Theories and practices of nonviolence have been employed against a wide range of oppressive political ideas and actors for thousands of years, at least since 1300 b.c.e. when Hebrew midwives hid slave babies from the murderous decree of the pharaoh. It is, however, difficult to introduce the topic of nonviolence in an era that is increasingly marked by ever ingenious ways to commit murder and mayhem. Consequently, it is refreshing to read Confluence of Thought and The Gandhian Moment for their rich interpretations of two important twentieth-century scholar-activists of nonviolent resistance.
Confluence of Thought is a thoroughly researched account of the similarities and differences between Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi and King were special because they were able to tap into aspects of their cultures and traditions in ways that transformed the traditional understanding of power as violence into coherent ideologies of resistance that avoided violent means. The author’s contribution to the vast literature on nonviolence, Gandhi, and King is thus to contextualize both men and to show their specific evolution of nonviolence into a powerful ideology that inspires people to fight against injustice (and to do this in a relatively short book). For Bidyut Chakrabarty, the “confluence” stems from the different intellectual and material origins but eventual “identical” conclusions that Gandhi and King arrive at in a variety of realms, including the power of love, redemptive or transformative suffering, faith in liberal solutions, and social justice: “While Gandhi drew on India’s eclectic religious beliefs in support of his argument, King justified his inclination toward nonviolence by referring to the long-standing nonviolent traditions in Christianity” (p. 107). The author explores the topic from a historical political theory approach using an extensive combination of archival and secondary sources.
Gandhi and King lived in similarly racist regimes that contradictorily claimed liberalism as foundational legitimating discourses. Although their intellectual foundations differed, their experiences with liberal universalism in theory and practice helped to form five surprisingly similar theoretical and practical responses: 1) Both agreed on the transformative power of truth and nonviolence; 2) both were driven by the desire to promote social justice in their different sociopolitical and economic contexts; 3) both insisted that love and truth were central to nonviolence; 4) both held that means and ends must cohere; and 5) both were peace educators and activists. The intellectual history of both men is similar insofar as they were steeped in racist environments in South Africa, India, and the American South. Both men were liberals, though they each offered unique interpretations of liberalism that criticized the particular and essentialized practical applications of liberal ideology in their respective contexts. As Chakrabarty observes, “the so-called universal of liberalism as a model of human deliberation was just cosmetic in nature. … According to [Gandhi and King], the design of governance that defended segregation was contrary to the basic tenets of liberalism, which informed the prevalent political authority in India and the United States, respectively” (p. 117). Nonviolence became a practical means of revealing the truth about British and American racism as it contradicted the tenets of liberalism enshrined in the works of J. S. Mill, British liberalism, the American Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. The conclusion for Chakrabarty is that both men provide organic, context-driven critiques and interpretations of liberalism: “[W]hat made the contribution of Gandhi and King significant was their ability to comprehend liberalism in its nuanced form and also their capacity to sway the disenfranchised and underprivileged in favor of opinions challenging the prevalent power-relationship which was, so far, considered ‘appropriate’ and also ‘just’” (p. 121).
The book is organized into four primary chapters that can be read separately without too much confusion. Chapter 1 offers an excellent review of Gandhi’s and King’s intellectual roots and places them in the context of contemporary critics like B. R. Ambedkar and Malcolm X. The second chapter focuses on their agonistic but productive relationship with liberalism. The third chapter focuses on Gandhi’s most prominent nonviolent campaigns and shows how his theory and practice of nonviolence became a new ideology of human equality that infused new life into an otherwise moribund Indian nationalism. The fourth chapter focuses on King’s prominent campaigns, which ultimately helped produce his unique challenge to racism. Written in a concise fashion, Confluence of Thought succeeds in providing a surprisingly thorough review of Gandhi’s and King’s historical and intellectual contexts while arguing that their “the moral politics” “represents an appealing vision for the present century” (p. 189).
