Gandhi and Islam: A New Dialogue?

A Review Essay Ramin Jahanbegloo, The Gandhian Moment, with a Foreword by the Dalai Lama, Harvard: UP, 2013. 196 Pages.

If you dissect my heart, you will find that the prayer and spiritual striving for the attainment of Hindu-Muslim unity goes on there unceasingly all the twenty-four hours without even a moments interruption whether I am awake or asleepThe dream has filled my being since the earliest childhood. Gandhi, (1929) while visiting Abdul Gaffer Khan (quoted in Jahanbegloo, 2013: 104).

The life and work of Mahatma Gandhi is so iconic, and so centrally located at the Gordian knot of modernity, that there are many points of access. In part because of this, critical biographies and new interpretations continue to emerge outside India well into the twenty first century.1 Gandhithe creator of non-violent political resistance, the activist spiritual teacher, the ethical political leader, the embodiment of simple living, the founder of communities of service, the defender of the least and the last in society-continues to be a crucial dialogue partner for us as we navigate the choppy waters of political, ethical, communal and spiritual life in the modern/post-modern world. Ramin Jahanbegloo, the Iranian-Canadian political theorist, has provided an original reinterpretation of his thought in The Gandhian Moment precisely by focusing on one of the key elements in Gandhis work, namely his life-long dialogue with Islam and Muslims. Jahanbegloo is not simply revisiting the old ground of partition and the failed political dialogue with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, rather he is asking a profoundly new question about the possibility of nonviolence in the Islamic public sphere (xii). This question is illuminated by (and illuminates) his reading of Gandhi on the role and potential of religious traditions. It also helps him identify Gandhis own creative articulation of ahimsa/satyagraha as the underlying truth of all religious traditions. Through all of this, Jahanbegloo is ultimately raising the hope of a new point of dialogue between Islam (as a religious tradition and a complex culture in its transition through the Arab spring) on the one hand, and, on the other, Gandhi as a radical political theorist, a champion of the idea of shared sovereignty (xii). Indeed for contemporary Islam, as he argues, it is precisely Gandhi who becomes an inevitable point of reference because he puts an end to [the] false choice between fundamentalism or secularism (132). This new point of dialogue with Islam is well worth examining and appreciating in part because the ongoing encounter between Islam and modernity is raising afresh the issues (political, ethical, spiritual) which remain still tragically unresolved in the globaleconomic synthesis of the modern west and which now again, from that point, dangerously confront the world as a whole. The resources hidden in the religious traditions (despite all their distortions) were, as Gandhi believed, essential to addressing 1

these issues. In his own life and work he elaborated a way to leverage those resources out of their traditional forms and give them a new ethical-political edge. That ethic of nonviolence (as the catalyst for radical social change), Jahanbegloo suggests, is precisely what might emerge and be revitalized in the inner dialogue of modern Islam. This, we might hope, would be a profound and important development for all of us. _____________________________

Before turning to examine the possibilities raised in The Gandhian Moment, it is worthwhile making some distinctions about interpretation and Gandhian interpretation in particular. These will help to clarify the issues raised by Jahanbegloos study. A first distinction concerns the use and misuse of Gandhi to address contemporary issues. On the one hand, Gandhi the icon has often fallen prey to what he himself feared namely, Gandhianism. From this follow a series of domesticating and one-sided interpretations of his thought to provide an ideological support for all manner of positions.2 What these interpretations have in common is a purposeful blindness to dialogue and to a transformative encounter with what is still original in Gandhi, for example, his principled non-violence adopted as a path of life, or his uncompromising clinging to the claim of truth-in-dialogue with any and all others, or finally, his deep commitment to self-sacrifice as the basis of an ethical life. As an experiment with truth, Gandhis work, in its integrity with his life, is simply not amenable to this kind of impersonal, ideological interpretation. On the other hand, then, because Gandhi must be taken as an inevitable point of reference for many of our ongoing questions, the interpretation of Gandhi will necessarily become dialogic and involve a kind of merging of horizons (Gadamer,1960). That is to say, it will involve a questioning that works both ways and does not simply look at the past as history to be resourced for contemporary needs. The past rather will question the present and may impinge on it as the historical moment of choice. 3 The importance of this first distinction will become clearer below when we examine how elements of a religious tradition may become alive again in the present in creative new ways. In any case, interpretation as dialogue means being open to hear the questions that Gandhi raises stilland, for the modern post-colonial west, this will mean questioning our own assumptions, as Ashis Nandy has documented in great detail in his classic study, The Intimate Enemy. Jahanbegloo illustrates in detail in his final chapter (135-156), that it was Martin Luther King who truly interpreted Gandhis vision through just such a dialogue in which Gandhis praxis (self-reflective action) of ahimsa became the key to reinvent the Christian ethic of love as an instrument for social and collective transformation (135-16) in the praxis of King and his compatriots. Jahanbegloo identifies this kind of interpretation as being effective through what he calls the Gandhian moment of individual reinvention (156). This puts the weight on interpretation through practice in a way which is very important for those who wish to claim some continuity with the practice of Gandhi. We will see below that this notion of individual reinvention or praxis is the key to his own interpretation of the Gandhian moment. 2

