Dhananjay Rai, M.K. Gandhi: Poorna Swaraj, Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place. Gurugram: Penguin/Vintage Books, 2023, lxxxviii + 220 pp., `599 (Hardcover). ISBN: 9780670098279.
Setting the Context
The contemporary political moment merits a systemic reflection on what really ails the promise of politics. The signposts of competing virtues of nationalism, liberalism and socialism have been put under severe strain by populist and authoritarian discourses. The human condition has progressively become more and more precarious. The current ‘illiberal turn’ reflects the backsliding of revered ideas of freedom, equality, justice, democracy, etc. In a world riddled with conflict, war and climate crisis, one has to revisit and take recourse to both old and new political and philosophical resources to make sense of past, present and future. Gandhi with a momentous iconography becomes an interesting philosopher and politician to look up to. Gandhian pedagogy has much to offer to his admirers and detractors to reflect on ways of being and transforming social relations which are just and humane, but maybe inadequate.
Popular Commonsense
In Indian nationalist hagiographic literature Gandhi remains an enigma. He is celebrated as an astute politician who built up a mass nationalist movement on the solid foundations of political and social swaraj. His critique of modern civilization and its paraphernalia remain quite profound. Further, his ‘experiments with truth’ rooted in ahimsa and satyagraha, that is non-violent resistance, transformed the political pedagogy of not just India but the world in substantive ways. However, in popular discourse he is found to be wanting in terms of structural critique of caste, class, gender, race, religion, and the politics of means versus ends. He is charged with the blight of privileging elite interests emerging from left and subalterns critics as well as appeasement of religious minorities emerging from the political right. Further, from the anti-caste tradition, Ambedkar offers a scathing critique of Gandhi with regard to his reading of the problem of untouchability. He is critiqued for upholding the Varna-based status quo, privileging the spiritual and religious idioms rooted in Brahmanical values of Hindu religion. Gandhi’s identification of hitherto untouchable community to antjatya (last born) and later ‘Harijan’ as children of God (drawing from medieval poet-saint Narsinh Mehta) was seen as a mistaken diagnosis of the problem of untouchability, guided by caste Hindu morality of benevolence and guilt rather than emphasizing on the essence of the inequality and injustice, rooted in the very structure of Hindu religion. Gandhi’s handling of untouchability as distinct from the supposedly ‘rational’ Varna based hierarchy, along with the gendered participation of women in nationalist politics still continues to generate polarising discourses in both academic and popular politics. It becomes evident from the above discussion that the list of bad blood Gandhi shares with his opponents and critics is quite extensive. From the reformist to revolutionary paradigm he finds solid interlocutors. While these questions and critique demand rigorous engagement, Gandhi’s praxis and creative democratic experiment to bridge the gap between constructive theory and practice remain quite instructive, more so in contemporary times.
Novelty and Academic intervention
Dhananjai Rai’s book length introduction of Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place is a welcome critical appraisal of Gandhian virtue of praxis and his roadmap for a non-violent egalitarian polity and society. He rightly establishes that Poorna Swaraj is not simply rooted in philosophy proper (Hind Swaraj/Swaraj postulation), but equally encompasses philosophy practical (constructive programmes) (preface p. X). He elucidates philosophy proper and philosophy practical as a paradigm of thought rooted in distinctive aspects of collected works of Gandhi. He elaborates these conceptions through the discussion of major, fragmentary and immanent texts. The major texts encompass Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, Satyagraha in South Africa and An Autobiography or, The Story of My Experiments with Truth. The fragmentary texts concern the huge corpus of writings in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi spanning a hundred volumes. Rai contends that both the major and fragmentary texts occupy centrality in the popular discourse meant to achieve utopian society in the future; there is no notion of immediacy involved (introduction Lxx-Lxxiii). However philosophy practical implies appeal to political action. The Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place calls for advocacy and action in terms of here and now, it champions ‘extra-parliamentary initiatives’ through three substantive premises and postulates; (i) narration of human condition, (ii) transformation of human condition, (iii) foundational principle of desired society or political community (introduction Lxxii). Such a profound reading of crisis and opportunity in existing forms of political initiatives, challenges and broadens the limits of politics and space as defined by the parliamentary form of liberal democracy.
