Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most recognizable public figures of the 20th century. According to Tajbakhsh (2018, p.2), Gandhi is arguably the most exceptional leader of the Indian independence movement whose philosophical, religious, economic, and social teachings have influenced India and the globe in general. It is perceptible that Gandhi’s ideas of truth, non-violence, peace, and love continue to be applicable in today’s world. Most of his perspective is primarily geared towards comprehending the current human value and social change. Gandhi has, for a long time, been a serious advocate for equality and safeguarding the basic principles of humanity; hence, his ideologies have always been towards supporting human rights and attaining state independence.
Nonetheless, scholars have noted that Gandhi’s notions have failed to accommodate some ideas and values of the modern world involving militarism and capitalism. Tajbakhsh, for instance, claims that Gandhi’s approaches contain many contradictions, thus deemed outdated and irrelevant to contemporary political thinking (2018, p.3). The reason for this assertion is because today’s politics include contestation, revolutionizing, reconstitution, and the development of diverse positions, which Gandhian ideologies seem to challenge.
Additionally,
“modernity” appears to generally rejected by Gandhian principles of
tolerance and non-violence. The use of modern concepts such as militarism and
capitalism are ostensibly at odd Gandhi’s underlying assumption of
non-violence, which advocates for more peaceful ways to attain human rights and
social justice. Furthermore, Tajbakhsh states that “Gandhi’s critique of modern Western
civilization and modernity set out in his manifesto, Hind Swaraj,” raises skepticism in terms of the radical politics and approaches to social development in the current world (2018, p.2). Capitalism, on the other hand, is not supported by Gandhi because he believed that its values were exploitative and cause economic inequalities. Balch declares that one of Mahatma Gandhi’s quotes, “the world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not everyone’s greed” (2013, p.1), is pre-eminently against the modern economy. Capitalism keeps eating into the planet’s resources at the expense of the disadvantaged groups of people.
In general, Gandhian principles a value visualizes a very dynamic world demonstrating individual and collective wellbeing. For this reason, Gandhi embraces the modern values and ideas of human rights and nation-state because it favors all aspects of human existence. Gandhi, on the contrary, perceives the other modernity, such as militarism and capitalism as immoral and unsuitable to collective human wellbeing.