The aim of the article is to present the economic thought of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi with respect to ethical aspects. There are lots of statements and remarks about the relations of ethics and economics in Gandhi’s writings. In his opinion, both areas should be treated as integrated. That is why it is worth analysing Gandhi’s views on various economic matters. Only a selected presentation was possible because it was difficult to find cohesion in his socio-economic system. One of the hypothesis underlined is that it is even risky to write about Gandhi’s united system. Generally his economic thought was not a part of economics as a discipline. Nevertheless it is not a reason to relinquish studies of it. Because of the fact that many remarks linked with microand macroeconomics are of considerable value, they can be used to research economic changes in India in 20th century or to study the attitude of Indian society towards those changes. The main source of the paper was the autobiography ‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth’ published in 1925. More of Gandhi’s economic thought can also be found in the work ‘Hind Swaraj’ from 1909 and in the lecture ‘Does Economic Progress Clash with Real Progress?’ from 1916.
Violence, as a concept, has shaped most of human history and discourse. Over the centuries, the concept has gone through dynamic evolutions and should be understood in relation to diverse agents such as nation, nostalgia, and culture. Modern society’s tendency to impede and constrain overt forms of violence has paved the way for covert forms to exist in socio-cultural spheres. Cultural violence is one such realization where aggression gets exercised covertly through heterogenous mediums such as language, regulations, mass media, and most importantly cultural practices. Its topological structures can be traced in national imagination and a sense of cultural nostalgia originating out of it, that ultimately formulates cultural “otherness.” In Gandhian philosophy, the absence of physical aggression is insignificant, if not complemented with the eradication of violence from the cultural and intellectual strata. Gandhi’s critique of exclusive nationalism and narrowness is reflective of a distinct kind of cultural topology that generates structural violence and with the due course of history it gets legitimacy to exert power over the cultural binary it constructed. The fundamental questions of the paper are associated with assessing the role of national imagination and cultural imperatives in germinating the structures of violence in culture, exclusive nationalism, and Gandhian reconsideration of peace in the context of covert violence in the material and intellectual realms.
The article deals with the Hindi language and its use as a language for official purposes from the late Middle Ages until its implementation in the Constitution of India in the year 1949. It reveals various ideas for promoting Hindi as a national (official) language of India. The main focus is on the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi on Hindi as the lingua franca of India and its role in the replacement of English. Further it describes the process and struggle of its implementation as the official language in the Constituent Assembly of India and concludes with the compromise made by this Assembly.
The paper explores basic political relations between the European Union and India which are at theoretical level almost “terra nullius”. The paper starts from the present epochal situation and enters the realm of EU–India geopolitics from the perspective of Gandhian moral practice on one side, and challenges presented by the impact of Coronavirus politics on the other. Our question is – on which platform is strategic negotiating between the EU and India possible? Despite their Lisbon summit in 2000 as well as virtual summit in 2020, it is obvious that until today the EU and India could not find a common denominator. Our idea is that the missing link of a better understanding partly lays in the new perspective that may be unexpectedly found from the Balkans’ point of view. Only unprecedented cognizance today may set up the roadmap for the times to come.
PL
Artykuł przedstawia podstawowe relacje polityczne między Unią Europejską a Indią, które na poziomie teoretycznym pozostają niemal „terra nullius”. Artykuł wychodzi od obecnej sytuacji międzynarodowej i rozwija sferę relacji między Unią Europejską a Indią z perspektywy praktyki moralnej Gandhiego z jednej strony, i wyzwań jakie stwarza obecna pandemia Koronawirusa z drugiej. Podstawowe pytanie badawcze brzmi, na jakiej platformie możliwe są strategiczne negocjacje między Unią Europejską a Indią? Pomimo szczytu UE-India w Lizbonie w 2000 r. i wirtualnego szczytu w 2020 r., podstawy realnej współpracy nie zostały wypracowane. Autorzy wykazują, że przyczyną tego są odmienne cechy cywilizacyjne obydwu regionów, a zwłaszcza postawa Unii Europejskiej, będąca dziedzictwem epoki kolonialnej, oraz jej korporacyjna, a nie republikańska natura. Postawa ta jest sprzeczna z wartościami cywilizacji indyjskiej i jej polityki odwołującej się do “energii moralnej”. Proponowanym kluczem do rozwiązania problemu polegającego na braku możliwości porozumienia odmiennych cywilizacyjnie partnerów, ma być zupełnie nowa perspektywa, jaką oferuje bałkański punkt widzenia.
