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Gandhian Law / Gandhi and Law:

His Ethos of Relating to Law Demonstrated in an Encounter with Legal Order

Alex Robb

November 13, 2010

University of Victoria

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“Only he who has mastered the art of obedience to law knows the art of disobedience to law”

Mohandas Gandhi, Young India, November 5, 1919 (CWMG 19: 80)1

This essay is guided by two purposes: first, to consider what is specifically Gandhian

about Gandhi’s approach to politics and law. Gandhi clearly presents a distinct practice, style and

theory of politics, but what makes it so? Within his many heterodox positions (on modernity,

civilization, religion, health, or work) and through the many unorthodox political practices of his

satyagraha campaigns (such as collective pledges and oaths, prayer vigils, fasting and self-

suffering, or nonviolent marches into violent retribution)2–are there consistencies and

continuities which form an at least marginally coherent political theory? And second, to ask how

law is to be understood in this distinctly Gandhian mode of politics. How do Gandhians relate

themselves to the law? In these different understandings and conceptions of law, what are the

similarities and resemblances that make for a common Gandhian approach to the law? The

research questions this essay seeks to address are: one, what is a specifically Gandhian

understanding of law and legal order; two, what is the relation of the Gandhian subject to the

laws? And, lastly, how do Gandhians comport themselves to law? To answer these questions, I

                                                                                                                         1 Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations of Gandhi in this essay are cited to Mohandas Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 98 vols. (New Delhi: Publications Division Government of India, 1999). Available at http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html 2 Satyagraha, the name that came to be attached to most of Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns, was a term conceived following a contest in Gandhi’s weekly newspaper in 1908, Indian Opinion, to give a Gujurati name to the form of active nonviolent political struggle that the South African Indian community was engaging in, in order to replace the label ‘passive resistance’ that was being applied to the movement’s tactics, and which Gandhi believed gave rise to confusion. The prize went to Maganlal Gandhi, Mohandas’ second cousin, and one of his “soul-mate” lifelong friends, who underwent a spiritual self-transformation alongside Mohandas Gandhi and played a significant role in Gandhi’s personal and political life. See Thomas Weber, "Gandhi Moves: Intentional Communities and Friendship," in Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality: Global Perspectives, ed. Debjani Ganguly and John Docker (New York: Routledge, 2007), 87-89; ———, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 69-83.) Maganlal Gandhi suggested ‘Sadagrah’ meaning “firmness in a good cause”, Mohandas Gandhi altered this to “Satyagraha” – “Truth (Satya) implies Love, and Firmness (Agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force... that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or Non-violence” (CWMG 34: 93). A hilarious biographical docudrama could be written spoofing Monty Python’s Life of Brian using the story of Maganlal Gandhi, the inventor of ‘Sadagrah’.

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will first unpack the terms of the questions and define what I mean by ‘Gandhian’ and by ‘law’,

and then offer an account of a Gandhian ‘encounter’ with the law where Gandhi himself, holding

firm to his own oaths and pledges in a manner that seeks to modify established norms of political

and legal behaviour, demonstrated this specifically Gandhian understanding of law and ethico-

political contestation. In so doing, Gandhi not only demonstrated the power of non-violently

resisting legal order through self-imposed duty, but he also demonstrated how these self-imposed

duties could be used for consolidating a political community and transforming the subjectivity of

the colonized.

The method I undertake to answer these questions is similar, in some ways, to the work

of Michel Foucault in the period of 1981-84.3 In the final years of his life, Foucault began a

programme of study that sought to investigate the question of the relations between the subject,

power, and truth from a different angle than his earlier foci on subjectivation through/by

disciplinary society and the production of the subject by specific power/knowledge discourses. In

The Hermeneutics of the Subject, he presented techniques of ‘care of the self’ practiced by

ancient Greek and Roman philosophers in order to modify their mode of being according to an

ethos. This foray into Greek and Roman philosophy and history—examining the works of Plato,

Seneca, Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, and many others—served to reverse the perspective of

his examination of the relations between the subject and power (without necessarily reversing his

stance on this relation) . His purpose was to “try to put the subject back into the historical

domain of practices and processes in which he has been constantly transformed”.4 In part one of

this paper, I aim to present an account of Gandhi’s Satyagraha in a similar manner, as a spiritual

                                                                                                                         3 See Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Lectures at the Collège De France 1981-1982 (New York: Picador, 2001); ———, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (New York: The New Press, 1997). 4 Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, 525.

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technique (or technology) of the self. 5 Techniques of the self suggest “How should one ‘govern

oneself’ by performing actions in which one is oneself the objective of those actions, the domain

in which they are brought to bear, the instrument they employ, and the subject that acts?”6 These

techniques of the self are engaged in by Satyagrahis in order to effect a self-transformation—

disrupting their subject-position within one system of power while re-affirming their place within

others—as they themselves struggle against prevailing modes of subjugation in their society. I

look to the practices that Gandhi engaged in to ethically position his self in relation to others, and

I examine the experimental and experiential epistemological method he recommended for

engaging with the law and with others. My intent in examining Gandhi’s mode of relating to the

law in this way is, like that of Foucault’s later work, to “take up the question of governmentality

from a different angle: the government of the self by oneself in its articulation with relations with

others” and to examine “the formation of the self through techniques of living, not of repression

through prohibition and law.”7

In taking up Gandhi’s ethics of relating to colonial legal order, my research may be

situated as part of an intellectual turn toward ethics that has begun both in and towards

postcolonial studies in the last decade. This ethical turn is evident in the work of postcolonial

                                                                                                                         5 Foucault uses techniques and technologies of the self synonymously to refer to practices of the self on the self in order to change itself. ‘Technologies of the self are defined as practices that “permit Individuals to effect by their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality” Michel Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," in The Essential Foucault, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (New York: The New Press, 1994), 146. And ‘techniques of the self’ as “the procedures, which no doubt exist in every civilization, suggested or prescribed to individuals in order to determine their identity, maintain it, transform it in terms of a certain number of ends, through relations of self-mastery and self-knowledge. See ———, "Subjectivity and Truth," in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1994), 87. 6 Ibid 7 Foucault, "Subjectivity and Truth," 87.

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scholars that study subaltern subject formation in the decolonizing world,8 and towards a

postcolonial aspiration for a de-imperialized legal and political theory by philosophers of the

political traditions in imperial centres.9 Rooted in the interpretive methods and postcolonial

intents of these works, I examine the ethical practices engaged in by Gandhi and his fellow

Satyagrahis that affirm a certain relation with law, and study how these practices engendered and

affirmed a particular mode of being, in order to promote a reverence for law and an ethos of

service, while (and through) directly challenging local laws and customs. I explore three

conceptions of ‘law’ in Gandhi’s thought and action: law as a pledge, oath or vow one makes to

oneself; law as ontological foundation of the universe; and law as locally established legal or

customary order. And I describe how these different conceptions of law are manifested in the

practices of his Satyagraha and non-co-operation campaigns.

In part two, I examine one of Gandhi’s ‘encounters with the law’ – his response to the

drafting of discriminatory proto-apartheid legislation in the governing institutions of colonial

South Africa– and I study the different ways he employed these concepts of law as a method of

both self and social transformation. In these nonviolent agonistic encounters with the law,

Gandhi used oaths, pledges, sacrifice and self-suffering, while gently accepting the consequences

of the laws and judicial systems that he was challenging, to transform relations of power and

subjectivity in himself and in the wider society. Gandhi pursued his own self-realization

                                                                                                                         8 David Scott, a major figure in this turn, has suggested that postcolonial thinkers study “ethical and political – as opposed to only cultural and epistemological (that is to say, rationality) – questions” and examine “what are the practices of self-formation in which the colonized/postcolonized subject is engaged.” See David Scott, Refashioning Futures (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 134, 206. Similarly Robert Nichols has described a shift occurring within postcolonial studies, away from the “problem-space” of questions of colonial identities, representations, or rationalities, and toward “issues of ethics, spirituality and disclosive transformation.” Robert Nichols, "Postcolonial Studies and the Discourse of Foucault," Foucault Studies 9, no. 1 (2010): 144. 9 See for example, James Tully, Strange Multiplicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); ———, Public Philosophy in a New Key, 2 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 2008); Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton, and Will Sanders, eds., Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2000); Duncan Ivison, Postcolonial Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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(moksha) through contributing to the public good as a spiritual exercise of holding onto and

nonviolently promoting one’s truth in a manner that directly challenges local dogmas and

customs that are perceived to be unjust, untruthful, or otherwise harmful. Using vows and

pledges Gandhi and his satyagrahis constituted alternative relations of power and freedom, and

so brought into existence an alternative politics of concerted, but independent, commitments to a

certain mode of being. It is by holding firm to one set of rules (derived from a reflective and

principled understanding of one’s self, and how to care for one’s self and one’s relation with

others), and in direct contravention to another set of rules (prescribed by custom, power, or

jurisprudence) that Gandhians act contrary to the rules of the law while in accordance with the

spirit of law.

For Gandhi, law can be understood as either an instrument of individual self-government

through which one may attain spiritual growth, or, law or custom may be understood as the

object of civic political activism, engaged with in order to protect one’s rights or to serve society

by altering or removing unjust laws and customary practices. Law, understood as both personal

and local rules of conduct, can act as an expression of freedom—as part of a freely-chosen

ethos,10 or as a constraint to freedom—as subjection to an external power. Because Gandhians, in

their search for truth, actively pursue these conflicts of laws and duties, their ethos of relating

with law is agonistic (but with sincere respect for the principle of law). And because Gandhians

accept the consequences of these conflicts of duty with gentleness, compassion, and self-

suffering, their relationship to law is nonviolent (but courageous in unbending will). Through this                                                                                                                          10 I refer to ethos as an ethical orientation or a set of characteristics that is reflected in deliberate choices and developed into a habit of mind, See Aristotle, On Rhethoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 125. Foucault describes ethos as “a way of being in the world and of behaviour... a mode of being for the subject, along with a certain way of acting, a way visible to others... For the Greeks, this was the concrete form of freedom; this was the way they problematized their freedom.” Michel Foucault, "The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom," in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1994), 287.

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agonistic, nonviolent relationship between the self and local laws and customs, Gandhi

elaborated and enacted in practice a way of understanding law that has the potential for radically

transforming both the self and the society, simultaneously working toward both individual self-

mastery and political self-rule. As I will explain in the next section, the idea of law is central to

Gandhi’s Satyagraha and his understanding of self-realization.

Part One: Gandhian Ethos and Gandhian Law

Before moving to the central focus of the essay—that of a Gandhian understanding of law

and how to relate to law—I will begin by describing what I mean by Gandhian in the first place.

Gandhi wrote that there could be no such thing as “Gandhism.” He says: “Gandhism is a

meaningless word for me. An ‘ism’ follows the propounder of a system. I am not one, hence I

cannot be the cause of any ism” (CWMG 91: 132). Nevertheless, I think it is possible to find

within Gandhi’s writings and actions some continuities that allow us to name a Gandhian ‘ism’

that is not a system, but a rather unsystematic and contingent ethos, a situated way of living in

the world. To understand what is Gandhian about Gandhi’s approach to politics, religion, and

social questions, one must look to the way he lived his life rather than his statements on

philosophy, religion, or specific social or political programs. Gandhi claimed that, though he

made no “hobgoblin of consistency,”11 nonetheless, all of his political, religious and social ideas

were “different branches of the same tree” (CWMG 54: 68), founded on a commitment to Truth,

and ahimsa (nonviolence and loving-kindness) as the highest and surest way to truth. As I will

                                                                                                                         11 “I make no hobgoblin of consistency. If I am true to myself from moment to moment, I do not mind all the inconsistencies that may be flung in my face” (CWMG 65:308). The turn of phrase comes from a saying of Emerson’s that Gandhi learned as a student: “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” (CWMG 73: 409)

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elaborate below, within the Gandhian ethos there are certain emphases and practices that form a

core of Gandhian thought and action.

There is good reason to believe that Gandhi, although he might have objected to my use

of the term “Gandhian” as a focus on his personal ethos, would not object to this consideration of

his ethos as he might to a system or philosophy of Gandhism. He wrote, “I never claimed to have

originated any philosophy. Nor am I endeavouring to do so... Without any elaborate scheme I

have simply tried in my own way to apply the eternal Principles of truth and non-violence to our

daily life and problems” (CWMG 68: 259-260; emphasis added). It is precisely his ethos, rather

than any specific ideas or programs that Gandhi was asking us to examine when he replied to a

request for a message to the world with the oblique phrase: “My life is my message” (CWMG 96:

342, 418). Understanding Satyagraha as an ethos also helps us understand the confusion Gandhi

expressed to Joan Bondurant when, in 1947, he responded to her explanation of her academic

analysis of Satyagraha by objecting: “but Satyagraha is not a subject for research—you must

experience it, use it, live by it.”12 Although these practices are described or alluded to in much of

his writings, they cannot be called a philosophy exactly, rather, they encompass a form of

spirituality, a mode of transforming oneself to attain a higher truth, a truth unattainable to the

subject in their prior mode of being.

