Remembering Gandhi's simplicity in this era of obsessive needs

THE QUESTION
There are many reasons to remember Gandhi. Although reviled in various quarters in India today, Gandhi remains a source of inspiration to many. Although we may not explicitly realize or acknowledge this, many privileges that we have today are due to the changes that the Gandhians in their own way have catalysed through their struggle.

I want to focus on one seminal idea of Gandhi, which needs to be taken more seriously.

Gandhi’s secretary Pyarelal in 1947 notes that Gandhi had said ‘Earth provides enough for every man’s need but not for every man’s greed.’ According to Gandhi, greed was the cause of poverty; he also saw greed as the root of all evil among humans. Rejection of greed is possible in all of us. Gandhi suggests that if we examine our own accumulative instincts, we will ourselves realize the ‘fewness of things’ we require.  

This opposition between need and greed becomes the central problem of today’s society and is very well exemplified by the comment in the movie Wall Street that  ‘Greed is Good’. Modern consumerist society builds itself on the necessity of greed. Without sometimes explicitly calling it by this word, it is,  nevertheless, the case that greed continues to play a major role in contemporary culture through the use of other terms like competition, merit, profit margins and so on.

The culture of greed is indeed the culture that you see in the consumption patterns of many of our well-to-do citizens. It is also the same culture that has led to the present-day obsession with variety as the marker of consumerism. The shopping malls are a glitzy mirror to the culture of variety. Today, we believe that it is our ‘right’ to choose between different goods and different manufacturers. We somehow feel that if we do not have a choice of many cars, many garment companies, many of everything, we are somehow being cheated of our ‘rights’. This is ironical considering how business houses are becoming bigger and bigger monopolies, and sell the same product under different brand names thereby simulating a choice for consumers.

Our obsession with variety and difference in our personal lives has led to a situation where we do not like to eat the same food items every day. The most damaging illustration of this attitude is seen in what they have done to the most innocent of all items: the idli. Today, restaurants (especially in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka) do not sell just idlis — these have become passé and boring. Instead, you have ‘fried idlis’, ‘idli manchurian’, ‘idli szechuan’, ‘idli masala’ and so on. The menu card has become the modern face of India where our daily desire for variety is reflected.

Gandhi’s observation about need and greed is an ethical observation since it has the potential to make us think about the goods we accumulate. Today’s shopping is not really about buying what we need. The middle class houses are museums of articles which have been stored and many times forgotten since they were never ‘needed’ in the first place.

Wardrobes of the better-off are filled with attires which may come out of the closet once in many months, and sometimes once in many years! Our desire for accumulation seems to be limited only by the money that we can spend and even that has been taken care of by credit cards which allow you to pay for your present desires in the future.

In spite of the constant message from the consumerist culture, it is clear that there is nothing natural about greed. Rather, it is a specifically cultivated attribute. It is a process that does not just harm the human society but also our very existence on this planet.

Gandhi does not have to give us a strict definition of need and greed. The meaning of these terms has to be found by each one of us, for each one of us. Where indeed is the line between need and greed in our daily actions? Is our consumption — whether of food or clothes or anything else for that matter — only limited by our capacity to buy? Or should some other principle of self-denial operate?

One way to understand the difference between need and greed is through the notion of simplicity. Gandhi embodied simplicity in many ways: his dress, his commitment to a few principles such as truth and non-violence, his controlled food habits, his spartan living quarters, his ashrams and so on.

Interestingly, simplicity is also an important theme in philosophy as well as science. Nature seems to privilege simplicity. The universe is ordered on the principles of simplicity, one of which is symmetry. Even the spherical shapes of the objects in the universe, the shapes of humans and animals, as well as natural formations on the Earth — all these have to do with symmetry and simplicity. The fundamental laws of nature are an illustration of the laws of symmetry. In fact, one could perhaps say that the most mysterious part of the universe is this relation with simplicity. All of Nature, except for the species called humans, embraces simplicity!

Simplicity has a lot to do with humility. There are many great business leaders who lead a simple life, one that is not reflective of greed or of an assertion of their wealth. They lead a simple life because they realize that their wealth is not an indicator of their qualities as humans. It is not an accident that Gandhi believed that humility was one of the most important virtues that one should cultivate.

The author is director of the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal University