Mahatma Gandhi’s Vision: स्वराज (Swaraj) and Indian Nationalism
Critique of Modern Civilization
Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj is primarily known for its trenchant critique of modern civilization. In Hind Swaraj, he also dwells on the condition of India as it developed under British rule and tutelage. He makes a basic formulation that under the impact of British rule, India is turning into an ‘irreligious’ country. He hastens to add that he is not thinking of any particular religion, but rather of that religion which underlies all religions. “We are turning away from God,” he adds. He likens modern civilization to a ‘mouse’ ‘gnawing’ at our people while apparently soothing them. Then he turns his moral gaze to some of the major developments, like railways and the emergence of a new elite, like lawyers and doctors. All these developments, he asserts, have only led to the impoverishment of India. According to him, railways have helped the British to tighten their grip over India. Besides, they have also been responsible for ‘famines’, epidemics, and other problems for the country. He counters the argument that railways have contributed to the growth of Indian nationalism by saying that India had been a nation much before the British arrived.
Lawyers and Doctors
In chapter XI of Hind Swaraj, he argues that lawyers have contributed more to the degradation of India. Besides, they have accentuated Hindu-Muslim dissensions, helped the British to consolidate their position, and have sucked the blood of the poor of India. In the next chapter, he describes how doctors have failed Indian society. In his opinion, doctors have been primarily responsible for making the people ‘self-indulgent’ and taking less care of their bodies. He concludes his critique of modern civilization by comparing it to an Upas tree, a poisonous plant which destroys all life around it.
Education System
In another chapter of Hind Swaraj, he examines the English educational system introduced in India and describes it as ‘false education’. For him, the basic aim of education should be to bring our senses under our control and to help imbibe ethical behavior in our life. He attacks the newly emerged elite, a by-product of the Macaulay system of education, as they have enslaved India.
Swaraj and the Path to Freedom
Swaraj and the method to attain it was the main concern of Hind Swaraj. In chapter IV of Hind Swaraj, he puts forward a basic formulation that mere transfer of power from British hands to Indian hands would not lead to true Swaraj. He adds that would be nothing more than having ‘English rule without Englishmen’. In that case, he argues, India may be called ‘Hindustan’ but actually it would remain ‘Englistan’. Hence it would not be Swaraj of his conception. And in chapter XIV (How Can India Become Free?), he tries to define true Swaraj by saying that if we (individuals) became free, India would be free. It is in the same vein that he opines that ‘it is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves’. Such a Swaraj, he further adds, would have to be experienced by each one of us. Gandhi also uses the term Swaraj for home-rule or self-government for the Indian people. But he makes it clear that there is a symbiotic relationship between Swaraj as ‘self-rule’ of individual Indians and Swaraj as the home-rule or self-government for the Indian people. In other words, home-rule that Indian people would achieve would be true only to the extent they are successful in being ‘self-ruling’ individuals. In chapter XV, Gandhi puts forward the thesis that the real challenge is to free millions of our people and not simply to change the government.
Non-Violence and Passive Resistance
How could it be achieved? Not by the use of arms and violence. This is for two reasons, he adds. One, any resort to violent rebellion would require thousands of Indians being armed, which in itself is too much of a tall order. Two, more importantly, if India resorts to arms, the ‘holy land’ of India would become ‘unholy’. In the process, India would become a land worse than Europe. He vehemently rejects the use of brute force for attaining Swaraj for India. He introduces new arguments for such rejection. One, there is a close relationship between the means and the end. Thus he rejects the basic formulations of Indian revolutionaries that India could be freed only by violent means both on moral and ethical grounds. Besides, he also rejects the Moderates’ view that Indians could be freed by mere supplication and petitioning. Unless backed by effective sanctions, that would be an exercise in futility. Hence India would require passive resistance, based on ‘love-force’ or ‘soul-force’ to move forward on the road to Swaraj. In chapter XVII, he elaborately dwells on the concept of passive resistance, albeit Satyagraha. He explains the concept of passive resistance as a method of securing rights by going through ‘personal sufferings’. Here, by implication, he justifies the use of soul force on the basis of the concept of ‘relative truth’. He further argues that passive resistance is not a ‘weapon of the weak’. Rather it is a weapon of the strong. He concludes the entire discussion by saying that real home rule is possible only through passive resistance. But he also hastens to add that a true passive resistor will have to observe ‘perfect chastity’, adopt ‘voluntary poverty’, ‘follow truth’, and ‘cultivate fearlessness’.
Composite Nature of Indian Nationalism
Another major concept which he introduces in Hind Swaraj is that of the composite nature of Indian nationalism. In Hind Swaraj, he puts forward the argument that Indian people constituted a nation much before the British came. The coming of the Mohammedans earlier had hardly made any difference to the fact of India being a nation. In the process, he argues that India could not cease to be a nation simply because people belonging to different religions reside here. People with different religious backgrounds would continue to constitute one nation so long as they maintain the principle of non-interference in one another’s religion. In the process, he makes a very profound statement:
“If the Hindus believe that India should be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in dreamland. Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsees, and Christians who have made India their country are fellow countrymen and they will have to live in unity if only for their own interests. In no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms nor has it ever been in India.”
