Why Gandhi Still Matters

 

Whenever I return to Gandhi, I find myself thinking less about the ceremonies held in his memory and more about the choices through which we live. What happens when we encounter injustice? How do we respond to someone who disagrees with us? What do we consider a successful life? These questions bring Gandhi into the present. His relevance lies in the way he unsettles our comfortable answers and asks us to examine the relationship between our convictions and our conduct.

As we celebrate Gandhi’s birthday this 2^nd October 2026, I reminisce about an invitation, some years ago. It offered me an opportunity to speak about Gandhi’s relevance in the twenty-first century. As a teacher of the undergraduate course Understanding Gandhi, I have approached him through reading and discussion. Yet my understanding also comes from the world in which I grew up. My roots in Vidarbha, particularly the Bhamragad region and its Madiya life and culture, remind me that political ideas acquire meaning through people’s lived circumstances. A theory of justice must eventually reach the child, the village, and the family whose struggles rarely enter public conversation.

I do not approach Gandhi as someone who has found every answer in his writings. I approach him as a learner. Teaching him has made me conscious of how easily familiarity becomes an obstacle to understanding. We recognize his face, remember a few quotations, and associate him with the freedom struggle. That recognition can conceal the demanding questions he raises about power, responsibility and the dignity of ordinary people.

Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, but his moral presence has travelled beyond his lifetime and beyond India. I think of this movement as the passage from the historical Gandhi to a civilizational Gandhi. The historical figure belongs to particular struggles, decisions, and limitations. The civilizational presence appears wherever people ask how injustice can be resisted without surrendering their humanity. This larger presence should deepen our study of the actual person, including the uncomfortable parts of his legacy.

It is tempting to turn such a figure into a finished doctrine. Gandhi’s autobiography, however, presents a life of experiments. Its very title, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, invites us to see ethical understanding as a continuing effort. This matters to me because reflection should leave room for correction. A conviction may be sincerely held and still require reconsideration when confronted with another person’s suffering.

Gandhi’s political importance also becomes clearer when we look closely at his methods. His spiritual commitments did not remove him from practical politics. He worked with grievances, institutions, negotiations, and public mobilization. Champaran in 1917 and the Salt March in 1930 demonstrate how he connected larger questions of colonial authority with experiences ordinary people could understand. The peasant’s predicament and the daily necessity of salt became matters of national concern.

India’s freedom emerged from many struggles and sacrifices. Revolutionaries, workers, peasants, tribal communities, and numerous political organizations contributed to it. Gandhi’s distinctive achievement was expanding the possibilities for participation. People who possessed neither wealth nor official authority could act together and challenge an apparently overwhelming power. His politics encouraged them to see themselves as participants in the making of their country.

This capacity to bring people into public life remains valuable. Democracy loses substance when citizens become spectators who applaud leaders and wait for decisions. Gandhi’s example asks whether people have the confidence, opportunity, and organization to influence the conditions of their lives. Political freedom becomes more meaningful when those usually unheard can speak and when public institutions learn to listen.

Listening also requires accepting disagreement. Gandhi’s encounters with his critics reveal the tensions within the making of modern India. His differences with Dr B. R. Ambedkar deserve particular seriousness. Their dispute over separate electorates and the Poona Pact of 1932 concerned representation, caste oppression and the terms of belonging to a common political community. It cannot be reduced to a reassuring story in which national unity automatically settled the question of justice.

Ambedkar insisted that those subjected to caste domination needed effective safeguards and political agency. Gandhi feared the consequences of separate electorates and opposed untouchability, yet his positions on caste and social reform remained open to powerful criticism. To recognize this is to respect the complexity of history. We can value Gandhi’s concern for solidarity while understanding why Ambedkar demanded protections that goodwill alone could never guarantee.

For me, reading them together strengthens our democratic imagination. Compassion must enter institutions, and institutional rights must be supported by a public culture of equal respect. A nation becomes more secure when its citizens experience membership as dignity rather than dependence. We should be able to admire a leader while questioning his judgment. Ambedkar’s warning against political hero worship remains especially valuable when public loyalty is treated as a reason to silence criticism.

The same seriousness is needed in discussing nonviolence. It is often mistaken for passivity, as though refusing violence means accepting injustice. Gandhi’s political practice involved confrontation, sacrifice, and the willingness to bear consequences. Nonviolent action seeks to challenge the wrong without making destruction the measure of courage. Its discipline is difficult precisely because anger can feel more immediate and more satisfying than patient organization.

His decision to suspend the Non-Cooperation Movement after the violence at Chauri Chaura in 1922 illustrates this difficulty. Many believed that withdrawal sacrificed political momentum. The disagreement deserves recognition. Gandhi nevertheless believed that a struggle carried forward through uncontrolled violence would damage the society it hoped to liberate. Whether one agrees with his decision or not, the question survives: what habits are we creating through the methods we use to achieve our goals?

