This post was co-written by Dr Tana Trivedi (Ahmedabad University, Gujarat) and Soham Patel (Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad, Gujarat). Tana’s field of research is in the area of political and economic history of modern Gujarat, specifically the region of Saurashtra-Kathiawar. Soham is a researcher at the Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, a publishing house founded by M. K. Gandhi in 1919. An Electronics and Communication Engineer by training, Soham researches and digitises the works of Gandhi and other Gujarati writers.
સૉક્રેટિસને આપણા આ કથળેલા સમયમાં આપણી વચ્ચે હરતોફરતો કરવો તે મારો મૂળ હેતુ છે.
It is my intention to invoke Socrates among us in these troubled times. (Afterword, Socrates, Manubhai Pancholi, 1974)
Tenets of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations have played a significant role in shaping the sensibilities of modern Gujarati literature, especially in post-independence India. Indian intellectuals have referred to Plato and Socrates, integrating ancient and modern philosophies. The first was Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), who wrote about the significance of Socratic thoughts of freedom and autonomy in 1908, and the tradition continues to the present day, with the work of Deepak Mehta (b.1939), a contemporary Gujarati writer. Others include Manubhai Pancholi (b.1914), Umashankar Joshi (1911-1988) and Raghuvir Chaudhrya (b.1938).
The purpose of this post is to discuss the invocation and reconstruction of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, especially the notions of democracy and citizenship through the works of Manubhai Pancholi, a modern Gujarati writer who vociferously expressed his opinion about the turbulent state of Indian politics in the decades of 1960s and 1970s. This post is motivated by the fact that discussions around Gujarati literary writing are still subaltern to the larger body of writings from the global South. It is important to draw attention to the presence of the indigenous protest writing which marked the post-colonial Indian state. The life and times of Socrates came to symbolise the notions — discussed below — of a ganarajya (“common-state”) and of swaraj (“self-governance”), both of which were being scrutinised very closely in an independent India. However, to understand the entry of Socrates into Gujarati writing, and in the life of Manubhai Pancholi, one needs to go back to a time when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was still a young lawyer in Africa.
Gandhi first read and translated Plato’s Apology while serving his time in a prison in Johannesburg, South Africa. It had a lasting effect on his philosophy of Satyagraha. In a brief essay entitled “Story of a Soldier of Truth (III): Socrates’s Defense”, an English translation of the original work in Gujarati, Gandhi portrays Socrates as a pious man, a Satyagrahi, who is willing to give up his life for truth, who, in fact, willingly drinks poison without the fear of death.[1] Phiroze Vasunia, in a paper titled ‘Gandhi and Socrates’ explains that this rendition of Plato’s Apology was banned by the British government in 1910 because they believed that the pamphlet would bring about unrest and contempt for the Government. It was, however, re-printed and disseminated once again when the Rowlatt Act of 1919 was enforced by the British government in India, making it an act of civil disobedience.[2] While much has been written about the influence of Plato and Socrates on Gandhi and Satyagraha, very little has been written about the subsequent impact of the ancient philosophers on modern Gujarati scholarship. There was at least one very significant Gujarati historian, educationist and writer, Manubhai Pancholi, known as “Darshak” (spectator, or observer), who explicitly referred to Socrates as his “guru”, and who extensively translated the writings of Socrates.
Born in pre-independence India (1914-2001), Darshak was deeply inspired by the Gandhian value-based politics, accepting it as aapad dharma (duty appropriate to a time of crisis). He believed that no democratic citizen can be a true citizen without the help of history, a belief based on his own study of the thinkers of the world such as Herodotus, Plato, Hegel, Thomas Paine, Karl Marx, Bertrand Russel, and others.[3] His seminal historical novel Dipnirvan (1944) narrates the histories of small democratic states like Maghad, Malawa, Patal, Lichchhavi, Trigarta, Shibi, Kuru, Panchala, Surashtra, which existed in ancient India.[4]
Based on the information about these states found through coins, through the Sanskrit treatises of Panini and Kautilya, through Buddhist records and travelogues, Darshak weaves together a narrative about the invasion of Menander (popularly known in Pali as Milinda), the Greek warrior-king who reigned around 155-130 BCE and is considered to have conquered large territories in the Indian subcontinent. In fact, it is in the foreword to this novel that Darshak explains what motivated him to write about ancient Greece and Rome. While reading the life of Plutarch, he began searching for parallels in Indian history, especially inquiring about the “ganarajyas”, or democracies that existed during the Buddhist era between the late 6th and the early 4th centuries BCE. He discovered that the histories of both the Indian subcontinent and of Greece converged on many vectors. He cites specific examples of rituals that were commonly found in both regions — such as the practice of infanticide and the figure of the Oracle. such commonalities convinced him of a shared Eurasian history of evolution.
What is interesting is that while Darshak began writing in pre-independence India, his most significant works were published after independence, in a post-colonial India, as a response to the growing despondency and despair at the state of the newly formed Indian nation. He invokes the idea of a “satyagrahi”, as someone who speaks the truth and challenges the establishment for its corruption and for sabotaging the idea of a democracy. The “ganarajyas” that existed in ancient India, according to Darshak, epitomised the idea of democracy as it had existed in “classical” Greece. By those ancient and classical standards, the newly independent, so-called democratic republic of India had failed at upholding the ideal of democracy. In the afterword to his novel Socrates (1974), he explicitly states that witnessing the country’s failing democracy in the previous five years equipped him to engage even more deeply with Socrates. He says:
ગ્રીસના ઇતિહાસની વાર્તાઓ બે નાનકડા ખંડમાં લખી ત્યારે સહેજે સૉક્રેટિસનું પારાયણ કરવાનું બન્યું. એ વખતે સૉક્રેટિસનાં અન્ય ચરિત્રો પણ વાંચ્યાં. પણ છેલ્લાં પાંચ વર્ષમાં આપણા દેશની લોકશાહીની જે અવસ્થા મેં જોઈ, તેની ઠેકડી કે હરાજી થતી અનુભવી, તેના નિકટના અંતરંગ અનુભવમાંથી પસાર થવાનું મારે ન બન્યું હોત તો ‘સૉક્રેટિસ’ લખવાનો ધક્કો વાગત કે કેમ તે શંકા છે. (અનુકથન, સૉક્રેટિસ).
