Gandhi’s critique of modernity shows millennials a more responsible consumption | The Indian Express

Gandhi’s critique of modernity shows millennials a more responsible consumption | The Indian Express

Written by Sreejith Sugunan |Updated: October 7, 2019 9:56:33 am

The writer, 30, is a PhD candidate at the Centre of Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Gandhi’s critique of modernity shows millennials a more responsible consumption

Gandhi’s minimalism hopes to thus liberate the other, and in the process liberate one’s own self.

Mahatma Gandhi. (Express archive photo)

As a millennial who completed his schooling in India during the decade sandwiched between the ongoing and previous millennia, my early memories of Gandhi are largely hagiographic. It is only recently that the Indian public sphere embraced the vocabulary of thinkers like B R Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh and V D Savarkar, who were critical of the Gandhian project. By the time we were born, non-violence had become a common-sense ethic embedded within our constitutional morality and liberal-democratic ethos. One didn’t really need Gandhi to point out the importance of being non-violent.