Gandhi, Ecofeminism and the Elusiveness of Truth
Mary Grey

    Gabriele Dietrich’s work has been a great inspiration to me over the last few years, as I have been trying to understand the social context of rural women in North India.  So, I am very grateful to be invited to contribute to this Festschrift in her honour.
My involvement in the villages of Rajasthan came about through participation in a small NGO, Wells for India, that works with Gandhian-inspired groups in 3 drought-affected areas in the desert – or semi-desert -of Rajasthan.E1 Wells for India’s partners are contemporary followers of Gandhi, and it is their vision that has convinced me that, despite some problems,  his legacy continues to offer inspiration to ecofeminists.  I begin by telling the story of one of these partners, Laxmi and Shashi Tyagi, leaders of GRAVIS, (Gramin Vikas Vigyan Samiti, or Village Self-help Organisation). The Tyagis were brought by a former Gandhian prime Minster, Mr Desai, to try to cope with the severe famine in the state of Bihar: they then moved on to the city of Jodhpur, western Rajasthan to respond to the water crisis of 1987 in the Thar desert. I will then discuss some problematic aspects of Gandhi’s legacy while considering positive aspects for ecofeminists today. 

A Personal Story: revenge refused
The initial attempts of the Tyagis and their team to build and deepen wells and village ponds in the Thar Desert had focused on helping the poorest and most vulnerable sector of the village people. But this had brought the fury of the Rajputs, (the upper caste people of Rajasthan) down on them with the disastrous consequence that their field centre at Jelu-Gagadi was completely burnt-down, destroying all records and personal belongings.E2 Still, the Tyagis and their fieldworkers - even though they were also stoned and attacked by the angry mob - refused to give way to revenge, and even argued with the police not to prosecute their attackers. “We do not blame you,” they said, “You were not given a chance - you had no proper education.”E3 They were courageously living-out the Gandhian belief in the innate goodness of humanity. If people are given a real chance to move out of the prison of both poverty and crime, so Gandhian theory goes, they will opt for the path of moral reform. This is also not far from the invitation of the Hebrew Scriptures to ‘choose life’ in place of death (Dt.30.15-20).
     In this case it worked. The upper caste Rajput people have now become some of their most loyal supporters. GRAVIS has now nineteen Field Centres in the Thar desert of Rajasthan, in the worst hit areas of the drought of the last five years - in fact, in its epicentre. In addition, they have set up HEDCON, a consortium of Gandhian organisations in Rajasthan that plays an advocacy role with the government.E4  They continually maintain the principle of working with all people, and not merely with untouchables (Dalits) or tribals to the exclusion of the Rajputs and other upper caste people. Indeed, if one realistically looks at the situation of women in Rajasthan, Rajput women too suffer deeply from poverty, lack of education, caste-based patriarchy and endemic misogyny.

Is Gandhi still relevant?
So why return to this deeply controversial figure? The late Mahatma Gandhi, assassinated half a century ago is bitterly criticised by the Dalit people and accused as having excluded them from the newly-fledged Indian Constitution. In contemporary India his inspiration is widely considered to have been overtaken by the forces of industrialisation and technological progress, his ideas on village-republics seen as both idealised and archaic. The feminist movement remains deeply divided as to his views on women. Even The Sunday Times of India, in an article apparently dedicated to his memory, and investigating his contemporary relevance, on the anniversary of his death, was titled “The Dismantling of the Mahatma.”E5 The personal tributes drawn on in the article depict Gandhi as now more influential outside India than within, more relevant to the International Peace Movement than for his ideas on the regeneration of Indian villages: indeed, the Gandhi Smriti itself holds a Global Convention on Peace and Non-Violence in New Delhi, February 2004. Gandhi’s concept of world peace would be the issue – but not his views on caste, gender and village sustainability. Of what relevance then could Gandhi be to the global ecofeminist struggle?
First, I value Gandhi’s openness to Christianity, especially as this can be put within his understanding of all religions and the place of religion in the quest for global justice:
Our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian. I broaden my Hinduism by loving other religions as my own.E6

It was through the Russian writer, Count Leo Tolstoy that Gandhi discovered the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, Luke 6) and integrated its principles into the heart of his message. It was the ethics of Jesus that partly inspired his focus on the most vulnerable people of his society.  He felt that most of what passed for Christianity was a negation of its teaching. Indeed he believed that militaristic Europe had rejected Christ in favour of the god of war:
Europe has disapproved Christ. Through ignorance, it has disregarded Christ’s pure way of life. Many Christs will have to offer themselves as sacrifice on the terrible altar of Europe, and only then will realisation dawn on that continent. But Jesus will always be the first among these. He has been the sower of the seed and his will therefore be the credit for raising the harvest.E7

Gandhi even considered that Jesus was the greatest economist of our times: ‘that you cannot serve God and mammon is an economic truth of the highest value.’E8
By all means drink deep of the fountains that are given to you in the Sermon on the Mount, but then you will have to take sackcloth and ashes. The teaching of the Sermon was meant for each and every one of us. You cannot serve God and Mammon. God the compassionate and the Merciful, Tolerance-incarnate, allows Mammon to have his nine days’ wonder.E9
    So Gandhi by going straight to the problems of diseased culture offers more to the aims of ecofeminist theology than has been realised. But how can a re-contextualising of some of Gandhi’s principles offer insights for contemporary lifestyle, caught as we are in the web spun by the addictive consumerism of global capitalism? The central issue is: if the authentic answer to the greed and individualistic consumerism of global capitalism lies in the creation of communities of justice and simplicity, how can these be experienced as enabling the fulfilment of human yearnings of all?
The story I told above illustrates that it is in the Ashrams of GRAVIS, in the dedication of their Field-workers amidst desperate conditions, that I encounter dynamic seeds of hope for the kinds of communities needed. The point of telling this story was to illustrate the contemporary influence of Gandhi on many levels. Maybe it is true that Gandhi was caught in “the trap of his own Utopianism.”E10  It is certainly no answer to global capitalism to condemn all aspects of material civilisation. “I cannot recall a single good point in connection with machinery” Gandhi says, (Hind Swaraj: p. 96) ignoring even the ship on which he was sailing. This is an example of several places where it just has to be admitted that Gandhi was wrong. For example, his views on sexuality strike a harsh note for modern ears.E11  He was also wrong in his policies as regards the Dalit vote in the new constitution, as has been mentioned. At this time, through his famous “fast unto death,” an action which some would see as emotional blackmail, Gandhi “forced” Dr. Ambedkar to give up his battle for separate representation for Dalits in the new Indian Constitution. In view of the continuing and worsening oppression of the 200 million Dalit people in India, this fact alone raises the question as to the value of Gandhi’s legacy.
Yet I think there is more to it: what I see in the praxis and inspiration of GRAVIS – and other Gandhian inspired groups - is the valuing of poor communities in a wider vision of the power of truth, reconciliation and non-violence. It is the vision of non-violence that has endured in the international community as Gandhi’s legacy. Particularly outstanding is the use made of the Gandhian protest action of satyagraha, (the power of truth). These protests are regularly held for a variety of goals: for example, there was resistance to the nuclear bomb experiments of the Indian government: these are contiguous with GRAVIS projects and the villages where their teams are active. Resistance took the form of a Peace March to the birthplace of Buddha near Varanasi. But satyagraha also has a wider impact: massive protests were recently held in the cities that the government had failed the people in the drought context. More recently, Gravis workers protested against the police’s failure to act on the report of the rape of a young Rajput woman –they had refused because the perpetrators were an even more powerful family of landowners. Thus the Gandhian tool of satyagraha is once more utilised as active means of resistance in causes very dear to ecofeminists.


Cultures of Simplicity and Austerity
But ecofeminist methodology has always been clear that resistance is only one side of the coin: constructive visions of an alternative society are the other. Specifically in the context of globalised unregulated capitalism the only alternative lifestyle in the face of structural injustice, for the sake of the massive suffering of these impoverished communities, must therefore be the voluntary formation of communities of simplicity, and voluntary austerity on the part of privileged people in solidarity with victims of structural injustice. This was also the message of the El Salvadoran liberation theologian, Rodolfo Cardenal, in a Liberation Theology Summer School in Southampton, UK, in 1996. Using Jon Sobrino’s concept of the Cross as referring not merely to Christ, but to the Crucified Peoples of El Salvador, he called for a culture of austerity in their name:

The crucified peoples offer values that are not found anywhere else. The poor have a great humanising potential because they offer community instead of individualism, service instead of egoism, simplicity instead of opulence, creativity instead of cultural mimicry, openness to transcendence instead of positivism and crass positivism.E12

The same words have been used about the richness of the spirituality of Dalit women in India.E13 This call to create a voluntary culture of austerity, simplicity or sacrifice, in the name of the crucified peoples of the world is similar to that which Gandhi made for over twenty years, in his attempt to work for sustainability in Indian villages. His work was against the background of a philosophy of non-violence inspired partly by the teaching of Jesus. A more contemporary western voice in the context of modern greed and consumerism is Ernst Schumacher and his alternative Gandhi-inspired economics.E14 This is also the life-style willingly adopted by thousands of aid and development workers, often in alliances and coalitions with religious and secular groups, by missionary movements, lay or congregational religious dedicated not to conversion but to eradicating poverty and structural injustice. The coalition formed in the UK by Jubilee 2000 and its successor ‘Drop the debt,’ as well as the contemporary Trade justice movement in Britain are witnesses to the practical transformations that can be effected.
The focus here is not so much on sacrifice, asceticism, renunciation, (even if these are part and parcel of what follows), but the deliberate, willing adoption of a simpler life-style that does not depend on exploiting poor communities. It is less “sacrifice” and more part of a joyous affirmation of life and flourishing for all. A famous example of this is the “Con-spirando” collective founded in Chile in 1991. It was the celebration of earth-centred rituals that gave birth to this collective:

During these rituals we would share our stories, our heart-aches, and our heart joys through drama, dance, music, and poetry; through earth, fire, water and wind; through native Mapuche and Aymara chants and drums; through silence; often through tears.E15

As the new collective took shape, it became a movement that sought spaces where women can experience new ways of being in community; where we can celebrate our faith more authentically and creatively; where we can rediscover and value our roots, our history and traditions.E16
Over the years Con - spirando, as Mary Judith Ress writes, has made a contribution in four areas – in unmasking violence against women, in renaming and connecting with the sacred, offering an embodied theology, and bringing an ecofeminist aspect to theology.E17
      The same joyous spirit emerges from Arundati Roy’s powerful text, The Cost of Living, written as protest against the Narmada Dam scheme in India. In it a mystical appeal to other kinds of truth rings out, an appeal to other kinds of yearnings than the dominating ones:
   
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own significance
    To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the
    vulgar disparity of life around you
To seek joy in the saddest places
To pursue beauty to its lair
To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple
To respect strength, never power
To try to understand
To never look away
And never, never forget.E18

Following from this, voluntary communities of simplicity manifest a life-stance that actually brings happiness, flourishing and fulfilment of desire because it is in truth one that enables survival and peaceful, reconciling co- existence, overagainst the dominant global order based on bringing excessive wealth to a small minority.

