How Can Gandhi Interpret His Favorite Bhagavad-Gita as a Gospel of Nonviolence?

Abstract

The Bhagavad-Gita is Gandhi’s guide to daily living. Scholars and Hindu followers of the Gita have found Gandhi’s readings and commentaries of karma-yoga and especially of a nonviolent Gita surprising, inadequate, and a hermeneutical disaster. What distinguishes Gandhi’s interpretation of karma-yoga is his emphasis on the karmic world of relative truth. What is really remarkable is Gandhi’s interpretation of the central message of the Gita as a gospel of ahimsa. How can Gandhi justify such a seemingly bizarre claim? I examine usual interpretations of this claim that one must not take the Gita literally, but must instead read and interpret it as highly symbolic, mythic, allegorical text. More significantly, I attempt to analyze Gandhi’s approach and dramatic nonviolent interpretations by regarding the Gita as a dynamic open-ended text that is always contextualized and involves a key, creative, insightful hermeneutical move of greatest relevance today.