Gandhi's Talisman and dressing like a hobo

Since the Mahatma made it a point to look like the poorest and weakest man anyone had ever seen, his advise cashes out as lending credence to stupid ideas peddled by people who portray themselves as emaciated beggars suffering deeply the frightful wrongs inflicted on those they themselves have misled.

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-2

It is a commonplace in our understanding of the western moral tradition to think of Kant's moral philosophy as the full and philosophical flowering of a core of Christian thought.
Our? Bilgrami, you are an Indian Muslim. It is not a commonplace for your people to believe any such shite. Nor is it commonplace for any German Christian to do so. Radhakrishnan did not make so vulgar an error in his engagement with Lutheranism even as a student. Why are you writing such ignorant shit? Does your colour (which actually is pretty white) or your status as a Muslim (non believing, it seems) give you a laissez passer to tell stupid, illiterate, lies?
No. But you are a Professor of a shit subject and that's all the excuse you need you worthless fuckwit.

 But Gandhi fractures that historical understanding. By stressing the deep incompatibility between categorical imperatives and universalizable maxims on the one hand, and Christian humility on the other, he makes two moral doctrines and methods out of what the tradition represents as a single historically consolidated one.
I see-only acting according to a maxim that can become a universal law means you have to be a self righteous dick and get up everybody's nose with your holier than thou sermons. Why? Who would agree that 'be a self righteous dick' is a universal law? Imagine the following- Gandhi turns up and starts telling you what a worthless cunt you are coz you wear trousers rather than a diaper. You promptly tell him he's an even slacker twatted ho coz he didn't personally sow the cotton from which his diaper is woven, He's going 'yeah, but like your're wearing trousers dude! Diapers trump trousers.' 'Ordinarily they would,' you reply suavely,' but these aren't trousers at all. What they are is the collected faeces of low caste bhangis which have been cunningly moulded to look like trousers. I personally, as a form of satyagraha, gathered all the shit by hand out of the anuses of Untouchables and as a gesture of humility and a blow in the face of British Imperialism fashioned them into the appearance of trousers. Ha, Ha- I win.'
Is that the sort of world anybody- more especially a self righteously dick- want to live in?
Surely, Bilgrami is wrong. Kant's categorical imperative entails'don't be a holier than thou Gandhian dick or Taliban dick or Amartya Sen type dick.' Why? Imagine a world where everybody is a dick of that sort. The Taliban dicks kill each other because the true Taliban kills anyone who might not be a true Taliban- i.e. everybody.
And discarding one of them as lending itself ultimately to violence, he fashions a remarkable political philosophy and national movement out of the other.
Shite cobbled together from Ruskin and Chesterton and Carlyle aint a Political Philosophy. It is shite. Why are you not saying Gandhi fashioned Khilafat and hence Al Qaida and the Taliban etc? Gandhi got money off the Khilafat guys for his shite Ashrams and Congress work.
He also got money and prestige off the I.N.C by promising to deliver Swaraj within 18 months.  He didn't.
Both Khilafat and the Swaraj movement existed before Gandhi. He just made money out of them and gained a temporary obligatory passage point status. But, he made himself irrelevant by his antics. He was a stupid fuckwit.
I want to stress how original Gandhi is here as a philosopher and theoretician. The point is not that the idea of the 'exemplary' is missing in the intellectual history of morals before Gandhi. 
Are you fucking mad or just stupid? What does 'insaan-e-kaamil' mean? What about 'Purushuttama'? Hang on, here's one you definitely do know- how's about Thomas a Kempis' Tshirt slogan- 'What would J.C do?'
The notion that the moral axis of the World does not coerce or criticize but that a sort of Boscovich 'field'- as in the Vimalakriti- emanates from him has been a constant feature of the 'intellectual history of morals' for at least two thousand years. Indeed, Occasionalism gains ethical salience precisely because this type of 'field' theory is hugely fecund.
What is missing, and what he first brings to our attention, is how much theoretical possibility there is in that idea. It can be wielded to make the psychology surrounding our morals a more tolerant one. 
Gandhi spoke his mind. He generally thought other people were selfish swine who didn't really understand stuff like their own Religion, Economics, Politics, Law, Education, Medicine, etc. He was swift to condemn behavior he thought immoral and to mete out punishments.
Now it is true that Spiritual Religion- whether Buddhist or Hindu or Sufi or Christian- teaches techniques to conquer cognitive dissonance and to control visceral reactions. Thus the sage should be able to serenely contemplate the most atrocious of spectacles without losing his equanimity.
Gandhi makes no special contribution. Furthermore, he simply wasn't a Philosopher.
If exemplars replace principles, then it cannot any longer be the business of morals to put us in the position of moralizing against others in forms of behaviour (criticism) that have in them the potential to generate other psychological attitudes (resentment, hostility) which underlie inter-personal violence. Opposition to moralizing is not what is original in Gandhi either. There are many in the tradition Gandhi is opposing who recoiled from it; but if my interpretation is right, his distinction between principle and exemplar and the use he puts it to, provides a theoretical basis for that recoil, which otherwise would simply be the expression of a distaste. That distaste is a distaste for something that is itself entailed by a moral theory deeply entrenched in a tradition, and Gandhi is confronting that theory with a wholesale alternative. 
When was Gandhi not 'moralizing' and criticising? He says again and again that anyone who does not do exactly what he says is evil and corrupt and likes eating nice food and wearing cool clothes and probably having sex and stuff.  True, he was 'passive aggressive' and backed down pretty quick unless it paid him to put on a gesture political drama to suggest otherwise.  Still, he was a major holier than thou shithead of the worst Gujarati type. Which is why Narendrabhai loves him so much.
Bilgrami doesn't say what 'Tradition' Gandhi was opposing. Was it Hindu? No- Bilgrami can't make that claim because he knows he is ignorant of Hinduism. If not Hindu, then what was it? It couldn't be Western because Gandhi denounced Western education.
Perhaps Bilgrami means 'Universal tendency' not 'Tradition'. In that case he is making an extraordinary claim- viz. Gandhi was the first and last man to achieve some very elevated moral stature.
But Gandhi was also a worthless fuckwit who alienated Jinnah and Ambedkar and did lasting damage to India in every conceivable way.
Moreover, his worshipers tell stupid lies about him like 'Gandhi got Freedom for India' or 'Gandhi healed Hindu Muslim disunity.'
So even if Bilgrami's claim is true, it is not interesting
This conception of moral judgement puzzles me, even while I find it of great interest. It has puzzled me for a long time. Before I became a teenager (when I began to find it insufferably uncool) I would sometimes go on long walks with my father in the early mornings. One day, walking on a path alongside a beach we came across a wallet with some rupees sticking visibly out of it. With a certain amount of drama, my father said: “Akeel, why should we not take that?” Flustered at first, I then said something like, “Gee (actually I am sure I didn’t say ‘gee’), I think we should take it.”  My father looked most irritated, and asked, “Why?” And I am pretty sure I remember saying words more or less amounting to the classic response: “Because if we don’t take it then I suppose someone else will.” My father, looking as if he were going to mount to great heights of denunciation, suddenly changed his 
expression, and he said magnificently, but without logic (or so it seemed to me then): “If we don’t take it, nobody else will.” As a boy of twelve, I thought this was a non sequitur designed to end 
the conversation. In fact I had no idea what he meant, and was too nervous to ask him to explain himself. Only much later, in fact only while thinking about how to fit together the various elements in Gandhi's thought, did I see in his remark, the claims for a moral ideal of exemplary action. But notice how puzzling the idea is. 
Not puzzling at all you fuckwit.  BTW you did too say 'Gee' or rather its homophone 'Ji'.
In any case, there is no great aporia here. Simply a story of any Ashraf or Caste Hindu taking a stroll on the beach with his Dad.
If you don't take the money you are somebody- i.e. a khandani Bilgrami Ashraf who will go on to occupy Chairs of Philosophy without blushing- this does not mean nobody takes the money but that a 'nobody' takes it.
Of if you feel this smacks of 'Casteism', look at it Game Theoretically. Your discounted reputational gain as the man who didn't take a wallet in the sight of another fully offsets the monetary loss.
Here is a wallet, abandoned, and we should not take it. This would set an example to others, though no one is around to witness it. 
No it wouldn't. Not unless you believe in something totally fucked liked Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonace or shite. Fuck me, you probably do!
The romance in this morality is radiant. Somehow goodness, good acts, enter the world and affect everyone else. To ask how exactly they do that is to be vulgar, to spoil the romance. Goodness is a sort of mysterious contagion.
No. It's doing good things. Like tracking down the owner of the wallet. Or, if that is too difficult, just fucking obeying the law- which says hand it in to the nearest Police Station.