In writing the stories of the history of Greece in two short volumes, it was easy to quote Socrates. At that time I also read other characters of Socrates. But I doubt whether I would have been inspired to write Socrates if I had not been able to go through the intimate experience of the state of our country’s democracy which I saw in the last five years, felt it being mocked or auctioned off. (Afterword, Socrates) [5]
Originally referred to as Indike by the ancient Greeks, “Bharat”, “India”, “Al-Hind” and “Hindustan” were diverse names used for India during the time of Independence. Despite their complex historical contexts, all these names co-existed in reference to the same subcontinent. There have been extensive debates about these names, but there is one linguistic equivalent to the constitutional name “Republic of India” which is “Bharat Ganarajya”. The idea of a “Ganarajya”, or a union of states, clearly invokes the notions of a democratic republic. That is, a non-hierarchical republican community that is led by the “gana” meaning common people and “rajya” meaning polity/state. In Kautilya’s Arthashastra svarāj expressed the ideal of the autocratic state ruled by one autocratic ruler or monarch; and gaṇarājya stood for the democratic government by an independent group. However, in modern times, swaraj (from Sanskrit svarāj) and ganarajya have become synonymous. Manubhai Pancholi invokes the idea of a ganarajya in the context of the trial of Socrates and compares it to present day politics, where the citizens turn into a crowd that can be manipulated, and their votes can be bought. In his essay titled “Socrates, Lokshahi na Sandarbh ma” (Socrates, in the context of Democracy), Darshak clearly delineates the importance of the “praja”, or the civil society in upholding the tenets of democracy in any nation. Darshak actually states, “Socrates sacrificed himself so that the voters could be enlightened.”[6]
We chose to write about Manubhai Pancholi in order to examine the impact of ancient Greek democracy on the way a Gujarati writer thought about nation building. Manubhai Pancholi was a member of the Gujarat legislative assembly from 1967-1971 and Minister of Education. He was also imprisoned during the emergency of 1975, imposed by the Congress politician Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In his essay “Lokshahi na Sandarbh ma”, he tells the story of when Pericles, to win over the voters, handed them out allowances. Socrates registered his protest by maintaining that this act of giving allowances would make people greedy and lustful instead of becoming knowledgeable, and this was not true democracy. In a similar manner, when he was in the Gujarat Legislative assembly, there was a discussion about increasing the salary of the members of the assembly. Manubhai raised two points to argue that there was no need to raise salaries: first, the members were going to receive their pensions and the assembly worked only for three months a year; and second, everyone had a side business. Serving the people seemed to be the last priority, and therefore, there was no real need to increase the salaries. While his appeal received support from only two members of the assembly, the influence of Socrates is evident in his understanding of what true democracy meant. In the words of Darshak, a real democracy is one where voters are enlightened and aware of the power of their collective decision. He writes,
લોકશાહીમાં મત એટલો જરૂરી નથી, પક્ષ એટલો જરૂરી નથી—એ સેકંડરી ચીજો છે, કોન્સ્ટિટયુશન પણ એટલું જરૂરી નથી, તે પણ સેકંડરી ચીજ છે, પણ પહેલી જરૂર મતદારોની કેળવણીની છે. એટલે જ સોક્રેટિસે કહ્યું કે, “હું રાજનીતિમાં પડ્યો જ નથી, મારે સત્તા જોઈતી જ નથી. મારે એક જ સત્તા જોઈએ છે, મતદારોને કેળવવાની. (p.15)
In a democracy, voting is not important, party is also not important- it is secondary, constitution is also secondary, but of foremost importance is the education of the voters. That is why Socrates has said, “I did not delve into politics, I do not want power. I only want one right — that is to educate the voters. [7]
For Darshak, ancient Greece was the truest and first form of constitutional democracy in the world, and the voice of Socrates was a premonition of times to come, a time when the tenets of what constitutes a democratic republic would be deeply questioned.
References:
- Gandhi, M. K., ‘Story of a Soldier of Truth’, Series of 6 articles, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol 8, pp. 172-229 (New Delhi: 1962) retrieved from https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/
- Pancholi, Manubhai ‘Darshak’, Socrates, R R Sheth & Co., (Ahmedabad: 1974)
- Pancholi, Manubhai ‘Darshak’, Socrates—Lokshahina Sandarbhma, Harold Laski Institute of Political Science, (Ahmedabad: 1982)
- Pancholi, Manubhai ‘Darshak’, Dipnirvan, Navajivan Trust, (Ahmedabad: 2018)
- Clémentin-Ojha, C. (2014). ‘India, that is Bharat…’: One Country, Two Names. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, (10).
- Vasunia, P. (2015). Gandhi and Socrates. African Studies, 74(2), 175-185.
- Bhave, S. S. (2001). Manubhai Pancholi “Darshak” (1914-2001). Indian Literature, 45(6 (206)), 139–142. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23345762