Gandhi's Truths in an Age of Fundamentalism and Nationalism

The twenty-first century has seen violence thunder back onto the world stage. Religious fundamentalism and other economic, political, and cultural forces are increasingly in the business of carving out strong nation-states. Religious fundamentalism and illiberal nationalism also work together to generate, catalog, and circulate a fixed platform of "truths" that are deeply mistaken and that generate division and violence. Against this backdrop and on the heels of several commemorations in 2019 of the 150th anniversary of Mohandes Karamchand Gandhi's birth, this edited volume examines and interprets Gandhi's religious and political ideas of truth for our age. Embedded in the political currents, especially those ranging in India and the United States, the authors carefully excavate and creatively employ Gandhi's thought and practice to reimagine a religiously plural and broadly inclusive nationalism rooted in a universal yet many-sided vision of religious truth. Rather than glorify the Mahatma (great soul), this book revisits Gandhi's ideas of truth-force (satyagraha) in the face of fake news, nonviolence (ahimsa) in the face of religious extremism, and freedom (swaraj) in the face of strong nationalism. Book jacket.