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GANDHI, THOREAU, AND A SHIP OF THESEUS


The political journey of Mahatma (Gandhi) though started from South Africa, however, his spiritual journey owes much  to the literary stalwarts like Tolstoy, Ruskin, Thoreau, and Emerson. What did really transform him, was his ability to share a space with the greatest thinkers, poets, and storytellers of that era. One of them was David Henry Thoreau. It is a well established fact that Gandhian method of Civil Disobedience was originally imagined by Thoreau, however, a wise Man like M.K. Gandhi, without being a 'Professor of Ideas', became truly a philosopher (Bilgrami, Gandhi: The Philosopher), an activist who practically implemented those ideas in toto, sometimes with flexibility, and elevated the scope of 'Potentiality into Actuality' (Georgio Agamben, Homo Sacer). Thoreau in his introductory remarks rightly says, "There  are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live" (Thoreau, Walden). 'A ship of Theseus' between a naturalist (Thoreau) and a humanist (Gandhi) was of course their ability to live with what they believed in and sincerity to believe what they lived with. Nevertheless, they never imposed their value of truth on others. Thoreau even went on questioning the very idea of truth what old men preach to have with them. D.H. Thoreau writes in Walden:

"One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience" (Thoreau, Walden).

Thoreau revered the solitude, than the deceitful companionship of fellow neighbours, friends, or relatives. Gandhi however, was an advocate of a 'Community Life'; like the transformation of 'being' into 'collective being'; an organic view of life. His ideas about "Village Republic" was discarded as the romantic and Utopian idea, a fashionable term of pacifists who love humanisation and rationalization of existing structure so as to stifle every progressive or out-of-fashion ideas to come. (R.M. Unger).

Thoreau, like Gandhi, was a dreamer, an achiever, a romantic poet who loves living than anything else. His erudite remark in Walden at least suggests so:

"I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life". (Thoreau, Walden).

For Gandhi, life was more than a heroic adventurism. His 'Satyagrahi' was a devotee of truth, sacrifice, and non-violence; one who relies on 'soul-force' instead of 'Brute Force'. 

It is to my mind a 'Sisiphusean task' to summarize Gandhi and Thoreau in few paragraphs. Every time one tries to imprison them in few words, each moment those words would be ashamed of its limited ability, or rather inability to express those gigantic ideas with clarity. Here I avoid conclusion, because, to conclude is kill the curiosity. The curiosity inspires us to enjoy melody and harmony more than anything else.

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