Bilgrami's Evil Enchantment.

Akeel Bilgrami believes that Gandhi was an erudite philosopher rebelling against some terrible metaphysical atrocity that occurred in the Seventeenth Century which involved killing off 'Enchantment'- i.e. fairies and elves and hobbits- and turning Mother Nature into an ugly quarry or all polluting iron-works for evil Orcs laboring under the blazing eye of Sauron who had somehow managed to unite all the multitudinous forces of Darkness under his sole command.

Bilgrami believes that Pantheists protested against Sauron but were mercilessly crushed. Perhaps, if he were writing about Islamic history, he would equate the Zanj rebellion (whose leader, though claiming to be a Syed, had an Indian slave in his maternal lineage) with a similar Pantheistic protest against Puritanical Plutocratic Capitalism. However, the crushing of the Zanj rebellion did not involve a Sauron who co-ordinated Capital, Religion and Science in such a manner that they turned into an evil 'thick' concept of Scientific Rationality which went on to rule the World and systematically exterminate fairies and elves and hobbits and everybody just worshiping trees and peacefully having orgies under the Midsummer Moon and other such hippy shite.
Why did Seventeenth Century succeed in yielding all power to Sauron while Ninth Century Iraq failed to achieve the same thing? The answer, judging by the evidence Bilgrami provides, is that Ninth Century Iraq did not have the Printing Press and so all manners of Pantheistic nutjobs- Ranters, Diggers, Quakers, Levellers, Anabaptists, Monetarists etc- did not get to circulate their silly pamphlets. True, they were crushed, just as the Zanj rebellion was crushed, but they were not exterminated and continued their corporate existence and textual availability cascades and preference falsification hypocricy down to our own day. Gandhi, according to Bilgrami, was part of this long running tradition of stupidity but for the shrill existence of which Sauron doesn't get hegemony and the ability to enforce 'thick' scientific rationality which is like totally evil and genocidal and not at all nice.
So there we have it. For Evil to triumph- i.e. for 'thick' Scientific Rationality to become hegemonic and make fun of Pantheism's pee-pee- it is both necessary and sufficient that Gandhian shite is endlessly spouted. Suppose Gandhian shite isn't spouted or its spouting is ended by killing those who spout it then Sauron doesn't get the Magic Ring which enables the unification of Capitalism and Science and Metaphysics and Ethics and dunno other such shite such that the entire planet is laid waste and no blade of grass is spared by Mammon's maw.
Bilgrami writes - 'Were we to apply the thin conception of “scientific” and “rationality” (the one that I imagine most of us in this room embrace), the plain fact is that nobody in that period was, in any case, getting prizes for leaving God out of the world-view of science. That one should think of God as voluntaristically affecting nature from the outside (as the Newtonians did) rather than sacralizing it from within (as the freethinkers insisted), was not in any way to improve on the science involved.
'Both views were therefore just as “unscientific,” just as much in violation of scientific rationality, in the “thin” sense of that term that we would now take for granted. What was in dispute had nothing to do with science or rationality in that attenuated sense at all. What the early dissenting tradition as well as Gandhi were opposed to is the metaphysical orthodoxy that grew around Newtonian science and its implications for broader issues of culture and politics. This orthodoxy with all of its implications is what has now come to be called “scientific rationality” in the “thick” sense of that term and in the pervasive cheerleading about “the West" and the Enlightenment'.'

So, kids, what have we learned in School today? Bilgrami admits that Pantheistic shite is shite. He doesn't say- 'if stupid Lefty nutjobs stop spouting holier-than-thou Pantheistic shite then there would be no market for 'thick' Scientific rationality and endless triumphalist cheerleading for 'Western Enlightenment' values and that would be a good thing coz Sauron would be foiled in his quest for the Magic Ring'. He doesn't need to say it. That's the only possible take-away point from his lecture. Unless you really believe there are fairies at the bottom of your garden. In which case, lay in a couple of six-packs and get busy with the weed whacker.

This follows if you believe, as Bilgrami does, that Spinoza was right when he said you can't predict and intend to do something at the same time- i.e. if you intend to do something it can't be because you predict it is what you want to get done. Hence, if your are an Ethical Consequentialist or Epistemological Instrumentalist, you can't intend to do anything at all- unless you are stupid and don't get Spinoza though you intend to get Spinoza and haven't predicted that you won't coz Spinoza is stupid and so are you and there is nothing to get anyway. But this also means there really are fairies at the bottom of the garden whom you are currently killing with your weed whacker while drunk off your head on Special Brew. This is because there is a predictive element in visual and all other perception. But, since you can never intend to see what you predict you will actually see, the fact that you don't see you are in the garden killing fairies proves that you can't have the intention of not killing fairies at this very moment.
 Predictions can be falsified, not so intentions. We can imagine a situation where you can intend to have your predictions falsified in a systematic way. Perhaps not seeing you are killing fairies when you intend to do so and are doing so is good strategy on your part. Ergo you can't prove you aren't killing fairies if and only if you don't see that you are killing fairies.
Bilgrami wants us to see that the World may be value laden. This is the phenomenological project which features such egregious shite as Hegel's refutation of Newton and Goethe or Schopenhauer's theory of Color and Malfatti's crazy Tantric nonsense and so on down to Weber's silly ideas about Capitalism and Protestantism and Husserl's wasting his time on Phenomenology and Heidegger's worthless rubbish and so on and so forth.
Bilgrami doesn't get that Gandhi fucked up big time with his Khadi (his chakri added negative value to cotton) and Basic Education (Zakir Hussain ultimately called it a fraud) and other such fuckwittery.
Kenneth Boulding, a Quaker and Environmentalist avant la lettre but also a great Economist, has written about why Gandhians fucked up. It was because they were as stupid as shit and refused to use their brains. Screw Scientific Rationality. Common sense tells us that prediction and intention are inextricably intertwined. But this means when you see that stuff aint panning out as you intended you stop doing what you're doing and try to think of a better solution.  Scratch that. Don't try to think of a better solution. Ask around till you find a guy who HAS a better solution. Copy him.
The alternative is killing fairies.
To see why consider Bilgrami's rejection of Economics on the basis that it doesn't permit a 'secular enchantment' of the world such that if you see a glass of water you don't think of the opportunity cost of your drinking the water but rather ask yourself- whom does that glass of water want to be drunk by?- and then go out on a mystic quest to hunt down that suffering Grail-King because only in this way can you end your own 'alienation'.
That way all the water gets spilled and you lose your job as a waiter at the Tandoori Restaurant coz the customer choked to death on his onion bhaji when you snatched away his water and so your kids back home starve to death and as for them fairies they all just laughed themselves to death at the spectacle of your stupidity.

