| Gordon A. Walter Faculty of Commerce The University of British Columbia Vancouver British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z2 |
We near the end of the second millennium (C.E.) and the West stands, dominant, athwart the world. No political, communications/transportation, economic, or military force seems to exist that might block the path of the techno-utilitarian-secular juggernaut of world wide development. Indeed, from a Western perspective, few would see a reason to do so (Kennedy, 1988, 1993). That the U.S. dwarfs Ancient Rome and is allied with other Western nations, which are more rich and powerful than could be imagined a short time ago, seems to be ignored by the mass of society. However, some appropriately reflective critics warn of the dangers of arrogant and unrestrained power. Korten (1995) is one of the leading critical voices, vividly documenting destruction by corporate expansion into developing nations and exploring other abuses of power.
Building on Lord Acton’s insight about the inherently corrupting aspects of unbridled power, Korten (1995) prescribes a solution of countervailing power by Western governments (since most nations will be no match for global corporations). Korten seems to draw impetus for his quest from the imbalance in global ideological advocacy (given the moral and economic failure of Communism). His position appears quite "post-modern" in that he draws particular attention to annihilation of indigenous cultures and their resource and economic bases. He also voices keen concern for the potential exhaustion of the planet itself, aligning himself adroitly with the ecology movement. Unfortunately, he also carries substantial tired liberal baggage and thus is substantially less post-modernist than the content of most of his documented abuses might imply. Further, he replaces the risk of nuclear holocaust with potential ecological disaster in his attempts to motivate readers by fear, but otherwise he uses the same demoralized logic that failed the test of reality during the Cold War. He seems to be a 20th Century critic in 21st Century garb.
This paper, however does resonate with Korten’s concern about problems and risks of abuse of power. This is the issue. Abuse of power by corporations is well documented by Korten, but the risks of abuse of power by a nation so powerful as the U.S. seem to slip by him. This paper does not share Korten’s optimism about the efficacy of Western Governments to get to the heart of the problem or even to avoid becoming a bigger problem. Quite simply, the fundamental issue is Western dominance, rather than Western corporate dominance.
For example, Western science and technology dominates nature in a way scarcely imaginable a century ago. Technological change has been rapid and dramatic this century. Moreover Korten’s self-righteous assumptions and tone sponsors the dangerous illusion that Western governments are not fundamentally enmeshed in the structures and processes he seems to abhor. The inadequacy of past governmental initiatives towards LDC development should give pause to even the most zealous missionary. Why not Korten? By focusing on the risks of business corporate dominance and destruction, Korten misses the broad premise about developing peoples which would force him to acknowledge that Western governmental "help" or restraint of corporations inevitably means Western governmental engagement in and direction of national agendas. This, assuredly, increases Western dominance, even if it reduces some specific power abuses.
Gandhi seems to have anticipated the risks of Western dominance for developing economies. He did this long before Western physical power was anywhere near as developed as today. Gandhi emerged into political leadership at the turn of the century, long before air travel, world financial transactions, and advanced telecommunications. One hundred years ago, imperial Britain had multiple potential equals (e.g., France and Germany), and the US economy was roughly equal to all of Europe’s. Today, by contrast, there is rationally no reason to doubt US military hegemony, in light of the Soviet Union’s disintegration. Simultaneously, our successes in technical, utilitarian, and legal "rights" spheres is counterbalanced by cultural disintegration, failure to cure multi-generation poverty, drugs, crime, and violence. Korten’s faith in Government solutions is doubly questionable, given our domestic failures despite impressive levels of affluence.
Korten assumes governments to be the solution, rather than an inevitable part of the problem. By contrast, Gandhi saw bureaucratized and secularized Western culture as the problem. Both governments and corporations are merely institutions within a problematic Western culture. In Gandhi’s judgment, Western culture was and is "hollowed-out", demoralized. Western society has lost its way amid physical riches. The depth to which materialism is embraced and violence sublimated into bureaucratic minutia seemed to truly amaze and appall Gandhi. He concluded that the West had lost the capacity to follow a higher guiding light in human affairs, as will be elaborated below.
This paper tries to explain, in today’s terms, the general thrust of Gandhi’s perspective and to show its relevance to world development in the new millennium. Gandhi symbolizes a more general principle that should stand above the considerations that preoccupy Korten. This paper accepts Gandhi’s position that cultural self-determination and freedom are the paramount priority for developing nations. Developing nations need substantial time for appropriate indigenous leadership to emerge. Outside governments’ "help" tends to stunt this development and short-circuit the development process, thereby undermining true autonomy. Nietzsche remarked that it takes five generations to spawn an aristocrat. Home-grown leadership is a pre-requisite to "home-made" tailoring modernization changes to the culture and traditions of that nation. Quite simply, development requires nurturance and takes time, measured in generations.
This paper may primarily serve as a review of long ago considered questions. However, readers are reminded that Gandhi was probably the political innovator of the century and, as such, his contribution deserves remembrance and reflection. Possible avenues for constructive world-wide development are implied in this paper, but the first task is understanding Gandhi’s words and solutions more deeply in an effort to reorient the discussion which Korten’s work has stimulated. This paper tries to make Gandhi’s position and approach sufficiently clear that one can think about the issues from the developing nations perspective and with an increased degree of detachment from the ethnocentricities of our "goods and services" driven social order. The gulf between Gandhi and Korten is vast. Gandhi’s thinking demonstrates an alternative development doctrine which is both viable and profound.
Gandhi put his trust in his culture and its ideals, describing himself as a practical idealist. Practical idealism was a manageable paradox to Gandhi, not an oxymoron. Thus his thought resonates with recent contributions of the pioneer Charles Handy (1994) in his appreciation of the emerging challenges of modernity, including the management of paradox. Gandhi could see that, because of the West’s capacity for physical dominance, the only path to freedom for the 350,000,000 Indian people of his day was a path that did not "fight fire with fire", and yet was not passive. Essentially, Gandhi invented and elaborated a "game" of political power assertion (Mintzberg, 1983). Gandhi’s power game pivoted on a subset of Hindu ideals. He connected effective political dogma with the most ordinary individual’s capacity to declare his/her fundamental dignity as a human being. He focused on a key ideal within the bedrock of Indian culture that would provide the basis for the subcontinent’s self-governance assertion.
Gandhi forcefully concluded that, for his people to achieve independence, Western ways had to be rejected. He did not naïvely think that national political independence would solve the problems of Indian society. Political independence was seen as merely one fundamentally important step toward a more "true" social order. For Gandhi, this meant being true to the roots of the society, just to all the people, and open to a robust individualism and freedom (Rawles, 197x).
Gandhi strongly advocated increased justice for all Indians, rather than the greatest good for the greatest number, as in utilitarianism. He wanted a core good for everyone. Since this criterion is pervasive in much Hindu philosophy, Gandhi aggressively asserted the necessity of an Indian solution to Indian problems. He was neither xenophobic nor reactive but had a broad appreciation of his fellow human beings in India and elsewhere. He diagnosed a fundamental incompatibility between Western culture and the "core identity" of the Indian people. He came early in his career to an opinion about power. Real progress would require forceful use of political power and this could only be achieved by mobilizing the inherent strengths and will of the masses. India had no wealth to divide and so needed to pursue a different set of motives and policies from the material ones which were the central focus of the other great reform movement of the day, state socialism. Gandhi concluded that this mobilization required tapping into the cultural strengths of Indian society in such a way that it touched the lives of all. For example, the first two things to address on his list of Indian societal ills were discrimination against the Untouchables Caste and the subjugation of women. Both practices were contrary to the ideal of justice that he perceived as central and essential in Hinduism. He considered the West to be a worthy adversary and, at the same time, also the essential audience of the political theater he orchestrated. Before elaborating this Gandhi’s politics, the paper first links Gandhi with a few touch stones of organization and management scholarly thinking. Next it focuses on Gandhi’s terminology and doctrine.
Maslow and McGregor ushered in a new era of management theory following WWII. Central to their view was that people can cultivate a proclivity for "going up higher" in motivation. Their positive and constructive view of the person emphasized the upward urge toward perfection. Perfection striving is at the heart of many world cultures and today is broadly considered an important contributor to the success of the five Asian tigers (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore), all neo-Confucian cultures. Confucius (500 B.C.E.) was perhaps the most pragmatic early definers of virtues in organized society and of "perfection-striving" as the ultimate life-style. Plato, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad and others focused on more ethereal aspects of idealism and perfection striving. Fundamental questions about meaning in life and human conduct in the face of social aggregations, worldly suffering, human limitations, mortality, and the profundities of eternity are woven into the work of all these great thinkers. Maslow and McGregor re-secularized aspects of perfection striving during the fading Christian influence of mid 20th Century America. They also applied the fruits of emerging psychology, existential philosophy, rising materialism, and post WWII confidence and sense of responsibility. "Ego needs" created a platform upon which Maslow defined and communicated some of the more subtle ideas to modern utilitarians, such as self-actualization (self-realization, authenticity, integrity, fulfillment, mental health, etc.).
