Kindred spirits across oceans: Gandhi and Du Bois’ transcontinental dialogue

How the two luminaries of civil rights forged an unlikely alliance, reshaping the discourse on race and nonviolence.

W.E.B. Du Bois’ enduring interest in Gandhi’s movement stems from their shared recognition that nonviolence’s radical potential lies in truth-based reconciliation | Photo Credit: Anadolu/Getty Images

In May 1929, Gandhi received a letter from W.E.B. Du Bois, the Black American scholar and civil rights activist, via British missionary C.F Andrews. Du Bois expressed his pleasure at meeting Sarojini Naidu and Andrews, requesting Gandhi contribute a message for Black people in his magazine, The Crisis. Gandhi replied that attempting a message was “useless,” but sent a “little love message” instead: “Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being a slave-owner.”

Gandhi had followed the Black movement closely since 1900. On September 10, 1903, he wrote a lengthy article on Booker T. Washington in Indian Opinion, the newspaper he established and ran from the Phoenix Settlement in Durban, South Africa. In “From Slave to College President,” Gandhi appreciated Washington’s biography and intellect, noting how the Black leader worked singlehandedly “in the face of enormous odds, without a glorious past to look back upon as an incentive” to establish his “great and universal” influence, admired by both black and white. Washington’s cross-racial solidarity impressed Gandhi.

Inequality across boundaries

Later, in Young India on October 14, 1926, Gandhi’s piece “Race Arrogance” compared racism to untouchability: “If the white man is cursed with the pride of race, we are cursed with the pride of birth. Our treatment of the so-called untouchables is no better than that of coloured people by the white man. I have cited the examples to show that the material achievements of the West have made no material difference in their morality—the final test of any civilization.”

Gandhi distinguished between the moral asymmetry of material goods and beings, asserting that material advancement cannot mask society’s moral bankruptcy of prejudice, which alone determines civilised standards. In an unpublished 1948 review of Gandhi’s Autobiography, Du Bois, who greatly influenced Martin Luther King Jr., made critical yet sympathetic observations. He described the work as “a catalogue of inner questionings and struggles; soul-tearing conflicts and hesitances, which left him pitifully in doubt or devotedly determined.” Du Bois considered Gandhi’s frank confessions about overcoming cultural limitations in his worldly encounters as acts of truth.

On Gandhi’s 1893 trip to South Africa, Du Bois wrote: “It was no accident that Africa not Asia, showed Gandhi his way.”

Gandhi and Africa

Africa challenged Gandhi with one of history’s most barbaric conflicts based on racist hatred in an unfamiliar setting. During the Boer War, Du Bois noted, Gandhi’s sympathies initially lay with the Boers, but he eventually compromised in favour of the British. Du Bois critically remarked on this as “one of those contradictory occurrences which so often faced Gandhi with reality and made him readjust his ethical and religious theories.” Regarding Gandhi’s political career in India, Du Bois acknowledged his “long fight for religious tolerance and unity” and his realisation of European industrial monopoly’s impact on poor Indian peasants.

W.E.B. Du Bois considered Gandhi’s frank confessions about overcoming cultural limitations in his worldly encounters as acts of truth. | Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Though Gandhi’s autobiography ends with the 1920 Nagpur Resolution, Du Bois offered a broader assessment: “Gandhi’s search for God ended in his overthrow of British imperialism and his failure to unite Hindu and Mohammedan. His voice was the voice of India in birth-pain.”

Despite noting Gandhi’s ideological shortcomings in South Africa, Du Bois recognized his lifelong commitment to addressing political conflicts. He viewed Gandhi’s contradictions as manouevres for ethical readjustment. Du Bois understood Gandhi’s project as a nonviolent reconciliation between self and world, and accurately described his religious quest as “seeking by devout introspection and broad human contact, the truth of the world and particularly of one’s inner self.” This broad quest inevitably confronts contradictions.

Gandhi’s search for “the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face” represents a deeply ethical project where encountering the divine meant facing the human other. Du Bois’ observation that Gandhi’s search for God led to overthrowing the British highlights the non-religious nature of Gandhi’s concept of religion. This paradox positioned Gandhi between Hindus and Muslims, prioritising their fraternal relationship. Gandhi’s failure to achieve this doesn’t invalidate the project but opens space for fresh reconciliation efforts.

Du Bois wrote two influential articles after Gandhi’s death. In “Gandhi and the Negroes” (July 1957), he assessed the historical importance of Gandhi’s nonviolent mission. Though “long puzzled” by worldwide violence that seemed to negate Gandhi’s success against the British, Du Bois recognised that from the war’s ashes rose “a new colored world free from the control of Europe and America.”

Need for another Gandhi

Encouraged by recent US court decisions, such as the 1954 ruling against racial segregation in education, Du Bois believed that “real human equality and brotherhood in the United States will come only under the leadership of another Gandhi.” For Du Bois, Gandhi’s name embodied a spirit capable of inspiring future leaders.

In “Will the Great Gandhi Live Again?” (February 11, 1957), Du Bois hailed Gandhi as the “greatest philosopher of our era,” crediting him for revealing modern world’s “inherent contradictions” and indicating a path toward their “eventual reconciliation.” Du Bois hoped that if nonviolence could overcome the “hereditary teaching” producing racial violence—resolving the “antithesis” against “synthesis”—it would mean “great Gandhi lives again.”

Nonviolence, as the counterpoint to inter-racial discord, offers a foundation for gradually erasing colour-based differences. Gandhi represents a spirit of lasting reconciliation against “the colour line,” a phrase Du Bois popularised in 1903, borrowing from Frederick Douglass. Gandhi sought to create spaces for reconciliation within societies, dismantling mental hierarchies based on color and occupation.

Du Bois’ enduring interest in Gandhi’s movement stems from their shared recognition that nonviolence’s radical potential lies in truth-based reconciliation. This approach counters the violence of race and birth (and their “hereditary teaching”) through new solidarity. Du Bois saw Gandhi’s nonviolent method as a powerful means for people to confront the deep “contradictions” in modern societies, acknowledge moral wrongs, and heal social relations. Gandhi’s spirit lives on in the possibility of its recurrence.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is the author of Nehru and the Spirit of India.