The Kernel of Gandhian Management PDF

# The Kernel of Gandhian Management **"The earth is sustained through Truth."** - Atharva Veda 14-1-I **"The Vedas, I feel convinced, will occupy scholars for centuries to come."** - Prof. Max Mueller **"Let there be no compulsion in the religion, Truth stands out clear from error."** - Koran...

# The Kernel of Gandhian Management **"The earth is sustained through Truth."** - Atharva Veda 14-1-I **"The Vedas, I feel convinced, will occupy scholars for centuries to come."** - Prof. Max Mueller **"Let there be no compulsion in the religion, Truth stands out clear from error."** - Koran **"Truth is difficult to listen to, more difficult to speak, and most difficult to practice, though it is simplest, purest, and clearest since it is irreducible, irrevocable and irreversible."** - The Author The bedrock of Gandhian management is the Gandhian philosophy, which is a monolithic structure of truth, love and non-violence. Gandhi applied his philosophy as a litmus test to confirm his principles, and as a fire-test to warrant his practices. It is the integration of this philosophy with his principles and practices that adds a new dimension to the field of management. It defines a new set of management values and hence a new school of management thought. Most corporates and competing institutions often issue their mission statements in which they declare their philosophy by defining their identity and stating in broad terms their intent or goal, competitive edge or strength, target groups and markets. IBM aims at supplying intelligent information, hence their innovations give foremost consideration to accuracy, quickness, compactness and security which are crucially important in making decisions in a competitive environment. Microsoft overcomes the barriers of languages by stressing on research and development in many such softwares that are user-friendly and which use symbols and icons to convey similar meanings in different languages. It has, therefore, gained worldwide acceptability and popularity. Nokia cell phones are 'connecting people', and BPL is 'believing in the best'. Johnson & Johnson promotes its baby products with an accent on body care 'with tender love'. Sony believes in people-oriented policies so that a person hired by an organisation can be accepted as a whole and is not dichotomised in virtuous-self and vicious-self. The Tatas, leader in the Indian automobile sector, combine robustness with sophistication. The Birlas promote their products through cultural and religious activities. Bajaj Auto advertises its products with focus on family happiness and togetherness. Gandhi, too, carved a philosophy, which he nurtured and upheld throughout his life, only to be known later as Gandhian philosophy. The importance of the human factor in contemporary management can be seen in its finest form in Gandhian management. His humanitarian canvas was so global, and clarion call for natural justice was so intense, that he became an institution by himself much before the world discovered this reality. The three cardinals of Gandhian philosophy, truth, love and non-violence, are so coherent, cohesive and co-focal, that all together they stand like a solid rock. The absence of even one breaches the wholesomeness of the structure. However, all these elements ought to be understood across a much wider plane and in a much deeper sense beyond the threshold of their common meaning. Truth is difficult to listen, more difficult to speak, and most difficult to practice, yet it is simplest, purest, and clearest since it is irreducible, irrevocable and irreversible. Knowing 'truth' means knowing the 'reality'. Humans by nature are truth seekers, and they have always been inquisitive, investigative and argumentative to probe more than what they know, to go deeper than what they see in themselves, others and their surroundings, and anything else with which they can interact through physical senses and mental processes. Truth is the aim of a scientist; truth is the goal of judicature; and, for a saint or a prophet, truth is the name of God. But certain parameters, which decide the end results, should also be checked out before arriving at the truth; and they are: credibility of an analyst or experimenter, dependability of an instrument or technique and the reliability of the data from primary or secondary sources. If all these parameters are bias-free and error-free, they add credence to the results that can be accredited as 'true'. However, our access to the 'absolute truth' may still be denied by Nature, for our understanding of 'being', 'seeing' and 'knowing' of the minutest object and event (shorter than a femto-second) – the building block of this universe – has been so far very limited. Such limiting zones are formed in our thought process alone, because the evolution or dissolution of our mental fields effected by internal and external stimuli, defines our analytical power and comprehension up to a certain point of accuracy, beyond which uncertainty becomes larger than the observable object or events of the microdomain. If we accept it as an inherent limitation imposed by Nature in reaching the ultimate truth, Gandhi must then be regarded as one of the greatest corporate managers and human resource developers of the twentieth century. Or as Nobel Laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore famously said, "He was a living truth at last, and not only quotations from books." Gandhi knew that common masses cannot manage themselves for perfect non-violence, and elements of imperfection are unavoidable. That is why Professor Gene Sharp¹ of Harvard University argues that according to Gandhi, although imperfection in practicing perfect nonviolence is inevitable, one's duty is therefore to strive constantly for the least imperfection. The second element of the Gandhian philosophy is love, which too has varied meanings and shades in different societies, and for different groups of people. One may instantly relate it to liking, fondness, passion, infatuation, attachment and adoration whereas, in Gandhian context, we must expand its horizon to encompass compassion, empathy, sympathy, kindness, reverence, esteem and devotion. We need to transform our mind-set from passion to compassion, from antipathy to empathy and from individuality to plurality in order to understand the expounded meaning of love. The third important element of his philosophy is nonviolence, which does not only mean non-killing, non-aggression or non-injury, but also being free from prejudice, jealousy, hatred, animosity, pride and ego, since these elements too implicitly cause some kind of perturbation, a sort of violence towards one's self