Hind Swaraj

Indian civilization is the best, asserts Gandhi, but it is enslaved because “the sons of India were found wanting” (39). Yet only those in India who have given themselves over to the English are enslaved: “It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. It is, therefore, in the palm of our hands” (39).

Freedom is not a mere dream, and “such Swaraj has to be experienced, by each one for himself. One drowning man will never save another” (39). Once this sense of freedom is in the hearts of Indians, the presence of the English becomes much less important, for “[i]f the English become Indianized, we can accommodate them”; otherwise, they “will leave of their own accord” (39). It is not necessary to expel them with violence, and “[y]our hatred against them ought to be transferred to their civilization” (40).

Hasn’t Italy proven that a violent rebellion can achieve freedom? Led by the revolutionaries Mazzini and Garibaldi, Italians fight battles and achieve separation from Austria. Gandhi retorts, “If you believe that because Italians rule Italy the Italian nation is happy, you are groping in darkness” (41). The outcome, instead, is that the Italians trade the rule of the Austrian emperor for the rule of the Italian king, and “[t]he reforms for the sake of which the war was supposed to have been undertaken have not yet been granted” (41).

There is no point in overthrowing the English simply to have their tyranny replaced by that of Indian princes. Besides, taking up arms will require years of preparation against the well-armed British, and “to arm India on a large scale is to Europeanize it. Then her condition will be just as pitiable as that of Europe” (42). Guerrilla warfare might cost 250,000 lives, but even if it were to free the nation, Gandhi alleges it would “make the holy land of India unholy […] What we need to do is to sacrifice ourselves. It is a cowardly thought, that of killing others […] Those who will rise to power by murder will certainly not make the nation happy” (42).

Already acts of violence have shaken the peace between India and England, including an assassination committed by the young revolutionary Madan Lal Dhingra. Gandhi concedes that this has led to some reforms, “but what is granted under fear can be retained only so long as the fear lasts” (42).

Does the achievement of freedom justify any means, including violence? Gandhi answers that bad means distort the ends: “If, therefore, anyone were to say: ‘I want to worship God; it does not matter that I do so by means of Satan,’ it would be set down as ignorant folly” (44). Rights are earned through duty, not force. The result of freedoms achieved through violence is “everybody wanting and insisting on his rights, nobody thinking of his duty” (44).

If you find a thief in the house, you might assume that the use of force is necessary to drive him out, but Gandhi suggests that the response depends on the type of thief: “If it is my father who has come to steal I shall use one kind of means […] If it is a weakling, the means will be different […] if the thief is armed from top to toe, I shall simply remain quiet” (44).

You are robbed; angry, you gather a group of men to raid the robber’s house and retrieve the goods. The robber defies you, gathers his own group, and begins stealing from your neighbors. You redouble your efforts; the damage increases all around, and “[t]hus the result of wanting to take revenge upon the robber is that you have disturbed your own peace” (46).

Gandhi suggests a second approach. Taking pity on the thief’s diseased mind, you make your goods easily available to him. The thief returns and, confused, still steals. He asks the neighbors about you, “comes to learn about your broad and loving heart, he repents, he begs your pardon, returns you your things, and leaves off the stealing habit” (46). Though this method will not always work, “the force of love and pity is infinitely greater than the force of arms” (46).

Petitions for redress are useless without force because “[a] petition backed by force is a petition from an equal and, when he transmits his demand in the form of a petition, it testifies to his nobility” (47). Two kinds of force can be used, violence and noncooperation. The latter Gandhi calls “love-force, soul-force, or, more popularly but less accurately, passive resistance” (47). This force, claims Gandhi, “is indestructible” (47).

To those who say that force is justified in preventing, for example, a beloved child from stepping into a fire, Gandhi responds that this is a false analogy: “[Y]ou consult entirely your own, that is the national, interest. There is no question here either of pity or of love” (47).

