Political Friendship: Gandhi and the Remaking of the Neighbor
One of the key words in Gandhi's vocabulary is swadeshi. Opposing the nationalist reading of the phrase, where swadeshi is exclusively economic in dimension, with a focus primarily on consuming goods from one's own country, he tries to make it a more broadly ethical practical practice of neighbourliness. Such neighbourliness, this paper suggests, involves a certain political friendship. Neighbourliness as political friendship is quite different from intimate friendship: one does not choose one's neighbours, one's neighbours are those in whom one finds oneself in relations with, and with whom there might often be intense disagreements. The essay explores the tensions of neighbourliness as political friendship.
Ajay Skaria teaches History and Global Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Hybrid Histories: Forests Frontiers and Wildness in Western India (1999), and Unconditional Equality: Gandhi's Religion of Resistance (2016), as well as of many articles on environmental and intellectual history. As a member of the Subaltern Studies Editorial Collective, he was one of the editors of Subaltern Studies Vol. XII. He is currently working on two books, one tentatively titled Ambedkar's Revolutions, and the other attempting a history of secularism from India.
One of the key words in Gandhi's vocabulary is swadeshi. Opposing the nationalist reading of the phrase, where swadeshi is exclusively economic in dimension, with a focus primarily on consuming goods from one's own country, he tries to make it a more broadly ethical practical practice of neighbourliness. Such neighbourliness, this paper suggests, involves a certain political friendship. Neighbourliness as political friendship is quite different from intimate friendship: one does not choose one's neighbours, one's neighbours are those in whom one finds oneself in relations with, and with whom there might often be intense disagreements. The essay explores the tensions of neighbourliness as political friendship.
Ajay Skaria teaches History and Global Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Hybrid Histories: Forests Frontiers and Wildness in Western India (1999), and Unconditional Equality: Gandhi's Religion of Resistance (2016), as well as of many articles on environmental and intellectual history. As a member of the Subaltern Studies Editorial Collective, he was one of the editors of Subaltern Studies Vol. XII. He is currently working on two books, one tentatively titled Ambedkar's Revolutions, and the other attempting a history of secularism from India.