The object of life is self-rule

Industries and consumer societies do not care for the ethical and human cost of what and how they produce, said Gandhi in Hind Swaraj

Bindu Puri Delhi

Real home rule is self-rule or self-control. MK Gandhi, Hind Swaraj Hind Swaraj explains Gandhi’s views on ‘Indian Home Rule’, or alternatively, self-rule. Also, of what the future Indian nation ought to become. Yet, it’s also a text in which Gandhi gives a strong critique of machinery, railways, speed, medicine and lawyers. It was written between November 13 and 22, 1909, on the ship  Kildonan Castle, during his return voyage from London to South Africa. Gandhi intended it to be an answer to the Indian school of violence which he had encountered in London.

 While in London on a deputation from South Africa, Gandhi had met young Indians, including VD Savarkar, who lived at India House. He had many conversations with them on the use of violence, as also, on the interpretation of ancient Hindu texts. The historical context of Hind Swaraj, then, was modern civilisation, the politics of South Africa, the politics of expatriate Indians, and the Indian nationalist movement. The intellectual context was even more diverse than the historical one. It included eastern and western sources, and within the latter, jurisprudence, vegetarianism, Christian theology, criticism of speed, and modern industrial civilisation, as also, writings on art.

Gandhi had also been in correspondence with Rajchandra Ravjibhai Mehta, the Jain mystic and philosopher, on issues like the nature of Atman, Ishwar, Moksha, as also the true understanding of the Vedas and the Gita. Hind Swaraj can be understood, both historically and intellectually, as a well-thought out text containing ideas which emanated from a core understanding which Gandhi had developed by then on the nature of human civilisation, Indian independence or swaraj, and the essence of what India ought to become. That these ideas were intimately linked to Gandhi’s core understanding is apparent if we put together the different strands of the vision in Hind Swaraj. 

Gandhi constructs a powerful critique of modern western civilisation as it makes bodily welfare “the object of life”. As part of this critique, Gandhi speaks against most things that we, the moderns, value. These include better houses, opulent lifestyles, consumerism, machines, trains, guns, factories, even means of speedy communication like letters. He even says that “formerly, people had two or three meals consisting of homemade bread and vegetables. Now they require to eat every two hours, so that they have hardly leisure for anything else”. 

 Of course, these are symptoms of a deeper malaise, and Gandhi notes, “This civilisation takes note neither of morality nor of religion.” At one level, Gandhi is undertaking a moral critique of western modernity, as it avowedly makes bodily welfare its true test and ignores the inner reality of man, the soul. It cannot then have room for religion or morality within its conceptual framework, as there simply is no theoretical space for religion or morality. Interestingly, in western post-enlightenment morality, there is this problem of finding a justification for the moral life, as it has by then become bereft of a foundation in terms of a belief in God or in a telos — the real purpose of human life.