Abstract
Liberal theory and practice rests upon, and constantly re-affirms, a division between the secular/rational and the religious/faithful aspects of individual life. This paper will explore the philosophical implications of an alternative Gandhian understanding of the role of faith and reason in individual life. The paper will argue that M K Gandhi thought of moral life differently from both the religious traditionalist and the liberal. The distinctiveness of Gandhi’s vision came from the manner in which he could reconcile two very different ways of thinking about the good human life. These could be simply put as the religious insight (which is well articulated in the Aristotelian position) into the good life as an essentially integrated life and the alternative liberal insight that morality was better connected with the idea of universalizability/reciprocity. The first section of this paper entitled “An alternative Gandhian understanding of faith, reason, and the integrity of the good life” philosophically unpacks Gandhi’s arguments about the integrity between faith and reason in reading religious texts with a view to living a good life. The second section is entitled “On religious belief: Gandhi and liberalism”. It brings out the differences between Gandhi and liberals on faith, reason, and the truth of religious belief. Both Gandhi and the liberals agree that religious beliefs should be held with modesty. However, the liberal argument for modesty comes from an avowed skepticism about the truth of religious belief. It is such skepticism that philosophically grounds the liberal division between faith and reason. In this section, there will be an attempt to bring out Gandhi’s reasons for being modest about religious beliefs held with certitude. The paper ends with the thought that though one cannot say which of these positions on faith and reason—Gandhian or liberal—is more coherent, there is some reason for exploring the Gandhian position if only because religious persons can act on Gandhi’s arguments quite consistently with their faith.
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Notes
See Kant on a somewhat crucial distinction between the public and private use of reason (Kant 1999)
The Bhagavad Gita also referred to simply as the Gita is a religious book for the Hindus. It is a 700 verse text in Sanskrit that is part of the epic Mahabharata. The Gita narrates a dialog between the Kshatriya prince Arjuna and his charioteer Sri Krishna. At the start of the war between the Pandavas and their cousins the kauravas Arjuna is filled with despair and wonders if he should take part in a war against his kinsmen. Sri Krishna’s reply to him forms the Gita. Krishna counsels Arjuna to fulfill his duty by action without any self-directed desire for results thereof.
Gandhi was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita in England in 1888–1889 when he read Sir Edwin Arnold’s translation. It made such an impact on his thinking that he went on to engage systematically with it across the next few decades of his life. In 1919, he commented on the Gita in one of the satyagraha leaflets. In 1926, he gave a series of almost daily talks on the Gita between February and November during morning prayers at the Satyagraha Ashram. They were posthumously published under the title Gandhijijinu Gitashikshan (Gandhi’s Teaching of the Gita). Gitashikshan seems to have been translated by the editors of the collected works as “Discourses on the Gita”. It was later published in English as a book “The Bhagavadgita” (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1980). Gandhi’s Gujarati translation of the Gita the Anasaktiyoga literally “the yoga of non-attachment” was completed in Yeravada jail in 1929. The Anasaktiyoga was a “rendering” of the Gita with short glosses on some passages and an additional preface. The English translation of the book by Mahadev Desai, was published in 1931 by Navajivan Press under the title “The Gita according to Gandhi”. There were also two other publications. Faced with complaints that Anasaktiyoga was too difficult to follow, Gandhi wrote a series of letters on the Gita. These were later published under the title Gitabodh. To help readers understand the Anasaktiyoga, he published a glossary to the terms in it, which was published in1936 as the Gitapadarthkosa.
A more recent exception is the fourth chapter in Douglas Allen’s Creative Nonviolence and Sustainability
“Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason to submit to the test of reason and universal assent.” (Gandhi, 1925 in Bose (ed) 1948: 27)
See Puri 2015
“Therefore I try to understand the spirit of the various scriptures of the world. I apply the test of “satya” (Truth) and “ahimsa” (non-violence) laid down by these very scriptures for their interpretation. I reject what is inconsistent with that test, and I appropriate all that is consistent with it.” (Gandhi, eCWMG vol. 32: 335)
“The original intention behind the idea of yajna was that people should do physical work. We forgot the root and came to concern ourselves with branches and leaves, believing that by pouring oblations into fire we perform a yagna. In the old days, it was necessary to clear down trees and burn the wood in order to clear the land...At the present time spinning has become a yajna. If water was scarce and we had to fetch it from a distance of two miles, fetching water would be a yajna...” (Gandhi 1980: 86)
“To confuse the description of this universally acknowledged spiritual war with a momentary world strife is to call holy unholy. We who are saturated with the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita but do not pretend to any special spiritual qualifications do not draw out sword against our relations whenever they perpetuate injustice but we win them over by our affection for them. If the physical interpretation alluded to of the Bhagavad Gita be correct we sin against it in not inflicting physical punishment upon our relatives whom we consider to have done us injustice…That one cannot strike down an adversary without anger is universal experience.” (Gandhi, eCWMG Vol. 18: 25–26)
In two interesting essays on the swabhava/nature/own most orientation of man written in 1926, Gandhi explained that ahimsa meant that it was man’s swabhav his special virtue/khaas lakshana that he was to own “kinship with not merely the ape but the horse and the sheep, the lion and the leopard, the snake and the scorpion.... the difficult dharma which rule my life, and I hold ought to rule that of every man and woman, impose this unilateral obligation (ekpakshi farj) on us. And it is so imposed because only the human is the image of God.” (Gandhi, eCWMG, Vol. 36: 5).
See note vii in this same paper.
“And in propositions that are contrary to our clear and perfect ideas faith will in vain endeavor to establish them and move our assent. For faith can never convince us of anything that contradicts our knowledge. Because, though faith be founded on the testimony of God (which cannot lie), yet we cannot have an assurance of the truth of it greater than our own knowledge (Locke 1997a, b: 249).
“Truth and non-violence are no cloistered virtues but applicable as much in the forum and legislatures as in the market place” (Gandhi in Bose (ed) 1948: 31)
See Puri 2018
This discussion has been taken in part from Chapter 3 in Bindu Puri 2015, The Tagore Gandhi Debate-On matters of Truth and Untruth pp. 67–102.
Gandhi famously equated God with Truth-Famously moving from “God is Truth” to “Truth is God” in 1931. Murti (ed) 1970, p. 73.
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Puri, B. Faith and Reason: an Alternative Gandhian Understanding. DHARM 2, 199–219 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-019-00048-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-019-00048-9