2.6 - Pantham, Thomas - Habermas' Practical Discours and Gandhi's Satyagraha (En)

Habermas'PracticalDiscoursandGandhi'sSatyagraha
Habermas'PracticalDiscoursandGandhi'sSatyagraha
byThomasPantham

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Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:2/1986,pages:190205,onwww.ceeol.com.
HABERMASES PRACTICAL DISCOURSE AND GANDHIS SATYAGRAHA

Thomas Pantham
I. There are interesting parallels and divergences between Habermass discourse mode of settling the rightness claims of contested socio-political norms and standards and Gandhis satyagraha mode of direct action in the pursuit of moral-political truth. Both Gandhi and Habermas oppose the scientization of politics. Both of them favour the reclamation of the public/political sphere by people from the technocrats of social power. They also advocate a consensual or communitarian conception of moral-political truth, which reintegrates politics and ethics. A proper political ethics for our times, they suggest, would entail a transformation of our moral consciousness from possessive-individualist values to communitarian values. The main difference between Habermas and Gandhi is that while the formers practico-political discourse centres around communicative rationality and the force of better arguments, the latters satyagraha is based not only on reason but also on love and self-suffering. Moreover, Habermass practical discourse is largely a thought-experiment, while Gandhis satyagraha is a mode of direct action that ruptures the theory-practice dichotomy. While Habermas offers his rational-consensus model of truth and rightness as a corrective to the polytheism of belief, Gandhi provides us with a mode of action that will enable us to live with the plurality of gods and demons without our having to abandon the ideal of a rationally grounded consensus on truth and rightness. An exploration of these and other divergences and parallels between these two inspiring critics of modern civilization, I submit, constitutes a useful contribution to the theory and practice of human emancipation in our times.1 II. Habermas on Practico-Political Discourse Practico-political discourse, according to Habermas, is the proper mode of establishing the rightness or correctness of contested socio-political norms and standards. It is distinguished from theoretical-empirical discourse which is the mode of redeeming the truth of contested theoretical statements or empirical assertions. Both theoretical and practical discourses are rooted in the communication theory of society, according to which, linguistic communication is the key distinguishing feature of human life. From this Habermas develops his overarching social theory of communicative competences and universal pragmatics, an important part of which is the consensus theory of truth and rightness. The goal of Habermass critical theory is human emancipation from ideological deceptions or self-deceptions (i.e., from systematically distorted
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communication) as well as from technocratic domination and the scientization of politics. In the technocratic model of politics, practico-political issues are withdrawn from the public sphere and are made the exclusive preserve of technical manipulation by the managers or engineers of social power. Habermas notes that as our civilization has become increasingly scientific and industrially advanced, there is an expansion of technical control over nature and a continually refined administration of human beings and their relations to each other by means of social organization. In this system, he goes on to point out, science, technology, industry and administration interlock in a circular process.2 What this means is the conversion or rather the reduction of practico-political or moral/ethical issues into issues of technical manipulation and control.
The dependence of the professional on the politician appears to have reversed itself. The latter becomes a mere agent of a scientific intelligentsia which, in concrete circumstances, elaborates the objective implications and requirements of available techniques and resources as well as of optimal strategies and rules of control ... The politician would then be at best something like a stopgap in a still imperfect rationalization of power, in which the initiative has in any case passed to scientific analysis and technical planning.3
Entailed in this scientization of politics is its divorce from morality and ethics. Habermas notes that while Aristotle regarded politics as the continuation of ethics in the sense that it was concerned with the good and just life, Hobbes and his followers have separated politics from ethics. In practico-political discourse, the task is to ascertain which interests or needs of the people are merely particular and which are or can be common, generalizable or intersubjectively recognized. It is the latter which is upheld or promoted by the right or proper social norms or standards. Habermas explains that in discourse,
no force except that of the better argument is exercised, and that, as a result, all motives except that of the cooperative search for truth are excluded. If under these conditions a consensus about the recommendation to accept a norm arises argumentatively, that is, on the basis of hypothetically proposed, alternative justifications, then this consensus expresses a rational will. Since all those affected have, in principle, at least the chance to participate in the practical deliberation, the rationality of the discursively formed will consists in the fact that the reciprocal behavioral expectations raised to normative status afford validity to a common interest ascertained without deception. The interest is common because the constraint-free consensus permits only what all can want; it is free of deception because even the interpretations of needs in which each individual must be able to recognize what he wants become the object of discursive will-formation. The discursively formed will may be called rational because the formal properties of discourse and of the deliberative situation sufficiently guarantee that a consensus can arise only through appropriately interpreted, generalizable interests, by which I mean needs that can be communicatively shared.4
In practico-political discourse, the participants make their inner natures transparent and make a truthful interpretation both of their own particular
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needs and more importantly of their common needs capable of consensus. The rationality and universality of contested social norms or standards are decided not through any monological imperatives by the participants ( la Kant) or through the monadic isolation of strategic action but through genuine dialogical communication.5 As noted by Thomas McCarthy, in Habermas, unlike in the case of Kants moral solipsism, the emphasis shifts from what each can will without contradiction to be a general law, to what all can will in agreement to be a universal norm.6 Such universal norms, in fact, do not exist independently of the dialogical process of communication; they are formed in that very process.7 Discursive morality or communicative ethics does not destroy but guarantees the autonomy of the individuals.
