Hind Swaraj is a manifesto for a new world based on supremacy of ethics and morality over matter. Erik Erikson called it ‘a rather incendiary manifesto.’ Dennis Dalton called it, ‘a proclamation of ideological independence.’ Gerald Heard compared Hind Swaraj with Rousseau’s Social Contact. George Catlin compared with The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The unique beauty of the Hind Swaraj lies in its capacity to present a very scientific and philosophical discourse in the most ordinary language.

The book/booklet comprises of 20 short chapters and is written in a form of dialogue between the Editor- heavily implied to be Gandhi himself – and the Reader, who is evidently modelled on Savarkar, for he is clearly described as a terrorist dedicated to violent action. The Editor answers the Reader’s questions about British colonialism, the emerging Indian nationalist movement, the kind of civilization that Indian should try to build, and the means they should use to do so. The advantage of the dialogue form is that it provides the Editor with an opportunity to discuss the entire gamut of issues with all their implications and intricacies.

Gandhi begins by defending the Indian National Congress that demands Swaraj. The Reader mistakenly thinks that this just means kicking out the British. But the Editor clarifies that unless Indians learn to govern themselves fairly and sustainably, India will simply have ‘English rule without the Englishman.’ England’s Parliament is stagnant, and its politicians are corrupt. According to the Editor, the problem with England is modern civilization, the way of life that prioritizes ‘bodily welfare’, or people’s material desires, above everything else. Worst of all, Europeans have lost sight of their moral and spiritual needs. Their materials desires are insatiable: the more luxuries they have, the more they want. This traps them and their colonies in an unsustainable cycle of constant economic expansion causing plundering of natural resources.

While Hindus and Muslims lived in harmony for centuries, now they have fallen victims to the English strategy of divide and conquer. In reality, the Editor argues, Hindus and Muslims are part of the same family, worship the same God, and belong to the same nation. But now, the Hindu majority foolishly persecutes Muslims, who respond by building separate protected institutions. Gandhi rejects Hindu cow-protection activists who attack Muslims for slaughtering cow and says “In my opinion, cow-protection societies may be considered cow-killing societies. It is a disgrace to us that we should need such societies. When we forgot how to protect cows, I suppose we needed such societies.”

The Editor explains why lawyers and doctors are also responsible for impoverishing India. Even the modern railway network is a dangerous tool for plundering India’s resources and forcing people into slavery: rather than living with self-sufficiency in their village communities, farmers have to sell everything to the British, which has created devastating famines.
The Editor goes on to argue that the real meaning of Swaraj is achieving freedom and reinstating true civilization which requires complete transformation of society. Only moral means can establish moral government and the only solution to India’s condition is passive resistance which is grounded in the fundamental force of love (or truth, or the soul) that binds people and nation together in peaceful harmony. About education and technology, the Editor is of the opinion that Indians should embrace education and reject Western machinery, with some exceptions (like the printing press).

In his conclusion, Gandhi summaries his political platform. While moderates try in vain to petition the British and the extremists propose a dangerous armed rebellion, Gandhi argues that passive resistance is the only effective response to tyranny. True home rule requires Indians to rule themselves and embrace traditional Indian practices. Although Gandhi uses sometimes Satyagraha and Passive Resistance as synonyms in Hind Swaraj and elsewhere, he sharpened the distinction between the two.

The term Satyagraha was coined by Gandhi in South Africa to indicate the movement that was originally described, even by Gandhi himself, as Passive Resistance. The word satyagraha was deliberately substituted for Passive Resistance because Gandhi, probably felt ashamed to use an English word. However, he also believed that Satyagraha had a wider meaning than Passive Resistance.

For him, Passive Resistance is a weapon of the weak, and one does not exclude the use of physical force or violence for the purpose of getting one’s end, but Satyagraha has been conceived as the weapon of the strongest and excludes the use of violence in any shape or form. So, the motive behind Satyagraha was not to destroy or harass the opponent, but to convert him or win him over with sympathy, patience, and self-suffering.

Gandhi seems to stand almost alone among social and political thinkers in his firm rejection of the rigid dichotomy between ends and means and in his extreme moral preoccupation with the means to the extent that they, rather than the ends, provide the standard of reference. In Hind Swaraj, he wrote that even great men who have been considered religious have committed grievous crimes through the mistaken belief that there is no moral connection or interdependence between means and ends.
Besides relation between means and ends, Hind Swaraj also highlights all of Gandhi’s basic principles, including between rights and duties, between religious communities, as well as his concept of history, nationality, dissent, education and technology.

These issues retain an elementary importance today, and thus give Hind Swaraj a timeless quality. Hind Swaraj has influenced a number of movements in India and abroad. Lanza del vastos’ Community of the
Ark settled in the south of France, Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement, the peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the contemporary green and environment movements, have had Gandhi as a major influence.

Indeed, Hind Swaraj was written not so much by a prophet of righteousness as by a righteous revolutionary. Gandhi’s profound discontent led him to a daringly sanguine view of how politics may be purified, how absolute standards may be upheld in all human relationships and how individual conscience may be combined with heroism in society.

(Concluded)