Sri Aurobindo's "expedient passive resistance" lacked satyagraha's moral commitment

Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture Richard G. Fox Beacon Press 1989 A book review by Danny Yee 1994 http://dannyreviews.com/ did Gandhi matter? can individuals change history?

Although Gandhi rejected modernisation and the West, Gandhian utopia, like the other strands of Indian nationalism, was a response to the impact of the world on India. Fox's sources and inspirations here include Wallerstein's "world system", William's "hegemony", Said's "Orientalism" and Terdiman's "conflicted intimacy". Gandhian utopia is seen as a form of affirmative Orientalism within the Orientalist hegemony of the world system, one in "conflicted intimacy" with the negative elements of that hegemony. Comparisons are made with other instances of cultural resistance to the world system.

Gandhian utopia did not appear out of a vacuum; there were others confronting that same Orientalist hegemony. Affirmative Orientalism involved Westerners as well as Indians, and people such as Edward Carpenter, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Ruskin and Annie Besant had a significant influence on Gandhi. Among the most important forerunners of Gandhi were a group centred on Bengal that included Swami Vivekananda, Margaret Noble (sister Nivedita) and Sri Aurobindo. They shared with Gandhi a belief in the essential spiritual nature of India, opposition to modernisation and stress on an organic society. However they were also also involved in revolutionary movements, and Aurobindo's "expedient passive resistance" lacked satyagraha's moral commitment. Another group of nationalists, centred on Bombay and London, was split between those favouring modernisation and Westernisation and revolutionary cultural nationalists like Bal Tilak and Shyamji Krishnavarma. Gandhian utopia was constructed as an alternative to these that rejected both Westernisation and violent revolution; its most important original component was satyagraha.