Indian thinkers on equality and justice: Gandhi, Lohia, Ambedkar

Detail

1. Gandhi — Sarvodaya

• Sarvodaya means "the welfare of all" (sarva = all, udaya = rise). It is an equality that lifts everyone, not just the majority or the strongest.
• Where the word came from: it was the title of Gandhi's 1908 Gujarati paraphrase of John Ruskin's Unto This Last. A paraphrase is a retelling in one's own words.
• H.S.L. Polak gave Gandhi the book to read on a train journey to Durban [2].

• Ruskin's book criticised capitalism. In 1904, after reading it, Gandhi set up the Phoenix settlement near Durban. There, he and his friends lived by their own physical labour [3].

• The three lessons Gandhi drew from Ruskin:

• The good of the individual lies in the good of all. There is no real gain for one person if it comes from another person's loss.
• A lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's, because everyone has the same right to earn a living from their work. This is equality of dignity in work.

• A life of labour is worth living. A life of physical work, like a farmer's or a craftsman's, is the life most worth living.

• Why it matters for equality: Sarvodaya rejects the idea of the "greatest good of the greatest number" (utilitarianism). It asks for the good of all, starting with the last person (antyodaya, the rise of the last).

2. Gandhi — Trusteeship

• Trusteeship is Gandhi's idea that the rich should keep only what they need. They should hold all extra wealth as trustees for society, like a guardian who looks after property for someone else.
• A third path:
• It differs from capitalism, where the owner may use profit only for themselves.
• It differs from state socialism, where the state takes property, by force if necessary.

• Trusteeship works through moral persuasion and a change of heart, without violence.

• Gandhi set out the idea in his writings on trusteeship, for example "My Theory of Trusteeship" [2].

• Weakness often pointed out: it depends on the goodwill of the rich. It has no way of enforcing itself.

3. Gandhi's successors

Successor	What	Key fact
Vinoba Bhave	Bhoodan ("land-gift") and Gramdan ("village-gift")	Started at Pochampalli on 18 April 1951. Bhave was a leading disciple of Gandhi and founded the Bhoodan Yajna [9].
Jayaprakash Narayan (JP)	Total Revolution (Sampoorna Kranti), 1974	A call for change in politics, the economy, society, culture and education at the same time. It took Sarvodaya into mass politics.

• How Bhoodan began:
• In 1951, Bhave was touring villages in what was then the Hyderabad region (now Telangana).
• A landholder offered land after Bhave appealed for a group of landless Dalits [8].

• The aim was to lift the rural poor by giving them privately owned land [8].

• Method: Bhave believed land reform should come through a change of heart, not government action [8]. This is trusteeship in practice.

• Gramdan went further than Bhoodan. The whole village gave its land to the village community, so the community, not individuals, owned the land.

4. Gandhian ideas inside the Constitution and the law

• Gandhian Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSPs). DPSPs are guidelines in Part IV that the state must follow when it makes laws. Courts cannot enforce them (Article 37).

Article	What the state should do
Art. 40	Organise village panchayats as units of self-government
Art. 43	Secure a living wage and a decent life for workers, and promote cottage industries
Art. 46	Promote the educational and economic interests of SCs, STs and weaker sections, and protect them from injustice and exploitation
Art. 47	Raise nutrition and public health, and prohibit intoxicating drinks and harmful drugs except for medical use
Art. 48	Organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern lines, and prohibit the slaughter of cows and calves

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): a legal duty on large companies to spend part of their profit on social causes. It is set out in Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013.
• Who must spend: a company with net worth ₹500 crore or more, or turnover ₹1,000 crore or more, or net profit ₹5 crore or more in a financial year [4].
• How much: at least 2% of the average net profits of the last 3 years [4].
• On what: the activities listed in Schedule VII of the Act [4].
• When: Section 135, Schedule VII and the CSR Rules were notified on 27 February 2014 and came into force on 1 April 2014 [4].

• The original rule (2014): if a company did not spend the money, it had to give the reasons in its Board's Report. This approach is called "comply or explain" [4].

• The debate: trusteeship was voluntary, a matter of conscience. CSR is compulsory, a matter of law. Can trusteeship still be called trusteeship once the state forces it? Or is CSR closer to a tax with a different name?

5. Lohia — Sapta Kranti (Seven Revolutions)

• Ram Manohar Lohia was a socialist thinker. Sapta Kranti means "seven revolutions" that must happen at the same time.

• Five inequalities to fight at once, because each has its own roots: 1. between man and woman (gender); 2. based on skin colour (race); 3. based on caste; 4. colonial rule of some countries over others; 5. economic inequality.

• Two more revolutions: 6. for civil liberties, to protect private life from intrusion by the state or society; 7. for non-violence (satyagraha), used in place of weapons.

• Why it was new:

• Orthodox socialism said class alone matters, and that caste and gender would disappear once class was abolished. Lohia rejected this.
• He said each inequality has independent roots, so ending one will not end the others.

• This anticipated intersectionality: the idea that a person can face several overlapping disadvantages at once, such as a poor Dalit woman.

