Can moral values, justice and non-violence guide economic progress? Insights from Gandhi

A good way to begin this essay on Mohandas Gandhi’s ideas about nonviolent ways of satisfying the basic economic needs of human societies is by recalling Joseph Cornelius Kumarappa (1892-1960). Most Indians do not know who he was. An economic philosopher and architect of the Gandhian rural economics programme, here was a Tamilian who obtained degrees in public finance and business administration at two prestigious American universities: Syracuse and Columbia. A lucrative professional career lay ahead of him. However, after his very first meeting with Gandhi in 1929 at Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, Kumarappa gave up his three-piece suit, took to wearing khadi and became a lifelong preacher and practitioner of Gandhian economics.

Religion is the chief source of Gandhian economics. And at the heart of his understanding of religion is the care of the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable members of society. Kumarappa, who crystallised Gandhi’s economic philosophy in his book The Economy of Permanence, lived his life by this religious diktat. In J.C. Kumarappa: Mahatma Gandhi’s Economist, his biographer Mark Lindley writes: “Kumarappa in his last seven years resided in a one-room house, the interior decoration of which consisted of a picture of a poor man. When asked who it was, he would say, ‘My master’s master. My master is Mahatma Gandhi, and Gandhi’s master is this villager’.”

Kumarappa’s quest in his book The Economy of Permanence, was “to relate our spiritual and higher self back to life so that the daily routine of mundane existence may be regulated in accordance with the dictates of our better self, and to find a way of life that will lend purpose for existence and action to such as have no use for the present-day traditional religion because of its other worldliness from humdrum everyday life.” He added: “An effort is here made to bring all walks of life into alignment with the universal order. What men of religion term ‘eternal life’ or ‘Union with the Godhead’ has been interpreted in relation to the everyday life of man.”

He added: “In studying human institutions we should never lose sight of that great teacher, Mother Nature. Anything that we may devise if it is contrary to her ways, she will ruthlessly annihilate sooner or later … A nation that forgets or ignores this fundamental process in forming its institutions will disintegrate.”

In his brief foreword to Kumarappa’s book, Gandhi posed a profound question in his inimitable manner: “Shall the body triumph over and stifle the soul or shall the latter triumph over and express itself through a perishable body which, with its few wants healthily satisfied, will be free to subserve the end of the imperishable soul? This is ‘Plain living and high thinking’.”

This question sums up the entirety of Gandhi’s life-transforming philosophy of nonviolent economic growth. Many great humanist thinkers in ancient and modern times have preached nonviolence. All of them are worthy of veneration. However, what is distinctive about Gandhi is that his “science of nonviolence” explored, among other things, the economic basis of violence. It also enunciated a new ethics-based and peace-promoting way of economic development consistent with the higher possibilities in human evolution.

The introduction of justice and moral values as a factor to be considered in regulating international commerce was, according to Gandhi, the touchstone of “the extension of law of nonviolence in the domain of economics”. He declares: “Economics that hurts the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and therefore sinful”. Much of what he said or wrote about economics negates the foundational principles of modern economic theory and practice. “True economics,” he affirms, “is the economics of justice”. He calls it the first principle of every religion.

His castigation of Britain and the other colonial powers of Europe was on account of the fact that the economics they practiced was a violation of the religion of Jesus that they preached. “I know no previous instance in history of a nation’s establishing a systematic disobedience to the first principle of its professed religion”. He reminds us that all the scriptures of the world, “which we (verbally) esteem as divine, denounce “the love of money as the source of all evil and as an idolatry abhorred of the deity”. They also declare “mammon service to be the accurate and irreconcilable opposite of God’s service”.

Unjust economics

Gandhi located one of the major sources of wars and violence in economic systems that favoured the few by neglecting the majority. His 1908 essay Sarvodaya, or the wellbeing and progress of all, that paraphrased writer-philosopher John Ruskin’s Unto This Last, was written six years before the outbreak of the First World War (1914-18). In the essay, Gandhi accurately predicted that Europe was heading towards a catastrophic war. Moreover, he had pointed out that the main cause of the war would be the West’s industrialism, whose inherent predilection for overproduction created an almost limitless appetite for new sources of cheap raw materials as well as new markets for its finished goods.

