Nonviolence as the Supreme Moral Truth and Politics of Lying Against Dalit Community in India: A Gandhian Interpretation

There are reasons to write on truth and politics from Gandhi’s perspective because both Kant and Gandhi are philosophically parallel at various points, belonging to deontological tradition of ethics they both believe in the supreme moral principles that govern our society. Like Kant’s categorical imperatives, Gandhi says, “Non-violence is the law of our species… the dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law -to the strength of the spirit…;” They both are pacifist and imagine a well-ordered society organised on the principles of peace and mutual co-existence. For both Kant and Gandhi lying is morally wrong and could not be tolerated. Truth has been the central concept of Gandhi’s life and philosophy, every page of his autobiography is a testimony to his love for truthfulness. And his further experiment of ‘truthful’ politics of nonviolence in South Africa against colonialism has been a success stories. Ahimsa (nonviolence henceforth) as supreme moral truth was central to his nationalist mobilisation during anti-colonial struggles in India and Gandhi adopted various methods of truthful politics like Marches, Hartal (strike), fast, boycott, and civil disobedience. Following Buddhist philosophy of nonviolence, Gandhi says that violence is not always physical but also cognitive. The proposed paper argues that the present government of India, through politics of lying, is doing cognitive violence against the Dalit community (depressed classes henceforth) and threatening their dignified existence. To eliminate social exclusion and discriminations, the constitution of India recognises reservation as representation of depressed classes in all public institutions and also provides certain safeguards against the atrocities. But the present government is spreading lying that depressed classes are misusing the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act of 1989 to threaten the high Caste people and reservation is the biggest problem in the process of nation-building because it promotes less meritorious. The interesting aspect is that to convert this lying into the public discourse, government is using the Supreme Court, who is considered to be the guardian of constitution and ensuring justice to the depressed classes. In the last two years, this lying is evident in the Judgements of the Supreme Court when it diluted the Prevention of Atrocities Act of 1989 on March 20, 2018 and very recently on February 7, 2020 the Supreme Court held that Reservation (affirmative action) in promotion is not a fundamental right. To counter these politics of lying, the depressed classes used Gandhian methodologies of Truthful politics and on April 2, 2018 and March 5, 2019 pan Indian strikes were called by the depressed classes to protest against the dilution of the above mentioned Prevention of Atrocities Act and to restore reservation in higher education respectively. These movements forced government to rethink its position and they were reinstated through Acts of the Parliament. Gandhi wants nonviolence to be consciously accepted as the supreme moral Truth the basic organising principle of socio-political institutions across the globe.