The Relevance of Gandhi’s Search for Truth
There is no way that I could argue that Gandhi embodied an ecofeminist perspective. It is the emphasis on truth, shining  like a beacon in Gandhi’s teaching on which I focus because I believe this is a powerful tool in the ecofeminist struggles. Though Arundhati Roy is no explicit Gandhian, from her text the conviction is clear that the realistic facing of the power of truth is the only effective starting point as a tool to oppose globalisation.  For this, Bikkhu Parekh, a contemporary Gandhian scholar argues,  that a new theory of revolution is needed. The concept of  Satyagraha, the power of truth, he writes, defines this revolution: 
    ..… it presupposed a deeper sense of shared humanity to give
    meaning and energy to its sense of justice. The sense of
    humanity consisted in the recognition of the fundamental
    ontological fact that humanity was indivisible, that human
    beings grew and fell together, and that in degrading
    and brutalising others, they degraded and brutalised
    themselves.E19 

This deeper sense of shared humanity, of connectedness with all things, is what ecofeminist theologians mean by the power of right relation and the power that drives to justice. The ecofeminist Vandana Shiva also regards the satyagraha movement as a powerful political tool in her struggles to attain justice for poor farming communities.E20 The satyagrahi – the enlightened one, like the Buddhist bodhisattva, takes upon himself or herself the burden of corporate evil and sustains this by the power of suffering love. The power that satyagraha relies on is soul-force rather than brute-force, the power of persuasion rather than coercion. On this point precisely there is a similarity with Process theology’s view of Divine power that works through persuasion, not coercion, a power that lures and invites humanity to other decisions and alternatives.E21 The satyagrahi’s endurance of prison sentences is also witness to this power of the sacrifice of self to achieve a goal that is important for society. Aung San Suu Kyi’s long endurance of house –arrest in Burma is another shining example.
Gandhi’s ideas of truth emerged from his early text Hind Swaraj, written in 1909 on the ship taking him back to India after his formative experiences in South Africa.E22 Although they underwent a considerable evolution, from the beginning they included social as well as personal transformation. Swaraj  (which means discipline, then develops to mean freedom and liberation) is linked with the idea of freedom as the inherent possession of human beings. Freedom means the “capacity to” or “power to” act - but always out of the interiorisation of obligations to others. (In feminist theory this would be seen as following from the idea of self as “the self-in-relation”). Freedom and truth belong together, grounded in the concrete struggle of the poor for humanity. “I cannot find God apart from humanity,” he continually said. But this would develop into a much richer notion of God as truth, “Where there is God there is truth, and where there is truth, there is God.”E23
Truth is attainable in every heart, it is discoverable in the great religions, and is reflected in the moral order of justice governing the universe. Later, in a move known as “the great reversal” he would assert that ‘Truth is God.’ Here Gandhi united four ideas - truth as reality, as ultimate concern, as Being and as justice. It is to be lived out as ahimsa, or “redemptive self-suffering love”; or as satyagraha, “truth force or “soul-force.” The arenas in which the drama is lived out are political, economic, social, spiritual and religious realms.
    All of this forms the background to Gandhi’s idea of a “transformed kingdom of human relationships” which he named Ramrajya. This was a global vision of mutual love and concern for all. Feminist Theology, instead of the familiar term ‘kingdom of God’ prefers the kin-dom of just relationships - to remove any suggestions of imperialism and to affirm that we shall be sisters and brothers in the new creation. 
Gandhi’s vision ended tragically in his own lifetime- the India he had longed for became tragically divided, and the fruits of this division that he had so vehemently opposed till this day provoke hatred and violent deaths. But his dream of a kin-dom of just relationships is reclaimed here as one foundation for an ecofeminist spirituality in the context of globalisation because it offers truth in a context of a culture more characterised by a “web of deceit”. Through this web of deceit, argues Mark Curtis in his recent book, Britain conducts her foreign policies and was complicit in the Ruanda genocide, the slaughter in Indonesia and in many illegal arms deals: the web of deceit is a tightly constructed net that keeps the majority of people ignorant of the truth or complicit in its suppression.E24 Hence the vital importance of subsuming freedom to truth - the biblical principle of “the truth will set you free.”
    It is no surprise that the telling of the truth was also the highest aim of the recent South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee. But the pain of allowing the truth to be told meant, said Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that in the telling, the ‘requirements of justice, accountability, stability, peace and reconciliation’ had to be balanced.E25  So what I argue here is the inseparability of justice-making from truth and that these are embodied in a lifestyle of suffering love, shared struggle and shared celebration. In this struggle what gives strength is the power of truth and the human heart already reconciled to this truth.

