Gandhi's Ashrams: Residential Experiments for Universal Wellbeing

FAIN: FEL-267328-20

Karline Marie McLain
Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA 17837-2005)

Research and writing a history of four utopian communities, established by Mohandas Gandhi in South Africa and India between 1904 and 1936, which provided a model for his social thought and politics.

Gandhi is known worldwide for his nonviolent fight for India’s independence from colonial rule. Lesser known are his utopian residential experiments conducted at the intentional communities, or ashrams, that he founded in South Africa and India: Phoenix Settlement (est. 1904), Tolstoy Farm (est. 1910), Sabarmati Ashram (est. 1915), and Sevagram Ashram (est. 1936). Residents engaged in small-scale experiments with ideals and methods for living a just life that Gandhi would apply to larger-scale social, religious, and political problems. This book focuses on the communal observances undertaken by Gandhi and his co-residents to illuminate the evolution of Gandhi’s concept of sarvodaya, universal wellbeing. It argues: First, that voluntary self-control, which at times bled into self-sacrifice, was central to Gandhi’s utopian philosophy of sarvodaya; and second, that Gandhi’s intentional communities were the necessary conditions for his experiments with and articulation of that philosophy.