Gandhi and Sen: Visions of Leadership for India

In order to free India from the British, a new sort of leadership was needed. Mohandas Gandhi wrote about satyagraha, or soul-force, an individual type of leadership. In contrast, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen interprets leadership differently. Whereas Gandhi generally valued leadership at the village and individual levels, Sen argues that this kind of leadership is only possible if the right climate is present at a national level. This article compares and contrasts the leadership visions of Gandhi and Sen. India is expected to become critically important in world affairs in just a few years. The way Indian leaders direct their country will play a key role in the way the country develops. For guidance, leaders can look to two Indian thinkers, Mohandas Gandhi and Amartya Sen. Gandhi, as one of the most important leaders in the fight for Indian independence, developed a distinctly Indian theory of leadership and non-violent resistance. Sen, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, has done a good deal of work on development, especially as it relates to India. From looking at Sen's ideal process of political, economic, and social development, we can infer the role he believes leaders ought to play. In this paper, I will compare two of these authors' works in order to discover what each has to say about the role of leadership in India. Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule, written by Gandhi in 1938, before Indian independence, deals with how India should be governed. In it, Gandhi contrasts the British style of colonialism with how he feels an independent India would rule itself, and he provides a plan for getting there: satyagraha, variously translated as soul-force, truth-force, or love-force. Key to Gandhi's vision of independent India is the idea of individual leadership and self-reliance: a literal interpretation of "home rule."