communicative ethics guarantees the generality of admissible norms and the autonomy of acting subjects solely through the discursive redeemability of the validity claims with which norms appear. That is, generality is guaranteed in that the only norms that may claim generality are those on which everyone affected agrees (or would agree) without constraint if they enter into (or were to enter into) a process of discursive will-formation ... Communicative ethics guarantees autonomy in that it carries on the process of the insertion of drive potentials into a communicative structure of action, i.e. the socialization process, with will and consciousness.8
In fact, for Habermas, the very project of practico-political discourse aimed at the discovery and formation of discursive morality or communicative ethics is a mode of emancipation from our self-deceptive acquiescence to ideologically sustained (i.e. through systematically distorted communication) norms or standards of social life and from the technical manipulations of our compliance to socio-political norms upholding non-generalizable interests. Habermas explains this in the following words:
A social theory critical of ideology can, therefore, identify the normative power built into the institutional system of a society only if it starts from the model of the suppression of generalizable interests and compares normative structures existing at a given time with the hypothetical state of a system of norms formed, ceteris paribus, discoursively. Such a counterfactually projected reconstruction , . . can be guided by the question (justified, in my opinion, by considerations from universal pragmatics): How would the members of a social system, at a given stage in the development of productive forces, have collectively and bindingly interpreted their needs (and which norms would they have accepted as justified) if they could and would have decided on the organization of social intercourse through discursive will-formation, with adequate knowledge of the limiting conditions and functional imperatives of their society?9
What is the distinctive role of the critical social theorist in practical discourse directed to political action? In political actions or political struggles, Habermas assigns only an advocacy role to the social theorists. The advocacy role of the critical theory of society, he writes, would consist in ascertaining generalizable, though nevertheless suppressed, interests in a representatively simulated discourse between groups which are differentiated
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(or could be non-arbitrarily differentiated) from one another by an articulated, or at least virtual, opposition of interests.10 By simulating a discourse between the parties to a conflict, the social theorist, according to Habermas, can aid them in finding out which of their interest-claims are or can be generalizable. The actual validation of the generalizability of interests has to be done by the affected or concerned people themselves. The social scientist, writes Habermas, can only hypothetically project this ascription of interests; indeed a direct confirmation of this hypothesis would be possible only in the form of a practical discourse among the very individuals or groups involved.11 While such individuals or groups must be conscientized or enlightened by critical social theory, they should not be subjected to technical control and manipulation by any avant-garde, whose members claim to have already successfully completed (the) process of enlightenment. Emancipatory praxis is a pedagogical activity and not the technical application of theoretical knowledge la Stalinist praxis or bourgeois social engineering. Habermas explains this as follows:
The organization of action must be distinguished from this process of enlightenment. While the theory legitimizes the work of enlightenment, as well as providing its own refutation when communication fails, and can, in any case, be corrected, it can by no means legitimize a fortiori the risky decisions of strategic action. Decisions for the political struggle cannot at the outset be justified theoretically and then be carried out organizationally. The sole possible justification at this level is consensus aimed at in practical discourse, among the participants, who, in the consciousness of their common interests and their knowledge of circumstances, of the predictable consequences and secondary consequences, are the only ones who can know what risks they are willing to undergo, and with what expectations. There can be no theory which at the outset can assure a world-historical mission in return for the potential sacrifices.12
Finally, Habermas maintains that practical discourse is not aimed at merely discovering an actually existing common denominator (generalizable interests) among the conflicting interest-claims of the parties to a conflict. It is also aimed at discovering and actualizing their potentially generalizable interests. Discursively redeemable norms and generalizable interests have a nonconventional core; they are neither merely empirically found already to exist nor simply posited; rather they are, in a non-contingent way, both formed and discovered.13 In this process of formation or actualization, the participants undergo internal changes in their perceptions and orientations. In Legitimation Crisis, Habermas argues that in the present, advanced phase of capitalism, the legitimacy crisis of the state cannot be resolved without the people undergoing a change from bourgeois values and norms to postbourgeois values; there can be no generalizability of interests or rationally grounded consensus on an infinite multiplicity of material wants! Hence, he writes,
the pursuit of happiness might one day mean something different for example, not accumulating material objects of which one disposes privately, but
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bringing about social relations in which mutuality predominates and satisfaction
does not mean the triumph of one over the repressed needs of the other.14
III. Gandhi on Satyagraha. Gandhi called himself an essentially practical man dealing with practical political questions. His aim, he declared, was to spiritualize the practicopolitical field and to demonstrate that truth alone conquers is a better maxim than might is right. In 1938, he said to a group of missionaries:
I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind and that I could not do unless I took part in politics. The whole gamut of mans activities today constitutes an indivisible whole ... I do not know of any religion apart from activity. It provides a moral basis to all other activities without which life would be a maze of sound and fury signifying nothing.15
In fact, it is for its amoral or irreligious features that Gandhi made his famous indictment of modern civilization. This civilization, he wrote in Hind Swaraj, takes note neither of morality nor of religion ... This civilization is irreligion.16 In particular, Gandhi opposed the divorce of practico-political questions from ethical and moral principles. Politics, divorced from ethics and morality, he said, leads to despotism and militarism, which engender and sustain exploitation, oppression and destruction on a global scale.17 Such amoral politics, he maintained, encircles us like the coils of a snake from which one cannot get out no matter how one tries.18 We must, therefore, according to Gandhi, avoid this type of politics and inaugurate a different kind of politics based on satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence) and tapas (self-suffering).19 It is such a course of politics that is intimated in Gandhis theory and practice of satyagmha. I have suggested above that the Gandhian satyagraha seeks to integrate the practico-political and the ethical. Before proceeding further, I must offer some clarification of the Gandhian notion of ethical, which he used interchangeably with religious, moral, spiritual or dharma (Moral Law). This is indicated in the following passages:
By religion I do not mean formal religion or customary religion but that religion which underlines all religions.20 [Ethical religion] means a belief in the ordered moral government of the universe ... This religion transcends Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc. It does not supersede them. It harmonizes them and gives them reality.21
Gandhi maintained not only that there is no religion higher than Truth and Righteousness but also that Truth and Righteousness should inform the practico-political. He followed the dharmasastra strand of the Hindu tradition of political thought in regarding politics and ethics as being united.22 According to that tradition of thought, dharma, derived from dhr (to be firm, to sustain or uphold), refers to the moral Law which governs the cosmos. The essence or basis of this cosmic law, according to the Hindu tradition, is Satya (Truth). Satya designates an ontological entity, an epistemological category
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and a moral norm. Its root, sat, means being, abiding, actual, right, wise, the essence of, reality, what is and what ought to be.23 In its highest sense, SAT> stands for Absolute Reality and Absolute Truth, which lies beneath and beyond all phenomena. Hence, as noted by Iyer, Gandhi uses truth in the sense of real, sincere, existent, pure, good, effectual or valid.24 To quote Gandhi:
The word Satya (Truth) is derived from Sat, which means being. And nothing is or exists in reality except Truth. That is why Sat or Truth is perhaps the most important name of God. In fact it is more correct to say that Truth is God than to say that God is Truth ... it will be realized that Sat or Satya is the only correct and fully significant name for God.25 In God is Truth, is certainly does not mean equal to nor does it merely mean, is truthful. Truth is not a mere attribute of God, but He is That ... Truth in Sanskrit means Sat. Sat means Is. Therefore Truth is implied in Is. God is, nothing else is. Therefore the more truthful we are, the nearer we are to God. We are only to the extent that we are truthful.26
Thus, for Gandhi, the ultimate reality is Absolute Truth, which is the basis or essence of dharma (moral law or ontological ethics). In the light of this ultimate identity of Reality and Truth, the real world of the practicopolitical cannot, according to Gandhi, be regarded as an amoral or non-ethical field. I do not believe, he writes, that the spiritual law works in a field of its own. On the contrary, it expresses itself only through the ordinary activities of life. It thus affects the economic, the social and the political fields.27 Social life, Gandhi said, is not divided into water-tight compartments, called social, political and religious; every act has its political, economic and spiritual implications. Accordingly, he conceived of his ideal society as the square of swaraj, whose four inseparable or integral sides are the political, the economic, the social and dharma. He said:
Some friends have told me that truth and non-violence have no place in politics and worldly affairs. I do not agree. I have no use for them as a means of individual salvation. Their introduction and application in everyday life has been my experiment all along.28
Gandhi conceived of his satyagraha as such an experiment for the introduction of truth and non-violence into the practice-political field. It has been meant to rupture the dichotomy between political expediency and moral/ethical principles. It unites the practical (is, being) and the moral/ethical (truth and rightness). Etymologically, satyagraha is derived from sat, satya (the meaning of which we saw above) and agraha, which means adherence, to hold fast, to seize or to grasp. Explaining why he chose satyagraha as the name for his resistance-movement against the repressive laws of the South African Government, Gandhi wrote: Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (Agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence.29 Satyagraha is that mode of practico-political action through which we can try to realize or approximate to
