by Robert Cole Gauthier
Mohandas Gandhi’s treatise Hind Swaraj lays out the philosophical groundwork that outlines how India should depart the British Raj and become a self-governed nation. Among all of the ideas presented within the work, the idea of passive-resistance or truth/soul force is a likely candidate for the idea most associated with Gandhi in the West. Meanwhile, in Germany, the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche including master and slave morality as well as the will to power were circulating and becoming popular as they were outlined in the polemic On The Genealogy of Morality.
While Gandhi and Nietzsche at first glance appear to be radically different thinkers, this paper is interested in understanding both of these ideas and illuminating them by viewing them through the lenses of each other. It will accomplish this first by explaining how passive resistance is superior to violent resistance both morally and practically. Following this, the Swaraj movement will be viewed through the Nietzschean lens framing the event as tension between master and slave morality, while also on the reversal considering the role of passive and violent resistance in Nietzsche’s historical examples. The secondary article, “Gandhi’s West, The West’s Gandhi” written by historian Vinlay Lal will be looked at alongside Hind Swaraj to aid in measuring the applicableness of Nietzsche’s theories in the Indian context. Lastly, this paper analyses how the idea of the will to power informs and impacts passive resistance through the figure of the ascetic priest. In other words, resistance will be first looked at in the context of India and then in the wider Nietzschean conflict resulting from multiple parties following different moral systems wishing to express their will to power. For this argument, the secondary source “Gandhi And His Critics” by Gandhi’s biographer Bal Ram Nanda will be utilised to understand the other factors which may have motivated Gandhi that differ from Nietzschean thought. Ultimately, Gandhi’s alternative way of looking at the discipline of history calls into question the universality of Nietzsche’s ideas while Gandhi’s satyagraha demonstrates how the innate will to power can manifest in a way that is beneficial to both the self and others.
Beginning with the path towards Swaraj, Gandhi identifies two forms of resistance, “[t]he force of arms [and] The second kind of force [passive resistance which can be verbalised as] ‘If you do not concede our demand, we will no longer be your petitioners.’”[1] Gandhi establishes that passive resistance is superior both morally and practically. From a philosophical perspective, passive resistance is superior in that it fuels itself on “[t]he force of love or the soul.”[2] On the other hand, brute force while “possible [and allows us] the same thing [the British] got” (domination over India), it would be a “[g]reat mistake” equivalent to “[getting] a rose through planting a noxious weed” to go this route.[3] What Gandhi is arguing metaphorically in this passage is that should India regain Swaraj using the same methods that the British used to establish their Raj, then the cultural values of the British Raj will remain. While the Empire may no longer occupy Indian land, their legacy and culture will still exist through future Indian rulers. In the beginning of his work, Gandhi is quick to establish that his problem with the British Raj is not its existence, but the values which it has sown into the nation replacing prior rich philosophical tradition. In Gandhi’s words, he wishes to avoid “[E]nglish rule without the Englishman [or] the tiger’s nature but not the tiger… [this independence scenario would] be called not Hindustan but Englistan.”[4] In passages like this, Gandhi suggests that there is not any inherent flaw in the character of a particular people as there are cultural values that have harmful effects on others. Gandhi wishes for a revolution of these values, not of people. Similar to how Emiliano Zapata famously described himself, Gandhi is a partisan of principles, not of men.
Furthermore, soul-force is argued to be stronger than brute force. In Gandhi’s words: “If the story of the universe had commenced with wars, not a man would have been found alive today. Those people who have been warred against have disappeared, as, for instance, the natives of Australia, of whom hardly a man was left alive by its intruders.”[5] Essentially, the reason that humanity exists is because of love. A warmongering attitude leads only to destruction, the loss of people and the loss of culture. While wars are memorable and thereby are inscribed into history, the majority of existence is spent exerting soul-force, hence the cultural survival of people around the world. Gandhi would say that “[H]istory, then, is a record of an interruption of the course of nature. Soul-force, being natural, is not noted in history.”[6] The way that the passive-resistance mechanism works is effectively “[s]ecuring rights by personal suffering.”[7] The idea behind this is that by disobeying, one is “[not minding] degrading laws [therefore ensuring] no man’s tyranny will enslave [them].”[8] By losing control of the populace, passive-resistance takes control away from the British without Indians having to sacrifice their principles in the process.