Gandhi was not a good exemplar. There were thousands of Gandhians but they produced nothing lasting. By contrast, take the case of Abdul Sattar Edhi. He came to Karachi a penniless refugee and penniless he remains to this day. Yet thanks to his personal example, nothing more- no long speeches or dramatic political gestures- his foundation is probably the largest voluntary Ambulance and Hospital service in the world.
Gandhi would have loved to have such a legacy. He probably genuinely believed something good would come out of his Khadi work and Basic Education scheme. Both were a massive waste of resources.
The Gandhi cap became a symbol of corruption- and, latterly, criminality and rape.
Perhaps, Bilgrami, in his own way is veering round to this view in his essay. He finally comes out and says Truth has to be about, at least partly, facts about the world. It can't simply be empty posturing. Perhaps, Gandhi wasn't really concerned with Truth at all. Perhaps he was a 'bullshitter' jumping on any bandwagon as an occasion to spout his self-serving holier than thou shite. True, Gandhi was afraid of violence because he himself and his own followers would die first, and this meant that he needed to spread hate by criticizing others without that hate spilling into violence because his side would get their heads kicked in. It was a tightrope that Gandhi had to walk. Fortunately it was a tightrope to nowhere and affected nothing. People who write shite may have their own reasons to pretend otherwise. Still, it is perhaps a good thing that they write shite on a topic which we have prior knowledge about. In this way, we are able to properly judge shite-writers as worthless shitheads whose oeuvre we do well to avoid.

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.

Gandhi on khaddar

My former neighbor, from when I lived in West Ken, Barrister Gandhi has written as follows-


WILL THEY DO IT?

(Harijan 25/5/1934)

Since I have taken up the walking pilgrimage, hundreds of villagers have been following the pilgrims. Some even talk about their woes. Thus, whilst I was reaching Sakhigopal, a representative weaver himself told me that the weavers were in great distress as there was no demand for their cloth.

I told him I had prophesied fifteen years ago that it would not be possible for them to co-exist with mills, so long as they used mill yarn, and that the natural supplier and sustainer of the handloom was the spinning-wheel. In his reply I heard, to the best of my recollection, for the first time, ‘Give us hand-spun and we shall weave it.’

‘I will, if you will do as I tell you’, said I.

‘We will’, the old man replied. The weaver was an old man with a bent back.

I was overjoyed at his replies and said, ‘That is very good. Then I would teach you, your wife and your children how to gin, card and spin. You will then have enough yarn for your loom. You will spin good, strong, even yarn, you will avoid waste. I shall expect you from your first out-turn to take your khaddar for your own use and then I shall buy all the surplus khaddar you weave. I shall try to become a member of your family and give you the benefit of my experience.

Thus, I shall ask you to give up drink and intoxicating drugs if you are addicted to them. I shall go through your family budget and wean you from incurring debts.’

The old man’s face lightened up and he said, ‘We shall surely follow your advice. At present, starvation stares us in the face.’ I asked him to bring some of his friends to see me at 3 o’clock at the
Gopabandhu Ashram in Saikhigopal.

He came with his friends, I repeated much of the morning conversation and said, ‘I know you can’t spin at once enough yarn to start your looms. I shall, therefore, supply you with enough yarn to start with for the most promising families. By the time you have woven it, you will have spun enough to feed your looms. The first khaddar you weave from this supplied yarn will be taken over from
you. For the second lot, if you have not yet enough yarn of your own, I will again supply you with some. After that you should become self-supporting and you should make all your own family
requirements of cloth and then only sell the surplus.

I regard this as an experiment of the highest importance and potency. There are probably ten million weavers in India. No one has the correct number, to the thousand even. But ten million is a safe guess. If these added all the previous processes to the art of weaving, they would not only ensure their own existence, but cheapen khaddar to the lowest possible limit and turn out much more durable and beautiful khaddar than has yet been produced.

The readers of Harijan know that there are in the Central Provinces several Harijan weaver families which do their own carding and spinning. I would add to this ginning. The future of khaddar can be assured if the weavers realize the necessity, for their own sakes, of themselves doing all the processes antecedent to weaving.'


