Gandhi's Sarvodaya was his Gujarati paraphrase of:

Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Ambedkar's memorandum States and Minorities (1947) proposed that:

State socialism, including state ownership of key industries and state-run agriculture, be written into the constitution itself

India adopt a Gandhian constitution of self-governing villages

Secularism be defined as strict separation of religion and state

Reservations be abolished after ten years

Assertion (A): Ambedkar held that political democracy in India would be insecure without social democracy. Reason (R): Ambedkar introduced the basic structure doctrine in the Constituent Assembly. Choose the correct option.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

Assertion (A): The word "secular" was part of the Preamble as adopted in 1949. Reason (R): Articles 25 to 28 guaranteed freedom of religion from the Constitution's commencement. Choose the correct option.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

Which of the following are among the three lessons Gandhi drew from Unto This Last? Select all that apply.

The good of the individual is contained in the good of all

A lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's

The life of labour is the life worth living

The state should own all means of production

The good of the individual is contained in the good of all

A lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's

The life of labour is the life worth living

Which of the following are philosophical arguments commonly offered in support of affirmative action? Select all that apply.

Substantive rather than merely formal equality

Compensatory justice for historical wrongs

Substantive rather than merely formal equality

Desert as purely individual merit

Compensatory justice for historical wrongs

Indian Social and Political Philosophy II: Constitutional Morality, Secularism, Rights, Social Justice, Social Institutions and Colonialism

The rest of Unit 7 is a list of concepts from modern Indian political thought: constitutional morality, secularism and fundamental rights; constitutionalism, total revolution, terrorism, swadeshi, satyagraha, sarvodaya, social democracy, state socialism, affirmative action and social justice; the social institutions of family, marriage, property, education and religion; and colonialism. This chapter treats each as a philosophical concept, giving its origin, its main defenders and the principal arguments for and against, without taking sides where the debate is live. The syllabus writes "Satyagrah"; the term is satyagraha. NET Political Science and NET Law cover the constitutional provisions and case law in more detail; here the question is what justifies them.

1. Constitutional morality, secularism, fundamental rights and constitutionalism

Constitutional morality: in the Constituent Assembly on 4 November 1948, B. R. Ambedkar quoted the historian George Grote to explain why the details of administration had been written into the Constitution: constitutional morality means "a paramount reverence for the forms of the Constitution", and "is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realise that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic." The Supreme Court has since used the idea to mean adherence to the Constitution's core values, liberty, equality, dignity and fraternity, even against popular or conventional morality, for example in Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India (2018).

Secularism: the word was added to the Preamble by the Forty-second Amendment (1976), though Articles 25 to 28 had guaranteed religious freedom from the start, and the Supreme Court held secularism part of the basic structure in S. R. Bommai v Union of India (1994). The Indian conception is usually described as sarva-dharma-samabhāva, equal respect for all religions, rather than a wall of separation; Rajeev Bhargava calls it "principled distance", which lets the state intervene in religion, for instance to reform caste practices, when equality demands it. Critics from different sides argue that this is either too interventionist or not neutral enough.
Fundamental rights (Part III, Articles 12 to 35) embody the liberal ideas of equality before the law, liberty of expression and conscience, and protection against exploitation, enforceable against the state through Article 32, which Ambedkar called "the very soul of the Constitution". Philosophically they raise the old questions of whether rights are natural or conferred and how they are to be balanced against the community's interests and the directive principles.
Constitutionalism is the idea that government should be limited by a higher law, through the rule of law, separation of powers, rights and judicial review. In India the Supreme Court's basic structure doctrine (Kesavananda Bharati, 1973), which holds that Parliament cannot amend away the Constitution's essential features, is its most distinctive expression.

2. Total revolution, terrorism, swadeshi, satyagraha and sarvodaya

Total revolution (sampūrṇa krānti): Jayaprakash Narayan's call at a rally in Patna on 5 June 1974, during the Bihar movement, for a transformation of the whole of society, not only the government. He listed seven revolutions, social, economic, political, cultural, ideological or intellectual, educational and spiritual, to be achieved by peaceful, non-violent mass action and people's committees.
Terrorism: as a philosophical topic the questions are definitional and moral. Most definitions involve violence or its threat against non-combatants, intended to create fear for a political end. Discussion turns on whether "terrorism" can be defined without bias (the "one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" problem), whether states can commit it, and why deliberately targeting non-combatants is wrong, a question answered through the just war principle of discrimination, Kantian respect for persons, and Gandhi's insistence that means shape ends. Modern Indian thinkers from Gandhi onward rejected political violence against the innocent.
Swadeshi: from the 1905 movement against the partition of Bengal, swadeshi meant boycotting foreign goods. Gandhi deepened it into a principle of neighbourliness: "Swadeshi is that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote" (Madras, 1916), applied to religion, politics and economics, and expressed in khadi and village industry.
Satyagraha (see Chapter 15) is, as a social and political method, organised non-violent resistance: non-cooperation, civil disobedience and fasting, with openness toward the opponent and willingness to accept punishment, aimed at the opponent's conversion rather than defeat.
Sarvodaya, "the welfare of all", was Gandhi's title for his 1908 Gujarati paraphrase of John Ruskin's Unto This Last. He drew three lessons from it: the good of the individual is contained in the good of all; a lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's, since all have the same right to earn a livelihood; and a life of labour, of the tiller and the craftsman, is the life worth living. After independence Vinoba Bhave carried sarvodaya forward in the Bhoodan (land-gift) movement from 1951.