Ecofeminism and the power of truth
What gives ecofeminist spirituality its uniqueness is its insistence that the well-being and flourishing of all life-forms of the web of life should be built into the foundations of any society. The power of truth is invoked in revealing the close links with nature that women embody, often suppressed by dominant and traditional analyses. Indeed these analyses still stress the domination and taming of the natural world. Even if these connections are immediately visible and striking in a rural Indian context, where the daily struggle for access to water, food and fodder for animals, is the reality for poor women - and frequently a dangerous struggle for Dalit women – it is also true in a western and urban context that women are largely responsible for feeding children, and for the health care of the younger generation. Secondly, and linked with this, is the truth that human well-being is interdependent on the well-being of other, non-human life forms. A third principle in this kin-dom of just relationships is the prioritising of the well-being of the poor and vulnerable, including  vulnerable creatures and diverse organisms of the eco-systems. In this connection, Gandhi, like Jesus, spoke of the inseparability of the power of truth, love and non-violence: ‘love,’ he wrote,
Is a rare herb that makes a friend even of a sworn enemy, and this herb grows out of non-violence. What in a dormant state is non-violence becomes love in the waking state.E26   

Within the coincidence of Gandhi’s vision and that of the kin-dom of right relations emerges an ecomysticism of resistance. This is mysticism not so much about the union of the human person with God, but more a shared commitment to opposing all that blocks the flourishing of all life forms. In any case Gandhi thought of God not as a being but as the power or essence of life.E27 This ecomysticism of resistance is expressed and rooted in communally-owned stance of standing for truth in everyday life.E28  In this stance the Divine power for life and fullness of being is experienced as energising strength. Since everyday life is submerged in the seductive web of globalisation, ecomysticism can be embodied as a communally owned political stance in opposition to unregulated global capitalism, a stance that brings the struggle for social justice into the heart of politics. In the context of the power of truth, ethics becomes once more recoupled with economics.

Gandhi’s Legacy and Women
Gandhi’s views on women, although hotly-disputed, and exhibiting certain weaknesses still offer positive elements to the ecofeminist quest.E29 In acknowledging women’s contribution to his vision of non-violence, Gandhi manifested the power of truth. His first role model for the path of non-violence, ahimsa, was his mother Putlibai: he spoke of ‘her resolute will and determination’ and said, “If you notice any purity in me, I have inherited it not from my father but my mother.”E30
    Both his mother and his wife resisted female exploitation in their 19th century Gujurati household. From his own wife, Kasturba, Gandhi actually learnt ahimsa:
Her determined submission to my will on the one hand and her quiet submission to suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking I was born to rule over her, and in the end she became my teacher in non-violence.E31

Gandhi held tremendous admiration for women in their capacity for endurance and suffering. He said that women hold the key to swaraj, (the power of truth, as discussed earlier), through this power of sacrifice and compassion. He felt he had “a passion to serve womenkind,” but insisted that progress would come through women’s own efforts. In this he differed from Nehru:
Gandhi’s perception of human development (was one) in which the teeming millions were to be the agents of history.E32