Reading and engaging with a text more than eight decades old, invites us to ponder over the rich political philosophy of Gandhi and whether or not it is worth revisiting. Rai rejuvenates and contextualises the text of less than 10,000 words and 18 chapters, keeping in mind the practical understanding of philosophy and political action. He brings forth the programmes up for public discussion through a systemic organisation of concepts and ideas through the lens of evolutionary episteme (preface p. XII). Evolutionary epistemology could be read as a process of learning emerging from the crisis and constraints of liberal political theory. The agendas and issues of justice and quest for freedom are defined by constant struggle to expand the meaning and forms of political participation. Political subjectivity is reimagined through meaningful participation and not simply mobilised being. For example, Gandhi in his reflection on communal unity begins with an acknowledgement of the wranglings of parliamentary democracy based on artificial political unity of mobilised beings. The separate electorate and majoritarian logic exhibit tussle over sharing the crumbs of power. He instead advocates Congressmen to cultivate personal friendships across different faiths not just as matters of political policy and procedure, but through unity of heart as a conduct. Similarly on the question of removal of untouchability, Gandhi chastises Congressmen to make a common cause with Harijans (who are awfully isolated), for their own sake in terms of the very existence of Hinduism. He urged fellow Congressmen to act not just as a matter of political necessity but as part of indispensability and building the edifice of swaraj. Rai builds up on the resourceful critique offered by Gandhi who detests instrumental political participation and negotiation. He spells out that such ‘normalisations of paradox’ and ‘inattention towards contradiction’ governs existing polities (preface, p. XI). He shows us how the inexhaustive lists of constructive programmes grew overtime through histories of struggle, philosophical churnings and constant revisions over time. The genealogical evolutionary agenda contextualised by Rai is quite revealing for the reader. He suggests that the Constructive Programme could help us in interrogating the contemporary moment riddled by structural contradictions. The author laments that the Constructive Programme as a text and discourse has not merited the intellectual and political attention it deserves, in comparison to his other celebrated texts like Hind Swaraj. He suggests that Gandhi’s Constructive Programme represented the actualisation of complete freedom or comprehensive change, realised through the construction of Poorna Swaraj imminently working with truthful and non-violent means.
Gandhi wrote this book to address the urgency and democratic challenges confronting the essence and emancipatory meaning of swaraj. Rai uses this vantage point to critique the constricted understanding of space, participation and representative politics. He argues for a reading of emancipatory politics inter-meshed in dialogue and divergence, specifically through his emphasis on extra-parliamentary politics. He pitches the Constructive Programme as extra-parliamentary politics, rooted in politicisation of space (every space is political) and meaningful participation (everyone is a participant), unlike the de-definite and de-constrained representation of liberal political theory. I feel this is a very important critique which is explored quite persuasively by the author, through comprehensive engagement with academic scholarship, including a critique of the progressive Rawlsian paradigm.
Gandhi’s ingenious reading of swaraj as distinct from political independence as self-rule and self-restraint amidst plurality of nationalist renderings is treasurable. Gandhi was able to enunciate a layered meaning of swaraj and political independence. In Young India, Gandhi remarks “The word swaraj is a sacred word, a Vedic word, meaning self-rule and self-restraint and not freedom from all restraint which ‘independence’ often means.” (19th March 1931) From a philosophical underpinning of swaraj emerging from his South-African experience to its elaboration in a classic text like Hind Swaraj, the ever-evolving ideas were put to test at different historical junctures. His ambitious pitch of realising swaraj in one year in the Non-cooperation movement to the emergence of a practical and comprehensive program of realising Poorna Swaraj through the Constructive Programme, Gandhi’s experiment seemed unwavering. ‘The pilgrimage to Swaraj’, he concluded in Young India (21st May 1925), ‘is a painful climb’. Gandhi’s emphasis on the Constructive Programme did not mean abandoning civil disobedience as an integral part of satyagraha. He was audacious enough to even suggest the disbandment of the Indian National Congress and transforming it to a social service organisation. The journey of his ideas and practice presents us with a testament of political theory rooted in Indian soil.