Bilgrami thinks Gandhian politics in pre-Independence India was made possible because Indians were stupid and believed in fairies. He is wrong. Gandhi got money off the Hindus and Jains and Khojas and Memons and other such business castes. They got a 'reputational' benefit from such largesse as did lawyers who signed up with Gandhi. In the short run, some weavers did get a bit of money out of it and, ultimately, secured their main goal which was to get a quota of mill-spun (NOT HAND SPUN) yarn. Still, the Gandhian interlude meant a lot of weavers starved to death and the industry as a whole was de-skilled. Capitalist methods have revived some sectors. Gandhi himself wanted to boycott the one prosperous section of weavers because they were doing well by supplying the luxury market.
The reason the 'Untouchables' are so angry with Gandhi is that his ideas fucked them up big time. They now shrilly campaign for compulsory English medium Govt. schools. They have even declared English a Goddess and worship a statue of Macaulay!
 Scientific rationality says all human beings have evolved such that there is territory specific canalization of Cognitive and Perceptual faculties.
Bilgrami type shite says that fairies are a persecuted minority or silently suffering subaltern majority whose cause only Ivy League Professors of Philosophy can legitimately champion. But, this is killing fairies with a vengeance because only kids can see fairies and a Credentialized 'Liberal Arts' Education System,  the apex of which pyramid Bilgrami occupies, is itself the blazing eye of Sauron which destroys all that is enchanting about this our, albeit ontologically dysphoric, World.
For which, needless to say, I blame David Cameron. That boy aint right.

Bilgrami's Gandhi- 1

Prof. Akeel Bilgrami, a nice guy- not obviously a witless careerist- has some extraordinarily foolish things to say about Gandhi. So what? So does Prof. Sorabji- an all round good egg. Surely, writing foolish things about Gandhi is what Indian origin Philosophers are supposed to do?

My contention- and, sure, I admit it is a scandalous one- is, NO, nice guys needn't write shite even if it's about Gandhi.  Omitting to publish one's quota of shite every other year won't directly result in Modi becoming P.M.

Writing non-shite, at least for an Ivy League Prof who has the ear of Rahul's elite buddies,  could however, at the margin, have helped the 'Secular' forces (by definition, anti-Modi) put up a better show in the recent elections. If nothing else, it might have given Modi an excuse to cull some of the more repellent senile shitheads in his own party- like the 84 year old Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Babulal Gaur Yadav, who reckons rapes are okay provided the rapist is a Yadav but a bad thing if the reverse is the case.

In what follows, I'll be quoting Bilgrami's Essay on Gandhi from his Columbia Uni. Webpage. My remarks are in bold.