While Gandhi’s revolution of principles idea is compelling, it may still be difficult to see practically why the British would give up India when the nation is so profitable to them and their army is superior. While it is upsetting to see others self-sacrifice as is done in the process of passive-resistance and the loss of profits from actions such as the salt march would make India appear less appealing to British elite, ultimately, it is easy to see how a ruling class could absolve their guilt as they are not forcing the peasantry to engage in said sacrifice and after acknowledging this, they can reestablish control via increased force. However, it is important to remember that Gandhi never says that passive resistance is easy. Instead, he says that “Wherein is courage required – in blowing others to pieces from behind a cannon or with a smiling face to approach a cannon and to be blown to pieces?… Believe me that a man devoid of courage and manhood can never be a passive resistor.”[9] In other words, while difficult, should a passive resistor not succumb, their sacrifice is extremely powerful because it can continue indefinitely without ever requiring more resources while also harming the enemy party at an increasing rate the longer the disobedience is maintained. Therefore, the rebellion can continue lessening the power of the oppressor and damaging them economically until they are forced to pull out and secede power to the oppressed class. In this regard, passive-resistance is not only philosophically necessary in a revolution of values to ensure the oppressed do not lose their moral high ground, but also is more efficient and practical.
Written in a similar time period to Hind Swaraj but in a very different context, Friedrich Nietzsche’s polemic On the Genealogy of Morality deals with similar questions regarding power, oppression and resistance. The fundamental difference in this work is that Nietzsche is not looking at any one concrete German problem insofar as he is looking at the history of morality across time and space to better understand how morality might or should evolve in the future. Whether or not Gandhi read Nietzsche, his identified framework and concepts can help readers more deeply understand the problem of oppression.
Nietzsche begins by separating society into two groups, the nobility and the slaves. The nobles practise master morality, a concept defined as being “[free] from all social constraint…”.[10] In contrast, the slaves practise slave morality and as the caste is ruled by domination at least at first, they define themselves by “[i]nterpreting into suffering an entire secret salvation machinery.”[11] In other words, the slaves glorify their suffering believing it will lead to a better life whether that is peace on Earth as is achieved in the Buddhist state dubbed Nirvana or peace in the afterlife as is found in the Christian realm of Heaven. Using Nietzsche’s hypothesis, it makes sense why Gandhi under the British rule in India would value slave morality and passive resistance over master morality and brute force.
However, to critique Nietzsche using this lens is too narrow, for Nietzsche was not concerned with such a short timespan. Countless examples throughout history can be found of one master overthrowing another. Rather, Nietzsche’s revolution is quiet, having taken place over a long period of time. In the European context, Nietszche identifies the conflict as having begun with “[R]ome against Judea” and still being ongoing with a recent example being the “[v]ictory over the classical ideal with the French Revolution…”.[12] This conflict which Nietzsche has identified as having taken place for almost 2000 years has existed longer than the British Raj and even The Kingdom of England itself. With this in mind, the Swaraj movement can be viewed not only as a debate regarding how to take back India, but as a continuation of the debate between the merits of slave and master morality.
One way in which India appears to conflict with Nietzsche’s theory more dramatically is that Gandhi argues that slave morality dominated India prior to English colonisation. European civilisation is described as a “[d]isease…” to which “[E]nglish people are at present afflicted by…”.[13] By characterising the English master morality as a disease from which India prior to the Raj was immune, Gandhi is arguing that slave morality is natural and existed prior to master morality, the opposite of Nietzsche’s argument. This is problematic as Nietzsche claims to be writing on the “[o]rigin of morality…” in general, not only in Europe and from Gandhi’s testimony, it appears India differs from claimed universal rules.[14] Even in the European context, by starting analysis with Rome rather than with civilisations that existed prior, the biological/natural nature of master morality becomes called into question.
