Visiting professor Anthony Parel from the University of Calgary spoke at Carleton about Mahatma Gandhi’s vision for peace and harmony at the first annual M.K. Gandhi Lecture in Peace and the Humanities on Oct. 14.
“In Search of Pax Gandhiana” is Parel’s insight on Gandhi and reaches into the implications of Gandhi’s notion of peace.
“Pax Gandhiana is a new vision of political, economic, and civilizational order that encompasses society and policy,” Parel said. “Tending towards peace and harmony between economic forces and nationalist forces, religious forces and so on. It’s a kind of vision of peace.”
Parel said he began his research on Gandhi because Gandhi is a remarkable historical figure.
“Gandhi is such a great historical figure and I was curious to know what the basic philosophy of Gandhi was. So that led me to spend some 20 years on research on Gandhi,” he said.
Fourth-year public affairs and policy management (PAPM) student Espoir Manirambona said he enjoyed the lecture because it focused on a particular aspect of Gandhi’s philosophy pertaining to economic issues.
“He actually got in-depth at a particular aspect of Gandhi’s economic philosophy that I think most people don’t know about,” Manirambona said.
Agradip Dutta, a fourth-year international studies and PAPM student said he also found the economic aspect of Gandhi’s philosophy relevant.
“It was interesting to learn about Gandhi’s approach to introducing virtue into the economy because often we’re programmed to think the economy is separate from moral virtue. As Gandhi was stressing the whole time, it’s all inter-connected,” Dutta said. “If you’re a virtuous person . . . you would also express that through your economic actions and dealings.”
In his lecture, Parel argued that Pax Gandhiana is the most important contribution that Gandhi has made to modern history.
“We associate Gandhi with independence for India, for promoting non-violence, and so on. But what combines them all together is a vision of a new non-violent social, political, economic, and civilizational order. All the other things are part of it, but Pax Gandhiana is a peace order,” Parel said.
Parel went on to argue that Pax Gandhiana is not imposed by imperial means but persuasion. The lecture focused on economic conditions necessary for Pax Gandhiana, as well as highlighting the emphasis on benevolence.
Parel argued Pax Gandhiana requires one to re-think basic economic ideas. These included the very notion of wealth, the notion of labour, the motivations that work in economic activities and private property. According to Parel, re-thinking these notions can lead to peace as Gandhi had envisioned.
