Gandhi’s Dilemma: Nonviolent Principles and Nationalist Power pdf

Manfred B. Steger is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and Global Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. He has served as an academic consultant on globalization for the U.S. State Department and as an advisor to the PBS television series, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. He is the author of twenty-eight books on globalization and social theory, including the bestselling Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, 5th ed. (Oxford UP 2020); the award-winning Globalisms: Facing the Populist Challenge, 5th ed. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020); The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (Oxford University Press, 2008) and, most recently, Globalization Matters: Engaging the Global in Unsettled Times (with Paul James; Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Gandhi’s Dilemma: Nonviolent Principles and Nationalist Power pdf by Manfred Steger

Throughout his long career as a political thinker and activist, Mahatma Gandhi encountered the dilemma of either remaining faithful to his nonviolent principles and risking the failure of the Indian nationalist movement, or focusing on the seizure of political power at the expense of his moral message. Putting forward his vision of a "nonviolent nationalism," Gandhi argued that Indian self-rule could be achieved without sacrificing the universalist imperatives of his nonviolent philosophy. Conceived as a study in the history of political thought, this book examines the origins, meaning, and unfolding of Gandhi s dilemma as it played itself out in both theory and political practice. This discussion is inextricably linked to significant and timely issues that are critical for the study of nationalism, for Gandhi s vision raises the important question of whether it is indeed possible to construct a benign type of nationalism that is rooted in neither physical nor conceptual forms of violence.