The Hind Swaraj of Gandhi is primarily known for the condemnation of western society that Gandhiji has done in an elaborate manner. He makes a simple formulation that India is developing into an irreligious nation under the control of the British rule. He also notes that he does not consider just any single religion but instead considers the philosophy behind all different faiths. He states that the country and its individuals are moving away from God. He contrasts the Britishers with a mouse ‘gnawing’ at our people while seemingly calming them. He then switches his moral gaze to some of the big innovations such as railways and the rise of modern elites such as doctors and lawyers. All these innovations, he argues, have just contributed to India’s impoverishment.

The railways allowed British to tighten their hold on India, according to him. In addition, they have also been blamed for the nation’s famines epidemics and other matters. By claiming that India had become a nation long before the British came, Gandhiji counters the claim that railways led to the development of Indian nationalism. But this view can be criticised as the development of railways greatly destroyed the barrier of distance that separated citizens and nationalists in different parts of the country. This allowed for easier spread of common ideologies among the citizens which greatly helped in the struggle for freedom as well development of our country. In Hind Swaraj, he states that lawyers have added much to India’s deterioration which is viewpoint that I believe should be strongly dissented mainly owing to the fact that he himself was originally a lawyer. He explains how doctors have failed the Indian society and says that in his view, it was mainly the fault of doctors to make people self-indulgent and take less care of their bodies. He even discusses the English educational system implemented in India and identifies it as a ‘ fake education’. According to him the basic aim of education should be to place our senses under our influence and help to imbibe ethical behaviour in our lives. The views on education are unjustified as the education provided by the British was of a high standard and led to the development of various people who later went on to become prominent figures in the fight against the Britishers.

The primary concern of the Hind Swaraj was Swaraj and the way to attain it. He brings forth a simple formulation in the Hind Swaraj about how the mere transition of power to Indian hands from the British hands would not lead to true Swaraj. To emphasize on this, he compares it to being the same as ‘English Law without the Englishmen’ and also states that India would be ‘Hindustan’ in name but in reality, would be ‘Englistan’. This form of Swaraj is not the form he has created in his mind as the ideal. He attempts to describe real Swaraj by putting forward that if individuals were free, India would be free. It is in the same explanation he says that when we learn to rule ourselves, that is when we achieve true Swaraj. He goes on to say this is the type of Swaraj he wishes all the citizens experience. Gandhiji makes it clear that there is a symbiotic relationship between Swaraj as the self-rule of the individual Indians and Swaraj as the Indian people’s home-rule. In other words, only to the degree that they are successful in becoming ‘self-ruling’ individuals can the home-rule that Indian people would attain be valid. Gandhi brings forward the thesis that the real struggle is to liberate millions of our people and not only to reform the existing government. His method of achieving this completely rejected the use of arms or violence. This is for two reasons mainly. One, any resort to an armed insurrection will entail the armament of thousands of Indians, which is too much of a high order in itself. Teo, more precise of a reason, is that if India resorts to arms, India’s ‘holy ground’ will become ‘unholy’ and in the end, India will be a poorer land than England. He had vehemently opposed the use of brute force of any kind in his fight for Swaraj. He denied the fundamental formulations of other Indian Revolutionaries on legal and ethical grounds, as they involved methods of brute force to achieve freedom from the Britishers. His ideologies on following non-violence is something that should have been further supported because it did lead to a much lesser number of lives being lost to unnecessary bloodshed.

Another important concept which Gandhiji introduces in Hind Swaraj is that of Indian nationalism’s composite nature. He brings out the point that Indian people were a country long before the arrival of the British. The arrival of the Mohammedans earlier had barely made any difference to the reality that India was a nation. In the process, he claims that India should not avoid being a nation merely because there are people living here belonging to different faiths. People of different religious backgrounds will continue to form one nation for as long as they uphold the concept of non-interference in the religions of one another. He dismisses the British thesis that India was never a nation, Rather, it has always been a cluster of diverse views and cultures. He believes that by setting up pilgrimage centres throughout our country, sages and seers laid the cornerstone of our national unity. They ignited the imagination of our people along with the notion of nationhood. Gandhi therefore lays the true foundations of secular nationalism in the Hind Swaraj. This viewpoint on maintaining secularity greatly helped strengthen unity among the individuals in the country and thereby strengthened the fight for the freedom.

Hind Swaraj puts forward the broad contours of an alternate culture- a modern civilizational structure in a primitive form. He describes it further in the chapter that deals with ‘true civilization’. He defines it as the form of behaviour that points out the course of obligation to man. He also states that moral action is nothing but to achieve ‘mastery of one’s mind’. He avers in the same part that the old culture that was prevalent in India fits the bill for being a real civilization. To this end, he determines the fundamental beliefs such as limitations of self-indulgence in terms of luxuries and pleasures, the emphasis on ancestor occupation, rural life and the spiritual influence of the sages over the princes, the restrictions of undue competition and the preference for small scale technology and autonomous politics. He agrees that the new India was turning away from these old ideals at the moment. But he places his hopes on the majority of the people in India who reside in the hinterland region, who continue to persist in their traditional manner. He also rests his trust in the new band of satyagrahis to play the role of model examples rather than the vanguards who will execute all these tasks. His indifference to the newer culture is unjustified as he completely rejects it instead of making an attempt to imbibe elements of both the old and the new cultures.

Aishwarya Says:

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