3. Social democracy, state socialism, affirmative action and social justice

Social democracy: in his speech of 25 November 1949 Ambedkar warned that "political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy", a way of life recognising liberty, equality and fraternity as a trinity, none of which can be separated from the others. On 26 January 1950, he said, India would enter "a life of contradictions": equality in politics and inequality in social and economic life.
State socialism: Ambedkar's memorandum States and Minorities (1947) proposed writing state socialism into the constitution itself: key industries owned and run by the state, agriculture a state industry with land leased to village collectives, and insurance a state monopoly, so that economic democracy would not depend on the majority of the day. The Constituent Assembly did not adopt it; the directive principles and Nehru's democratic socialism took a looser form.
Affirmative action: reservations in education, public employment and legislatures for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes rest on Articles 15(4), 16(4) and 46. In Indra Sawhney v Union of India (1992) the Supreme Court upheld OBC reservation with a general ceiling of fifty per cent and the exclusion of the "creamy layer"; the 103rd Amendment (2019) added a reservation for economically weaker sections, upheld in 2022. The philosophical arguments offered for it are compensatory justice for historical wrongs, distributive justice or substantive equality, and diversity and representation; the arguments offered against invoke merit, individual rather than group desert, and the risk of entrenching caste identity.
Social justice: the Preamble promises "justice, social, economic and political". In Indian thought the idea is developed by Ambedkar (the annihilation of caste and social democracy), by Lohia (the special claims of the backward and of women) and in constitutional practice through protective discrimination; it meets Western theories such as Rawls's difference principle in Unit 8.

4. Social institutions and colonialism

Social institutions in Indian thought
Institution	Classical conception	Modern debate
Family	The householder (gṛhastha) as the support of all āśramas; the joint family as the unit of ritual, property and care	Nuclear families, gender equality within the family, and the reach of the state into family life
Marriage	A sacrament (saṃskāra) serving dharma, progeny and companionship, with eight forms listed in the dharmaśāstras	Sacrament or contract; consent, divorce and equality; personal laws and a uniform civil code
Property	Artha as a legitimate aim regulated by dharma; property held by the family	Gandhi's trusteeship (the rich as trustees of wealth for society), socialism, and the right to property (a fundamental right until the 44th Amendment, 1978)
Education	The gurukula: study as a stage of life, knowledge as liberating (sā vidyā yā vimuktaye)	Tagore's education in freedom, Gandhi's Nai Talim (basic education through productive craft, 1937), and education as the means of equality in Phule and Ambedkar
Religion	Dharma as the order that sustains society, wider than "religion" in the Western sense	Religion as a source of unity or of division; reform movements; secularism and freedom of conscience

Colonialism is examined in Indian philosophy both as an economic and political system and as a condition of thought. Dadabhai Naoroji's Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901) set out the "drain theory", the transfer of India's wealth to Britain without return. Gandhi's Hind Swaraj argued that the English hold India because Indians have accepted modern civilisation, so that freedom requires a moral and cultural, not only political, swaraj. K. C. Bhattacharyya's "Swaraj in Ideas" diagnosed a slavery of the mind, and Tagore warned against answering imperialism with an imitative nationalism. Later post-colonial writers, such as Edward Said in Orientalism (1978) and Ashis Nandy in The Intimate Enemy (1983), extended the analysis to the ways colonial knowledge shaped the self-understanding of both colonised and coloniser.

⚠️ Whose concept is it?

Total revolution is Jayaprakash Narayan's (1974); sarvodaya is Gandhi's title from Ruskin, carried on by Vinoba Bhave; constitutional morality in the Assembly is Ambedkar quoting Grote; state socialism in a constitutional scheme is Ambedkar's States and Minorities; "principled distance" is Rajeev Bhargava's term. Matching questions often swap Gandhi, Vinoba and JP.

Key takeaways

Constitutional morality: Ambedkar quoting Grote (4 November 1948), "not a natural sentiment; it has to be cultivated"; later used by the courts for the Constitution's core values. Secularism: added in 1976, basic structure in Bommai (1994), equal respect or principled distance.
Constitutionalism as limited government; the basic structure doctrine (Kesavananda Bharati, 1973); fundamental rights enforceable through Article 32.
Total revolution: JP, Patna, 5 June 1974, seven revolutions. Swadeshi: Gandhi's spirit of serving one's immediate surroundings (1916). Sarvodaya: Gandhi's 1908 paraphrase of Ruskin's Unto This Last, three principles; Vinoba's Bhoodan (1951). Terrorism: definitional and moral questions, the wrong of targeting non-combatants.
Social democracy: Ambedkar (25 November 1949), liberty, equality and fraternity as a trinity; state socialism in States and Minorities (1947); affirmative action (Articles 15(4), 16(4), 46; Indra Sawhney, 1992) with arguments for and against.
Social institutions: family, marriage (sacrament or contract), property (trusteeship), education (Nai Talim, 1937), religion as dharma. Colonialism: Naoroji's drain theory, Hind Swaraj, Swaraj in Ideas, Said and Nandy.

