Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)’s relationship with the Jews is explored in this article. The history of this relationship can be divided into two different periods. The first begins during his formative years in South Africa from 1893 to 1914, and the second, during his political activism in India thereafter. The article points out that Gandhi’s close Jewish associates in South Africa, although coming primarily from a Theosophist background, considered their support of Gandhi and his struggle to represent their core Jewish (...) values. Still, Gandhi’s close Jewish supporters did not successfully influence Gandhi regarding Zionism. In retrospect, Gandhi’s objection to Zionism enormously impacted the Indian Congress Party’s position regarding Palestine. The article notes that although Gandhi opposed political Zionism, he supported Zionism as a spiritual movement that could be best realized “within.” Somewhat surprising and little-known fact was a desire on Gandhi’s part to mediate between the Arabs and the Jews in direct talks. Gandhi hoped the Zionist leaders would respond positively to his offer to mediate so that he could advance his teachings of nonviolence while also claiming to represent the Indian Muslims. The article discusses Gandhi’s call to German and European Jews to resist the Nazi regime by adopting Satyagraha, the consequent rift with Jewry that followed, and his silence after the Holocaust. Finally, the article also briefly explores B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956)’s views on the Jews and the Indian pariahs. (shrink)

The Avali Silūk (The Ultimate Song) and the Kāfir Bodh (The Wisdom of the Infidels) are lesser-known yogic granths, or treatises, in the early modern North Hindustani Nāth literary tradition. Erased from the modern literary canon in the mid-twentieth century, these multilingual teachings are crucial to understanding how the Nāth Yogīs conceptualized their complex relationships with Muslim communities around the time of the Nāth sampradāy’s foundation. Although the better-known Sabadī (The Sacred Utterances) attributed to Guru Gorakhnāth frequently speaks of the (...) porous religious identity of early modern North Hindustani Nāth Yogīs, the Avali Silūk and the Kāfir Bodh are the only two known discourses that highlight Nāth Yogī engagement with Islamic publics from a Nāth point of view. This article examines these teachings, explores possible motives for their erasure in the modern printed canon, and reconsiders how the Nāth Yogīs expressed their identity and relationship with Muslim publics in early modern Hindustan. (shrink)

In 1962, Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) was asked about the political implications of his ethics and the possible similarity between his philosophy and the writing of Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948). They both were aware of the considerable tensions between politics and ethics. Both tried to construct ethical politics, and both thought about the ethical aspects of politics. The differences were obvious. Gandhi was an Indian thinker who embraced Hinduism, Christian ethics, Western philosophy, and Leo Tolstoy’s spiritual writings. Levinas was a Western (...) philosopher with a traditional Jewish background, familiar with Russian literature. Gandhi was a social figure and political leader who based his attitude and activism on spirituality. Levinas was a phenomenological philosopher who based his perspective on ethics, underpinning his political philosophy. Nevertheless, this article suggests a philosophical study of Gandhi’s writings compared to Levinas’s teachings. This new perspective explains Gandhi’s philosophy by focusing on the establishment of the subject, the validity of ethics, the search for truth, and the epistemological stance. This study would structure Gandhi’s political position based on spiritual and ethical thinking. This could clarify three main principles of Gandhi’s doctrine: striving for the truth, self-control, and nonviolence. (shrink)

Daya Krishna, one of the most original voices of contemporary Indian philosophy, writes that “Gandhi is as rare as…a Shakespeare or a Michelangelo” (1999). Mohandas K. Gandhi himself writes that “Jesus was, to my mind, a supreme artist” (1924). And Tridip Suhrud, Gandhian and Gandhi scholar, speaks of “Gandhi’s striving to lead the life of a ‘supreme artist’ ” (2018). The question raised in this article is this: If Gandhi was an artist, then what is his artwork? In reply, the (...) author suggests that Gandhi himself is the artwork of Gandhi the artist. To substantiate this contention, Gandhi is depicted first as a “hunger artist,” in dialogue with Franz Kafka’s 1924 story of the same name, and second as a “death artist” crafting (determining, choosing) his death. Here the author draws on Ramchandra Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson and an intriguing philosophical voice, and examines Judah L. Magnes’s 1939 letter to Gandhi. (shrink)

Rebb Binyamin (pseudonym of Yehoshua Radler-Feldman; 1880–1957) was a leading figure in movements that called for the establishment of a joint Jewish-Arab political framework in Palestine and that sharply criticized the Zionist cooperation with the British colonial authorities. In the early 1920s, he began exploring the writings of Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) as the basis for his critical approach toward the hegemonic Zionist discourse. In his writings Rebb Binyamin emphasized Gandhi’s refusal to reconcile himself to the British colonial “divide and (...) rule” policies by creating divisions between Hindus and Muslims, the Indian anticolonial struggle that he led, and the way this struggle inspired the development of anticolonial movements in the Middle East. These aspects of Gandhi’s political repertoire were considered by Rebb Binyamin as a framework for the critical discussion of the ways in which the British colonial authorities perceived the Zionist movement as their representative and pointed to the fact that the Zionist-colonial partnership was an obstacle to the crystallization of Jewish-Arab cooperation. This article focuses on the ways in which Rebb Binyamin’s reading of Gandhi served as the basis for his critique of hegemonic Zionist discourse and practices. (shrink)

This study accounts for disparate portrayals of divine destroyer Śiva in the normative Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata as opposed to Kālidāsa’s amatory Kumārasaṃbhava and Raghuvaṃśa by contrasting the primary and secondary Sanskrit epic authors’ respective reliances on the Mānavadharmaśāstra and the Kāmasūtra. By arguing, per Richard Johnson’s postpoststructuralism, that these mythological and philosophical differences deliberately reflect those poets’ specific sociohistorical contexts, this inquiry accounts more accurately for Śiva’s classical-epic depictions than do Stella Kramrisch’s and Wendy Doniger [O’Flaherty]’s investigations informed by Claude (...) Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism and Don Handelman and David Shulman’s researches influenced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s poststructuralism. The present work, in revising such prevailing Indological notions as Romila Thapar’s traditional construal of the “classical,” Donald R. Davis Jr.’s anthropocentric definition of puruṣārtha (human aim), and Sheldon Pollock’s unvarying characterization of śāstras (treatises), models a historically aware approach that appreciates the interrelationship of mythological philosophy and philosophical mythology. (shrink)

In the formation of vernacular North Indian literature in “Hindavī,” an important role is played by “Sufi romance” (premākhyān). The earliest love narrative known as Cāndāyan, written in 1379–80, by Maulānā Dāūd has been cited as evidence supporting arguments about the rise of literary vernaculars by scholars foregrounding religious and political factors in that process. The purpose of this article is to rethink the broader arguments by revisiting the historical circumstances at the time and through a close reading for affect. (...) It invites a shift in perception by demonstrating Cāndāyan’s roots in folk narrative performativity. Concurrent with that, it is a revision of the view that the author, Dāūd, was a member of the sultanate elite. Closely reading the text’s aesthetic elements also creates a new perspective regarding who its audience was. Finally, the article explores what constitutes a vernacular emotional regime and the role of emotional communities in the emergence of Hindavī. It goes beyond the specific case study in looking for new ways to conceptualize the connections between regional centers of power and early devotional communities, highlighting their deployment of interlinkages through multiple networks of cultural production. (shrink)