Furthermore, On The Genealogy of Morality may not be applicable to Hind Swaraj when one considers how Gandhi’s opinions on what constitutes history differ from the European ideas that would have inspired Nietzsche. Indian historian Vinlay Lal summarises the academic thought close to the era of Nietzsche and Gandhi through a quote by French feminist thinker Luce Irigary where she argues that “The dominant discipline in the human sciences… is now history.”[15] The prevalence of history is further evidenced by Nietzsche’s decision to make his text on understanding morality a genealogy and by the arguments used by British thinkers in the 19th century when Nietzsche was most active, that Indians lacked “[r]ational thinking…” due to their “[inability] to deliver simple chronologies.”[16] Europeans and even Indian nationalists hoping to construct a history of India fitting European standards struggled to accomplish their task due to the people’s focus on “[m]yths.”[17] Similar to how Elsie Paul spreads tɑɁɑw through oral narratives that focus more upon the lessons which they teach than absolute historical certainty, Gandhi believed that history serves better as a moral tool than a hard science. He believes history as Europeans see it is unnecessary with Lal quoting him stating “I believe in the saying that a nation is happy that has no history. It is my pet theory that our Hindu ancestors solved the question for us by ignoring history as it is understood today and by building on slight events and their philosophical structure.”[18] This differs significantly from the European histories of the time which according to Lal, “[assessed civilizations] along an evaluative scale, [with] history [becoming] the template by which people were judged as more or less socially evolved.”[19] When combining this with the history being written by the victors bias that inevitably occurs, Lal argues that to Gandhi, “History was thus not only a totalizing mode of interpreting the past that was wholly inhospitable to competing visions of the past, it was, even more ominously, a way of hijacking the future of colonized people.”[20] Using this framework of history favoured by Gandhi and other Indians, On The Genealogy of Morality with its linear structure and adherence to the progress doctrine quickly morphs into a tool which does not make sense to use in the Indian context. While On The Genealogy of Morality may be more useful for looking at Nietzsche’s home state of Germany, based on the passages presented in this paper, Gandhi begins to raise the question of whether Nietzsche’s polemic oversimplifies the history of morality in Europe as well.
In the same way that some arguments in Hind Swaraj call into question claims made by Nietzsche, arguments in On the Genealogy of Morality also force readers to rethink Gandhi. While Gandhi’s resistance philosophy centres around the idea of soul-force and love, Nietzsche’s claim that even the ascetic priest is exercising a will to power provokes thought. When describing this totem of slave morality, Nietzsche writes: “The ascetic priest must be counted as the foreordained savior, shepherd, and advocate of the sick herd: only then do we understand his historic mission. Dominion over ones who suffer is his realm.”[21] In other words, the ascetic priest by enrapturing the attention of the herd and acting as a guide attains power over their devotees. Viewing Gandhi through this lens, Nietzsche might argue that Gandhi is less concerned with soul-force and more so with attaining power over his followers.
Other secondary sources provide more lenses to look at Gandhi including the lenses of religion and psychology. Viewing Hind Swaraj from a religious perspective paints a more optimistic portrait about the motives of Gandhi writing Hind Swaraj contrasting the agnostic Nietzsche. In his work “Gandhi And His Critics”, Bal Ram Nanda argues that “[Gandhi possessed] a doctrine of original goodness. He did not divide mankind into good and bad; there were only evil acts… the ‘moral solidarity of mankind’ was an ever-present fact: ‘We are… the children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite’.[22] Whereas Nietzsche comes from an increasingly secular world, Gandhi’s deep religious background forms a way of looking at the world through a more optimistic lens where all are infused with the same divine spirit. In this perspective, Gandhi is not trying to establish power insofar as he is filling out the will of a higher power. This perspective aligns closer with Gandhi’s original idea of soul-force.
