Politics, Ethics and the Self

Re-reading Gandhi's Hind Swaraj

Rajeev Bhargava, Rajeev Bhargava

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000607963
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Hind Swaraj by Mahatma Gandhi is arguably the greatest text to have emerged from the anti-colonial movement in India and the first to seriously challenge the cultural and civilizational premises of the colonizers' mentality. It is also the first text in India that falls within the broad tradition of modern political philosophy, advancing a complex cluster of theses with conceptual sensitivity, analytical precision, and sustained argument.

This book critically engages with Hind Swaraj and explores the fascinating and subtle dialogue set up by Gandhi between the characters of the reader and the editor. With essays from leading contemporary thinkers on Gandhi, the volume looks at themes such as Gandhi on epistemic servitude, decolonization, and intercultural translation; his complex critique of modern civilization; his views on the empire, democracy, citizenship, and violence; the normative structure of Gandhian thought; Gandhi and the political praxis of educational reconstruction; and how to read this text.

An important intervention in Gandhian studies, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of peace studies, political philosophy, Indian philosophy, Indian political thought, political sociology, and South Asian studies.

Part 1 The truncated ethic of modern civilization

1The originality of Hind Swaraj

Anthony J. Parel

DOI: 10.4324/9781003043188-3

The originality of Hind Swaraj is twofold. First, it sets its argument within an Indian intellectual framework. This is very original as far as works on modern Indian political thought are concerned. Works in this genre alas do not always produce ‘Indian political thought.’ They often produce what may be called, for want of a better description, ‘political thought in India.’ This happens because, for one reason or another, they do not use an Indian intellectual framework for their study and interpretation of Indian thought. Instead, they use liberal, Marxist, or some other framework. Reliance on such frameworks can produce only ‘political thought in India’ but not genuine Indian political thought. To produce genuine Indian political thought, you need to use an authentic Indian intellectual framework – which is exactly what Gandhi does in Hind Swaraj.

The framework that Hind Swara uses is a radically revised version of the theory of the four canonical goals of life – the purusharthas. The revision is Gandhi’ own, which makes the framework all the more remarkable. The traditional interpretation places the four canonical aims of life in opposition to each other. One of the consequences of this had been that artha, which covers the fields of politics and economics, was isolated from dharma and the pursuit of moksha, to such an extent that it was marginalized to the point of being ignored in favour of the pursuit of moksha.

Gandhi breaks with tradition here and reinterprets the relationship of the four purusharthas in terms of mutuality rather than opposition.¹ The purusharthas, though distinct from each other, do not operate entirely independently of each other. The pursuit of the one affects the pursuit of the others. This insight enabled Gandhi to interpret artha – politics and economics – not only in their own terms but also in terms of their relationship to dharma and the pursuit of moksha. In doing so, he restored artha to its original place of being one of the canonical vidyas (sciences) necessary for human development.² The restoration of the dignity of artha is of the highest importance for his project of transforming India. India cannot be transformed without the aid of a new Arthasastra: this idea has gone very deeply into Gandhi’s thought. The good life requires a balance between the spiritual and the secular pursuits of life. This-worldly pursuits may not be undermined in the name of other worldly pursuits, and vice versa.

In emphasizing that the scope of the modern transformation of society be comprehensive, Gandhi goes against the modern tendency of privileging national transformation only in political and economic terms. He rejects this narrow approach by arguing that ethical and spiritual transformations are equally part of the process of national transformation.

However, Gandhi’s framework affirmed more than just the principle of mutuality between the secular and the spiritual. It made explicit the principle of transcendence also. The principle of transcendence affirms that humans, being body-soul composites, have ends that transcend the conditions of their bodily existence. Dharma, artha, and kama are concerned mainly (though not exclusively) with the needs of material existence, while the pursuit of moksha is concerned mainly (though not exclusively) with spiritual ends that transcend material conditions of life. The originality of Hind Swaraj, and Gandhi’s political thought generally, is that the question of transcendence may not be ignored as and when we pursue our material ends. The comprehensiveness of Gandhi’s program of the transformation of India emphasizes this point. And this emphasis separates Gandhi from most of the modern political thinkers – Indian and Western – and it adds to the originality of his thought.

