Gokhale and Gandhi:

GOKHALE AND GANDHI:
SPIRITUALITY IN PUBLIC LIFE *

PROF. D. G. KARVE
Formerly, Vice-Chancellor, Poona University

Speaking at a function which must have been among the very first held to pay homage to Gokhale after his demise, which had occurred only a few weeks earlier, Gandhi said (Jubilee Souvenir of the G. I. P. A., Pp. 84-86):

“I have declared myself his disciple in the political field and I have him as my Raj-Guru, and this I claim on behalf of the Indian people. It was in 1896 that I made this declaration and I do not regret having made the choice.”

He went on to say: “Mr. Gokhale taught me that the dream of every Indian who claims to love his country, should be to act in the political field, not to glorify it in language, but to spiritualize the political life of the country, and the political institutions of the country.”

In view of the fact that Gokhale exhorted his countrymen to spiritualire public life, and that this exhortation evoked a deep, reverent and abiding response in the heart of Gandhi, whom later generations have cherished as the Father of the Nation, the concept of “spirituality in public life” may merit close attention. In the same speech of Gandhi, he asked:

“What is the meaning of spiritualizing the political life of the country?”

Admitting that it was difficult to offer a generally acceptable answer, he declared his own response as follows:

“I think the political life must be an echo of private life and there cannot be any divorce between the two.”

Going through the several speeches of Gokhale, where a reference to an appropriate attitude towards politics and public life occurs, and keeping in view some of the controversies on a high moral and political plane which went on when Gandhi made his first speech about Gokhale, his remarks have a special significance. If political life, that is, those activities of one’s life which have their origin in one’s position as a member of the polity, the state, is treated by citizens as an optional and additional activity, their interest in public affairs is at best casual. With the mass of the people having no more than an indifferent or only occasional interest in politics, a democratic or liberal form of government, built on the assumption of active participation of citizens, is ruled out. For both Gandhi and Gokhale the objective of political struggle was not only to gain freedom from Britain, but to get it in such manner that the Indian State, which will emerge at the end, will be a democratic, progressive and equalitarian society. For, an integrated goal of political activity such as this the distinction between ends and means was most crucial.

There were not a few among the well-known contemporaries of Gokhale, and later of Gandhi, who felt that achievement of political freedom from foreign rule was itself such a supremely moral end that any controversy about the ethical merits of the means to be adopted to attain that end was irrelevant. Gokhale and Gandhi very emphatically held a different view on the subject. According to them political or civic conduct is, or ought to be, part and parcel of the normal life of a member of a civilized community. Not only must he give to civic and political interests the same attention which he normally gives to his personal or family interests, he must also be held accountable in both spheres to the same standards of good behaviour. Political life, said Gandhi, must be an echo of private life, there cannot be any divorce between the two. In fact, Gandhi expressed his views about the crucial importance of the quality of means in a social transformation more firmly on another occasion when he observed: “It is true we cannot rise till our political condition is reformed. But it is not true that we shall be able to progress if our political condition undergoes a change by any means and in any manner.” **

As Gokhale was among the very first of his countrymen to appreciate fully the high moral plane on which Gandhi moved–the first meeting between the two is described by Gandhi as “love at first sight”–he continued throughout his later life to pay unstinted public tribute to Gandhi, to his work in South Africa and to his teachings. In one of his innumerable references to Gandhi, Gokhale said that in him Indian humanity has reached its high-water mark. While appreciating, and following, the high principles of fairness and morality in public life which the two shared, Gokhale was prepared to devote himself in a workmanlike manner to the essential task of building India’s public life. Throughout his career Gokhale worked as a Congressman, and he filled several positions in that organization. In 1903 when he was only 37 years of age, he was elected Joint Secretary of the Congress. In that capacity he toured the country to create the necessary interest in, and to guide the progress of public life. The speech that he delivered in Madras in July 1904 was an occasion for him to make an important statement of his views on public life in India.