The distinction that Foucault draws between spirituality and philosophy may be helpful to

understand what I mean here. Foucault defines philosophy as “the form of thought that asks what

is it that enables a subject to have access to the truth and which attempts to determine the

conditions and limits of the subject’s access to the truth”, and he defines spirituality as “the

                                                                                                                         12 Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, Revised ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 146. Emphasis in original.

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search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary

transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth.”13 Thus, while the object of

philosophy is access to knowledge or truth outside of the subject, the object of spirituality is the

subject itself, and transforming the subject in order to experience an otherwise inaccessible truth.

The spiritual practices that the subject must engage in, in order to modify their being to have

access to another form of truth, involves “a progressive transformation of the self by the self for

which one takes responsibility in a long labour of ascesis.”14 This involves tending to the self

and working on the self through spiritual exercises in order to attain a different subjectivity. To

highlight these techniques of self-fashioning, Foucault examined the spiritual and ascetic

practices of antiquity that were used to care for one’s self in a certain way, in order to live

beautifully, courageously, or without attachment to worldly desires, and so to care for oneself in

order to truly ‘know oneself,’ as a subject that is in reflective engagement with oneself.

The techniques of altering one’s mode of being in order to gain access to different truths

are called “spiritual exercises” by Pierre Hadot, a philosopher and historian at the College du

France who had a profound effect on Foucault’s philosophy in the later period of his life. Hadot

argued that many of the incoherencies and inconsistencies in ancient philosophy identified by

modern scholars could be explained by understanding their philosophy as part of a practice of

spirituality, that is, as involving spiritual practices undertaken in order to alter or affirm their

mode of being in the world.15 Hadot’s understanding of ancient philosophy as primarily spiritual,

“rather than aiming at the acquisition of a purely abstract knowledge, these exercises aimed at                                                                                                                          13 Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, 15. 14 Ibid., 15-16. Ascesis is here taken, not as a specific practice of Christian renunciation or mortification, but in a very general sense, “as an exercise of the self on the self by which one attempts to develop and transform oneself, and to attain a certain mode of being.” See ———, "The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom," 282. 15 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); ———, What Is Ancient Philosophy? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

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realizing a transformation of one’s vision of the world and a metamorphisis of one’s

personality.” These spiritual exercises are exercises because they were “practical, required effort

and training, and were lived; they are spiritual because they involved the entire spirit, one’s

whole way of being. The art of living demanded by philosophy was a lived exercise exhibited in

every aspect of one’s existence.”16 They could involve physical activity, (as in dietary regimes or

athletic training), they could be discursive (as in purpose-driven dialogue or writing), or they

could be mental, (as in intuition, contemplation, or meditation); regardless of their exact nature,

what they share is that they are all intended “to effect a modification and transformation in the

subject who practiced them”.17

Aldous Huxley can further assist our understanding of this idea of spirituality as self-

modification of one’s way of being in order to attain a higher knowledge. In his survey of

mystical and ascetic traditions of East and West in the Perennial Philosophy, Huxley writes:

“Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a

corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing.” To illustrate this point, Huxley

uses the analogy of a scientist, who changes their being by use of instruments to attain

knowledge that would be impossible for the un-equipped, un-modified human being.18

This is the manner in which I wish to present ‘Gandhism’, as an ethos that enables us to

make ourselves other than what we are—but what we aspire to be—through spiritual exercises

and practices of the self. These Gandhian practices include: a) disciplining oneself as a ‘votary of

                                                                                                                         16 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 21. 17 ———, What Is Ancient Philosophy? , 6. 18“Equipped with a spectroscope and sixty inch reflector an astronomer becomes, so far as eyesight is concerned, a superhuman creature; and as we should naturally expect, the knowledge possessed by this superhuman creature is very different in both quantity and quality, from that which can be acquired by a star-gazer with unmodified, merely human eyes... Knowledge we could never attain, remaining what we are, may be attainable in consequence of higher powers and a higher life, which we may morally achieve. Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), vii.

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truth’; b) ahimsa (nonviolence and loving-kindness) in all one’s relations; and c) service to

others as a vocation and a means to self-realization.19 I will now turn to Gandhi’s concepts of law

as a way to elaborate each of these elements of a Gandhian mode of being.

Two Concepts of Law in the Idea of a ‘Votary of Truth’

The term “votary of truth” is employed frequently by Gandhi to describe his religion and

ethics, and packed within this term are the first two concepts of law I want to present in Gandhi’s

thought. First, “votary” implies the action of vowing, pledging oneself, or swearing oaths. This is

the first concept of law; the law we enact through these commitments to our self. “Truth” in the

context of the phrase ‘votary of truth’, implies the second conception of law I want to present.

This is law as an expression of ontological truth, as the very nature of being, life and the

universe. This is the concept of law Gandhi refers to when he speaks of the ‘law of life’ or the

‘law of truth.’ Before discussing the Gandhian ethos as a ‘votary of truth’ and introducing the

relation of this ethos to his third conception of law, that of legal or customary order, I will first

describe these two conceptions of law in slightly more detail.

Vows and pledges are of the utmost importance for Gandhi.20 They are the primary

means of self-transformation and the major way we shape and structure our own lives. As

Gandhi tells us in his autobiography, it was by maintaining the first vows that he ever made (to

his mother, not to touch liquor, women or meat during his stay in London) that Gandhi first

                                                                                                                         19 There is some similarity between this simplified formulation and the first and second-level norms in Arne Naess’ more diligent “Systemization D”, an ethic that begins with “Seek complete self-realization” and moves through the essential oneness of all life to a derivable norm, (“Act in group struggle and act, moreover, in a way conducive to long-term universal reduction of violence”), and onto a rather detailed ethics of nonviolent dispute resolution. Arne Naess, "A Systematization of Gandhian Ethics of Conflict Resolution," Journal of Conflict Resolution 2, no. 2 (1958): 142. and ———, Gandhi and Group Conflict: An Exploration of Satyagraha Theoretical Background (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1974). 20 For a more detailed presentation of the importance of vows for Gandhi, and the all the vows that he took over the course of his own life, see Mohandas Gandhi, Vows and Observances, ed. John Stohrmeier (Berkeley: Berkeley Hills Books, 1999).

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experimented with self-discipline and self-fashioning as an integral element of the spiritual life.21

As Gandhi’s great-daughter and postcolonial studies professor Leela Gandhi describes, this first

vow he took had a profound influence on the direction his life took, not just through practices of

restraint, but by giving him cause to take up vegetarianism with his whole spirit, and so find an

avenue for meeting radicals of the fin de siècle animal welfare and anti-imperial movement in

late nineteenth century London.22 As Gandhi’s stay in England continued, “[t]he importance of

vows grew upon me more clearly than ever before. I realized that a vow, far from closing the

door to real freedom, opened it [...] in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation.”23

Vows and pledges are the instruments through which one structures the conditions of their own

existence. In taking and holding a vow subjects realize firmness in their relationship to

themselves, from which they may exercise a greater influence on their own subjectivity.

Gandhi’s second concept of law is ontological in nature; this is law as the way of the

universe, the nature of being, or the ground of our being. This is the law of dharma. It is supreme

truth, or God, that rules the universe, even if we cannot decipher these universal laws. As Gandhi

writes in “On God,”

There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything, I feel it though I do not see it. It is this unseen power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses[...] Even in ordinary affairs, we know that people do not know who rules or why and how He rules and yet they know that there is a power that certainly rules. [...] That law then which governs all life is God. Law and the law-giver are one. I may not deny the law or the law-giver because I know so little about it or Him. Just as my denial or ignorance of the existence of an earthly power will avail me nothing even so my denial of God and his Law will not liberate me from its operation, whereas humble and mute acceptance of

                                                                                                                         21 ———, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 57. 22 See Leela Gandhi, "Ahimsa and Other Animals: A Geneology of an Immature Politics," in Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality: Global Perspectives, ed. Debjani Ganguly and John Docker (New York: Routledge, 2007). 23 Gandhi, An Autobiography, 207.

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divine authority makes life’s journey easier even as the acceptance of earthly rule makes life under it easier. I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates. (CWMG 43: 95)24

For Gandhi, the purpose of life is to bring this first conception of law as close as possible

to this second conception of law, and so to purify ourselves by bringing our own being in-line

with this higher being, and coming to ‘know God’. Gandhi followed this aim through constantly

experimenting with different truths, and using vows to hold himself firm to the truths he

discovered through these experiments.

Self-Fashioning as a ‘Votary of Truth’: An Experimental and Experiential Epistemology

The first and most fundamental practice of a Gandhian ethos is the constant self-

fashioning and re-fashioning of the subject as a “votary of truth,” that is, one who is bound by

vow and duty to act truthfully in every thought, word and deed. To be a votary of truth is to be a

Satyagrahi, to actively seek out truth, and to act with resolution with others to non-violently

attain it.

Although Gandhi believed in an absolute Truth (which he understood as God), the ethics

of searching for truth is cast as a practice of sceptical experimentation and validation. Although

he is certain of the existence of absolute truth, there is no certain way to know truth absolutely.

Gandhi writes that “[a] votary of truth is often obliged to grope in the dark” (CWMG 44: 351).

Gandhi’s search for truth involved a constant struggle against the dogmatisms of his own

conditioning and those of his local contexts. Devotion to truth in Gandhi’s sense is not so simple

as a faith in a holy book, prophet, or ethical code. Gandhi’s truth had to be experienced in every

moment “as it appears to us”; thus, truth must appear differently to some than to others, and for

                                                                                                                         24 This message “On God” is also the only audio recording that exists of Gandhi’s. See http://www.youtube.com/user/mkgandhiserve

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this reason, conflicts between truths are inevitable and even desirable. In each of us following

our own truth, according to our own lights, and with each gently correcting one another where

they find others untruthful, we all undertake a “selfless search for Truth”. This would be

Gandhi’s ideal world where “nobody can lose his bearings for long. Directly he takes to the

wrong path he stumbles, and is thus redirected to the right path. Therefore the pursuit of Truth is

true bhakti, devotion [...] It is the path that leads to God (CWMG 49: 384). Truth is available to

all, but each from different perspectives; as a result, we must in the final analysis measure our

thoughts, words and deeds against our own truths and challenge others where their truths conflict

with ours. Responding to a letter from born-again Christians in the USA asking if Gandhi

accepted Jesus’ truth that he was the son of God and asking Gandhi to accept Jesus Christ as the

Saviour of the World, Gandhi responded:

Truth is not so simple as it appears to you. You know the story of the elephant and the seven blind men who actually touched him. They all touched him at different parts. Their descriptions differed from one another. They were all true from their own points of view and yet each appeared to be untrue from the position of the rest. We are all, you will perhaps agree, in the position of these seven sincere observers. And we are blind as they are blind. We must therefore be content with believing the truth as it appears to us. The authenticity and the interpretation of the Biblical record is a thing you will not want me to discuss. (CWMG 36: 3-4)

Although it seems paradoxical to explain Gandhi’s concept of truth, and his constant

search for Truth in terms of post-modern or post-structuralist offerings regarding the

contextuality, contingency, and refutability of all truth, actually, as Lloyd and Susanne Randolph

argue, “Gandhi anticipates much post-modern thinking by taking the view that, at best, humans

can know partial and contingent truths.”25 For Gandhi, only limited truth can be known, and it

can only really be known experientially. Before launching any campaign, he made sure to

                                                                                                                         25 Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays: Gandhi in the World and at Home (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 5.

15    

thoroughly familiarize himself with its particular context. In a process akin to the discovery

phase of a legal proceeding, he carefully investigated all the circumstances surrounding the

conflict, including the attitudes and motives of the contending parties. The goals of each of his

campaigns were formulated with reference to the situation’s unique problem. As a Satyagrahi he

practiced firmness in the pursuit of contextual or situational truth. And, as an adherent of the Jain

doctrine of anekanatavada, he viewed truth as many-sided and its understanding by the human

mind as ‘fleeting and fragmentary’.26 Gandhi writes that,

Finite human beings shall never know in its fullness Truth and Love which is in itself infinite. But we do know enough for our guidance. We shall err, and sometimes grievously, in our application. But man is a self-governing being, and self-government necessarily includes the power as much to commit errors as to set them right as often as they are made. [...] After all each one must be a law unto himself, the invariable condition being that he must then walk in the fear of God and therefore continually keep on purifying his heart. (CWMG 38: 297)

Truth, therefore, is the paramount principle. Devotion to truth is the sole justification for

our existence. All our activities should be centered on truth, but we must accept that all we may

achieve as fallible humans is a relative and contingent truth, yet Gandhi insists we must strive for

it nonetheless. For Gandhi, the purpose of the practice of searching for truth is improved by

vows, and making and keeping vows will eventually lead to making more vows, as the subject

changes his mode of being and realizes other truths to bind herself to with vows. As more truths

are realized by this form of self-disciplined living, Gandhi says that right conduct will arise

spontaneously from us, and more truths will appear to us. “Truth should be the very breath of our

life. When once this stage in the pilgrim’s progress is reached, all other rules of correct living

will come without effort and obedience to them will be instinctive.” (CWMG 49: 383)

                                                                                                                         26 Ibid.

16    

Truth in action must be pursued and discovered in relation with others, and in engaging in

these pursuits, one is bound to make mistakes. So “above all, a votary of truth must exercise the

greatest caution”, and act non-violently in all their experiments.27 To stifle untruths in order to

prevent them from growing or refracting throughout society requires acting nonviolently in one’s

searching for truth. The pursuit of truth must be engaged in as a spiritual exercise, undertaken

with the strength of one’s whole spirit, with the intent on transforming one’s mode of being. If

we perform practices of searching for truth and pledging ourselves to it, the effects on our being,

Gandhi says, will inevitably lead us toward peace and nonviolence in all our relations.

Ahimsa (Nonviolence and Loving-Kindness) in All One’s Relations

Ahimsa means nonviolence or loving-kindness. It involves not just the prohibition from

killing or harming others, but the active promotion of harmlessness in all our actions. In always

striving for this harmlessness toward others, the end that is achieved is invariably a peaceful one,

even if not the one we originally intended. Nonviolence means that where conflicts between

truths engender violence, this should be accepted with patience, gentleness and self-suffering by

the seeker. For Gandhi, an ethos of nonviolent relations is a necessary offshoot of the self-

fashioning work of a votary of truth. As he elaborates:

I realized that what I was doing were experiments in truth. In doing so I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors. Life has thus become for me a series of experiments in truth. In my pursuit of truth I came across the method of non-violence. By instinct I have been a votary of truth, but not non-violent. As the Muni Jinavijayaji once rightly observed, I was all for truth and was capable of sacrificing non-violence for the sake of truth. I confessed to him that it was true. For me “there was no dharma higher than truth” and “no dharma higher than the supreme duty of non-violence.” The word dharma in my opinion has different connotations as used in the two statements. In other words it means that there cannot be an ideal higher then truth and there cannot be any duty higher than non-violence. A man can pursue truth only by constantly adhering to this duty. There is no other means for the pursuit of truth. (CWMG 68: 260)

                                                                                                                         27 Gandhi, An Autobiography, 298.

17    

It is through the practice of nonviolence and love in all our relations that we are able to

discover truths unavailable to us in other, more violent, modes of being. Ahimsa in all one’s

relations should be seen as a practice of the self on the self, realized through one’s relationship

with all others. Nonviolence is the essential technique in the more fundamental purpose of

searching for truth. Jyotirmaya Sharma shares this interpretation of ahimsa as the means toward

self-realization through an ethical relation with others. He writes: “[Ahimsa] has always been

mistakenly seen as a vehicle for lokasangraha (the preservation of society), but Gandhi intended

ahimsa to be the trigger for atmasangraha (self-possession).”28 As well as having metaphysical

purpose, Richard Gregg, in his book the Power of Nonviolence, elaborates on both the moral and

strategic necessity of love in struggles that aim for truth: “Love for an opponent makes possible a

sympathetic appreciation of the real meaning of his apparent needs, contentions, positions, and

desires, and implies a willingness to approach them open-mindedly, [...] Love also induces a

frame of mind in the opponent to lead him to understand your needs, contentions, etc.”29 This

idea of love and nonviolence as the essential guide to truth is similarly expressed by the Sufi

poet, Jalal-uddin Rumi: “The astrolabe of the mysteries of God is Love.”30 The practice of

nonviolence in all relations is linked to a third practice of the Gandhian ethos, that of selfless

service to others.

Service to Others as the Way of Self-Realization

Gandhi writes in his autobiography:

What I want to achieve –what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years—is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha (literally, freedom from birth and death. The nearest English equivalent is salvation.) I live and move and

                                                                                                                         28 Jyotirmaya Sharma, "Emancipation without Utopias," India Seminar, http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/601/601_jyotirmaya_sharma.htm. 29 Richard Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence, 2nd ed. (Nyack, N.Y.: Fellowship Publications, 1959), 59. 30 Quoted in Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, viii.

18    

have my being in pursuit of this goal. All that I do by way of speaking and writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are directed toward this same end.31 As elaborated above, the purpose of the Gandhian ethos is to perform a uniting of the law

of the self with the law of the universe. One does this by renouncing the fruits of action,

“reducing oneself to nothing”, and acting with humility and nonviolence in active service to

others. In constantly serving others we attempt to forget, extinguish, reduce to nothing our

‘selves’, becoming a ‘cipher’ through which the law of the universe can be expressed.

God demands nothing less than complete self-surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having. And when a man thus loses himself, he immediately finds himself in the service of all that lives. It becomes his delight and his recreation. He is a new man never weary of spending himself in the service of God’s creation. (CWMG 43: 417)

This means, almost paradoxically, that taking care of oneself means finding oneself in others and

working tirelessly for them. One of Gandhi’s favourite Sanskrit maxims was “the society

comprises us all. It does not make us. We make it– as the atom so the universe”. Thus, if we

make ourselves nonviolent and truth-seeking, and we take care of ourselves in this way, by

serving others, our society and our universe will fall in line with this self-fashioning without our

active work or desire for it. Connecting this maxim to another “as with the individual so with the

world”, if we work on ourselves, we are bound to influence others, and “if each one of us was to

take care of one’s self, nobody would need to worry about the others.” (CWMG 46: 396). Gandhi

understood his agonistic nonviolent search for truth as a practice for himself, as a service

rendered to the whole world, including the opponent that he was in struggle against, and any

other spectators or participants that his actions may touch. As Gandhi writes: “The aim of man in

his life is self-realization. The one and the only means of attaining this is to spend one’s life in

                                                                                                                         31 Gandhi, An Autobiography, xii.

19    

serving humanity in a true altruistic spirit and lose oneself in this and realize the oneness of life.”