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the ultimate identity of the practical and the ethical. It is an end-creating means and as such it partakes of the ultimate unity of the real or the practical and the ethical or the moral. According to Gandhi, although Truth is Absolute, our knowledge and experience of that Truth is only partial and relative. Moreover it is the human condition or, rather, the human prerogative to act on the basis of what we perceive and experience as truth until and unless we are persuaded by others that what we regard as truth is in fact untruth. I worship God, writes Gandhi, as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him . . . But as long as I have not realized this Absolute Truth so long must I hold by the relative truth as I have conceived it. That relative truth must meanwhile be my beacon, my shield and buckler.30 Even though our truth-claims are all relative, it is through them that we partake In and approach the absolute Truth; we are only to the extent that we are truthful. Or, to find Truth completely is to realize oneself and ones destiny, that is to become perfect. Hence, we are all united in our common pursuit of truth. We all have in us some element of truth-force. In satyagraha, we use that truth-force to resist or overcome untruth, oppression and violence. Through satyagraha, politics can be made truth-centred and non-violent. Gandhi assumes that what we take to be truth may be untruth for others. The conflicts arising from such competing truth-claims can, according to Gandhi, be resolved through satyagraha. The claim for satyagraha, writes Joan Bondurant, is that through the operation of non-violent action the truth as judged by the fulfilment of human needs will emerge in the form of a mutually satisfactory and agreed-upon solution.31 The satyagrahi assumes that his opponents or oppressors are also truth-seekers, acting on the basis of what they perceive to be truth. The satyagrahis use truth-force not to eliminate the opponents or oppressors but to bring about a restructuring of the total conflictual or oppressive relationships so that both parties to the Initial conflict can realise a heightened mutuality or moral interdependence. Through satyagraha, the victims of oppression, seek to liberate themselves by aiding in the emancipation of their oppressors from their self-deceptive, truth-denying beliefs and actions. Acting as we do on the basis of relative truths, we must, according to Gandhi, seek to ensure social harmony by following the non-violent path of vindicating the validity of rival truth-claims. To quote Gandhi:
It appears that the impossibility of full realization of truth in this mortal body led some ancient seeker after Truth to the appreciation of ahimsa. The question which confronted him was: Shall I bear with those who create difficulties for me, or shall I destroy them? The seeker realized that he who went on destroying others did not make headway but simply stayed where he was, while the man who suffered those who created difficulties marched ahead, and at times even took the others with him ... The more he took to violence, the more he receded from Truth. For in fighting the imagined enemy without, he neglected the enemy within.32 The basic principle on which the practice of non-violence rests is that what
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holds good in respect of oneself equally applies to the whole universe. All mankind in essence are alike. What is, therefore, possible for one is possible for everybody.33
For Gandhi, non-violence is the means to, or measure of, truth. I have often said that if one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself. Non-violence is the means. By ahimsa (non-violence), Gandhi did not mean merely non-injury to others. That would be a mere negative or passive connotation of ahimsa, which has also a positive or active meaning, namely, love or charity. Gandhi writes:
In its negative form it [ahimsa] means not injuring any living being whether by body or mind. I may not, therefore, hurt the person of any wrong-doer or bear any ill-will to him and so cause him mental suffering. In its positive form, Ahimsa means the largest love, the greatest charity. If I am a follower of Ahimsa, I must love my enemy or a stranger to me as I would my wrong-doing father or son. This active Ahimsa necessarily includes truth and fearlessness.34
In the light of what has been said above, we may conclude that for Gandhi action based on the refusal to do harm to others is a negative test of moral or practical truth. Its positive test is action meant to promote the welfare of others.
Our desires and motives may be divided into two classes selfish and unselfish. All selfish desires are immoral, while the desire to improve ourselves for the sake of doing good to others is truly moral... The highest moral law is that we should unremittingly work for the good of mankind.
We have thus far considered two elements of satyagraha, namely, satya (truth) and ahimsa (non-violence). A third element is tapas (self-suffering). Action based on love toward others, we saw above, is a positive test of truth, From this Gandhi goes on to say that tapas or self-suffering is the test of such love. Suffering injury in ones own person, writes Gandhi, is ... of the essence of non-violence and is the chosen substitute for violence to others.36 Self-suffering by the satyagrahis, it must be understood, is not out of their cowardice or weakness; it is based on a higher form of courage than that of those who resort to violence and it is meant to aid in the moral persuation of ones opponents or oppressors. In the satyagraha mode of conflict resolution, self-suffering plays a complementary role to that of reasoning. Persuading others through reasoning is indeed of the essence of satyagraha. But satyagraha recognizes the limits of reason in resolving fundamental social, religious, political or ideological conflicts, in which a rational consensus may not be easily or quickly forthcoming. In fact, Gandhi insisted that the direct action techniques of satyagraha are to be resorted to only after employing the usual processes of reasoning with the opponents or oppressors and only for securing their rational consent or conversion. He writes:
Since satyagraha is one of the most powerful methods of direct action, a satyagrahi exhausts all other means before he resorts to satyagraha. He will, therefore, constantly and continually approach the constituted authority, he will
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appeal to public opinion, educate public opinion, state his case calmly and cooly before everybody who wants to listen to him; and only after he has exhausted all these avenues will he resort to satyagraha.37
