28
vision of his politics, if we take it seriously, was much larger, much more
ambitious. What does he mean, for example, when he says that “civil
disobedience is the purest form of constitutional agitation”
45
?
One could then argue that the relevance of the Gandhian project was not
linked to the colonial state, but existence of modern state itself. While we still
find ourselves within the form of sovereign state structures very much like the
one’s Gandhi questioned, it is possible to see scope for Gandhian political
action. True the contours of that politics has to be shaped by the specific
experiences of the movement, as Gandhi himself would have been the first to
acknowledge. But the essential trope of moving politics beyond the concern
for life and security, towards a dialogical search for meaning and critique of
the sovereign order retains its relevancy and its radical potential.
45
In Young India, December, 1921, as quoted in Iyer, Supra note 11.
Convention