Gandhi as an Economist

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by John Scales Avery / May 18th, 2015

If humans are to achieve a stable society in the distant future, it will be necessary for them to become modest in their economic behavior and peaceful in their politics. For both modesty and peace, Gandhi is useful as a source of ideas.

Gandhi’s exceptionally sweet and honest character won him many friends in England, and he encountered no racial prejudice at all. However, when he traveled to Pretoria in South Africa a few years later, he experienced racism in its worst form. Although he was meticulously well dressed in an English frock coat, and in possession of a first-class ticket, Gandhi was given the choice between traveling third class or being thrown off the train. (He chose the second alternative.) Later in the journey he was beaten by a coach driver because he insisted on his right to sit as a passenger rather than taking a humiliating position on the footboard of the coach.

Gandhi was about to return to India after the settlement of the case, but at a farewell party given by Abdullah Seth, he learned of a bill before the legislature which would deprive Indians in South Africa of their right to vote. He decided to stay and fight against the bill. Gandhi spent the next twenty years in South Africa, becoming the leader of a struggle for the civil rights of the Indian community. In this struggle he tried “… to find the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts.”

Gandhi also organized many demonstrations whose purpose was to show the British public that although the British raj gave India many benefits, the toll exacted was too high, not only in terms of money, but also in terms of India’s self-respect and self-sufficiency. All of Gandhi’s demonstrations were designed to underline this fact. For example, in 1930 Gandhi organized a civil-disobedience campaign against the salt laws. The salt laws gave the Imperial government a monopoly and prevented Indians from making their own salt by evaporating sea water. The majority of Indians were poor farmers who worked long hours in extreme heat, and salt was as much a necessity to them as bread. The tax on salt was essentially a tax on the sweat of the farmers.

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/05/gandhi-as-an-economist/#more-58440