(CWMG, 46: 396).

Engaging in these three practices together—searching for truth, acting with nonviolence,

and serving others—is the way to self-realization in the Gandhian ethos. Gandhi’s agonistic

nonviolence is not primarily a manner of pursuing one’s interest, seeking justice, or demanding

recognition (although it may serve to act as all of these things); rather, nonviolent agonism for

Gandhians should primarily be understood as part of a programme of care for the self, to realize

one’s “higher self”, attain moksha, and achieve self-rule and inner freedom. This is the idea that

Gandhi finds as the essential teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, that social work and action for the

public good can be undertaken in an ascetic mode if we undertake work for the public as end in

itself. Social work and civic action are understood as spiritual exercises where aspirants renounce

egotism and fashion one’s being in work for the good of others, without attachment to personal

reward. 32 This is how Gandhi interpreted Indian and Christian religion in a manner that directed

it toward civic action, without making politics. Gandhi’s focus on socially-engaged spiritual-

seeking distinguishes it from the traditional renunciation of action of sadhus, ascetics, or those

living a monastic life, and instead emphasizes the renunciation of the fruits of action. This

renunciation of action’s reward is an essential part of nonviolence, it is a manner of acting for

good without incurring the karmic repercussions of action itself. As Gandhi instructed his

Satyagrahi volunteers in the opening days of the Salt March:

When a man gives up his arrogance and becomes humble like dust, only then is the power of non-violence awakened in him and the divine strength becomes his. Hence we should all become fully devoted to our duties. We should pray to God that He alone do everything. In this manner, if the eighty persons who have set out become like ciphers, our task will certainly be accomplished. (CWMG 48: 451)

                                                                                                                         32 See Mohandas Gandhi, The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2009).

20    

This righteous, truthful conduct is achieved by bringing Gandhi’s first concept of law (the

rules of our personal conduct) in line with his second concept of law (as the way of the universe)

in order to reshape his own subjectivity. The self-modification enacted by committing oneself to

truth and nonviolence in all relations and to service for others, invariably leads the Gandhian to

directly encountering the third kind of law I want to examine—law as the customary and legal

ordering of society.

A Third Concept of Law in Gandhian Practice

The final concept of law for Gandhi that I would like to discuss is a conception of law

that we are more familiar with. This is law as legal or customary order. Gandhi’s revolutionary

move is to place his first two conceptions of law in an agonistic relationship with his third

conception of law, that of established legal or cultural order. Gandhi, trained as a barrister in the

Inner Temple in London, had a great respect for legal order, and maintained this respect even

after he came to reject the legitimacy and justice of the British imperial order and British law

after 1919. Hinting toward this eventual rejection, Gandhi wrote in Hind Swaraj in 1909: “As

long as the superstition that people should obey unjust laws exists, so long will slavery exist.”

(CWMG 10: 294) Although Gandhi came to see established law and custom as the primary

legitimation of injustice in the world, he also saw it as an essential element in striving toward

truth and freedom.

Gandhi takes legal order very seriously because it is through these established practices

of jurisprudence that men are formed, and by engaging with jurisprudence that men may reform

themselves and their societies. Law in this conception is held up by society as a truth, a mode of

conducting oneself and one’s relation with society that is claimed to be correct, and so laws

supply Gandhians with a most appropriate subject for experimentation with agonistic

21    

nonviolence. In developing this agonistic nonviolent approach to seeking truth through

contesting law, Gandhi develops a form of personal jurisprudence, a practical wisdom of using

vows and pledges in order to place oneself in a certain relation with the law. Gandhi outlines his

theory of personal jurisprudence in his Autobiography:

Before one can be fit for the practice of civil disobedience one must have rendered a willing and respectful obedience to the state laws. For the most part we obey such laws out of fear of the penalty for their breach, and this holds good particularly in respect to such laws as do not involve a moral principle. For instance, an honest respectable man will not suddenly take to stealing whether there is a law against stealing or not, but this very man will not feel any remorse for failure to observe the rule about carrying headlights on his bike after dark… but he would observe any obligatory rule of this kind, if only to escape the inconvenience of facing a prosecution for breach of the rule. Such compliance is not, however, the willing and spontaneous obedience that is required of a Satyagrahi. A Satyagrahi obeys the laws of society intelligently and of his own free will, because he considers it to be his sacred duty to do so. It is only when a person has thus obeyed the laws scrupulously that he is in a position to judge as to which particular laws are good and just and which unjust and iniquitous.33

The best expression of this personal jurisprudence can be seen in Gandhi’s own criminal

trial in 1922, when he was arrested and tried for promoting disaffection to the government. Here

he placed submission to a just law on a equivalent moral level as non-cooperation with an unjust

law, and so demanded that his judge examine his own conscience regarding the justice of the law

he was administering and cease cooperation with it himself. Gandhi explains his reasoning as

follows:

Nonviolence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The only course open to you, the judge, is either to resign your post and thus dissociate yourself from evil, if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good

                                                                                                                         33 Gandhi, An Autobiography, 470.

22    

for the people of this community and that my activity is, therefore, injurious to the public weal.34

By wisely and consciously obeying some just laws, while purposefully disobeying other

ones, the votary of truth aims not merely to follow their own law, but to practice a personal

jurisprudence of seeking to directly and publicly defy, challenge and face the consequences of

unjust laws. The Satyagrahi openly demands that society either repeal the law or re-affirm it by

imposing on him the highest penalty afforded by the law. Should this occur, the Satyagrahi will

not waver, but will continue to defy the law and humbly face the consequences until either the

law is changed or the Satyagrahi perceives himself to be mistaken.

Gandhian Ethico-Politics

Returning to the contention that began this paper, Gandhi’s ethics of relating to the law

has much in common with the connection between ethics and politics that Foucault described in

his later work. Foucault writes: “in the type of analysis I have been trying to advance for some

time you can see that power relations, governmentality, the government of the self and of others,

and the relationship of self to self, constitute a chain, a thread, and I think it is round these

notions that we should be able to connect together the question of politics and the question of

ethics.”35 Gandhi’s purpose is the same as this, to bring the field of ethics to bear into the field of

politics and so constitute a form of ethico-politics where care of the self as a practice of freedom

is expressed through service and care for others, engaging in work for the public good toward the

end of the transformation of the self, and non-violently challenging perceived untruths in oneself

and in society. For Gandhi, ethics and politics are inseparable, but this cannot be a move that

gives way to evangelizing, for in that would be seed of violence. Ethico-politics is not the

                                                                                                                         34 A.G. Noorani, Indian Political Trials, 1775-1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 235. 35 Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, 252. Emphasis in original.