A second distinction follows from this and concerns the problem of insiders and outsiders in the act of interpreting a tradition. It has just been argued that a distanced, objective stance is not adequate to interpret Gandhi, but it is equally true that a stance which is only based on self-involvement in a particular tradition is not therefore privileged to interpret it. We are all both inside and outside in a pluralistic world and though our location in particular culture is real and significant, it is not being inside or outside alone that gives one a privileged understanding of a culture or religious tradition. Martin Luther King was very much an outsider to Gandhis Indian and Hindu religious traditions and yet he saw to the core of his teaching on ahimsa and truth more clearly than many who were native to them. He was able to do this because of what Gandhi himself called the spiritual experiences that are shared by us whether we wish it or not (Jahanbegloo, 131). Such experiences, like his own encounter with the inner voice of truth, are embodied by our lives not by our speech which is a most imperfect vehicle of expression. Spiritual experiences are deeper even than thought. (Jahanbegloo, 131) They were also rooted more deeply than culture in our common humanity, although cultures always embody and transmit those experiences through individuals through their particular languages and forms. Thus, a respect for cultural integrity and difference did not, for Gandhi, negate the recognition of shared values and, in the deepest sense, of a creative synthesis which could reach across cultures.4 These deeper spiritual experiences in each culture were open in principle to all human beings as suchthey did not belong to the particular culture or its guardians nor did the interpretation and meaning of them, so Gandhi asserted. Just as King interpreted Gandhi from the depths of his Christian tradition, so Gandhi (drawing on the resources of Hinduism and the Gita) felt privilegedas an insightful outsiderto use his own spiritual experience to interpret the messages of Jesus and of Mohammed, the holy prophet of Islam. This act, of course, put him at odds with the claims of theocracy and fundamentalism; and therefore, like Tolstoys interpretation of the radical teaching of Jesus, it came to be viewed as a truly political act, a radical dissent.5 There is a great irony to this, for the truth that rings out like a clarion in Gandhis interpretation is based on both critical distance from the tradition and a deep faith in its spiritual core. This position of the outsider was chosen by Gandhi very intentionally, as Jaminbegloo notes: The key to Gandhis anti-modern modernism is that he sought to blend modern thought and Indian traditions. In doing so he remained an outsider both to India and to modernity (61). We will examine this claim to interpret religious traditionas a critical outsider (rather than through a fundamentalism) further below, not only with regard to Islam but with regard to religious/spiritual traditions in general. This leads finally to a third distinction between respect for the integrity of cultures (in their differences) and the inescapable need for dialogue in a pluralistic world. It is well known that Gandhi, from the time of Hind Swaraj until the end of his life, made a sharp distinction between the traditional civilization of India and the modern civilization of England and the West. His resistance to colonialism was based not just on asserting the irreducible difference between these two civilizations but on repudiating 3

the claim that one was better, more modern or more civilized and should therefore, rule and absorb the other (as the colonial and later development and globalization models all maintain). Gandhi did indeed hold up traditional Indian culture as a better alternative for Indians to the modernity of the English. His disagreement with Dr. Ambedkar illustrates this, but it also illustrates that he was by no means thereby holding up a version of the Hindu nationalism advocated by Savarkar or others of his ilk. That is because his understanding of traditional civilization was critical 6just as was his understanding of the modern civilization of the west whose claims he was repudiating . It was this critical stancebased ultimately on the inner voice or the acid test of reason--which allowed Gandhi to enter into a true nonviolent--dialogue with the other, to acknowledge the virtues of the west as well as its evils.7 That dialogue across and through the real differences (which was truly another form of the ahimsa he espoused in political life) becomes the basis for Gandhis ultimate vision of the peaceful but creative polity between cultures and nations. We may only note that it is based on a deep resistance to envy/hatred of the other and sees the other ultimately as an essential partner. Here too, we may find that the pluralism which recognizes true differences between cultures and accepts them as valuable may be more able to engage in dialogue and avoid the inevitable violence of othering.8

