Comparative adversaria of Gandhi and Marx: self-clarification through thinking in diaries and letters

ABSTRACT

We can now see in the public sphere almost everything written by Karl Marx and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Both are widely read, and both have had major impacts on how many people, if not all in some way, understand political activity. Both were prolific writers, but their ideas would exceed the forms in which they were expressed. Access to even their most intimate writings—diary, drafts, notebooks, personal letters—perhaps allows us to better see, in a retrospective way, their thinking unfold. Looking at private correspondence, notebooks and diaries of famous political figures reveal writing as a tool of self-clarification, providing insight into the labour required as a prelude to formal publication. Seeking out how public texts were rehearsed and assembled in more intimate forms for the ears of others also raises questions about who gets to write and read, and of course, what is retained and what is excluded by publication. Comparing Marx’s notebooks and drafts with Capital or Gandhi’s daily diary with its published versions might mean asking different self-clarifying questions, in our different contexts of distraction. And of Marx and Gandhi, might we ask if it is still possible for someone politically engaged to write all the time? An emphasis on “adversaria” may itself be a privileged diversion, available only to those who will be measured in turn.

KEYWORDS:

• Diary
• correspondence
• revolution
• paratexts
• notebooks
• comparison

Notes

1 Vinaya Narahari “Vinoba” Bhave (in Mashruwala 1951, 14–15) was most well-known for the Bhoodan or land gift movement, convincing large landowners such as the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Raja of Jharkhand to gift part of their land to the landless.

2 As Marx’s notebooks became increasingly available, texts paying attention to his writing, structure and metaphors appeared in work by Musto (2020a, 2020b) and Anderson (2018). See also Pradella (2015); and Delheim and Wolf (2018). However, only a few such texts are cognizant of the postcolonial —exceptions might be Harootunian's (2015), and Gayatri Spivak's (2014) Readings with Laura Choksey.

3 Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary extended over two years, though volumes offering new reassessments appeared as early as 2011 with a special issue on the centenary of the publication of Hind Swaraj, in Public Culture (see Birla 2011). Then popular authors turned again to Gandhi (Guha 2018), with issue-based volumes on Gandhi and Media (Kaul 2020), Gandhi and Philosophy (Kumar 2020) and Gandhi and Theology (Mohan and Dwivedi 2018), as well as Gandhi and development, class, gender, race, science, and even corporate branding, for example in the compilation Gandhi@150: Celebrating the Mahatma’s Relevance for Today (Welukar 2019). Introductions to older works were reissued (Roy 2017), Yale brought out a Critical Edition of the autobiography annotated by Tridip Suhrud in 2018 and there were children's books (Anand 2019), a volume of anecdotes (Nainy 2019) and the Black Lives Matter movement compared Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr (Jahanbegloo 2021). The online availability since 2015 of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, from the Gandhi Peace Foundation, is key.

4 Against caricature in writing, Gandhi comments that “If palpable untruth can be put before the public about contemporary men and women, one shudders to think of the distortion that must appear years after they are gone” (Gandhi 1999, vol. 30, 443).

5 Suhrud points out the difference in Gujurati of jivan vrutant as chronicle of a life and atmakatha, the story of a soul “from the small vice within” (2018, 16).

6 In English alone, the collections are many, from Selected Correspondence 1846–1895 with Commentary and Notes. Marx and Engels, Lawrence & Wishart, London (1934); the Letter to Americans, Progress Publishers, Science and Society, (1938); the Letters on Capital, New Park Publications (1968a), Marx Engels Correspondence International Publishers, (1968b); and many others. I have mostly used the MEGA editions in the third division. In English, the International Publishers edition has most of the key letters (1968b).

7 Recalling the famous “Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kömmt drauf an sie zuverändern” (Marx and Engels 1970, 537).

8 I have not traced an original source for this parable, but can report interest in Bengal, specifically a version attributed to Satyajit Ray’s father Sukumar Roy. I thank Sourav Roy for this and other links for this paper (see Roy 1987). An early English version of the tale—the earliest I have found so far—was published anonymously ten years before Marx picked it up in the Sonoma Democrat, Volume XVI, Number 38, 28 June 1873.

9 “Ich unterstelle natürlich Leser, die etwas Neues lernen, also auch selbst denken wollen” [I assume of course readers who want to learn something new, also want to think for themselves] (Marx [1867]1989, 44).

10 This quote is also attributed to 1934 by Mucheli Rishvanth Reddy along with a further gloss: “when anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the latter of the two on the same subject” (Countercurrents Magazine online, 16 September 2020). I have been unable to verify this citation which does not appear in the 1934 volumes of the collective works. “Hobgoblin” is uncommon, but we can hope Gandhi gets the word from the first English translation of the first line of The Communist Manifesto by Helen Macfarlane: “A frightful hobgoblin stalks Europe” —for “Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa” (MacFarlane translation of Marx and Engels [1848]1850; Marx and Engels [1848]1970).

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John Hutnyk

John Hutnyk is a researcher in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. His most recent books are “Pantomime. Terror: Music and Politics” (2014 Zero) and “Global South Asia on Screen” (2018 Bloomsbury and AAKAR Books in India)