Mahatma Gandhi and Link with Modernity Essay Example

There is no plain explanation as to why Gandhi condemned and criticized modernity. It is, however, important to note that he condemned specific units of modernity. He majored on condemning political organization in the modern setting and the professionalism. There is no doubt that there was a major change in human civilization as it transited from the pre-modern to modern civilization.

The machines that were being used in the pre-modern era were built just to fulfill the requirements of the specific community. These machines were also built to be specific to the needs and were rarely used in differentiated tasks. The machines then were individually sufficient in nature. This changed with the modern society, but still, machines were not the greatest concern to Gandhi. According to Gandhi’s philosophy, today’s environmental and ecological problems have their roots in the behavior and individual attitudes of people.

He said that we are all complicit in the destruction of nature because we all agree to benefit from the exploitation of what is extracted from it. This may be why he rejected certain facets of modernity. Gandhi taught how valuable work is, and how harmful waste is. Labor is not something to be avoided; it is something that brings dignity and self-realization to human beings.

The greatest sin is a waste. One must only take from the earth what he needs, and nothing more. These last two ideas are based directly on the teachings of the Gandhi. For these reasons he opposed industrialization and precisely, modernization. It wastes resources and takes away people’s need for work.

Gandhi saw how English rule in India was based on exploiting the land’s resources. Cotton, wood, and other

raw materials were taken to British factories to be sold back in India. The effect was to destroy the traditional internal economy of the country. He believed that it would not be enough to call others not to cut more jungle or emit more carbon IV oxide from their chimneys unless we were willing to make similar sacrifices. It would not be enough to use unleaded fuel or ecological vehicles; as such measures do not address the problem.

They only allow us to keep our habits of waste, postponing the moment of truth. We would have to find an alternative to the self, and to the Western lifestyle that is based on it. This would undoubtedly require a high degree of personal sacrifice and commitment of public political will. Perhaps the greatest reason for opposing modernity was that mechanization would bring unemployment. Gandhi said that he had nothing against the machine itself; After all, the human body is an exquisite machine.

Some machines, such as the spinning wheel or wheelbarrow, are beneficial because they extend the power of the human hand. Provided that the machine is in the service of the human hand, and the hand itself energizes it, it can be valuable. However, he denounced madness for what they call machines that save work. People are saving jobs until thousands are unemployed and starving in the streets. He said that he would like to save time and work, not for a small fraction of humanity, but for all. He would want to see wealth concentrated, not in the hands of a few, but in the hands of all.

It was this tendency of industrialization, concentrating power and

wealth in the hands of an elite few people, whom Gandhi saw as the greatest danger. It meant the end of the ancestral economy of Indian villages, as it deprived the individual and the community of the way to control their way of living life. Now, almost 80 years after he wrote these words, we can see how the concentration of production and capital in a tiny minority of the world, mostly in the West, has meant the dismemberment of traditional lifestyles in all corners of the world. Gandhi's response to this threat was, to revive the villages of India.

In 1924, he began his movement to transform the Indian villages of chicleros into ideal settlements (Chakrabarty, 29). He believed that villages should be home to small industries and handicrafts, and the main production should be khadi or artisan cotton cloth. Also, hand-made flour, spices, soaps, matches, leathers, oils and many other products. He emphasized the need for the entire population to participate in their hard work and support.

Everyone should see it as a matter of honor to use only articles produced in the village at any time and place where possible. Gandhi was vibrant on addressing issues that affected the community directly like the political systems where the community was left at bay. His concern seemed to be that the new systems majored on individuals rather than the community. Professionals like doctors and lawyers were individuals in the modern world unlike before when they were committed to community service. Gandhi’s perspective is difficult to understand and contemplate therefore one has to be keen on the issue to understand it. Being a philosopher, Gandhi wrote about

many things in the community.

Other than just being a critic of modernity, he is known to be a strong oppose of feminism. This is again a shocker about him because he was against modernity and yet he shared modernity’s opinion on matters concerning feminism. He, however, maintained that women were to serve their duty of serving their husbands regardless the elevation they got from society. Mahatma Gandhi once said that the day when a woman will be able to walk freely at night, then that day India can say that it has achieved independence. He fought for against the atrocities that took place in India. Women were not allowed to hold any political offices.

