International Political Thought of Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia

ABOUT THE BOOK The author of this book challenges the notion that there is no systematic tradition of Indian thinking on preserving peace and order to global level. The book convincingly demonstrates that Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia, though somewhat contrasting in their views shared a common problematic of ordering international society. In order to lend academic salience to the views of those who did not belong to the genre of scholars, the author relates their thinking to some of the dominant schools of thought in international relations (Kant, Grotius and Hobbes).

The book addresses the most fundamental question related to the nature of international society where in the views of Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia-the author makes a modest attempt to answer the question as to what constitutes a good life at micro and macro levels of society. Is it achievable? The book holds the answer.

Utmost care has been taken to provide a viable conceptual framework within which Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia's thoughts have been examined. This book may fill the void, which one finds in the Indian approach to the study of international relations. It conceptualizes the Indian thinking on the problematic of peace, order and justice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Nalin Anadkat is a reader in the department of Political Science in M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara, and teaches International Relations. His fields of interests are the classical theories in International Relations and Strategic Conflicts and Peace Studies.

The Gujarat Granth Nirman board has published his first book on political philosophy of Bakunin. He has published several articles in professional journals and in edited books. He has attended several national and international seminars on various dimensions of Political Science and read papers.

He visited U.S.A. on fellowship from the United States Information Agency to attend seminar on issues of Indian and American Security, in February 1989. During his visit he delivered lectures on wide ranging topics to the various American Universities and governmental institutions.

He is member of several professional organizations and at present actively associated with the "Save Education" movement in Gujarat. He is a visiting faculty to the I.A.S. center (M.S.U.), and Railway staff college, Vadodara.

FOREWORD It is quite a challenging academic task to provide a conceptual framework to the international political thought of Gandhi. Nehru and Lohia as they were basically men of action. Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia played a very vital role not only in liberating India from the clutches of foreign rule but while doing so they had a vision of a new world order free from all forms exploitation and dominacne. Dr. Nalin Anadkat in his book makes a seminal contribution to the literature of International relations not merely by analyzing the motivating thought of Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia but he encapsulates their ideas about a more stable, equitable and peaceful world at large in his book.

As the author has rightly admitted in his introductory chapter that none of the three (Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia) were either philosophers or theoreticians and therefore to find any thematic consistency in their ideas is unthinkable. It is for this reason Dr. Anadkat's work deserves attention as he had to go back to the roots where tradition of thinking on problematic of world-order, peace and justice was laid by the great western political thinkers like Hobbes, Grotious and Kant.

There may be an element of truth when allegations are made that there is no tradition of conceptual thinking in India. The fact of the matter is that in Indian contest it is from praxis to theory, which was a challenge for the scholar. Not that our men of action had no foundation of normative thinking but they did not systemize it or theorize it. It is this vacuum which scholars like Dr. Anadkat has tried to fill though his work.

While theorizing about Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia the author very emphatically makes it clear that the concern of peace and order has been perennial as the pendulum of war and peace has never been absent in international society. The author has conceptualized international society within which he has situated the concept of order as done by the Western scholars. Dr. Anadkat has shown as to how Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia were not far from the realistic notion of the causes of war and peace-though they did not provide any theoretical foundation to their concern.

INTRODUCTION Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Ram Manohar Lohia were neither philosophers, theorists nor system builders. All of them were men of action. As a matter of fact, action of any kind is never possible until a theory of some kind is presupposed, truly or falsely. For each of them, actively associated with the struggle for Indian independence, politics was an art realized in action, not a science insisting upon a theory to ground action. Each of them possessed a great and biding intuitional insight into the nature of Indian and international reality, which is valid even today. It is, therefore, impossible to deny that they had any contribution in shaping the tradition of Science of Politics. The main hypothesis of this study is that hitherto an international dimension of their political thinking is neglected. It is presumed here that their reference to the international dimension of the nation-state is not peripheral to their thought system. They have thought deeply and expressed extensively, either orally or through their writings, on the problematic of 'global order and peace' within the parameter of the nation-state system. To date, no academic study in India has attempted to reconstruct their thinking into a theoretical framework which would consolidate the notion of international society. This study is a modest attempt to explore that direction through research. Their ideas are available piecemeal-scattered over their writings and actions. To understand these and derive concepts out of them, these need to be assembled, assimilated and analysed and the undercurrent need to be discovered. This involves penetrating them beyond the obvious concerns of their programme of action and uncovering the analytical foundations on which they were based. Only this way we can hopefully infer the rationale of how they wanted to tackle the contending problems of global order and peace.

**Contents and Sample Pages**