When mere reasoning or persuasions fail to move the oppponents or oppressors, the satyagrahis resort to such other actions as purificatory or penitential actions (prayers, pledges and fasts), acts of non-cooperation (hartal, strikes, boycott, fasting unto death), acts of civil disobedience (picketing, non-payment of taxes and disobedience of specific laws) and constructive programmes (for the promotion of communal unity, the removal of untouchability, adult education, the promotion of social and economic equality, political and economic decentralization, etc.). It is the assumption of satyagraha that when reasoning fails to move the head, the argument of suffering by the satyagrahis helps move the heart of the oppressors or opponents. Self-suffering, moreover, is the truth-serving alternative to the truth-denying method of inflicting violence on others. I have found, writes Gandhi, that mere appeal to reason does not answer where prejudices are age-long and based on supposed religious authority. Reason has to be strengthened by suffering. Again,
Suffering is the law of human beings; war is the law of the jungle. But suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears, which are otherwise shut, to the voice of reason. Nobody has probably drawn up more petitions or espoused more forlorn causes than I, and I have come to this fundamental conclusion that if you want something really important to be done, you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also. The appeal of reason is more to the head, but the penetration of the heart comes from suffering. It opens up the inner understanding of man. Suffering is the badge of the human race, not the sword.38
Those who rely on the method of violence seek to destroy the truth of human unity. They regard others as mere means or instrumentalities for technical manipulation and control or, even, physical elimination. They do not regard other people as truth-seeking moral agents, who too have to act on the basis of what they perceive and experience as truth. Gandhi said to a group of Christians in December 1938 that belief in non-violence is based on the assumption that the human nature in its essence is one and, therefore, unfailingly responds to the advances of love.39 By contrast, the method of violence denies the freedom of the individual and hence it militates against true democracy, i.e., the swaraj of the masses. In August 1942, Gandhi addressed the All-India Congress Committee in the following words:
I read Carlyles French Revolution while I was in prison, and Pandit Jawaharlal has told me something about the Russian revolution. But it is my conviction that in as much as these struggles were fought with the weapon of violence, they failed to realize the democratic ideal. In the democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy established by non-violence, there will be equal freedom for all. Everybody will be his own master.40
True democracy or Swaraj of the masses can never come through untruthful
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and violent means, for the simple reason that the natural corollary to their use would be to remove all opposition through the suppression or extermination of the antagonists. That does not make for Individual freedom. Individual freedom can have the fullest play only under a regime of unadulterated ahimsa.41
I said above that the non-violent direct-action steps of satyagraha are used only after employing the ordinary processes of reasoning and only for securing a rational consensus between the parties to the original or initial conflict. Regarding the latter part of this claim, it must be stressed that satyagraha assumes the rationality and perfectibility of human nature. Individual freedom is a chief value to the satyagrahi. Accordingly, what the satyagrahi seeks to achieve through his non-violent direct actions is not any coerced assent of the opponents or oppressors but their free and rational acknowledgement of their untruthful or wrong perceptions and actions. The satyagrahi assumes that the hardest heart and grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice. The satyagrahis direct actions are meant to redeem individual freedom and autonomy not only for themselves and their followers but also for their opponents or oppressors. He writes:
The golden rule of conduct, therefore, is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we see Truth in fragment and from different angles of vision. Conscience is not the same thing for all. Whilst, therefore, it is a good guide for individual conduct, imposition of that conduct upon all will be an insufferable Interference with everybodys freedom of conscience.42
Again,
Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side. We shut the doors of reason when we refuse to listen to our opponents, or having listened, make fun of them. If intolerance becomes a habit, we run the risk of missing the truth. Whilst, with the limits that Nature has put upon our understanding, we must act fearlessly according to the light vouchsafed to us, we must always keep an open mind and be ever ready to find that what we believed to be truth was, after all, untruth. This openness of mind strengthens the truth in us.43
Gandhis insistence on tolerance, civility and charity has to do with his assumption that our knowledge of truth is relative. In this he was influenced by the Jain doctrine of anekantavada, according to which reality is not one-dimensional but multi-dimensional. Accordingly, the different truthclaims may be referring to different aspects of the same reality. It has been my experience, writes Gandhi,
that I am always true from my point of view and often wrong from the point of view of my honest critics. I know that we are both right from our respective points of view. And his knowledge saves me from attributing motives to my opponents or critics ... I very much like the doctrine of the manyness of reality. It is this doctrine that has taught me to judge a Mussulman from his own standpoint and a Christian from his ... My anekantavada is the result of the two doctrines of satya and ahimsa.44