Bilgrami's Thesis
1) Gandhi held a consistent but highly unusual philosophical position. 
'Universalizability suggests merely that if someone in particular holds a moral value, then he must think that it applies to all others (in relevantly similar situations).'
Bilgrami is wrong. A moral value can militate for a 'mixed strategy'- i.e. one with a stochastic component- which can't be simply dominated. Thus a man who abhors gambling may still permit a contentious zero-sum issue to be decided by a coin toss. Yuddhishtra was a moral man. If some people in his kingdom MUST be slaves why should he and his kin themselves become slaves by virtue of a coin toss? It's a perfectly plausible Rawlsian, or 'overlapping consensus' solution IFF Econ 101 in the original position tells you that some necessary Public Good only becomes available if some people are slaves. Otherwise the species goes extinct.
As a matter of fact, in the Mahabharata, the Just King, to overcome his vishada or harmatia, has to learn both Game theory (in the Nala episode) as well as the wisdom of the low-caste butcher (the Vyadha Gita) which shows that perfect felicity in this world and the next is attained by ignoring Kings and Priests and just taking your own elderly parents as your Gods. Notice, the Vyadha's ethic is universalizable; yet entails no obligation to go around making a nuisance of yourself lecturing all and sundry on their moral shortcomings and ignorance of the Chandogya's highest truth which is known equally to the carter and Krishna Devakiputra neither of whom go in for pi-jaw.
2) Philosophers aren't stupid and Gandhi was a philosopher
 Yet despite the fact that it is much weaker than universality in this sense, it still generates the critical power that Gandhi finds disquieting. If moral judgements are universalizable,  one cannot make a judgement that something is morally worthy and then shrug off the fact that others similarly situated might not  think so. They (unlike those who might differ with one on the flavour of ice cream) must be deemed wrong not to think so.
Why? All we can say about them is that they have a different Vyavahara/Jati dharma/Verstehen than we do. Since Gandhi claimed to have read the Gita- indeed, he claimed to understand it better than anyone else- why should we assume he hadn't read its dual, the Vyadha Gita? Furthermore, Gandhi learned a little Jainism from his greatest supporter's brother-in-law. Where is the scandal for Anekantavada in what Bilgrami is saying? Indeed, there is no scandal for European thought here either.  No doubt there is some narrow textual availability cascade in the Academy that pretends otherwise- but it is fuckwitted merely and has had zero impact on anyone whether Western of Eastern or whatever.
3) Gandhi was a hermeneut of traditions he was entirely ignorant of.
Gandhi repudiates this entire tradition. His integrating thought is that violence owes to something as seemingly remote from it as this assumed theoretical connection between values and criticism.
Gandhi was blissfully unaware of any such tradition. People would tell him about it and he'd basically tell them to fuck off in a polite way while underlining his firm conviction that everybody else was a moral worm or eunuch and he alone was worthy of worship. Why did Gandhi do that? The answer is because that's what guys who run expensive Ashrams with other people's money do if they want to be successful and get to sleep naked with young girls.
Take the Maharishi, instead of saying 'ply chakri and Universal Peace will reign' he said 'Do Yogic Levitation and then Universal Peace will reign'. Still, Mia Farrow wouldn't sleep with him. The Beatles wrote 'Sexy Sadie' to commemorate this terrible crime which the Materialistic West inflicted on the Spiritual East.
4) Shite gobshites write can cause violence even without the instrumentality of a sociopath
Take the wrong view of moral value and judgement, and you will inevitably encourage violence in society. There is no other way to understand his insistence that the satyagrahi has not eschewed violence until he has removed criticism from his lips and heart and mind.
Urm...not just satyagrahis, every one who knew him well,  was constantly tempted to criticise Gandhi for sleeping with naked chicks and making his wife cook mutton chops for Maulana Azad and fucking up the Independence Movement, the Khadi Movement, the Basic Education scheme and anything else he stuck his oar into. Telling his wife she was guilty of 'himsa' (violence) if she didn't cook mutton chops (coz Azad really liked them and was a total fuck-wit of Gandhian proportions who had dreamed of becoming the Imam ul Hind and buggering with all them smart Aligarh M.U. types) was par for the course.  
Gandhi, himself, of course, criticised everybody and anybody unless they got stroppy and made him stop. That's just standard operating procedure for charismatic fuckwits running a Credentialized Ponzi scheme is all.
5) My name is Bilgrami and I'm an Indian Muslim and can't reason for shit. Watch Slumdog why don't you?
But there is an interpretative challenge hidden here. If the idea of a  moral value or judgement has no implication that one find those who disagree with one's moral judgements, to be wrong, then that
suggests that one's moral choices and moral values are rather like one's choice of a flavour of ice cream, rather like one's judgements of taste. In other words, the worry is that these Gandhian ideas
suggest that one need not find one's moral choices and the values they reflect relevant to others at all, that one's moral thinking is closed off from others. But Gandhi was avowedly a humanist, and repeatedly said things reminiscent of humanist slogans along the order of 'Nothing human is alien to me'. Far from encouraging self-enclosed moral subjects, he thought it the essence of a moral
attitude that it take in all within its concern and its relevance.
A guy running a Ponzi scheme has an interest in broadening the base of his pyramid to cover not just all sentient beings but imaginary ones too.
Now, it is true that there is a Jain Gandhism- originating with Dr. Pranjivan Mehta and Raichandhbhai and very effectively developed in vernacular languages like Gujerati and Hindi (see for e.g. H.H. Amar Muni Upadhyay of Veerayatan fame) but it is based on a monadology which is 'self-enclosed' and which rejects the notion that one substance (dhravya) can, for woe or weal, operate directly on another. However, this is a dynamic conception- i.e. a field theory- and features fuzzy logic and other such high I.Q stuff- so forget I mentioned it okay? 
How, then, to reconcile the rejection of universalizability and of a value's potential for being wielded in criticism of others with this yearning for the significance of one's choices to others? That is among the hardest questions in understanding the philosophy behind his politics, and there are some very original and striking remarks in his writing which hint at a reconciliation.
Name one. Go on. I dare ya.
So far, I have presented the challenge of providing such reconciliation as a philosophically motivated task.
Why? Gandhi was a stupid guy. He passed the University entrance exam, but realised he'd gotten as far as he could and, sensibly, never pretended otherwise- at least to himself.
But it is more than that. It is part of the 'integrity' that I am pursuing in my interpretation of Gandhi that it also had a practical urgency in the political and cultural circumstances in which he found himself.
We know very well that it was close to this man's heart to improve India in two ways which, on the face of it, were pointing in somewhat opposite directions. On the one hand there was the violence of religious intolerance, found most vividly in the relations between Hindus and Muslims. This especially wounded him. Religious intolerance is the attitude that the other must not  remain other, he must become like one in belief and in way of life. It is an inclusionary, homogenizing attitude, usually pursued with  physical and psychological violence toward the other.
Right! Jinnah was constantly trying to get Hindus to convert to Islam wasn't he? Liaqat actually did convert one person- his second wife, but she was Xtian to start of with and, come to think of it, she converted voluntarily. Under Muslim Law, Liaqat could have kept an Xtian wife. 
Who else? Savarkar was constantly badgering everyone to like get with the program and worship a cow already. Same was true of Bal, Pal and Lal.
Are you fucking kidding me? The whole point about Ashraf Muslims like Bilgrami is they didn't want their Kayastha clerks or Bania agents to convert to Islam and then start inviting themselves around on the excuse of Eid or whatever.  If nothing else, it would damage their efficiency.
Similarly, no Iyer has ever tried to convert a Muslim. Them guys are way smarter than us Smarthas.  The last Tamil Avadhani was a Muslim. As for Sanskrit- don't even start.
As a particularly vicious Hindutva nutjob myself, suppose I have a chance to slip A.R. Rehman a mind-altering drug and then to 'shuddify' him- i.e. reconvert him to Hinduism. Would I do it? Fuck no! The Tamil film (music) industry was a sewer of drugs and drink and dishonourable conduct to women. God bless the Pir who- WITH NO INTENTION TO CONVERT- helped the family when the father was dying in hospital. Thank God, the young genius took shelter in Islam! That way he could refuse drink or drugs on the grounds of Religion. Had he remained a Hindu, those bastards would have forced him because- don't you know?- Hinduism is very evil and the best way to escape its to get drunk and rape some girls belonging to a lower caste.
Modi has been in power for 12 years in Gujerat. Show me the Muslims he has converted even from his own 'Ghanchi' caste (for example those in Godhra). 