Was Gandhi right in the advise he gave the elderly weaver? Could hand spinning yarn yield the weavers enough income to stave off starvation?

Gandhi's acolyte, Vinobha Bhave made the experiment-

On September 1, 1935 I started a new practice, though in fact it was not really new, it merely became more noticeable. The whole spinning exercise was designed to demonstrate that a man could earn his living by spinning, provided he received the wages I had calculated, and the market prices remained steady. On this basis I reckoned that one should be able to live on six rupees a month; the diet included fifty tolas of milk, thirty tolas of vegetables, fifteen to twenty of wheat, four of oil, and some honey, raw sugar or fruit.
This principle, that a spinner should be able to earn his living by his work, had always been accepted from the first years at Wardha, 1922-23. The new practice we began at Nalwadi in 1935 was that at four o’clock each afternoon we reckoned up how much work had been done. If it was found that by six o’clock (after eight hours of work) the spinners would have earned full wages, then the evening meal was cooked. Otherwise, the workers had to decide whether to forego the evening meal, or to work extra time and earn the full wages. Sometimes the ration was reduced when the earnings fell short. My students were quite young lads, but they worked along with me enthusiastically to the best of their power.
The Charkha Sangh (All India Spinners Association) had fixed wages which amounted to only five rupees a month for four hanks daily, that is, for nine hours’ work a day. In my opinion a spinner should receive not less than four annas (a quarter-rupee) for his daily quota; Bapu would have liked it to be eight annas. But that would have put up the price of khadi, and the gentry would not be prepared to pay a higher rate. What could be done? The only way was for someone like me to experiment in living on the spinner’s wage.
Bapu soon heard of my experiment. He was living at Sevagram, but he was alert to everything that was going on. When we next met he asked me for details. ‘How much do you earn in a day,’ he enquired, ‘calculated at the Charkha Sangh rate?’ ‘Two annas, or two and a quarter,’ I said. ‘And what do you reckon you need?’ ‘Eight annas,’ I replied. ‘So that means,’ he commented, ‘that even a good worker, doing a full day’s work, can’t earn a living wage !’ His distress was evident in his words. At last, thanks to his efforts, the Charkha Sangh accepted the principle of a living wage, though in practice we are still a long way from achieving it.
This debate about wages went on for two or three years. The Maharashtra Charkha Sangh made the first move, and as no adverse consequences followed, they were emboldened to take a second step, bringing the wage to double what it had been. An ordinary spinner could earn four annas by eight hours’ work, while a good spinner could earn six annas. Some specially skilful and hard-working individuals might occasionally earn as much as eight annas—the amount Gandhiji had proposed as the standard. But though the Maharashtra Charkha Sangh adopted the principle, it still seemed impracticable to people in the other provinces.
After I had succeeded in spinning four hanks of yarn in nine hours on the wheel, I planned a similar experiment with the takli (i.e. using a spindle). But my speed was so slow that I felt it was beyond me to achieve satisfactory results. I wanted some more capable person to take it up, because it was only by such experiments that the idea of khadi could really gain ground. I myself experimented for a full year with takli spinning by the left hand, and found that there was a difference of twelve yards in the production of the right and left hands. The purpose of the exercise was to find out whether a full day’s wage could be earned on the takli, spinning for eight hours with both the hands. My fellow-worker Satyavratan was able in this way to produce three hanks of yarn in eight hours.
In those days, about 1934, we used to come together every day at noon for takli spinning. I looked upon this as a form of meditation, and I told my fellow-workers that while I had no wish to impose my ideas on others, I did hope that there would be a better attendance at this takli meditation even than at meals. If this does not happen, one reason is that we do not pay attention to the principles upon which it is based. Meditation stands as it were midway between practical affairs and knowledge—knowledge of the Self—and acts as a bridge. Its task is to enable us, who are preoccupied with practical activities, to reach the Supreme Truth. Meditation appeals first to practical benefits, and by concentration on these benefits leads us to the further shore, to peace, contentment and knowledge of the Self. Let a person begin with the thought that if every inhabitant of India were to take to the takli or the charkha, many of the country’s ills would be remedied. If he starts spinning for that reason it will bring peace of mind. Whatever we undertake in this spirit of reflection or meditation brings both outward and inward benefit, and experience of the takli is of this kind.


So there we have it. Spinning might have some value akin to meditation but it didn't yield an income sufficient to stave off starvation. No doubt, the Gandhian fad meant that hand-spun cloth could be sold at a premium, but even so spinners couldn't feed themselves adequately on the basis of their earnings. By contrast, good weavers using machine yarn were doing quite well for themselves because they were producing a luxury product with a high market price.