He first dealt with those who had by then grown weary and pessimistic about the results of political activity conducted by the Congress. Gokhale felt that considering the strength of those who were entrenched in power, and the weakness of the people seeking their rightful position, the achievements in respect of creating and organizing public opinion were by no means meagre or discouraging. The struggle, in his opinion, was bound to be a long and arduous one in which success will depend on the development of the people’s capacity and character, and on the quality of their efforts individual as well as institutional. To those who felt that it would be more fruitful to turn the organised activities of people into industrial channels, Gokhale answered: “It is with me a firm conviction that unless you have a more effective and more potent voice in the government of your own country, in the administration of your affairs, in the expenditure of your own revenues, it is not possible for you to effect much in the way of industrial development.” The spurt in planned economic development which has occurred in independent India during the last fifteen years, in contrast with the systematic stunting of India’s economic life under foreign rule for over a hundred and fifty years, fully bears out the validity of Gokhale’s analysis and his emphasis on priority of political work.

The circumstances of the times, he thought, justified, better hopes and called for more intensive and disciplined action. He declared that “Our public life is really feeble and ineffective because it is so faint-hearted and so soulless. Very few of us have really faith in the work we are doing.” He went on to add that if we desire to emulate the example of Japan–which was then emerging as a strong Asian power–we must have a more concentrated and more disciplined public life. Elaborating the same thought further he observed:

“The day has gone by when politics could afford to be amateurish in this land. It has been ameteurish in the past but the struggle is growing keener and keener, and it is necessary that men should take up the duties and responsibilities of public life in the same manner as they choose their profession and devote their energies to it...Surely in every province, the country has the right to expect at least one or two men to come forward and give more of their time and energy to the building up of the public life, whose weakness we all so much deplore. These men could then be centres round whom our young men could group and band themselves together, and it would then be possible to build up a much higher type of public life than now. There is a great deal of quiet work to be done for which we want young men, who will be willing to go among the public without noise or fuss, not anxious to address meetings but willing and content to do quiet work. If we all recognise our respective duties in this spirit, we shall be able to turn our present efforts into a great, rousing movement for the political emancipation of this land.”

Only next year, that is, on June 12, 1905, the Servants of India Society was established with headquarters in Poona with Gokhale as its First Member, who at sunrise on that administered the oath of membership to his three fellow-members. In a preamble to the constitution of the Society Gokhale brings out more fully the implications of his views on public life in India. In an important part of this statement he observes:

“A creditable beginning has already been made in matters of education and of local self-government; and all classes of the people are slowly but steadily coming under the influence of liberal ideas. The claims of public life are every day receiving wider recognition, and attachment to the land of our birth is growing into a strong and deeply cherished passion of the heart...One essential condition of success in this work is that a sufficient number of our country-men must now come forward to devote themselves to the cause in the spirit in which religious work is undertaken. Public life must be spiritualised.”

It will thus be seen that Gokhale’s exhortation to his countrymen to spiritualize politics had several implications. That they should follow in their public or political life the same standard of good conduct as they naturally do in their private life was an important, but only one of the important, implications of his teaching. That all civilised and patriotic persons have a public aspect of their life for which they must have a programme of daily devotion, as they reserve for their private life, is a principle of behaviour on which alone the life of a great nation is based. Gokhale had Japan very much in his mind as one of the outstanding examples of an Asian country rising as one man, and working like a dedicated family for the freedom and progress of the nation. Not in one field, but in all, unless people devoted themselves to their social, civic and political duties with the same idealism and dedication which are considered appropriate virtues in private life, political freedom, democracy and progress would be impossible of attainment.

This was Gokhale’s and Gandhi’s teaching for all their countrymen. For the select few who would muster strength and enough idealism and dedication to devote themselves entirely to national service a higher standard of sacrifice and selflessness was demanded. As an example may be quoted the following vows which each member of the Servants of India Society has to take before his admission into the Society:

(i)                  That the country will always be the first in his thought and he will give to her service the best that is in him.

(ii)                That in serving the country he will seek no personal advantage for himself.

(iii)               That he will regard all Indians as brothers and will work for the advancement of all, without distinction of caste or creed.