At the outset then, we may recognize that the Gandhian approach is a complex one: it draws together realms that are most often isolated and insulated from each other (spiritual, ethical, political, social and personal). Moreover, in doing so, it consistently relocates the centre and the periphery in a way which transforms established hierarchies of values (elevating the last and the least, the fulfillment of service/self-sacrifice and the ethical sovereignty of the individual).9 It is just this complex weaving together of radical realignments in view and value which Ramin Jahanbegloo insightfully calls the Gandhian moment and takes as the touchstone for his interpretation of Gandhi (xi). As a political theorist and Iranian in exile, Jahanbegloo identifies two factors in the two decade-long interest leading him toward Gandhi: the first was the rise of nonviolent dissent around the world and the second was the ongoing western debate about political sovereignty and the role of the modern state (xi) While Gandhis idea of shared sovereignty appeared as a genuine alternative to the tradition of Hobbes, it was the extended interpretation of this idea in the life work of the Indian Muslims Khan Abdul Gaffer Kahn and Maulana Azad (as well as the Christian, Martin Luther King) which drew Jahanbegloo toward exploring the viability of such an approach to shared powerand to its real possibility within the Islamic public sphere (xii). As he recognizes at the outset, nonviolence is the key to thisGandhian moment of politics and precisely in the sense of the transformative power of nonviolent resistance in the hearts and minds of those struggling for the opening of democratic political space (3). Jahanbegloos study of Gandhi is divided into four parts: 1) an introduction entitled Gandhis Inversion of Modern Political Perception, 2) a chapter entitled Principles of Gandhian Politics and 3) an outline of Gandhis Critique of Modern Civilization and finally, 4) a chapter on Gandhis political philosophy subtitled Linking the Moral with the Political. This is a very rich and detailed analysis which should be 4

read carefully in its own right, I only want to point to certain strands in its direction of interpretation here. A first step is to locate Gandhis approach to politics in relation to western traditions of political philosophy. Jaminbegloo does this very artfully and insightfully, for though Gandhis well-known spiritual-ethical politics is often alluded to it is rarely understand. The real issue behind this, for Gandhi, Jahanbegloo notes, is not who rules but the whole structure of sovereign rule (6). Secularization in the west had meant a transfer of formerly religious obedience to the sovereign ruler and later, nation state; this obedience to the state was then regarded as politically essential to avoid the anarchy of self-interested individuals (the war of all against all)or so Hobbes argued.10 In whatever ways this pact between individual and state is later modified (e.g. as a Rouseauian social contract or as a humane realm of human rights), the elements remain essentially unchanged: the state is justified and politics conceived on the basis of an (internal/external) security paradigm and the individual cedes their proper moral and ethical authority to the state for the sake of self-preservation and later, well-being, wealth, or rights (18-19). As Gandhi learned through his struggles in South African, however, this secularized politics sets up a series of imbalances which can never be corrected on their own terms. On the one hand, the individual can never regain its proper moral/ethic agency and is reduced to the compromising choice between security/comfort and a very limited range of dissenting non-conformity. On the other hand, the State naturally usurps more and more decision-making authority and engages in increased surveillance for the sake of a security which can never really be achieved. In the end, the modern state comes to embody a very theocratic form with unquestioned paternalistic authority and is an institution enmeshed in violence (21).11 The insight arising out of Gandhis own work and his contact with the groundbreaking insights of Tolstoy (in The Kingdom of God is Within You) was that by ceding their ethical power to the state, individuals were in fact legitimizing its power and subsequent violence. Legitimacypolitical powerwas ultimately derived [from this consent and thus] from the sphere of the ethical. Yet withdrawing consent from the state would have to mean assuming ethical sovereignty again and becoming a political subject who embraces moral duty (5). Such a political subject was thereby entering in to a constant process of self-realization, self-reflection and self-reform as an individual (22). This is the meaning of the famed Gandhian ideal of self-rule or swaraj--and satyagraha as the process that leads to it--where the political and the ethical reunite in practice. But as Jahanbegloo notes, this means a fundamental relocation of democracy as such: For Gandhi, democratic action finds its base not at the level of the state, but at the societal/communal level as it is intertwined with the individual (48). Having identified this radically unique Gandhian starting-point in relation to the western political tradition, Jahahbegloo alludes to the two crucial, and primarily religious, elements which Gandhi developed as principles of the self-realized political individual. The first is the acceptance of sufferingas the truly human response to violence and the necessary counterpart to reason (18-19) and the second is its counterbalance with the 5