Guha on Gandhi

Ramachandra Guha's new book, 'Gandhi before India', is not entirely innocent of historical scholarship yet joyously jejune in its hagiographic claims- things like, 'Gandhi was born and raised a Hindu, and he avowed that denominational label all his life. Yet no Hindu before or since had such a close, intense engagement with the great Abrahamic religions. '
Is Guha right?
 Raja Ram Mohan Roy had a close and intense engagement with all three Abrahamic Religions- not just Arabic, he even learnt Hebrew- and went on to found a monotheistic sect which strictly forbade idolatry. Nor was Roy unique. Many North Indian Hindu lawyers had a profound knowledge of  Islamic law and Religion; in addition to Persian, some attained proficiency in Arabic; and, from about 1830 on wards they had a lot of exposure to Christianity. 
As for the South Indian littoral, Judaism had always maintained a presence. Indeed, in Kerala, Hindus have lived side by side with Jews, Christians and Muslims for over a thousand years. Is it plausible that not one single Malyalee Hindu- more particularly given the genius for theological speculation displayed by the people of that region- failed to engage equally intensely with 'the great Abrahamic Religions'? One way to engage intensely with a Religion is to convert to it. We know some Hindus converted to Judaism and Christianity and Islam- how can we have a priori knowledge that their engagement was less intense than Gandhis?
Consider the case of some young Hindu alive in the world today. How do we know his engagement with Abrahamic religion is less intense than Gandhis?
It may appear that Guha's absurd claim is nothing but harmless hyperbole.
Yet, when we read what he goes on to write in justification of it, we find that this absurdity lies at the heart of Guha's historiography.
He is saying that only in South Africa, at that particular time, could Hindus and Jews and Christians and Muslims intermingle in a manner such that Gandhi, despite being intellectually unexceptional and deeply provincial to boot, could suddenly turn, by some miracle of elective affinity, into the highest attainable point, at least for a Hindu, of engagement with the Abrahamic Religions.
Thus, Guha tells us that Gandhi 'understood Judaism through a highly personal lens, through his friendships with (Henry) Polak, (Hermann) Kallenbach and Sonja Schlesin especially. His interest in Christianity was both personal and theological—he liked (Joseph) Doke and loved (Charles Freer or C.F.) Andrews, but whereas he was not really influenced by Jewish thought he was profoundly shaped by heterodox Christian texts, above all Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. His relations with Islam were partly personal, but largely pragmatic and political. He had read the Quran (probably more than once), but was never really moved by it in the same way as he was moved by the Bhagavad Gita or even the Sermon on the Mount. He had some Muslim friends, but what concerned him more—much more—was the forging of a compact between Hindus and Muslims, the major communities in the Indian diaspora in South Africa, as they were in India itself.'
Gandhi  had some Jewish friends- but they weren't orthodox- and he had some Muslim friends- but he wasn't a 'shagird' of a Sufi master or anything of that sort- and he had some friends who were ordained Christian ministers- but they didn't discuss Christian theology with him since their own Irenicism was of an eclectic type.
Under these circumstances, how did Gandhi manage to achieve a closer engagement with the great Abrahamic religions than any Hindu before or since? Virtually every Hindu with a modicum of personal charm, who studied in Europe at that time, would have had some Christian and Jewish and Muslim friends. No lawyer conducting a successful practice in Bombay or Madras or Calcutta- or even Kipling's Lahore- would not have had a friendly acquaintance with some Jews and Christians and so on. Some Hindus were good at learning languages. Some Hindus did and do learn Arabic to read the Quran, Hebrew to read the Torah, Greek to read the New Testament, Latin to read the Vulgate and so on. Furthermore, some of the same Hindus studied or study Philosophy and Theology. Many joined or join progressive organizations of various types- Beasant's Theosophical Society, Kipling's Freemasons, or even just the local lending Library. How does Guha know that Gandhi achieved a closer engagement with the great Abrahamic religions than any such Hindu? Guha assumes what he needs to prove- viz. there was something special about Gandhi. But Guha also maintains that there was nothing special about Gandhi. Had he remained in Porbandar, he would have been a nonentity. Yet it was Porbandar, more particularly his elder brother's influence there, which opened the door to a job with a Muslim firm inSouth Africa for Gandhi. It seems, Porbandar wasn't such an out of the way place after all. The threads that connected it to the wealthiest Muslim businessmen in South Africa were spun of not gossamer but steel.
What Guha fails to see is that Gandhi's world was already so interconnected as to be relatively hysteresis free. Such opportunities or acquaintances as came his way were not not unique or providential but largely interchangeable and arising out of his own autonomous life-project. Had Gandhi remained in London, working for an Indian firm, he would have blossomed from being a vegetarian activist into a broader role which would have brought him, sooner or later, within the same coterie in which he played so signal a part. Had he remained in Bombay- perhaps teaching part time while building up a clientele amongst his caste fellows- he would have slowly climbed the ladder of municipal politics while finding like minded associates in the Theosophical and Servants of India Societies. Sooner or later, Gokhale or Phirozeshah Mehta or Bownargee would have asked him to volunteer his services as the Congress Party's representative to either Fiji or Zanzibar or South Africa or Trinidad or something of that sort. Gandhi had an adventurous spirit. He was brave. He had compassion. He would have risen to the occasion.
Perhaps Guha's thesis- viz. that living outside India turned Gandhi into a totally different man (even though the means to live outside India arose entirely from his Indian connection)- is really about South Africa and the curious course of events which made it the center of World attention in the opening years of the last Century. However, the truth is Gandhi's role there was as a supporting actor, nothing more, in a drama whose real star was not Lord Milner but Jan Smuts.

Ultimately, Guha's failure in this book arises from his distaste for, or ignorance of, Religion.
Take the case of Dr. Pranjivan Mehta who who was Gandhi's first mentor in London and, till his own death, his most loyal  supporter and financier. Guha calls Pranjivan the Engels to Gandhi's Marx and mentions the influence of Raichandbhai Mehta (who was related to Pranjivan by marriage) on Gandhi but does not pause to consider why a Jain might consider Gandhi a 'Mahatma'.
The answer has to do with a crisis within Jain meta-ethics, most strikingly articulated by Acharya Bhikshu, whereby good deeds, save that of feeding monks, by reason of the exigent circumstance represented by India's cumulative impoverishment, had lost soteriological efficacy because such deeds, that too, in ever increasing volume, were now so vital for the simple survival of the species that they could not be seen as merely instrumental in creating a karmic tropism towards the diksha- i.e. renunciation- of the ascetic than which no higher temporal goal can exist for the laity. In this context, Gandhi- a Hindu- could be seen to be creating a new type of vyavahara, or customary morality, for the masses such that premature Cosmic dissolution could be averted. By an imaginative interpretation of Yasovijaya, an interesting possibility arises in this context- viz that some intermediate 'dharma' (duty) is abrogated during the period of activity of a vyavahara stabilizing Mahatma such that a layman, like Raichandbhai, could indeed have achieved kevalya (Gnosis) even though he died before he could take diksha and, in any case, no Tirthankara existed during his life time. In other words, Pranjivan had a specific soteriological stake in wishing to see Gandhi as a Mahatma and, because he himself was not 'a mediocre student' or a provincial boor, his efforts to build up Gandhi (for example by arguing with Gokhale regarding the latter's more objective assessment of Gandhi's ability) played a much bigger role in both Gandhi's self-image and the respect accorded to him than the fact that he was pals with a couple of Jews or Christians or Muslims.
Guha was not trained as a historian. He doesn't know much about Indian literature and philosophy. He isn't into Religion. That's why his comments about Gandhi are stupid.
One other point. Guha is not a novelist or a playwright. He doesn't watch crap TV soaps and old weepie melodramas. Thus he fails to understand the dynamics of what he describes. 
Take the case of Jeki Mehta- the scarlet woman of Satyagraha- Gandhi had asked his second son Manilal to nurse this daughter of Pranjivan's, who was supposedly unwell, so as to instill in the young man an immunity to the temptations of her flesh. No doubt, this ploy would have worked had the lady in question, recently married but perhaps unhappily so, not been in rather better health than Gandhiji supposed. Manilal was not a pervert. Tending to a sick person does not stimulate erotic thoughts in either patient or nurse. But, if both are healthy and young, then the situation could not be more highly erotically charged..
Gandhi has been accused of having reacted in an extreme manner to what then happened. But what was he supposed to do? The girl was the daughter of his mentor and financial supporter. She was married to a lawyer whom Gandhi had recruited and sent to Fiji. She was living under his roof. His own son was implicated. A lesser man would have hanged himself or hushed it up or shifted the blame on to someone else.