Argyris crystallized much modern management thought in Integrating the Individual and the Organization (1964), when he articulated the central conflict of modernity as the "needs" of the individual for self-expression, actualization, and growth vs. the organization’s priority for control, conformity and measured output. More recently, issues such as "empowerment" have dominated efforts to implement the Argyris/McGregor vision for life in organizations. Issues such as individual values and emotions are at the forefront of efforts to create empowered, healthy and just organizations today. The limits of corporate power are rightly understood to be bound-up in the nature of humanity.
Progress is facilitated by "inviting" organizational participants into escalated commitment and higher-level performance. "Exploitation", while not a thing of the past, is increasingly taboo today. Still, avoidance and remediation of exploitative arrangements requires insightful, self-disciplined and skillful managers. Such managers need to develop their character as well as their bureaucratic skills to earn the necessary respect and finesse. The bottom line is broadly assumed to be dependent upon high levels of voluntarism, levels that cannot be achieved through coercive force in our "free" society.
Karl Weick (1995) is not the first person one generally connects with Douglas McGregor, but an important connection does exist. Weick is strongly associated with the social-psychological processes of organizing. His perspective emphasizes is on verbs, rather than nouns. Weick has also been key in stimulating the growing comprehension of the subjectivity of organizational life, including such issues as "making sense" and "making meaning" out of existence. Forty years ago Harold Leavitt (e.g., Leavitt and Whistler, 1958) dramatically increased managers’ appreciation of the profundity of individual human perception and other psychological factors in the coming era. Today Karl Weick is having a similar impact on processes awareness, particularly of enactment--the way in which individuals and aggregations construct their own "reality". These arguments are more abstract than McGregor’s idea of self-fulfilling prophecies. Weick identified compelling enactment-related conceptualizations, such as "believing is seeing" and "double interacts". In general, he stimulated a deeper awareness about subjectivity in organization life. Analyses today incorporate anticipatory actions, interactions, causal nets, and so forth. The idea that people largely "enact" their own context (rather than merely perceive it, or act and react in it) is now widely understood and accepted within fairly conventional groups, such as the Academy of Management.
It is humbling to realize that Gandhi must have intuitively understood these subtle points a hundred years ago. Even more impressive is that Gandhi was able to build a philosophy for developing nations upon such brilliant insights. Moreover, his view spans both the human condition and world politics. Gandhi was highly criticized because he demanded an extreme "purity of means" in all political actions. The Hindu roots of his idealism were seen by critics as being "out-of-synch." with the gritty demands of world politics. He was also accused of being arbitrary and rigid, but he proved the rightness of his position with the momentum it generated and still is generating.
Gandhi understood enactment. Each of us does, at least, live "downstream" of our motivation and perceptions. Moreover, expectations and cognitive schema largely create our experience. Much significance of "enactment" is captured in the Eastern notion of samsara, in which human actions, based on desires, generate a web of consequences and reactions from others that enmesh the individual in a series of reactive cycles and thus determine key long-term eventualities, or karma. Gandhi believed (with what appeared to be saintly assurance) that mobilizing the right means is the prerequisite for generating right ends. In a sense, he was a radical utilitarian. He knew that when political demonstrations were "staged" in certain ways, various stakeholders would see (or interpret) different significances in predictable ways. Weick has now elucidated this human tendency "believing is seeing". Gandhi fully believed that human dignity could only be defended in a way that mobilized and preserved human dignity. Without human dignity, mere political freedom would evaporate.
One must admire nations which give birth to themselves. In comparing revolutions, one is struck by the fact that both Americans and Indians "did it their way". America revolted violently, sensing the limitation of Britain’s ability to suppress similarly armed and trained forces across the Atlantic Ocean. Gandhi’s revolution was through enacting a context of mutual respect and self-respect which carried India through to independence in its own way, a way of non-violence that was little comprehended in the West. Gandhi appreciated the unwillingness of the Britain’s democratic populace to inflict suffering on Indian people to keep in them in the Empire, especially when the lion’s share of the apparent primary benefit from Empire went to the elites.
Before exploring Gandhi’s actual political contribution, some of the central concepts of his movement deserve definition. This leads us immediately to appreciating the Gandhi’s insightful, and perhaps devious, use of terms.
Substantial confusion exists about various contradictions in Gandhi’s life, and also about what he meant by terms which were pivotal in his political career. In the West, Gandhi is largely thought of as a saintly person who (perhaps luckily) was able to help stimulate revolt against imperialism. However in response to the "accusation" of being a saint trying to be a politician Gandhi retorted, "No, I’m a politician trying to be a saint." And a formidable politician he was. Quite simply, he was a master of symbolic communication (Frost, Moore, Louis, Lundberg and Martin, 1991). This is illustrated below, as the paper highlights a few concepts and terms which can have subtle differences in meaning in various languages.
Gandhi openly used the ambiguities of grand terms to manipulate stakeholder reaction. One would consider him Machiavellian, except that Gandhi lacked some of the exploitativeness and ruthlessness assumed by the contemporary use of that term. To be ruthless is to have no moral limits. However, Gandhi was intensely moral and was conscientiously true to his own ethics. In essence, Gandhi was a political "magus". He also was an early master of world media. It appears in retrospect that Gandhi focused his course of action around a terminology that was interpreted quite differently in Hindu and Western/Christian cultures. He used carefully crafted terms and rhetoric, which could inflame the masses to stormy rebellion (e.g., we must protect our women from rape) and at the same time evoke a sympathetic (rather than antagonistic) response from various constituencies in the West (e.g., Christians witnessing police brutality directed at "innocents" and "peaceful citizens").
Some key terms are elaborated and discussed below to communicate both the specifics of Gandhi’s doctrine and to show his clever cross-cultural communications.
Ahimsa is the cornerstone in Gandhi’s tactics, strategy and ethics. Ahimsa is generally translated to English as "non-violence". More accurately, the term means the absence of himsa. Himsa is a Sanskrit word indicating doing harm to others or being hateful. Thus the first layer of meaning to ahimsa involves a substantial portion of the Hindu belief system. This, in turn, broadly influences and guides other levels of social interaction. For example, a willingness to suffer for one’s family and one’s values is implied in ahimsa. This suffering ideally takes place without anger, vengeance, or even resentment. In the West, to be non-violent is quite distinct from willingness to suffer and to suffer cheerfully is too much to expect from normal, hedonistic Westerners. In fact one might expect a non-violent western person to be less willing to suffer than a violent person by nature and by values. Today, protesters who aspire to save the forests show considerable resentment when they are made to obey injunctions, pay fines, or are incarcerated. They seem to have learned the most visible portion of the civil rights movement, but have missed its philosophical roots in Gandhi and Hinduism.
"Not himsa" living is far more extreme than merely avoiding the worst of the Christianity’s seven deadly sins. Gandhi’s "law of ahimsa" is often paralleled to the Western ideal of Christian love (e.g., turning the other cheek). This is an important connection, because Gandhi’s political theater is pointless unless the Western audience actually "sees" specific actions in this way. Still, ahimsa goes beyond turning the other cheek, because of the need to avoid all negative emotions, such as resentment. Ahimsa requires constant "self-purification" of all hatred and harm-wishing from one’s thoughts. Meditation, prayer and performing various humble tasks, such as working a spinning wheel or making one’s meals, are salient useful disciplines embraced by Gandhi. Everyone should experience the daily life of the common person. Vegetarianism is also an expression of ahimsa in India. The logic is that one does not hurt animals; nor is one complicit in hurting animals by eating them! (Yes, like the bumper sticker). In Hindu belief, all life is sacred, not just human life. By contrast, Westerners can express Christian love with near saintliness and still not extend that love to even thinking seriously about avoiding eating meat, poultry, or fish. Be kind to your pet, do not shoot Bambi and do not be "cruel" to other animals. However, efficiently "farm" and "harvest" food animals and eradicate pests and health hazards with techno-zeal. Gandhi said he wished he could live without eating plants, but that was impossible. Thus he could justify hurting plants (and "even" drinking milk) but felt a responsibility to keep his daily consumption down to 800 calories!
Gandhi asserted "and so ahimsa is our supreme duty. If we take care of the means we are bound to reach the end sooner of later" (Gandhi: from Yeravada Mandir pg. 9 ; in Collected Works). In other words, by living by the law of ahimsa, the best long term advancement of the people will be achieved as society becomes more and more consistent with the requirements of God. Thus, non-violence is not a utilitarian stratagem. Ahimsa is more important than effectiveness, more important than freedom, and more central to life itself than any secular consideration. Today, we might sloganize his thought as "The process is the product".
Gandhi was attentive to other world religions. For example, he identified a central principle common to both Hindu and Christian religions. More importantly he used this idea to motivate the desired actions on the part of his followers and, at the same time, he anticipated the emotional reactions of the populations which could put direct political pressure on British power wielders. This political influence was Gandhi’s overt objective. He often spoke of the inability of the human heart to witness suffering without wanting to help. Gandhi believed that persuasive appeals to the heart of the Western citizens could not be ignored. The moralist part of him said this was because of the nature of the "law", but the politician part of him intuited how such a priority would be experienced by Christian believers. Idealistic? Yes, but also practical.