principle of service to others. Together they create a political-ethical duty which lays the foundation of a state of sarvodaya or the well-being of all (19-20). This mining of these traditional religious forms of self-suffering and service (seva) to deepen his ethical understanding of autonomy is a key to the Gandhian synthesis or Gandhian moment. We will return them in a moment. At this point, it is worthwhile to summarize what has been drawn together in the ethical-political synthesis sketched by Jahanbegloo and to highlight its implications. We should note that this is already a very holistic presentation of Gandhis holistic and creative synthesis of ethics and politics. It locates it through its radical claims vis--vis the western tradition of political thought and it underlines what we earlier called the position of the outsider adopted by Gandhiwith such potent political effect. Moreover, it is a helpful corrective to the sanitized and gentle interpretations of Gandhis ethics often heard in the west. For there is very deeply disturbing and transformative process involved for the individual in Gandhis vision of swaraj. The process of becoming a nonviolent outsider within a violent society cannot be domesticated into a technique and it is not for the faint of heart; rather, it comes at a high price and demands constant self-sacrifice and the devotion of clinging to the truth at all costs. Jahanbegloo, as a political theorist, only hints at all of this, although he clearly wants to address it and later, in his biographical sketches of the Muslims and Christians who followed Gandhi, he will return to it. But he is very clear that for Gandhi this act of withdrawing consent from the state and assuming ethical sovereignty within the individual is the only way to truly address the ultimate problems of violence and its moral illegitimacy (81). It also is the only way to create a civilized and democratic political culture. Gandhis integral view of ethical-political action was present from very early on in his life. As he himself wrote to his faithful cousin Maganlal in 1909: For realizing the self, the first essential thing is to cultivate a strong moral sense. Morality means the acquisition of virtues such as fearlessness, truth, brahmacharya and so on. Service is automatically rendered to the country in this process of cultivating morality.12 This is the position that comes to full expression soon after in the text of Hind Swaraj. Democracy (and more fundamentally, civilization) cannot be created or sustained at a systematic level without this ethical process and participation in and through the individual. Assuming individual ethical responsibility is the service which creates a sphere of mutual, democratic action. As a result then, the effect of Gandhis position is to widen the political discourse considerably by including in it the ethical and spiritual dimensionand by highlighting the crucial role of the individual as agent for change. As Jahanbegloo rightly emphasizes, then, Gandhian nonviolence is ultimately a project to recover the ethical and political autonomy of the individual (nonviolence and autonomy converge in Gandhis philosophy, 8). As Gandhi claimed, the loss of this autonomy through submission to and dependence upon the state could only truly be addressed by an ethical-spiritual act like swaraj/satyagraha. It is important to note that this autonomy had, in fact, been the original dream of the secularization in the west. Therefore, beneath the strong disagreement with modern civilization, Gandhi also established an essential point for 6

dialogue (which drew deeply on the wests own dissenting traditions). How was genuine autonomy to be achieved and maintained? A deeper question lies behind this, Jahanbegloo notes, and that is, how was political change or social justice to be achieved? For Gandhi, it was not simply a question of a reform at the top of the political system (as both western reformers and revolutionaries imagined) but rather of inculcating the capacity to regulate and control authority among the masses of individuals through the ethical practice of satyagraha (34). Here, then Gandhi pointed to the more radical form of democratic reform through the inner revolution of swaraj in the individual; though from the beginning this ethical-political principle had a social dimension (One of Gandhis primary concerns was thus to explain how an individual self as a moral agent in a political realm always stands in relation to other human beings, 34). It is in this sense, finally, that ethical-political autonomy also had a spiritual dimension, namely in the cultivation of the virtues of self-suffering and service to others. It is here that Gandhi points to the religious traditions as key: for there can be no autonomy without the acceptance, application and widespread practice of these principles. We may now return to the question of religious traditions and their place in the political and inter-cultural dialogue. Here we want to develop the description of Gandhis position as a critical traditionalist. This positive assessment of the role spiritual/religious virtues in the process of achieving ethical-political autonomy identifies the traditionalist focus in Gandhis position. Religious traditions, he recognized, preserved, practiced and transmitted the wisdom and virtues essential to achieving swaraj or ethical-political self-realization. This was something forgotten in the western approach, which attempted rather to achieve control of the objective, systemic conditions as a way of achieving control of self and autonomy.13 On the other hand, he argued, such religious traditions could not command unquestioned obedience so as to avoid or minimize the individual understanding and ethical practice of truth. This critical focus of the Gandhian position is articulated both in his deeply-held pluralism (no religion can make exclusive/absolute claims about truth)--as well in as his belief in the integrity of individual practice (experimentation with truth/spiritual experience) as the final arbiter of religious meaning.14 This critical element made Gandhis traditionalist approach very different from (and resistant to) the claims of fundamentalism, dogmatism and theocracy. As Jahanbegloo illustrates, Gandhi espoused a spacious religious pluralism which was based on a ruthless internal interrogation of his own tradition of thought (35). His well-known statement on this is not then, simply a kind of indifferent relativism but rather an assertion of the critical, dialogic openness of each religious tradition: There is in Hinduism room enough for Jesus as there is for Mohammed, Zoroaster, and Moses. For me the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same vine. (Jahanbegloo, 34) Yet such flowers are only seen after a rigorous and sometimes ruthless culturalreligious weeding and gardening. In this sense, Gandhis religious and cultural pluralism was based not on reverence or dogmatism but on an internal critical dialogue (experiment) within each tradition so as to enable it to enter into an inter-cultural, interreligious dialogue. It was within such a open-ended, global inter-cultural dialogue that 7