The second reason for Hind Swaraj’s originality is its argument itself. It argues, as mentioned, that the transformation needs to be systemic and comprehensive. What remains to be added is that it should be peaceful and non-violent too. On this issue, Gandhi stands almost alone among his contemporaries – Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and others. To understand the argument of Hind Swaraj fully, therefore, one has to understand that it rejects the modern dogma that violence is necessary for human emancipation.

Now we can see why the dialogue form of Hind Swaraj is of decisive importance. The dialogue is at bottom on the modern dogma of political violence. The ‘reader’ of the dialogue is a composite figure. From Gandhi’s other writings we can identify four of his interlocutors. Of these, Gandhi was able to win over only Dr. Pran Jivan Mehta (d. 1932).³ The others – V. D. Savarkar (1883–1966),⁴ Shyamji Krishvarma (1857–1930),⁵ and Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (1880–1937)⁶ – belonged to what he called ‘the party of violence.’ They wanted to convince him that ‘nothing but the use of violence, covert or open or both’ was needed to emancipate India. ‘I have met practically no one who believes that India can ever become free without resort to violence.’⁷ We find evidence of their position in Hind Swaraj itself:

At first we will assassinate a few Englishmen and strike terror; then, a few men who will have been armed will fight openly. We may have to lose 20 or 25 lakhs of people, more or less, but we will regain our land. We will undertake guerilla warfare, and defeat the English.⁸

In actual historical terms, Hind Swaraj tackles two categories of political violence: the violence associated with national liberation and violence associated with Marxist revolution. Savarkar and Shyamji Krishnavarma were the advocates of the first. After 1923, the violence of national liberation morphed into the neo-fascist violence of the Hindutva ideology. Chattopadhyaya was the intellectual ancestor of the promoters of Marxist revolution in India. Just as the reading of Hind Swaraj requires an understanding of the thought of ‘the party of violence’ of 1909, so its reading in 2022 requires an understanding of the promoters of political violence today, viz., the Marxists, the Maoists, the Sangh Parivar, and the jihadits.

Hind Swaraj focuses on a number of different themes to make its argument – civilization, nationalism, satyagraha, swaraj, education, the modern professions, and modern technology. For the sake of brevity, I shall confine myself to the first four of these.

Civilization

Students of Hind Swaraj are familiar with Gandhi’s fierce criticism of modern civilization. The point of the criticism is that modern civilization fails to keep a balance between the spiritual and the secular, a balance that every good civilization should have. The need for maintaining a balance between all basic human values is of course a postulate of his intellectual frame: modern civilization lacks it, hence the criticism.

There is a good deal of misunderstanding surrounding Gandhi’s criticism. Some think that he is criticizing Western civilization and extolling Indian civilization. Others think that he is totally negative about modern civilizations. Neither of these is true.

To clear up the misunderstanding, it is necessary to understand what Gandhi means by modern civilization. He means the civilization that followed the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.⁹ It originated in the West, but that does not make it Western civilization. Western civilization has a history that goes back to at least 25 centuries. The history of modern civilization does not go beyond the last three. It is sui generis: it is not specific to a region, East or West, North or South. It aspires to be the new universal civilization of the entire humankind. It rejects tradition as a valid source of culture and transcendence as a valid spiritual goal. It stands for materialism as against any spiritual vision of existence. It regards physical nature as something to be ‘mastered and possessed’ for human ends, regardless of the ecological consequences. It promotes secularism and dismisses religion as superstition. Technological mastery over nature is converted into a means of self-destructive consumerism. It infects even the honourable professions such as medicine and law, making them means of acquisition of wealth and power, rather than means of serving fellow human beings. In short, modern civilization is a disease threatening the health of humanity.

But according to Gandhi, it is a curable disease.¹⁰ For, there are elements in modern civilization that are healthy – regard for human rights, civil liberty, neutrality of the state towards religion, gender equality, need to eliminate poverty, democracy, and rule of law, among others. Gandhi’s approach to modern civilization, therefore, is therapeutic rather than completely negative. But to save the patient from the potentially fatal disease, the patient should know what true or good civilization is. In other words, Gandhi has his own concept of civilization. There are two elements to it. The first is that every good civilization indicates the path of duty to its adherents.¹¹ The second is that civilization is that which indicates what the ‘object of life’ should be.¹² The Gujarati original for ‘object of life’ is the philosophically loaded term purushartha. That is to say, the concept of purushartha holds the key to a correct understanding of the nature of any given civilization. Look for ‘the object of life’ that a given civilization advocates; you will then know whether it is healthy or not.

