Managing Value Conflicts

Morals are deeply held beliefs-usually based on cultural traditions, long-held family and religious teachings and long-lasting memories of personal experiences. Because of its deep-roots, moral conflicts tend to be intractable and long-lasting.makes negotiation or compromise extremely difficult. In some cases, new forms of communication can help to heighten understanding of the world-view and overcome the moral conflict. By making a distinction between morals and values and redefining or reframing the conflict and focusing more on attainable interests and less on non-negotiable positions can help to seek negotiable outcomes rather than win-lose outcomes. Even if the moral conflict cannot be eliminated, it sometimes help to focus on something of an overarching importance. 

As happened with Gandhiji.

What Got Gandhiji's Goat

Gandhiji, a strict vegan, preferred to avoid any animal products. But the range of protein sources at that time were limited - soy was just getting known widely, and Gandhiji did not favour consumption of most dals and legumes. In his early life he often tried milk-free diets, and his position hardened after he came back to India and learning of the cruelties that many dairymen here practiced on their cows to increase milk yield. He took a vow then to avoid drinking milk and tried to find substitutes. But none seemed to work, and without other easily digestible vegetable proteins, his health started to get affected rapidly.This came to head around 1918 when a combination of the stressful Kheda Satyagraha campaign, and the milk-free diet caused him to develop a range of ailments that really threatened his life. The doctors he consulted insisted he had to drink milk, but Gandhiji felt he could not break his vow, and in letters he wrote to his family then, he seemed to be fully prepared to die for this reason. 

Practical Solutions
Kasturba knew that unless she thought of something - and fast, there was a distinct possibility of Gandhiji's health taking a turn for the worse. She knew that her husband had refused to drink buffalo milk, as being too close to cow's milk, but how about goat's milk? On hearing her proposition, Gandhiji thought about it for a while and agreed he had not been thinking of goats when he made his vow, so perhaps it could be alright. This was splitting hairs, as he acknowledged with some shame to correspondents like Narahari Parikh, but he argued, "The fact of big loopholes having been left in my vow is evidence of their utter sincerity." 

But was it in fact splitting hairs and did Gandhiji have any reason to be ashamed? I thought about this for a long time and decided he had no reason to. For, what Gandhiji had done was make a distinction between Morals and Values. Morals tend to be established rules of conduct that do not vary.  They provide an nonvariable (in theory) guideline as to what is right and what is wrong. Morals do not have a hierarchy while Values do. Values therefore, imply degrees.  For instance, Gandhiji may may have valued his cause for better treatment of the cow as also the life of a human, but obviously, held the value of one higher than the other. 

Gandhiji was a passionate proponent for the cause of saving the cow

So, though he never wavered in his unshakable moral belief in nonviolent protest and religious tolerance, when it came to his vow, by valuing human life (including his own) over his cause for better treatment of animals. He had redefined and reframed his values conflict and by agreeing to drink goat's milk, had focused more on an attainable interest - fighting for India's freedom, and less on non-negotiable position of giving up milk altogether. 


Learning: By combining ideals with a practical spirit one can choose negotiable outcomes rather than win-lose outcomes. Even if the moral conflict cannot be eliminated, it helps to focus on something of an overarching importance.