Gandhi saw a positive future for humankind. Needless to say, however, this position was not an easy one to advocate politically since it subjected all guardians and orthodoxies to the demand for open and open-ended critiqueinternally and externally. Like his notion of shared sovereignty, this notion of shared responsibility for the critical interpretation of traditions and the dialogue among them advocated a radical political transformation of state-dominated politics and urged their devolution to the local communal level. Jahanbegloo does an exceptionally good job of explaining Gandhis cultural and religious pluralism and connecting it with the various elements of his political thought (34-52). This culminates in the insight that the Archimedean point of Gandhian politics is a space of shared political judgmentdetermined by a moral claim to truthfulness and justice (51). He also illustrates how Gandhi himself practiced this inter-religious dialogue (with Christianity, Islam, the Jain tradition and Buddhism) so as to evolve the creative insights that were key to his thought: ahimsa, swaraj, satyagraha and swadeshi.15 This pluralism, based on open dialogue among cultures and religions was Gandhis alternative vision to a civilizational model based on the dominance and conflict proposed in colonialism. It is from this pluralistic vision, rooted in Gandhis own lifelong experimentation with the truths of religion, that Jahanbegloo turns, finally, to the major focus of the work, and that is the opening of a new point of dialogue with Islam, and within Islam. We noted at the outset that Gandhi labored intensely throughout his life for this dialogic relationship with Islam. Jahanbegloo recounts the now well-known history leading to partition, for example in Gandhis lengthy and failed dialogue with Mohammed Ali Jinnah (94 ff) . He balances this account very even-handedly with the parallel dialogue between Gandhi and Ambedkar over the claims of Hindu traditions. Between the two, we are able to see the now clearer shape of Gandhis critical traditionalismsomething which was misunderstood and rejected by both Jinnah and Ambedkar.16 Gandhis attempt to establish a political union between the swaraj movement and the Khilifat movement unraveled in the ongoing struggle within Congress and led finally to partition along the lines of religious identity and the complete secularization of politics. The effects of that tragic history are still very evident on both sides. However, the deeper Gandhian moment was accepted and took root in two Muslim leaders who become life-long dialogue partners with Gandhi: Khan Abdul Gaffer Khan and Maulana Azad. It is these kernels of a dialogue which Jahanbegloo is most interested to explore and build upon. Jahanbegloo provides a brief sketch of Gandhis own dialogue with Islam before turning to the dialogues opened by Azad and Gaffer Khan (105-110). This sketch is illustrative of the principles we have just outlined. He points first to the spiritual experience which Gandhi identified as a common ground under all religious traditions. In various places, Gandhi refers to this deep layer of experience as the inner voice, conscience, the voice of God or simply the Truth For me the voice of God, of Conscience, of Truth or the Inner Voicemean one and the same thingFor me, the voice is more real than my own existence. It has 8

