Post-Modern Gandhi: Truth, Context, and Hermeneutics

When we think of postmodernism, figures like Derrida, Foucault, or Lyotard typically come to mind-not a man in a simple loincloth leading India’s independence movement. Yet Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph argue that Gandhi’s 1909 work Hind Swaraj was an opening salvo of the postmodern era, challenging the modernist faith in progress years before World War I shattered Europe’s confidence in inevitable human advancement. Gandhi’s approach to truth, knowledge, and interpretation bears remarkable resemblance to postmodern thought, making him a pioneer of ideas that would only gain mainstream recognition decades later.

An early postmodern critic 🔗

In 1909, Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj during a voyage from London to South Africa-a text that would become foundational to his philosophy and to postcolonial thought. The modernist confidence in scientific and technical progress, the belief in the mastery of nature and the rational design of social order, was at its peak. Gandhi directly challenged this worldview, calling modern civilization into question and advocating for a return to more natural values and sustainable ways of life.

What makes Gandhi’s critique remarkable is its timing. The modernist belief in inevitable material progress would only be widely questioned after World War I devastated Europe, revealing the destructive potential of industrial civilization. Gandhi anticipated this intellectual shift by nearly a decade. His criticism was not directed at science itself but at what he saw as the misguided direction of modern civilization-its obsession with material advancement at the expense of moral and spiritual growth.

Gandhi called his target “modern” rather than “European” or “Western” to highlight its historical specificity and to emphasize that Europe itself had long nurtured a different civilization with much in common with non-European cultures. He hoped the “other West”-the tradition of Ruskin, Tolstoy, and Thoreau-would eventually reassert itself against industrial modernity.

Partial and contingent truth 🔗

Perhaps the most distinctly postmodern aspect of Gandhi’s thought lies in his epistemology-his theory of knowledge. Unlike the Cartesian tradition that sought absolute, objective knowledge through rational inquiry, Gandhi embraced a concept of truth rooted in context and action. His definition of truth was grounded in Karma Yoga, or “truth in action,” locating meaning in particular facts and circumstances rather than abstract universals.

The influence of Anekantavada 🔗

Gandhi’s epistemological framework drew heavily from the Jain doctrine of Anekantavada, meaning “non-absolutism” or “many-sidedness.” This ancient philosophical principle holds that reality is perceived differently from different viewpoints, and no single perspective captures the complete truth. Objects possess infinite modes of existence and qualities that cannot be fully grasped by limited human perception.

Growing up in Gujarat, Gandhi was exposed from childhood to the practice of non-violence, non-possession, and Anekantavada. According to biographers like Uma Majumdar and Stephen Hay, these early impressions significantly shaped his character and moral development. In his writings, Gandhi attributed his seemingly contradictory positions over time to his learning process, his experiments with truth, and his belief in Anekantavada.

The doctrine is often illustrated through the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each man touches a different part-trunk, ear, leg, tail-and describes the elephant differently. All are partially correct from their respective viewpoints, yet none grasps the complete reality. Gandhi embraced this metaphor wholeheartedly, writing that it taught him to judge people of different faiths from their own standpoints rather than dismissing their perspectives.

Truth in practice 🔗

For Gandhi, every individual has a duty to determine what is personally true and act on that relative perception of truth. However, while bound to act according to one’s relative truth, a practitioner of Satyagraha must remain equally open to learning from the truth held by opponents. This created an epistemology that was simultaneously committed and humble-firm in conviction yet open to revision.

Gandhi explained his position clearly in a 1926 article: he could support both Advaita (non-dualism) and Dvaita (dualism) because the world is constantly changing and therefore has aspects of both reality and unreality. This stance, which he called his own form of Syadvada (conditional predication), saved him from attributing motives to critics or opponents. He wrote that this doctrine gifted him the ability to see himself as others see him, allowing him to embrace the whole world in love.

Absolute truth as a limit 🔗

Gandhi’s concept of truth operated on two distinct levels. On one hand, he recognized relative, contextual truths accessible to ordinary humans. On the other, he posited an Absolute Truth-which he equated with God-that humans could approach but never fully attain.

The diamond and infinity metaphors 🔗

Gandhi compared understanding Absolute Truth to understanding infinity in calculus. Just as a mathematical limit can be approached infinitely close but never actually reached, the ultimate truth serves as a guiding ideal that orients our pursuit of relative, contextual truths. The Absolute Truth was, in his words, “without breadth”-like a perfect Euclidean line that no one has ever drawn and never will. Yet keeping this ideal in mind enables progress, just as the concept of a perfect line enables progress in geometry.

