Can a Philosophical Anarchist Help Build Institutions? Gandhi and the Work of Democratic Renewal

Gandhi: Protester or Builder of Institutions?

We usually picture Gandhi in a march, at a salt pan or in a prison cell. Movements still use his method of non-violent Satyagraha, which is why his image as an activist has lasted eight decades after his death. When the conversation turns to building institutions, though, he is rarely consulted, even by those who admire him.

There is a reason for this. Gandhi was openly critical of the modern state and called himself a philosophical anarchist. Hind Swaraj (1909) was the only book he refused to revise. It seems odd to ask such a thinker how to build institutions.

Gandhi's test for institutions In Young India in 1925, Gandhi said he stayed loyal to an institution only while it helped his growth and the nation's.

Once it obstructed that growth, disloyalty became a duty. This is not anarchism. It is a standard for judging institutions. It asks what any democratic body is for and it gives the citizen a reason to stay loyal as well as a reason to resist.

Gandhi wanted institutions that were humane, decentralised, inclusive and truthfully democratic. India later wrote part of that ambition into Article 40 and the 73rd Amendment, which gave village panchayats constitutional standing.

The citizen beneath the institutions Gandhi located the deepest institution in the citizen, not in a building or a statute.

• In 1920, he asked for voters who were impartial, independent and intelligent and who would not vote out of private loyalty or personal gain.
• In 1929, he called awakened public opinion the most powerful weapon a Satyagrahi has. That matters today. Political scientist Hilal Ahmed argues that the line between news and propaganda has blurred. When public opinion is managed rather than formed, every formal institution loses the force that holds it accountable. Courts, commissions and Parliament all depend on a public able to notice when they fail.

Protest and

construction as one practice Gandhi did not treat protest and construction as separate activities. Resistance without an alternative had no purpose for him and an alternative without the readiness to resist would eventually be captured.

That is why the duty of disloyalty comes with a second duty: to build something better. Satyagraha against the salt law went alongside the constructive programme of khadi, village industry and work against untouchability.

The citizen who refuses an unjust institution has to help build a just one. So Gandhi is not only the patron of protest. He offers one discipline with two sides: judge every institution by what it does for human growth and accept responsibility for building its replacement when it fails.