Revisiting Gandhi from a Postcommunist Perspective

This article investigates the relevance of Mahatma Gandhi’s writings and ideas for the intellectual interactions and activist movements in postcommunist 1 Romania while also considering the parallels between the larger region of Central and Eastern Europe and the postcolonial space. Despite the asymmetrical timeline and the geographical differences, postcommunism and postcolonialism share a series of common features, among which are hybridity and the will to disrupt the hegemonic discourse of the former colonisers. It is thus difficult to understand how postcommunist Romania seems to be largely unaware of Gandhi’s philosophy. The discussion takes into consideration, on the one hand, the lack of publications of Gandhian philosophy and thought in the Romanian market of ideas and, on the other hand, the clear intersection of Gandhi’s vision of passive resistance, civil disobedience and search for truth through satyagraha and ahimsa with the 35-year-long peaceful protests in Romania, which culminated in a major diaspora protest in 2018. In this way, the hypothesis of the transactive character of postcolonialism and postcommunism is verified, as well as the exchange of knowledge of their similar (once subaltern, now quasi-liberated) conditions.