The one unquestionable contribution that Gandhi made to Indian politics was in getting women out of the prison of purdah and into proper Jail cells. How would that work if the sluts expected nookie as a reward? It really doesn't bear thinking about which is why I want you to stop thinking about it otherwise I'll just stop typing this and then you'll be all like trawling porn sites for Savita bhabi does Satyagraha or Debbie does the Dandi March or... FUCK ME the video I just thought of actually exists! Won't post the link though. That will teach you to only think pure thoughts in future..
                                                                                                                                                   

Roots of Gandhi's Charisma

The older view of the source of Gandhi's charisma, well summarized by this short volume published by the University of Chicago, holds that  it was deeply rooted in the aspects of Indian tradition that he interpreted for his time. The key to his political influence was his ability to realize in both his daily life and his public actions, cultural ideals that many Indians honored but could not enact themselves—ideals such as the traditional Hindu belief that a person's capacity for self-control enhances his capacity to control his environment. Appealing to shared expectations and recognitions, Gandhi was able to revitalize tradition while simultaneously breaking with some of its entrenched values, practices, and interests.

Such a view immediately raises the question of why Europeans and Americans of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds were numbered amongst his most fervent disciples. Upper Class English converts like Madeline Slade & Verrier Elwin called Gandhi 'Christ personified'. By contrast, few Hindus or Muslims considered him to incarnate or indeed possess any degree of erudition with respect to their respective Religious doctrines, yet some very erudite men from these communities can be classed amongst his acolytes.
Now it might be asserted that the notion exists that if a man can make himself independent of his environment- for example, if he no longer needs to eat but can draw energy from the aether, a doctrine called 'Breathism' or Inedia-then, it is equally plausible to suggest, he might become the master of his environment and order it in some ideal way such that change and decay lose their motive force.
Between 1880 and 1920 there was a vogue for the 'professional faster'- or 'hunger artist'- like the American, Dr. Henry Tanner- who claimed to have discovered some such technique. It may be suggested that Hindu thought is a plausible origin for this notion and so the reason Gandhi attracted European disciples was because, as an Indian who thought fasting had some morally or socially therapeutic value, it was conceivable that, on his returning to his Hindu roots, he might somehow Antaeus-like draw strength from his native soil and achieve the ideal of Inedia. Thus, one fine day, embarking on a fast against some Injustice or instance of Violence, Gandhi would cease to require food. His body would be transfigured and transformed into a different type of being. Perhaps, the spiritual energy radiating from this now transubstantiated body would bring about a miraculous chain reaction. Violence and Greed would disappear. The Rains would fall at their proper time. Rivers would not turbulently rage or capriciously flow but irrigate vast deserts with a mother's care.The green shoots and gorgeous flowers of the Earthly Paradise would crack open the grimy pavements of infernal cities and the dismal proletariat would find the Factory Chimneys to which they were enchained, turned into Maypoles as Labour itself became but a refrain in a roundelay or marked a movement in a Morris dance.
But, there is a problem with this view. Fasting for political purposes was a program being far more dramatically and tragically carried forward by the Suffragettes in England. Since Gandhi wasn't claiming to be able to do without food, his efforts in this direction were simply not such as could win him celebrity or endow him with charisma.

Indian Nationalist Politics had already produced Revolutionaries turned Holy Men and vice versa of whom super-natural powers and Divine Grace were widely predicated. Thus, there were plenty of templates, of a superior sort, available to Indians whereby their 'cultural ideals' could be seen to have been realized, that too in a marvellous manner, in the 'daily life and public actions' of quite a wide body of people. 
Once agains, this suggests that if, indeed, there was some unique way in which Gandhi incarnated some Great Principle, then there was nothing specifically Indian, or Hindu, about that Principle. I say this because men like Khan Abdul Ghafoor Khan or Abbas Tyabji  were certainly not in thrall to some 'Indian' or 'Hindu' ideal- it is offensive to suggest it- whereas a convert to Hinduism, like Savitri Devi, found nothing interesting in Gandhi.

Now it is true that Gandhi did believe he had a special understanding, denied to others, and arising from his principled way of life, of Hinduism, but he also thought that he had special insights into a number of other quite disparate subjects. It was not uncommon for an acolyte firmly convinced of Gandhi's genius in one area to indignantly reject his thinking in a separate field.  By contrast, other charismatic figures of the period- Hitler, Stalin and so on- were portrayed by their propaganda machines as possessing super-human capacities in every domain. 
It is true that anti-Imperialist forces as varied as the Maji Maji rebels in German Tanganika and the Boxers in China ascribed magical powers to their leaders and India was not far out of line with this trend. Annie Beasant and the adherents of the Theosophy Society unquestionably held that the 'mahatmas', from whom they received instruction, existed on an astral plane and were immune to death and the ageing process.

Still, since it is a fact that no actual and long standing acolyte of Gandhi's has ever made any similar claim about him- though many of his contemporaries were indeed deified and have an on-going cultus- it must be the case that it was not the devotee's desire to believe in the super-natural that invested Gandhi with charisma but some human quality or charm of expression which he possessed in a superlative degree..

