Mohandas Gandhi´s social representations : the power to reach unity in diversity

Abstract

Research on intergroup conflict and on identity within the social and behavioural sciences has provided broadly applicable explanations of phenomena such as bias, prejudice and discrimination. In the colonial system, identities and power relations are constructed as a function of the dichotomy dominance/privilege - subjugation/suffering. The rationale for colonization purporting to the westernization of those perceived as backward peoples involves clear demarcation of the borderlines between the colonizer and the colonized and encompasses appropriation and negation of what is local or indigenous, naturalized by the use of a development metaphor. Resistance is the action of contesting colonial state and power in an effort to dismantle colonialism and to reclaim what has been lost to it. Violent oppositional models assume the “enmity” between the native and the imperialist and reproduce the binarism of difference of colonial knowledge. Mohandas Gandhi, the Indian leader, proposes a moral framework for being truly civilized, an alternative to the historical representations and to the values and ideologies that inform and legitimize exploitation in India. He does not define oppression in terms of the presence of an oppressive other but conceptualizes it as a system of economic, political and cultural structures. His notion of resistance requires the transformation of these structures and is based on the creation of a new order of intergroup relations characterized by interdependence and love and not by antagonism, hatred and vindictiveness.