23    

politics that derives from promoting one’s ethics or moral values in the public realm, rather it is

the politics that is borne from living an ethical life, with an understanding that the way we live

our life necessarily seeps over into all relations of power and knowledge. As Gandhi told an

English audience in 1931:

Although to all appearances my mission is political, I would ask you to accept my assurance that its roots are spiritual. It is commonly known though perhaps not believed, that I claim that at least my politics are not divorced from morality, from spirituality, from religion. I have claimed [...] that a man who is trying to discover and follow the will of God cannot possibly leave a single field untouched [...] And I found, through bitter experience that, if I wanted to do social service, I could not possibly leave politics alone” (CWMG 53: 396)

Gandhi’s personal jurisprudence is, first and foremost, an extension of his spirituality.

Local laws are critical to Gandhi’s method of nonviolent conduct because they form the context

in which one may begin searching for truth. But it is not simply case that Gandhi understands the

most important law to be the principles that arise out of one’s own conscientious action and vows

and pledges. Locally established laws are a crucial means through which citizens live in

organized harmonious relations. They are the duties and expectations society claims upon its

citizens, and they are one proclaimed truth against which one may non-violently test other truths.

To act in a Gandhian way, then, is to act in a manner that is truthful in every thought,

word and action, is duty-bound to always seek truth in oneself and in others, serving others by

non-violently and gently investigating and experimenting with perceived truths, and engaging in

all these actions as ends in themselves, renouncing any hoped-for fruit of service. To engage in

these practices is to conflate ethics and politics into one unified field. For Gandhi, living this

ethos of selfless service to others is the means, and expression of, realizing in the world, one’s

essential unity with all that is.

24    

Part Two – A Gandhian Encounter with the Law

I will now take up one story of how Gandhi engaged with a colonial governing system to

depict how he went about developing his own practical wisdom about personal obedience and

disobedience to local laws and customs. The story I present is of the collective pledge of

resistance made by the Indian community as they began the very first satyagraha campaign

against the laws of the proto-apartheid government in the Transvaal in 1906. I intend to show

how the practicalities of this particular encounter with the law are cast in the spiritual exercises

of civic service described above. I will highlight how Gandhi pursued his own self-

transformation in his work to restructure colonial relations by directly disobeying or actively

resisting the law while engendering new ‘rules’ for ordering society through vows and

submitting himself to the consequences of both.

My method in taking up this local encounter is to centre the narrative on the instance of

the practices of this agonistic nonviolent relation to the law, rather than the political processes

that preceded or resulted from the mobilization itself. In isolating this encounter with the law, I

hope to draw out the significance of Gandhi’s personal jurisprudence and spirituality as well as

the significance of the law that Gandhi was contesting in shaping his efforts toward self-

realization.

The Advent of Satyagraha from a Pledge of Resistance:

The Empire Theatre, Transvaal, South Africa on September 11th, 1906

The first encounter with the law I want to discuss is poignantly described by Gandhi in

Satyagraha in South Africa as the advent of the satyagraha movement in South Africa.36 1906

                                                                                                                         36 See volume 34 of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Available at http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL034.PDF

25    

was a year of consolidation for Gandhi when his life took firm root in an ethos of service and

spirituality, marking the completion of a personal transformation from an careerist Vaishya caste

member, aspiring to the prestige and respect of a barrister in the British Empire, to a true ‘public

servant’ primarily concerned with spiritual matters, manifested through ascetic self-discipline

and social service to his countrymen. It was in this year that, following his work in raising and

commanding an ambulance corps during the so-called ‘Zulu Rebellion,’ Gandhi began to form a

clearer picture of the violence and injustice of the British Empire. It was also in this year that

Gandhi formally took a vow of brahmacharya – complete body purity expressed, among other

ways, through a vow of celibacy. But, undoubtedly, the most profound transformation of

Gandhi’s life would come later in the year, in the conception of a new form of political struggle,

Satyagraha.

On August 22, 1906, the government of Transvaal published in the Government Gazette a

piece of draft legislation—“the Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance”—which provided for the

totalitarian regulation of the Indian community. The legislation was intended to clampdown on a

supposed influx of Indians into the territory that local whites found to be threatening to their

cultural and economic dominance in the region. In Gandhi’s punctilious summary of the

legislation:

Every Indian, man, woman or child of eight years or upwards, entitled to reside in the Transvaal, must register his or her name with the Registrar of Asiatics and take out a certificate of registration. The applicants for registration must surrender their old permits to the Registrar and state in their applications their name, residence, caste, age, etc. The Registrar was to note down important marks of identification upon the applicant’s person, and take his finger and thumb impressions. Every Indian who failed thus to apply for registration before a certain date was to forfeit his right of residence in the Transvaal. Failure to apply would be held to be an offence in law for which the defaulter could be fined, sent to prison or even deported within the discretion of the court [...] The certificate of registration issued to an applicant must be produced before any police officer whenever and wherever he might be required to do so. Failure thus to produce the certificate would be held to be an offence for which the defaulter could be fined or sent to

26    

prison. Even a person walking on public thoroughfares could be required to produce his certificate. Police officers could enter private houses in order to inspect certificates. (CWMG 34: 84-85)

Gandhi’s view of the legislation, coming not long after his return from his time serving with the

British army in the field, was one of disgust and gross apprehension. He described the Asiatic

Draft Ordinance as an “abomination” and a “crime against humanity” (CWMG 5: 324). In

considering this ordinance Gandhi described the situation as one of life or death and posed the

question that would eventually give birth to his technique of Satyagraha.

