Mk Gandi's Hind Swaraj
Interpreting Gandhi's Hind Swaraj
Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj is not rejection of the liberative contribution of modernity. Rather his effort can be interpreted as an attempt to integrate these positive elements with a liberating re-interpretation of tradition. With his critique from within the tradition, Gandhi becomes the great synthesizer of contraries within and across traditions.
GANDHI’s Hind Swaraj (HS) is surely a foundational text for any understanding of the man and his mission. In dialogue with the text in its context, with the author and among ourselves, we hope to locate the text within it’s own horizon of meaning and then interrogate it from within our own contemporary. For Gandhi’s text is "a proclamation of ideological independence" [Dalton 1993:61] he never compromised, his "confession of the faith" [Nanda 1974:66] he never abandoned, "a rather incendiary manifesto" [Erikson 1969:217] to enkindle his revolution. No wonder it was banned by the colonial government in 1910 for fear of sedition.
I Gandhi’s Critique of the Modern West
For Gandhi civilization was by definition a moral enterprise: "Civilisation is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty" (HS, Ch 13). Hence it is the very basic ethos of this modern west that Gandhi sets himself against. For he finds two unacceptable and unethical principles at its very core: ‘might is right’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’. The first legitimated the politics of power as expounded earlier by Machiaveli; the second idealised the economics of self-interest as proposed by Adam Smith. In the west "with rare exceptions, alternatives to western civilisation are always sought within its own basic thought system" [Saran 1980:681].
The three recurrent themes in Hind Swaraj which we will discuss here are: colonial imperialism, industrial capitalism, and rationalist materialism.
Colonial imperialism: Gandhi categorically insisted that "the English have not taken India; we have given
Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj is not rejection of the liberative contribution of modernity. Rather his effort can be interpreted as an attempt to integrate these positive elements with a liberating re-interpretation of tradition. With his critique from within the tradition, Gandhi becomes the great synthesizer of contraries within and across traditions.
GANDHI’s Hind Swaraj (HS) is surely a foundational text for any understanding of the man and his mission. In dialogue with the text in its context, with the author and among ourselves, we hope to locate the text within it’s own horizon of meaning and then interrogate it from within our own contemporary. For Gandhi’s text is "a proclamation of ideological independence" [Dalton 1993:61] he never compromised, his "confession of the faith" [Nanda 1974:66] he never abandoned, "a rather incendiary manifesto" [Erikson 1969:217] to enkindle his revolution. No wonder it was banned by the colonial government in 1910 for fear of sedition.
I Gandhi’s Critique of the Modern West
For Gandhi civilization was by definition a moral enterprise: "Civilisation is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty" (HS, Ch 13). Hence it is the very basic ethos of this modern west that Gandhi sets himself against. For he finds two unacceptable and unethical principles at its very core: ‘might is right’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’. The first legitimated the politics of power as expounded earlier by Machiaveli; the second idealised the economics of self-interest as proposed by Adam Smith. In the west "with rare exceptions, alternatives to western civilisation are always sought within its own basic thought system" [Saran 1980:681].
The three recurrent themes in Hind Swaraj which we will discuss here are: colonial imperialism, industrial capitalism, and rationalist materialism.
Colonial imperialism: Gandhi categorically insisted that "the English have not taken India; we have given