It is interesting that whereas Amedkar is considered a Boddhisattva, Gandhi is not acclaimed as an Avatar or Siddha or Avadhoot on anything similar. Thus, it seems to me, the roots of Gandhi's appeal can't be found in anything specifically Indian or Hindu, nor is it the case that his acolytes considered him to have received some special gift of grace from God- so, it surely follows, the roots of his charisma can't be found in traditional values or Religious beliefs but, rather, if people continued to idolize Gandhi even after specific initiatives of his, whether political or socio-economic, which brought him great celebrity, had been proved to be dismal failures, foredoomed by his amateurishness and confusion of thought, then the secret of his appeal must be sought in the secular arena constituted and sustained by the, so to speak, 'counter culture' Mass Media of his times. 
The obvious rejoinder to this view is to say- 'Gandhi was a virtuous man. Politics is a dirty business. People idolized Gandhi because he never compromised his principles. The world would be a much better place if we all emulated Gandhi. What is this nonsense you are talking about 'counter-culture' and 'Mass Media'? Since when has Virtue and Principled Behaviour been 'counter culture' or 'Pop culture' or any such nonsense? Kindly get your head examined!'
The problem with this rejoinder is that Gandhi's actions and thoughts were known to his acolytes. Those actions were not virtuous for Virtue seeks not to bring itself into Temptation. Nor were they principled- Gandhi experienced no redemptive tragedy arising from a conflict between Love and Duty- he bounces like an elastic ball away from the troubles of his eldest son- there can be no Uttara -kanda to the Gandhicharitra; Sophocles and Aeschylus will search his character in vain for any trace of 'pathos mathei'- Gandhi blunders, Gandhi suffers self-doubt, but Gandhi learns nothing, nothing was his fault; there had been no tragic dividing between the high road of Duty and the shaded path of the heart; if any lesson is to be learnt it is that people are even greater scoundrels than he thought them and perhaps his Chastity hadn't been tested sufficiently by  attentions to pretty girls.
Now, it is possible that Gandhi, like Quixote, suffered from a mental aberration and that his actions were intended to be virtuous and principled and only failed to be so because he mistook windmills for giants and a tavern wench for a chaste chatelaine.
I suppose you could say, 'what if Quixote was the only virtuous and principled man in the whole of Spain? In that case, though we may lament his mental infirmity, yet we do right in idolizing him. If it is proved that his virtue has driven him mad, might we not benefit by sharing his madness for what truly defeats the ends of human existence is to live without virtue and without principles?'
Indeed, people writing about Gandhi often appear to be making some such argument. They hint that the Indian political class, prior to his advent, was wholly lacking in Virtue, in Principles, in belief in Non-Violence, Hindu-Muslim Unity, Concern for the Poor etc, etc. Yet, even a cursory examination of the facts shows there is no truth whatsoever in this line of reasoning. I do not say Gandhi was a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants but that he was a Vamana to such Moral Titans as threatened the Olympus of British Imperium. Under his auspices, Indian Capitalism was derailed from the project of raising up the country in the manner that Japan had raised itself up, Indian Islam was derailed from the project of tackling the root causes of its economic and educational decline- Muhammad Ali Jinnah was campaigning for Waqf reform long before Timur Kuran pointed out how failure to reform Inheritance Law had enfeebled Muslim Commerce- the campaign by Indian lawyers to get peasants the protection of the law, as in Champaran, that too was derailed because Gandhi thought lawyers were scoundrels; the anti-caste movement, the Hindu-Muslim unity movement, the reform movement in the Princely States, you name it, every single progressive initiative predating Gandhi's return to India was derailed by his activities. 
Fair enough, if he had delivered 'Swaraj' (Independence) on the time-table that he promised. He didn't. Instead he frustrated and derailed even such very cautious reforms as would have proceeded had there never been so much as a single public-spirited Indian in the country.
Yet, despite all this happening very publicly, despite his closest adherents being acquainted with all the facts of the case, his 'charisma' rather waxed than waned and, in time, became the sole tangible asset on his, or indeed his Party's, balance-sheet. It was that charisma from which he drew the dividends which he frittered away on his crack-pot schemes. 
The alternative view- viz. that vested interests financed and promoted Gandhi- his charisma was a snake-oil they palmed off on the credulous public- collapses when we find that Industrialists like Jamnalal Bajaj gave up their Wealth and took up humble occupations in Gandhi's Ashram, not as matter of hypocrisy but from genuine conviction.
Does this mean that Gandhi possessed the personal magnetism of a Gurdieff  and should be classed simply as a charismatic cult leader? Some of his adherents, it can't be denied, were of such stuff as cultists are made- but many, nay most, weren't anything of the sort. They loved Gandhi, it is true, but all the evidence points to their love being returned- surely not a trait discoverable in a Narcissistic personality- and there are instances of Gandhi taking an interest in the ideas and aspirations of others even when they conflicted with his own long cherished beliefs. 

This positive aspect of Gandhism- more especially the mutual affection and camaraderie which permitted large sections of the Indian National Congress to develop an esprit de corps by the shared experience of penal servitude (an important factor in holding India together for 30 years after the departure of the British)- should, by itself, have been enough to yield some substantial benefit during the period of Gandhi's domination. Yet, the evidence is, it did no such thing. Egypt gains the semblance of Independence, India gains nothing. Ceylon gains universal suffrage with strong minority protection- India gains worse than nothing- a system of representation precisely calculated to envenom Community relations and to make things like dealing with the Bengal Famine an impossibility save by the intervention of the Viceroy.
It is an ungainsayable fact that had Gandhi never returned to India, every existing initiative would have had a happier expression and more harmonious outcome. Yet, it is remarkable that this fact can be acknowledged without impugning any aspect of Gandhi's charisma because no similar empirical evidence can be adduced to support the view that some corrupt dealing or sociopathic tendency lay behind it.
Thus, in seeking to get to the root of Gandhi's charisma, we find ourselves blocked and baffled at every turn. A functionalist explanation fails because Gandhism was dysfunctional. A conspiracy theory fails because the facts contradict it. A 'hamartia' or 'flawed Great Man' narrative fails because Gandhi wasn't a King, or the head of a Religious Sect, he never commanded unquestioning obedience, and so we are left  looking at something more imprecise, if not nebulous- not a 'Man of Destiny' but a 'Schelling focal point' or 'Obligatory Passage Point for Interessement' or some other such more or less fuzzy concept to which the notion of 'hamartia' is not applicable. Indeed, the danger of such an approach is to reduce Gandhi's characteristic confusion of mind, which he unfailingly brought to bear upon every issue, to something transmitted into him by abstract social forces- i.e. a Great Man narrative quickly turns into its opposite, Gandhi turns out not to be a Man at all but rather a blank sheet on which impersonal and abstract elementals inscribe their inscrutable agon.