This question reaches beyond protest. We may justify humiliation because we believe our cause is right. We may excuse dishonesty because an opponent seems worse. We may celebrate intimidation when it benefits our own side. Gandhi’s attention to means exposes these evasions. A desirable objective does not relieve us of responsibility for the people harmed along the way. The character of public life is shaped by practices repeated long before a final victory is announced.

Violence must also be considered beyond its visible forms. Johan Galtung later developed the concept of structural violence to explain how social arrangements can prevent people from realizing possibilities available to others. I find this useful when reflecting on deprivation. A child excluded from good education, a family without accessible healthcare, or a community denied equal treatment may suffer injuries that attract little attention because no single dramatic event has occurred.

Gandhi did not formulate Galtung’s later theory. His constructive programme nevertheless invites us to connect the pursuit of peace with work against social exclusion. His concerns included the removal of untouchability, communal unity, sanitation, education and village livelihoods. The relationship is suggestive: a society cannot congratulate itself on peace while accepting avoidable deprivation as the natural condition of some of its members.

My connection with tribal life makes this concern particularly immediate. Communities must be understood through their aspirations and histories, rather than through distant assumptions. Roads, schools and hospitals matter, but so do language, culture, land and the opportunity to participate in decisions. Development deserves that name when people can recognize their own dignity within it. Assistance that ignores their voice can reproduce the distance it claims to overcome.

Legitimate grievances should be distinguished from armed violence. Public authority has responsibilities towards security, but durable peace also requires fair treatment and trust. A citizen who seeks justice should find institutions that respond. Gandhi’s emphasis on personal contact and constructive service reminds me that national belonging grows through everyday encounters with the state and with fellow citizens. Neglect can weaken that belonging; respectful engagement can strengthen it.

His vision of Gram Swaraj raises related questions about the location of power. Decisions made far away can overlook local needs. A meaningful democracy therefore requires capable local institutions, public participation, and accountability. Yet we should resist romanticizing the village. Villages can contain oppressive hierarchies, especially caste and gender inequalities. Ambedkar’s criticism prevents the language of community from concealing the domination experienced by individuals within it.

The task is to create local democracy that protects equal citizenship. People need a voice in managing shared resources, but constitutional rights cannot depend on local approval. Gandhi’s attention to the village can guide us towards participation, while Ambedkar’s insistence on equality helps us judge whether that participation is fair. Their differences become productive when they help us ask better questions about the institutions we build.

I also find Gandhi useful in thinking about technology and work. We need not reproduce the economy of his time to take his concerns seriously. The relevant question is how economic change affects human dignity. Does a new technology improve people’s capabilities? Who receives its benefits, and who bears the cost of displacement? Can those affected participate in the transition? Progress should be assessed through these consequences, alongside efficiency and output.

His insistence on restraint carries an environmental lesson as well. Human needs deserve fulfilment, but consumption can become a pursuit without a stopping point. When prestige is measured by accumulation, both nature and human relationships come under pressure. A Gandhian approach asks us to consider what is sufficient and to recognize the claims of people whose necessities remain unmet. Restraint becomes a responsibility towards others, rather than simply a private preference.

This outlook resonates with Indian civilizational traditions that speak of interconnected life. The idea of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, the world as one family, becomes meaningful through how we treat those beyond our immediate circle. Traditions of compassion and ahimsa offer resources for such reflection. Their worth is realized through conduct. Civilizational pride should encourage self-examination, especially when inherited practices conflict with the dignity we profess to uphold.

Gandhi’s religious sensibility also offers a way to think about living with difference. Faith can sustain ethical responsibility, yet it can become a language of exclusion when possession of truth is confused with superiority over others. A plural society requires room for belief, doubt, and disagreement. The willingness to encounter another person respectfully is a civic responsibility, whether one is religious or not.

In our own public conversations, this responsibility is often tested by speed. Messages circulate before their truth is checked, and disagreement quickly becomes personal hostility. Gandhi’s discipline of truth asks something modest but demanding of us: pause, verify, and remain willing to correct ourselves. For a teacher, this extends to the classroom. Students should feel able to question what they hear, including the convictions of the person teaching them.

As I return to the question of Gandhi’s relevance, I find that it leads back to the scale of an ordinary life. We cannot all lead national movements. We can notice exclusion, resist cruelty, and refuse to make dishonesty convenient. We can treat disagreement as an invitation to think. These acts acquire political meaning when they shape the relationships through which a society lives.

It is therefore, Gandhi represents a continuing conversation between learning and living. My readings offer concepts; my background reminds me of the people those concepts must serve. His example asks me to examine that connection with greater honesty. Remembering him becomes meaningful when it changes how we exercise authority, approach another person’s pain, and accept responsibility for our shared world. That is the Gandhi I wish to keep encountering: a presence that makes reflection answerable to life.