Thus he sought a radical reorientation of society so that Indian women would recover their true individuality lost through centuries of subjection. If some see the influence of western feminism here, (for example, the suffragette movement), in fact, the first instance of the initiative of women themselves in the struggle for freedom came from South Africa. Here women joined agitations with Gandhi, went to prison, endured long sentences, and brought the miners out on strike.E33 In a stance that may now sound like ‘romantic feminism,’ Gandhi tried to establish a link between ‘womanly’ qualities and political potency, believing that the powers of endurance and self-sacrifice that women displayed abundantly on the domestic scene should be brought into prominence for their transforming potential. Denying any essential link between maleness and the control of public affairs, he rejected the martial tradition in India, its colonial identity, and refused to equate femininity with passivity, weakness, dependence and the absence of masculinity.
Highly important for Gandhi was the idea of freedom as part of dharma (teaching) and the search for truth. Hence he fought for reform in the oppressive customs making women’s lives a misery - prohibition on widow remarriage and especially child widow remarriage, as well as practices like the dowry system and purdah.E34 Female education was central to this thinking, not only for women themselves, but also for their children, specially the despised girl-child, and for the role he thought women should play in the whole freedom movement. (It has to be admitted that there was no especial focus on the suffering of Dalit women. As is well-known, Gandhi did not want to get rid of Untouchability, but to reform it, within a context where all work was shared. This is a stance now rejected outright by all Dalit communities).
    But all of his reforms, it has to be admitted, were in the context of an essentialist view of femaleness and gender identity. Gandhi’s views rested on two pillars, that of gender equity and that of complementarity, the latter now so strongly resisted in feminist circles. The domestic role, motherhood and care of children were definitely a woman’s responsibility.  As one contemporary Indian writer observes:
Gandhi presented an apparent paradox in that he perceived
women’s qualities as different from those of men, and at the
same time wanted to blur the biological and sexual difference.E35

At least three points need to be made in response. The first is historical: complementarity has to be placed within Gandhi’s attempts to educate men to take a share in household tasks - an activity that he enthusiastically shared. Within his ashrams he wanted to create another type of household, with new social relationships attempting to break the barrier between public and private space and the restriction of women within the latter.  Secondly, his insistence that women contribute to income- generating activity was an enduring contribution.  His revival of khadi, the traditional spinning and weaving cottage industries of rural India, although some think this was a retrograde step, was the means of enabling this, since women could do this at home. Even Gandhi’s vow of brachmarya – the vow of celibacy- was taken with the intention of honouring women. Where he is most criticised is in allowing women very little public leadership role – for example in his famous Salt March women were initially refused permission even to participate.E36 Clearly Gandhi was before his times in his insistence that women must grow out of institutionalised passivity and shame about being female, and much of contemporary feminist pastoral theology and spirituality have created healing processes and rituals enabling new beginnings.E37

Suffering Love- a new way to embody truth?
The most controversial aspect of Gandhi’s teaching is the voluntary assumption of suffering  and suffering love. Feminist theologians reject the kind of sacrifice that keeps women in subjection, while telling them that this is their path to holiness. We rightly object to the essentialising of the gender roles to keep this dynamic going – and this conflicts with Gandhi’s views. Women, in the patriarchal way of thinking,  are supposed to be essentially more eirenic, reconciling, sacrificing in order to smooth over injustices for the sake of family order.  Where the goal is to hold the family together, whatever the abuse of power within it, true justice can never be achieved. Yet women who leave a marriage because of the level of injustice within it receive scant sympathy. They are often accused of being radical feminists who put self-interest before the good of husband, children and family integrity. Thus are suffering and endurance justified in the name of stability and the preservation of the status quo. For Christians, renunciation of personal happiness is encouraged in order to become increasingly Christ-like and to earn a reward in the next world. Another jewel in the crown. Without suffering there is no maturity in holiness. No pain, no gain. And what undergirds all of this in Christianity has been a distortion of a Cross theology that persuades women, and any victim group, that enduring suffering – however unjust its origins- to identify with Jesus on the Cross, and obtain a reward in Heaven. There is no other path to holiness than the path of endurance, suffering, and sacrifice. Behind all of this, and most worryingly of all, is the image of a God who sanctions the logic of violence by sending Jesus, the obedient son, to a violent death. An extreme consequence of this line of thought would be Rita Nakashima Brock’s argument that, in delivering up Jesus, the Divine child, to a violent death, God the Father is a sadist and a sanctioner of child abuse.E38
The roots of this logic of sacrifice must be exposed and rejected. Somehow through this false logic, (itself part of the web of deceit), huge areas of injustice and misery not only for women, but also for undervalued groups of people have been swept under the carpet.  This has all been in the name of some supposed greater ideal, like progress, the hidden hand of the market, in a secular context, or participating in the unfinished work of Atonement in a religious and Christian one.
It is important to assert that any gender essentialism identifying one sex as rightly bearing the burden of suffering would not be acceptable today – nor ever should have been. Secondly, it is crucial to destroy the logic of sacrifice where suffering is divinely sanctioned and held in place by a Divine archetype of Father/Son dyad. This underpins patriarchal constructions in many countries. In India colonial imperialism cannot be solely responsible for the suffering of women. In fact,
Vandana Shiva’s critique that all women’s problems are due to colonialism are refuted by Savita Singh who says that it is the system’s inherent weakness which even attracted and sustained colonialism.E39