(iv)              That he will be content with such provisions for himself and his family, if he has any, as the Society may be able to make. He will devote no part of his energies to earning money for himself.

(v)                That he will lead a pure personal life.

(vi)              That he will engage in no personal quarrels with anyone.

Such a rigid code of conduct was possible only for those who could rise to an exceptionally high level of moral and social sublimation of the normal instincts and interests of common men. In a way this code is for Political or Social Sannyasins. Gandhi, enjoined in substance all these obligations on the members of his Ashram, and on his immediate co-workers. For the rest, both Gokhale and Gandhi were content to exhort their contrymen to follow these principles in spirit to the best possible extent. An educated, alert and public-spirited mass of the people, an appropriate number of leading workers giving a fair portion of their time and resources to organizing public activities, a widespread network of institutions engaged in promoting different aspects of national welfare, and a select group of dedicated workers such as those who formed the Servants of India Soceity was Gokhale’s conception of an appropriate public life for India. In his day, both in quantitative terms and in terms of the functions to be allotted to active workers the expectations of Gokhale were naturally very limited as compared with those which were appropriate to later times, such as those the final stages of the national struggle under Mahatma Gandhi.

Spiritual loftiness, moral depth, organizational leadership and practical realism were combined in Gandhi to an exceptionally high degree. In a manner of speaking, he took over the leadership India’s struggle for Independence where Gokhale left it. In some of the words used by Gandhi in his speech referred to country seem to indicate that he was conscious of his inheritance of faith as well as of responsibility.

“My dear countrymen,” said he, “I wish to say this to you that you have given me a great opportunity or rather a privilege on this great occasion….God is not in me (referring to the fact his clothes were not dusty and tattered as mentioned in Tagore’s description of a man with whom God moves, in a song of welcome which was used on the occasion). There are other conditions attached; but in these conditions too I may fail; and you, my dear countrymen, may also fail; and if we do tend this thought well we should not dishonour the memory of one whose portrait you have asked me to unveil this morning...He inspired my life and is still inspiring; and in that I wish to purify myself and spiritualize myself. I have dedicated myself to that ideal. I may fail, and to what extent I may fail, I call myself to that extent an unworthy disciple of my master. ***

That Gandhi did not fail in physical or material terms is now well known. He fulfilled to the very letter Gokhale’s prophetic claim that, “It may be that the history of the world does not furnish an instance where a subject-race has risen by agitation. If so, we shall supply that example for the first time. The history of the world has not yet come to an end, there are more chapters to be added.” (Madras, February 1904)

Such moral prestige as India enjoys in the present-day world is almost entirely due to the addition made by the Indian people under Gandhi’s leadership, and under his banner of truth and non-violence, of a glorious chapter to world’s history. That a determined, dedicated and united people can achieve their just rights against mighty material odds by mobilizing the forces of their own moral regeneration is a truth that civilised human beings would like to believe. They, however, see few major instances of the vindication of this truth in real experience. Gandhi, in pursuit of the ideal which he shared with Gokhale, supplied a shining illustration which has inspired hope and courage among many others who are faced with similar and worse trials.

For Gokhale and Gandhi, the merit of achieving an end-result lay at least as much in the quality of the means as in the extent of the achievement. In fact for several reasons they attached more importance to means than to ends. As a rule disregard of just means leads to an eventual deterioration which would rob the achievement of all substance, at least of all moral substance, of the ideals in support of which the struggle is undertaken. Here again, Gokhale expresses the relatively greater importance of legitimate means when he says: “The real moral interest of a struggle, such as we are engaged in, lies not so much in the particular readjustment of present institutions which we may succeed in securing, as in the strength that the conflict brings us to be a permanent part of ourselves.” (Presidential Address at the Banaras Congress Session, 1905)

Now, after nearly nineteen years have elapsed since the successful issue of the great popular movement for independence sponsored by the Congress under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, it should be possible to take stock of the situation and to see how far the struggle has added to our permanent strength.

