Each and everybody in this world, is engaged in an exercise of becoming this leads all to imperatives of a peaceful and non-violent society. Gandhiji was not only a unique person who strived ceaselessly for creation or a non-exploitative, society, based on truth and non-violence. He was also a unique phenomenon of this fary as well as contemporary society. Peace is Universally desired. It can achieved through the elimination of impediments to its realisation. It is a question of establishing a new society founded on values, culture and a way of life integral to peace & non-violence as inreparable compound in all aspects of personal as well as social life.
We are glad to publish the book on the Gandhian Mode of Becoming by Dr. Catalin Mamali a Scholar, of the University of Iowa. He has made a penetrating study of Mahatma Gandhi's life in all aspects. In this book, he has compared Gandhi with Machiavelli, for deeper understanding of Ahimsa.
Mamali through the book, has produced a destinctive and analytical as well as comparative study of Gandhiji. It is in many ways an unparallel study. We hope this publication incorporating the ideas and analysis by Dr. Catalin S. Mamali will be welcome by all social scientists. We thank Dr. Catalin Mamali for entrusting the publication of this very thought provoking critical work of comparative study. We hope this publication will be welcome by many Scholars. I congratulate our Peace Research Centre for undertaking such an enlightening publication. I also thank Prof. Johan Galtung for advising Mr. C. S. Mamali to send his MSS to us for publications.
[By Johan Galtung, Professor of Peace Studies Hawai i Universität Witten/Herdecke.
One more book about Gandhi? Oh yes but, dear reader, you are in for something very exceptional this time. I have been working on Gandhi for more than 40 years, and yet I am amazed to find so many new angles, so much fresh insight, in this erudite, penetrating work by the Romania. philosopher, psychologist, general social scientist, Dr Catalin Mamali.
Mamali is unique in working on Gandhi at all three levels: the Gandhi of public space, known to us all from his public experiments with truth, the private Gandhi known only to family and friends, and revealed to others through notes and correspondence and many books, and then the inner Gandhi, the Gandhi of the spiritual journey. To follow that Gandhi the philosopher-psychologist training of Mamali, so far mainly seen in Erik H. Erikson's Gandhi's Truth, is very useful. Mamali's explorations is the best rebuttal of Erikson' psychologizing of Gandhi so far as concluding that Erikson's book tells more about Erikson's childhood problems than those of Gandhi. And, I may add, could Erikson's denigration of Gandhi also be a cry of despair: if the Jews of Europe were unable to find an alternative to violent resistance, then nobody else should have any claim on that kind of Truth.
And yet, in Febraury 1943, in Rosenstrasse in Berlin, German wives of Jews to be exterminated managed, nonviolently, to have their husbands liberated by the thousands (see my The Way is the Goal: Gandhi Today, 1993 pp. 45-46). Imagine Gandhi's Truth, as told by Mamali, or by Gandhi!, had been better known in those dark days.
Mamali's book has one organizing axis a comparison of Gandhi with Machiavelli, for understanding both of them better, as each other's contrast, dialectionally not to end up telling the reader whom he should follow. Interestingly, they were both fighting for freedom of their lands. But to Machiavelli such giant tasks accrued to the Prince. To gandhi the liberation could only be done by those who should be liberated; the people, not the way Machiavelli (and the Marxist tradition) saw them, as "masses", as superficial admirers of success: hence to be led by feeding them with successes. As a social psychologist Mamali then hitches on to the US social psychologist Richard Christie's work on Machiavelli, developing an attitude scale on Machiavellianism. The reader can easily imagine what Mamali develops in response an ahimsa scale.
Recently, browsing in a bookstore. I came across a book by a US political scientist Kenneth Thompson), Fathers of International Thought The Legacy of Political Theory, extolling the theories of Plato, Aristotle. Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Grotius. Hobbes, Locks, Smith. Hume, Montesquieu, Rouseau, Burke, Kant, Hegel, Marx. In other words, a book in the old tradition of white males admiring white males; no doubt great and worth knowing. But none of them came up with practical ideas grounded in deep philosophy, religion and psychology on how to encounter violence, direct and structural, in its two standard forms of exploitation and repression, with non-violence. And yet Machiavelli with his contempt for people, and his view, that end justifies any means, however, violent, is standard fare on the political science curriculum. Not that little brown giant, and the countless women who have practiced non-violence.
How does the liberal tradition, based on the two pillars of rule of law and the free market, handle the dilemma of extolling the individual and the freedom of choice, yet sacrificing them as friends and foes on the altars of war, and of world exploitation? By deploring the anarchy, the lawlessness. of some political systems; and by holding out the promise of a perfectly functioning markets with plenty for all who work hard. In other words, the same way as marxists did by promosing a utopia which works perfectly when perfectly realized. Maybe there is a clue to the civilization of the Occident here the apodictic faith in some formula.
But, as has been said and been seen again and again violence is not rational because it breeds violence. The vanquished become addicted to their revenge and the victors to more victory, and thus it goes on. So there could be some other reason why violence is deplored, yet seen as indispensable by some under one condition: that the means of violence are only in the hands of the Prince (if not, it is referred to as "terroism", and the people as "rebels"). So, maybe there is something higher than even the rule of law, the free market, the dignity of the individual and rational choice rule, simply rule as such, "with all necessary means" (Clausewitz) as opposed to non-rule, anarchy. And in this category rule by people, even when non-violent, would probably be included.
May be one day that elusive entity, "the liberal tradition", could open its entry and exit gates, admit Gandhi through the former and expel Machiavelli through the latter? Or is a white Gandhi (not a King, a Mandela) a condition? Maybe. But if it should happen, then you will find the reasons in this book.
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