• Legacy: his ideas shaped backward-class politics in North India. That politics demanded special provisions for backward classes, the kind the Constitution permits under Art. 15(4) and Art. 16(4).

6. Ambedkar's idea of a just society

• The problem: graded inequality. Caste is a ladder, not a simple two-level split. Each caste looks up to those above with an "ascending sense of reverence" and looks down on those below with a "descending sense of contempt".
• The goal: dissolve this hierarchy and create a compassionate society (Annihilation of Caste, 1936).
• The trinity of liberty, equality and fraternity. Fraternity means a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood among all citizens.
• The three must go together. Liberty without equality creates rule by a few. Equality without liberty kills individual effort. Without fraternity, neither of the other two can last.

• He said he took these ideas from the Buddha, not the French Revolution (radio talk, 1954).

• From political democracy to social democracy (25 November 1949). He gave this speech in the Constituent Assembly, the day before the Constitution was adopted.

• Social democracy is "a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life" [5][6].
• He warned that India was entering "a life of contradictions". In politics there would be "one man one vote and one vote one value", but social and economic life would remain unequal [6].

• If this contradiction lasts too long, those who suffer from inequality may destroy the structure of political democracy [6].

• Constitutional morality: respect for the Constitution's rules, limits and processes, even when one disagrees. Ambedkar held that it does not come naturally. It must be cultivated.

• Institutional guarantees: he built into the Constitution a responsible government, checks and balances, Fundamental Rights, independent institutions, and DPSPs aimed at social democracy [7].
• Economic views: in States and Minorities (1947) he proposed state socialism. Key industries would be state-owned and run, and agriculture would be a state industry. He wanted this fixed in the Constitution itself, so that a simple majority could not reverse it.

7. Comparison

Thinker	Main focus	Method	Main tool
Rawls	The worst-off (difference principle)	Rational choice behind a "veil of ignorance"	Just institutions
Marx	Class	Class struggle	Abolishing private property
Gandhi	Welfare of all, the last person	Moral persuasion, change of heart	Trusteeship, village self-rule
Lohia	Several inequalities at once	Simultaneous struggles, satyagraha	Seven revolutions, special opportunity for backward groups
Ambedkar	Dignity, fraternity, ending caste	Constitutional and legal means	Rights, reservations, institutions

• Key difference: Gandhi trusted the conscience of the powerful. Ambedkar did not. He wanted rights that are legally guaranteed and enforceable, because the victims of caste could not wait for their oppressors to change their hearts.

Prelims Hooks

• Sarvodaya (1908) was Gandhi's Gujarati paraphrase of Ruskin's Unto This Last, not of Tolstoy or Thoreau.
• The Phoenix settlement near Durban (1904) was set up after Gandhi read Unto This Last [3].
• Bhoodan began at Pochampalli on 18 April 1951, under Vinoba Bhave. JP's Total Revolution was in 1974.
• Gandhian DPSPs: Art. 40 (panchayats), 43 (cottage industries, living wage), 46 (SC/ST/weaker sections), 47 (prohibition, nutrition), 48 (cow slaughter, agriculture).
• CSR: Section 135, Companies Act 2013. 2% of average net profit of the last 3 years. Thresholds: ₹500 crore net worth, ₹1,000 crore turnover, or ₹5 crore net profit. Activities are listed in Schedule VII. In force from 1 April 2014 [4].
• Sapta Kranti (Lohia) includes gender, colour, caste, colonialism, economic inequality, civil liberties and non-violence. Trap: religion and language are not among the seven.
• Ambedkar said he drew liberty, equality and fraternity from the Buddha (1954), not the French Revolution.
• "One man one vote, one vote one value" and "life of contradictions" come from Ambedkar's speech of 25 November 1949 [6].
• States and Minorities (1947) contains Ambedkar's plan for state socialism. Annihilation of Caste is from 1936.

Mains Points

• Voluntary vs compulsory trusteeship.
• CSR under s. 135 turns Gandhi's moral appeal into a legal duty [4].
• For: it guarantees money for social causes.
• Against: it can become box-ticking compliance, and it moves welfare duties from the state to companies.

• Gandhi's own method was a change of heart, as in Bhoodan [8]. That reached far, but it did not last because nothing enforced it.

• Persuasion vs guarantees, the Gandhi–Ambedkar contrast.

• Gandhi relied on the conscience of the powerful.
• Ambedkar relied on enforceable rights, reservations and constitutional morality.

• The Constitution blends both: non-justiciable Gandhian DPSPs sit alongside justiciable Fundamental Rights such as Art. 15(4), 16(4) and 17.

• Lohia's intersectional equality.

• Single-axis policies, such as caste-only or income-only measures, miss people who face overlapping disadvantages.

• Lohia's simultaneous struggle is relevant to debates on sub-categorisation within reserved groups and on gender within caste-based policy.

• Political vs social democracy.

• Ambedkar's 1949 warning [6] can be used to judge Indian democracy today.
• Equal voting rights exist, but social and economic gaps remain.
• Fraternity, the "forgotten" value in the Preamble, is the precondition for the other two.