A bioethical reading of mahatma gandhi’s satyagraha

Abstract

Mahatma Gandhi‘s Satyagraha is more forthrightly known in the social and political language. Yet, Gandhi himself said that his politics is but an expression of his religion, of his ethics. Ergo, Satyagraha, is essentially ethical. As such, Satyagraha can therefore also be woven into the Bioethical fabric. Though many claim modern bioethics was born in the Western world, eastern/oriental cultures already had, definitely even before the ancient Greeks (as earliest representatives of western thinking), coherent and systematic notions about sickness, diseases, healing, handicaps, aging, mores, ethics and other related ideas used by bioethics. However, because the contemporary medicine and science where modern bioethics emerged are largely products of western civilization, so eastern or oriental thinking hasn‘t yet significantly informed bioethics as much as Western thinking does. Ergo, this research is a means of integrating, or as the theme of ABC11 essays, mundializing Mahatma Gandhi‘s Satyagraha into contemporary Bioethics. Satyagraha has several tenets. However, this paper shall deal only with its two most fundamental ones: Satya and Ahimsa. Satya/Truth, Mahatma Gandhi says, posits spirituality and centrality in one‘s life. Ahimsa/Non-violence and the co-principle of Satya, makes Satyagraha not passive but an active creative power.