Undermining populism through Gandhi’s intercultural democratic discourse

Abstract

Populism is receiving increasing attention and the intrinsic dependency of populism from liberal democracy is being scrutinised to find forms able to contain the populist rise, so far with limited success. Little consideration has been given to the implications that populism is a modern political category that could not emerge without liberal democratic regimes. This article analyses the entanglement between postcolonialism, democratic theory and populism in order to fill this research gap. It focuses on the notion of demagogic populism as a threat to democratic regimes that liberal theories are incapable of contrasting. It analyses in some detail the intercultural democratic discourse (IDD) of M. K. Gandhi, in order to understand to what extent it undermines the populist upsurge and contributes to structuring a substantive and intercultural alternative democratisation theory, with respect to liberal democracy. To cope with the extent of Gandhi’s thought, after addressing some limits of liberal multiculturalism, the article focuses on four Gandhian categories: ‘civilisation’, ‘duty’, ‘non-possession individualism’ and ‘spirituality’. As Gandhi engaged in the anti-colonial struggle and critical strategic dialogues in intra-civilisational contexts (tradition, religion, caste, modes of production, etc.), he advances a solid IDD, elaborating a groundbreaking vocabulary that includes ashram, satyagraha, swaraj and swadeshi.