Gandhi Was Like Adam Smith In His Thinking. But Gandhian Studies Won’t Tell You This

September 26, 2021

Books written for students of economics and management make no references to Mahatma Gandhi. The losers are the students. Gandhi, with his encyclopedic range of interests, has much to say that can be treated as complementary to mainstream economics and management theories, or as even an intrinsic part of them. His contributions, even at their most eccentric, have a universal appeal, as Ramachandra Guha (2018) points out, and are characterized not only by high idealism, which one undoubtedly expects from a great soul, but also by their almost invariably empirical grounding and suitability for wide practical application. Attempting to make an intellectual connection between Gandhi and Adam Smith, the ‘father’ of economics, may appear to be a formidable task, given that Gandhi is popularly associated with asceticism and anti-industrialism. But I would submit that this task is no more formidable than the philosopher Akeel Bilgrami’s attempt to establish linkages between Gandhi and Marx. 

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