The Ideal and the Actual in Gandhi's Philosophy - By B. S. Sharma
The Ideal And The Actual In Gandhi's Philosophy : The question: “How is the ideal related to and distinct from the actual?” is crucial to the understanding of Gandhi’s philosophy. The failure to appreciate this has led his critics either to misrepresent him or to call him inconsistent and full of contradictions. Gandhi has often been quoted against himself. Dr Bondurant writes: “Gandhi’s political philosophy is, indeed, elusive. To the scholar who seeks internally consistent, systematised bodies of thought, the study of Gandhi is unrewarding.”1 She attributes this to the “result of his thinking in public.” 2 Another recent writer, Dr Paul F. Power, writes: “Divergent and sometimes conflicting positions can be traced throughout most of his public life, although one may dominate the others during particular phases.”3 He tries to classify Gandhi’s idea into different categories at different times and concludes that they “cut across.”4 At the same time, later on he observes: “