Aims and sources

This chapter aims to present the economic thought of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in relation to ethical issues. When studying the views of the great Indian one very often comes across the information about the close connection between economics and ethics. According to Gandhi both spheres should by all means be inseparable. In order to verify this conviction, it is becoming acquainted with some aspects of Gandhi's concepts, or rather his judgements about various economic issues. A selective presentation of these opinions may be justified by the fact that it is difficult to find coherence in his socio-economic system. It is even somewhat risky to write about Gandhi's system. In fact, his economic thought does not fulfil the requirements of economics as a scientific discipline. This is not said as an argument to reject a scientific analysis thereof, however. A number of his remarks of a micro- and macroeconomic character were extremely valuable and may be used at least in researching the economic changes happening in India in the 20th century, or in getting to know the attitude of the Indian society to these changes.

There is a vast literature covering the life and activity of the Indian leader. The subject of Gandhism and its economic dimension is presented in many compilations in English, especially by Indian authors. Among them is a work of the author of the term ‘Gandhian economics’ – Joseph Cornelius Kumarappa. Moreover there are the works of Ajit Dasgupta, Sudarshana Iyengar and, among the Western authors there is, inter alia, Richard Glyn. The most important Polish scientific work on the subject of Gandhi's ethics is a book written by Ija Lazari-Pawłowska (1965). She systematised his scattered moral directives, although she looked at them with the eyes of a philosopher and not an economist.

The primary source of learning about Gandhi's beliefs is his Autobiography (The Story of My Experiments with Truth), which he finished in 1925 (over 22 years before he died). In order to find more of his views about economic development one has to refer to the work Hind Swaraj, written in 1909, and obtain the recording of his speech from 1916 entitled: Does economic progress clash with real progress? One has to bear in mind, though, that over time Gandhi modified some of his beliefs.