In 1915, Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) returned to India after his eight-year-long
satyāgraha (non-violent struggle) in South Africa. As he initiated
satyāgraha in India for the first time, he soon realized that the idea of ‘non-violence’ was misunderstood among his fellow countrymen; it was considered a practice followed by cowards and the weak. In order to eliminate this misconception, Gandhi argued that non-violence was by no means practiced by cowards but by manly and courageous Indian
kṣatriyo (warriors). Having highlighted Gandhi’s muscular discourse on
satyāgraha, Erikson (1969) termed the concept ‘militant non-violence’.This muscular and militant interpretation of Gandhi’s non-violence significantly influenced later Gandhian scholarship.
Contrary to established views, in this paper I show that towards the end of his life Gandhi developed a new interpretation of non-violence that was neither muscular nor cowardly but based on his unique ideas on
vyaktitva (personality). In order to demonstrate this, I examine Gandhi’s concept of
brahmacarya (sexual celibacy) in relation to his political discourse on non-violence. Gandhi first took a vow of
brahmacarya in 1906 during his sojourn in South Africa. During this period, his ideas of
brahmacarya were rigorously austere and puritanical. However, after the late1920s, his views on
brahmacarya gradually changed. More often than not, Gandhi stayed physically close to his female entourage not only in his
āśram but also in public areas. At the end of his life, he even started to sleep naked with naked women under a banner of ‘the experiment’ with
brahmacarya. Although this experiment caused controversy all over India, it has never been seriously examined philosophically in past scholarly works.
Using original diaries written in Gujarati by Manubhen, a core participant of ‘the experiment’, I reveal three fundamental philosophical features of ‘the experiment’ in relation to
tantra sādhanā.(1) Gandhi tried to become
sthitaprajña, a man whose wisdom is never affected by organoleptic impulse. (2) Gandhi tried to realize his inner
strī (woman) so that he could gain hidden
śakti (spiritual power) that was thought to be essential in bringing permanent peace to communal conflict. (3) Through the yogic practice of
vīryanigraha (semen retention), Gandhi aimed to realize his inner
napuṃsaktva (impotecy) and become
ūrdhvaretā (a man whose semen is sublimated) in which male and female sexual boundaries are transcended. This last experiment pointed toward Gandhi’s spiritual project of
swarāj in the deepest sense—namely an epistemological emancipation from colonial domination.
抄録全体を表示