Discuss Gandhi’s approach to property in relation to trusteeship.

Trusteeship is Gandhi's answer to the question of how to redistribute wealth without violence, and it follows directly from two moral commitments rather than from economics.

Foundations. Aparigraha — non-possession — makes accumulation beyond need a form of theft, since one man's surplus is another's want. Ahimsa rules out expropriation, because a violent transfer reproduces violence in the new order. Gandhi therefore rejects both the sanctity of private property and the class struggle that would abolish it.

The doctrine. The rich man is not owner but trustee: he may keep what is needed for a decent life, and holds the rest for society. Talent is itself a social inheritance, so its fruits are not personally earned. The proposed practical form is well specified — the trustee's remuneration fixed by the state and subject to a ceiling, the right of succession to trusteeship not absolute but regulated by the state, and the trust operated for the welfare of workers and the community.

Critiques. M. N. Roy and the socialists called it utopian, a moral appeal to a class whose interest lies in refusing it; the historical record of Indian business houses gives them the better of the argument. Ambedkar's objection is sharper: it leaves the structure of ownership untouched and makes the poor dependent on the conscience of the rich.

Gandhi's own concession is often missed — he accepted state legislation to enforce trusteeship, and said that if trustees would not act as trustees, the state might take over with minimum exercise of violence.