Gandhi also pragmatically discerned that only non-violent political activity could be broadly sustained and supported by a population that eschewed eating meat due to religious beliefs. He could get the masses to endure suffering, but not to be destructive. Gandhi was especially successful in getting Indians to face suffering by using marches and deliberate acts to evoke vivid British assaults on human dignity. This appears to be more idealistic than realistic, at first glance. Yet one must remember that, for the Indian masses, dignity was one of their most real possessions.
Gandhi spent thousands of days in prison during his lifetime. He declared his prison to be a mansion, compared to living under foreign domination or even living as a peasant. However, he also was careful to make sure that the media made his suffering felt by and imprinted in many minds, both home and abroad.
Again from Sanskrit, brahma = God and charya = practice. Thus the term brahmacharya means the path of God-realization. It includes, as Gandhi says, "control in thought, word and action, of all the senses at all times and all places". One controls thought (consciousness) in order to control desire and, thereby, to avoid bad karma. "Therefore, an individual practising brahmacharya is absolutely free from passion" (Bandyopadhyaya, 1969, p. 50).
Non-violence implies bread-labor. Simultaneously, bread-labor is a sacrificial rite from the Bahagavadgita and thus is broadly comprehended within India to be an act of religious devotion. Thus bread labor itself could be compared with baptism in the west. It is not merely a quaint custom. Bread-labor is "the divine law that man must earn his by labouring with his own hands" (Bandyopadhyaya, 1969, p. 55). The depth of meaning of such apparently concrete actions to the people of India went largely unappreciated in the West during Gandhi’s political career.
Dharma is often translated into English as religion, but a synonym for God might have been a more useful translation (assuming a one word translation is appropriate and useful). The meaning of dharma is both richer and deeper than assumed in the West. For example, it includes the notion of immanent justice. Hindu aspirations for justice are based on the idea that there is an ultimate principle or law, upon which the universe (not just the functioning of a human society) is organized. In short, God is a principle, the principle, of the universe.
Dharma is also understood to include the fundamental force by which order is created from or instead of chaos. Thus dharma is the Hindu cultural equivalent of modern science’s notion of "unified field theory". Modern, unified field theory starts from the four forces which are central to the observed, physical universe: Gravity, magnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force. Unified field theory posits that these four observable forces are expressions of a more abstract, and as yet unobserved, force. Science has not yet found an adequate single theory to embrace all four forces. But unified field theory has progressed sufficiently far that there is no serious doubt that a synthesis will ultimately be achieved. Quite simply, most physicists accept as inevitable that an overall ordering force must exist. Thus the deeper meaning of dharma anticipates post-relativistic physics at the same time, Western science does not assume that unified field theory has direct implications for the conduct of human affairs and thus is more circumscribed than dharma. The focus of unified field theory is strictly of physical phenomena, for which the concept justice has no meaning. Still, unified field theory focuses on the ordering forces of the universe and explains why the universe does not dissolve into chaos, entropy, or simply "run down". That the concept of dharma is at least four thousand years old gives one pause.
Hindu thought emphasizes the tension between order and chaos. Order can be imposed by physical force, but this is inferior to true, lawful order. By contrast, the central tension in Christianity is between sin and redemption. Rebellion and punishment is a closely aligned cultural theme in Christianity. Order in the physical realm is increasingly possible via physical force in the West, but the degree to which this era’s physical mastery will endure is anyone’s guess. The strength of the modern West is in mastering such forces and in creating institutions that "forcibly" generate goods and services. Firing a poor performer is not a sin in the west. It is not even questioned if done in a procedurally proper way and buttressed by legitimate utilitarian criteria. So called out-placement consultants have thrived in the past 15 years due to humanistic scruples that prescribe "it" should be done kindly and with constructive support for individuals affected. The relevant laws, in turn, are constructed by society in the West through legislation and a judicial system that seeks procedural justice. Procedural justice, also is socially constructed in light of ideas such as the adversary system, a test of facts, the chance to face one’s accusers, etc. In short, the West has an orderly procedure for dealing with the chaos of human affairs on earth and does not look towards divine "intervention". Pragmatic Western justice is imperfect, but preferred to waiting for eternity or even merely the "next life".
The value assertion within dharma warns us that order will not endure if it is not just. Perhaps intuitive awareness of this principle is what today fuels fears of a coming ecological disaster. The point is that considering dharma as merely the equivalent of "religion" blinds Westerners to appreciating Gandhi’s political genius. Dharma strongly implies justice to half a billion Hindus and does so in the same way that Jesus Christ implies the profound importance of selfless love to as many Westerners. Even the concept of justice has a different meaning to Hindus than to Westerners. Gandhi not only handled these vagaries and ambiguities, he manipulated them to his political purposes.
Chaos is the consequence of non-dharmic order. Alert Hindus should react to chaos by reflecting on the basis of the current order. Consider, for example, that Ancient Rome’s fall was not simply due to barbarian conquest. After all, the Celt Brennos took Rome itself and occupied it for over six months in 386 B. C. This did not finish the Romans who beat them badly a hundred years later. All this was over 700 years before Rome’s final sacking by Atilla. Further, consider that ethnocentric Western historical explanations that Rome’s culture was "sinful" basically miss the point. Rome was also ‘sinful’ during its rise! More relevant perhaps is simply that Rome lost its stoic ethic and other historic patterns of discipline, as it became ever more entertainment and consumption-oriented. Higher culture dissipated while government became stale, hermetic and un-adaptive. But Rome remained orderly to the end. However, order was enforced differently than during its rise. The law and the dole replaced its traditional social structure. To a Hindu, Rome lost its resonance with dharmic order and thus did not have a preservable order. The deeper question is how did Greek Orthodox Christianity differ from Catholicism and how did that contribute to an order which did survive for another thousand years. Opinions vary, and are beyond the scope of this paper. But the important point is that, even with a similar governmental and Christian religious structure, the order in the Western empire had ceased to move the hearts and minds of the population. The people, in turn, were unwilling to defend the empire against the threat. The concept of dharma somehow inculcates much of this aspect of social organization. Associations and implications abound. Justice is a very big concept.
Himsa is force that is energized by violence or anger. Resentment, jealousy, gossip, victimisation, exploitation, all are included in himsa, whether they are displayed in action and overt consequences or not. Thinking hurtfully is violence.
Satya literally means "that which exists" and alludes to God. Satya implicitly contains three essential attributes of deity (being-consciousness-bliss). "Satya thus stands for truth about the universe and ... also stands for rita or Justice" (Bandyopadhyaya, 1969, p. 21). Note the circularity of reasoning - conceptual structures in Hindu culture parallel Hindu cyclical views on life, such as reincarnation. Hindu belief seems to include a judgement that linear, ends directed, thinking is superficial, childish, and perhaps even evil. This is an odd idea for Westerners to seriously contemplate, yet profoundly important for understanding the next concept, satyagraha.
The standard English translation of this famous term is that it is a combination of two Sanskrit words meaning Truth and Force. Thus it is defined as truth force. This translation is true but, again, desiccated. Deeper associated meanings and allusions are important. For example, Western science virtually equates truth with the factual, the measurable, and the reproducible. Clearly, Gandhi understood this. However, Gandhi seemed to particularly value the notion that God is Truth (and Truth is God). Western media "printed" Gandhi’s specific verbalizations about truth, but failed to communicate interpretive elaborations on the meaning of the words in India! Pity the oversimplifications of childish thinkers.
Gandhi believed that dharma requires adherence to the "law of ahimsa" and he communicated this conviction to Indians. By definition, Gandhi held that God/Truth dispenses perfect justice. In other words, the rich meanings of dharma are also imbedded in the term satyagraha. This means that the order of celestial existence defines and dispenses justice. Several things follow. First, rebellion and revolution are not synonymous. Non-violent revolutionaries are not rebellious. They may not be revolutionary, in the Western sense. They may be more counter-revolutionary, trying to follow the original order, the primal law. Political action gains an enlarged scope for action under this conception. People who live as God intends for them, such as by following the law of ahimsa, can access the power of satyagraha and thus wield political influence as satyagrahi. Satyagrahis are solders in a war against the illegitimate disrupters of dharmic order. Only perfection of the human soul leads the individual to the happy state of receiving perfect justice. This is the task of existence. The consequence of perfection is release from the samsaric cycles of suffering (bad karma) that are the legacy of one’s previous actions. Suffer now as a satyagrahi and accelerate your progress toward nirvana! Thus, it appears that the desire for justice and mercy is at the core of life, according to Hindu thought. It also seems that the justice-seeking motive need not (must not?) be abandoned on the way to nirvana. Striving to follow God’s directives and laws is assumed, much as in Christianity, except Gandhi did not anthropomorphize.
