Book Excerpt: Colonialism, Tradition and Reform- An Analysis of Gandhi's Political Discourse by Bhikhu Parekh

An exclusive excerpt from Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse by Bhikhu Parekh (Speaking Tiger, 2026)

It is a trite observation that tradition and reform are essential features of every human society. Societies exist in time and live in constant awareness of a past and a future.2 The past is not like a distant sky, an abstract and indeterminate background to the present, but rather like the earth from which it has sprung and to which it is tied by organic bonds in the form of inherited beliefs, practices, rituals, images, symbols, language, ceremonies and institutions. These are handed down over generations and carry a measure of authority, and thus constitute its traditions. Societies vary greatly in how they individuate the past, define different levels and degrees of pastness, the kind of authority they confer on it, and in the way they relate it to the present. They also, therefore, differ in their conceptualisation of the nature and authority of tradition. For some, the past begins with yesterday’s sunset and all practices existing since before then are binding; for some others, it goes beyond ‘living memory’, that is, beyond the remembrance of the present generation and especially its oldest living individuals; for yet others, the past properly so called begins where memory ends and only those practices originating in a remote and hazy past are invested with the prized status of tradition, the rest being mere practices, conventions or usages. In some societies, again, all past practices carry equal authority; in some others, their degree of authority varies with their pastness, the older being more authoritative than those more recent; for most, their authority depends on their place in the society’s conception of itself and their role in its survival. Most societies often reserve the term tradition for practices that are deemed to be important and worth preserving. In modern society, for example, the practice of brushing one’s teeth in the morning rather than in the afternoon, although of a distant and untraceable origin, is a practice and not a tradition, whereas many of those associated with birth, marriage, death and mode of governance are considered traditions.

No society is immune to change, not even the so-called timeless or primitive societies described by anthropologists. Even if they manage to resist new inventions and modes of production, they cannot escape the interventions of nature in the form of climatic changes, disasters, variations in the rate and pattern of reproduction and diseases in plants, animals and humans. While they may studiously avoid all external contacts, other societies might not be so obliging. All this creates new problems and needs to which they must respond by suitably altering their inherited structures of practices or face extinction.

Every society, then, must find ways of preserving, transmitting and reforming its traditions, of retaining its links with the past and being ready to respond to the future, of preserving its past and safeguarding its future. Different societies rely on different mechanisms for doing so. In some, traditions cannot be reformed only reinterpreted, and change is conceptualised as altering not their content but only their meaning. Their conservative rhetoric often fools outsiders into thinking that they are resistant or opposed to change. Sometimes the opposite is the case. Societies subject to constant change often deploy a conservative rhetoric to regulate its pace and direction or to reassure themselves that they have not ‘lost’ their past. Again, in some societies, the headwaters of a tradition enjoy the highest authority and no reform is entertained that is not traceable to them. In others, such an appeal is considered reactionary and a reformer is expected to appeal to an immediate past, a specific turning point in it, or to an anticipated future.

Since different societies have different organising principles and differently define their identities, they are hospitable or hostile to different kinds of reform. Those whose social structures are inextricably interwoven with their ‘ethnic’ religions feel threatened by religious reforms, whereas those in which the two are clearly separated, as in modern Europe, feel not in the least worried by them. In some societies, such as the Hindu, belief and conduct are less closely related than, for instance, in the Muslim and the Christian, and people remain free to believe what they like so long as they continue to behave as required. Changes in beliefs there might not evoke a whisper whereas even the most minor change in a social practice might provoke a revolt. In short, different societies have different sticking points, different nerve centres, are tickled and teased differently and fight out their battles on different terrains. No society is, or even can be, uniformly conservative, and its response to change is necessarily differentiated and discriminating. Fiercely resistant to some changes, it is in varying degrees hospitable to others. The failure to grasp this simple point underlay much eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European mythology about the ‘hidebound’ and conservative East.

Excerpted with permission from the author and the publisher of Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse by Bhikhu Parekh (Speaking Tiger, 2026)

Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links.

About the Book

A landmark study of Gandhi’s political thought and action, now in a revised edition, by one of India’s finest political theorists.

How can a society reform itself without repudiating its past? How can it learn from other civilisations without accepting their judgement of its inferiority? And how can tradition remain a source of moral authority without becoming an obstacle to change?

These questions lie at the heart of Bhikhu Parekh’s landmark study of Gandhi’s political discourse. Colonialism, Parekh argues, did more than impose foreign rule on India. It unsettled the country’s sense of itself, forced Indians to defend their beliefs and practices in categories defined by their rulers, and profoundly altered the terms on which tradition could be understood, let alone questioned and renewed.

Gandhi’s response was neither orthodox nor fully modernist. Seeking a new yugadharma for a new India, he drew upon the resources of Hindu tradition while opening them to moral insights from other religions and intellectual traditions. He was at once a radical reformer and a figure deeply marked by the limits of the society he sought to transform.

With rare intellectual sympathy, Parekh examines Gandhi’s reworking of ahimsa; his dialogue with the revolutionaries; his campaign against untouchability; his controversial experiments in celibacy; his distinctively Indian remaking of autobiography; and the tensions within his economic and political worldview. The book culminates in a searching meditation on the crisis of religion in the modern world and the changes it must undergo if it is to retain a place in public life.

Neither hagiography nor refutation, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform remains one of the most incisive studies of Gandhi’s originality, achievements, contradictions and failures. At a time when questions of religious identity, social reform, cultural self-confidence and political morality have acquired renewed force, this book remains indispensable for any student of India.

About the Author

Bhikhu Parekh is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory at the University of Hull. He has been Visiting Professor at several universities, including McGill, Harvard, the Institute of Advanced Study in Vienna, the University of Pennsylvania, and Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Baroda from 1981 to 1984. He is the author of several widely acclaimed books in political philosophy, including Rethinking Multiculturalism, published by Harvard University Press in 2000. He also chaired the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, whose report, known as the Parekh Report, was published in 2000. Active in British political life, he was Deputy Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality for five years and was appointed to the House of Lords in March 2000.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a past president of the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences. His honours include the BBC’s Special Lifetime Achievement Award for Asians, the Sir Isaiah Berlin Prize for Lifetime Contribution to Political Philosophy, and the Padma Bhushan.