Anthropos 56 (2): 447–460 | issn0587-5161 | e-issn 2630-4082
Interview
‘Every Living Thing Has a Soul’ –
Radical Peace, Liberation Struggles
and Nonviolence: An Interview
with Purushottama Bilimoria
Katja Utroša
Gmajna Cultural Association, Slovenia
katja.utrosa@gmail.com
© 2024 Katja Utroša
An increasingly militarised world, where even resistance strategies across
the political spectrum are sharpened and turning to violent means, reaf-
firms the need for normative ethics and modes of social and political re-
sistance based on non-cooperation and nonviolence. As just agents for
achieving political and social change, they have deep roots in tradition,
advocated among others by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr.,
Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, Quakers, other Christian and Indian
religious and philosophical schools. These ideas are still relevant in con-
temporary posthumanist liberation struggles, especially regarding ani-
mal and environmental ethics.
The interview with Purushottama Bilimoria, a philosopher and profes-
sor of law and international affairs, was recorded on June 24th, 2023, on
the eve of Statehood Day of the Republic of Slovenia. We met at the cafe
of the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, not far from the Congress
Square where the state celebration was to take place. Bilimoria had tea.
He brought his own plant-based milk to go with it – an important detail.
I stuck tomy usual diet of coffeewith regularmilk and sugar and plenty of
tobacco. The interview was planned to shed more light on classic Indian
philosophy in the local academic discourse. However, it took a slightly
different route.
While researching his work, I realised he teaches a course on Gandhi,
nonviolence and civil rights with an emphasis on King Jr. andWilliam E.
B. Du Bois, two important social reformists and leaders from theus, who
contributed significantly to the equal rights struggle of Blacks. I antici-
pated gaining some further insight into the Black emancipation move-
https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.447-460
Katja Utroša
ment, as I studied the militant abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859), who
was (partly) connected to the American transcendentalists Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Thoreau. The conversation took off from there across a pic-
turesque cast of people, institutions, and ideas that crossed paths, build-
ing amovement that successfully stood up to oppression and exploitation
in different parts of the world.
Gandhi’s efforts, based on three key ideas from the Indian philosoph-
ical traditions – satya (truth), ahim. sā (nonviolence) and tapasya (asceti-
cism), definitively contributed to the end of British colonial rule in India.
His ideas and practices influenced Black leaders in theusduring the Civil
RightsMovement, resulting inwhat Bilimoria calls the ‘Black Satyagraha.’
The exchange between civil rights leaders in theus and Gandhi’s work is
the focal point of the interview. It weaves a transnational network of ac-
tivists determined to change the status quo:Du Bois’ newspaper reported
Gandhi’s activities; Marcus Garvey shipped Gandhi’s forbidden papers to
the West; Rosa Parks and James Lawson trained in nonviolent strategies;
and King had an extensive collection of Gandhi’s books and was taught
by teachers who were familiar with Gandhi’s work. Many Indian schol-
ars and activists visited, lectured and worked in the us and in Europe,
among them Indian Christian theologian Manilal Parekh, socialist Ram
Manohar Lohia, and academic and Garvey’s associate Haridas Muzum-
dar, who wrote on Gandhi and nonviolence.
The key idea of nonviolence or non-injury, which permeates Gandhi’s
work, is a cornerstone of several Indian philosophical traditions. It is
present in Buddhism, Hinduism, especially in the epics, and in Jainism,
an ancient Indian philosophical system and way of life, adhering to a
teaching started around 500 bce by Mahavira. The Jains prohibit any
form of injury towards living and sentient creatures, prescribing strict
vegetarianism. Jain monks and nuns carry soft brooms and wear mouth
cloths so as to not (accidentally) step on, inhale, or harm any living crea-
ture, reinforcing nonviolence as an ascetic practice. In conclusion, the
interview relates the idea of nonviolence to animal liberation and ecolog-
icalmovements that prescribe political and legal rights to animals, plants,
and ecosystems, to the contemporary subaltern.
Martin Luther King Jr. is known worldwide as the leading figure of the Civil
Rights Movement in the us. However, what is your view of the earlier, in-
fluential but perhaps a little less known leader, Du Bois?
Du Bois is a sociologist. I think he was the first Black man with a Har-
448
Interview
vard PhD. He started a paper called The Crisis. He was critical of the
American policy and treatment of freed slaves.
