A similar point can be made with respect to égalité. Equal respect for everyone in the ideal village is civility, but it is not only civility. It is personal security, freedom from fear of battery, rape, or theft, but it is also more than that. It is also material equality in the sense that all the people in the village eat roughly the same quantities of rice and lentils (or of whatever, among the available foods, they choose to eat), occupy roughly the same size space for sleeping, and in general consume at the same level. Although Gandhi opposed (in theory anyway) extreme inequalities of wealth, he did not propose equalizing wealth, but instead its socially responsible use. Ownership of land and things was to be regarded as a fiduciary relationship (of which much more later) binding the owner to the duties of a trustee. People who took advantage of their legal status as property owners to consume at a level higher than the physically healthy (and spiritually uplifting) simple living standard of the village were to be regarded as in breach of their fiduciary duties, and as thieves.

It can be concluded that (at least in some important respects) Gandhian villages (assuming that it would be feasible to organize them) would put into practice the modern western ideals of freedom and equality more perfectly than they have been put into practice in any actually existing modern western society. (It must be acknowledged, however, that for some thinkers the material equality envisioned by Gandhi counts as imperfection rather than as perfection, because they measure perfection according to different standards, or even, as in the case of Robert Nozick, because they object to using any standard to measure any such thing –of which more in later chapters.) It still remains to solve the puzzle why Gandhi thought that caste would make a positive contribution to the institutional structures of the villages, rather than being an oriental blemish marring an otherwise beautiful realization of western ideals. To continue to attempt to solve this puzzle I turn to the third of the classic ideals of the French Revolution, fraternité.