The review is here [Guardian]. I have read Gandhi's My Experiments with Truth twice so far: once in school and then again while doing my undergraduation. It had a great influence on me during my younger years and I still owe much to the book for showing what passion and commitment to one's belief means. The second reading was at a time when I was very impressionable which naturally led me into the moral servitude of abstinence from meat. I served time for 6 years and casually broke the abstinence during a fine dinner in a Namakkal hotel with spicy chicken. The reason: I had realized my abstinence was a sorry attempt at reaching moral highground based on a thorough misconception of my place in the world. My parents have since been in a state of eternal bewilderment. While I respect Gandhi for his fierce and unrelenting passion, his religiosity and his morality informed by scientific ignorance is not something I hold in high esteem (you see, Darwin's Origins book was out in the wild by then and was causing all sorts of commotion in England. Mohandas Karamchand was around studying Law and taking dance classes. Not to be disrecpectful to memories and such, but I believe there was a distinct possibility that if Gandhi had read Darwin then the idea of Evolution would've dealt the necessary blow to dislodge his religious dogma. I trust the fact that he had the determination to let go of anything for Truth. Nothing is closer to truth than science.)
That brings us (well, sort of) to what I really wanted to say. I was surprised to see Pankaj Mishra agree with Gandhi: Mishra vents his frustration at how secular thoughts have misled the world.
A politics driven by the cold rationality of individual self-interest and collective security led inevitably to violent conflict. It is why Gandhi wished to reintroduce religion into politics. This may sound perverse to those secular fundamentalists who blame religion for all violence in the world today, stigmatising its political potential by pointing to the fanaticisms of Osama bin Laden and George W Bush rather than to the achievements of Gandhi or Martin Luther King. But then, far from being blind faith or rigid dogma, religion for Gandhi meant the everyday practice of altruism, compassion, austerity and perpetual self-examination. It was a form of ethical and spiritual life still open to individuals as the relentlessly secular political and economic systems of the modern world institutionalised the immemorial human forces of greed and violence.
Mishra is correct. He sounds perverse. There is no fundamentalism in secular thoughts informed by science. Waving the 'political potential' wand is rather condescending to the billions, especially those in India, who could, and would if given a choice, use science and secularism than the rotten religions they've got now. I am even more surprised to see Mr Mishra assert that political and economic systems have institutionalized greed and violence while he redeems religion of misdeeds.
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It's also entirely incorrect to think that all secularists are driven solely by "cold rationality". There's an entire field of secular ethics out there, you know...
I prefer my rationality warm. Steamed is nice.
I think that Gandhi, or anyone who thinks that we need to inject religion into politics, wants a short cut to getting people to behave. I reject this because like all religion it is an appeal to authority. Not even Gandhi should be able to hide and not answer questions.
OTOH, I see exactly where this comes from. People are unruly and ignorant, and having them behave is important. But we do something awful if we fall into the trap of expediency.
Incidentally, despite proscriptions against greed and violence in religion, they don't have much of a practical track record in dealing with them, so I'm not sure what Mishra was going on about. Humans are greedy and violent, as well as altruistic and caring, depending on culture and context. An ethics built on understanding of what humans really are seems to me more likely to modulate the good and bad in people than a bald appeal to authority.