Ethnic monopoly and/or cleansing is a different kettle of fish. Partition wasn't about converting people- it was about coveting their possessions and perquisites of office and then conducting a cull. Still, it is noteworthy, Pakistan banned the exodus of 'bhangis'- i.e. the guys who did the dirty jobs- while, Paul Brass tells us, the Jat Sikhs deliberately cleansed their own Muslim 'service castes' so as to create space for Mazhabi Sikhs. (I don't personally believe this story- but a 'Secularist' like Bilgrami is bound to pay lip service to it.)
On the other hand, for all his traditionalism about caste, there was something offensive to Gandhi within Hinduism itself.
Yes. It was the notion that he himself wasn't educated enough in it to claim a scholarly or clerical title.
The social psychology of the Hindu caste system consists of an exclusionary attitude.
Unlike the non-Hindu caste system.
For each caste, there was a lower caste which constituted the other and which was to be excluded from one's way of life, again by the most brutal physical and psychological violence.
Is this true? Let us look at Dr. Ambedkar's biography.  Parsis beat him and throw him out of their lodge. Muslims deny him water. A low caste Hindu 'banjara' won't carry him to his destination- even though he's just a child and well educated and affluent.
By contrast, his teacher is a Brahmin who delights in him and gives him his own surname- which is why Gandhi thought him to be some over-educated Westernised Brahmin who didn't really understand the 'Harijans' and thus was heating his brain for no reason- and, later on, his second wife- a Medical Doctor whom he married to care for him because he was diabetic- was also a Brahmin. She was ostracized and accused of having poisoned him after his death by his own son.  Yet, right from the start, the educated Mahar (thanks to the British Indian Army) was a significant threat to the Maharashtrian Brahmin. 
Yet it is from that equally martial community that he received most support. Hegdewar and Gowalkar loved him. He himself appreciated the R.S.S for its anti-caste attitude. That's why, later on, people like Barrister Khobragade had no compunction in allying with the BJP or Shiv Sena even though it wounded the hearts of LSE fuckwits like me.
Why? What was the reason?
The Chitpavan, who were getting demoralized and sinking as a community, knew that the Mahars were a heroic people like themselves.  
Dr. Moonjee volunteered to serve during the Boer War, as did Gandhi, so as to learn Military tactics. Any future Indian Army which neglected the Mahars' martial prowess- their sheer courage and intelligence and long tradition of uprightness and pietistic 'Bhakti' religion- would be bound to fail.  The great qualities of this 'caste' are visible to all- then and now. But, I can multiply instances.  Look at the Balmik caste, the Jatavs, or (for Tamils) the Valluvars who technically are 'Pariahs'. Can you imagine Tamil without Tiruvalluvar? Hinduism without Valmiki? A.K Ramanujan tried but he also told us his grandmother enjoyed being taken from behind by underemployed fishermen, but only with the fell purpose of using her vagina dentata (I'm not making this up) to bite off their low caste dicks.

