October 1913):
  • When striking labourers were evicted from their homes, Gandhi camped with them in the open, aided unexpectedly by the trader class.
  • As the crowd swelled to about 5,000, Gandhi decided to march this “army” on foot into Transvaal to court arrest; the march began on 28 October 1913, with strict, self-imposed discipline on sanitation despite most participants being uneducated.
  • Gandhi drew two lasting lessons: social and political consciousness need not depend on formal education, and leadership can be exercised most effectively through personal example — “Where the leader himself becomes a servant, there are no rival claimants for leadership.”
  • The marchers reached Charlestown safely with continued help from traders, including a large European firm.
  • The struggle secured key demands: validation of Indian marriages, abolition of the £3 tax on ex-indentured labourers, and recognition of domicile certificates for entry across the Union of South Africa.
• Gandhi described his 21 years in South Africa as the period in which he discovered his “vocation in life” — raising consciousness about self-respect and constructive collective action; the central social idea he derived was equality, whether between the sexes, races, or social classes.
• He concluded that satyagraha was “a priceless and matchless weapon,” through which he replaced a common feeling of helplessness among Indians in South Africa with a consciousness of organized strength and self-respect.

8. Gandhi’s Views on Capital and Labour

• Gandhi saw the strained relationship between capital and labour as another reflection of the general erosion of human values in Indian society, even though he believed the two were, in principle, mutually complementary forces.
  • He criticized the absence of a genuine work ethic: employers sought “maximum service with minimum payment,” while labourers sought “maximum pay with minimum work,” resulting in wage increments without corresponding improvement in output.
• Living conditions of labourers:
  • Gandhi was deeply moved by the plight of labourers in Mumbai, who lived in what were literally boxes rather than houses, facing overcrowding, poor ventilation, long working hours, and inedible food.
  • Lacking guidance, many turned to drink, compounding their misery.
• On political mobilization of labour (1921): In the context of violence during the Non-Cooperation Movement, Gandhi cautioned against premature political use of factory labourers or the peasantry, admitting that their political education had been neglected and that reliable workers to guide them were still too few.
  • He blamed the educated classes for failing to understand the aspirations of labourers, remaining aloof while expecting their support for a national cause they knew nothing about.
• Toward harmonious industrial relations:
  • Gandhi observed that Indian labour forces lacked mutual ties and were often led by leaders with provincial, communal, or unscrupulous outlooks.
  • Where genuine goodwill existed on both sides, however, the adversarial employer–worker relationship could be transformed into cooperation — as demonstrated by the Ahmedabad Textile Mills labour union, reorganized under Gandhi’s guidance, which he cited as a successful example of harmony combined with efficiency and work ethic.
• Gandhi also drew attention to the continued existence of bonded labour in parts of the country, viewing it as another stark instance of the oppression and inequity pervading Indian society.

9. Gandhi’s Views on Decentralization of the Economy

• The foundation of Gandhi’s economic thought was the idea that every individual should have the means to feed and clothe themselves adequately, and that the means of production of life’s necessities should remain under the control of the masses rather than being monopolized by any group.
• Decentralization through the Khadi movement:
  • Poor peasants received advances to buy cotton and spinning wheels from AISA (All India Spinners’ Association) units; the spun cotton was purchased at fixed prices and passed on to weavers.
  • Weavers received support in turn, and the finished cloth was retailed at fixed prices through dedicated outlets.
  • Gandhi’s rule that khadi should not be sold outside its locality or province of production ensured that the entire enterprise, coordinated by AISA, benefited those who needed it most.
• Gandhi favoured total protection for indigenous industries through import bans, even at the cost of higher prices or lower initial quality, permitting imports only for goods that could not be produced domestically at all.
• The Karachi Resolution (March 1931) on Fundamental Rights and Economic Changes:
  • This was a major advance in Gandhi’s economic thinking, envisioning that political freedom (swaraj) must include real economic freedom for the masses.
  • Labour provisions: special protection for women workers, prohibition of child employment in factories, and the right of workers to form unions.
  • Agricultural provisions: substantial reduction in rents, exemption from rent for uneconomic holdings, relief for small zamindars, and a progressive income tax on agricultural incomes above a fixed minimum.
  • Fiscal provisions: a graduated inheritance tax, at least a 50% reduction in military expenditure, and reduced civil department expenditure; state salaries, other than for specially employed experts, were not to ordinarily exceed Rs 500 per month.
  • Industrial provisions: protection of indigenous cloth by excluding foreign cloth and yarn, state control over exchange and currency policy, and state control of key industries and mineral resources.
  • Moral–economic clauses: total prohibition of intoxicants and drugs, abolition of duty on Indian-manufactured salt, and control of usury.
  • Gandhi explained the resolution’s purpose plainly: it told “the world and to our own people what we propose to do as soon as we come into power,” and forewarned all concerned to prepare for coming change.
• In subsequent years, Gandhi’s thinking increasingly turned toward economic equality, though he recognized it as an ideal that could only be approximated.
  • He preferred equitable distribution over compulsion, relying on the theory of trusteeship: the rich should hold their superfluous wealth in trust and, failing voluntary compliance, face non-violent resistance (satyagraha) from the poor.
  • By 1942, Gandhi was prepared to see trusteeship regulated by the state rather than left to individual philanthropy, stating that “a trustee has no heir but the public,” and that in a non-violent state, princes and zamindars would be treated on par with other men of wealth.
  • Unlike the Marxists, Gandhi did not reject the notion of private property altogether, but favoured significant limitations on it in the interest of social justice.
• Since more than 80% of India’s population lived in villages, Gandhi’s overarching aim was a relationship in which cities provided sustenance, leadership, and expertise to villages rather than exploiting them — a mutually reinforcing rather than antagonistic urban-rural relationship.
• Among the key instruments of social change Gandhi envisaged were: satyagraha for conflict resolution, swadeshi production, all-round village uplift, integrated adult and primary education, removal of untouchability, communal harmony, mobilization of women, an all-India organization for popular mobilization, and a socialistic pattern of economic development.

10. Gandhi’s Views on the Faulty (Colonial) Education System

• Gandhi viewed the British-instituted education system in India as a major instrument for consolidating colonial control, which in turn widened existing fissures within Indian society.
  • He believed the ancient Indian education system, though inefficient in some respects, had at least provided basic learning to most people.
  • Under British rule, administrative attention shifted to the cities, leaving rural education to languish; village institutions were closed or fell far behind their urban counterparts, widening the rural-urban gulf.
• Psychological and social effects of colonial education:
  • It tended to subdue the imaginative and creative faculties of those who received it, as they focused on mastering a foreign language and culture.
  • Gandhi called such individuals “denationalized” — deluded into believing everything indigenous was inferior: “we function like blotting paper before western civilization… we have become its superficial imitators.”
  • It widened the gulf between the educated elite and “the masses,” whom the elite could not even address in matters of basic hygiene, let alone politics — Gandhi likened the educated class unfavourably to the Brahmins of old, who at least considered themselves “trustees of the nation’s culture.”
  • It produced a class of frustrated youth, educated for administrative posts that did not exist in sufficient numbers, and alienated from the traditional mainstream without a natural leadership role to fill.
  • It created a further imbalance between spouses, as men of the upper and middle classes received Western education while women remained largely uneducated — a gap Gandhi described as “almost unbridgeable,” sometimes leading men to mistreat or neglect their uneducated wives.
• In sum, Gandhi held that colonial education widened social fissures without offering any new, forward-looking value system to replace what it displaced.