or others. As a researcher in the fields of science and management, I have always experienced, be it with myself or my peer group, that presence of the above said elements inhibit the recognition of truth in others' work, and create hurdles in searching for the truth within and assessing oneself truthfully. Truth and science, hence scientific management, are closely linked to each other. Nobel Laureate C.V. Raman meticulously draws a semblance between truth and science: "Science is nothing but a research for truth. Truth not only in the physical world, but in the world of logic, psychology, behaviour and so on. The virtue of a truly scientific frame of mind is the readiness to reject what is false and untrue." We know as well from our exercises in the pursuit of science that fear, fright and coercion also strongly interfere in the process of finding truth as they also create perturbation, distort our perception and delude our findings. What one logically deduces is that for scientific management, a manager has to manage the affairs of an organisation without ego, pride, predilection, prejudice, jealousy, hatred, coercion, fear etc., because they all reflect violence in one form or the other. Hence, the absence of truth and love on any pretext, and/ or the presence of 'violence' in any form would interfere with SWOT analysis and PEST analysis, and would jeopardise the setting of SMART goals, while all these are, in fact, important tools of organisational management. It is ironic that Gandhi has been often misquoted by a few critics as a symbol of 'weakling' and has been mistaken as failed, because they measured his success with a narrow and myopic view arrested within the frame of material gains and gratifications. What they failed to notice is the paradigm shift that Gandhi actuated in human resource management – the very basis of modern corporate management. At the Millennium World Peace summit held at the UN headquarters, New York, in the last week of August, 2000, about 1,500 religious and spiritual leaders from 75 faiths and 92 countries assembled (as reported by media) and unequivocally affirmed the dire need to establish peace and harmony in the world. They condemned violence and issued vigorous statements³² on the subject 'Towards A World Movement For Non-Violence'. Betty Williams, the Nobel Peace Laureate from Northern Ireland, stressed in her speech that practicing non-violence is not for the faint-hearted, as it requires exemplary courage. Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi and member of the South African Congress, reiterated: "Non-violence is not a passive concept but an active one – one that demands courage and love, not hatred." We don't really know how sincerely and seriously the people who participated in this summit have pledged and committed themselves to Gandhian philosophy and to propagating the concept of peaceful co-existence on earth. But we expect that futurity shall respect, more than ever before, the men and women who possess these attributes. Society shall always admire those who can show even moderate sense of respect for truth, love and non-violence. To corroborate this conjecture, let's recall an incident at the White House at the turn of the century. How narrowly did former President Bill Clinton escape the political disaster during his last tenure! What factors have contributed in bailing him out? His alleged affair with intern, Monica Lewinsky rocked the Presidential Office and the news made headlines in all leading newspapers and magazines. In this sensational case, the issues related to truth, love and non-violence (tolerance) were found surfacing very frequently and were noticed prominently in almost all the meetings and proceedings of Prosecution and Defence. President Clinton, in a philosophical mien, exclaimed⁴ under oath: "It is in the hands of the Congress, and the people of this country, ultimately in the hands of God." Behold, the President did not outright controvert the truth; he did not deny his love; and he did not resort to retaliation or counter allegation (a form of violence) against his adversaries and their accomplices who chose to disrupt his career, disgrace his image and bring discord in his family life. Only simple modesty on the part of Clinton, implying respect for all three cardinals of Gandhian philosophy, swung the public opinion poll as conducted by market research groups, in his favour, exonerating him of his misdemeanour – if it was – and endorsing his continuance in office. Even the later impeachment move against him failed in the U.S. Senate. It is also worth noticing here how emphatic Henry Hyde, Chairman of the judiciary committee of the US House of Representatives, had been about searching truth alone. He told the House in this context: "We do not make any charges, we simply begin the search for truth." One also sees there an event with a strange coincidence of time and place, when American congress took a historic decision to erect a memorial of Mahatma Gandhi in Washington D.C., and President Clinton accorded his approval on Oct. 28, 1998. I have purposely brought in here this specific reference to the case of Bill Clinton. Americans have always been interested in the philosophy and methodology of Gandhi as much as Gandhi had faith in their capability to understand and respect human values. He once said; "I am interested in the United States and in Americans always. There is a special bond of sympathy between us, I believe. The Americans can understand our desire for independence.' The laws of truth are global; suppression of truth always caused upheavals in public and politics, while just reverence or reconciliation with the truth very often settled down the storm of war and the heat of destruction. Gandhi once said: "Politics bereft of religion is death trap." Religion to him was first humanity and omnipresent God, while God for him was another face of the truth. **Footnotes:** 1. 'Non-violence: Moral Principle or Political Technique' by Gene Sharp, an article from the book 'Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi', Editor, Verinder Grover, p 60., Deep & Deep Publication, 1998, New Delhi, India. 2. 'C. V. Raman: A Memoir' by A. Jayaraman, op. cit. 3. The Times of India, 31 Aug., 2000. 4. The Times of India, Dec., 1998. 5. 'Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans', compiled and edited by Dr E.S. Reddy, Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan, 1998, Mumbai 6. Young India, 3 April 1924. **Glossary:** * **SWOT:** Strength, weakness, opportunities and threats * **PEST:** Political, economic, social and technological environments * **SMART:** Specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound