Gandhi’s View on Judaism and Zionism in Light of an Interreligious Theology

Self Cite

A virtual encounter between Buber and Gandhi articulates where they differ and where they touch common ground. They developed a transformative thinking that opened up the individual and collective ego to others. Only recently have scholars paid full attention to Buber’s theo-political thinking. Gandhi’s article “The Jews” made his way of thinking irrelevant for many Zionists over the decades. The relative neglect of Buber’s political thought and of Gandhi’s contribution to conflict resolution in Israel/Palestine explains why studies systematically comparing Buber’s politico-religious thinking with that of Gandhi are rare. The present article wants to fill this gap. Gandhi and Buber’s religiosity impacted upon spiritual, social, and political life. Their transformational perspectives could shed new light on how to deal with violent conflict situations.

Section: Dialogical Religious Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gandhi and Buber on Individual and Collective Transformation

Meir

2022

Self Cite

“…54-60, 550-52). 7 This recommendation has been discussed since, and is indeed questionable (Meir 2021), especially with hindsight. After Hitler unleashed the war, Gandhi moved towards a more qualified understanding of nonviolence that also allowed violent resistance in specific circumstances to count as a form of resistance that is close to the ideal of nonviolence.…”

Section: Breaking With the Cycle Of Violence: Progressively Substituting Force With Nonviolencementioning

confidence: 99%

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

Palaver

2021

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.

“…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.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Noort

2022

Against the background of differing opinions about Gandhi’s views on the relationship between political action and religious inspiration, this paper examines his use of scriptures, if he made hermeneutical decisions and if so, what they were. The starting point is a letter from Gandhi in which he pleaded against reading the scriptures literally and named truth, ahiṃsā, and a living faith as criteria. Reason is most important, but with limitations; ahiṃsā, nonviolence, is never at stake, but the definition of what may be called hiṃsā, or ahiṃsā, is dependent on place, time, and situation. Faith-based truth as Faith = God enabled the use of religious language and definitively bridged the religious and the secular. For an understanding of Gandhi’s personal faith, his statements on Rama and Ramarajya as the Kingdom of God on earth are important. Gandhi found a leading principle in 2 Cor 3:6: “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,” comparing it often with a literal vs. figurative reading. The connecting factor between Gandhi and Paul was their situation, which is more fully explained for Paul. Both tried from a different perspective to reformulate their religious heritages in a new way by claiming that their now-defended truth was already present in the scriptures. Both needed a hermeneutical key and found it in the killing letter and the life-giving Spirit. For Gandhi, it meant the right to expand the original meaning of texts to realise ahiṃsā hic et nunc. The last section of this paper offers examples of Gandhi’s use of this principle in changing contexts: the opening of the temples of Travancore, his approaches to the Gita, his exegesis of Galatians, and his readings of the Hebrew Bible.