{"id":21517,"date":"2019-06-24T15:22:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T19:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=21517"},"modified":"2019-06-24T15:22:22","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T19:22:22","slug":"gandhi-versus-jinnah-on-means-and-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=21517","title":{"rendered":"Gandhi versus Jinnah on means and ends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Posted while leading the 11th annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies<\/a>, on questions like this one.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A major theme in Gandhi’s thought it the primacy of means over ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1924, some Indian political leaders proposed the immediate creation of a new, independent \u201cFederated Republic of the United States of India.\u201d They argued that this end justified a wide range of strategies. They wanted to \u201cdelete the words \u2018by peaceful and legitimate means\u2019 from the Congress creed, so that men holding every shade of opinion may have no difficulty in joining\u201d the independence struggle. That would have expanded the range of means employed to achieve the goal of home-rule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gandhi replied, “They say \u2018means are after all means\u2019. I would say \u2018means are after all everything\u2019. As the means so the end.\u201d The \u201conly universal definition to give it is \u2018that status of India which her people desire at a given moment.\u2019 If I were asked what India desires at the present moment, I should say I do not know.\u201d For Gandhi, the means used to pursue swaraj<\/em> (independence in its deepest sense) had to be good ones. \u201cAs the means so the end. Violent means will give violent swaraj. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on Karuna Mantena, I would suggest the following Gandhian reasons to focus on means rather than ends. Human beings are cognitively limited and cannot see justice far beyond our own present circumstances. Human beings are motivationally flawed and highly susceptible to various distorting and destructive impulses. Therefore, we must choose modes of politics that channel our impulses in beneficial rather than harmful directions. Forming too sharp a definition of justice (or any of its components, such as national sovereignty) can simply excuse bad behavior. Consequences are always difficult to predict and control, and trying to pursue elaborate ends is foolish. We disagree, and what we decide about justice right now is contingent on how we are organized, so it is crucial to get the organization right. Finally, how we participate in politics helps to constitute the world. By acting, we don\u2019t merely bring about a result (usually an unpredictable one); we immediately create a new reality just in virtue of our action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A focus on means and a reluctance to specify ends does, however, pose a risk. A person might (whether intentionally or inadvertently) select and defend means that generate a foreseeable outcome or that foreclose the outcome that others prefer. That could be a back-door strategy for getting the ends that the person wanted in the first place. To claim that you are too humble and aware of your own limits to know the best goals is disingenuous if it\u2019s clear what ends your favored means will lead to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was essentially Muhammad Ali Jinnah\u2019s quarrel with Gandhi. Gandhi insisted that the social movement for Indian independence must involve close collaborations among Hindus, Muslims and adherents of other faiths. Immediately after saying that he did not know what India wanted, he added that he only endorsed a few values, including \u201ctruthful relations between Hindus and Mussalmans.\u201d (\u201cTruthful,\u201d for him, would imply a close, sincere, and interactive relationship.) For Gandhi, the means of political action in India must incorporate interfaith dialogue and cooperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Gandhi insisted that \u201cCongress leaves swaraj undefined,\u201d Jinnah could see that if Hindus and Muslims won independence together, they would found a democracy with a large Hindu majority. This new country might be secular, or it might be Hindu-dominated, but it couldn\u2019t be an Islamic republic–simply because of demographics. Jinnah identified the Congress as a Hindu organization and created the Muslim League as an alternative. He objected when Congress tried to place its Muslim President, Maulana Azad, in the provisional cabinet for British India, arguing that the Muslim League should name all Muslim members. After Gandhi\u2019s assassination, Jinnah eulogized him as \u201cone of the greatest men produced by the Hindu community and a leader who commanded their [sic] universal confidence and respect.\u201d Jinnah regretted Gandhi\u2019s death \u201cso soon after the birth of freedom for Hindustan [his term for India] and Pakistan.\u201d Thus, although Gandhi claimed that \u201cmeans are after all everything,\u201d Jinnah saw that Gandhi\u2019s means would prevent Jinnah\u2019s goal, a sovereign Pakistan. And he charged Gandhi with having an implicit goal of his own: the creation of a \u201cHindustan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The broader, theoretical question is how to think about means and ends when sometimes the means that we choose for good intrinsic reasons have foreseeable ends that are subject to debate. Yet, if we propose a clear vision of our goal, how can we know that it is right, and who gets to evaluate it? Surely, that requires a process <\/em>that is not simply designed to yield a given outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For what it’s worth, this is my verdict on the case at hand. Gandhi joined and then led an interfaith party for swaraj<\/em> that encouraged debates about both means and goals. Jinnah was a member of that party, albeit mostly before Gandhi\u2019s arrival from South Africa. Jinnah and others had the right to quit the party and movement. Exit is a legitimate choice in movements and party politics. As a result of Jinnah\u2019s exit, Gandhi\u2019s means failed: Congress ceased to be a forum for dialogue and cooperation that included the kinds of people who preferred the Muslim League. But Gandhi\u2019s failure doesn\u2019t invalidate his general advice to focus on means rather than specific ends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing here on Karuna Mantena, \u201cAnother Realism, the Politics of Gandhian Nonviolence,\u201d <\/em>American Political Science Review, vol. 106, no. 2 (May 2012) and various original passages from Gandhi’s works that Mantena’s article led me to. Also drawing on Ramachandra Guha, <\/em>Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 1914-1948 (New York: Knopf, 2018)<\/em>
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(Posted while leading the 11th annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies, on questions like this one.) A major theme in Gandhi’s thought it the primacy of means over ends. In 1924, some Indian political leaders proposed the immediate creation of a new, independent \u201cFederated Republic of the United States of India.\u201d They argued that this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civic-theory","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21517"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21523,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21517\/revisions\/21523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}