Comment: Anarchism in Gandhi’s philosophy. (1993, 20 Marks)
Philosophical anarchism holds that the state has no moral right to command, even where abolishing it is not an immediate aim. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi belongs to this family rather than to the insurrectionary anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin. His anarchism is an ideal limit, “enlightened anarchy”, against which he measured every government without proposing to abolish one.
Why Gandhi Distrusted the State
- Organised violence. In his 1934 interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose (published in the Modern Review, 1935) he said the state represents violence in a concentrated and organised form. A person has a soul; the state is a soulless machine that cannot give up the force it rests on.
- Destroyer of individuality. He feared every increase in state power. Even when it reduced exploitation, it damaged the individuality which lies at the root of all progress.
- Conscience above law. Only persons are moral agents, so obedience is never an excuse. Openly breaking an unjust law, and accepting the penalty, becomes a duty. Satyagraha is this principle as a method.
His sources were Leo Tolstoy‘s Christian anarchism in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (read in 1894) and Henry David Thoreau‘s Civil Disobedience (1849), recast in the Indian idiom of Ramrajya, a moral order needing no coercion.
Enlightened Anarchy
In Young India (2 July 1931) he argued that if national life became so perfect as to become self-regulated, representation would be unnecessary. That condition is enlightened anarchy. Everyone is his own ruler and never hinders his neighbour; there is no political power because there is no state. Since the ideal is never fully reached, he endorsed Thoreau’s classical statement that the government is best which governs the least. Political power was for him a means, never an end.
The Ideal and the Interim
The anarchism is asymptotic, approached but not reached.
- He worked for a predominantly non-violent society (Harijan, 1940), conceding that it might still need police, a sign of his imperfect ahimsa.
- Gram swaraj in an oceanic circle of villages would shrink the centre, not abolish it.
- Trusteeship rested on persuasion, yet he later accepted legal enforcement.
- Vinoba Bhave‘s Gramdan and Jayaprakash Narayan‘s partyless democracy carried the idea on; Geoffrey Ostergaard and Melville Currell called these Sarvodaya leaders The Gentle Anarchists (1971).
Critiques
- Ambedkar’s reversal. For B. R. Ambedkar caste society, not the state, was the main oppressor, so the state had to emancipate. His 1949 warning against the grammar of anarchy rejected civil disobedience once constitutional remedies existed.
- The developmental state. Jawaharlal Nehru found village republics unworkable for defence, planning and welfare; Gandhi’s own Congress built a centralised state.
- Marxist objection. Moral self-rule leaves property and class power intact, so the state cannot wither.
- Not quite anarchism. Karuna Mantena places his anti-statism nearer the political pluralists‘ attack on sovereignty. His religious grounding and gradualism also separate him from Peter Kropotkin.
Contemporary Resonance
Mendha Lekha in Gadchiroli, a Gond village that in 2009 became the first to win community forest rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, decides by consensus in its gram sabha. Its slogan, our government is in Mumbai and Delhi, but in our village we are the government, is the ideal in miniature, an island within a strong state.
Conclusion
Gandhi’s anarchism is philosophical, not programmatic: a moral horizon that makes the state justify every extension of coercion. He was a reluctant statist with an anarchist conscience. Enlightened anarchy was never meant to be realised; it serves as the standard for judging how far power can be made decentralised, consensual and non-violent.