never failed me, or for that matter anyone else (106). On the basis of this experience, Gandhi was able to approach each religious traditionso he feltfrom its true inner core, for all religions share that fundamental orientation to Truth. Furthermore, for him the voice of Truth spoke within the human being as a soulforce, and when it did, it spoke the words of love (ahimsa), self-sacrifice and service. It was, as the Gita and the Beatitudes taught, a Truth which demanded action from the human being, or better, en-action: this truth must be enacted in the world of human history. It was from the claim of this soul-force (and not simply political alliance) that Gandhi turned throughout his life toward his Muslim compatriots in dialogue. In many ways, it should be noted, the Muslim comes to represent the other within Indian and Hindu culturethe face of austerity, simplicity and monotheistic focusand for this reason had attracted many negative projections e.g., violence and savagery. But Gandhi was attracted by this otherness as a potential partnership in dialogue and he repudiated the othering in every sense. He knew that only if this relationship (with the other within) could be brought into balance, could Hinduism itself reach its own inner ideals. And therefore Gandhi sought dialogue and partnership by interpreting Islam from its own orientation towards Truth. As Jahanbegloo points out Gandhi employed the Holy Quran as he did the sacred texts of Hinduism such as the Gita or the Ramayana (117). He studied the life of the Prophet in great detail and was deeply attracted to what he saw as Muhammads life of devotion and self-sacrifice, his fasting and prayer (117). He searched for the teaching of nonviolence beneath what he called the execrescences in Islamwhich he claimed had been created during its long history of imperialistic expansion. He firmly believed that this nonviolence was rooted within the teaching of the Prophet. All of this effort at interpretation was complemented by the dialogue with Maulana Azad. Azad, born and raised in Mecca, learned Arabic and Urdu, studied the Quran and later, after moving to Calcutta, was greatly influenced by the Islamic reformer and modernist, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (110). Although he began his political career as a firm Islamist and even a fundamentalist, he underwent a conversion, partly through the dialogue with Gandhi and his own political activity. By arguing that the fundamental teaching of the Quran [was] mercy and forgiveness [rahmat] (113) he came to represent a different and dialogic Islam. In developing this interpretation, Azad was following the trail of several Sufi traditions, Jahanbegloo argues, especially the notion of (wahdat-i-wujud), the unity of existence and therefore, also, of truth (113). From that point, his many written works entered into a deeper inter-religious dialogue with Hinduism and his political path led to greater collaboration with Gandhis secularized but deeply spiritual politics. This spiritual vision of Islam, focused on the centrality of God as the cherisher and nourisher (Rabb), was a profoundly creative articulation of the possibility for dialogue within Islam as Jahanbegloo suggestsand beyond it. More well known as an Islamic teacher and master of nonviolence was Abdul Gaffer Khan. He was influenced early in life by Maulana Azad and of course, by Gandhi himself. And yet, as Jahanbegloo stresses, his profound belief in the truth and 9

effectiveness of nonviolence came also from the depths of his personal experience of Islam (120). Like Gandhi, he perceived the truthfulness of the teaching of the prophet as something to be realized in practice and his organization of a nonviolent army of volunteers in the Northwest Frontier Province (Khyber and Peshawar) among the Pashtoons (the Khudai Khitmatgars) only deepened his belief in the effectiveness of nonviolence. As Jahanbegloo argues, Gaffer Khan, created a most unlikely and profound synthesis of nonvioleny spirituality within a culture built on tribalism, feuds and ongoing historical violence. After sketching the impact of these pioneers of dialogue within Islam, Jahanbegloo turns to the contemporary situation where terrorism and fundamentalism along with state-controlled theocracy seem the only voices left to articulate this tradition. Yet he argues that the conflict between fundamentalism and secularism is a false alternative which avoids truly drawing on the civilizational potential of Islam (126). Here he makes his strongest claim about the dialogue concerning nonviolence begun by Gandhi: To develop an Islamic approach to nonviolence that is dialogical and pluralistic, one needs to move beyond Western models of peace building and conflict resolution by building upon alternative models of peace and nonviolence. (127) Those alternative models are precisely the kind suggested by Abdul Gaffer Khan and Maulana Azad, namely, models of nonviolence which draw from the heart of the religious traditions of Islam and articulate it through a process of self-examination and self-criticism (126). If political Islam is to move beyond being an ideological response to the hegemony of the West, then this process which draws out the spiritual and ethical capacities of Islam itself will be crucial, he argues (127). He concludes with a reflection on the anti-fundamentalist approach of Gandhi and identifies, what he calls Gandhis spiritual secularism as a catalyst for this new approach to Islam. This is a pluralistic respect for the values and differences between religious traditions based on a belief in the underlying unity of Truth (133). All of this brings to the surface a great and telling irony articulated by Jahanbegloos book, namely that the ultimate outsider, Gandhi, may hold the key to the true development of Islamic tradition, spiritual and political. As if to underline this irony, Jahanbegloo turns in his final lengthy, chapter (135-156) to a study of that other outsider Martin Luther King Jras the truest interpreter of Gandhian nonviolence, a practitioner of the Gandhian moment. In some ways this may seem a diversion from the main argument and its focus on Islam. And yet what Jahanbegloo seems to want to do with this account of Kings Gandhian praxis is to highlight a common and underlying spiritual tradition which reaches across divergent religious traditions with their claims to orthodoxy and identity. For example, he stresses Kings growing emphasis on the universality of the beloved community (139) and his recognition that inclusiveness is an intercultural perspective (141). This is to reinforce the vision of religious pluralism, secular spirituality that Gandhi espoused. As he notes, both King and Gandhi knew that there was no such thing as a single homogenous religious or cultural community (149). Since the boundaries of religious traditions are porous and the identities constructed from them always partial and incomplete, dialogue among them is inescapable and the only 10

true alternative to violence. Having evoked this vision of a broader emancipatory practice as the basis of a new politics within Islam (156), Jahanbegloo turns finally to his own native county, Iran. It has, in many ways, been lurking behind his argument throughout, for where else is the falseness of the choice between secularism and fundamentalism more painfully and clearly evident than in Iran--a great and ancient civilization which founders in totalitarianism and violence and does so most recently by hiding behind theocracy. Yet Iranians have also recently rediscovered the older political truth of nonviolence: Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, his power is gone (159). This is the only proper way to conclude a fine and hopeful book about the visionaries of nonviolence.