Critics of Christianity in India have frequently accused Christianity of being a predatory, imperialistic religion with absolutist tendencies, and have framed Christian evangelism as an aggressive, uncouth act. More recently, however, and in an idiom that resonates with many contemporary Indians, Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1930-) has made the more controversial claim that the attempt to convert another person is itself an act of violence. In three parts, the paper 1) describes Dayananda’s claims, while bringing them into conversation with the arguments of earlier critics of Christianity (e.g., Mahatma Gandhi, Sita Ram Goel, Ashok Chowgule, Arun Shourie), 2) analyzes and critique Dayananda’s use of the term “violence,” and 3) demonstrate how the claim that conversion is an act of violence blurs somewhat easily into a justification of acts of violence against those who attempt to convert others. In the end, I argue that whether Dayananda’s claim that proselytization is a form of violence makes sense depends not only on one’s definition of “violence,” but also on one’s definition of “religion.”
This article focuses on the history of Indians in South Africa. In November 2010 the community celebrated their 150 years of settlement. Between 1860 and 1911 the Colony of Natal imported from different regions of India over 150 000 Indians to work primarily on its sugar cane plantations. The analysis covers the process of settlement in Natal, including the activism of Mahatma Gandhi and the government’s creation of an Indian township (Chatsworth) to the south of Durban. After 150 years on South African land, Indians assimilated with the native population, calling themselves nationals of South Africa and repudiating the term „immigrant”. Despite cultural, religious and linguistic differences in the past, Indians today uphold their heritage in the modern upper-class society of South Africa.
Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of nonviolence was undergirded by his own interpretation of Hinduism. As the interest in his work has moved to the West, certain questions have arisen about its applicability to Western culture and thought. Martin Luther King, Jr. used his version of Christianity, for instance, to import Gandhi into a powerful movement in mid-20th century America. American philosopher, Gene Sharp, has written about Gandhi’s influence in terms of methods that work, with or without a metaphysical or religious foundation. This paper contends that some sort of metaphysical foundation is necessary for nonviolent movements to be effective with large groups of people over time. In service of finding a Western metaphysics that would support nonviolence, the writings of Martin Heidegger are employed. First, Gandhi’s metaphysics is discussed. In light of this discussion, Heidegger’s insights into the relationship of beings to Being are compared to some of Gandhi’s interpretations of Hinduism, especially with regard to nonviolence (ahimsa), Sat (truth) and the active confrontation of violence (satyagraha). In the work of both these thinkers there lies an apparent paradox of boldly confronting the truth that violence and injustice exists while holding to a belief in the impossibility of possessing truth totally. At the heart of this paradox is the danger that a self-righteous “holding to truth” (satyagraha) itself may be a source of much violence, both physical and structural and therefore is the antithesis of nonviolence. It is precisely at this point of contradiction that Gandhi’s and Heidegger’s metaphysical insights converge and transcend this paradox and can be employed as a metaphysical foundation for nonviolence as an ongoing, active struggle with violence.
The aim of the article is to present an intriguing issue of multiculturalism in Durban, South Africa. The city’s social and cultural rapid development is based on tripolar culture of the African, Asian and European origin. Strongly rooted native Bantu culture repre-sented since 18th century by the Zulu tribe which collided with the European culture of Dutch and British origin. That is complemented by the rich Indian culture, which since the second half of the 19th century played a significant role in the development of the city.
PL
Tematem niniejszego artykułu jest przedstawienie intrygującego zagadnienia jakim jest wielokulturowość południowoafrykańskiej metropolii Durban. Szybki rozwój społeczny i kulturalny miasta ma swe podłoże w trójbiegunowej kulturze rodem z Afryki, Azji i Europy. Silnie zakorzeniona kultura Bantu reprezentowana od XVIII wieku przez plemię Zulusów, zderzyła się już w XIX wieku z napływową kulturą europejską, najpierw holenderską a następnie brytyjską. Całość uzupełnia bogata kultura indyjska, która od drugiej połowy XIX wieku odgrywa znaczącą rolę w rozwoju miasta.
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