Gandhi’s Body and the Chauri-Chaura Riot: The Failure of Sexual Abstinence and the Suspension of the First Non-Cooperation Movement

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  • Hazama Eijiro
    Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo

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Other Title
  • ガーンディーの身体とチャウリー・チャウラーの暴動
  • ガーンディーの身体とチャウリー・チャウラーの暴動 : 第一次非協力運動停止の背後にあった性欲統制の失敗
  • ガーンディー ノ シンタイ ト チャウリー ・ チャウラー ノ ボウドウ : ダイイチジ ヒキョウリョク ウンドウ テイシ ノ ハイゴ ニ アッタ セイヨク トウセイ ノ シッパイ
  • ―第一次非協力運動停止の背後にあった性欲統制の失敗―

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Abstract

<p>This paper examines the relationship between Gandhi’s first nationalist movement (1919-1922) and his contemporaneous experiments with brahmacarya (sexual celibacy). Although voluminous works have dealt with Gandhi’s political engagements in the first nationalist movement, they have dismissed the significance of Gandhi’s experiments with brahmacarya during the movement; thus they have failed to unravel the reason behind Gandhi’s sudden suspension in response to the Chauri-Chaura riot. In this paper, I explore the development of Gandhi’s core idea of brahmacarya, namely “semen-retention (vīryasaṇgrah),” during 1918 to 1922. In so doing, I show that Gandhi’s purportedly “odd” and “paradoxical” ideas of “nonviolence in violence” (“hiṃsāmāṃ ahiṃsā”) and the “ethics of destruction” (the public burning of foreign clothes) during the movement were intimately linked to Gandhi’s inner psychological tensions created by his repressed manner of brahmacarya. Gandhi kept his “silence” about the massacre of the Moplah riot, which caused 10,000 deaths, but he suddenly responded to the Chauri-Chaura riot, which only caused 23 deaths. This was because only the latter could have made Gandhi aware of his inadequate manner of brahmacarya. What mattered to Gandhi was not the scale of physical violence in the outer-world, but rather the scale of the psycho-physical violence of his sexual desire. </p>

Journal

  • Asian and African Area Studies

    Asian and African Area Studies 17 (1), 39-72, 2017

    Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University

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