I shuddered as I read the sections of the Ordinance one after another. I saw nothing in it except hatred of Indians. It seemed to me that if the Ordinance was passed and the Indians meekly accepted it, that would spell absolute ruin for the Indians in South Africa. I clearly saw that this was a question of life and death for them. I further saw that even in the case of memorials and representations proving fruitless, the community must not sit with folded hands. Better die than submit to such a law. But how were we to die? What should we dare and do so that there would be nothing before us except a choice of victory or death? (CWMG 34: 84, emphasis added)

On September 11, 1906, Gandhi and other leading Indians held a mass public meeting at

a Jewish-owned theatre in Transvaal named “The Empire” attended by nearly 3000 members of

the Indian community. At the meeting Gandhi gave an accounting of the draft ordinance and

presented several resolutions for the Indian community. The most important of these, Resolution

IV, declared that “every Indian present at this meeting solemnly and sincerely resolves that,

rather than submit to this tyrannical law and abide by its un-British provisions, he will prefer to

go to gaol and will continue to do so until it pleases His Majesty the King-Emperor to grant

relief” (CWMG 5: 341). Sheth Haji Habib, an older merchant, highly respected within the

community, originally from Porbandar and living for many years in Pretoria, after hearing the

lawyer-Gandhi’s explanation of the implications of the draft ordinance, supported the resolution

by “solemnly declaring in the name of God that he would never submit to the law, and advised

all present to do likewise” (CWMG 34: 87). Gandhi was disturbed and put on his guard by this

27    

spontaneous pledge to God and, upon hearing Haji Habib’s declaration he immediately rose to

impress upon the Indian community the gravity of Haji Habib’s pledge. Gandhi said:

To pledge ourselves or to take an oath in the name of that God or with Him as witness is not something to be trifled with. If having taken such an oath we violate our pledge we are guilty before God and man [...] But if I can imagine a crisis in the history of the Indian community of South Africa when it would be in the fitness of things to take pledges, that crisis is surely now [...] There is no doubt, therefore, that the present is a proper occasion for taking pledges. But every one of us must think out for himself if he has the will and the ability to pledge himself. Resolutions of this nature cannot be passed by a majority vote. Only those who take a pledge can be bound by it [...] Everyone must only search his own heart, and if the inner voice assures him that he has the requisite strength to carry him through, then only should he pledge himself and then only will his pledge bear fruit.

A few words now as to the consequences. Hoping for the best, we may say that if a majority of the Indians pledge themselves to resistance and if all who take the pledge prove true to themselves, the Ordinance may not be passed and, if passed, may be soon repealed. It may be that we may not be called upon to suffer at all. But if on the one hand a man who takes a pledge must be a robust optimist, on the other hand he must be prepared for the worst.

We may be deported. Suffering from starvation and similar hardships in jail, some of us may fall ill and even die. In short, therefore, it is not at all impossible that we may have to endure every hardship that we can imagine, and wisdom lies in pledging ourselves on the understanding that we shall have to suffer all that and worse. If someone asks me when and how the struggle may end, I may say that if the entire community manfully stands the test, the end will be near. If many of us fall back under storm and stress, the struggle will be prolonged. But I can boldly declare, and with certainty, that so long as there is even a handful of men true to their pledge, there can only be one end to the struggle, and that is victory. (CWMG 4: 334)

In this episode Gandhi frames the work of the Indian mass meeting within the context of

his self-understanding as a servant of the will of the community. For Gandhi, the community

created by the vow to God brings into a being an intersubjective unity that became constitutive of

his being, as much as the individual pledge taken by each member of ‘the Indian community’

served to re-constitute themselves as an active subject acting ethically within the context of the

British colonial regime in South Africa. Gandhi declares at another point that he had no doubt

28    

that he will follow through on his pledge to the death. He has, at this point, so united his being

with that of the community that he can only understand himself as surviving along with it.

A word about my personal responsibility. If I am warning you of the risks attendant upon the pledge, I am at the same time inviting you to pledge yourselves, and I am fully conscious of my responsibility in the matter. It is possible that a majority of those present here may take the pledge in a fit of enthusiasm or indignation but may weaken under the ordeal, and only a handful may be left to face the final test. Even then there is only one course open to someone like me, to die but not to submit to the law [...] Although we are going to take the pledge in a body, no one should imagine that default on the part of one or many can absolve the rest from their obligation. Everyone should fully realize his responsibility, then only pledge himself independently of others and understand that he himself must be true to his pledge even unto death, no matter what others do. (CWMG 5: 335)

The collective pledge brought the Indian community together in way that a resolution or a

boisterous political meeting could not, but Gandhi reminds all present that the pledge they are

making, though they need each other for it, must be a pledge to themselves. It is only by working

on and through themselves that they can enact the disciplined self-transformation necessary to

combat the much stronger and more violent Tranvaal government and white community with a

nonviolent commitment to truth that the Indians seek to bring into being. In making this pledge

an individual practice of the self and a collective pact of allegiance and mutual reassurance and

protection, Gandhi aims for everyone present to attain greater mastery over themselves and so

greater mastery over their destiny as a community. By engaging in these practices of self-

transformation and collective pledging and oath taking, Gandhi is not only promoting re-

subjectivation by the subject through his own example, he is also creating and promoting the

conditions for society to move in the same direction. Gandhi is working simultaneously on the

particular level of buttressing the convictions of the community in themselves, and on the

archetype-level, by seeking to strengthen the prestige of oaths and pledges in general and prepare

the way for others’ practice of personal jurisprudence and engagement in ethico-politics.

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Conclusion

In this essay I have sought to present a distinctly Gandhian approach to a personal and

civic relation with the law that frames his understanding of the law as part of an ethos of selfless

action searching for truth. My aim has been to draw out the ethical, spiritual and political nature

of Gandhi’s conception of law by providing a description of how each of his understandings of

law interact with one another to give form to his ideal of an ethical life. Gandhi’s relationship

with the law is part of a spiritual exercise of searching for truth. It is through this spirituality, in

the sense of Hadot and Foucault’s interpretation of the philosophy of antiquity, that Gandhi

partook in an ascetic, socially engaged, ethico-political way of life, following the way of action

and service, in the sense espoused by Bhagavad Gita. In the second section of the paper, an

account of one of Gandhi’s encounters with the law demonstrates how developing the spiritual

practice of taking oaths and pledges into a spiritual act transforms not just ourselves, but the

society we are acting within. By engaging in these practices of self-transformation and collective

pledging and oath taking, Gandhi is not only promoting re-subjectivation by the subject through

his own example, he is also creating the conditions of society to move in the same direction by

highlighting injustice, and converting opponents to the justice of his cause through self-suffering.

It is through these ethical practices that Gandhi says we attain true swaraj and it is through this

conflation of ethics with spirituality, and spirituality with politics and jurisprudence, that one

tests their understanding of the self against ruling games of truth about the self. Conceived this

way, individual acts of resistance, and broader programmes of service to others, are acts that one

engages in for oneself, as a way of working on oneself, and so the resister, social worker, or

Satyagrahi carries on in their practices as spiritual exercises, not with a mind to a future reward

or a preconceived outcome, but as reasons in themselves.

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