The pacifist and the hypophysical: A cosmological reading of Gandhi

Abstract

Amidst the resurgence of scholarship on pacifism, this essay seeks to critically interrogate certain influential sections within pacifism which characterise Gandhi as a pacifist, and his philosophy as pacifism. After pointing out the shortcomings of existing attempts to problematise the pacifist connotations of Gandhi, I adopt a cosmological approach to reading Gandhi. I argue that such an approach enables us to view the uncritical equation of both strands of thought as symptomatic of the deep-rooted ontological, epistemological, and other biases informing Western cosmology. This is demonstrated by the channels through which Gandhian discourses are framed as pacifism (especially in their diffusion into the American context), via a distinct set of interactions with both the religious and secular cosmological background assumptions underpinning pacifism. In the subsequent section, I continue this approach by highlighting how an alternate relational cosmology – Gandhian hypophysics – with a radically different set of background assumptions results in an idiosyncratic notion of Gandhian ideas which are quite inimical to pacifism. Besides reconciling contradictory characterisations of the same man and his philosophy, as well as contributing to a dialogic, pluriversal approach, I argue that this work also seeks to extend the scholarship on the interrelated themes of agency and cosmology.