Gandhimentality: The Art of Anti-Nuclear Resistance in India

• In Event: Knowing Democracy

Abstract

Scholars have shown the circulation of “technomoral” rationalities in Indian state and civil society interactions (Bornstein and Sharma, 2015), where debates about science and technology filter through democratic institutions by mobilizing procedural and legal argumentation that do not question state scientific expertise (Bhadra Haines, 2019). As Gandhian politics become institutionalized through technomoral praxis, the political work of civil disobedience in subjecting one’s self to violence remains undertheorized. Indian political theory underscores the distinctiveness between what Partha Chatterjee calls political and civil society, with the former being characterized through corruption, illegality and non-liberal democratic politics, and the latter marked by virtuous, Gandhian liberalism. I trace the mutual construction and dependency of the two by asking which bodies are debilitated during Indian anti-nuclear protests. I posit the concept of “gandhimentality” to suggest one answer. Gandhimentality—both a Gandhian governing sentimentality and rationality—attunes observers to (1) the affective and epistemic relationships shared by activists, villagers and the nuclear state, (2) how elite activists increase their cultural capital through credibility economies of pity, and (3) how scientific literacy is instrumentalized by different political actors. I argue that the technomoral legalism of elite, anti-nuclear activists in India’s courts is contingent upon broader credibility performances of civil disobedience, where nonviolent protest serves to interpellate a violent, rural polity into a legible, Indian citizenry mobilizing ideas of virtue and truth—but not necessarily science—to hold the powerful accountable for transgressing political liberties. Yet, I argue, anti-nuclear activism may be most successful when such interpellations fail.

Author

• Monamie Bhadra Haines, Nanyang Technological University