Applying this definition to modern civilization, Gandhi finds that it is unhealthy, in that it considers ‘bodily welfare’¹³ to be ‘the object of life’ – bodily welfare to the exclusion of spiritual welfare. There is, therefore, a fatal imbalance in modern civilization: it is weighted all in favour of materialism. It is the imbalance that modern civilization has to correct, and it can do so by expanding its present framework and integrating the spiritual values necessary for the restoration of balance. In Gandhi’s philosophic language, ‘bodily welfare’ translates into the exclusive concern for artha and kama, and total disregard for dharma and the pursuit of moksha. Gandhi would want modern civilization to acquire the harmony of all the basic goals of life.

In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi’s purpose is not to extol Indian civilization in its present state of decline.¹⁴ He defends only its foundations,¹⁵ viz., the theory of purusharthas. Indian civilization also has to correct its present imbalance. For too long, under the influence of the renouncer (sramanic) traditions, Indian civilization favoured the pursuit of dharma and ultimate liberation at the expense of artha. The transformation of Indian civilization would require the restoration of artha to its rightful place in the scheme of the canonical aims of life. Gandhi’s approach to Indian civilization too is therapeutic.

The irony of ironies is that Gandhi recommends the healthy values in modern civilization, noted earlier, to be used to bring about the right balance in the new civilization of modern India. The reading list in Appendix I of Hind Swaraj represents some of these values. They include, among other things, regard for art, architecture, the beautification of India’s cities and villages. Why else would it include Tolstoy’s What Is Art? (he caused it to be translated into Gujarati)¹⁶ and Ruskin’s Political Economy of Art? Already in 1909, he regarded with horror cities like Calcutta and Bombay turning into ‘the real plague spots’ of the country.¹⁷

One may wonder whether the borrowing of some of the healthy values of modern civilization might not make Hind Swaraj an eclectic work, and Gandhi an eclectic thinker. Eclecticism is possible only if the ideas taken are not integrated, or not capable of integration. Gandhi takes what he takes from modern civilization on his term, that is, in terms of his framework. The values mentioned earlier broadly belong to the sphere of artha, and so long as they recognize the legitimacy of the values of dharma and moksha – and Gandhi believes that they are capable of recognizing them – the borrowing is legitimate and leads to constructive development. Once more, we see the importance of having an intellectual framework that is valid and capacious.

Gandhi’s one nation theory

Hind Swaraj advances the bold and novel idea that India is one-nation (ek-praja). It does this because it wants to give its readers a valid and clear concept of what ‘Hind’ in Hind Swaraj means. Unless there is a clear idea of what India is, it is useless to talk about its transformation. The national unity of India is the presupposition on which Gandhi’s program of transformation rests.

What, then, is his argument for India being one-nation? Gandhi starts with taking a panoramic glance at Indian history. During the period prior to the introduction of Islam into India, he writes, ‘One thought inspired us. Our mode of life was the same.’ The philosopher-saints of India, or our ‘leading men’ as he calls them, travelled the length and breadth of India and established places of pilgrimages in the four quadrants of the country. They did so, Gandhi avers, in order to facilitate travel and communication within the vast country.¹⁸ They created the vision of India as being one cultural entity. From the point of view of Indian history, this is not a far-fetched idea. Alberuni (973–1048), the great Muslim savant, for example, travelling in India in the 11th century, had spoken of the country as being one oicumene, one self-conscious, cultural unit.¹⁹

The introduction of Islam, Gandhi argues, need not result in the fracture of the nation (praja-bhang). ‘Do people become enemies because they change their religion’? he asks. Besides, ‘the same blood’ runs through the veins of Hindus and Indian Muslims. ‘The Hindus flourished under Muslim sovereigns, and Moslems under the Hindu.’ Above all, Indian culture is an open culture, capable of assimilating newcomers.

The introduction of foreigners does not necessarily destroy the nation; they merge in it. A country is one nation (ek-praja) only when such condition obtains in it. That country must have a faculty of assimilation. India has ever been such a country.²⁰

However, Gandhi is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 The truncated ethic of modern civilization
• PART 2 Empire, politics, and violence
• PART 3 Colonization of minds
• PART 4 Cultivating self
• PART 5 How to read Hind Swaraj
• Index