11. Gandhi’s Views on Education as an Instrument of Social Change

• Alongside satyagraha, Gandhi regarded education as the foremost instrument of social change, and he implemented several concrete schemes reflecting his concept of “real education.”
• National Gujarati School (Ahmedabad, 1917):
  • Gandhi’s first experimental school was built on the principle that education should be “physical, intellectual and religious.”
  • Physical education included agriculture, hand weaving, carpentry, smithy, drill, civil defence, and basic health instruction.
  • Intellectual training covered Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi and Sanskrit as compulsory subjects, with Urdu, Tamil and Bengali as optional; English was withheld for the first three years. Mathematics, book-keeping, weights and measures, history, geography, and elements of astronomy and chemistry were also taught.
  • Religious instruction focused on general ethical principles, especially truth and non-violence, taught primarily through the conduct of teachers.
  • The scheme was idealistic but constrained by a shortage of teachers, funds, and organizers, resulting in slow progress.
• Gujarat Vidyapith (Ahmedabad, 1921):
  • Established at the height of the Non-Cooperation Movement as India’s first national university, aiming to prepare educated, conscientious workers for the swaraj movement.
  • It refused government aid and upheld truth and non-violence, and consequently rejected untouchability in any form.
  • Students spun regularly and wore khadi to boost swadeshi production and identify with village life; instruction was in the language of the province to avoid an artificial class-mass divide, while Hindi-Hindustani (in both Devanagari and Persian scripts) was compulsory for national integration.
  • Manual and intellectual training received equal importance, with an emphasis on dignity of labour and reduced ambition for personal wealth.
  • After enrolment began to decline, Gandhi reorganized its management in February 1928, shifting control from the senate to a board of trustees, which improved its functioning.
  • Similar institutions — the Kashi Vidyapith and the Jamia Millia Islamia (initially at Aligarh, later shifted to Delhi) — were established along the same lines in the 1920s, surviving without government help until independence.
• Basic Education / Wardha Scheme (from 1937):
  • Gandhi sought to make education self-supporting, a goal that gained urgency once Congress governments adopted prohibition, cutting off liquor excise revenue that had traditionally financed state education.
  • Implemented after Congress formed governments in seven provinces in 1937.
  • The core principle: vocational training as the medium for all-round development, with the syllabus woven around a craft so that history, geography, arithmetic, language and grammar were taught in connection with it.
  • The course extended over seven years, covering vocations such as hand manufacture of cotton, wool and silk products, embroidery, tailoring, papermaking, bookbinding, cabinet making, toy making, and gur making — chosen for requiring little capital outlay.
  • Products made in schools were purchased by the state at fixed prices, making the scheme self-financing; trained students were guaranteed state employment in their learned vocation.
  • Gandhi saw no fundamental difference between rural and urban application of Basic Education, believing cities owed a “debt” to villages and that urban vocational training should relate to village needs, just as village production had always served urban needs.
  • A key criticism was the high degree of state control the scheme envisaged; Gandhi nonetheless believed it could check village decay and lay the foundation for a more just social order without violent class conflict or costly mechanization.
  • He saw an important role for women as teachers in the scheme — not needy job-seekers, but patriotic women with the leisure and zeal to serve.
  • The first Basic Education school, the Vidyamandir Training School, opened at Wardha in April 1938 under the Hindustani Talimi Sangh; on 21 April, students pledged 25 years of service on a monthly salary of Rs 15, with 166 admitted out of 5,000 applicants.
  • The first Conference of Basic National Education was held at Pune in October 1939, where secretary E.W. Aryanayakam declared the scheme’s principles vindicated by a year’s practical experience.
  • After independence, India’s development path diverged from Gandhi’s vision, and the scheme languished within five or six years, surviving only in name at a few schools.
• On higher education, Gandhi’s later view was that it should be left to private enterprise, meeting national requirements in industry and the arts, with state universities functioning purely as self-supporting examining bodies.
• In conclusion, Gandhi saw education not as an end in itself but as a means to the all-round development of individual personality and the needs of the nation.

12. Gandhi’s Views on Rural Regeneration

• Gandhi regarded the state of India’s villages as the true index of the state of the country, making rural regeneration central to his social programme — covering health, education, employment, and the revival of village-based industries.
• Role of the village worker:
  • Volunteers were to live simply among villagers, teaching healthy living through precept and practice; Gandhi propagated these ideas through his journals — Navajivan, Young India, and Harijan.
  • He proposed that villages be grouped into blocks of roughly ten miles’ radius, covering about ten villages each, with one worker per block — requiring an estimated 70,000 volunteers to cover India’s more than seven lakh villages.
  • Each worker’s duties included a census of cattle (to assess milk yield), a census of untouchables and their conditions, and a detailed survey of the village’s area, crops, land revenue, crafts, industries, wells, fruits, and trees — data essential to planning uplift programmes.
• Examples of village service centres:
  • Tamil Nadu: a Gandhi ashram near Trichengodu, set up by C. Rajagopalachari.
  • Comilla, Bengal: the Abhoy Ashram, run by Drs S.C. Banerji and P.C. Ghosh.
  • Meerut: the Gandhi Ashram managed by Acharya Kripalani, with branches in several places.
  • These centres undertook spinning, medical relief, national education, dairy work, agriculture, rural sanitation, removal of untouchability, and anti-liquor campaigns.
• All India Village Industries Association (AIVIA), October 1934:
  • Constituted under Gandhi’s guidance by J.C. Kumarrappa as an autonomous body, separate from Congress’s political activities though still linked to it.
  • Its objectives were to: encourage and improve threatened village industries; take charge of and sell their products; survey industries needing revival; and attend to village sanitation and hygiene.
  • Its working method envisaged town parties visiting villages to clean, instruct and purchase, and village parties visiting towns to sell and demonstrate the usefulness of their products — a movement of decentralization restoring health, comfort, and artisan skill to villages.
  • This effort epitomized Gandhi’s concept of bread labour — the idea that everyone should perform adequate manual labour, either for a living or to correct society’s unfair division of labour.
  • To generate awareness, khadi exhibitions were organized jointly by AIVIA and AISA to coincide with annual Congress sessions; the first was held in March 1936, showcasing artisans from Kashmir, South India, Sindh, and Assam.
  • When Congress governments were formed in seven provinces in 1937, Gandhi advised them on promoting village industries and finding markets for their products beyond the villages of production.
• While Gandhi’s rural regeneration efforts achieved limited concrete results, they succeeded in bringing India’s basic issues of social and economic change into sharp national focus.