However, Gandhi never claims in Hind Swaraj that he has been instructed to carry out satyagraha by a higher power leading one to wonder what inspired Gandhi in particular rather than someone else when many in India during this time would have come of age in religious families. Nanda provides an answer to this question by drawing his reader’s attention to the arguments of eminent Harvard psychologist Erik Erikson and his psychoanalysis of Gandhi. Erikson and others, see Gandhi as “having been marred by, what to him was, ‘juvenile excess’, and charged with feelings of guilt. They also see… ‘his precocious sexual life, combined with his moral scrupulosity… [leading] him to a life of public service.”[23] Here, in the same way that Saint Augustine of Hippo fervently dedicates his life to God after a rebellious period of youth, Nanda presents Erikson’s argument that Gandhi’s adherence to his morals is an attempt at reconciling with his past self that he regrets. Nietzsche in his Genealogy of Morality argues that the will to power can be channelled towards an “[i]nstinct for freedom…” or to break away from, rather than to succumb to social pressures thereby establishing control over one’s life.[24] Based on these observations, one might view Gandhi as someone utilising an exceptionally unique coping mechanism to regain control over the chaos in his life and his past regrets by channelling his psychological will to power in a healthier, inspirational and uplifting way as opposed to the British using their will to power to oppress Indian and other colonial societies. While what Gandhi is doing may be partially influenced by a desire to repent and regain control over his life, the way which he is coping with this and expressing his will to power is a healthy one which others can emulate so that they can grow stronger from their past rather than become a victim to it. In other words, Gandhi’s usage of soul-force rather than brute-force against the enemy appears another manifestation of a will to power, but this is not nefarious, for it simultaneously allows Gandhi and others freedom over themselves from their universal sense of human regretfulness of their past conduct and their primal instincts to fight back with force while also helping others and causing less harm in the process.
While Nietzsche’s concept of the struggle between master and slave morality can illuminate aspects of the Indian independence movement, should Gandhi be correct in identifying the morality system of India prior to British rule, the integrity of Nietzsche’s theory is significantly weakened. Moreover, Gandhi’s concept of history significantly differs from European norms and further questions whether On The Genealogy of Morality is a useful tool not only in the Indian context, but also on the European continent. Similarly, Gandhi is convinced that his moral philosophy is built upon love and the natural inclinations of the soul. Should Nietzsche be correct in his theory regarding the will to power and the ascetic priest’s relation to it, one could prove that even Gandhi’s philosophy centres to some extent upon personal power and control. However, this is not a slight to Gandhi, as much as it is a beacon to the rest of the world to what a person can achieve should they manifest their will to power in a positive and uplifting manner to transcend themselves.
Endnotes
[1] Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, ‘Hind Swaraj’ and Other Writings, ed. Anthony J. Parel, Centenary ed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 83.
[2] Ibid, 83.
[3] Ibid, 79.
[4] Ibid, 27.
[5] Ibid, 87.
[6] Ibid, 88.
[7] Ibid, 88.
[8] Ibid, 90.
[9] Ibid, 92.
[10] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, ‘On the Genealogy of Morality A Polemic’, trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 22.
[11] Ibid, 44.
[12] Ibid, 31 and 32.
[13] Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, 37.
[14] Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, 3.
[15] Vinlay Lal, “Gandhi’s West, The West’s Gandhi” New Literary History 40, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 304. 281-313. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27760259.
[16] Ibid, 304.
[17] Ibid, 305.
[18] Ibid, 305.
[19] Ibid, 306.
[20] Ibid, 308.
[21] Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, 90.
[22] Bal Ram Nanda, “Gandhi and His Critics”, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 156.
[23] Ibid, 15.
[24] Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morality, 51.
Bibliography
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand. ‘Hind Swaraj’ and Other Writings. Edited by Anthony J. Parel. Centenary ed. Cambridge Texts In Modern Politics. Cambridge, East Anglia: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Lal, V. (Spring 2009). “Gandhi’s West, the West’s Gandhi”. New Literary History, 40(2), 281–313. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27760259
Nanda, Bal Ram. “Gandhi And His Critics”. New Delhi, NCT: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Maudemarie Clark and Alan 1998. Swensen. Indianapolis , Indiana: Hackett, 1998.