GANDHI ON DEMOCRACY, POLITICS AND THE ETHICS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

This paper is about Gandhi's critique of politics, of which his ambivalence towards democracy was apart. I argue that for Gandhi the ground of moral action is fearlessness, while that of political reason is security and self-defense. Gandhi sees the context of moral action in the mundane fabric of everyday life, in places such as the family and the village. For that reason he does not believe that moral action requires being supplemented by the particular kind of unity which politics and the state call for and necessitate.