Unconditional Equality:Gandhi's Religion of Resistance
$46.00
Author: | Ajay Skaria |
ISBN 13: | 9788178244778 |
Year: | 2016 |
Subject: | History/Modern Period |
About the Book
Unconditional Equality examines Mahatma Gandhi?s critique of liberal ideas of freedom and equality, and his own practice of a freedom and equality organized around religion.
Sometimes working against the grain of Gandhi?s explicit formulations, Unconditional Equality reconceives satyagraha (passive resistance) as a politics that strives for the absolute equality of all beings. Liberal traditions usually affirm an abstract equality. But for Gandhi such equality is an ?equality of [the] sword??because it excludes those presumed to lack reason (such as animals or the colonized), but also because those included lose the power to love.
Gandhi professes instead a politics organized around dharma, or religion. For him, there can be ?no politics without religion.? This involves self-surrender, a freely offered surrender of autonomy and everyday sovereignty. For Gandhi, the ?religion that stays in all religions? is satyagraha.