Melting Pot of Cognitive Frameworks: Influences on Philosophy and Action of Mahatma Gandhi

Abstract

Both conceptual and practical heralds of Gandhi for facilitating nationwide anti-colonial movements backed up by immense mass support had already been there in late nineteenth and early twentieth century nascent and restricted nationalist sentiments. Also, quite surprisingly in the writings of colonial administrators perpetuated as a part of colonial investigative modalities for knowledge formation, we get archetypal tincture of conceptualizing village society as the socio-cultural core of Indian civilization, later embraced by Gandhi and his fellow nationalists of twentieth century. All these prevalent knowledge and sentiments came into practice with political endeavors of Swadeshi movement of 1905 in Bengal. The present article is an effort to show that all these existing theories and practices catered Gandhi’s political philosophy and pragmatic moves who blended them into the contextual necessities of his times. He simultaneously engaged himself in rediscovering, evolving, and expressing these prevalent components in order to suit his contemporaneous realities.