Rethinking Satyagraha

Ananta Kumar Giri is the Founding Honorary Executive Trustee of Vishwaneedam Center for Asian Blossoming, Puducherry and Chennai. After three decades of service, he retired as a Professor from the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India, in March 2025. He has taught and done research in many universities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University (Denmark), Maison des sciences de l’homme (Paris, France), the University of Kentucky (USA), University of Freiburg & Humboldt University (Germany), Jagiellonian University (Poland), and Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi). He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change, criticism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of transformation, theories of self, culture and society, and creative streams in education, philosophy, and literature. Dr Giri has written and edited more than six dozen books in Odia and English.

Satyagraha, the centre of gravity of this timely book, is a phenomenon that has a venerable, indeed, a noble history. It denotes the defining human characteristic of spontaneity – the embodied force striving towards and driving the non-violent renewal of the human form of life through enlightenment and liberation asobserved, for example, in social activism and movements. While oriented towards real achievements under concrete conditions, the process is nevertheless throughout directed and guided by deep-seated concerns regarding adequate knowledge of our world, the moral organisation of social and political life and ethical subjectivity.Although the enabling spontaneous striving is thus firmly undergirded, such intuitive awareness of the structure of human activity by nomeans occludes the process, barring pathological cases, but rather infinitely keeps it open. As the title of the collection assembled under the able editorship of Ananta Kumar Giri intimates, satyagraha possesses an acute relevance for our 21st-century crisis-ridden global world that we should reflexively re-appropriate and make our own.Piet Strydom, University College Cork, IrelandThis remarkable collection opens up new horizons for scholars, activists and critical thinkers by looking through and beyond the concept of Satyagraha to pose new questions about movement, co-productive dialogue and the dynamic nature of truth. It is a philosophical work that refuses any quick road to transcendence.Arjun Appadurai, Emeritus Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University This book is a timely gift to humanity. At a time ofwarmongering and of barbarian destruction of peoples, livelihoods and cultures this book invites us to pause and to meditate on and valorize all the convivial potential of Satyagraha. Gandhi was a remarkable intercultural translator and Ananta Kumar Giri and his fellow contributors follow his lead enriching it with new and innovative perspectives in light of the new challenges the world is facing.Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Emeritus Professor, University of Coimbra, Portugal, and author of Law and the Epistemologies of the South (2023)An ensemble of scholars gathered here to engage in a dialogue with Gandhi. Of the themes discussed, the exploration of the significance of walking in Gandhi’s life is especially interesting. Like spinning cotton on the charkha, it was primarily a form of meditation, besides and before its place and symbolism (from the solitary walk to the collective padayatra) in the campaign against colonial rule. We live in a violent world which hardly leaves a space for dialogue. We live in a solipsistic world (of SUVs with dark windows) which leaves no room for the other. This anthology invites us to walk together – with each other, with the contributors, and with Gandhiji – to rediscover the power of dialogue (with open ears, no earbuds) and the joy of walking.Daniel Raveh, Professor of Indian and Comparative Philosophy, Tel Aviv University, IsraelWith millions dying due to intrastate and interstate wars, Gandhi’s “experiments with truth” are proving ever more wise and urgent.These excellent essays should be read and their advice heeded.Robert McDermott, President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco, USA

• Rethinking Satyagraha: An Introduction and an Invitation Part I: Rethinking Satyagraha: Truth, Travel and Translation1. Rethinking Satyagraha: Truth, Travel and Translation 2. Rethinking Gandhi’s Philosophy and Practice of Satyagraha: Insights, Misconceptions, and Reformulations 3. Reclaiming Satyagraha: Truth, Travel and Translation 4. In Search of Inter-religious Truth: The Acts of Travel and Translation in Comparative Theology Part II: Rethinking Satyagraha: Religion, Spirituality and Beyond 5. Imam Hussain, Gandhi, Gaffar Khan and the Traditions of Satyagraha and Winning Martyrdom in Islam 6. Satyagraha and Gandhi’s Religious Ethics 7. Satyagraha: The Complex Legacy of Gandhi and Buber 8. Gandhi-Religion-Spirituality: Satyagraha in the 21st Century 9. Satyagraha and the making and un-making of Gandhi’s Swaraj 10. Satyagraha, Three Gunas and the Calling of Hope: Plato, Gandhi, Moltzman and Beyond 11 Gandhi and Mandela, The Two Pioneers of Satyagraha Movement: A Comparative Analysis 12. Spirituality, Seva and the Art of Seeking the Truth: Perspectives from the Guru-led Seva Movements in India Part III: Rethinking Satyagraha: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics and Beyond13. Gandhi on Non-Violence in Action, Education and Satyagraha 14. Satyagraha as Emancipation: Gandhi, Kallenbach and Naidoo 15. Wittgenstein and Gandhi: Religion, Politics, Mysticism and Social Critique 16. Satyagraha as Pure Means: Recovering Gandhi’s Politics of the Body in Dialogue with Agamben’s Contemporary Political Theory 17. Doing Without a Patrimonial Ruler and the Divine Right of Kings: Satyagraha, Democracy and Egalitarianism 18. Gandhi’s Experiment with Walking / Padayatras: An unfolding of a Moral Space Afterword by Marcus Bussey