He prophesied: “Western civilisation is a mere baby, a hundred or only fifty years old. And yet it has reduced Europe to a sorry plight. Let us pray that India is saved from the fate that has overtaken Europe, where the nations are poised for an attack on one another, and are silent only because of the stockpiling of armaments. Some day there will be an explosion, and then Europe will be a veritable hell on earth. Non-white races are looked upon as legitimate prey by every European state. What else can we expect where covetousness is the ruling passion in the breasts of men? Europeans pounce upon new territories like crows upon a piece of meat. I am inclined to think that this is due to their mass-production factories.”

A lot has changed in the world in the hundred years since Gandhi wrote this indictment of Western imperialism, the most notable change being the end of the colonial subjugation by European nations. Nevertheless, there has also been a striking continuity. The Western model of economic growth, with some variations, has spread to most parts of the world. The instinct of big and powerful nations to aggressively capture sources of raw materials, especially energy resources, near and far, and their equally aggressive attempts to seize markets for finished products, is welded to commercial culture in the age of globalisation. Slowly, India too is following the wrong footsteps of other powerful nations.

Gandhi not only foresaw the unsustainability of Western patterns of production, marketing and consumption, but he also warned India about the danger inherent in imitating them. He wrote in Young India on December 20, 1928: “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts”.

Environmental destruction

This essentially Western, but lately globalised, model of economic growth has also given rise to new forms of violence. Economic “progress” has resulted in – nay, it has actually necessitated – the most virulent attacks on the environment, the likes of which have never been seen in human history.

Forests, one of the most beautiful and benevolent creations of nature, have been felled with impunity. Oceans, rivers and other water bodies have been polluted with toxic effluents killing countless aquatic creatures. Even though we have not, fortunately, witnessed in the past few decades the mass killing of human beings on a scale seen during the two World Wars and other smaller conflicts during the 20th century, the savagery of human beings against other species on the planet can only be described as an unending holocaust. The irony is that other species are being exterminated for the “development” of human species.

The protection of the environment and sustainable development were not quite on the global or India’s agenda when Gandhi was alive. Nevertheless, we see how he was far ahead of his time in warning the world about the potentially disastrous consequences of the Western model of economic growth, which has, alas, now become, with some local variations, the globally accepted model.

When asked if he wanted India to enjoy the same kind of lifestyle as Britain, his incisive reply was: “It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve this prosperity. How many planets will a country like India require?”

Although technological breakthroughs during the past few decades have unleashed huge productivity gains in the global economy, Gandhi’s fundamental concern for the ecological health of the planet remains valid.

Gandhian environmentalism is integrally linked to his worldview of nonviolence. “It is an arrogant assumption,” he wrote, “to say that human beings are lords and masters of the lower creatures. On the contrary, being endowed with greater things in life, they are the trustees of the lower animal kingdom”. He wanted “to realise identity with even the crawling things upon earth, because we claim descent from the same God, and that being so, all life in whatever form it appears must essentially be so”. In a highly original re-interpretation of colonialism, he affirmed that lording over nature and over other “inferior” people are both manifestations of colonialism.

Let us turn to some irrefutable evidence to know the shocking extent of violence that human beings have perpetrated through this colonisation of other species on Earth ─ paradoxically, eco-colonialism gained momentum after the era of conventional colonialism came to an end in the second half of the 20th century.

A study published in 2010 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network, has concluded that nature’s very “backbone is at risk”. The most comprehensive assessment of the world’s vertebrates confirms “an extinction crisis” with one-fifth of species threatened. “On average, fifty species of mammal, bird and amphibian move closer to extinction each year”.

Clearly, nature’s greatest creation, human beings, turned out to be the worst destroyer of its other creations.

Family and community

Another new form of violence in the modern era has been the massive disruption of that most basic, civilising and naturally created institution of human beings: family. It is in the institution of family that one is most human. It is here that humanising values such as love, mutual affection, care and cooperation without seeking anything in return are more active than in other areas of social interaction.

The laws of modern economics have no place within the family unit because human labour here is non-monetised and freely offered. Traditional societies in the past had ensured extension of this caring ethos of the family to neighbourhoods and communities to a substantial degree. Sadly, in modern times, this ethos has come under relentless attack by the forces of lopsided economic growth. The rapid disintegration of family and communities has led to the atomisation of society.

