Gandhi’s call for ‘enchantment’ is still valid

It was startling to see a full house for Akeel Bilgrami, a philosopher from Columbia University in New York at Jnanapravaha, in Fort. There were references to Spinoza, Gandhi, Nietzche, Freud, Weber, Blake, the 1640s, the French Revolution, the Iraq and Afghan wars, but the audience stayed put for an hour-and-a-half.

Though the talk was billed as, ‘Gandhi and Freud and the Early Modern and Romantic Tradition’, Bilgrami was really talking about why the American public acquiesces to wars in their name in far-off lands.

He claimed that the American public, and in particular he talked about the religious and politically conservative mid-west, does not have the critical training to see how they are fooled by the elite.

To explain this Bilgrami referred to the beginning of modern scientific society in 17th century England and how a section of the scientific elite managed to win an argument which said that god and divine values could not be accessed by the common person. The common man and woman would need such values to be interpreted by scripture and clergy.

He said that Gandhi, in his criticism of modern society, was acutely aware of its British history, and had formidable insights on the particular anxieties which accompany modernising societies. His solution, which Bilgrami stressed was still valid, was to call for a popular and democratic re-enchantment with the divine values inherent in the world.