Gandhi’s Militant Nonviolence in the Light of Girard’s Mimetic Anthropology

Abstract

Nuclear rivalry, as well as terrorism and the war against terror, exemplify the dangerous escalation of violence that is threatening our world. Gandhi’s militant nonviolence offers a possible alternative that avoids a complacent indifference toward injustice as well as the imitation of violence that leads to its escalation. The French-American cultural anthropologist René Girard discovered mimetic rivalries as one of the main roots of human conflicts, and also highlighted the contagious nature of violence. This article shows that Gandhi shares these basic insights of Girard’s anthropology, which increases the plausibility of his plea for nonviolence. Reading Gandhi with Girard also complements Girard’s mimetic theory by offering an active practice of nonviolence as a response to violent threats, and by broadening the scope of its religious outreach. Gandhi’s reading of the Sermon on Mount not only renounces violence and retaliation like Girard but also underlines the need to actively break with evil. Both Gandhi and Girard also address the religious preconditions of nonviolent action by underlining the need to prefer godly over worldly pursuits, and to overcome the fear of death by God’s grace. This congruence shows that Girard’s anthropology is valid beyond its usual affinity with Judaism and Christianity.

Gandhi and Buber on Individual and Collective Transformation

“…Palaver sides with René Girard, who demonstrated the contagious, fire-like nature of violence. Against the mimetic dynamic of violence, one could progressively substitute force with nonviolence (Palaver 2021). Douglas Allen, too, insists that, for Gandhi, one had to be "as nonviolent as possible" in permanently striving to the Absolute Truth of nonviolence (Allen 2019, p. 33).…”

Gandhi’s Use of Scriptures: A Hermeneutic of Nonviolence against Letters That Kill

“…On the chronological level, the decades-long failure to integrate the "African" and "Indian" Gandhi has opened new perspectives (Hofmeyr 2014;Guha 2013Guha , 2019. In comparative studies, the weighing of possibilities and limitations of Gandhi's legacy and those of scholars from other traditions have proven fruitful for current issues concerning violence and political change (Du Toit and Vosloo 2021;Meir 2021aMeir , 2021bPalaver 2020Palaver , 2021. Nevertheless, the most controversial link between Howard's compartments is that of the relation between religion and politics or between faith and nonviolence.…”