In our own day, we are familiar with the figure of the celebrity singer, or actor or writer or what have you, gaining a sort of second life as the exponent of an esoteric doctrine or exotic cause whose broad appeal arises from the feeling shared by many ordinary people that the 'Knowledge Economy' which consigns them a lowly rank does not really know anything at all valuable; nor does the increasingly homogenized Political Class, notwithstanding skills finely honed by pollsters and focus groups, represent anything real except this Planetary Technology that reprocesses the tectonic convulsions of the subject's hidden depths into the meretricious and manufactured consent of a specious Citizenhood.
Some vast, inward and wholly submerged aspect of an otherwise atomized polity connects up with other beings across Time and Space in a manner which constitutes an occult and marvelous Continent governed not by the Statesman's Words but the Sorcerer's Wonders.
In Gandhi's case, where then should we begin to look for the secret of his appeal? 
Here, it is instructive to look again at the field where he first gained salience and celebrity- turn of the century South Africa.
During the long peace stretching from 1870 to 1914, two conflagrations stand out-  first, the Boer War, which fed anti-British sentiment, and then the Russo-Japanese War, where an Asiatic power, albeit one which had Westernized itself, defeated the most autocratic of European Empires. Both of these Wars, though small in comparison with the Universal Holocaust which was soon to follow, showed that European Imperialism was susceptible to challenge both from the military and the moral stand point and that such challenges could have a huge impact on Eupope's own internal constitution and elite politics. The abortive Russian Revolution of 1905, which owed more to Tolstoy than Marx, was a direct consequence of the defeat inflicted on the Tzar by the Japanese.
In Britain, initially 'Jingoistic' patriotism sparked by the Boer War had led to the election of a 'khaki' parliament- i.e. one dominated by gentleman who had served on the Front- but then a reaction set in and the subsequent election showed public opinion had swung the other way. In Literature, Swinburne, an ardent anti-Boer, was completely superseded, indeed made to look rather silly, as the relic of a bygone age, by anti-Imperialist writers like George Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton. Even Churchill, whose exploits in the Boer War had kick-started his political career, was now engrossed in the project of internal Reform- curbing the power of the Aristocracy, unshackling the Trade Unions, and introducing the sort of National Insurance Scheme that  previously had been considered, by people like Herbert Spencer, as the first step to a 'servile State'. In other words, Colonial Wars conducted in far off places, had, for the first time, become a driver for Socio-Political Change at the very heart of the great European Empires.
In this context, Gandhi, an Asiatic disciple of Tolstoy in post War South Africa, could easily become a focal point of an essentially International sort.
General Smuts, having been tipped the wink by General Kitchener that a political change in Britain was in the offing, though losing the War yet manages to win the Peace, not least by getting Public Opinion in England and America on his side by playing the 'Yellow Peril' card- i.e. by suggesting that Chinese or 'coolie' Asiatic immigrants posed a threat to the White Man's standard of living and 'Civilized' code of conduct- especially with regard to the treatment of women.
 Gandhi, like Smuts, a barrister who had given proof of courage and self-sacrifice on the field of battle, was a natural leader for Asiatic resistance to this cunning policy of the Boers. But the cards were stacked against him and the Chinese leader, Leung Quin. The political prize of permanent domination of South Africa was now linked to demonizing and crushing the spirit of the Asiatics. Thus, even if Gandhi had been an intelligent negotiator, he wouldn't have won any concession from Smuts for the entrepreneurial and professional class that he himself represented. However, whereas the Chinese, despite their valiant efforts, could be pitilessly deported just so Smuts could show the Mine Owners who had the upper hand, the same was not true of the Indian labouring class- because as subjects of the British King Emperor, Whitehall would have to intervene to evacuate and resettle them. Moreover, the Indian 'coolies' had been pushed too far. The poll tax had been set too high to allow them a margin for survival. They had nothing to lose by going on strike. The Mine owners could threaten to shoot them if they did not work but this was tantamount to the re-establishment of slavery, which the British Govt. could not countenance. Thus, if Smuts had not buckled, the British would have been obliged to evacuate the Indian labouring population and resettle them elsewhere in which case they would have been no worse off whereas the South African economy would have sustained irreparable damage. 
Only by remitting the poll tax could Smuts give the Indian workers an incentive to remain and go back to work. Gandhi, already a celebrity in India, for his decision to go to jail over this and related issues, had received strong political and financial support from India and since his methods had been impeccably 'moderate'- the 'Naram Dal' in Indian Politics could claim
1) that Gandhi's methods- not the desperate action of the labouring classes- had secured some huge victory in South Africa. 
2) Gandhi was a 'Moderate' of the stamp of Gokhale or the Servants of India- i.e. a highly educated and rational being whose patriotism arose from a pure ethical instinct which could have no truck with popular passions or suddenly take recourse to violence.
Acclaim accorded to Gandhi by the Indians- and his extraordinarily rapid ascent in Indian politics- had the effect of confirming his celebrity status as arising from some special gift in his field of specialization. However, this view was fundamentally mistaken. Just as an unknown, or not particularly talented, actor might suddenly gain prominence by taking a seemingly unsympathetic role disdained by others but which becomes a surprise hit; thus gaining a celebrity status, or cult following, which enables him to make a grab at Political or other such Power, so too in Indian politics, Gandhi attained an unsustainable 'super-star' status, eclipsing more able colleagues, precisely because his inexperience and confusion of mind led him to espouse contradictory and deeply flawed programs- like 'Khilafat' & 'Swaraj'- which were bound to end up more bitterly dividing those they hoped to unite.
Yet, since celebrity and salience might appear to be good things in themselves, it was possible to suggest that Gandhi had merely been a better surfer of evanescent waves of Popular Agitation which were foredoomed to collapse long before they hit the shore-line of established Power structures. This being the case, when the fated Tsunami finally arrived, might not Gandhi and his acolytes gain a brief glory riding that final all-annihilating big wave as it swept away the sky-scraping Babels of Cosmopolitan Civilization?

Indeed, is not the appeal of irrational strands in any contemporary counter-culture precisely that of, I will not say surviving a common doom, but gaining an exalted vantage point from which to view the awesome unfolding of that all-nihilating cataclysm?
Yet, a moment's consideration will show that there are two ways in which such a desire could be satisfied. One might take the path of terrorism- the hijacker in the cockpit crashing his plane into the sky-scraper- but, in this instance, there is the risk that death will not claim us at our moment of exaltation and we will live on in chains to bear witness to the folly of our actions. Alternatively, we might rigorously deny ourselves the previous option, though making every other sort of preparation, save that of inflicting actual harm, to the same end. However, since in both cases, the possibility exists that the underlying action is foolish merely; perhaps a more palatable course is to hedge our bets, to carry on as normal in all practical matters, but 'at night, to dream Moosbrugger'- i.e. to constrain impulses of this sort to the realm of fantasy. Yet, this too yields little satisfaction and so some sort of accommodation might be sought, in company with like-minded people, which, it is possible to believe, might actually yield some benefit to the common weal.