13. Gandhi’s Views on Marriage and Varna

• Gandhi’s views on inter-religious and inter-caste marriage underwent a radical evolution over time.
  • Until the early 1920s, he regarded such marriages as contrary to dharma and raised several practical objections.
  • By April 1928, his position had shifted — he held that caste should not be a consideration in marriage, and that what mattered was a shared sense of belonging to the same nation.
  • By 1931, he saw “no moral objection” even to inter-religious marriage, provided each partner remained free to observe their own faith — though he believed the children of such unions should be raised in the father’s faith, a position reflecting the patrilineal tradition to which he belonged.
  • From 1933, he began actively advocating interprovincial and inter-communal marriages among educated people as a check against provincialism and caste exclusiveness.
• Evolution of his views on Varna:
  • In later years, Gandhi came to believe that all Hindus should be classified in the fourth varna, as Shudras — a position intended to level all distinctions of high and low at a stroke.
  • This did not preclude anyone from pursuing divine or other knowledge, but implied that all must live by their own labour and be entitled to nothing more than simple maintenance — a corollary of his doctrine of bread labour, drawn from the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible.
• Opposition to untouchability:
  • The excesses of the caste system made Gandhi a strong opponent of it; he believed reformers should begin by changing their own practice, accepting social boycott if necessary.
  • Responding to those who justified untouchability through the Hindu law of karma, Gandhi argued: “My karma does not compel me to throw stones at a sinner… It is a prostitution of the grand doctrine of karma to consign a man of lowly birth to perdition.” He invoked the example of Ram honouring a fisherman as illustrative of Hindu tradition’s capacity to uplift the lowly.
  • The issue of untouchability, tied closely to the construction of an egalitarian society, became one of the most significant social concerns in Gandhi’s thought.

14. Gandhi’s Views on Public Service

• Gandhi established stringent moral norms for the “public worker,” believing there could be no wholesome public life without them.
• Example set in 1899:
  • In recognition of his public service in South Africa, the Indian community there gifted him costly items, including diamonds, silver, and a heavy gold chain for his wife.
  • This troubled his conscience, as he had publicly declared his work to be unremunerated and had urged others to give up their attachment to jewellery.
  • Despite his wife’s protests, he refused to keep the gifts as personal possessions, instead creating a trust for community benefit and appointing leading Indians as trustees — establishing his firm view that a public worker should accept no costly gifts.
• Focus over breadth: Gandhi also advised that a public worker should not take on too many burdens but should devote himself to a few chosen fields for the best results. As he wrote to a friend: “…from cut of the heap of suffering, we should pick up one clod of earth. If we resolve to do all we can to end that suffering and firmly refuse to take up any other task, we shall have carried the load of the entire hill.”