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The tolerance which is warranted by the doctrine of anekantavada, Gandhi insists, should not be reduced either to indifference towards others or to a fatalistic belief in the inevitability of destructive dogmatic or religious or ideological warfare, Syadvada (the Jain doctrine of the possibility of only relative predications), should, according to Gandhi, prompt us to pursue the interrelationships among the different relative truths, rather than commit us to indifference or fanaticism. For Gandhi, anekantavada and syadvada strengthen the case of non-violence, i.e., love or charity, as the inevitable and infallible means of testing relative truths. While we may actually disagree about the nature of ultimate truth, we must assume that we may all be wrong. Everybody, writes Gandhi, is right from his own standpoint, but it is not impossible that everybody is wrong.45 We must all therefore agree that non-violence is the universal means of conducting the pursuit of truth. Such truth-searching non-violence, Gandhi points out, cannot be the mere passive non-violence of the indifferent, the skeptic or the weak; it has to be the active non-violence of the strong, i.e., of those with faith in, and hope for, truth. My appeal to you, Gandhi writes, is to cleanse your hearts and to have charity. Make your hearts as broad as the ocean.46 He goes on to say:
I can say with assurance, as a result of all my experiments, that a perfect vision of Truth can follow a complete realization of ahimsa. To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.47
IV. The Critical Theorist and the Satyagrahi A critical-emancipatory concern is common to both Gandhi and Habermas. They are concerned with the legitimacy crisis of the socio-political structure of exploitation and violence as well as our ideological self-deceptions and the tyranny of dogmatic beliefs. Habermas objects to the reduction of practicopolitical questions into the technical or technocratic model of politics, which eschews ethics and morality. Gandhi too condemns the divorce of politics and economics from ethical standards and moral principles. Both Gandhi and Habermas seek to reclaim the freedom or autonomy of the individual from the technocrats of social power. For ensuring a democratic social order, Habermas advocates communicative ethics, while Gandhi proposes communitarian morality. Habermas conceives of the liberated self in terms of his or her realization of autonomy and responsibility in an ideal speech situation in which truth, justice and freedom interpenetrate. Gandhi conceives of the ideal society in terms of swaraj (self-restraint and self-rule) and sarvodaya (the welfare of all). Practical questions, according to Habermas, admit of truth. For Gandhi, we are only to the extent that we are truthful. Hence, the practice-political field is to be integrated with Truth and Rightness. According to Habermas, the practical truth or rightness of social norms and political commands consists in their upholding or promoting generalizable interests. For Gandhi, as we saw above, all selfish desires are immoral and the highest moral law is that we should unremittingly work for the good of mankind.
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In the present, advanced phase of capitalism, according to Habermas, as we saw above, the resolution of the conflict over the practical truth or legitimacy claims of the state calls for a basic change of our beliefs and perceptions from bourgeois, possessive-individualist, materialist preferences to socialist or communitarian values leading to communicative ethics. Gandhi too speaks of the need to shun the evils of capital or, in other words, to revise the viewpoint of capital. Under the new outlook, he writes, multiplicity of material wants will not be the aim of life, the aim will be rather their restriction consistently with comfort.48 The ethics of the Gandhian sarvodaya is offered as a corrective to the individualism and materialism of utilitarianism. In his search for an alternative to the technocratic model of politics, Habermas looks not so much for any institutional blue-print or organizational arrangement as for the organizing principles or legitimating grounds of a truly democratic society. One must think, writes Habermas, ... in process categories. I can imagine the attempt to order a society democratically only as a self-controlled learning process.49 His primary concern, as noted by McCarthy, has been to demonstrate that a truly democratic society is one in which basic political decisions would meet with the agreement of all those affected by them if they were able to participate without restriction in discursive will-formation.50 Similarly, according to Gandhi, a government is an instrument of service only in so far as it is based upon the will and consent of the people. Swaraj, he writes, will be an absurdity if individuals have to surrender their judgement to majority.51 Like Habermass preoccupation with the legitimating principles or grounds of a truly democratic society rather than with its specific institutional arrangements, Gandhi too is concerned not so much with proposing alternative organizational or institutional blue-prints as with the moral principles or ethical standards (truth and non-violence) on the basis of which a truly democratic order can be ushered in.52 True, he proposed an oceanic-circle pattern of political and economic decentralization as a corrective to the over-centralized and bureaucratic system of modern government. Yet Gandhis overriding preoccupation was to integrate politics with moral/ethical values and principles rather than to give institutional blue-prints of the ideal society. Habermas arrived at his notions of generalizable interests and the rational-consensus model of truth and rightness as the ground of democratic legitimacy from his theory of the communicative competences of the human species. This normative foundation of Habermass critical theory of society, as pointed out by McCarthy, is not arbitrary but inherent in the structure of linguistic communication. According to Habermas as we saw above, the design of an ideal speech situation is necessarily implied in the structure of potential speech, since all speech, even intentional deception, is oriented toward the idea of truth. The structure of our speech, in other words, contains the anticipation of a form of life in which autonomy and responsibility are possible.52a Gandhi derived the first of the two normative foundations of his social and political theory, viz., satya (truth), from the Hindu philosophy of life. As we
