Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule. Edited by Anthony J. Parel. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000. 164p. $70.00 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Extract

The life and thought of Mahatma Gandhi continues to be a reproach to ideologies and dispositions that produced the horrors of the twentieth century. But his complex legacy suffers from a paradox. His ideas appear to be both necessary and improbable at the same time. To many, Gandhi's thought becomes even more relevant in a context in which the vision of modernity that he critiqued so powerfully has triumphed, the violence that he stood against has become an ineliminable feature of political life, and the practice of freedom has come to be dissociated from the exercise of virtue. But the very same historical momentum that inspires the authors in this volume to turn to Gandhi also seems to make Gandhi an even more distant and unlikely figure for our times. This volume, a product of sincere and careful scholarship, is largely an effort to keep Gandhi's thought alive. It focuses on the central category of Gandhian thought, swaraj (self-rule). Anthony Parel's essay usefully distinguishes between four meanings of freedom for Gandhi: freedom as national independence, freedom as freedom from poverty, political freedom for the individual, and freedom as the capacity for self-rule or spiritual freedom. This typology will provide a helpful initial orientation to readers unfamiliar with Gandhi's thought.