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

The call for "total revolution" (sampūrṇa krānti) in 1974 was made by:
1. B. R. Ambedkar
2. Vinoba Bhave
3. Jayaprakash Narayan
4. Ram Manohar Lohia
Show answer
Answer: C — Jayaprakash Narayan
JP made the call in Patna on 5 June 1974. Vinoba led the Bhoodan movement, Lohia developed a socialism of the backward and of women, and Ambedkar spoke of social democracy.
Gandhi's Sarvodaya was his Gujarati paraphrase of:
1. Marx's Communist Manifesto
2. John Ruskin's Unto This Last
3. Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You
4. Thoreau's Civil Disobedience
Show answer
Answer: B — John Ruskin's Unto This Last
Gandhi read Ruskin's Unto This Last on a train in 1904 and published a Gujarati paraphrase titled Sarvodaya in 1908. Tolstoy and Thoreau influenced his thinking on non-violent resistance, but Sarvodaya is the Ruskin paraphrase.
"Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated." Ambedkar was quoting:
1. George Grote
2. J. S. Mill
3. Edmund Burke
4. A. V. Dicey
Show answer
Answer: A — George Grote
In the Constituent Assembly on 4 November 1948 Ambedkar cited the Greek historian George Grote's description of constitutional morality as "a paramount reverence for the forms of the Constitution".
The term "principled distance" for Indian secularism is associated with:
1. Jayaprakash Narayan
2. Dadabhai Naoroji
3. Rajeev Bhargava
4. Ashis Nandy
Show answer
Answer: C — Rajeev Bhargava
Rajeev Bhargava describes Indian secularism as principled distance, allowing the state to engage with religion for the sake of equality. Nandy is a critic of secularism and of colonial modernity, Naoroji the author of the drain theory.
Ambedkar's memorandum States and Minorities (1947) proposed that:
1. State socialism, including state ownership of key industries and state-run agriculture, be written into the constitution itself
2. India adopt a Gandhian constitution of self-governing villages
3. Secularism be defined as strict separation of religion and state
4. Reservations be abolished after ten years
Show answer
Answer: A — State socialism, including state ownership of key industries and state-run agriculture, be written into the constitution itself
States and Minorities proposed constitutionally entrenched state socialism so that economic democracy would not depend on the legislature of the day. It was not adopted; the other options describe different proposals or debates.
Assertion (A): Ambedkar held that political democracy in India would be insecure without social democracy. Reason (R): Ambedkar introduced the basic structure doctrine in the Constituent Assembly. Choose the correct option.
1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
3. A is true, but R is false
4. A is false, but R is true
Show answer
Answer: C — A is true, but R is false
A is true: his 25 November 1949 speech warned that equality in politics with inequality in social and economic life is "a life of contradictions". R is false: the basic structure doctrine was laid down by the Supreme Court in Kesavananda Bharati (1973).
Assertion (A): The word "secular" was part of the Preamble as adopted in 1949. Reason (R): Articles 25 to 28 guaranteed freedom of religion from the Constitution's commencement. Choose the correct option.
1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
3. A is true, but R is false
4. A is false, but R is true
Show answer
Answer: D — A is false, but R is true
A is false: "secular", with "socialist", was inserted by the Forty-second Amendment in 1976. R is true: the religious freedom articles were there from 1950, which is why secularism is said to have been implicit from the start.
Which of the following are among the three lessons Gandhi drew from Unto This Last? Select all that apply.
1. The state should own all means of production
2. The good of the individual is contained in the good of all
3. A lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's
4. The life of labour is the life worth living
Show answer
Answer: B — The good of the individual is contained in the good of all; C — A lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's; D — The life of labour is the life worth living
Gandhi's autobiography records these three lessons. State ownership of the means of production is a socialist programme, closer to Ambedkar's States and Minorities, and Gandhi preferred trusteeship.
Which of the following are philosophical arguments commonly offered in support of affirmative action? Select all that apply.
1. Substantive rather than merely formal equality
2. Desert as purely individual merit
3. Diversity and representation
4. Compensatory justice for historical wrongs
Show answer
Answer: A — Substantive rather than merely formal equality; C — Diversity and representation; D — Compensatory justice for historical wrongs
Compensation, diversity and substantive equality are the standard supporting arguments. The appeal to purely individual merit is the standard argument offered against group-based preference.
How many revolutions did Jayaprakash Narayan list as making up "total revolution"? Type the number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: 7
Seven: social, economic, political, cultural, ideological or intellectual, educational and spiritual.