He argued that women have to feel protected in their country; they have to be free, to walk without being afraid of what can happen to them. He believed that there were many aspects of women empowerment that had to change, not only in India but the whole world. A country cannot be considered democratic if women, who are part of society, do not feel part of that democracy. Women in India, especially in rural areas, experienced changes in their lives through health.

Through Gandhi’s efforts, women in India today enjoy many liberties such as empowerment and savings programs that enabled them to access small-scale finances to start up their businesses. This way he improved their expectations and gave women a voice in their communities and families. It was not only progress but justice but for equality and peace as well. He had a strong stand against violence. To eradicate violence, he believed in working together in harmony.

Mahatma Gandhi is also considered a

world leader in the culture of non-violence. His contributions come from his life and supported by the media. He was able to lead India to achieve independence from the British without making a single shot against the English inclemency. Gandhi considered feminism as a movement whose objective was to end an oppressive and discriminatory system in India and the world as well as to the non-egalitarian behaviors that support it. Therefore, the goal of feminism that he claimed was to achieve a society in which all people regardless of gender are the same, with respectful, happy relationships, quality and good treatment between women and men. One of the Gandhi’s goals as an advocate of feminism was to make women independent, capable of decision and independent.

In short, these efforts were aimed at empowering women. He was one of the few people who analyzed the situation of women in India and realized the needs and interests of poor women, and made feminist efforts to the main referents of the strategy to address gender inequality. This raised the need to change the economic and political structures of his time which were crucial in fighting women poverty and inequality. He developed a movement that not only strived to promote peace and nonviolence in the face of colonialism, but also against the social devaluation of the feminine. It was aimed at putting pride in being a woman and passing on that feeling to many other women, as a way of creating and strengthening a collective self-esteem and as a basis for changing society. This is how collective empowerment is achieved.

Starting from a private process, to arrive at a common process,

by which the interests of the women are related, and the efforts and the collective influence are united, to participate in the social change. That is to say: women empowerment, from Gandhi’s feminist point of view, did not end in the individual. However, it transcended collective space, so that the work done from individuality and subjectivity would serve to organize women around the struggle for their collective interests. Gandhi’s efforts were also aimed at strengthening collective consciousness to maintain feminine energy and enthusiasm over time. He believed that sustaining and consolidating women in groups are one of the central indicators for measuring the progress of this level of women’s empowerment. With this, women began to believe in their rights and transform the relationships, structures, and institutions that limit them while at the same time perpetuate the situation of their subordination.

One area that he fought for women empowerment was in the inclusion of women in leadership. Women are empowered through their active participation in all areas where decisions are made that are relevant to them and their groups of belonging. Participation was not limited to being heard by others but also was aimed at publicizing their interests, promote their agendas of demands and implement strategies to modify laws and policies. In essence, this would contribute and defend their visions and alternatives to general problems, build strong and diverse feminist leaderships that would influence the world politically and from institutions. The way in which he politically directed the Hindus to channel their independence struggle by showing peaceful resistance was written in history in large print. Indirectly, the movement of peaceful revolution also influenced other revolts like Civil

Rights Movement in America as well as the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa in the late twentieth century.

The influence of his teaching has stretched all over the world. To speak of Mahatma Gandhi is to recognize his condition of a fighter, without arriving at the violence, position that deserved to be the Indian nationalist leader that took to his country to obtain the independence using a pacific resistance. In Gandhi, lies a variety of values that give rise to a new concept of pacifism through the philosophy and practice of non-violence. It is considered an active model for individual and social liberation, as well as for the peaceful reform of man and the social structures in which humankind is immersed. He had a strong conviction that self-violence is more powerful than the most sophisticated weapon of destruction invented by the ingenuity of man.

Gandhi acknowledged that among the causes of the precarious situation of large sectors of the contemporary world, it is because states spend on military equipment the budgets that are necessary to alleviate world hunger. He once said that arms are more likely to be responsible than the opium of misery in the world. Conscious of this, he believed that there would be no peace in the world unless people and their rulers renounce their desire for power. They must also denounce the use of violent methods, the machines of destruction and war, and work sincerely and truly to establish relations.

