Virtual Presentation to Commemorate 150th Birthday of Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi and the Question of Friendship
By Ajay Skaria
UMN Dept. of History
Date: Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Time: 9:30AM (in Minnesota), 8:00PM (in India)
Zoom: https://umn.zoom.us/j/
Abstract: 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 talk will explore the tensions of neighbourliness as political friendship, focusing specifically on the courage required for it.
