Institute Colloquium on whether Gandhi is still significant for India
Speaker
ProfessorDouglasAllen
ProfessorofPhilosophy
TheUniversityofMaine,USA
Title: Is Gandhi Significant for India in 2016?
Date: Wednesday, February 10, 2016.
Time: 5.15 pm
Venue: Main Auditorium, Victor Menezes Convention Centre
About the Speaker
Professor Douglas Allen is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Philosophy at
the University of Maine, USA. He served as President of the Society for Asian and
Comparative Philosophy and is the Series Editor of Lexington’s Studies in Comparative
Philosophy and Religion. Author and editor of 15 books and 150 book chapters and scholarly
journal articles, he has been awarded Fulbright and Smithsonian grants to India. He is the
recipient of the Maine Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award and the
Distinguished Maine Professor Award (the outstanding professor in teaching, research, and
service). Recent books include Comparative Philosophy and Religion in Times of Terror, The
Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century, and Mahatma Gandhi. A peace
and justice scholar-activist, Prof. Allen has been active in struggles, going back to the Civil
Rights Movement, the Vietnam Antiwar Movement, and continuing to the present. For his
2015-2016 sabbatical in India, he is writing a new Gandhi-inspired book and is serving as the
first Distinguished Chair Professor in Gandhian Philosophy at IIT Bombay.
Abstract
Is the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi—focusing on morality, truth, nonviolence, tolerance,
interrelated self-development and harmony with others and nature—significant or largely
irrelevant for India today? Many Gandhi supporters present a rigid, closed Gandhi,
uncritically asking what Gandhi said in a kind of Gandhi fundamentalism. They transform
Gandhi into a kind of larger-than-life, usually irrelevant Mahatma. Many Gandhi critics also
present a rigid, closed Gandhi, often misrepresenting him or unsympathetically focusing on
unacceptable formulations in Gandhi. They usually present an M. K. Gandhi who is at best
irrelevant and at worst an obstacle to progress. By way of contrast, the speaker's
interpretation and application of Gandhi’s philosophy today is consistent with his own
approach in viewing his life and philosophy as ongoing experiments with truth and as full of
miscalculations and “Himalayan blunders.” In Prof. Allen's approach, Gandhi’s exemplary
life, philosophy, and enduring legacy should be viewed in a dynamic, open-ended,
contextualized way. We must engage in selectively and creatively reformulating what is of
value in Gandhi’s philosophy for our contemporary contextualized world. Gandhi does not
have all of the answers, but when selectively reappropriated and integrated with other
complementary approaches, Gandhi’s moral, spiritual, economic, and cultural approach is
deeply significant in critiquing and resisting much of what is happening in India and in the
world in 2016 and in desperately needed alternatives.