In 1914, Gandhi returned to India with an international reputation as a skilled mediator and a powerful spokesman for justice. He was soon swept up in the Indian struggle for independence from Great Britain, which had occupied India as its colony since 1858. Using the techniques that he had developed in South Africa, Gandhi led boycotts against British goods, demonstrations against colonial authority, and highly public acts of civil disobedience against unjust laws of the British Empire. In one particularly successful campaign, he led his followers in a march to the coastal village of Dandi to make salt by hand, in direct defiance of the British salt monopoly. More than sixty thousand of Gandhi's followers were arrested, but the demonstrations focused so much world attention on India that the British government agreed to negotiate with Gandhi for the release of all political prisoners in the country.
In 1947, the British government granted India its independence. As part of the agreement, India was divided into two countries: Pakistan, which would be Muslim, and India, which would be Hindu. Only a few months later, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist who resented Gandhi for forcing the Indian government to make economic concessions to Pakistan.
Gandhi did not often write for publication. However, various collections of his letters, speeches, and newspaper articles have been published since his death, giving readers key insights into his motivations and character. The speech included here was originally given at the December 22, 1916, meeting of the Muir Central College Economics Society, in Allahabad, India, where Gandhi had been invited to address a group of scholars and students on the topic of "economic progress."
Because Gandhi's audience for these remarks included both Hindus and Christians, he argues from the authority of both religions' scriptural traditions. The majority of these references are to the New Testament—the sacred text of India's colonizers— suggesting a strong desire on Gandhi's part to appeal to Christians on their own rhetorical ground.
When I accepted Mr. Kapildeva Malaviya's[275] invitation to speak to you upon the subject of this evening, I was painfully conscious of my limitations. You are an economic society. You have chosen distinguished specialists for the subjects included in your syllabus for this year and the next. I seem to be the only speaker ill-fitted for the task set before him. Frankly and truly, I know very little of economics, as you naturally understand them. Only the other day, sitting at an evening meal, a civilian friend deluged me with a series of questions on my crankisms.2 As he proceeded in this cross-examination, I being a willing victim, he found no difficulty in discovering my gross ignorance of the matters. I appeared to him to be handling with a cocksureness worthy only of a man who knows not that he knows not. To his horror and even indignation, I suppose, he found that I had not even read books on economics by such well-known authorities as Mill, Marshall, Adam Smith3 and a host of such other authors. In despair, he ended by advising me to read these works before experimenting in matters economic at the expense of the public. He little knew that I was a sinner past redemption.
My experiments continue at the expense of trusting friends. For, there comes to us moments in life when about some things we need no proof from without. A little voice within us tells us, 'You are on the right track, move neither to your left nor right, but keep to the straight and narrow way.' With such help we march forward slowly indeed, but surely and steadily. That is my position. It may be satisfactory enough for me, but it can in no way answer the requirements of a society such as yours. Still it was no use my struggling against Mr. Kapildeva Malaviya. I knew that he was intent upon having me to engage your attention for one of your evenings. Perhaps you will treat my intrusion as a welcome diversion
Crankisms: eccentricities.
Mill, Marshall, Adam Smith: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), and Adam Smith (1723-1790) were important British economists and social theorists.
from the trodden path. An occasional fast after a series of sumptuous feasts is often a necessity. And as with the body, so, I imagine, is the case with the reason. . . .
Before I take you to the field of my experiences and experiments, it is perhaps best to have a mutual understanding about the title of this evening's address: Does economic progress clash with real progress? By economic progress, I take it, we mean material advancement without limit and by real progress we mean moral progress, which again is the same thing as progress of the permanent element in us. The subject may therefore be stated thus: 'Does not moral progress increase in the same proportion as material progress?' I know that this is a wider proposition than the one before us. But I venture to think that we always mean the larger one even when we lay down the smaller. For we know enough of science to realise that there is no such thing as perfect rest or repose in this visible universe of ours. If therefore material progress does not clash with moral progress, it must necessarily advance the latter. Nor can we be satisfied with the clumsy way in which sometimes those who cannot defend the larger proposition put their case. They seem to be obsessed with the concrete case of thirty millions of India stated by the late Sir William Wilson Hunter[276] to be living on one meal a day. They say that before we can think or talk of their moral welfare, we must satisfy their daily wants. With these, they say, material progress spells moral progress. And then is taken a sudden jump: what is true of thirty millions is true of the universe. They forget that hard cases make bad law. I need hardly say to you how ludicrously absurd this deduction would be. No one has ever suggested that grinding pauperism can lead to anything else than moral degradation. Every human being has a right to live and therefore to find the wherewithal to feed himself and where necessary to clothe and house himself. But, for this very simple performance, we need no assistance from economists or their laws.
'Take no thought for the morrow'[277] is an injunction which finds an echo in almost all the religious scriptures of the world. In well-ordered society, the securing of one's livelihood should be and is found to be the easiest thing in the world. Indeed, the test of orderliness in a country is not the number of millionaires it owns, but the absence of starvation among its masses. The only statement that has to be examined is whether it can be laid down as a law of universal application that material advancement means moral progress.
Now let us take a few illustrations. Rome suffered a moral fall when it attained 5 high material affluence. So did Egypt and so perhaps most countries of which we have
the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof " (Matthew 6:31-34).
any historic record. The descendants, kinsmen of the royal and divine Krishna, too, fell when they were rolling in riches. We do not deny to the Rockefellers and the Carnegies6 possession of an ordinary measure of morality but we gladly judge them indulgently. I mean that we do not even expect them to satisfy the highest standard of morality. With them material gain has not necessarily meant moral gain. In South Africa, where I had the privilege of associating with thousands of our countrymen on most intimate terms, I observed almost invariably that the greater the possession of riches, the greater was their moral turpitude. Our rich men, to say the least, did not advance the moral struggle of passive resistance as did the poor. The rich men's sense of self-respect was not so much injured as that of the poorest. If I were not afraid of treading on dangerous ground, I would even come nearer home and show you that possession of riches has been a hindrance to real growth. I venture to think that the scriptures of the world are far safer and sounder treatises on laws of economics than many of the modern textbooks.