Army discipline requires that the 'high born' show 100 per cent obedience to the orders of his 'low born' superior. Nothing else will do.  This is the basis of the R.S.S ethos and the real reason people like me used to hate them. Don't get me wrong. I love the Indian Army- but only coz their officers looked so smart and their lovely wives and daughters spoke such beautiful English.
Now, because my 'posh' English accent (hey! I went to St. Columba's!) is starting to fray,  and I can't understand Rahul Baba's English (he did spend a little time at St.Columba's but then Harvard got hold of him) and have to settle for Modi's Hindi- what? I'm a fucking Madrasi!- all bets are off. Let the Indian Army promote according to Merit. Let English die in India. But fucking fix it so children don't get raped!
Sorry, for that outburst. I'm truly shit, I am. Senile fucking debility, mate. 
Anyroad...
Returning to Bilgrami's thesis, there may well be 'alterity' here. But it is an alterity which cries out for an, I will not say Levinasian, but 'Mussar' response such that 'the spiritual needs of the other are my material needs'. If Acharya Kosambi, a Brahmin, and Babasaheb Ambedkar, a Mahar, both embrace Buddhism- where is the problem for the 'Caste' Hindu?
Are we so fucking stupid that we prefer to be ruled over by Mlecchas just so as to preserve our 'Smarta Vicharams' and plague afflicted 'Agraharams'? 
Bilgrami, as a deracinated emigre, may believe Gandhi's return to India marked something genuinely new. It didn't. If Khilafat was a success- was it because of Gandhi? As for Hindu 'Anushilan' or 'Jugantar' type radicalism- Gandhi was no where in the picture.
As a prematurely senile but active man, no doubt, he provided a cover for those- like Birla- who needed to retreat from Revolutionary politics. He was the provider of a 'Good Conduct' certificate which kept you out of the clutches of blackmailers and police-spies while also granting you a sort of post-obit on the resources of the dying Raj.
When I think sometimes about caste in India --without a doubt the most resilient form of exclusionary social inegalitarianism in the history of the world-- it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that even
the most alarming aspects of religious intolerance is preferable to it. To say, "You must be my brother", however wrong, is better than saying, "You will never be my brother." In religious intolerance there is at least a small core that is highly attractive.
Bilgrami Sahib, you must know the expression 'sag bash birader-e-khurd na bash' (better a dog than an younger brother). Is that not what has happened in the Indian subcontinent? 'You must be my brother' means- 'you must be my younger brother and let me shit in your mouth.'
You may find this 'small core' in Religious intolerance highly attractive. Why? Believe me, the stuff they are serving you isn't goulash- it's shit. I found out the hard way.
The intolerant person cares enough about the truth as he sees it, to want to share it with others.
Why, Bilgrami Sahib, why? What you describe is a strategy that is easily dominated if the other has an equal endowment of knowledge and/or reasoning power. Even if he doesn't, still, the optimal strategy is to only grant the privilege of being witnesses to your truth to those who immediately die for it- i.e. martyrs or shaheeds.  
Of course, that he should want to use force and violence in order to make the other share in it, spoils
what is attractive about this core. No need to do so. Just pretend that the truth is esoteric or requires some long praxis of unquestioning obedience. If you are speaking of 'cognitive dissonance reduction'- just pretend to be a bien pensant humanist till some over-educated shithead from somewhere else turns up to sit at your feet. It was Gandhi's humanistic  mission to retain the core for it showed that one's conception of the truth was not self-enclosed, that it spoke with a relevance to all others, even others who differed from one. How to prevent this relevance to others from degenerating into criticism of others who differed from one and eventually violence towards them, is just the reconciliation we are seeking.
O...kay. You're about to say something real interesting, right? After all, you're one smart dude and, more to the point, belong to the Bilgrami khandan.
In the philosophical tradition Gandhi is opposing, others are potential objects of criticism in the sense that one's particular choices, one's acts of moral conscience, generate moral principles or imperatives, which others can potentially disobey. For him, conscience and its deliverances, though relevant to others, are not the wellspring of principles. Morals is only about conscience, not at all about principles.
There is an amusing story about two Oxford Philosophers, which makes this distinction vivid. In a seminar, the formidable J. L Austin having become exasperated with Richard Hare's huffing on about how moral choices reveal principles, decided to set him up with a question. "Hare", he asked, "if a student came to you after an examination and offered you five pounds in return for the mark alpha, what would you say?" Predictably, Hare replied, "I would tell him that I do not take bribes, on principle!" Austin's acid response was, "Really? I think I would myself say, 'No Thanks.' " Austin was being merely deflationary in denying that an act of conscience had to have a principle underlying it. Gandhi erects the denial into a radical alternative to a (western) tradition of moral thinking. An honoured slogan of that tradition says, "When one chooses for oneself, one chooses for everyone". The first half of the slogan describes a particular person's act of conscience. The second half of the slogan transforms the act of conscience to a universalized principle, an imperative that others must follow or be criticized. Gandhi embraces the slogan too, but he understands the second half of it differently. He too wants one's acts of conscience to have a universal relevance, so he too thinks one chooses for everyone, but he does not see that as meaning that one generates a principle or imperative for everyone. What other interpretation can be given to the words "One chooses for everyone" in the slogan, except the principled one?
WTF! That's your apercu culled from decades and decades of elitist Anglo education? Austin was clearly wrong. He said 'No thanks'- which means the other guy has to offer him more money or a beating or a buggering or whatever. The point about deontics is that it solves a co-ordination problem. It is Eusocial. Austin should have punched the student. A punch has illocutionary force. A.J Ayer once argued Mike Tyson out of raping some hot chick. How? Flattery and nimble footwork. Language is strategic or not at all. 
Gandhi was too making a privileged claim re. his Conscience. It was the voice of God. Marie Stokes heard the Voice of God in 'a dark yew wood' and it is to her we have all harkened. Flaubert spoke of Art as being the Soul's condom in this brothel of a World; Bilgrami spouting Gandhian shite too is a prophylactic but not for the Soul, no, rather for a burnt out Careerism which now must take recourse to the dirtiest sort of Senile, Syphilitic, gesture politics.

Boulding on why Gandhi failed

Kenneth Boulding

My Lord, Thou art in every breath I take,
And every bite and sup taste firm of Thee.
With buoyant mercy Thou enfoldest me,
And holdest up my foot each step I make.
Thy touch is all around me when I wake,
Thy sound I hear, and by Thy light I see
The world is fresh with Thy divinity
And all Thy creatures flourish for Thy sake.

For I have looked upon a little child
And seen Forgiveness, and have seen the day
With eastern fire cleanse the foul night away;
So cleansest Thou this House I have defiled.
And if I should be merciful, I know
It is Thy mercy, Lord, in overflow.

( There is a Spirit, 1975, p. 13.)

Apart from being a great Quaker mystical poet, Boulding was a widely respected Economist, many feel, greatly ahead of his time.
He introduced the concept of Psychic Capital in 1950 which, I suppose, might marry well with the doctrine of Rupert Sheldrake and give rise to a sort of Humanistic teleology such that 'the Noosphere'- i.e. the common intellectual and moral heritage of man- might itself yield an 'Omega point'- or theosis for the entire species.
However, in the context of why Gandhi failed, what he has to say about negative Psychic Capital bears repeating
'... failure in a task could also lead to a depletion of psychic capital. An accumulation of negative memories of failures, disasters,atrocities, or perceived injustices and indignities (as either recipient or perpetrator) could be called negative psychic capital. Negative psychic capital can also be a powerful motivating factor, in the pursuit of satisfaction through revenge or a settling of scores. In either of its forms as positive or negative psychic capital, this package of collective memory is an essential link between collective memory and collective mental state'

Mahatma Gandhi did not create the negative psychic capital which fuelled the Indian Revolutionaries- he did not invent the 'drain theory' of Indian immeseration or the notion that the rule of predominantly White I.C.S officers and Judges somehow represented a worse insult to Indian honour than the rule of 'Ashraf' Turks or Afghans or Yemenis or 'Manuvaad' Brahmins or Banias or Rajputs. However, he was very successful in denying that the positive Psychic capital created by the British Raj- viz. technological progress, law and order, a meritocratic educational system which permitted boys from poor families to rise to become High Court Judges, Privy Counselors, Dewans of Native State- was actually a good thing.