More overtly focused on the contemporary political relevance of Gandhi and nonviolence, The Gandhian Moment is both an intellectual history and a call to action. The author describes what he calls “the Gandhian moment” as “the transformative power of nonviolent resistance in the hearts and minds of all those struggling for the opening of a democratic political space” (p. 3). The author is quick to point out that he is not focused on nonviolent protest movements “but on the process of the mental and spiritual struggle that changes individuals within and helps create conditions in which the meaning of political action be transformed” (p. 4). In an era when the clash-of-civilization thesis still carries weight, it is refreshing to read an analysis that reveals that “nonviolence is premised on the existence of a universal ethical imperative that transcends religious and cultural particularities and is channeled through local, grassroots movements” (p. 9). Ramin Jahanbegloo explores the Gandhi themed topic of the individual as the true subject of the political, and not the state.
The Gandhian Moment begins with a discussion of Gandhi’s political project of bringing the ethical and the political into dialogue, and ultimately sees politics as a search for the ethical. Gandhi thought that humans were governed by “self-restraint and self-suffering” rather than by their passions (p. 18). The author juxtaposes the liberal discourse of civilization with Gandhi’s view that civilization “implies there is a higher mode of conduct that guides towards moral duty” (p. 19). Part of this moral duty was to resist tyranny wherever it was found. Gandhi believed that when an actor uses violence, especially killing, he assumes absolute knowledge. This, however, is not possible since only God possesses absolute knowledge, or Truth. Thus, nonviolence becomes a moral safety mechanism that allows someone to struggle against tyranny and injustice while simultaneously allowing for the possibility that one is wrong. Gandhi’s conception of nonviolence included a heavy emphasis upon protecting the individual by way of creating radical democracy. Thus, “Gandhi considered nonviolent civil disobedience as a full exercise of citizenship” (p. 25). Whereas liberal individualism focuses on careful protection of rights, to Gandhi individual transformation would go hand in hand with social transformation (p. 33).
By bringing the political and the ethical into dialogue, Gandhi encourages what Jahanbegloo refers to as “dialogical empathy,” which is the opposite of demonizing one’s enemy. The goal of eliminating one’s enemy, or the evil doer, is thus transformed through empathy into a project of eliminating evil (pp. 82–85). Gandhi sought to eliminate evil by “globalizing the forces of soul, truth, and love” (p. 129). The techniques of nonviolent civil resistance, combined with dialogical empathy, allowed him to unite both Indian elites and the majority peasant society of India under a single nationalist banner. Further, he was able to bring significant Muslim leaders into productive dialogue, a fact that could provide a lesson for contemporary students of conflict studies.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of The Gandhian Moment comes when the author discusses the relationship between Gandhi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, referred to by some as the Frontier Gandhi. Ghaffar Khan lived in Peshawar near what is now the Afghanistan border with Pakistan. After the Afghan king abdicated in 1928 and was replaced by a British puppet named Habibullah, Khan organized 50,000 men and women into a group called “Khudai Khidmatgars,” or “the servants of God.” The most distinguishing feature of this group was their “discipline and adherence to nonviolence,” and according to Jahanbegloo, “the British used to say, ‘a nonviolent Pathan is more dangerous than a violent Pathan’” (p. 120). Like Gandhi, Khan became an active member of the Indian nationalist movement, and like Gandhi, he opposed racism and all forms of bigotry. Given the prominent role played by a Muslim theorist and practitioner of nonviolence, it is surprising that more scholars have not discussed Khan. As the author insists, “reading Gandhi as a problematizer of violence and modernity in Muslim countries today is to help promote nonviolence in these countries. … [T]he making of a new Muslim Gandhi in the twenty-first century remains an important challenge” (p. 127).
Whereas Confluence of Thought demonstrates the universalism of nonviolent theory and practice by way of a discussion of Gandhi’s and King’s unique interpretations of liberal theory, The Gandhian Moment addresses contemporary critiques of Islam that pit it against Christianity and the West. Both books retain a strong normative focus while clearly interpreting nonviolence, Gandhi, and King in light of contemporary issues. Confluence of Though is more scholarly insofar as it employs significantly more sources and seeks to situate King and Gandhi both historically and intellectually. The Gandhian Moment is shorter and is more narrowly focused—and clearly intended as a call to nonviolent political action. Overall, both books contribute significantly to the extensive literature on nonviolence, Gandhi, and King. Taken as a whole, the former book is a wonderful secondary source, though it could easily be broken down into individual chapters to be assigned in courses on civil rights, political conflict, or nonviolence. The latter book could easily be assigned in its entirety.
