Ideological Connection between Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2018 and Gandhi

Todays is Mahatma's Birth anniversary. Mahatma Gandhi's contributions towards India's struggle for Independence need no retelling. The activist, who preached non-violence, emerged as one of the most prominent faces in India's fight for freedom and his ideals remain relevant even to this day. Several books and articles on the leader have tried to capture his various facets.

Relvance of Gandhi in todays era is always come with a question mark among youth.Even though they speak of Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar, and romanticise Marx and Che, it is not so easy to find them engaging with Gandhi in a meaningful and creative way. It is sad that, because of a massive pedagogic failure, Gandhi, for many of them, is being perceived primarily as a “non-modern” “puritan” conservative with all sorts of “impractical” postulates.

But when on his Birth Anniversary, while going through various articles and opinions about Gandhiji, it appears that remarkable connection with Gandhi's ideology and this years Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2018 was missed.

This year Nobel Committee has awarded James P Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing a paradigm-breaking cancer therapy by “inhibition of negative immune regulation”, which has bettered the chances of full recovery in certain kinds of cancer by over three times.

Traditionally, cancers have been dealt with by a war of attrition — a war of numbers. Surgery may be first used to drastically reduce the population of malignant cells to a manageable count. What remains is then attacked by chemotherapy and radiation therapy, until the point when the malignant tissue stops growing, or disappears altogether. Metastasis is usually the watershed at which this strategy falters, but in the lab, the immune method has shown promising success against metastatic cancers.

The Nobel Laureates, instead of relying on external attacks on tumours with radiation and chemicals, which is the traditional method, immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy unleashes the body’s own defence system against the enemy within. 

It is in this context that I would refer to two important ideas of Gandhi — “soul force” and “gentle anarchy”. In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi contrasted “soul force” with “brute force”. While “brute force” is based on intoxication with endless craving for all sorts of “needs”, “soul force” cultivates the power of the self, our inner resources, and our ability to have control over body, diet and life’s needs.

Thought of Erich Fromm, wgo too would agree with Gandhi, and speak of “having” and “being”. While modern capitalism and consumerism intensifies the “having” mode of existence, it is inherently violent. Every relationship, be it with nature or other fellow beings, becomes instrumental. In contrast, the “being” mode of existence, like Gandhi’s “soul force”, helps us to find the treasure within, and regain our moral strength.

 Think of the way we are losing control over ourselves. With an almost neurotic preoccupation with gadgets, or the intensification of the desire for the ever-expanding “manufactured” needs, we lose the courage to resist the way technocratic capitalism with its seductive consumerism enslaves us.

Like inhibition of negative immune regulation therapy which unleashes the body's own defence system against the enemy within, the Gandhi’s “soul force” — if meaningfully reinvented in our times — can give the youth an effective philosophy and practice of resistance against this new form of social control.

Priydarshi Prateek

Citations:

1.https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/mahatma-gandhi-jayanti-satyagrah-non-violence-bhagat-singh-ambedkar-for-the-young-5381729/

2. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/nobel-prize-in-physiology-or-medicine-2018-in-the-treatment-of-cancer-unshackling-the-power-of-human-immunity-5381763/