Boulding, visiting India some half a century ago, wrote-

The failure of Gandhism is not a failure of ahimsa, but a failure of satyagraha. The modern world is so complex that the truth about it cannot be perceived by common sense or by mystical insight, important as these things are. We must have the more delicate and quantitative sampling and processing of information provided by the methods of the social sciences if we are really to test the truth of our images of social and political systems.

Boulding was perhaps unaware that Gandhi's 'Guru' in politics, Gokhale- a Professor of Mathematics- represented precisely the sort of truth seeking, statistics compiling, rational and quantitative approach which Gandhism so signally turned his back on. The Servants of India Society functioned as a sort of Jesuit order, prizing  scholarship and independent research just as much as individual austerity and self-sacrifice. Gokhale, before his death, warned against entrusting any negotiations to Gandhi- he said, truth be told, his achievements in South Africa had fallen far short of the mark- and, to their credit, the Servants of India Society refused to admit Gandhi to their own august order. Thus, the only reasonable conclusion to draw, as to why Gandhism failed- assuming Boulding is correct- is that it was not because Gandhi came from a Society incapable of anything except 'common sense and mystical insight' but because Gandhi was not intelligent enough to take the more arduous path indicated by Social Science. Yet, to do him Justice, at Champaran, or later, during his inquiry into the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre, he used his influence to exclude from the record testimony of atrocities which could not be substantiated- an important step in securing him the respect of the British authorities. True, as Rajendra Prasad pointed out, the Champaran atrocities had been exaggerated to a point of ludicrous absurdity, Gandhi had no alternative but to pursue the course he did- no lawyer of  any degree of professional integrity could have done otherwise- still, something else about Gandhi- viz. his proprietary, but also wholly imaginary, Psychic Capital of Satyagraha- proved more decisive in establishing his place as the leader of the Indian Freedom Struggle and arbiter of, not its Destiny, unless that was always a cowardly dereliction of duty, but its dense, dour and dim-witted praxis of self-deception.
But the simple 'preference falsification availability cascade' which a set of provincial politicians profited from, has now been taken up by senile Professors of International standing for no purpose I can see save that of making plain the utter bankruptcy of their disciplines.
Boulding, perhaps, was unaware of this impending disaster when he wrote-

 The next logical step, therefore, for the Gandhian movement would seem to be in the direction of the social sciences, in peace research, and in the testing of all our images of society by the more refined means for discovering truth which are now available to us. I am not suggesting, of course, that the social sciences produce “absolute” truth, or indeed that much valid perception is not achieved through common sense and insight. What I do suggest, however, is that the problem of truth is so difficult that we cannot afford to neglect any means of improving the path towards it, and that without this, non-violence will inevitably be frustrated.

Since Boulding wrote these words, and more particularly in the last twenty years, there has been an enormous explosion in 'Gandhian social research' as well as a Global epidemic of non-violent movements which attract good people and sustain a self-image of being effective thanks to the myth of the Mahatma's own extraordinary and untrue achievement of expelling the British from India. 

But is this a genuine psychic capital- know-how, as Boulding terms it- or merely a mass delusion like the recent panic about the Mayan Apocalypse?

The fact is, both genuine technological changes and imaginary ones can have a short term impact. The announcement, by a credible source, of the discovery of 'cold fusion' will move markets even if it turns out to be false later on.

It may be a false announcement coincides with some genuine change which militates towards the same end. In that case the only way of differentiating the true from the imaginary cause is to test their alethic status. Gandhian satyagraha fails this test. Where  peasant agitations succeeded, as in Champaran or Bardoli, Gandhi  neither initiated nor built upon what was achieved. All that Social Science can say is that 'rent strikes' or the like can succeed under such and such circumstances but their achievements are severely limited and require the sort of outside help which can't be made universally available. Bardoli succeeded because wealthy men from Bombay were willing to buy back alienated land and return it to its owners. Precisely for that reason, Bardoli was self-limiting.

Gandhian saytagraha, as some sort of 'perpetual motion' device, remains a myth- but is Boulding's notion of Psychic Capital really indifferent between myth and reality?

Everywhere I went in India in my brief and inadequate visits I heard one thing: “There is no alternative”. It was precisely the greatness of Gandhi that he always insisted there was an alternative. Morality always implies that there are alternatives to choose, for morality is choice. To deny alternatives is to deny morality itself. To perceive alternatives requires imagination, hard thinking, and costly and painstaking study. If the Gandhian movement in India can recapture this great vision of the alternative, India may yet be saved from the disaster towards which she seems to be heading.

Yes, Gandhi always insisted there was an alternative. But it was imaginary. Morality, indeed, is to choose rightly. But can Boulding really mean that it is morally right to reject Reality, because it remains indifferent to your scolding, and to live instead in a Fool's Paradise where, like Acharya Vinobha Bhave, you imagine that you have solved all Bihar's problems because, by your efforts, almost all of the land in the state has been gifted away in an entirely bogus  'boodhan'? Surely this is not Morality but self-serving Stupidity of a particularly repulsive sort.

There was a time when it appeared that the Government of India, purely in its own interest, was going to bring in tougher anti-corruption laws coupled with some sort of fast track Ombudsman service. This was because a principal-agent problem had arisen- dynasts could no longer trust their bag-men- and in this context it appeared that a 'Gandhian' anti-corruption movement might serve a useful purpose by creating a sort of popular 'don't take, don't give' anti-bribe' Psychic Capital favorable to Market based reforms. 

That was a pipe-dream. What we are faced with instead is just another rowdy political party and one more bogus Yogi Bogi Godman.

