Raghuramaraju, A - Away From the Binary: Reading Rajas and Tamas in Mahatma Gandhi

10/30/2009

Unpublished book chapter

This is a chapter in a book about Gandhi-- this chapter seeks to locate Gandhi's policy of non-violence in a classical context of the three aspects of being: violence, non-violence, and non-action. Author argues that this is an important three-part substance that involves domination of one substance (non-violence) over the other two, rather than flat-out rejection of them. Furthermore, current writers simplify Gandhi into a two-part binary of violence and non-violence and suggest that one can be rejected and the other affirmed; both the factual claim and the meta-psychological conception is mistaken, according to author.

Author's first target is Richard Lannoy's binary relation, violence and non-violence. What is missing here is a third possibility: inaction. The three options correspond to three 'gunas': 'tamas' (inaction), 'rajas' (violent action) and 'sattva' (non-violent action). Author brings out through quotations that Gandhi preferred violent action to inaction, which upsets the notion that Gandhi rejected violence as an acceptable mode of action.

Author contends that Gandhi was rajastic (violent) in nature but constantly strove to overcome and dominate that tendency for the sake of sattva, non-violent action. Author locates the metapsychology here as coming from the Bhagavat Gita's discussion of the three gunas-- they are each constitutive elements of action, just one dominating the others during a particular action. Yet from this classical understanding did Gandhi stray, not accepting non-action (tamas) as a worthy possibility.