I began by reflecting on the problems of interpreting a tradition, both in the sense of being open to its own proper horizon of understanding and also in the sense of being an outsider to its practice, beliefs and orthodoxies. I suggested that dialogue is the best resolution of the first problem and it is now evident that for Gandhi, dialogue is also the best approach to the stance to be adopted by the outsider. From the other side, we may see that traditions, in particular, religious traditions, often have many-facetted internal dialogues, disagreements in approach, belief and practice even some which come to the point of schism or heresy. Such religious traditions, often pre-occupied with their internal politicized dialogues, have given less reflection to the importance of dialogue with the outsider, the other. We are past the era where condemnation of heresy could be an unquestioned claim; we are also past the era where the outsider can be simply dismissed as unbeliever, pagan, lacking religious experience or insight. We can go further however than simply articulating a political platitude about relativism and hospitality. In fact, the outsider may be the one who has undergone a process of critical selfexamination (vis--vis their own tradition) and has emerged from it with a capacity for deeper insight into the other. We may also recognize that religious traditions are porous (in principle open to understanding by all human beings) and internally very complex. To be sure there may be levels of insight available only to those within--practitioners and native speakers, as it were, but there are also always blind-spots of those within, areas of crucial unrealized potential and depth. These are perhaps only evident and visible to the outsider who has acquired critical vision and becomes a friend by entering into dialogue.17 By entering into that dialogue with the other, we begin to realize our own difference and become open to a self-understanding we could not achieve on our own. This it seems, is the real truth embodied in pluralism, not simply tolerance of the other, but a dialogue leading into previously unknown self-knowledge. Finally, as Gandhi realized, this is not a universality that can be achieved by some method or technical expertise nor is it abstract in nature; in fact, it is intrinsically personal (though not simply individual). True openness begins in self-knowledge, is arrived at by self-discipline and self-sacrifice. It leads to encounter and dialogue. In that way it may also become true service and service of Truth. 11

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Along with the standard biographies by Judith Brown, (Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope. Oxford 1991) and Bhikku Parekh ( New Delhi: Oxford, 1997) as well as the classic studies like those of Joan Bondurant, (The Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict , Berkeley, 1971) or Erik Erikson (Gandhis Truth: On the Origins of Militant Non-Violence, N.Y. 1969), or Thomas Merton (Gandhi on Nonviolence, N.Y, 1965), there have been more recently new biographical interpretations such as Stanley Wolpert, Gandhis Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, (Oxford, 2001) and Joseph Lelyveld, Great Soul. Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle for India, Knopf NY, 2011. There have also been re-issued works by Eknath Eswaran, Gandhi the Man. How One Man Changed the World, 1977 (reissued 2011); Dennis Dalton, Gandhi. Nonviolent Power in Action (1993 reissued, 2012). In addition to all of this, there are several new critical interpretations, such as that developed by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, (The Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays, Chicago; UP, 2010) and that developed over several years by Ashis Nandy (from The Intimate Enemy, 1983 and reiussed 2009) through the essays in Science, Hegemony and Violence; A Requiem for Modernity, Oxford, 1988), to which we will refer below, especially, From Outside the Imperium; Gandhis Cultural Critique of the West. Nandys approach is well-documented in Talking India,. Ashis Nandy in Covnersation with Ramin Jahanbegloo (Oxford 2006) Nandys approach, which highlights Gandhis importance in addressing the problems of local culture in the context of globalization as the second stage of colonialism, has ben very influential on the work of Jahanbegloo himself. 2 See A Nandy, Gandhi after Gandhi: http://www.lifepositive.com/spirit/masters/mahatma-gandhi/gandhi-legacy.asp for an account of the four Gandhisthe Gandhi of the Indian state and Indian nationalism, the Gandhi of the Gandhians, loveable and khadi-wearing, the Gandhi of the ragamuffins, eccentrics and unpredictable i.e., the social activists and finally there is: The fourth Gandhi is usually not read. He is only heard, often second- or third-hand. While a few like Martin Luther King Jr carefully assess and use his work, the rest do not even know what he wrote. Nor do they care to. This Gandhi is primarily a mythic Gandhi. 3 See the discussion of history from a Gandhian perspective in Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, 5562. Gandhis counter-colonial vision gave privilege to myth over history: If the past does not bind historical consciousness and the future begins here, the present is the historical moment, the permanent yet shifting point of crisis and the time for choice (62). 4 See Jahanbegloos summary: Gandhi expected communities to be molded on the ability to see themselves in others and others in themselves. He considered such a policy essential to avoid the dangers of cultural conformity and instead move toward a genuine comity of cultures based on mutual exchanges and creative sytnthesis (39). 5 See Ashis Nandy on dissent and conformity in The Intimate Enemy, A Postcript: The colonial culture redesigns the entire educational system and the process of socialization to ensure the spread of definitions of sanity, rationality, adulthood and health that automatically stigmatize all unruly dissent as childish, irrational and retrogressive. You are taught to fight established authorities according to the conventions authorized by authorities themselves, so that rebellion gradually becomes a matter of apprenticeship (118). 6 Ashis Nandy in The Intimate Enemy, calls Gandhis kind of position critical traditionalist (62): critical traditionalists like Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gandhi began to re-emphasize the world-views which, through self-control and self-realization, sought to understand and change the world. 7 See Hind Swaraj. Jaminbegloo quotes the later Gandhi to this effect: I have been a sympathetic student of the Western social order, and I have discovered that underlying the fever that fills the soul of the west, there is a restless search for Truth. I value that spirit. Let us study our Eastern institutions in the spirit of scientific inquiry.(60) 8 I think in this regard of the groundbreaking work of Ramon Pannikar. See the Rhythm of Being. Pannikar adopted what he called an non-dualistic advaita approach which accepted ultimate

