Thinking of M K Gandhi

The assassination failed to kill Mohandas Gandhi. Here’s why: as a course instructor teaching Business Ethics to management students for over two decades, I have found Gandhi fitting in the curriculum even without explicit mention of the name in the syllabus. There was a time when Gandhian thought was a part of the course curriculum for the civil services. The Ahimsa Centre at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, US, has been actively pursuing Gandhian ideals ever since it was established in 2004. It is often said that Gandhi’s views are too idealistic to be practised. Nothing can be further from the truth. Gandhi was a practical idealist. And even if Gandhi’s ideas were too ideal and, hence, unrealisable, the point is that there is little sense in setting a wrong benchmark in the name of practicality. Gandhi was a votary of valuesbased leadership, and a practitioner too. Practicality and morality, then, can harmoniously go together. Be it politics, governance or business. Machiavellianism and Gandhism are two different approaches and both are possible. One has to believe. Realism may not necessarily be nonidealism. Gandhi epitomised the most desirable managerial quality that is widely talked about these days in management jargon as ethical leadership. It is not about idealism versus realism but idealism as realism, and it can provide answers to most problems that the world is facing today. Gandhi accomplished what he could by sheer dint of his moral courage. That is what we need today

Economic Times, 12/02/2020