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noted above, Satya, in its highest sense, denotes an ontological, epistemological and moral category or norm. In it are fused the real and the good, existence and truth. It is the basis or substance of dharma, i.e., ontological ethics or the Moral Law. This ultimate identity of the real-practical and the ethical/moral must, according to Gandhi, be reflected in the practico-political sphere of life. Since violence destroys life/reality, it can never be the means to Truth which is also Reality. Hence non-violence becomes the only means to truth. The imperative of non-violence as the means to truth also follows from Gandhis assumption that our knowledge and experience of truth are relative and that therefore we have to assume that even our opponents or oppressors are also fellow-seekers of truth. The testing of these relative truths can therefore be done through non-violent means only. Moreover, in its positive or active sense, non-violence means love or charity, which, in its turn, entails self-suffering rather than the inflicting of violence on others. For the Gandhian satyagrahi, therefore, non-violence or love becomes the means of testing the truth or rightness of practical-political questions. This is how non-violence becomes the second of the normative foundations of politics, according to Gandhi. In the pursuit of truth, according to him, the purity of the means becomes all-important. If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later. This brings us to an important divergence between Gandhi and Habermas. Habermass practico-political discourse is a thought-experiment in practical truth. It has rationalistic overtones. Gandhis satyagraha is not a mere thought-experiment but a mode of truth-centred direct action, which consists of both rational and extra-rational elements. Relatedly there is a difference between the emancipatory tasks of the critical theorist and those of the satyagrahi. I shall try to elaborate this below. The participants in Habermass practico-political discourse are social theorists who are required to step out from the constraints or context of social action so that they can be moved only by the force of better arguments. Their task is to simulate a discourse between the parties to the given conflict and to hypothetically show which of their interest-claims have generalizability or intersubjective validity. By doing this, the critical theorist plays an advocacy role vis--vis his constituents or addressees. The actual confirmation of the hypothetically valid or right social norms or standards has to be done by the affected people themselves. Habermas maintains this position not to prevent the critical social theorists from involvement in actual political struggles but to indicate that the critical social theorist, qua social theorist, ought not to assume any avant-garde role of technical manipulation of his constituents.53 The Gandhian satyagrahi, in contrast, is required to step into, and become participants in actual political struggles. He is not content with making hypothetical projections of good social norms or right political commands in a given situation. His role extends to the practical demonstration of the life of goodness and rightness. According to Gandhi, a perfect satyagrahi has to be almost, if not entirely, a perfect man. The means he uses in the pursuit of truth is active non-violence, i.e., loving service of others. If he has universal love, Gandhi writes, ... it must find expression in his daily conduct. He
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would be bound with the poorest in the village by the ties of service. He would constitute himself the scavenger, the nurse, the arbitrator of disputes, and the teacher of the children of the village ... His needs would, as far as possible, approximate to those of the poor.54 The satyagrahi, moreover, does not use the force of arguments to compel or coerce others into accepting Ms claims to truth or rightness: everyone, says Gandhi, should follow his or her own inner voice. The satyagrahi only gives a constant and extensive demonstration of a life of active non-violence, i.e., love and self-suffering in the pursuit of truth. The Gandhian satyagrahi thus avoids any theory-based or truth-ordained technical manipulation or control of his followers or their opponents or oppressors.55 Tolerance of opposite views and active nonviolence, i.e., love of, or charity towards, ones opponents are cardinal rules to the satyagrahis experiments with relative truths. Tolerance, civility, nonviolence and loving care of others including ones opponents have a greater and longer or more enduring role in the Gandhian satyagraha than in the Habermasian discourse. Self-suffering, moreover, is required of the satyagrahis but not of the participants in the Habermasian discourse. Habermas assumes that the polytheism of beliefs can be overcome through communicative rationality.56 He, in other words, advances his discursive or rational consensus model of truth and rightness as the corrective to the Weberian pluralism of value systems, gods and demons.57 Habermas makes two crucial assumptions, viz., (a) that a rationally grounded consensus can be realized between the parties to a conflict over truth or rightness; and (b) that this can be done only through argumentative reasoning or discourse. Gandhis assumptions are different. He too does assume that a rational consensus is possible, at least in the long run, between the parties to a conflict over truth and rightness claims. But he insists that in the short run and in the not-so short run, such a consensus may not actually be forthcoming even after considerable amounts of argumentative reasoning or discourse has been done. We must, therefore, according to Gandhi, act in the practico-political sphere on the basis of the assumption that our knowledge of truth and rightness is relative. In the light of the doctrines of anekantavada and syadvada (see above), he is able to say that the plurality of gods and demons need not commit us to indifference or fanaticism. Our failure to actually arrive at a rational consensus on truth and rightness in a given socio-historical context need not condemn us to inaction or passivity. Through the direct actions of active non-violence (i.e., through love and self-suffering) we can and must complement the rational-discursive methods of pursuing truth and rightness. As we have discussed this at length in section 3 above, we only need to add here that according to Gandhi the attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad as a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. For Gandhi, a rational-consensus model of truth or absolute truth is a Euclidean point, which we can only approximate to in the practico-political world. The process of such approximation must however go on. Until we realize that ideal or, rather, in order for us to realize that ideal, we are obligated to give adequate scope for the play and inter-play of our individual conscience or, in other words, to the truths as we perceive and experience