In his quest for peaceful revolution, he was imprisoned on numerous occasions and managed to mobilize millions of Indians while always promoting a culture of peace. With the teachings of Gandhi’s philosophy, it is

necessary to develop future generations through the values of building a more democratic, just and responsible country in the construction of peace which eradicates acts of violence. The key to peace lies precisely in respect of the rights of others. It is, therefore, necessary that society from the different instances, governmental and non-governmental sectors, permanently unite to work in the formation of solidarity, willing and cooperative human beings to solve social problems. Gandhi sacrificed his life so that the women and all people could fight for their ideals without resorting to violence.

Faced with powerful political and economic forces, Gandhi bravely struggled to preserve his simple style of living. It is the economic behavior of a society that determines how it treats its land and natural resources. For this reason, any discussion of environmental values must necessarily address the economic issue. India’s village economy provided a practical example of a truly ecological style of living life.

Gandhi recognized this truth. He believed that it would be impossible to achieve change in society without achieving changes in behavior. Changing the way people act means changing the way they think. Therefore, Gandhi's main objective was to change people’s philosophy of life. He did not want people to identify any group of people with any particular religion. Gandhi's philosophy of life, therefore, was rooted in the Hindu tradition, and so he had a profound impact on Hindu society in his time.

He grew up a vegetarian and as a young man decided to adopt the principle of non-violence, in its deepest sense. His concept of non-violence meant more than not physically damaging others or being a vegetarian. It was rather a

code of chivalry that required no one else to suffer any inconvenience because of it. It meant that he could only take from the world what was necessary to him, because if he took more, he would be depriving another.

It also meant that he should not ask another person for anything that he was not willing to ask or to suffer himself. He believed that the independence he longed for India could only be achieved through this non-violence. A non-violent economy, Gandhi taught, was one that did not exploit anyone. It is one in which no one else takes more than you can use, because if you took too much, they would indeed be stealing from someone else. He wrote that nonviolence is a fundamental law of nature; nature produces enough to satisfy our day-to-day needs, and if only each person took enough for their needs and nothing else, there would be no poverty in this world. This philosophy, in this modern age, would call humankind to stop supporting the modernity and industrialization of the global economy which is responsible for so much pollution and devastation of natural resources of the earth by withdrawing our cooperation with it.

Gandhi believed that independence would be achieved by teaching the Indian people how to live simply and positively and, above all, nonviolent. He felt that obedience to British rule owed more to the Indians than to the British, for they could not control the country without their cooperation. “Englishmen have not taken India,” he said, “We have given it to them”. They are not here because of their strength but because we maintain them. The people only had

to withdraw their collaboration, peacefully and without violence, and the English would have to leave.

Consequently, with the Hindu tradition, he taught that life should be seen as a whole and that a corresponding internal change must accompany any attempt at external change. Self-determination of the nation would not be achieved without self-control of the individual. The public could not act nonviolently until the individual learned to do the same. For this reason, morality, and personal ethics was the root of any change. In the long and agitated struggle for Indian independence, Gandhi was faced with many setbacks. The English frequently imprisoned him for extended periods.

He made 18 protest fasts, mainly for the acts of his people, and many times he was disappointed. However, from 1919 to independence in 1947, he was one of the highest spiritual and popular leaders, who provided purpose and direction. None of the new political leaders appeared to take Gandhi's vision of a peaceful, rural society seriously, however. On the contrary, now that they had the power to govern, they wanted to industrialize India and make it become a world economic power. What happened then is known history. For 40 years India has become the largest industrial and military power in Southeast Asia.

In human terms, the price of this apparent success has been enormous. Its population has more than doubled and with it the number of poor. Their land, their villages and their people have been ruined. In 1948, the year after independence, Gandhi was killed by a Hindu fanatic who rejected his pacifism. He left behind what now seems to be only a dream of what might have existed.

Perhaps his

epitaph might be this. It is remarkable that Gandhi, who lived in a place so remote from the modern world, and whose life had ended in the middle of the 20th century, has so much to tell us today.

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