This metaphor reveals Gandhi’s sophisticated philosophical position. He was neither a naive relativist who denied the existence of truth nor an absolutist who claimed certain knowledge of ultimate reality. Instead, he occupied a middle ground: truth exists, but our access to it is always partial, situated, and evolving. This anticipated the postmodern critique of grand narratives while avoiding the nihilism sometimes associated with postmodern thought.

Truth as a vast tree 🔗

Gandhi described truth as a vast tree yielding more fruit the more one nurtures it. The quest for that Truth, he declared, is the highest purpose of life. This organic metaphor suggests growth, development, and deepening understanding rather than the static possession of fixed knowledge. Truth, in Gandhi’s view, was something to be cultivated through practice, not merely discovered through intellectual inquiry.

Postmodern hermeneutics 🔗

Gandhi’s approach to interpretation-his hermeneutics-further demonstrates his alignment with postmodern sensibilities. He rejected the modernist claim to self-evident foundational truths or timeless universal narratives, focusing instead on the practical purpose of texts and practices within their contexts.

Interpreting the Bhagavad Gita 🔗

Gandhi’s interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita was explicitly non-literal. From his first encounter with the text in 1888-1889, he understood it not as a historical account but as an allegory. The battlefield described in the Gita represented, in his view, the perpetual struggle within human hearts, with physical warfare introduced merely to make the internal conflict more vivid and compelling.

This interpretive approach was radical for its time. While some Indians read the Gita as a call to arms against British colonial rule, Gandhi famously extracted a message of nonviolence. Rather than endorsing military action, he understood Karma Yoga as disciplined action in pursuit of self-realization-a path to be followed in everyday life.

According to Gandhi, the Gita’s purpose was to show the way to self-realization through selfless action, renunciation of attachment to results, and surrender to God. He called it “The Gospel of Selfless Action,” emphasizing ethical living over metaphysical speculation.

Meaning through practice 🔗

Gandhi’s hermeneutics were inseparable from practice. He understood his authority as an interpreter of the Gita as deriving not from scholarly credentials but from his ongoing efforts to enact its lessons in daily life. For over forty years, he sought to implement the Gita’s teachings at his intentional communities-Phoenix Settlement, Tolstoy Farm, Sabarmati Ashram, and Sevagram Ashram.

This practical orientation extended to his interpretation of practices like vegetarianism, which he understood contextually rather than dogmatically. The meaning of any practice or text, for Gandhi, emerged through engagement with specific circumstances rather than through abstract theorizing.

Beyond foundationalism 🔗

Gandhi acknowledged that holy texts could have multiple meanings. The deeper one delves into a scripture like the Gita, the richer the meanings discovered. He saw seekers as free to extract whatever understanding enabled them to implement the text’s central teachings in their lives. This interpretive pluralism stands in stark contrast to modernist claims of single, authoritative meanings.

For Gandhi, Krishna in the Gita was not primarily a historical figure but “perfection and right knowledge personified.” This symbolic reading freed the text from narrow historical constraints, allowing it to speak to different contexts and circumstances across time.

Gandhi’s complex relationship with postmodernism 🔗

While Gandhi’s thought anticipates postmodern themes, important differences remain. Postmodernism, as Lyotard defined it, involves “incredulity toward metanarratives.” Gandhi, however, maintained grand commitments to Truth and Ahimsa (non-violence) as foundational principles. He remained a Vedantin who admitted degrees of reality, believing that two apparently contradictory facts could both be true because contradiction exists only at the empirical level.

Perhaps the most accurate description positions Gandhi not as a postmodernist proper but as a pre-modern critic of modernity who anticipated postmodern insights. His critique drew on ancient Jain and Hindu wisdom to challenge the assumptions of modern civilization, arriving at conclusions that resonate with contemporary philosophical debates.

What Gandhi offers, ultimately, is a vision of engaged relativism-one that takes context and perspective seriously without abandoning the pursuit of truth or the commitment to ethical action. In an age of polarized certainties and nihilistic doubt, his approach suggests a middle path of humble conviction.

What do you think? Can Gandhi’s epistemology of partial truths provide guidance for navigating contemporary conflicts between competing worldviews? How might his hermeneutical approach-finding meaning through practice rather than abstract theory-transform our engagement with religious and philosophical texts today?

References

1. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo4343100.html
2. https://mkgandhi.org/articles/Mahatma-Gandhi-readings-in-a-postmodern-light.html
3. https://www.india-seminar.com/2022/750/750-SATISH%20C.%20AIKANT.htm
4. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Anekantavada
5. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/11/619
6. https://www.reonline.org.uk/research/living-the-bhagavad-gita-at-gandhis-ashrams/
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita