Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The Politics of Engagement in Post-Truth Times by Vinay Lal ISBN 9780198936657, 0198936656 instant download

Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The Politics of Engagement in Post-Truth Times by Vinay Lal ISBN 9780198936657, 0198936656 instant download

A massive industry of scholarship and commentary has developed around the life, thought, and work of Mohandas Gandhi. Yet, as this introduction to the volume argues, we are far from exhausting our understanding of Gandhi, and indeed there are many enigmas that come to the fore when we put him under scrutiny. He could be authoritarian and yet he was a radical democrat in many ways; he was a devout Hindu but was viewed by Christians as a better Christian than any they had ever known; he was entirely ecumenical in his conception of his religion and yet not sympathetic to conversion; and he was astute in his understanding of politics and yet he entirely disavowed political rationality and normal politics. One could go on in this vein, almost ad infinitum. This introduction suggests that we should forgo attempts to make him ‘relevant’, and that it is not ethically or intellectually productive to view him through the lens of ‘diversity’. Rather, it is argued, using the terms associated with the philosopher of religion James Carse, that Gandhi was a player of infinite rather than finite games, and the introduction invites the reader to consider Gandhi’s life as a vision of play and possibility.