     Thirdly, more attention needs to be given to God’s desire or eros that there should be joy and celebration in creation. A joy shared by all living things. The kind of joy that was expressed by the Con-spirando collective mentioned earlier. The joy experienced by so many groups embodying another vision of how to live. And here is the link with Gandhi. Put within the struggle for freedom from colonialism, Gandhi recognised the power of endurance and courage that women represented and practised if only to enable the survival of their families. Where this is a chosen ideal it represents the elusive quality of truth hidden in a patriarchal web. There is an extraordinary congruence between feminist liberation movements and Gandhi’s ideals, “To him the ultimate ahimsa and satyagraha was when women, in vast numbers, rose up to put an end to the destructive aspects of male dominance in society.”E40
    In other words, the free choice for a different lifestyle that involves suffering and sacrifice because it clashes with another world view is what Gandhi urged, and what seems to me now to be the only means of effective resistance to an unjust world order. For Gandhi it was an ancient practice of Hinduism that he advocated. He saw that the vision of non-violence
    In its dynamic conscious means conscious suffering. ..
It is the one constructive process of Nature in the midst of incessant
destruction going on about us…..
Not till the spirit is changed can the form be altered…E41

Conclusion
The choice for communities of simplicity needs to be made by both women and men and in life-style communities, communities that live sensitively with non-human life forms. Sacrifice cannot be redeemable where it crushes the possibility of flourishing, but suffering love can be an integral part of a life-style of choosing life for all, joy and justice for all, sustainable living for all. Gandhi, too, faced the greed and individualistic consumerism of culture, even if for him, the struggle to free India from colonialism was the prime motivation for his struggle. He knew that the power that drives economics is unmitigated self-interest and realised the need to put the system on a different basis, a basis that is consistent with the truth of interconnectedness of all life forms. Then economics could be set on a course that enabled the highest potential for the whole of humanity. This would involve setting limits respecting earth’s resources.
The truth that inspires ecofeminism now is that non-violence is not possible by holding onto what the earth could not possibly sustain. In fact real civilisation consists in a culture in which the forces of nature are used with restraint. Voluntary simplicity, Gandhi considered, would bring maximisation of happiness. For many women, indeed for countless poor communities, there is no choice. Degrading poverty is the reality. Hence for those who can choose, solidarity demands transformed lifestyles.  Gandhi  insisted that a lifestyle based on the power of non-violence and speaking truth-with-love, is quite simply geared to change and transformation. And this is within the possibility of everyone. To realise this means already a change of heart:
    Our prayer is a heart-search …
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words
without a heart.E42

Gandhi thought that if the doors of the heart have opened, it can contain everything. Then the field of service becomes unlimited.E43  Clearly there is a vision here where love, longing and simplicity are brought together in a transforming vision for society. In aspirations – though not in expression – that are very close to ecofeminist spirituality, Gandhi cried:
The only way to find God is to see Him in his creation and be one with it. This can only be done by the service of all. I am part and parcel of the whole and I cannot find Him apart from the rest of humanity.E44
   
Truth continues to be elusive, in this web of deceit that threatens to overwhelm. But we are given ways of seeing in the dark. Gandhi’s insights still give valuable pointers: Gabriele’ life and struggle, part of the whole ecofeminist quest, give hope that it can still be embodied.