Paradoxically, countries where family and community values have been most eroded are regarded as “developed”, worthy of being emulated by the developing and underdeveloped countries.

This degenerative process is no longer limited to the countries of the West. It can also be seen in India and, to a lesser extent in, China, the two large, ancient civilisations that achieved high gross domestic product growth by following the Western model of development. The widening rural-urban divide, the forced separation of migrant workers from their families, the dehumanising living conditions of the urban poor, the separation of ageing parents from children in middle-class families, the inhospitable, and even hostile, nature of the urban environment for senior citizens, children and the disabled, and the growing scarcity of living space and basic amenities for all but a rich minority – are all of these not manifestations of violence?

Healthcare, a basic need and an inalienable right of every human being, now comes with a price tag, unaffordable even for the ordinary citizens of wealthy countries.

Is it not systemic violence when the sick go unattended, not for want of medical facilities in the vicinity but for want of money? And is it not systemic violence when the undignified and hazardous living and working conditions for a large section of the global population increases their vulnerability to disease and death?

The compulsions of crass commerce have brought violence even into the realm of culture. The function of culture is to refine the higher senses of human beings, enrich human relationships and thus enhance joy. However, by converting culture into a marketable commodity, tempting human beings into becoming consumers of this commodity, deadening their capacity for refined aesthetic experience and reducing joy itself to instant and yet fleeting gratification, the business of mass entertainment has only created an illusion of “good life”. Worse still, the giant entertainment industry in the West, which in turn is aped by entertainment businesses run by the westernised elites in India and other countries, has inflicted violence on a huge scale on the diversity of art, culture, literature, languages, dialects and spiritual traditions around the world.

All these multiple manifestations of violence have created a moral vacuum and alienation in modern societies. Crime in many new and sophisticated ways, which has increased in almost every part of the world, is also a form and an outcome of alienation.

There is another, oft-neglected, form of violence in the modern world: alienation caused by the economic and cultural tyranny of industrialism. There is growing loneliness, especially among youngsters, causing isolation, depression and unhappiness. Parent-children bonds are diminishing and connections between families are reducing. Atomised living in impersonal social and work environments is causing lower emotional stability, loneliness, addiction to drugs, depression and other mental disorders.

All this has also led to human being’s alienation from their past as well as from their future. Increasingly, we are obsessed only with the short-term considerations and aspirations of our finite existence on this planet: the here and now. We have little concern either for our ancestors’ expectations or for our own obligations towards the generations to come. This has resulted in a cognitive and behavioural disorder in modern human beings.

Edward Goldsmith (1928-2009), an Anglo-French philosopher of sustainable development and a passionate votary of the Gandhian model of development, remarks: “The notion that we owe nothing to posterity seems to justify, in the eyes of many people, our terrible egotism and the deliberate pillaging of the world’s natural resources to which our society is so committed in order to satisfy the requirements of the corporations that control it.”

Rebuilding economics

Gandhi repeatedly emphasises that his advocacy of nonviolence is a necessary by-product of his faith in satya, or the truth, which for him was the same as God. Ahimsa, or nonviolence, was the best – indeed, the only – way to worship God.

Since he recognised science as an important and reliable way of finding truth, he called his advocacy of nonviolence the “science of nonviolence”. He was one of the few saintly voices of peace who uncovered the economic roots of violence. His “science of nonviolence” was comprehensive. It addressed three fundamental questions that have agitated the minds of thinking people all over the world.

Firstly, are humans inherently violent? If violence is an inseparable part of human nature, then the dream of a nonviolent world remains just that – an unrealisable dream. On the contrary, if, as Gandhi believed, humans are not by nature violent, then the question that begets itself is: how can individuals, societies and nations progress along the path of peace?

Specifically, how can the world rid itself of wars and weapons of mass destruction? Can science and technology, which have so far come to the aid of human instinct to kill fellow beings, become the means to promote the virtue of non-killing? Can the rhetoric of “a world without nuclear weapons” become a reality – and how soon? Peace-lovers in all ages have dreamt of beating “swords into plowshares”. Realisation of this dream demands a drastic reduction in military expenditures of national governments, especially big powers, and diverting the saved resources to eliminate poverty, hunger, disease and homelessness from our beautiful planet. How can this be achieved?

