British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalization of Democratic Nationalism 1805-2005
Abstract
Mazzini and Gandhi
Fabrizio de Donno, Cambridge
The presence of Giuseppe Mazzini in Gandhi's thought is associated with new vision of self-rule (swaraj) in Indian nationalism. This paper will deal primarily with two aspects of the relationship between Mazzini and Gandhi. Firstly, it will look at how Mazzini's association between religion and politics had an impact on Gandhi's thought. Secondly, it will explore how Gandhi's use of Mazzini had also the purpose of distinguishing Gandhi's non-violent and non-militaristic vision of Indian unification and self-rule from that of previous Indian revolutionaries. The paper will also analyse briefly how comparisons between Mazzini and Gandhi were drawn in the early 1940s by Italian orientalists such as Carlo Formichi to promote anti-British collaboration between fascism and Indian nationalists, a collaboration legitimated by the affinity between the Italian Risorgimento and the Indian struggle for independence. It will then be seen how similar comparisons were also made by Italian anti-fascist intellectuals such as Giorgio Borsa to suggest, on the basis of the same affinity, that the Italian anti-fascist Resistance needed a leader such as Gandhi to achieve the same national freedom first achieved by Mazzini.