Part A:

Why and how did Gandhi’s politics merge the traditional and the modern? Discuss
with reference to both the primary and secondary source.

Gandhi’s politics merged both the traditional and modern by sharing his seemingly traditional

ideas and strong opposition to modernity using contemporary technologies. His contradictory

stance allowed him to widely spread his radical message that India was not inferior to Britain,

uncivilised, unenlightened or impassive, but instead a vibrant nation with strong culture and

soul.

Gandhi shrewdly combined both the traditional and contemporary in his politics to expose the

fallacy of the widely believed notion that India was ‘uncivilised, ignorant and stolid’1. One

impact of colonialism was the enforcement of the intrusive concept that India was a weak

nation that was inferior to England. Gandhi adamantly opposed this idea and, as Young

describes, combined his fight for home rule with a ‘cultural revival’ to restore Hindu values,

morality, and India’s cultural nationalism2. Gandhi challenged the modern concept of India’s

weakness through his commissioning of shakti, or soul-force over physical-force. His

opposition strategies seemed conservative at the time but demonstrated his argument that

India was morally advanced and strong. In the modern world where physical force was the

ultimate demonstration of supremacy, Gandhi maintained that passive resistance and soul-

force was ‘superior to the force of arms’ as it required greater courage and self-sacrifice3.

Young furthers this idea, describing how Gandhi ‘took the moral high ground’ in his

approach and focused on ‘psychological resistance’, asserting that Gandhi viewed them as

‘more ethical and effective than any kind of violence’4. This was evinced in his traditional

1
Gandhi M K Hind Swaraj. S. Ganesan & Co Publishers, 1921, p. 48.
2
Young R J C Postcolonalism: An Historical Introduction. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2001, p. 318.
3
Gandhi, op. cit., p. 71.
4
Young, op. cit., p. 323.
approaches to resistance which he combined with modern technologies to reach a wide

audience with his message of India’s capability to rule herself.

Further, Gandhi merged the traditional and contemporary to critique modernism itself and the

superiority complex of Britain. Whilst in Britain, Gandhi experienced significant pressure to

‘adopt European clothing’ and ‘become civilised out of savagery’5. He greatly opposed the

concept that India was uncivilised as it implied that she was weak and inferior to Britain. This

was especially concerning to Gandhi as he viewed Britain’s modernity as self-destructive and

limiting. In Hind Swaraj, he critiqued the modern civilisation as it forced conformity and

restricted the human experience and its capabilities. He further evaluated it as what Mahomed

would name a ‘Satanic civilisation’ and what Hinduism calls ‘the Black Age’, claiming it

would be ‘self-destroyed’6. He instead elevated India’s civilisation as so evolved that it was

‘not to be beaten in the world’ as the nation was still ‘sound at the foundation’ and that she

‘has nothing to learn from anybody else’7. Thus, Gandhi’s politics merged the traditional and

modern to distinctly oppose the notion of India’s inferiority with a wide audience.

To achieve this radical goal, Gandhi merged his values and strategies, which were deemed

traditional, with modern communication technologies to reach a wide audience. His strategies

subverted Britain’s gender and social expectations and were viewed as a return to primitive

and ‘savage’ times, whereas Gandhi beheld it as an embrace of India’s culture8. To subvert

social expectations, Gandhi encouraged ‘voluntary poverty’, arguing that people should only

take the necessary resources for survival, drastically opposing the materialistic, capitalist

5
Gandhi, op. cit., p. 20.
6
ibid., p. 22.
7
ibid., p. 48.
8
ibid., p. 20.
values of Britain9. Connected to this was his use of fasting as a form of political protest.

Young describes this technique as embarrassing to colonial authorities as they could not

control or repress his actions or the attention it received10. Despite heavily criticising modern

technology for its restrictions on people, Gandhi merged the traditional and modern to

increase the reach and effectiveness of his political influence. He travelled widely throughout

India and Europe on trains and other modern modes of transport, promoting India’s

independence. Moreover, he employed printing technologies to share his thoughts in books

and newspapers as well as in many television and radio interviews for various nations

including the United States. By allowing photography and filmography, his image with

symbolic clothes or items, such as his spinning wheel representing sustainable development

for India, were seen around the world, combining the customary and contemporary11. This

merging of traditional and modern in his politics was extremely effective as his global

powerbase grew.

Furthermore, Gandhi also subverted gender expectations through his traditional dress and

adoption of more femininity in his appearance and actions. As Young describes, Gandhi

utilised dress to identify with the socially excluded and impoverished Indians who were

referred to as ‘untouchables’12. This radical use of traditional opposition combatted elitism in

contemporary society and also increased Gandhi’s powerbase with the peasantry.

Additionally, he opposed the concept of masculinity as superior by accepting more feminine

ideas in his political thought. Imperialism itself, which Gandhi unyieldingly opposed, was

based upon racist theories which placed Europeans as strong masculine races and non-

Europeans as weak feminine peoples13. This opposition is significantly modern by today’s

9
Young, op. cit., p. 320.
10
ibid., p. 323.
11
ibid., p. 328.
12
ibid., pp. 320-321.
13
ibid., p. 326.
standards, but were seen and weak and primitive during Gandhi’s time. However, his use of

modern technology to share his ideas and his adoption of suffragette resistance strategies, he

threatened the powerbase of the colonialists as ‘femininity in men came to be regarded as

more dangerous than femininity itself’14. Hence, Gandhi’s politics merged the traditional and

modern by his adoption of contemporary communication technologies which shared his

traditional ideas with a global audience.

14
ibid., p. 326.
Part B:

Anjaneyulu, B S R ‘Gandhi’s ‘Hind Swaraj’ – Swaraj, The Swadeshi Way’. The Indian

Journal of Political Science, vol. 64, Jan – June 2003, pp. 33-44.

Krishan, S ‘Discourses on Modernity: Gandhi and Savarkar’. Studies in History, vol. 29, no.

1, pp. 61-85.

Lee T M L ‘Modernity and postcolonial nationhood: Revisiting Mahatma Gandhi and Sun

Yat-sen a century later’. Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 131-158.

Mehta, U S ‘Gandhi on Democracy, Politics and the Ethics of Everyday Life’. Modern

Intellectual History, vol. 7, no. 2, pp.355-371.

Muralidharan, S ‘Religion, Nationalism and the State: Gandhi and India's Engagement with

Political Modernity’. Social Scientist, vol. 34, Mar – Apr 2006, pp. 3-36.