A slightly more subtle translation of satyagraha yields Soul Force. Thus satyagraha parallels the Western religious idea of moral power, one of the three "faces" of power (Boulding, 1978). In the long run the moral power of truth and soul has the greatest endurance. Thus, no matter how daunting the secular power of an opponent or the opponent’s "track record", the ideal approach to influence and persuasion is through soul-force. Victory is inevitable, if not immediate. The reader is reminded of Gandhi’s earlier quote "and so ahimsa is our supreme duty. If we take care of the means we are bound to reach the end sooner or later" (Gandhi: from Yeravada Mandir pg. 9). Satyagraha has greater meaning than implied by desiccated terms such as non-violence, and a radically different meaning than "passive" resistance. It involves willful, active forcefulness. If one rolls a rock over a cliff upon one’s enemy, some force must be expended before the greater force of gravity is utilized.
The way Gandhi mobilized satyagraha in human affairs was by "non-cooperation". The key target was fundamental Western social conventions that assaulted Indian people’s human dignity. Dignity was the key value Gandhi could "use" to get his people to "fight". His tactics emphasized first focusing on specific rules and structures, such as the prohibition against home-made salt in South Africa (to maintain the government monopoly). In today’s terms the next steps involved building awareness and commitment to the significance of the issue (i.e., break through denial). Next, came a premeditated act (e.g., a march) that culminated in high press coverage. Finally the moment of truth; a specific violation (defiance) of a unambiguous proscription. This brought out the forceful reaction of authority upon the satyagrahi. It also triggered created an "escalating commitment" dynamic (Staw,198x). For example, imagine a march of hundreds of miles to the sea in South Africa which culminates in a smiling Gandhi picking-up a pinch of salt from the beach in violation of the salt monopoly laws! Such a photograph, such punishment, such manifest unfairness to the poor! Brilliant political theater! Clearly, also Gandhi had massive courage, especially considering this all happened at the turn of the century.
Gandhi’s political genius was in formulating and orchestrating events which vividly demonstrated the true suffering that was caused by existing social structures. He did so in such a way that the beneficiaries of domination, who were otherwise detached from the consequences of their order, were spotlighted. Thus they lost invisibility. One is tempted to describe him as Machiavellian in the extreme and many of his critics considered him as such. However, remember his self-imposed moral limits. Noteworthy was his scrupulous attention to not taking advantage of adversaries when they were vulnerable due to other circumstances. A true Machiavellian might consider such a move to be clever or astute. For example, Gandhi was directly involved in providing medical services for the soldiers during the Boar War. He thereby earned the criticism, wrath and scorn of many Indian politicians and reformers. In today’s terminology, he was labeled an "Uncle Tom", hardly a fitting label for a real Machiavellian.
The logic Gandhi evoked in his followers was, essentially, "God is Truth". A fundamental truth is that human degradation violates the sacred core (spirit) of each individual. The challenge for the individual is to be assertive in the face of degradation, to not "buy-in" to the dominators’ logic. The most appropriate and viable responses are non-cooperation and non-compliance. Maintain your integrity. When the inherent coercive proclivities of a control system come to bear on the individual, s/he must suffer, must endure. Physical blows against the body involve less total suffering than the degradation itself, especially in the longer run. To fight fire with fire is to fail, both because one degrades oneself and because the overlords have overwhelmingly superior capacity for violence. Armed with only the "truth force", the individual renounces violence and in its place makes a big bet on the law--dharma.
Gandhi seemed to distinguish between violence and political pressure/coercion. Violence involves anger, hostility, hatred, and inhumanity to one’s brothers and sisters. Non-violent force is the enduring of pain and suffering without revenge, retribution, or anger (ahimsa). One demonstrates one’s strength of commitment to one’s "truth" by being willing to die for it, rather than by being willing to kill for it. Highly organized non-cooperative acts, such as stopping the economy of an entire nation, are clearly economically coercive, but not violent. Gandhi’s public fasting to the point of near-death and the feelings of sympathy and frustration mobilized by such spectacles could easily result in anger being directed at some of Britain’s leadership. It could affect elections or even be associated with more coercive acts. However, according to Gandhi’s logic, this is not violence. In actuality, massive social pressure on elites (to soften their control systems in light of the consequences) is dharma--shining through the veil of materiality.
Moral power is clearly seen as the countervailing force against materialistic power. Far from expecting the best from colonial overlords, Gandhi expected them to pursue their selfish materialistic ends with what ever force they had at their command. To Gandhi the conflict required a full willingness for total war. But fight the war on moral ground rather than physical ground. Satyagrahi were soldiers in this war. There is abundant evidence of moral rather than expedient thinking and choices in the pattern of Gandhi’s acts and in his idiosyncrasies during confrontations and other crucial periods. At the same time it is relatively clear that he was not a saint, a theologian, nor an academic. At his best, Gandhi was a General as well as a politician. He aggressively maneuvered, in anticipation of a contest so as to stage specific battles on advantageous ‘fields’. He also chose to fight certain known adversaries for whom he could predict moves and counter moves. Progress was measured by the capacity of either side to "fight", not the results of a particular battle. Gandhi endured devastating losses, only to regroup and prepare for the next time. Just as one would expect of any general, Gandhi was willing to have his followers imprisoned, maimed for life, and killed. Various weapons, such as fasting unto death (his final option), depended upon specific opportunities for communicating the progress of the battle of wills through the media. Tactics depended upon the character and priorities of particular people in specific roles of the British Government, as well as upon the nature of the issue at hand. He often treated a government official as worthy neutral or ally (except during specific battles), as illustrated by mobilizing political support for Britain during both the Boar War and WWI.
Since freedom of action comes through acquired virtue, it follows that swaraj (or the external freedom enjoyed by an individual) would depend directly on the degree of his self-perfection, through acquired virtue. An individual’s external swaraj cannot exceed his internal moral evolution. "Swaraj is thus fearlessness born out of self-perfection--as in the case of Socrates or Jesus Christ--a fearlessness that defies not only external authority, including the authority of the mightiest state or empire, but even death itself." "If swaraj is delayed it is because we are not prepared calmly to meet death and inconveniences less than death." "Those who defy death are free of all fear." (Bandyopadhyaya, 1969, pp 71-72). Again, one is struck by the radically different meaning of ‘freedom’ in the West and in India. Further, the idea of freedom does not stand alone (at a political level) in Gandhi’s thought. Freedom of action that has negative consequences (hurt) is not freedom. Hurtful actions are license. License results in the ultimate bondage, bad karma. Gandhi was not rebellious in the Western sense. He was defiant of materialism and materialism’s proclivity for violence. His defiance of Britain’s power and interests went beyond the merely human.
Becoming "desireless" is generally considered the key to the psychic state of freedom and is achieved by control of consciousness. One could be quite free in prison or a peasant shack and one could be enslaved among physical mobility and opulence. Freedom to Gandhi means escape from samsaric cycles. It is a specific kind of spiritual freedom. Gandhi’s freedom seems to most closely resemble the western religious idea of salvation. Perhaps this is the sense of freedom Jesus had in mind when he said, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free". Of course, it seems obvious that Christianity also embraces a non-scientific/non-factual conception of truth.
Westerners consider a desireless state to be repose (or burnout) and might impute being under-motivated and unproductive to individuals with no desire. But this is a superficial judgement. For example, a person can pursue purpose without distraction when competing desires are not in the way. If one is pursuing one’s highest calling, one is also free. The image of a professional, absorbed in work, is a Western prototype for this state. Consider a real example of a surgeon who does heart/lung transplants in cystic fibrosis children. She has "it all": Home, family, professional respect, and meaningful work. She has turned down opportunities in the U.S. at four to ten times her current Canadian income, because it is this community to which she is committed. She is desireless for a (quantum) increase in monetary riches.
A moment’s reflection emphasizes the fact that only a few in a million people can reach this professional’s level of ‘freedom’ by the path of "having it all". The rest of us might benefit from reflecting on Gandhi’s prescription for purification as the path to swaraj and thus to freedom. Purification is defined as the elimination of desire and retention of only purposeful action. Again, the implied standard of self-discipline is far beyond a Christian image of avoiding sin. It isn’t surprising that Gandhi looked like a saint to Westerners, but considered himself still far from adequate purity. He was, in fact, quite self-deprecating about not having achieved purity of mind during sleep. Gandhi did seem to achieve sufficient swaraj early in life to make a quick ascent to leadership upon arriving in South Africa. By the time of the first assassination attempt against him, that event itself only slightly disrupted his day. Substantial documentation shows that he was more than up to the task of facing death unafraid. A political cartoon of the 80’s has him telling Martin Luther King that "the odd thing is assassins think they have killed us". Poignant.
Opinions vary about much of Gandhi’s life but most would agree that, as the chosen son of district prime minister (who was the second generation of district prime ministers in his lineage) and as a London-educated lawyer, he was driven by high expectations. At the same time, it is clear that he was not headed for success as a lawyer or administrator in India. This lack of success at home led him to emigrate to South Africa via a contract with an Indian-owned business. He discovered his true genius, politics, in the assaultive environment of South Africa. Erik Erickson (1969) refers to his "finding himself" quite quickly during his South African political efforts on behalf of his fellow Indians. In the process of finding himself, he also crystallized his ethics and experimented with elements of his formidable program of action.