He was active in the first half of the twentieth century and was actually a
contemporary of Gandhi.
In 1910, Du Bois founded the paper The Crisis. He called it ‘a record
of the darker races.’ He was a prolific writer. He wrote a very good and
powerful book, The Souls of Black Folk, in which he criticised the way the
rights were not being given to the Blacks because they were not included
in the Constitution as citizens of the New World. During the period of
the Reconstruction the freed slaves were supposed to reconstitute their
lives and rejuvenate their community in enterprising ways, but it was not
in their favour. What the White masters used to do was to capture freed
slaves, re-enslave them, and make them servants, as the British did with
indentured labourers in the colonies. Hewanted the Black people to come
up. It was too early for him to be thinking in terms of equal rights but at
least some recognition and dignity could be accorded. He was very aware
of the concept of colonisation. In 1905, quite early on, he and some other
Black leaders formed what was called the Niagara Movement and wrote
Niagara’s Declaration of Principles in which it is very clearly stated that
people of dark races, Africans, Asians, and so forth are being colonised.
He also attended a congress in London, where he came across Gandhi-
ans, the Gandhian nationalists. That is how he got interested in Gandhi.
He wondered who this man was. But it was not just from that confer-
ence. He was reading papers Gandhi was publishing in South Africa. He
and some other American journalists wrote about the satyāgrahaGandhi
staged in South Africa in 1906. Those papers, called Young India, came to
America by boat and were distributed widely among African Americans.
They were very aware of what Gandhi was doing. They were aware there
was a movement to oppose the empire. The empire in the Indian case
being the British Empire, but also America was highly involved with dif-
ferent imperial activities. He compared the state of the Blacks in America
to the untouchables in India. How the British treated the colonised sub-
jects and within that not doing anything about the caste system, and the
so-named untouchables, was not dissimilar to how the United States had
rendered their former slaves and their descendants to second-class, barely
citizen, segregated status. He started to take very seriously the kinds of
strategies Gandhi was using to question and protest against what we now
call white supremacy and white domination. He wasn’t committed to any
449
Katja Utroša
kind of revolution. He thought the process of reform should happen from
the inside. The Blacks should empower themselves as much as possible
and as part of reconstruction take on projects like industrialisation. It
wasn’t really industrialisation but any kind of industry that they could
begin themselves. They could produce things and not be dependent on
the dominant society.
There was another man called Booker T.Washington at about the same
time.He startedwhatwas called theTuskegee Institute. Tuskegeewas sep-
arate. He didn’t want any kind of integration into the White community.
There was a bit of a debate and difference between Du Bois andWashing-
ton in a similar way you had arguments later on between Martin Luther
King Jr. and Malcolm X. A little bit of that. It was about what kind of
approach you take to education. Du Bois was educated at Harvard Uni-
versity. He thought there was no reason why Blacks couldn’t go to White
colleges even if segregation was still there.
How did Du Bois get into Harvard University?
That is a question I have not been able to find the answers to. He must
have had a very strong recommendation. Later on in the 1930s, a young
Black woman, Pauli Murray, tried to get into Harvard Law School and
they would not take her because she was Black and a woman. But Du
Bois somehow managed to get into Harvard.
If I remember correctly, Du Bois spent the closing part of his life in Africa,
in Ghana.
Yes, the very last part of his life. He was so disillusioned that he left and
spent his time there. He worked until very late. He was an academic. It
wasn’t until the 1960s that he left the us permanently, but until then he
was very well-connected and worked very hard for the Blacks. He wrote
some amazing things about how children should be brought up. He was
in education. He also wrote storybooks for Black children.
In The Crisis he covered Gandhi’s activities, especially after Gandhi re-
turned to India in 1915. For a few years, Gandhi travelled, but in 1917, he
started his activities in India, staging protests based on non-cooperation,
i.e. not cooperating with the British rulers on the industries, demanding
better pay and enhanced rights. Of course, he was also questioning the
power base. He was tried and charged with sedition in 1922. He said to
the British in that famous quote that if you are here illegally I am being
tried by a system that is not legitimate, but if you want to, you can give
me themaximumpenalty, or, he said to the judge, you should resign from
450
Interview
your position in the Government. Du Bois reported all that in The Crisis,
which was circulating among the Blacks and someWhite church leaders.
Some Whites were leading trade unions and wanted Blacks to be in-
volved. There were church and social leaders, a man called John Haynes
Holmes, who worked closely with the Blacks. A Dutch immigrant Abra-
hamMuste, who was a pacifist, led a huge strike called the Lawrence Tex-
tile Strike in 1912 inMassachusetts. TheWhite pacifistsmostly came from
the Quaker tradition, and some were Jewish.
At that time, what was the role of the Unitarian church, which is connected
to progressive social movements? We find Unitarians among the abolition-
ists in the nineteenth century.
Actually, Haynes Holmes was a Unitarian.
In The Crisis, Du Bois has pictures of Gandhi and he even has several
swastikas identifying with the Indian tradition – before the Nazis appro-
priated the swastika; then he removed it. He would say: There is only one
man in the world when he sneezes, the whole British Empire shakes, and
whenhe fasts all of India fasts with him andwould back him for the things
he is doing. He almost compares him to a mystic, a mystic leader, a so-
cial Jesus, which is a term that Martin Luther King Jr. later used. Du Bois
was instrumental, as was Washington, who was in correspondence with
Gandhi. He was asking him: How are you running your ashrams? These
were cooperativemovementsGandhi had started.He started the spinning
of khadi, producing your own clothing, and so forth. Tuskegee wanted to
do something very similar. They invented many things at that time. The
Blacks were very industrious. They likewise had schools, industries, and
farms.
Several Gandhians visited the us, including Reverend C. F. Andrews,
who was an English priest and a friend of Gandhi and Tagore. Gandhi
sent him to spread the message of nonviolence and non-cooperation to
people who were oppressed. Andrews was very instrumental. About that
time two or three people fromGandhi’s circle visited – an English woman
Madeline Slade, known as Mirabehn, came, Manilal Parekh, and Ram
Manohar Lohia. They spoke at Black colleges, like Oberlin College and
Morehouse College. They would talk about Gandhi. There were others,
academics, about half a dozen Indians who had migrated and had jobs
in Berkeley and other places. They were involved in setting up mutiny
groups training Indians to stage a possible mutiny in India. In earlier
stages, theywere still kind of violent, they didn’t understandGandhi’s idea
451
Katja Utroša
of nonviolence, and it was not until later that some of them converted to
Gandhi’s way because they saw the message that violence may not be the
productive way to go in the long run. Their efforts to take the mutiny to
India failed; so they started to form nonviolent activist circles with the
Blacks and the Jews. The Jews were also second-class citizens in theus at
that time and they needed to fight for their rights. Some of the support
that came commercially was from a number of Jewish philanthropists.
From my account, Du Bois was instrumental in getting Gandhi recog-
nised as a very important leader of the Coloured people, indeed as an ex-
emplar that the Black folks could follow. He didn’t say straightforwardly
much about nonviolence but he did talk aboutGandhi’s strategy of protest
and non-cooperation.
I studied some other things related to the American Civil RightsMove-
ment and the earlier emancipation struggle, and that is how I came across
Du Bois. I was not aware he had a significant connection to Gandhi.
In his papers, he covered both Gandhi and also Rabindranath Tagore.
Tagore, who had won the Nobel Prize in Literature, also toured theusHe
too visited Tuskegee. I don’t know if he met with Du Bois, but Du Bois
wrote to him and asked: Do you have a message for my people?
There was another guy. He was a bit of a maverick, Marcus Garvey.
He was a Caribbean and owned a shipping company. He would bring
over some of Gandhi’s papers because the British would not allow them
to come. He had some issues with Gandhi, but he did correspond with
him. He thought anything that would work to bring down the empire
was worthwhile looking at. He was aware Gandhi was being successful in
India. Whether that strategy would work in the us or not, he had some
doubts about that, but he had a very close connection with a Gandhian
who was an academic, by the name of Haridas Muzumdar. They were
both deported from the us. Garvey was not deported because of his po-
litical campaign but on some other trumped-up commercial charge, like
not declaring his income and taxes. Muzumdar returned to India to join
Gandhi’s Salt March in 1930, and later took up an academic post as a so-
ciology professor in a small liberal college in the Midwest.
I have the names of all these people who came around, gave lectures,
and wrote books on Gandhi. A Jewish woman, who had married an In-
dian, called Gertrude Stein, wrote articles for the New York Times on
Gandhi. Gandhi’s books and some local books were being reviewed. At
that time, papers like theNew York Timeswere quite pro-Gandhi because
they had nothing to do with Britain basically. Yes, they fought together in
452
Interview
the First World War, and by now the Second World War had started, but
after the war, it wasn’t really important.
Garvey is known for his Pan-Africanism.
Garvey founded theunia, Universal Negro Improvement Association,
supported African nationalism, and declared himself to be the provi-
sional president of all African people.
But he is Jamaican.
Yes. He was flamboyant. He was very important. People tend to dismiss
him, but he had a lot of influence on setting up trade union movements
for the Blacks. He helped them quite a lot. He participated in one of the
Pan-African Congresses, where he criticised Du Bois. There were a series
of them being held in Paris, Brussels, Manchester, and London. There
were always representatives from the African American community in
the leadership, and a good number of Gandhians, too.
From about the 1930’s African American leaders started to travel to In-
dia. But even before they went, there was aman called Richard Gregg. He
was White, very educated, and a psychologist. He spent some months in
Gandhi’s ashram studying nonviolence, its psychological ramifications,
what it means to be a nonviolent fighter, and also how powerful that
method can be. He wrote a book, The Power of Nonviolence, which in
a later edition has a foreword written byMartin Luther King Jr. The book
was published and circulated in theus.
In the 1930s African American students were able to go to India, go
on missions, and be exposed to all that was going on. Then a man called
James Lawson – he is still alive¹ – goes to India in the 1950’s. He spends
time in the ashramofGandhi’s associateVinoba Bhave, whowas still alive
and one of the most powerful people in Gandhi’s time. Gandhi had his
ashram not far from there, near Patna. Lawson had gone to domissionary
work in a Christian school in the same town, but he gets so interested in
the idea of nonviolence that he trains himself as a nonviolent activist.
I was not aware there was so much back and forth between Indian activists
and the ones from the us. But it is an expected exchange in the context of
their shared struggles against systemic oppression.
They were inspired. FromDuBois, there was another man called Alain
Locke, who was also an academic. He wrote extensively about nonvio-
lence and issues of civil rights.
¹ James Lawson passed on June 9th, 2024.
453
Katja Utroša
In about themid-1930s, some other important people go to India. They
areHowardThurman and SueBailey Thurman. Theymade 8mmmovies.
They were on their way to visit Tagore, but they wrote to Gandhi, who
invites them to his itinerant location, they come and interview him, and
that interview was published in a book. It had one of the last photos of
Gandhi before he stopped posing for cameras. The last beautiful photo
of Gandhi and Sue Bailey Thurman, the original of which is in Emory
University in Atlanta. After the Thurmans, a couple of other people go,
Mordecai Johnson and others. Right up to the time when India had its
independence in 1948. There is a delegation of African Americans who
are there for it. I don’t knowwhether theus. government sent a delegation
or not but the African Americans are there. A delegation of Blacks also
come for Gandhi’s funeral upon his assassination.
Thurman, Johnson, and others were teaching at Spelman College,
Morehouse College, and Howard University, which are Black colleges.
Howard University is the place where Kamala Harris and Angela Davis
studied. It becomes the very stronghold of the civil rights movement at
one time. So, the teachers of Martin Luther King Jr. were people who had
visited India. He attended their lectures, heard about Gandhi, bought his
books, and had one of the largest collections of Gandhi’s books in the
usThey are all in his archives at Stanford University. He writes notes on
them. He is looking at how Jesus was doing something very similar. He
was looking for social justice because it was important for him. But he is
still training to be a pastor. He goes to Boston University, where he wrote
his PhD on Christian aspects of social justice. I don’t think there is any
Gandhi in it. I haven’t read the thesis. I should one day.
Then he goes to Birmingham, Alabama, to be a pastor. That is about
the time Rosa Parks refuses to get off the bus. There is a bus strike now
– the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was a very big strike. For two months,
the Blacks are not getting on buses. They are walking. Big protests are
being mounted called the Selma to Montgomery marches, crossing the
bridge in Selma, Alabama.
There was a movie called Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay, about these
marches a decade ago.
They are looking for a leader. They go down, including a very young
man at that time, John Lewis, who becomes a very important and pow-
erful congressman later on. A whole group of people called the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee persuaded King to lead the march.
454
Interview
He is reluctant because he just wants to be a pastor. But when he gave a
speech down at the church, people were convinced he was the one who
stood out to lead them. So, he becomes their leader.
At the first protest he led, violence was very likely from the Whites,
from the state. He calls that off. It goes all over the country. He says we
are committed to nonviolence. We cannot have violence perpetuated on
us. They reorganised – because they also didn’t have a permit or some-
thing like that. The next protest is organisedmuchmore effectively. There
are people from all over the country. There were two young eight-year-
old girls whomarched with King. I met later one of them. SheyannWebb
became a soprano singer and Bettie Mae a gospel singer. That was the
first time a mass hand-to-hand protest of the kind Gandhi had been do-
ing in India happened in theus. By that time, television was around. The
Kennedys try to dissuade him. From that point on the Kennedys and
the fbi started to track King because he was going to become a very im-
portant leader. From Selma, he moves to Atlanta, and many things hap-
pen from there. He has some very close people who he works with –
Philip Randolph, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Bernard
Lafayette, and Bayard Rustin. They are all training. Even Rosa Parks at-
tended a school where African American women trained people on non-
violent strategies. The bus boycotts were happening earlier. They were
being staged by students but they didn’t make headlines until the Rosa
Parks one that led to the boycott and mass protests.
Then JimLawson comes back.He and a young studentDianeNash lead
what is called the Freedom Rides. They get on the bus and go on protest.
They get off in towns where there are stores that also have a cafeteria
and where Blacks are not allowed. Even if the Blacks were serving, they
wouldn’t serve the Blacks. The students go in and sit, and they do not
move. The police come, beat them, and they all surrender. The jails were
full. Busloads of African Americans came. One of the buses was burned
by the Whites, by the Ku Klux Klan.
Were there casualties during the Freedom Rides and the burning of the bus?
Were there people on that bus?
They escaped, but they were injured. John Lewis was burned and in-
jured quite badly. Great man, I met him. Robert Kennedy intervened. He
sent the National Guard to protect them, get them out of there, put them
on a flight, and get them safely away. TheWhites were waiting in towns as
the buses arrived. They would attack and not let them through. The atti-
455
Katja Utroša
tude of theWhites was very nasty. But it made international news that the
Blacks were mounting something with nonviolence, and the nonviolence
was winning. They would be beaten, hosed down with water hoses, and
dogs were being put after them, but they just stood and took it. It changed
the violent attackers; not so much the local people, but they disarmed the
police. The people were not reacting. When somebody is seen to react or
resist, that is when they get angrier, and more violence happens.
The influence of nonviolence on the civil rights movement is intriguing. I am
more familiar with the events of the nineteenth century that led to the Amer-
ican Civil War – for example, with the militant abolitionist John Brown.
The philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote in defence of Brown. Are you
familiar with this story?
Yes, Brown worked with Mary Ellen Pleasant, the woman who funded
him. They were trying to raise a mutiny.
Yes, an armed mutiny. They wanted to arm the slaves so they could defend
and emancipate themselves. There was a raid at Harpers Ferry, where there
was a federal armoury. The army stopped it. Robert E. Lee was involved,
the later leading Confederate general. Brown was in jail or already hanged
when Thoreau wrote two letters of support for him. Not only Thoreau but
Victor Hugo wrote to the editor of the London News and the Polish poet
Cyprian Kamil Norwid wrote poems in his name.
I have to look that up. I didn’t know Thoreau wrote in defence of that.
He influenced Gandhi because of his nonviolence, actually, civil disobe-
dience more than nonviolence. It was a passive act: don’t pay poll taxes
and don’t cooperate. Gandhi got non-cooperation from Thoreau and the
nonviolence and pacifism from Tolstoy. Tolstoy had a lot of influence on
Gandhi. The pacifism: turn the other cheek. But Gandhi wasn’t so much
a pacifist. He said: you must have a sense of protest. You don’t just turn
the other cheek; you give both cheeks or you take the beating, but you
try and bring out justice in that situation. That was the difference with
Tolstoy. What Gandhi started was something very new. No one had quite
done that. It might even provoke, in the sense it might provoke violence
from the other side. But let them see the pointlessness of their violence.
We are standing for justice and when we stand for justice in our nonvi-
olent boots we are not moving. We are not going to budge. We are not
going to go away. We will keep moving with that until justice is meted
out. That was a very powerful way of doing it.
There were a couple of women during the Emancipation period to be
mentioned: Sojourner Truth and Ida Wells. They had some ideas about
456
Interview
not committing any kind of violence. They were influenced by the Quak-
ers. There was a pacifist way of using the legal system, going to Lincoln
and so on. Am I not a woman? I deserve to be respected. This kind of
thing. They worked with the suffragettes, the women who were fighting
for women’s rights, even if they knew that Black men did not have votes.
What chance do then Black women have? But they were supportive of the
idea: if White women get votes, they will support us to get votes some-
time, too. There were a lot of bits and pieces that happened at that time
that were very important.
Are you familiar with the abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison and
his newspaper The Liberator? I believe it was first primarily focused on the
emancipation of slaves, but it supported women’s suffrage, too.
Yes. That is right. Garrison was very influential, liberal, and progressive
for his time.
But coming back to civil rights, there was segregation. Kennedy had
written the legislation but wasn’t pushing it through. He was holding
back. They were very frightened of King because he had toomuch power.
Malcolm X was coming up. The Whites were confused: What were these
people doing? There was the Black Panther movement. The militant
Blacks. Black Panthers might have been a little bit later. There were con-
verted Black Muslims, Elijah Mohammed and the Black Muslim league.
MalcolmX fell out with them. He didn’t want all-out violence. He wanted
votes. He said: the ballot or the bullet. That was his famous speech. But
he wasn’t like some others who were being influenced by other Muslim
revolutions outside and were prepared to be more violent. Probably, he
was assassinated by Elijah Mohamed or the fbi. Nobody knows.
Some speculate Malcolm X was assassinated by Elijah Mohammed and the
fbi in collusion.
A recent book that has come out inAmerica says that they bothworked
together becauseMalcolmXwasmore of a threat to the American nation
than King was. Because any kind of violent revolution – they would be
scared of that.
They would. The American Civil War that led to the emancipation was
very bloody. It was part of the industrial age with more advanced weapons
coming into the dynamic.
Whites had the weapons.
To continue, afterGandhiwas assassinated,Kingwent to India together
with Coretta Scott King in 1959. He wants to feel the spirit of Gandhi.
He gave some wonderful lectures on Gandhi. He said, my faith in Indian
457
Katja Utroša
philosophy has grown stronger after I’ve come to India, my faith in non-
violence. He uses the word Indian philosophy. Although I don’t think he
read any classical Indian philosophy that is how he put it in his speech in
India that is publicly available. It is called ‘King’s speech to the All India
Radio.’ He gave two speeches, actually, very powerful. We have wonder-
ful liberal radio stations in America. They archive them and make them
available. It is among one of his famous speeches. He really thinks that
being completely nonviolent is the only way. Then the March on Wash-
ington happens. He, John Lewis, and other people organise it. There he
gives that speech: I Have a Dream. Again, he stresses nonviolence and
says: One day, I can see my children andWhite children walking hand in
hand.
Desegregation came from the Supreme Court. But whenever Blacks
would walk into a college theWhites were in huge protests. Kennedy had
to send in guards to help the Blacks go to the rooms in colleges and start
studying. Desegregation and civil rights were big achievements. There
was a Civil Rights Act in the nineteenth century, but it was overturned
by a court ruling. Civil rights didn’t really happen, but there was a civil
rights act.
Would the mentioned Civil Rights Act of 1875 have given equal rights to
African Americans?
It would have given them some recognition of the rights of citizens.
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments tried to bring in rights for Blacks,
but there was a lot of opposition to them. There was Plessy v. Ferguson,
a Supreme Court ruling, which said that the Constitution does not con-
fer equal rights to every person. It dampened it. That is why there had to
be amendments. It was a very slow process. Even after the amendments,
segregation was still on. You could have equal rights but also have segre-
gation. Whites have to go on the bus where the White schools are, and
the Blacks should not be on the same bus – those kinds of Jim Crow reg-
ulations.
To update the conversation: how do you view colonial and post-colonial
studies today? Your bibliography covers several topics, for example ngos
and feminism, gender justice and ecology, etc.
I can talk about gender justice and ecology, the work which was done
by my late wife Dr Renuka Sharma. She passed through cancer. She was a
doctor, psychiatrist, philosopher, and feminist. I’ve continued her work.