Boulding's work, including his notion of Psychic Capital, is by no means facile. But, properly applied, it militates to the conclusion that Gandhism was a sham. Elsewhere, and treating only of social movements which yielded more than they cost, it may yet expand the noo-sphere, not the nonsense sphere.

Thresholds, Violence and Psychic capital

Both Violence and Memory have thresholds and triggers and can give rise to engulfment psychosis- is there any connection between the two from the perspective of what Kenneth Boulding called Psychic Capital?
A recent paper gives a cogent summary of this notion-
 A collective mental state will be influenced by memories, which can also be collective insofar as they are produced by common experiences. The store of good memories has been called psychic capital, but there will also be bad memories or negative psychic capital. A community can be aided in its survival by a sense of coherence. Psychic capital can be drawn upon in the task of maintaining a sense of coherence and therefore survival.
Put this way, Psychic Capital cashes out as the ex ante Incentive system obtaining at any given point in time. Economic theory suggests that coercion would rely on monetary exactions (fines) rather than physical violence except where agents have no wealth. But, if the proportion of zero wealth agents rises faster than the productivity of Violence,congestion and spatial polarization based multiple equilibria will exist though perhaps eventually converging to a a dominant firm/ competitive fringe type situation.

In this context, the Sociologist Randall Collins stresses the learned aspect of Violence- i.e. a 'know-how ' effect in Boulding's terminology- and we can add a Tardean mimetic hedonics of violence to motivate such learning.

Perhaps the greatest living theorist of Non Violence, Gene Sharpe, takes as his starting point the insight that Power is not monolithic, the People can withdraw their obedience and leave their Masters without Power. However, just as any existing Monopoly has to remain competitive or shore up barriers to entry against potential rivals, Governments too never have more than a notional monopoly of coercion which is in any case  hotly contested at the margin. In this context, 'withdrawal of obedience' imposes a monetary cost on those with wealth- because the State can reciprocally  withdraw protection from crime and delinquency in a discriminatory manner so as to maximize the rent on such Law and Order as remains. This shrinks the economy but it may kill off dissent faster than it enfeebles the State and in any case, by reducing the capitalized value of the returns on Power, turns everybody's focus to short term Machiavellian tactics rather that long term strategic thinking or mechanism design.

 Prof. Sharpe, who has been called the Machiavelli of Non-Violence, highlights what would otherwise seem an oddity in the trajectory of Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha such that Civil disobedience did not cease to be non-violent while at the same time dramatically eroding its participants' inner (as opposed to tactical, or hypocritical) commitment to Ahimsa as a principle.

I suppose the take-away point here is that 'Violence' is only perceived as such  when it crosses a certain threshold- in the context of Power, it is the the boundary between delinquency and disobedience.  Similarly, Collective Memory only turns into Psychic Capital when a threshold is shifted- as happened with Ind's recovered memory of sexual abuse at the hands of Evil British people who wore Top Hats and were terribly well spoken and had a real plausible reason for suggesting that they'd lost their mobile phone, and were expecting a real important call, and it was probably hiding in one or other of your orifices and would you mind awfully if I took a look? and it turns out they hadn't lost their mobile phone at all- in fact phones hadn't been invented yet- and OMG having to live with the shame, the humiliation- I mean if that's not a good enough reason to burn your Jermyn St. shirts what is?

The Non Aggression Principle says Violence is a Virtue Ethics

Is any argument calling for the initiation of aggression (defined by the Non Aggression Principle as violence or the threat of violence against a person or her legitimately owned property) inherently self-contradictory?
No. Everything depends on whether the status quo is considered to be good in itself or having moral legitimacy simply by virtue of its existence. Any larger theory of the world which holds the status quo to be degenerate, or Fallen or Barbaric, also posits some hidden violence, of a more invidious and destructive kind, as already occurring and militates for the initiation of a visible violence that can surgically excise the danger represented by the 'hidden' violence.
   But, what if we introduce a further axiom such that Providence always ensures that the status quo is free of hidden violence and is the morally most perfect state possible? Surely, under those circumstances, it would be self-contradictory to argue for initiating aggression against any person or her legitimately owned property? 
Once again the answer is no. It may be that initiating Violence is a skill which, once mastered, brings some great benefit to Society such that a benign Providence would itself ordain that act of aggression. In other words, in addition to the axiom of the Providential nature of the status quo, we would need to add a second axiom- viz. that benign Providence can never ordain any initiation of aggression. But, now, we don't have any intellectual argument at all, just arbitrary assertions about the nature of Providence which, unless one subscribes to pure Occassionalist Theism, really does involve one in self-contradiction.
  An alternative tack is to deny the possibility of 'hidden violence', to dismiss the reality of unspoken intimidation, as a phantasm merely. By this account, the fact that I don't go and confront my hooligan neighbor when she turns up her hi-fi is evidence not of  the 'hidden violence' by which she intimidates me but my enjoyment of the horrible, probably Lesbic & obscene, lyrics of her favorite singer- M.S. Subbalaxmi.
  In this case, once again, an intellectual argument has been displaced by an arbitrary assertion about the facts of the World- one which collapses under Micro-Sociological appraisal.
Randall Collins, author of Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory, writes-
 'Humans confronting each other come up against a wall of confrontational tension/fear (ct/f), a tension arising from the hard-wiring in humans that makes us especially susceptible to rituals of mutual solidarity, Interaction Rituals in the specifically sociological sense...Successful instances of human violence come from getting around the barrier of ct/f, sometimes by chance, but also by techniques that persons skilled in violence learn to use. ' (Randall Collins)
Rene Girard developed a theory of mimetic desire which highlighted the role of the scapegoat- the human sacrifice- in rituals of mutual solidarity. Social Interaction, it seems to me, tends to be ritualized along lines of alterity whose borders are defined by the 'pharmakos' or scapegoat who no longer has to be killed in proportion to the capacity for coercion the Social sub-unit believes itself to possess.
The problem here is that Violence is a skill that has to be learned and, once learned, constitutes a type of Human or Social Capital which commands a rent even absent its exercise. Small groups, which cultivate that skill, can become decisive over much larger nomological rubrics, or unities, such as that under which Libertarians operate. Fortunately, Violence can only function as a 'Virtue Ethic' where it evokes a 'balanced game' so the Libertarians, or Gandhians, or Rousseauians or whatever are saved despite themselves.

