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. 

It is on such intellectual foundations that modern western civilisation is based and Gandhi sees this one glaring lacuna from which it foundationally suffers. Modernity is a product of western enlightenment. The institutions characteristic of its reality suffer from this lacuna; they are at best not concerned with morality. That is why the Gandhian critique of British Parliament is that it is a “sterile woman and a prostitute”. What he means is that, in terms of its theoretical structure, it can do nothing without outside pressure. It has to be under the control of prime ministers who use it to promote the interest of their own parties. All institutions and professions, which are definitive of modern western civilisations, have to be without moral foundations as there is simply no theoretical space for morality once modernity has freed itself from the church and God and from an Aristotlian telos. And yet, the moderns as humans have an awareness of a need for something more — they need to pretend about ethics.  

It is this that makes modernity schizophrenic. Its institutions, like the medical and the legal structures, Gandhi argues, take a one-sided view of the human being. Therefore, the medic treats the body as if it were only a body without a soul. The lawyer looks at and fights about cases, alienated from their social and aesthetic contexts, for years in the courts of law. These professions, by definition, profit by the misery of others. Even the products of technology and science, that is, machines, industries and speed, share the absence of the other institutions, as they are not able to accommodate moral arguments. 

Modernity can debate about whether a machine is more efficient than human hands, but not whether it is more ethical. Notice that industries do not look at the ethical and human cost of what and how they produce — and what can be more illustrative of this argument than the current phase of relentless globalisation and economic reforms in India whereby thousands are being forcibly displaced from their indigenous life-zones of traditional simplicity? Do we really need 20 kinds of television sets or 100 entertainment and news channels? Is the television ethos contributing to the good life of human beings? 

It was questions of this genre that perhaps Gandhi foresaw as early as 1909 and they worried him. Again, the Gandhian critique of railways and the defence of the charkha are intimately linked to the moral argument discussed above. For instance, one of the salient features of modern life is developing faster means of transport so that people can go everywhere, have faster mobility, and be more productive. However, is this speed really creating or destroying leisure? 

Besides, the slow, traditional charkha, the handspun khadi, unites the country in one single symbol of solidarity (as in the freedom movement) while it also creates leisure as these are activities that need leisure to be pursued. The very act of spinning the yarn and creating cloth creates space for the spinner to be with himself or herself; it creates a moment of stillness. But how does this alternative philosophy link with home rule or swaraj?

 It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves authentically and sensitively, when we develop self-control. Real home rule has to be based on people who control their wants, impulses and inclinations, while developing inner resources in order to participate in making a rashtra. This is only natural to human beings and in all traditional civilisations, eastern as well as Christian western, human beings need inner sustenance as much as outer comfort. The outer should not completely destroy the inner or disregard the inner. 

 However, the truth is that modern civilisation is about self-indulgence, not self-control. Indians, according to Gandhi, needed to revert back to traditional Indian civilisation and Indian ways of life. Hence swaraj, very specifically in the Indian context of extreme poverty of the majority, would be more at home in traditional simplicity rather than in the rampant consumerism of the affluent society. Self-control cannot flourish in an institutionalised framework of self-indulgence. Modernity needs to think, with Gandhi, about this swarajya, for, a nation or a world is but an extension of the humans who make it.