The principle of Gandhi’s underlying thought concerning caste’s desirable qualities is undoubtedly true. If every person did her or his duty in a well-organized society, then all needs would be met, insofar as meeting them was not prevented by natural obstacles beyond human control. Gandhi’s principle is a tautology. A = A. Duty done equals duty done. Duty done equals the deeds required by duty performed. In a well-organized society, when the deeds required by duty are performed, all of its institutions are functional and not dysfunctional. I am well aware that this platonic tautology is a recipe for the closed society trenchantly criticized by Karl Popper and others, but I do not therefore conclude either that Gandhi did not believe it or that it is not true; rather I conclude that when, where, and to the extent that it is put into practice important other considerations must also be borne in mind.

The empirical findings of economics concern, in contrast, hypotheses which may and may not be true at any given place and time. Smith only hypothesized that the self-interest of the baker would bring him his bread. That hypothesis might have proven true for sixty or more consecutive mornings during a cold Glasgow winter. But under other circumstances it might empirically have been the case that it would be in the self-interest of the baker to starve Smith into submission and not to give him a crumb until he allowed Smith to exploit him shamefully and take all he had.

A conclusion to be drawn from the immediately preceding considerations is that although it is hard to understand why Gandhi wrote in favor of Varnashram, once his reasons are understood it should be acknowledged that they are undoubtedly true, even if not sufficient to establish his conclusion. Economic research, as well as research in psychology and the other social sciences, can (and, I will later argue, should) be regarded not as a refutation of Gandhi, and not as presupposing the adoption of a more scientific and wiser worldview that supersedes Gandhi’s, but rather as the study of how to achieve in practice under a given set of circumstances the pro-social behavior that Gandhi advocated and with his life tried to exemplify.

I want to develop this conclusion, not just here but also in following chapters, in general and not just with respect to caste. I do not claim to be revealing a message hitherto hidden. Gandhi wrote in his autobiography that his purpose in life was to see God face to face, and that he looked upon his life as a series of opportunities for service. I am not the first reader to believe that he meant what he said. Nor do I claim that there is no word in Gandhi that can be understood without imagining an idealized traditional Indian village where every villager’s ruling passion is to achieve Moksha by serving the community.

What I will do is trace a number of ways in which Gandhi’s ideas have interacted with those of other Indian thinkers, always thinking of Gandhi as somebody who came at problems from a standpoint outside of modernity.. Then, when I get to law, my argument will take a turn that I fear will be hard to follow. Having generally regarded Gandhi as a seer who saw more deeply and truly than anybody else, I will then say that he did not sufficiently carry through his principle (the same principle named in various ways, somewhat as Kant stated the same categorical imperative in various formulations). He did not sufficiently criticize the normative framework of commercial society, the law. Having attributed a principle to him, I will criticize him for not employing his own principle consistently.