She was very concerned about women’s rights and justice. I’m just putting
458
Interview
out Volume ii of Indian Ethics. It’s called Companion to Indian Ethics:
Women, Justice, Bioethics, and Ecology (Routledge 2024). It is dedicated to
my wife.We have two volumes.Companion to Indian Ethics: Women, Jus-
tice, Bioethics, and Ecology (Routledge 2017), which you have seen, is also
my work that is theoretical. It includes theories of dharma and practical
ethical thinking of Sri Aurobindo and Vinoba Bhave, whom I mentioned
earlier. I also have a chapter on animal ethics and ecology in India.
Animal ethics is another subject I wanted to speak to you about.
I have a much longer chapter on animal ethics in Volume ii. It also
includes issues of bioethics and how it impacts on women, surrogacy, in-
fanticide, the impact it has on female children, amniocentesis when they
abort female foetuses because they are not desirable, and the role of the
state and its complicity, including questions of abortion. I have a chapter
on euthanasia. The volume covers a lot of things. There is a chapter on
ecology, environmental ethics, animal ethics, and biotechnology.
You are also an expert on the Jain tradition. They have a very radical
and focused position towards animals, nonviolence, and animal ethics.
Audiences in the West are maybe not so familiar with it. It is a school of
religion, so their standpoint on nonviolence is influenced by that.
Their commitment to nonviolence is a philosophical position, but it
possibly has a religious origin, too, because any kind of violence to any an-
imal hurts the soul. It creates karma. It retards, blocks your chance of be-
ing enlightened and becoming omniscient at some point. To avoid karma
one must avoid hurting. That is where it starts. But now the Jains have
taken after animal liberation, the issues of animals and factory farming,
and the huge amount of violence. They have become morally concerned
about these issues. They are turning into vegans as well. Some of them
wouldn’t use milk because there is violence involved in the production of
milk with the cow. The calf is deprived of its milk.
But are they looking at the issue only from the perspective of the idea of
nonviolence or are they considering the animal as a subject?
Yes, they have souls. That is why. Every living thing has a soul, including
the two-cell amoeba, any sentient being. In more recent work in marine
biology, and philosophers are looking at this as well, it is not sentience as
defined in the 1970s and 1980s, which was a response to pain. It comes
from the Jains in India. People are now thinking that the amount of intel-
ligence animals like octopuses or even shells and corals have is extraordi-
nary. They are looking at consciousness as more than just a response to
459
Katja Utroša
pain. Looking at how these bio-systems are purposeful in their own right,
they have intentionality, they have a purpose, and they want to achieve
that. Some critters and creatures they find might only live for one day,
but they have such an amazing sense of their purpose, and of what they
need to achieve. They also often cooperate with other creatures. They are
not all eating each other. AnAustralian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith
goes deep down in the sea with marine biologists, and he has been study-
ing with them and looking at these tiny creatures. Hewas on a philosophy
programme and was asked: Has your moral attitude changed as a result
of your study? He said: Yes, to quite a degree. I can’t just dismiss these
creatures, who we don’t know or even see, that are amazing. Shells maybe
we could eat, but some other 3 cents creatures are living things, they have
life, and they have intelligence.
Trees and other plants also have some intelligence. Studies show they coop-
erate.
They all have it, too. People have talked about the communication that
trees have underground. They can distribute water among themselves
and warn if a predator is coming. They can warn other trees and produce
some kind of fluid to kill the threat.
What is your view of contemporary ecological movements that focus on
global warming? Young people are organising worldwide and demanding
things like climate justice.
They are coming at it from a different angle, of course. I call my chapter
‘Animal Justice andMoralMendacity.’ I was there when animal liberation
started with Peter Singer. I am not just coming from Indian philosophy.
My chapter has a fair bit of discussion about the threat to the species that
we are losing and just the sheer number of animals killed every year. It
is exploitation by human beings. It is a post-colonial perspective on the
subaltern. It is not just human beings that are subaltern. That is what sub-
altern meant: under the lowest of lowest beings. That was the original use
of subaltern. Now, of course, it is used politically for people – subaltern
people. One of my papers is: ‘What is the Subaltern of the Philosophy
of Religion?’ I used the term playfully. Subaltern is a term used in post-
colonial studies for the marginalised and disadvantaged. They get it from
Antonio Gramsci, he was using it, but he took it from biology – subaltern,
underneath, underground, or in the water.
460