15. Gandhi’s Views on Communal Tension

• Gandhi was acutely aware of the many points of friction within Indian society, remarking: “Today our democracy is choked by our internecine strife. We are torn by dissensions — dissensions between Hindus and Muslims, Brahmins and non-Brahmins, Congressmen and non-Congressmen.”
• Hindu-Muslim relations formed the pivot of national harmony in Gandhi’s view.
  • He believed that before British rule, Hindu-Muslim conflict had been limited to localized misunderstandings without systemic overtones, which British policy exaggerated into major divisions, fostering the “two nation theory” with the help of ambitious elements in both communities.
  • He argued that at the mass level there had been genuine coexistence — Hindus flourished under Muslim rulers and Muslims under Hindu rulers precisely because both sides recognized that mutual fighting was suicidal.
  • He noted that most Muslims were descended from Hindu converts, reflecting shared ancestry and a syncretic culture built through centuries of assimilation, and argued that “in no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms.”
• Cow protection societies:
  • Though a devout Hindu who worshipped the cow, Gandhi condemned these societies for threatening communal harmony, remarking in Hind Swaraj that “cow protection societies may be considered cow killing societies.”
  • He believed the only path to protecting cows was through persuasion of Muslims, not coercion; if Hindus found the situation intolerable, he urged self-sacrifice rather than violence against Muslims.
  • He also blamed Hindu owners for cruelty toward cows — citing the practice of phooka (used to extract the last drops of milk) and the sale of barren cows to butchers — arguing it was “preposterous” to claim that Hindu ahimsa and Muslim meat-eating made coexistence impossible, since such notions were spread by “selfish and false religious teachers.”
• Role of colonial policy and press:
  • Gandhi held that British historians distorted the culture of subject peoples, shaping public perception.
  • The grant of separate electorates to Muslims in 1909 exacerbated tensions, as the British sought to use the minority to counterbalance the majority community — a strategy Gandhi tried to counter through the national movement he launched in 1919.
  • After a temporary truce, relations soured again in 1924, though Gandhi remained undiscouraged, viewing the awakening of the masses as itself “a tremendous gain.”
• The Shuddhi movement and mutual suspicion:
  • Gandhi criticized the Arya Samajist shuddhi (reconversion) campaigns as lacking rational basis, since conversion was not, in his view, integral to Hinduism as it was to Christianity or Islam; he saw the contemporary practice as an appeal to selfish instinct through bribery into conversion.
  • He also criticized the press, particularly in Punjab, for fanning communal tension through abusive and scurrilous language.
  • Mutual suspicion ran deep: some Muslims saw themselves as a “race of conquerors” and distrusted Hindus as cowardly, a perception aggravated by Hindu mistreatment of Harijans; conversely, some Hindus regarded Muslims as mleccha (untouchable).
  • Gandhi personally faced intolerance from some influential Muslim scholars who objected to his citing the Koran in discussions of non-violence, though he responded that truth was “no man’s monopoly.”
  • He noted glimmers of harmony too — as in Mysore in July 1927, when the Gorakshana Mandali (Cow Protection Society) reported majority Muslim support for preventing cow slaughter.

16. Gandhi’s Views on Cordial Hindu-Muslim Relations

• Gandhi treated cordial Hindu-Muslim relations, alongside swadeshi and the removal of untouchability, as a leading factor in India’s social progress, making it a core part of the constructive programme launched in 1920.
• The Khilafat Movement as a bridge:
  • Gandhi’s long association with Muslims and Hindus in South Africa convinced him that traditional harmony, though fractured, could be re-established in India.
  • He saw the Khilafat demand as an opportunity to bring Muslim masses into the national struggle while restoring communal amity, and persuaded Khilafat leaders — after consultations with Maulana Abdul Bari — to adopt non-violent methods.
  • Prominent leaders such as Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das, Swami Shraddhanand, and Bamanji of Saharanpur extended their support.
  • In November 1919, the Khilafat demand was folded into the all-India satyagraha campaign launched that April — Gandhi’s first major step toward Hindu-Muslim unity.
  • The impact was visible in gestures such as Maulana Abdul Bari’s telegram on 6 September 1919 (Bakri Eid): “In celebration of Hindu-Muslim unity, no cow sacrifices in Firangi Mahal this Bakrid.”
• The 1924 fast and its aftermath:
  • The harmony of 1919 proved short-lived; Turkey’s abolition of the sultanate in 1924 rendered the Khilafat issue redundant, and communal riots broke out after the withdrawal of non-cooperation in February 1922, continuing sporadically until 1924.
  • Feeling responsible for the violence, Gandhi undertook a 21-day penitential fast beginning 17 September 1924, at the Delhi home of his close friend Mohammad Ali, describing his role as striving “to become the best cement between the two communities.”
  • The fast led to a unity conference in Delhi (26–27 September 1924), which passed a Gandhi-drafted resolution deploring communal violence, declaring it “unlawful and irreligious for any person to take the law into his own hands,” and setting up a board of arbitrators for disputes — including cow slaughter and music before mosques — as well as a scheme (binding for five years, till 1929) to protect minority rights.
  • The resolution also addressed conversions, holding that tabligh or shuddhi of minors or uneducated adults was contrary to moral sense, and that conversions must be conducted openly with notice to relatives.
• Other approaches to building unity:
  • Gandhi asked women to use satyagraha — including non-cooperation with their own menfolk — to press for Hindu-Muslim unity.
  • At the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Conference, Karachi (1 April 1931), he appealed to the ulema to promote non-violent conflict resolution and adopt swadeshi; he similarly appealed to Muslim zamindars, especially in Sindh, to improve relations with Hindu neighbours.
  • He proposed the formation of Peace Brigades — local men and women with genuine faith in non-violence and equal regard for all major religions, trusted within their communities, ideally identifiable through distinctive dress, capable of anticipating and defusing communal trouble.
• Though Gandhi’s efforts for lasting Hindu-Muslim unity did not ultimately succeed due to larger political forces, his personal integrity, freedom from bias, and consistent zeal for reconciliation earned him deep trust among large sections of the Muslim community.

