ABSTRACT
This essay argues that Gandhi’s politics was radical and humane not in spite of his anti-modernism but because of it. It does so by analysing three different aspects of Gandhi’s repudiation of modernity (1) his convictions about the centrality of the malaise of alienation in the mentalities of modern life, (2) his implicit scepticism regarding the modernizing claims inherent in Marx’s account of ‘primitive accumulation’; and (3) his willingness to appeal to religion and superstition in the service of moral persuasion.