difference without stigmatizing it (Rhythm of Being, 34). He spoke of this as a sacred secularity which does not discard anything, do not put anything aside, nor despise or eliminate any portion of the real (Rhythm of Being, 36). 9 For this description see, Ashis Nandy, Final Encounter. The Politics of the Assassination of Gandhi in Bonfire of Creeds, (Oxford 2011: 64) : his continuous attempt to change the definitions of centre and periphery in Indian societycan be called crudely a distinctive Gandhian theory of social justice 10 See Michael Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, characterizing Hobbess view The war of all against all that characterizes life in the state of nature can be overcome by reason through the construction of an artificial world, the commonwealth, to supplement the world that God created. (262). 11 This evolution of the paternalistic state on the basis of a system of human needs has been very skillfully analyzed by Ivan Illich. See for example: Ivan Illich, The Rivers North of the Future. The Testament of Ivan Illich as told to David Cayley. Toronto, Anansi , 2005.
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From a 1909 letter to Maganlal Gandhi in Ahimsa, by Yatish Mehta, Selections from Mahatma Gandhi Vol IV, 1, 2013, 83, 13 The modern world view challenges the traditional faith that the greater self-realization leads to greater understanding of the not-self, including the material world.Modernity includes the faith that the more human beings understand or control the objective, not-self, including the not-self in the self (the id, the brain processes, social or biological history), the more they control and understand the self (the ego, praxis consciousness) (Nandy, 2009: 62) 14 What Gandhi calls the acid test of reason is actually a form of experimentation with reason that, according to him is a far better approach to cultural and religious traditions than reverence (36). 15 His greatest ideas, such as satyagraha, were neither purely Eastern nor purely Western but came from a process of living between cultures (38). On ahimsa see 79 ff. 16 Jinnah, like Ambedkar, criticized Gandhis insistence on the spiritualization of Indian politics (103) 17 I refer here to something like the Johari window technique for interpersonal awareness developed by two American psychologists, J. Luft, H. Ingham, (1955). "The Johari window, a graphic model of interpersonal awareness". Proceedings of the western training laboratory in group development (Los Angeles: UCLA). Bibliography Gadamer, H.-G. Truth as Method. Continuum London, 2011. Gillespie, Michael. The Theological Origins of Modernity. University of Chicago, 2008. Illich, Ivan. The Rivers North of the Future. The Testament of Ivan Illich as told to David Cayley. Toronto, Anansi , 2005. Jahanbegloo, Ramin. The Gandhian Moment, with a Foreword by the Dalai Lama, Harvard: UP, 2013. 196 Pages. _________________. Talking India,. Ashis Nandy in Covnersation with Ramin Jahanbegloo (Oxford 2006)

Rudolph, Lloyd and Susanne. The Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays, Chicago; UP, 2010. Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy, Oxford. 2009. ___________.Science, Hegemony and Violence; A Requiem for Modernity, Oxford, 1988. ___________. Bonfire of Creeds. The Essential Ashis Nandy, Oxford 2011. ___________. Gandhi after Gandhi, online at, http://www.lifepositive.com/spirit/masters/mahatma-gandhi/gandhi-legacy.asp Pannikar, Raimon. The Rhythm of Being. The Unbroken Trinity. The Gifford Lectures. Orbis, 2010.