Secondly, how can we protect the priceless eco-wealth of our planet? In other words, can human beings become nonviolent towards the natural ecology of which he is an integral part? Can homo sapiens become a reliable trustee to other living species that are cohabiting this beautiful but fragile planet? Like the challenge of nuclear disarmament, this challenge too has become far more pressing in the post-Gandhi era.

Indeed, the biggest task is to first heal the wounds humans have already inflicted on “Gaia”, Greek for Mother Earth. Science and technology can no doubt serve as healing agents, but human beings need something more: the wisdom to know why they committed the crime of assaulting the environment in the first place, the readiness to repent and the knowledge to save themselves and the wondrous web of life on this planet.

Thirdly, are women more capable of making our world a safer and better place than men? Are they inherently more predisposed towards peace and caring than men? Gandhi’s answer was resoundingly in the affirmative. Since he regarded women to be more kind and hence more nonviolent, he believed in the power of women’s leadership to create a more peaceful future for humanity. It is for this reason that he regarded “survival of the kindest” as against the theory of “survival of the fittest” as the future law of human evolution. Nevertheless, the challenge remained: how to empower women in economic and non-economic spheres in societies that continued to be dominated by patriarchal, religio-cultural dogmas?

Ethical guidelines

Does Gandhi’s philosophy offer readymade answers to these questions? Does he provide formulaic solutions to overcome the multiple maladies of the modern world? No. However, his ideas do help us understand that the source of these maladies lies, to a large degree, in the reigning economic system, which in turn has distorted the systems of politics, education, science and technology and even religion, in countries around the world. It also provides a useful set of ideas and ethical guidelines that can help cure many of these maladies.

One can find a good selection of them engraved on the walled enclosure surrounding Raj Ghat, Gandhiji’s serenely verdant cremation site in New Delhi. Among them is this pithy but profound aphorism, penned by Gandhi himself, explaining the “seven social sins”, which he regarded as the roots of all kinds of violence in society:

Wealth without Work,
Pleasure without Conscience,
Knowledge without Character,
Commerce without Morality,
Science without Humanity,
Worship without Sacrifice,
Politics without Principles.

Gandhi questions the absurd assumption of capitalist economics that inequity and injustice are inevitable. He likens the circulation of wealth in a nation to the circulation of blood in the natural body. Using this scientific analogy, he explains how inequalities of wealth, “unjustly established”, are harmful to the health of society and its members, both rich and poor. It is necessary to record here that he makes a distinction between inequalities of wealth “justly” and “unjustly” established. He considers wealth “justly” established to be natural.

Using the language of mathematics, Gandhi explains the moral and immoral ways of wealth creation:

“The real value of acquired wealth depends on the moral sign attached to it, just as sternly as that of a mathematical quantity depends on the algebraical sign attached to it. Any given accumulation of commercial wealth may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful industries, progressive energies and productive ingenuities; or on the other hand, it may be indicative of mortal luxury, merciless tyranny, ruinous chicanery.…Therefore the idea that directions can be given for the gaining of wealth, irrespective of the consideration of its moral sources, is perhaps the most insolently futile of all that ever beguiled men through their vices.”

As in everything else, Gandhi places greater responsibility on major world powers – which now includes India and China, besides the United States and other rich nations – than on small and weak nations to promote nonviolence and peace in international commerce. “Great nations (must cease) to believe in soul-destroying competition and to multiply wants and thereby increasing their material possessions”.

The United Nations declared October 2, Gandhi’s birthday, as the International Day of Nonviolence. This is a befitting tribute to the greatest promoter of peace in the modern era. However, do leaders of India and other powerful nations pay heed to his philosophy of nonviolence while devising their policies and strategies for economic growth? The answer is painfully obvious.

The writer, who served as an aide to India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is the founder of the Forum for a New South Asia – Powered by India-Pakistan-China Cooperation. His X handle is @SudheenKulkarni and he welcomes comments at sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com.

This is the first of a two-part series on Gandhi.