Sarvodaya and the Bodhisattva Ideal: Compassion, Moral Discipline, and Ethical Durability in Gandhi and Śāntideva

The present study compares Gandhi’s Sarvodaya and Śāntideva’s bodhisattva ethics as two ways of making compassion durable rather than momentary. It argues that both thinkers treat compassion as a disciplined moral practice rather than simply an emotion. Gandhi gives compassion a public form through constructive work, non-violence, communal reconstruction, and economic responsibility, while also grounding it in personal discipline through truth, restraint, and self-purification. Śāntideva gives compassion inner stability through bodhicitta, the six pāramitās and vigilance grounded in śūnyatā. The paper, therefore, argues that the common contrast between Gandhi as an outward, institutional thinker and Śāntideva as an inward, contemplative thinker is too simple. Gandhi also depends on inner moral formation, and Śāntideva also directs ethical practice toward the welfare of others. The paper then examines the limits of both traditions in relation to justice, rights, and public accountability. Gandhi’s duty-centred view of rights is morally serious, but it becomes limited when social hierarchy is already built into society’s structure. Ambedkar’s critique shows that appeals to duty may fail when duties themselves are shaped by unequal social power. Śāntideva faces a different difficulty. His emphasis on inner moral cultivation leaves open the question of how justice is to be maintained when moral agents fail or when entrenched interests control institutions. To address this problem, the paper draws on Garfield’s account of rights as compassion institutionalised at scale, as discussed by Sevilla. On this view, compassion and rights are not opposing moral frameworks. Compassion provides the ethical motivation to respond to suffering, while rights provide the public protections and institutional stability needed when moral motivation is weak or absent. The paper concludes that comparative moral philosophy is most fruitful when it avoids forcing traditions into false equivalence. Instead, it shows how they illuminate different dimensions of a shared ethical problem.