The Impossible Indian : Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence

"The Impossible Indian" offers a rare, fresh view of Gandhi as a hard-hitting political thinker willing to countenance the greatest violence in pursuit of a global vision that went far beyond a nationalist agenda. Revising the conventional view of the Mahatma as an isolated Indian moralist detached from the mainstream of twentieth-century politics, Faisal Devji offers a provocative new genealogy of Gandhian thought, one that is not rooted in a cliched alternative history of spiritual India but arises from a tradition of conquest and violence in the battlefields of 1857. Focusing on his unsentimental engagement with the hard facts of imperial domination, Fascism, and civil war, Devji recasts Gandhi as a man at the center of modern history. Rejecting Western notions of the rights of man, rights which can only be bestowed by a state, Gandhi turned instead to the idea of "dharma, " or ethical duty, as the true source of the self s sovereignty, independent of the state. Devji demonstrates that Gandhi s dealings with violence, guided by his idea of ethical duty, were more radical than those of contemporary revolutionists. To make sense of this seemingly incongruous relationship with violence, Devji returns to Gandhi s writings and explores his engagement with issues beyond India s struggle for home rule. Devji reintroduces Gandhi to a global audience in search of leadership at a time of extraordinary strife as a thinker who understood how life s quotidian reality could be revolutionized to extraordinary effect. While in his own time Gandhi was recognised by friends and enemies alike as a major political force, not only in India but the world at large, in our own day the Mahatma has been reduced to an idealist by his supporters as much as by his detractors. Whether this idealism is regarded as sincere or hypocritical, Gandhi has also become a resolutely Indian figure today, capable only of inspiring others in the most general way. Yet the Mahatma always considered his practices as being realistic and even mundane in the ease of their application, while at the same time holding them to possess universal potential. India for him was only the site of an experiment in non-violence. Given that Gandhi had become during his own lifetime one of the world's most famous and admired men, indeed one of the earliest figures who enjoyed such global celebrity, these grandiose impressions of his mission were not out of place. This book is about the Mahatma as a political thinker, one who recognised how the quotidian reality of modern life could be radicalised to produce the most extraordinary effects. In this sense he belongs with Lenin, Hitler and Mao as one of the great revolutionary figures of our times, though his politics was of course directed along paths other than state-building. Focussing on his unsentimental engagement with the hard facts of imperial domination, fascism and civil war, this study places Gandhi at the centre of modern history, exploring the new political reality he claimed to have discovered. This was a politics the Mahatma mobilised in practices that required as much sacrifice, and even death, as those propagated by his revolutionary peers, if for very different reasons. The Impossible Indian reveals Gandhi as the hard-hitting political thinker he was and confirms the contemporary relevance of his legacy to the world at large

The Impossible Indian offers a rare, fresh view of Gandhi as a hard-hitting political thinker willing to countenance the greatest violence in pursuit of a global vision that went far beyond a nationalist agenda. Revising the conventional view of the Mahatma as an isolated Indian moralist detached from the mainstream of twentieth-century politics, Faisal Devji offers a provocative new genealogy of Gandhian thought, one that is not rooted in a clichéd alternative history of spiritual India but arises from a tradition of conquest and violence in the battlefields of 1857.

Focusing on his unsentimental engagement with the hard facts of imperial domination, Fascism, and civil war, Devji recasts Gandhi as a man at the center of modern history. Rejecting Western notions of the rights of man, rights which can only be bestowed by a state, Gandhi turned instead to the idea of dharma, or ethical duty, as the true source of the self’s sovereignty, independent of the state. Devji demonstrates that Gandhi’s dealings with violence, guided by his idea of ethical duty, were more radical than those of contemporary revolutionists.

To make sense of this seemingly incongruous relationship with violence, Devji returns to Gandhi’s writings and explores his engagement with issues beyond India’s struggle for home rule. Devji reintroduces Gandhi to a global audience in search of leadership at a time of extraordinary strife as a thinker who understood how life’s quotidian reality could be revolutionized to extraordinary effect.

This book offers a rare, fresh view of Gandhi as a hard hitting political thinker willing to countenance the greatest violence in pursuit of a global vision that went far beyond a nationalist agenda. Focusing on his unsentimental engagement with the hard facts of imperial domination, Fascism, and civil war, Devji recasts Gandhi as a man at the center of modern history. Rejecting Western notions of the rights of man, rights which can only be bestowed by a state Presents a rare view of Gandhi as a hard-hitting political thinker willing to countenance the greatest violence in pursuit of a global vision that went beyond a nationalist agenda. Guided by his idea of ethical duty as the source of the self's sovereignty, he understood how life's quotidian reality could be revolutionized to extraordinary effect. Bastard history A nation misplaced In praise of prejudice Brothers in arms Hitler's conversion Leaving India to anarchy.