For freedom to be real, it has to be experienced by the common man in his daily life. This alone evokes interest and participation by the citizen in public affairs. A pattern of social organization in which the affairs which directly affect the people of each locality or region are left substantially to their own mangement is to be welcomed as a foundational feature of stable democracy. Gokhale was an ardent advocate of decentralised administration. That considerable progress has been made in setting up these local organs of self-government at all levels of our national community is in one sense a fulfilment of the promise of a truly democratic regime. That the new set-up has its own problems, especially on the human or personnel side, only poses a fresh challenge and an opportunity for the organization of public life in the spirit in which Gokhale preached its extension in the nation’s political life. The smooth functioning of democratic institutions nearer one’s own place of interest and their utilization for promoting public welfare, constitute a permanent addition to the opportunities and obligations of public life which all can now share.

The same feeling of a substantial fulfilment of the institutional promise of the mass struggle for national independence may be conveyed by the efforts made to initiate a social order in which planned economic development of all classes and regions finds suitable recognition. This observation does not necessarily imply that the machinery, or the making, or the implementation, of plans has been faultless. That is a different issue by itself. But as with a broadbased structure of political life, so with a commitment to planned economic development of all classes and regions in the country; the two together constitute a permanent accession of strength to the nation. Their early and firm establishment in the country is a natural and a healthy sequel to the policies underlying the national struggle, for which Gokhale worked throughout his life. To bring to an end political as well as economic subjection, which more than any other purpose, was Gokhale’s special concern, has now been attained. Internally, and internationally, we are free in both these respects to order our affairs as the people of this country freely desire.

It must be admitted, however, that in one or two prominent respects, and in a somewhat unexpected fashion, a few of the most cherished values in public life, on which Gokhale and Gandhi laid great stress, appear to have faded out of sight. Public life must be spiritualized, said Gokhale. Gandhi understood that to be the principal teaching of his Guru, which in his life he tried to follow. Look upon your public life as a part of your personal life: follow the same high standard in both: do your public work as you do your private work, in a religious spirit. This was their teaching, their precept and their example. After nineteen years of independence a generation has appeared to whom the exhortation would appear to be pointless, if not meaningless. That version of secularism, which in practice has meant virtual eclipse of religion for the great mass of the people, in which new generations are being brought up without any assured introduction to religious philosophy and faith, would fail to constitute, in the Gokhale–Gandhi tradition, a worthy preparation for public, or for that matter for private, life.

Another equally disquieting development is the absorption, into the political vortex of governmental power, of all the traditions of disinterested service of the nation and of humanity for which the generation of Gokhale and Gandhi worked, Gandhi’s withdrawal from the Congress on the eve of the latter’s assumption of governmental power in Delhi was an event of great symbolic significance. The Congress, such as it was in the middle of 1947, was an institution devoted to the attainment of freedom by Indians of all classes, to the making of which persons, with different ideologies and -grounds, but having a common dedication to national independence, had contributed their mite. The prestige, goodwill and historical appeal, which had gathered round the name of the Congress, was not the creation of any particular group, each one of whom would been legitimately free to form an electioneering organ of its own in the new democracy which was born. The Congress would they have continued as a truly non-partisan national body giving unity and inspiration to all those who had a disinterested, dedicated, spiritualized interest in public life–such as people had before the setting up of governmental institutions of our own for which electioneering postures and arrangements were thought to be necessary. It was reported at that time, that Gandhi desired that after independence the Congress should cease to be a political body in a partisan sense.

The obviously unnatural situation which has been created in many parts of the country–that we have hardly any political party to compare with the Congress, but the Congress itself is full of rival factions and dissident splinters–is a portentous circumstance. What is more relevant to any hope of spiritualizing public life, the entire tradition of disinterested national service having been pressed into the normal functioning of a party government, several basic spheres of social amelioration in which non-political motivations are alone effective have come to be neglected to a point of danger. To take only a couple of examples: prohibition and tribal welfare.

In pre-independence days, almost all social workers, except a fringe of highly modernized patriots, felt interested in the cause of temperance. Many among the older generation of today would recall the sustained efforts then made to persuade the victims of the drink evil to follow better ways. The whole of the official machinery in those days was hostile to such an effort, partly because the rulers did not look upon drink in the same unfavourable light as we did, and partly because excise revenue was an important feeder of the public purse. One had every right to expect that in both these respects conditions would materially change when we had our own governments. Temperance workers, with the assistance of a suitable public policy and of better example from the new rulers, would have hoped for better success, and for a cleaner and healthier society.

But when the reformers donned the clothes of rulers, or of policemen, in their inexperience and arrogation, they thought what was needed to end the drink evil was an anti-drink law and little more. Lip sympathy is even now paid to the need for educative propaganda. But I have yet to see leading lights of the ruling party going into drink-infested localities, and carrying on an anti-drink campaign as their own predecessors were doing. Now they would more easily send a police party. If public work is no more than public coercion, albeit in a good cause, all hope of spiritualizing public life, of carrying it on in a religious spirit, would vanish.

Even more disturbing are the developments, or the lack of development, in the tribal areas. The rehabilitation, and the social, cultural and economic betterment of the tribal people is a debt, is an obligation, which we owe to the whole humanity. If ever a missionary approach of serving God in serving one’s fellow-men is called for, it is here that the need is greatest. Whatever the political motive of the foreign rulers may have been, it cannot be doubted that the foreign missionaries in the tribal areas played a significant role in bringing the tribal people into the fold of the more advanced peoples of the world. Both Gokhale and Gandhi placed the greatest emphasis on this sphere of public service. Thakkar Baba, a colleague of Gokhale and Gandhi, played almost a historical role in reclaiming for the national cause the allegiance of some tribal communities, who, left to themselves, might otherwise have posed problems almost as big as those which are now posed by some other tribal groups. The overnight transformation of the Congress into a political party and its being enthroned in Viceregal, and Governor’s, palaces as the ruling power, has meant an end, at least an eclipse, of genuine public service, such as the one which Gokhale and Gandhi lived for and died for.

Obviously, it is too late in the day to undo what has been done in this respect. The remedy in the political field will now have to be a political one. But in the sphere of non-partisan social, human and civic activity it has now become necessary, in view of the many major frustrations of the people’s hopes and ideals, to reconstruct public life more or less along the same principles which were advocated by Gokhale and Gandhi over fifty years ago. With a democratic constitution, with widespread knowledge, and with growing abundance of resources, it should now be easier to build local and national units of public service. What is needed is the spirit of non-partisan and devoted regard for the relief of misery, for the spread of knowledge, and for the vindication of justice. There is an urgent call for public service in all these respects, and with a government committed to the principles of social justice as outlined in the preamble and in Part IV of our Constitution, the prospects of fulfilment even in material terms, as distinguished from the moral satisfaction of the worker, are definitely more assured. The attainment of independence, and the transformation of the Congress into an electioneering party, have not lessened but multiplied both the need and the opportunity of organizing public activity according to the principles of Gokhale and Gandhi.

This should not surprise or disappoint us in any way. Wider freedom and more sophisticated organizations always create larger and more intricate problems. Our efforts to solve them have also be better organized, better equipped and better directed. But the moral principles and human values to be pursued by workers in all circumstances remain the same. To repeat, with Gokhale and Gandhi: – 

(a)                           The dream of every Indian who claims to love his country should be to spiritualize the political life of the country;
(b)                          Political life must be an echo of private life; there cannot be any divorce between the two;
(c)                           A sufficient number of our countrymen must come forward to devote themselves to the cause in the spirit in which religious work is undertaken; and
(d)                          Public life must be spiritualized.

So long as his countrymen remember, and try to follow, these invaluable teachings of Gokhale, he would not have lived in vain.

* Extract from the Centenary Address delivered in the Gokhale Birthday Centenary Celebrations at the Gokhale Institute of Public Affairs, Bangalore, on the 9th of May 1966.
** Gokhale: My Political Guru. p. 50
*** Pages 84-86; Jubilee Souvenir of the G.I.P.A. 1965