Elsewhere in Hind Swaraj, he rejects the British thesis that India was never a nation. Rather it has always been a conglomerate of different creeds and communities. He asserts that our seers and sages laid the foundation of our national unity and Indian nationhood by establishing centers of pilgrimage on the four corners of India. In the process, they fired the imagination of our people with the idea of nationhood. Thus in Hind Swaraj, Gandhi lays a real foundation of secular nationalism for which he lived and died.
Vision of an Alternative Society
Hind Swaraj presents the broad contours of an alternative society – a new civilizational framework in a rudimentary form. In the chapter dealing with ‘true civilization’, he defines it as that ‘mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty’. He further adds that moral behavior is nothing but to attain ‘mastery over one’s mind’. In the same chapter, he avers that the ancient Indian civilization fits the bill for being the true civilization. To that end, he identifies its core values such as:
- Limits to self-indulgence in terms of luxuries and pleasures
- Emphasis on ancestral profession
- Rural life
- Moral control of sages over the kings
- Its curb on unnecessary competitiveness
- Its preference for small-scale technologies and decentralized polity
He admits that at present modern India is moving away from these old values. But he pins his hope in the bulk of the people of India residing in the hinterland who continue to persist in its hoary tradition. As to who would perform all these onerous tasks, he reposes his faith in the new band of Satyagrahis who should play the role of exemplars rather than that of vanguards. There are other concepts in Hind Swaraj scattered all over the book, viz. Swadeshi, Brahmacharya, nature cure, a new educational and legal system, relationship between the means and the end, and duties and rights which he elaborated in his later writings. At the end of the book, he makes a solemn declaration that the rest of his life would be dedicated to the attainment of the kind of Swaraj he had explained and has actually experienced in his own inner being.
Reception and Legacy
Initially, Hind Swaraj did not attract much attention either at the hands of scholars or even political leaders of India. There are innumerable commentaries and ‘write-ups’ on Hind Swaraj either commending it for its broad and bold sweep or critiquing rashly its harsh views on modern civilization or its day-dreaming of an alternative societal framework. There are two major critical commentaries which, by and large, cover most of the basic points elaborated by other scholars. What is more, both these commentaries came directly to Gandhi in his own lifetime to which he sent his reasoned response. It is also interesting to note that one of them came immediately after the publication of the English version of Hind Swaraj in 1910 and the other nearly 35 years later in 1945. Besides, in both these cases, the personalities involved were not only important people but also intimately known to Gandhi. The two luminaries are none other than W.J. Wybergh, member of the Transvaal Legislature and a good friend of Gandhi despite their differences on the racial issues, and Jawaharlal Nehru, one of his closest followers and his political ‘heir’.
A Fresh Look at Hind Swaraj
This is the centenary year of Hind Swaraj and as such a fresh look at its basic formulations is called for. In other words, how do they appear in the light of the historical developments of the last one hundred years? Admittedly, most of these ideas have been discarded by the practitioners of ‘real politic’ all over the world including India. And yet intellectual interest and inquiries continue to persist without much interruption. In fact, they have got intensified in the recent past. What is the reason for such practical rejection of and simultaneous intellectual attraction for Hind Swaraj? In our view, such a mystery of an ardent repulsion and attraction could be explained by the way one looks at Hind Swaraj and ideas contained therein. One way to look at them it is to take it as a blue-print, something like a project report for a new social order. Looked at from that perspective, we do not find many takers for Hind Swaraj and its major ideas. On that level its rejection is quite obvious and even ‘obliterous’. But there is another way to look at it: as a source book for ideas for an alternative civilizational framework. With the failure of most of the dominant ideologies. There is a strong tendency among the sensitive minds from all over the world to look at Gandhian ideas as providing a new paradigm for an alternative civilizational framework. And Hind Swaraj being the source-book of Gandhian ideas has necessarily become the center of new intellectual quest.
Nuances in Gandhi’s Critique
There is another problem with Hind Swaraj: written in the style and manner of and advocacy for a particular line of thought, on casual reading it would appear baldly bold and even absolutist in the extreme. It was primarily meant for dissuading the Indian people from falling into the alluring trap of western civilization both in terms of finding the right means for Indian independence, as well as building a new India in the post-independent era. Hence, it involves a very strong criticism of modern civilization verging on its total rejection. But a closer perusal would reveal that his criticisms are much more nuanced and balanced than it is usually understood. Gandhi, in the first place, makes a distinction between Western civilization per se and modern civilization. And it is the latter that is put under his moral gaze. Here again, he accepts some of its positive contributions like time management, greater control over the environment, and better organizational efforts. Gandhi does not stop at the rejection or western civilization.
Alternative Modernity
Rather he charts out a plan for an alternative modernity.