Revolution without the use of violence was the method by which Gandhi brought about the liberation of India... On the whole, I believe that Gandhi held the most enlightened views of all the political men in our time We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our case and to refrain from taking part in anything we believe as evil... Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. Gandhi, the greatest political genius of our time, indicated the path to be taken.
-- Albert Einstein
(essay in N. Coursins [ed.]
[1996]. Profiles of Gandi.
Delhi: Indian Book Company, pp. 99-100.)
Two decades of high profile Indian political leadership in South Africa resulted in Gandhi returning to India a hero, during its upheaval with Imperial Britain. Gandhi was trusted as being "for the people" as no other Indian politician, ever. He had a "proven" doctrine and an effective program of action, one that did not ask ordinary people to act against their morality. He had tremendous access to world media. Beyond these well-documented factors, Gandhi brilliantly and dramatically personified the plight of the Indian people and even of colonial India itself. Napoleon, in the early years, personified the glorification of the republican dream; Nelson personified the bold courage of the British Navy; and Churchill (some would say) personified the determination of the WWII British. Yet the duration, effectiveness, and completeness of Gandhi’s representation of India and his identification (Kelman, 1958) with India’s core aspirations were far beyond the reach of those other leaders. The way in which Gandhi identified with the culture and the needs of the Indian people inspired devotion and responsiveness. The congruence of his goals with fundamental Indian values and beliefs also yielded influence through internalization (Kelman, 1958). The quality by which he executed his influence earned him power that was needed to go against the compliance forces available to British colonial governors.
Gandhi seemed to believe in a reform process in which "truth" was asserted and evaluated by principled acts that brought down predictable suffering on one’s self. The process was all-powerful in his view. This contrasts with the Western Darwinistic assumption of the day that willful coercion (military/ economic/ bureaucratic) was the key to change. Power in the West was defined almost entirely as the willingness to inflict costs and suffering on others. In competitive "tests", this means that the "best" person, group and/or cause "won". Even today, for example, most Americans assume that the resolution of WWII came about because of the righteousness of the democratic way of life.
Perhaps losers of wars have something to teach the winners about the war that was. For example, to the Japanese one view is that the West’s victory was primarily a consequence of the overwhelming economic superiority of the British empire and its allies, compared to a divided socialist-communist-fascist cabal of challengers. In short, Anglo domination was in the cards because of the combination of 19th Century British empire and 20th Century North American economic expansion. That the challenging cabal avowedly pursued utterly brutal domination was not the decisive issue. Theirs was a last ditch effort to preserve their cultures in the face of an Anglo "new world order", which might last for centuries. Their bid for domination simply came too late. In fact, Gandhi saw significant similarities of brutality between Hitler’s Nazis and "us". The following quote deserves significant reflection. AGermany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked, when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy of weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness (Gandhi, Collected works, Vol. IV, p 312). Similarly, Winston Churchill famously commented at the end of WWII, that he did not mind Britain serving as the new Greeks to the Americans/Romans of modernity. The Romans, too, were brutally efficient. Is there evidence that this view might have some truth in it?
Indian culture is less focused on factual truth than is the West, and more focused on what the world’s great religions refer to as ultimate truth. Ultimate truth is generally admitted to be both abstract and difficult to logically communicate. Religions are organized around the winnowing of ideas that have poignantly touched the lives of various peoples in dim history. These ideas, images and practices help individuals and groups generate meaning and also help to sustain and guide them in the multigenerational task of participating in an ongoing society of mortal beings. It is the test of time in the retention of ideas that verify such ideas as "true". Survival is selection.
Muslim fundamentalists in Iran recently revolted to dramatically exclude certain Western utilitarian/materialistic cultural influences. There is little doubt that they saw no other viable way of controlling the Westernization processes which are broadly underway. Gandhi was less radical and more practical than such religious leaders. He comprehended and accepted that his people needed their embedded cultural truths to create the needed developmental path for themselves. But he was not an isolationist. Interaction with the British and the rest of the world was good, but carried the requirement of aggressive competition (even warfare) to resist cultural domination. Political warfare was his chosen mode and his solders were disciplined to suffer rather than impose suffering for their cause. He boldly experimented with non-violent non-cooperation almost from the start in South Africa. He focused satyagraha techniques to clearly delineate upward accountability for costs, as well as benefits, of what had previously been accepted as ‘reality’.
Gandhi saw a central task to be stripping off the veil of "impersonal systems" that was used to shield the beneficiaries of the system’s exploitative domination. Some people shout, "The emperor (empire) has no clothes". Gandhi took photographs! In today’s terminology he was a "Frame of Reference breaker" (Bolman and Deal, 1991; Frost, et al, 1991; Fairhurst and Sarr, 1996). For example, he broke the "benevolence" frame of reference of imperialism, by flushing out its inhumane iron rod and its contempt for the defenseless. Great theater, great education, great psychotherapy and, most of all, great politics. Combine these talents with Gandhi’s courage and self-sacrifice and one appreciates how he earned the label - Mahatma, or great soul (Maurer, 1969; Chopra, 1972).
Gandhi intensely asserted the importance of letting the force of truth do all the work and to not add to it any direct, personal force. He struggled with the adulation that came toward him and often showed active efforts to minimize its impact. In this sense he was neither charismatic nor demagogic. Still, charisma is a difficult quality to define or delimit (Conger, Kanungo, and Associates, 1988). Gandhi may not have had the extroverted personality of JFK or Patton, yet his satyagrahi venerated him and would follow him into battle with the same emotions Patton evoked in his army. Further, who could doubt that he was charismatic in the eyes of the common Indian people?
Gandhi did not polish his personality to generate charisma. Thus, he starkly contrasts with today’s mediagenic politicians of the West and with the current focus of academic work on charisma (e.g., Conger, et al, 1988). Gandhi’s charisma seems to have been generated at two levels. A third factor, integrity, seems to have made the other two "work".
The first, level involves Gandhi’s persona. He managed this scrupulously but, again, not for glamour. Instead, he showed an absolutely consistent lifetime record of acts of self-sacrifice for his people, steadiness under fire, and symbolic identification with the peasants. Imprisonment, beatings, political back-stabbing seemed to not alter his willingness to suffer for his people. He walked thousands of miles in a given season to visit countless villages. He gave himself utterly. This communicated stamina and a kind of fearlessness which demonstrates swaraj. His actual life goes beyond synthetic Hollywood heroes and others who emulate them. Nothing was momentary nor glib.
Second, Gandhi overtly demonstrated an unswerving compassion for all of his people. Specific manifestations included his humility and his "life style" (living as a virtual village peasant when not in prison). Further, his attention to matters of significance "only" to a specific common villager and his massive expenditure of energy, such as demonstrated in that most humble and universal experiences of peasants, walking.
Third was his integrity or, as psychologists might say, his tightly integrated and ordered personality. He literally walked his talk! He also ate what the common people ate and conformed to the religious disciplines of the people. Many examples document his willingness to emphasize means above ends, especially when hard choices had to be made. For example, he consistently canceled various demonstrations if there were the slightest violation of ahimsa. He did this in one instance when victory for the specific cause was within sight.
Politically orchestrating 350,000,000 agrarian people required more than charisma, and Gandhi had as much relevant talent as relevant character. For example, he was cunning in the way he focused his non-cooperative assertiveness so as to get media attention, and powerfully communicated a clear message. As noted earlier, he was more a director of street "theater" than an egocentric street fighter. Critics emphasize that his tactics would not work without relatively free communications of a modern democratic order, and this is true. Some order must be in place through which to work for a higher order. Russia’s recent troubles in Afghanistan pointed out the limits of totalitarian media control. For example, technology provided practical access to contraband video tapes, which showed graphic truths that were contrary to the claims of the government. Big brother as a helpless fool!
Gandhi also virtually redefined and reframed our conceptions of the rights associated with being human. For example, today, assertiveness is often called the ability to say "No". Our clarity on this owes much to Gandhi’s political perspective. The role of privacy in legal pinions of freedom today in the West is critical in many of leading edge issues and thus Gandhi’s work might also be affecting us today. For many, privacy is now fundamentally seen as the freedom to be left alone (Walter, 1984). This review has left the author standing in awe of Gandhi’s insightfulness, integrity, discipline, tolerance of pain, purposiveness, civility, and energy. One even is tempted to imagine that he paid too high a price for his principles, but such a judgment is tainted by the author’s own Western ethnocentrism.
