The Common Cause The Common Cause Postcolonial Ethics and the Practice of Democracy, 1900–1955 LEELA GANDHI The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London LEELA GANDHI is professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is the founding coeditor of the journal Postcolonial Studies and the author, most recently, of Aff ective Communities: Anticolonial Thought and the Politics of Friendship. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2014 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2014. Printed in the United States of America 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 01987- 1 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 01990- 1 (paper) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 02007- 5 (e- book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226020075.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Gandhi, Leela, 1966– author. The common cause : postcolonial ethics and the practice of democracy, 1900–1955 / Leela Gandhi. pages ; cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 226- 01987- 1 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978- 0- 226- 01990- 1 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978- 0- 226- 02007- 5 (e- book) 1. Democracy—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Postcolonialism—Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Postcolonialism—India. 4. Anti- imperialist movements—India. I. Title. JC423.G36 2014 172.0954'09041—dc23 2013036399 o This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). For my father, Ramchandra Gandhi Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Moral Imperfection: An Ethics for Democracy 1 1 After Virtue: The Strange Case of Belle Époque Socialist Antimaterialism 29 2 On Descent: Stories from the Gurus of Modern India 55 3 Elementary Virtues: The Great War and the Crisis of European Man 93 4 Inconsequence: Some Little- Known Mutinies Around 1946 116 Epilogue: Paths of Ahimsaic Historiography 149 Notes 167 Index 229 Acknowledgments This book has been in process for a long time, and many people and institutions have helped along the way. A sab- batical term from La Trobe University allowed me to work in dispersed archives; another from the University of Chicago, supported by a fellowship at the Franke Institute for the Hu- manities, yielded invaluable writing time. At the University of Chicago Press, Alan Thomas has been the most encour- aging and engaged of editors and interlocutors. I am truly grateful for his direction and advice throughout the writing process. The project came into view in the rare intellectual envi- ronment of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, where I served a summer term as faculty under the exemplary directorship of Amanda Anderson. I have gained immeasurably from her incisive and generous input over time, and from her ongoing work on political ethos and on the transnational histories of liberalism. My gratitude ex- tends as well to the SCT community of participants, staff , faculty, and fellows for their feedback and suggestions. I wish to thank the staff and archivists at the following libraries: the State Library of Victoria, the Bibliothèque na- tionale de France, the National Archives at Delhi, the Nehru Memorial Library and Museum, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives, the Sabarmati Ashram Archives, Sri Ramanasra- mam, Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, the British Li- brary, and the Houghton Library at Harvard University. In other matters of detail, Timothy Campbell and Daniel Purdy were helpful on the question of Kant’s clothing; James ix