17. Gandhi’s Views on ‘Civilization’ and Social Degeneration

• Though a practising Hindu, Gandhi revered all faiths as reflections of a single supreme truth, and was acutely conscious of the contrast between India’s ancient heritage and the state of contemporary society.
  • He attributed India’s decline to an unhealthy imitation of the West and an emphasis on bodily comfort over spiritual uplift — a faulty value system that had displaced India’s authentic roots.
  • He lamented that India, once the “cradle of religions,” was “becoming irreligious,” with religious superstition replacing genuine morality and fostering cruelty and rivalry among communities.
• Critique of the intelligentsia:
  • Gandhi felt the country’s so-called intelligentsia — including lawyers with influence over public opinion — devoted too little time to national development, confining their political engagement to leisure hours: “I do not expect… lawyers will bring us substantially near swaraj.”
• Signs of social degeneration:
  • He observed widespread fraud, hypocrisy, and inequity, including ostentatious spending by the rich at social functions even as the poor struggled — “we make too much ostentation… instead of sincerely mourning we make a show of mourning.”
  • Emulation of the rich by the poor often led to ruinous debt, while the rich themselves preferred rhetoric to sacrifice for the national cause.
  • Religious leaders, in Gandhi’s view, mirrored the hypocrisy of the social elite — professing non-violence while showing indifference to the suffering of small creatures such as insects.
• Regional and pilgrimage-site observations:
  • In Madras (Chennai), Gandhi noted that religion’s outward form persisted while its inner spirit had vanished, with Harijans facing greater indignities than almost anywhere else in India, and Brahmins more sharply separated from non-Brahmins than elsewhere — despite abundant use of sacred ash, sandalwood paste, and vermillion, and a proliferation of well-funded temples.
  • At the Kumbh Mela in Hardwar (1915), Gandhi was struck by the pilgrims’ “absent mindedness, hypocrisy and slovenliness” rather than piety, citing the notorious fraud of a calf’s severed fifth foot grafted onto a cow’s shoulder to exploit the credulous — an experience he later called of “inestimable value” in shaping his own future course.
  • On a 1929 visit to Mathura, Govardhan, and Vrindavan, Gandhi — a devout Vaishnava expecting to find flourishing cattle and pure milk in Krishna’s homeland — instead found emaciated, barely productive cattle sold off to butchers, Brahmins reduced to “beggars” rather than “custodians of true religion,” and large numbers of impoverished widows (many from Bengal) surviving on a small daily pittance for repeating the name “Radhey-Shyam.”
  • At the Buddha Jayanti celebrations in Kolkata (May 1925), Gandhi remarked that “Buddhism, like every religion at the present moment, is really decadent,” while expressing hope that all great religions would eventually be purged of fraud and hypocrisy, leaving only truth and love as religion’s true badge.
• Gandhi also pointed to the exploitation of young girls forced into marriage with older widowers under the guise of “social service,” as well as reports of violence, untruth, and large-scale bogus membership and embezzlement within the Congress itself — evidence, in his eyes, of how deeply this moral degeneration had penetrated even the foremost political organization of the nation.