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them. The progress we make toward the ideal of absolute truth or rational-consensual truth is in direct proportion to our non-violence (ahimsa) both in its negative and positive senses. Non-violence in its broadest sense is thus the supreme means to truth (Satya). Satya and ahimsa, Gandhi writes:
are like the two sides of a coin, or rather of a smooth unstamped metallic disc. Who can say, which is the obverse, and which is the reverse? Nevertheless ahimsa is the means; Truth is the end. Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty. If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later. When once we have grasped this point, final victory is beyond question.58
NOTES
1. On some of the modes of oppression in our times and on strategies of emancipation from them, see Christian Bay, Strategies of Political Emancipation (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, and Somaiya Publications, Bombay, 1982). See also Thomas Pantham, Libertarian Socialism as Emancipatory Political Theory: A Critique of Christian Bays Approach, Political Science Review (Jaipur), Vol.21, No.4, October-December 1982. 2. J. Habermas, Theory and Practice. Trans. by John Viertel. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), p. 254. 3. Habermas, Toward a Rational Society. Trans. Jeremy Shapiro. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 63-64. 4. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis. Trans. T. McCarthy. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), pp. 107-8. 5. Habermas, A Reply to my Critics, in J. B. Thompson and D. Held, eds., Habermas: Critical Debates (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 227. 6. T. McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jrgen Habermas (Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1978) p. 326. 7. See T. McCarthy, op. cit., p. 327. (See note 13 below) 8. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 89. 9. Ibid., p. 113. 10. Ibid., p. 117. 11. Ibid., p. 114. 12. Habermas, Theory and Practice, p. 33. 13. As cited in T. McCarthy, op. cit., p.327. 14. As cited in Steven Lukes, Of Gods and Demons: Habermas and Practical Reason, in J. B. Thompson and D. Held, op. cit., p. 144. 15. M. K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Trans. Mahadev Desai. (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1956), pp. 387-8. 16. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1938), p. 27. 17. Gandhi, Satyagraha: Non-violent Resistance (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1951), p. 36. 18. Young India, April 1920. 19. Gandhi, Satyagraha. 20. As cited in R. Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (Delhi: Oxford, 1973), p. 45. 21. Harijan, 10 February 1940, p. 445. 22. Cf. Bhikhu Parekh, Some Reflections on the Hindu Tradition of Political Thought, and I. Rothermund, Gandhis Satyagraha and Hindu Thought, in Thomas Pantham and K. L. Deutsch, eds., Political Thought in Modern India (New Delhi: Sage, 1986). 23. See R. Iyer, op. cit., p. 150. 24. Ibid. 25. Young India, 30 July 1931, p. 196. 26. Harijan, 27 March 1949, p. 26. 27. Young India, 3 September 1925, p. 304. 28. N. K. Bose, Selections from Gandhi (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1957), p. 31. 29. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa. Trans, V. G. Desai (Madras: S. Ganesan, 1938), p. 172. 30. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, p. 4.
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31. Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Bombay: Oxford, 1958), p. 195. 32. Gandhi, From Yervada Mandir, Trans. V. G. Desai (Ahmedabad: Navijvan, 1932), pp. 5-6. 33. D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma, Vol. IV (Bombay: D. G. Tendulkar, i960), p. 352. 34. As cited in R. Iyer, op. cit., pp. 179-180. 35. Gandhi, Ethical Religion, Trans. A. Ramaiyer (Madras: S. Ganesan, 1922), p. 7. 36. As cited in Bondurant, op. cit., p. 27. 37. Young India, October 1927. 38. As cited in R. Iyer, op. cit., p. 287. 39. Harijan, 24 December 1938, p. 38. 40. Tendulkar, Mahatma, Vol. VI, p. 153. 41. Harijan, 27 May 1939, p. 143. 42. Young India, 23 September 1926, p. 334. 43. Harijan, 31 May 1942, p. 172. 44. Young India, March 1925. 45. Gandhi, From Yervada Mandir, p. 40. 46. Young India, January 1925. 47. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, p. 504. 48. M. K. Gandhi, Democracy: Real and Deceptive (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1961), p. 77. 49. Cited in T. McCarthy, op. cit., p. 331. 50. Ibid., p. 332. 51. Gandhi, Democracy, p. 45. 52. See Thomas Pantham, Thinking with Mahatma Gandhi: Beyond Liberal Democracy, Political Theory, Vol.11, No.2, May 1983.
52a. T. A. McCarthy, A Theory of Communicative Competence, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 3 (1973) p. 154.
53. In this context, a reference may be made to Habermass defence of civil disobedience in his Civil Disobedience: Litmus Test for the Democratic Constitutional State, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 30 (1985): 95-116; and Right and Violence a German Trauma, Cultural Critique, Fall 1985: 125-39. 54. Harijan, August 1940. 55. See Thomas Pantham, Proletarian Pedagogy, Satyagraha and Charisma: Notes on Gramsci and Gandhi, in R. Roy, etc., Gandhi and Our Times (New Delhi, forthcoming). 56. J. Habermas, A Reply to My Critics, in J. B. Thompson and D. Held, eds., Habermas: Critical Debates (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 226. 57. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 107. See also S. Lukes, op. cit.
58. Gandhi, From Yervada Mandir. Trans. V. G. Desai (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1932), pp. 8-9.

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