*Originally published in 2023. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work.

This article is part of the Indian IR Meets Global IR series, edited by Deepshikha Shahi and Raghav Dua.

The recent debates on Global IR emphasize the vital roles that non-Western knowledge-forms can play in strategic mainstreaming of the relational ethics of ‘post-humanism’. That is, the theoretical-practical approach that propositions an inclusive account of the importance of not just the human actors but also the non-human actors in global political life, such as nature, earth’s processes, plant and animal systems, technospheres, forms of viruses, and so on (Cudworth, Hobden and Kavalski 2018, Brasovan 2017, Kavalski 2020, Shih 2020). Since Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1957), or the Mahatma (great soul) as he is popularly known, vehemently made an appeal to acknowledge an ‘identification with all that lives’, his viewpoints come across as an untapped repository that could be evoked to supplement the post-humanist agenda of Global IR. In fact, Gandhi’s way of foregrounding the post-humanist agenda borrows from a range of conceptualizations – such as, ahiṃsā (non-injury or non-violence), satyāgraha (truth-force), tapasya (spiritual heat), sarvodaya (welfare for all) and swadeshi (self-sufficiency) – that arise from the Indian textual traditions of the Vedas and Bhagavad Gītā. This article aims to explain how these conceptualizations based on the Indic knowledge-forms can initiate a dialogic interaction between the seemingly divergent approaches of ‘Western modernity’ and ‘non-Western traditionalism’, thereby imaginatively informing the Global IR discourse.

The Twin Pillars of Gandhi’s Political Practice: Ahiṃsā and Satyagraha

Gandhi's ideas, more than most in recent times, have struggled to advance Indian ethics beyond the pale of an apparently diminishing relevance in a modern, civilizing and globalizing world. Perhaps Gandhi doesn’t have much to offer as an ethical theoretician – as Bimal Krishna Matilal (one of my own mentors and progenitors of the two volumes on Indian Ethics: 2007, 2023), once put it to me. But, it is said, Gandhi’s genius lay in his practical wisdom, especially his ability to take an idea from a traditional practice or context (e.g., fasting) and apply it to contemporary issues or situations, whether on dietary matters or in an act of civil disobedience. For this he would attract criticism from both traditionalists and modernists alike.

Gandhi led a nationalist struggle against British sovereignty in India, which sparked a spate of anti-colonial movements throughout the globe. The way or means by which he was able to achieve this feat, and how this ties in with the particular ethics he gave voice to, is particularly significant. That in the process he also ended up questioning many of the traditional (Hindu) values and customary practices, as well as a host of modern (Western) values, though perhaps not overturning them, is also significant. So, for example, he grew up a vegetarian on customary Hindu grounds; but after a short lapse, he switched his moral justification for vegetarianism to ethical consideration for animals.

Gandhi is a curious mix of the radical and the conservative. For example, he took up the cause of civil rights in South Africa, but his struggle did not extend much beyond rights for the Indian community. Still, he set an example with sagely guidelines for ‘civil resistance’ which some Black leaders and their Christian sympathizers of the time also followed. Indeed, the ANC was modelled after the Natal Indian Congress. Returning to India, Gandhi was much anguished by the injustices of the caste, class and religious divisions that had taken deep root in the Indian society. He became a champion of the cause of the ‘untouchables’, whom he gave the name harijan (people of the Lord), and he railed against the prejudices and ‘the evils of the caste system’. It looks as though Gandhi is set to have the entire structure dismantled.

In the long run, however, Gandhi defended the varṇa (a social structure based on the division of labour), on the grounds that it is (1) different from the divisive social structure based on the hierarchical notions of caste/jati (it should be noted that while jati and caste are often used interchangeably, jati has a broader connotation and is also used to refer to various groups and subgroups within and outside the caste system); (2) a sensible scheme for demarcation of work, (3) a law of human nature, and hence part of dharma. Dharma here is an all-embracing conception, and perhaps unique to Indian thought, which has many and varying meanings, beginning with ‘fixed principles’ in the Vedas and ranging from ordinance, usage, duty, right, justice, morality, virtue, religion, good works, function or characteristics to ‘norm’, ‘righteousness’, ‘truth’ and much else (Kane 1969). The word is derived from the Sanskrit root dhṛ, meaning to form, uphold, support, sustain, or hold together. It connotes the idea of that which maintains, gives order and cohesion to any given reality, and ultimately to nature, society, and the individual. It is also central to other Indian traditions like Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, each with its own understanding of dharma.

What Gandhi didn't find agreeable was the inordinate privileges one caste, especially the Brahmin has arrogated to itself. Inequality, he thinks, is not an issue in the design, but it becomes a problem when the structure gets tilted vertically (Gandhi 1965, 29, 80). The enigma of dharma oddly places constraints on the otherwise splendid idea of civil and human rights that Gandhi awakens to rather early in his career, but it also helped him forge a principle of human action which itself has buttressed the struggle for rights of one kind or another in different quarters. That principle is non-violent action or, as Gandhi also called it, ahiṃsā.

Ahiṃsā is a fundamental rational intuition and the highest virtue, at least in Jaina ethics, which is both a philosophical system and a way of life in its own right and was founded around 500 BCE by Mahavira, an ascetic and unorthodox teacher thought to be a contemporary of the Buddha, to whom he is often compared. Jainism is decidedly non-theistic, rejecting, like Buddhism, belief in a ‘supremely personal God’. With its broad understanding of sentient life force, Jaina ethics inevitably reflects, as Albert Schweitzer put it, an uncompromising ‘reverence for all life’. The moral restraints that follow from this intuition comprise dietary habits, such as non-consumption of meat, alcohol, and foods of certain kinds, and ruling against the abuse, subjugation, exploitation, ill-treatment, tormenting, discarding and slaying of ‘all breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures.’ There are prohibitions against the injurious treatment of animals, such as beating, mutilating, branding, overloading and deprivation of food and space. The Jaina ethical worldview can and is examined in light of normative ethics and debates regarding styles and approaches to religiously and socially inspired activism.

Gandhi first toyed with non-cooperation, an idea which he discovered in Tolstoy and Henry Thoreau. This was reinforced by his Quaker friends in South........

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