A Teaching Resource for Living with Gandhi: Experiments in Utopia

Publication Date

2026

Description

Gandhi was an Indian anticolonial activist, lawyer, and politician. Less famously, but no less importantly, Gandhi was also a back-to- the-land farmer, a founder of communes, and a seeker of utopia. Gandhi established four intentional communities in India and South Africa, where he and his coresidents engaged in crucial small-scale experiments with the ideals and methods for enhancing life that Gandhi would then apply to larger-scale social and political problems.

Gandhi’s communities are arguably among the most important communal experiments with utopia to have been undertaken in Asia and Africa. It was at these communities that Gandhi first began to articulate, and then continually sought to refine and implement, the utopian philosophy that he called sarvodaya, meaning “universal wellbeing.” The majority of scholarship about Gandhi focuses on his biography and his political philosophy and action. But Gandhi’s politics began at home, where he and his coresidents gave deep thought to what it meant to live well in community with one another.

This article provides an introduction to Gandhi’s philosophy of universal wellbeing (sarvodaya) and his method of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) for the high school or college classroom. It includes a detailed lesson plan that draws upon materials available online (for free) at the Living With Gandhi Archive, and includes learning objectives, a glossary, and discussion questions.

Journal

Education About Asia

Volume

29

Issue

2

First Page

https://www.educationaboutasia.org/article/1861/galley/3517/view/

Department

Religious Studies

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