Violence as Virtue Ethics

    Dipping into a book by Nicholas Gier got me thinking- you heard me right folks, I said thinking not drinking- has there ever been a philosopher or prophet or politician or any other sort of fuckwit whatsoever who has actually advocated Violence?
   Hilter? No he denounced violent opposition to himself in very vehement terms. Genghis Khan? No, he greatly disapproved of violent opposition to himself and delivered great masses of people from this detestable vice.
    Hitler never used violent means to secure his aim- viz. the end of violent opposition to himself. He never actually shot anybody or slapped anybody or even knifed them a little bit. Those who were already violent removed others- violent or not- whose counsel, example, or relative sanctity such as is conferred by mere continued existence, might have led those same men of blood to like mebbe one day violently oppose Hitler or something. In other words Violence used itself as the means to come to the particular state of absolute and eternal non-violence that Hitler enjoined.

    It may be true that a good end can not be achieved by bad means. But, nothing enjoins an officious striving to prevent a bad end frustrating itself by bad means such that a good end is achieved, albeit with little or no assistance from good means.
    We can turn any historical figure, no matter how brutal or blood-soaked, into a champion of non-violence by positing him or her to be a mere Kagemusha, or shadow warrior, to the true protagonist, occulted by the chronicles, who wills that non-violent end state which violence aims at.
   Assuming brain modularity, Principal Agent hazard (of the sort mentioned above) arises in even a one person, one time period, model- one can be violent to oneself by reason of preference falsification or Kavka's toxin. Any argument against what I'm saying here is going to have to admit that it assumes, and thus only has relevance to, a world where brains didn't evolve or look nothing like our own. But, even so, such arguments are wasted words coz of the Thomas Nagel Bat problem.
    What about a theory of Violence as a Virtue Ethics? What would a philosopher of violence look like? No, not Nietzche- give the guy a break, he was a syphilitic lunatic, not to say German philologist, and thus mentally incompetent to impose a poset on what he valorized- but maybe Merlin's King Arthur or some such mythical beast who insists every moral, that is deontic, or non alethic issue or question be settled only by violence. This would need to be a violent agon, otherwise there is no partial ordering of states of the world signified by the word Violence. To see why consider the following case- I cut your throat after you have stuck your head under a guillotine and let fall the blade. If you did this to escape my knife, I still am credited with a lot of violence. If however you did it for some other reason and neither knew or cared about my plan to cut your throat- the amount of violence I have actually perpetrated is considerably diminished. Essentially, the more causal chains having bearing on us both, the more difficult it will be to establish a partial ordering of states of the world such that Violence can be measured or states of the world ranked with respect to its criteria. In practice, the only tractable way to establish a Violence metric is to recast every interaction as a 2 person violence agon- even if it is both multi-agent as well as diachronous- with some ad hoc weighting formula for working out the contribution of each agent at different times. (This is Newtonian substantivism as opposed to the mirage of Leibnizian relationism.)
     But even with a pure two person violent agon the problem arises that I won't fight unless I get a positive Expected value for the Outcome- so there has to be a reward and a threshold probability of winning that reward. You may say, well, I'll kill you if you don't fight. But, all that then happens is, I choose the option that minimizes my own pain and suffering, not the one that maximizes the amount of violence I do and/or provoke. So, if Violence- as opposed to a utilitarian calculus of costs and benefits arising out of perceived tastes and potentials for violence- is going to be in a position to actually to decide anything of moral or non alethic import- i.e. if it is to be a virtue ethics- it has to ensure two things
1) Symmetry and 'Balanced Gaming' ( Notice Non-Violence does not demand Symmetry for its practice- thus it throws away information and is dissipative) Formally this means  all violent conflicts must have random outcomes- assuming all agents are risk neutral.

   However, suppose Iyers are more cowardly than Iyengars- this is empirically true of Iyer males when matched against Iyengar females- then Iyengar women must be suitably handicapped (I suggest they not be allowed to pull my hair or punch me in the fatty portion of my arm) and Iyer men properly armed and armoured.
2)  Impredicative Pareto efficiency- the setting up of the conflict situation must involve an outward shift in the production possibility frontier such that both parties to the violence can, at least theoretically, be made better off. In other words the purse for the prize fight must always exceed the sum of losses on both sides. Suppose, the reverse were the case- e.g. if I say 'you and your sister must fight each other to the death to decide who gets the hush money you are extorting from me for not telling your Mum and Dad that I let you stay up with me to watch 'Frightnight' even though they'd specifically said I wasn't allowed to watch it coz it makes me pee the couch and what sort of babysitters are they sending us nowadays anyway?'
    The problem is, to make sure you and your sister actually fight each other to the death, I have to import extra violence into the scenario. There has to be a credible threat that you will both die more painful and lingering deaths by refusing combat. But, from the first principle (viz Symmetry) this extra violence can't arise. Thus, unlike Non-Violence or Justice as Fairness or other such pi jaw, Violence as Virtue Ethics is impredicatively Pareto efficient.
   But, if these two conditions are satisfied then- for the first time in its life- Ethics would actually yield something Ethical. Thus, not only is Violence (as opposed to non-violence) a Virtue Ethics- it is the only Virtue Ethics which don't fuck things up big time.