Given Rai’s sustained engagement with Gandhian philosophy, it is quite appreciable and reflective that the author has heavily referenced the original sources of Gandhi, contextualised concepts and equally made good use of secondary sources. Students and researchers will have a field day using these resources to their advantage. The elaborate and extensive notes are a treat to the reader. However, given the author’s rigorous academic engagement with the Constructive Programme, the author does not go beyond the critique of liberal political theory to reflect on the contemporary crisis of democracy in meaningful terms. The lack of empirical examples to delineate explanations of contemporary issues and concerns is a serious omission. There are no commentaries outside the supposedly non-textual concerns of politics, other than an exceptional critique of liberal democracy, where the supposedly ‘liberal conundrum’ of engagement is to be realised along substantive terms, without regressing into identitarianism, religious fanaticism or right-wing popular politics (afterword, p.90). While the author’s normative prescription of reframing politics through Gandhian novelty and emphasis on extra-parliamentary politics is well warranted, the author adopts a conciliatory overtone to the existing problems. The author identifies the problem confronting contemporary politics, but refuses to streamline the virtues of the Constructive Programme into a robust political discourse. The author relies too much on secondary readings and conceptual jargons to communicate the intricate philosophical and political discourses, which makes the reader ambivalent to the force of argument emerging from the book. In the process of reading, on many occasions the author’s argument appears quite pedantic, moral in spirit, but not necessarily politically clarificatory.
In fact, to read the Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place in its original offers clear insights into the working of modern day society and polity. Gandhi was politically, morally and pragmatically more invested in issues that were of social concern and confronted them head on in theory and practice. Rai presents a sharp treatise on the Constructive Programme critiquing and presenting a constrained reading of politics emerging from liberal political theory. The crisis of politics is very much embedded in the book. However, on many counts the author is found to be fence sitting over clearer articulation over the scope and necessity of revisiting the book. Throughout the discourse on both the theory and practice of democracy, the contemporary present gets short shrifted, be it on the engagements on rampant communal discord, grudging unity, caste atrocity, neoliberal reforms in the field of labour relations, farm laws and education policy; or conflicts over indigeneity, student politics, language and Khadi. The author could have expanded on the empirical and normative challenges of our times. The book while speaking to the present looks back, rather than looks into the crisis of our times.
Conclusion
Further, one serious political travesty emerges in the blurb section of the book, where Gandhi’s biographical description ends with a mischievous mystification rather than historical truth, whether or not such framing is part of conscious or inadvertent framing of the publisher and author needs a serious reflection on the question of re-writing history. The sentence “In January 1948, Gandhi was assassinated as he walked to take his evening prayers” presents a curious case where the assasination of Gandhi by a fanatic religious nationalist gets silenced into oblivion. Have we entered into a domain of academic and political discourse where to state the obvious truth requires mystification? It is a serious question, given the prejudiced commonsense and chauvinist nationalist renderings have even gone to the extent of trying to establish a narrative where Gandhi is supposed to have committed suicide.
Overall Rai’s contribution to Gandhian scholarship is immense. It calls for a renewal of academic interest in revisiting Hind Swaraj and the Constructive Programme. However, some head on engagement with issues of critical importance would have made this book a great bridge between theory and practice on its own terms. Both researchers and activists from social movements can draw creatively from such a resourceful and comprehensive reading of Gandhian scholarship. Rai’s diagnosis of the limits of liberal political theory is profound. Anyone who has a stake in rethinking the present will find this book to be an exciting read.
TheDaak review 
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