Liberation and Reconciliation: J. Deotis Roberts, Mohandas Gandhi, and Śāntideva in Dialogue

In political discourse, liberation and reconciliation are often seen as competing goals. Liberation and freedom are conceived in terms of autonomy, while reconciliation and unity are conceived in terms of mutuality. Against these customary associations, the Black liberation theologian J. Deotis Roberts insists, “There can be no liberation without reconciliation and no reconciliation without liberation.” Roberts’s Christian theology offers an alternative, dialectical picture of the interplay between freedom and interdependence. This paper compares Roberts’s argument with the work of Mohandas Gandhi. In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi argues similarly that true independence is not possible without taking responsibility for one another. The eighth-century Buddhist monk Śāntideva likewise offers a vision of liberation in which one is freed for the sake of others, and freed by caring for others. Comparing these authors’ arguments points toward an alternative paradigm for integrating the urgent demand for emancipation with the urgent need for cooperation.