The question that must arise, in the context of conventional, Secular, Political Philosophy- or Social Choice theory- is whether fundamentally ontologically dysphoric preferences- in other words, situations where people feel, 'this is the wrong world- nothing in it can make me happy'- on an analogy with gender dysphoria- where a person feels trapped in a body of the wrong gender, no concession or compensation short of gender reassignment will do- pose a fundamental challenge to our views as to what is legitimate in Methodology and reasonable in World Views.
In the case of Iran- a country which we imagine to be obscurantist and patriarchal- it is a fact that the reality of gender dysphoria has been recognized and, in some respects, it appears they have been somewhat ahead of us, for a paradoxical reason- viz. our greater tolerance of homosexuality may have caused us to say 'you don't really need to take this step. The truth is you have been brain-washed by our homophobic culture. Don't go under the knife. The very thought makes me queasy.'
I don't personally have any knowledge of this issue- but I can see that the fact that some such possibility exists is enough to show I have no sure means of determining what Justice requires.
Similarly, with ontologically dysphoric views of a type with which I  feel no empathy, or which make me feel queasy, the temptation is for me to say- 'Oh, you people are just confused by all this brain-washing we are all constantly subjected to. There's some rational path of compromise such that you can stop feeling this way. So, just you stop listening to crack pots and dabbling in all this counter-culture nonsense.'
If there is any utility to the analogy I am proposing, then there is something I'm radically missing by yielding to the temptation of being an old fogey - viz. the necessity for the creation of some new way of being in Society which can tackle the root cause of the malaise.
Even if there is some obvious villain on whom to pin the blame, a deeper understanding is required. Indeed, in the case of a Movement or tendency linked to dysfunctional charisma or charisma yoked to a sociopathic end, it becomes urgent to tackle the underlying ontological dysphoria which the charismatic leader taps into to recruit his capacity for mischief.

Gandhi's charisma still exists as an unproblematic fact about the world. One can become captivated by him just by looking at his picture. This is scarcely a cause for concern. Yet, in recent years, there has been quite a revival and burgeoning of 'Gandhian' programs at least some of which appear to be a terrible waste of resources or a criminal enterprise in delay and obfuscation. This suggests to me that Gandhi's charisma is not of a simple sort- i.e. a token of the infinite love and understanding that exists as free floating energy- but that it has a specific relationship with a type of ontological dysphoria prevalent in a post fin de siecle, fin du mond, Edwardian era which bears some uncomfortable similarities to our own.
In particular, there is a sort of panic which arises from an increasing awareness of radical inter-dependence, the ceaselessly pragmatics of negotiation, repair and accommodation, contemplating which one feels a despair of the spirit. In earlier times, surely, people could believe that there was some way to insulate themselves, to insulate their own Society, from everything else such that Freedom had a horizon as the end of Work. There was always some expedient, some tangible quick-fix, just round the corner which would secure a steady state of diminishing effort and increasing returns and one reason to believe so was the notion that all things constitute sub-systems self-regulating in themselves. It is sufficient to secure our own independence from the complex web of things, by establishing an ideal order within our own sphere of sovereignty, for us to be forever after  buffered from everything else and though interaction and exchange would continue to occur this would happen on terms of trade increasingly favourable to ourselves, because Providence has arranged for an ideal hierarchy of systems and since our natural place stands at the top of that hierarchy, the mere effort to insulate ourselves within an ideal ordering, or praxeology,  would suffice for everything lower down the chain of Being to achieve the spontaneous equilibrium natural to it.
Thus, the power elite might say, 'Once we can agree on the ideal way to decide how to divide up the cake between ourselves, we need no longer bother about the Economy or National Security or the Environment- they are all self regulating. The important thing is to insulate our own debate about how to carve things up amongst ourselves from shocks arising from those hierarchically lower systems. To think we have a duty to repair or regulate lower systems is sheer lunacy. We can't be the nursemaids of Industry or the Environment or overly concern ourselves over Defence. That should be left to businessmen or farmers or the sturdy yeomanry, who, of course, left to themselves, are perfectly able to see off any threat.'
No matter which sub-system one looks at, the power-elite within it are going to have this temptation.
After India was properly annexed to the Crown, British administrators were pulled in two different directions- one, the need for more and more intervention to replace crashing systems or repair moral ecologies, the other the temptation to concentrate on receiving as much praise and commendation as possible by saying 'well, from time immemorial, the Indian village has been self-regulating. It is only our own misguided desire to help, or the malicious desire of the so-called 'Reformers' to meddle, which has caused the present problem. So long as we do nothing and concentrate on the really important question- viz. who gets which Gong and fat post-retirement sinecure- India will be fine.
Indian barristocrats too were pulled in opposite directions. They could either undertake stewardship of the arduous and Sisyphus like task of extending legal protection to ever poorer members of the productive classes- this is the only recipe for productivity growth and an escape from the threat of demographic collapse or moral anarchy-  or else they could renounce everything and compete with the British power elite for honors deriving from doing nothing but foster the myth of Indian 'organic' self-regulation which, provided the de trop British departed post haste, would somehow magically restore prosperity and communal harmony and ecological balance and so on.
The Janus face of Gandhian charisma-as-interessement, beaming with toothless benevolence, is the icon under which simultaneous pilgrimages in opposite directions continually embark with the certainty of re-encountering each other at journey's end.
No doubt, something similar could be said of every metaphorical description of a political program or interessement mechanism. The fact is, in the same way that the physical organism needs sleep, so too does the Spirit require some means of buffering itself from Life's web of radical inter-dependence and a respite to recruit itself through the contemplation of Platonic ideals.  No doubt a great mischief is worked when such Ideals supervene on pragmatics and needful decisions are put off. But, if we recognize that there may be types of ontological dysphoria which correspond to some way of being in the world not yet available or imperfectly recognized then even the foolishness of Philosophy, the grotesqueness of gesture politics, is found to have a necessary inertial property without which inter-dependence would have no temporality and Reason no sleep.