"To become like a particle of dust": Dignity as a Gandhian Practice

Abstract:Most approaches to dignity's history, and its meanings, rely on a hierarchical grammar that elevates the dignified individual. Hierarchy links dignity, through the armament of rights, to coercive bodies and mechanisms that give political substance to dignity claims. This essay seeks in Mohandas Gandhi's thought an alternative practice of dignity, one that departs from this dominant tendency. Unlike most counterparts in the western canon, Gandhian dignity gives ontological priority to vulnerability. Gandhi's anti-hierarchical conception frames dignity in direct relation to existing inequalities, and is elaborated through experiments in proximate living, and via service to the most vulnerable.