Gandhi intentionally endured multiple beatings, assassination attempts, thousands of days of imprisonment, public vilification by adversaries (Churchill called him a fakir in diapers), a strikingly austere physical existence, and multiple fasts that brought him to death’s door. He was the first to admit that this was not for religious asceticism, but for political pragmatism. He was no monk. Simultaneously, he did not become a "victim" of either the British or the difficult politics of his own country in the eyes of the world or in his own eyes. Suffering is nearly synonymous with victimization in the West, as it slumps more deeply into consumption /entertainment decadence. When is a person really a victim? Remember, suffering in Hindu (and Buddhist) belief systems is the fundamental condition of material existence. Suffering is a condition of life, not evidence of victim-hood.
Contrary to the hedonistic/utilitarian West, the East seems to frame this entire issue within dharma. The individual needs to choose a life path with forethought about spiritual progress. For what purpose will one’s life stand and will one’s inevitable suffering be endured? Suffering occurs because perfection is not reached, not because someone else made one a victim. Thus Gandhi’s joy in suffering while in prison made him a victor rather than a victim in the minds of Indians. This is because his joy and peace showed that he was pursuing the proper path toward perfection.
Samsaric existence arises out of desire for something at a material level. Thus materialistic perception, motivation and action of the individual "enacts" that individual’s karma. Weick (1969) seems to capture the key social process idea of samsara, but without the Eastern religious imagery and associations and without normative judgments about desire or renunciation. Gandhi’s definition of freedom as internal, rather than political, is today far from incomprehensible or illegitimate. Instead, we recognize that self-fulfillment and self-actualization are closely related to it. How could Gandhi be a victim when one is self-actualizing fully? Whether or not India achieved independence in Gandhi’s lifetime did not define victory or defeat for Gandhi. His fundamental evaluative instrument was internal and, simultaneously, it was the solidity of purpose and integrity of Gandhi that guaranteed his purpose would be joined by others and would live beyond his personal, inevitable end.
Gandhi also set a standard for his people with regard to purposeful suffering. He showed them an alternative to "silently" enduring assaults on human dignity, even when the imperial "tyranny of nobody" would have preferred things framed another way. Compassion is a venerated form of love in all the major world religions. Compassion may even be fundamental to humanness. It may well be "bred in the bone" so to speak. Suffering does evoke compassion in at least some of those who witness it, perhaps in most. Thus Gandhi held a compelling view in believing that satyagraha has the irresistible force of truth, even if one steps away from a Hindu frame of reference. The hallmark of modern, mass, bureaucratized systems is, truly, a tyranny of nobody. The field of Organization and Management has been able to influence Western business and government leaders of the fundamental managerial importance of the ideas of the McGregors, Golembiewskis and Weicks. Gandhi approached implementing the same truth from the opposite end of the poverty/affluence continuum. However, he formulated his action plan in accord with the same fundamental human insights.
The more one studies Gandhi, the greater one’s appreciation of satyagraha as a political concept. Success in the U.S. civil rights movement is one direct result, but the concept is much more compatible with Hindu culture than with Western individualism. Imagine the Labor Union movement, which is still operating in the old Marxian oppression conceptual framework, making the satyagraha leap and joining forces with enlightened management. Imagine an emerging world order that avoids the constipation and waste of Western litigation. By comparison to satyagraha, Western legal approaches to conflict seem only one step removed from dueling at sunrise, or a gun fight at high noon. Perhaps the Chinese have a legitimate claim when they label Westerners "barbarians". Imagine people using non-violent, non-cooperation tactics and suffering to demonstrate legitimacy. What about restraint as not trying to hurt the specific people who "caused" the suffering? For example, Gandhi refused to identify specific people who beat him in the streets of South Africa, when he returned from a brief trip to India. Instead, he concentrated on dispelling false news reports of his criticisms of South Africa while in India. How many Westerners would even consider such self-restraint, even a hundred years later?
Political acts that "smoke out" the violence of the overlords help the masses face reality and step past their first level psychological defense, denial. They then can perceive that the "way things are" as not really value neutral. They penetrate the hypocrisy of institutionalized humanitarianism. They see past the form to the substance. The inevitability of the current order evaporates, as one views a yet more enduring level of truth. Scale of domination no longer serves as an equivalent to reality.
The fact that world systems are intentionally constructed to benefit specific people, perhaps unjustly, becomes simple to understand. It immediately follows that arrangements can be changed. But how? The mental focus switches from passive perception to active change management. Thus, once the peoples’ political will is mobilized, the objectives dramatically emerge or unfold. This is "truth in action", and is the essence of the democracy of interactive systems design (Wildavsky, 1988; Senge, 1990). This is why Gandhi says, "God is Truth and Truth is God" (Gandhi, 1946). The power mobilized by awareness of this revealed truth is the power inherent in democracies and perhaps a large portion of other societies. One must remember that even under King John’s rule England was contingent upon consent of the governed (i.e., Magna Carta).
Systems are deals between the governed and the governors. Institutional economics captures the essence of this aspect of organization defining organization as a "nexus of contracts" (Williamson, 1985). Contracts, or "deals", can be revised when one party decides that the deal is not just. This can be because of changing market circumstances, or other factors that affect the balance or power. Truth is our bottom line, too. But in the West it is the truth of relative market conditions which define the power to influence price.
This is true whether contracting is within democratic capitalism or some other ideological basis for governing. For example, consider for a moment communism, the materialistic power-failure story of the century. Stalinist/militaristic collectivization, Soviet gulags, and police state totalitarianism in the Soviet Union simply failed everyone--the people, the economic theory, science, and even those elites who dedicated their lives to pursuit of its ideals. The Russian people are mute evidence that the ability to endure suffering is mightier than awesome oppression. Why isn’t Korten concerned about their past or their present? Today Russians grope toward better lives, while not getting adequate Western corporate involvement.
Gandhi asserted that truth-force moves through the world evoking compassion, because compassion is a "true" human quality. Compassion, which differs from mere sympathy, was one of the essences of being human to Gandhi. For example, giving a dollar to a street panhandler relieves a person of feelings of sympathetic discomfort at the sight of one far less fortunate than oneself. True compassion requires either more or less help. Forty or more days of a fasting by Gandhi, in which he became so weak that he could no longer sit up, evoked deeper compassion. It required witnesses to respect his general political claim and to consider it seriously. It may also have evoked a specific political objective of the moment. In short, compassion required at least partial surrender to Gandhi’s point of view. Selfless suffering seems to prod thoughtful observers to generalize their comprehension of the suffering the purpose which the individual represents or symbolizes. An identity is momentarily forged. For an instant the witness grasps the essence of human brotherhood with regard to the focal issue. Gandhi held that no physical coercive system had a chance against such fundamental power. This is not blind faith, but acutely perceptive faith: Faith in the power of a fundamental underlying truth in existence.
In the final analysis, Gandhi must be concluded to have been both sincere and honest in his emphasis on truth-force. His was a mystical appreciation of truth, translated into practical politics. He demonstrated a good and useful test of truth. He demonstrated that a practical higher truth exists beyond mere fact. If properly communicated, this truth can be apprehended at multiple levels and for multiple perspectives across desperate cultures. It offers an alternative approach to domination in international affairs and thus in world development.
The stark reality of the coming century is that no super power exists to replace the countervailing ideological position of the collapsed Soviet Union. This power vacuum leaves 20th Century liberals in a fix, as illustrated by Korten’s ‘wild west’ portrayal of the bully (capitalism). How lost Korten must be. He seems to see only chaos, when the deeper reality is that the only thing that has been lost is a convenient dialectic between communism and capitalism. The main political convention, which framed the last half of this century, is gone. Let it go. It’s time to think bigger.
Wealth exploitation and pollution are two current evils against which Korten fulminates, and this paper accepts such problems as real. Few would quibble with Korten’s case for the risks of abuse of power or the ugliness of unbridled greed. But is this really the point? Isn’t the point that in the absence of a comfortable dialectic, liberals like Korten are at sea without a compass. They navigate now by hating capitalism because their love object is bankrupt. A better strategy would be to seek-out a meaningful goal in the spirit of Gandhi. Their dialectic has been reduced to a shrill, negativistic didacticism. Moreover the very shrillness of it identify it as himsa. Korten is a deflated automobile inner tube manufacturer in a tubeless tire age, railing against market chaos. Form without function, action without meaning, fury signifying nothing.
Meaning comes from transcendent values rather than denial of pragmatic reality. Gandhi showed and represents such a value, the value of human dignity. Governments inevitably assault culturally imbedded pivot points essential to human dignity. Capitalists are not the problem. Materialistic culture and structure is. This includes all of the modern West as well as Russia and much of the East. The very essence of the intangibles so badly discounted by modernity are the soulful aspects of being ignored by materialistic governments and cultures alike. Western culture is not so much bad as it is small. It is, simply, not big enough at this point in its evolution. Korten’s retreat into the old dialectic rather than commitment to a clear alternative transcendent value does not stimulate the needed depth of thought necessary for the challenge he announces.
This paper, therefore, looks at the goal of national development in light of Gandhi’s truth. Gandhi was acutely aware of the problems Korten addresses. If not so well mannered, Gandhi might even inquire, "What is new here?" Gandhi would probably reject Korten’s prescription as one that might solve specific problems but would not rectify the underlying systems dilemma at the very core of national development (Senge, 1990). Korten’s prescription is simply too risky. The inevitable threat is that "aid" will serve as a Trojan Horse, within which come the miners who sap the cultural self-determination of the focal nation. By analogy to individuals, such nations may gain the world but loose their soul. They may reduce some abuses by specific corporate players, but fall under a more suffocating, cultural hegemony.
Gandhi was clear about the prerequisites to building a long-term social order that retains the essence of major indigenous cultures. More importantly, perhaps, Gandhi believed that each ‘nation or people’ has something to contribute to world culture. Korten seems to almost believe this. But, he has more of a romantic (even sentimental) approach, reminding one more of Gauguin than Gandhi. Gandhi saw value in cultural diversity and he had a clear idea of what India had to offer the world to transform it beyond the linear and utilitarian. He thus anticipated the eco-diversity movement, dedicated to preserving uniqueness to making sure its adaptive potential was not lost. Gandhi’s vision for the next millennium centered on development of the highest possible world culture through veneration of "human potential". He particularly valued the human wisdom codified and preserved in ancient, grand cultures (such as India’s). In short, Gandhi would suggest "let it be". He would support finding ways of aiding the adaptation of indigenous cultures to modernity but would reject direct western government involvement.
Governments govern. They do so primarily according to internally generated objectives and priorities. When governments "help" other governments deal with new "troubles", hegemony is a likely quid pro quo. Isn’t this obvious? For example, Western governments may help limit forest industry ecological impact in the tropics while simultaneously shaping various nations’ economic and social priorities. Perhaps this influence will be "merely" in the direction of Western utilitarianism or perhaps it will serve a high-leverage western interest group. Interest groups (e.g., PACs) significantly influence definitions of "strategic" value.
Which is the greater moral dilemma, the West’s potential aid to Africa or pollution in SE Asia? Why do we not see this priority translated into governmental effort? The Gulf War demonstrated U.S. effectiveness in a high priority region. By contrast one sees, equivocation, inaction, and inarticulateness when facing various privations and evils in Africa, the former Yugoslavia, and so forth. Korten ignores these elementary realities. Africa has been virtually set adrift to economic stagnation and regression, plus tribalistic war and deteriorating health conditions. Shouldn’t genocide carry an automatic call for effective action from Western governments? How can Korten wring his hands about a handful of displaced South Seas aboriginals and simultaneously ignore the agony of Africa?
To act is to enact. To be effective is to affect. Today’s ideological power vacuum signals the need for very different nationalistic politics from those that fit neatly into the antiquated dialectic of the Cold War. The Cold War was WWIII. The good news is that "we" won it too! Korten’s vision of artificially re-inventing the Soviet Union’s countervailing power seems wasteful (downright un-utilitarian). Korten seems to look backward while trying to move forward. This seems an odd and unrealistic self-indulgence, since it goes against the march of time. Truth just might prevail if it were sought and provided with increased support. This is an ideal period in history for such forward looking aspirations. Gandhi advocated sharing in some of benefits of modernity by dispossessed people. He saw India’s autonomy as a kind of "first fruit" of 20th Century’s technological and economic advancement.
Looking forward today is more difficult than in Gandhi’s time, owing to the vacuum created by the failure of communism. Any vacuum is accompanied by ambiguity, anxious reflection, and confusion: A kind of chaos. Chaos is disorganization. Disorganization is uncomfortable but it also yields "unfreezing", the pre-requisite of broad systems change. Unfreezing empowers new energy centers, whether they be political constituencies or psychological forces. To pursue desired social unfreezing, today’s Western domestic socio-cultural agenda calls for "deconstruction" of such common terms as "man"hole covers, and fisher"men" (person hole covers and fishers). By contrast, Korten seems almost reactionary. He wishes to pre-empt the unfolding chaos of world-wide capitalistic development efforts. He advocates governmental actions which entrench both his dialectic and historic patterns of international hegemony. In a sense, Korten’s manifesto is dedicated to order without progress. It rails against a truism: Progress is sometimes messy. By contrast, Gandhi’s truth and his exemplary political career demonstrated that disorder is a price of progress. Gandhi illuminated a self-developmental path for his country and for others. As always, it takes will and wisdom to let the people seek their own future. How then can today’s developing nations pursue their unique goals?
Chaos creates opportunities for new, emergent leadership. Unfreezing is the price of progress. The very messiness of the capitalist "stampede" opens opportunities for indigenous leaders and their peoples. Today’s turbulent developmental conditions closely approximate "empowering". Thus "truth" has new opportunities to be heard. Consider Korea, for example. Korea has been virtual colony of the Chinese, the Mongolians, and the Japanese for a substantial portion of its long history. Imperial hegemony is as old as the profit motive. Further, Korea might have been assumed to be a semi-colony of the US before Russia’s collapse and, perhaps, highly hedged-in by Russia itself. Now all is changed. The Soviet/Chinese threat meant Korea risked degenerating into a Yugoslavia. Now the balance is changed. Today South Korea is reeling from a massive devaluation of the Won. Is this worse than the eminent risk of a military contest? Korea just might create a "new-synthesis" from its complex history of contradictions and conflicts to yield a stronger and more successful "Korea for Koreans". Today also, North Korea is undergoing a massive crisis in which estimates of two million people dying of starvation in the winter of 1997-8 are filtering-out to the west. South Korea may be able to help its northern cousin. How?
Korea clearly needs emergent leaders who differ from those of the past. At the same time it must continue its long history of adroitly managing the diplomatic balance between competing outside governments (and business) interests. Korten’s prescription simply ignores the reality of Korea’s evolutionary challenge. Instead of restraining capitalistic exploitation, Korea seems to need a balancing of international governmental and other forces, such as was achieved by Switzerland 350 years ago. The formula for such a feat will differ fundamentally from specific historic solutions since physical proximity, natural geographic barriers, and so forth will not have the same significance in the 21st Century as they have had in the past. Korten fails to ask fundamentally relevant questions about world-wide development for countries such as Korea. What institutional structure, other than mutual tolerance by governments would provide the best matrix to sponsor such development? What facilitative factors need to be present? How could the distinctive cultural threads be identified, drawn together and woven into a meaningful identity that would be uniquely Korean and would serve the interests of Koreans best? Korten’s ignores these very real and pressing questions of world-wide economic development.
Gandhi saw a single glaring reality facing India, long-term British governmental hegemony. Gandhi prescribed small scale manufacturing and local village economic self-sufficiency for India, as well as thoughtful secularization of Hindu ideals and principles. This was largely to free India from passive dependency patterns, developed under colonialism. He wanted to reform both the exploitative structures of colonialism and the evils of traditionalism such as the cast system. He saw these and many other ills of India as deviations from pivotal Indian cultural values. Much as the French Enlightenment provided the idealistic spark for the American Revolution, Gandhi found the inspiration for Indian self-rule in the ancient Vedas and the Upanishads. Gandhi was India’s Rousseau. He saw that religious and educational structures of India had an essential role to play in his country’s development, as did democratic political processes.
Other nations with emergent cultural self-determination agendas abound today. For example, Iran is currently stabilizing a regime that Gandhi would have appreciated, if not admired. Surprisingly, Korten seems to take no notice of Iran’s priestly cast’s leadership in asserting Iran’s cultural rejection of the vacuous materialism of modern, Westernized culture (See MacIntyre, 1981). The Western media call the Iranian regime "medieval", implying that it is merely regression or even a total loss. However, it is quite possible that a period of medieval retreat and cultural consolidation and preparation is not a bad alternative for the Iranian people or for other societies that might well disintegrate or loose key cultural goods if they merely followed broad Western influence. Pollution and natural resource exploitation appear to be not the main concern of the vast majority of Iranians. It seems that they have more trust in Iran’s Moslem priestly class than Western government (utilitarian) functionaries. Why does Korten embrace the noble savage of the south seas but reject Iran and ignore Korea and Africa? Lets also not join Korten in forgetting how the Chinese Government "saved" Tibet in the 50’s from the medieval influences and threat of the Dalai Lama by killing one million of its five million population and destroying 6,000 Buddhist monasteries.
Korten needs to acknowledge and admit certain glaring realities. Governmental "help" tends to sap the inner direction and self-determination of most peoples it permeates. For example, is there any historical evidence or logical reason to believe that governments (National or multinational) can restrain themselves from establishing parallel agencies and structures within client governments? In fact Western governments are, if anything, more ethnocentric than most business people. At least business people tend to try to play by local rules and, simply, make a dollar.
Korten seems to notice and accept that corruption and abuse of power are an ever-present danger. However, he ignores the fact that Western cultural hegemony is more likely to occur if both Western business and governments get involved, than if only one does. The very chaos of today’s "stampede of greed", might be preferred. The sad reality of Darwinian struggles is that some orders and regimes will not survive. Let’s join Korten’s lament that the world is a little less rich in cultural diversity because of this. Yet let’s not join Korten’s wishful thinking that such fundamentals of the human condition do not exist. Wishing does not change reality. In fact, Korten’s governmental "helpers" actually increase the key problem, rather than reduce it, through cultural hegemony.
The provocative Darwinian question is "Who will survive?" One obvious answer is that nations and peoples which are not easily exploitable or corruptible by eager capitalists will survive. China and India are obvious good bets, because of their cultural richness and sheer numbers. So too are Korea and Singapore. Some countries in Southeast Asia will flourish and preserve their cultures and some countries will not. This may have more to do with strategic value (resources, logistics, and location) than with anything else. Neo-Confucian cultures, which to have been significant beneficiaries of Post WWII development, are not necessarily favored in the coming period. Is this good news or bad news for them? Many African countries are not attractive to capital these days. Thus they will likely drift for a period. Should we be happy or sad for countries that preserve their heritage, but fail to attract development capital? Does it matter that such countries will experience a declining standard of living and infant mortality will rise? Korea’s recent Won devaluation was to one quarter of its previous exchange rate. Korten seems to assume we should not worry about such factors. Tell that to the parents of starving children in North Korea and Africa. What about the genocidal conflicts in Africa and elsewhere? Are we so jaded that such barbarisms fail to stir us and our governments to effective action? Is mining pollution in the south seas more significant? How can Korten miss this one?
The ancient Romans were quick to get an area "organized and normalized", following conquest. Why is Korten is such a rush to impose further order on the "new world order" so clearly announced and demonstrated by President Bush? Is such tidiness for us, rather than for them? Korten seems to abhor the chaos of unfreezing, to ignore the vast populations currently suffering and instead emphasize extinction of peoples on the fringe of the worlds’ major civilizations. What about bread and butter issues for the vast majority of the world’s needy peoples?
Think of Gandhi merely emerging early in the Century of one of many voices leading to India’s shrugging off of British colonialism. Truth has a chance now! Gandhi would be exuberant with the possibilities. Further, consider the evolution of India this century. Gandhi himself could not provide all the leadership in that struggle, nor could he live long enough to see its full flowering. What is needed for successful emergence of leadership in the fast approaching century? It takes decades, generations and even centuries for such forces to emerge. Why Korten’s time urgency? Can’t we simply allow the changes to come out of emergence instead of making it an emergency?
Consider the possibility that we should rejoice at today’s fluid situation, instead of aggressively "solving the problem". Change is on the march. Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline (1990) illustrates a highly pertinent truth about change and its management. If one deals with problems at a symptomatic or even a problem level, one wastes time and resources and "shifts the burden" out into the future. The "fifth" discipline is doing the tough work of systems analysis, and then changing the system. This is meaningful constructive change. According to Senge and most comparable change scholars, the rest is superficial ‘band-aiding’. Gandhi, of course, anticipated this and agrees with the emerging position. The key difference is that today one does not necessarily need the religious frame within which Gandhi operated.
Why is Korten so enthusiastic about vilifying corporations and in such a hurry to "fix that problem"? How can he miss the blindingly obvious "larger picture"? Western dominance is the issue. Pursuing the path to cultural self-determination for peoples and nations will take time. More Western governmental involvement increases domination, while restraining specific problems. The vacuum in the absence of the old dialectic is real, but it appears that dialectical assumptions and thinking are part of the systems challenge facing the world at this juncture. We all must move higher in our thinking.
Gandhi believed that his country could teach the world significant lessons about benevolence and compassionate relations in work-a-day small communities. Gandhi believed in the value of India’s unique Hindu (and Moslem) pattern and he believed that India’s rich cultural history offered wisdom which had a ‘right’ to both preservation and world influence. He saw such community structures as an alternative to the city/factory/office tower/highway social order of the West. Cultural self-determination is freedom. Freedom unleashes exhilarating opportunities but also involves risks, obligations, and costs. Gandhi clearly judged cultural self-determination to be his people’s duty to dharma. As such, cultural self-determination is sacred. In short, it must come first. Cultural self-determination is not merely a utilitarian accouterment.
All change involves loss and also often involves risks that can be painful to bare (Bowlby, 1973; Walter and Marks, 1981). Avoiding suffering and loss is not a viable objective or strategy during massive change. Unfortunately, for Korten’s agenda, the less risky and painful paths to development are ‘hedged’ about. Explicitly Colonial hegemony will probably not characterize the next century. However protectorates, spheres of influence, trusteeships and many other modified forms of hegemony will, as evidenced by the fact that they still exist for the U.S. and many other Western powers. Just ask Manuel Noriega! Hegemony may not be as permanent as extinction - but the ‘new world order’ structures being put in place now and in the coming twenty to fifty years are likely to endure for centuries. Corporations won’t, nor will the agendas they pursue today. Why accelerate and intensify the seemingly inevitable Western cultural predominance?
Contemplating the U.S. and its government at this historical juncture resembles an intermission of an Arnold Schwarzenegger action thriller. There the hero stands amongst the rubble which was once his adversary. Slightly dazed, sheepish and relieved; Arnold is also feeling a little guilty and awkward about the mess he has made in subduing the assigned evil target. What to do next? Korten would have Arnold and us act on that guilt and self-consciousness. He cajoles us to start cleaning up the mess, naughty, large, forceful children that Arnold and we are. By contrast, Gandhi had no time for guilt. In fact guilt does not fit particularly well in his doctrine. Guilt is a Judeo-Christian ethnocentrism, and a poor ethical substitute for well thought out ideals, principles, and purposes (MacIntyre, 1981).
By contrast, Gandhi pursued a clear purpose. His purpose was the preservation and advancement of a culture and a people. He was a radical individualist, so much so that extreme Libertarians and even the DAR would be proud of his agenda. Perhaps we should reflect a bit more on his frame of reference, since India was the mother to both Hinduism and Buddhism and is a significant home of Mohammedism, the three great religions of the East.
These Eastern belief systems pertain to the vast majority of the peoples who are likely to come under the influence of Western corporations in the coming century. They are a fundamental, living element of those peoples’ cultures. Gandhi would probably advise us to concentrate on appreciating and respecting the key values of all these cultures. This requires cultural awareness and sensitivity, not guilt-motivated regulation. Korten has applied arguments about relatively isolated cases involving less robust cultural systems. One size does not fit all in the emerging era. Governmental regulatory tools of yesterday’s liberals may be obsolete and irrelevant to societies with richly developed (but non-modernized/utilitarian) cultures. Why would Korten ignore the majority of people who are relevant to the next century of development?
A living culture offers the world and its own people something unique and valuable. More importantly, the value resides beyond nostalgia. It is radically different from academic ruminations. Gandhi’s image of Indian freedom is the antithesis of cultural extinction. Gandhi’s solution is better than the one offered by Korten, even though its concern for the peasant may not have been extended to the noble savage. Gandhi prescribes less Western governmental involvement, not more. Gandhi thus offers a viable and practical approach to maximizing world cultural diversity in the coming millennium. This should comfort those who highly value diversity. Quite simply, different nations will have different internal and external challenges and responses. They are capable of building upon their own foundations as they enact their own futures.
The Cultural Frontier
Inner space, not outer space, is the new frontier. Gandhi, Jung, (1965) and more recently, Joseph Campbell (1976, a,b,c) have shown us how intricately connected culture (including religion and myth) is with inner space. Gandhi’s insights continue to be utilized within Western culture, as "we" grope our way along our developmental path. Westerners must remember that we too are, at best, a developing and possibly even a decaying culture. Gandhi wrote All Men are My Brothers and demonstrated in his life how to proceed in accord with that insight and belief. What have we learned from the man who, a hundred years ago, said, "I am black and I am beautiful."?
One shudders at the thought of the West, uninfluenced by Gandhi’s truth? What kind of a society would the U.S. be today if it were not for Gandhi’s inspiration? Would the Civil Rights Movement have occurred? Would its effectiveness have been as substantial without the influence of Gandhi and India? Gandhi’s philosophy and the politics of non-violent non-cooperation precipitated massive social change in Britain and the US. Gandhi’s India has helped the West comprehend a "kinder, gentler way" to social organization. Last year a person from the former "Untouchables Cast" was elected Prime Minister of India! What a landmark event for human equality and freedom. The cradle of democracy and the cradle of ahimsa, mutually influencing siblings! This progress should not go unnoticed or uncelebrated.
What great things are yet to be learned from Japanese Zen masters, Chinese calligraphers and Taoists, Tibetan Lamas, to mention only a few of the obvious? By contrast, we in the west seem to be particularly adept at utilitarian action. This is a significant portion of what the West has to give others. Do we really want to "protect" each and every people from a change of "life-style" to such a degree that we inhibit free exchange with other cultures. Many societies have a likelihood of long term survival and high cultural self-determination potential. Should we inhibit their growth and thereby loose the opportunity in some distant future for these people to help the West in its development? More and more nations in the next century will be in a position to share their cultural legacy and help the human family build a fundamentally better, higher, world culture. Gandhi would consider such advancement to be the truth made manifest. I wish I could be around to witness the effects of the great unfolding of truth made manifest in the coming centuries!