Is there any evidence in history that soul-force or passive resistance has freed a nation? Gandhi declares that there is no such evidence in the history of “kings and emperors,” who use violence and treachery. For most people and countries, most of the time, “the force of truth or love” predominates (49), but historians don’t note it, as “[h]istory is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul” (49).

Resistance by “body-force” causes suffering to others; passive resistance uses “soul-force,” and only the user suffers: “Everybody admits that sacrifice of self is infinitely superior to sacrifice of others. Moreover, if this kind of force is used in a cause that is unjust, only the person using it suffers” (50).

Some argue that disobeying the laws is disloyal and that it is better to drive out the lawgivers. Gandhi argues that obedience to such laws is a recent, “newfangled” thing: “A man who has realized his manhood, who fears only God, will fear no one else. Man-made laws are not necessarily binding on him” (51). Many laws promulgated by the majority are later found to be wrong, and reforms always come from minorities. “So long as the superstition that men should obey unjust laws exists, so long will their slavery exist” (51);only passive resistance can awaken people to this, while violence leads to disaster.

It’s one thing for the weak to use passive resistance but another when they become strong and can use their power as a force. To this Gandhi says, “Passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is matchless. It is superior to the force of arms. How, then, can it be considered only a weapon of the weak?” (51). Passive resistance requires a courage that men under arms don’t possess: “Do you believe that a coward can ever disobey a law that he dislikes?” (51). When extremists drive out the invaders, “they will want you and me to obey their laws” (52).

The physically weak and untrained can use passive resistance because “[c]ontrol over the mind is alone necessary, and when that is attained, man is free like the king of the forest and his very glance withers the enemy” (52). The power of passive resistance doesn’t age or rust and can’t be stolen.

Passive resistance has been used in India many times: “We cease to co-operate with our rulers when they displease us. This is passive resistance” (53). Princes have relented under that pressure.

It’s important to train the mind but also not to let the body become “weakened by pampering” (53). Furthermore, “those who want to become passive resisters for the service of the country have to observe perfect chastity, adopt poverty, follow truth, and cultivate fearlessness” (53).

Without chastity, even husbands and wives succumb to “animal indulgence,” which interferes with “any great effort” on behalf of the nation. Poverty helps one become indifferent to money, enabling one to “be prepared to lose every penny rather than give up passive resistance” (54). Being truthful removes the complications of lying. Fearlessness enables the passive resister to face loss.

“These qualities are worth having, even for those who do not wish to serve the country” (54), and this is true as well for those who would use physical force, as lying and fear will continue to plague men at arms.

In short, “[o]ne who is free from hatred requires no sword” (55). 

Many in India want to see public education for all. Gandhi argues that “a knowledge of letters” is of dubious value and often does more harm than good: “The same instrument that may be used to cure a patient may be used to take his life, and so may a knowledge of letters” (55). By teaching a peasant to sign his name, “[w]ill you add an inch to his happiness? Do you wish to make him discontented with his cottage or his lot?” (56). Gandhi declares that Indians are “carried away by the flood of western thought” and pursue it blindly (56).

Gandhi also looks askance at higher education: “I have learned Geography, Astronomy, Algebra, Geometry, etc. What of that? In what way have I benefited myself or those around me?” (56). He quotes British scientist Thomas Henry Huxley, who believes a person with a well-tutored body whose “‘mind is stored with a knowledge of the fundamental truths of nature,’” whose “‘passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience,’” and who “‘hates all vileness’” is truly educated (56). Formal schooling, on the other hand, “does not make men of us. It does not enable us to do our duty” (56).

Of course, Gandhi’s constructive eloquence derives in part from an extensive education. To this he says that his life would not have been wasted without it, and though he and others have made use of it, he has had to “become free from its ill effect”; “it is not for the millions,” and “we must not make of it a fetish” (57).

Gandhi finds that the teaching of English merely puts Indians under the thumb of the English. Worse, the educational system the Indians follow has already been discarded by Britain. “We ignorantly adhere to their cast-off systems” (57), learning a stilted form of English while they encourage the Welsh of Britain to revive their own language. That Indians must speak English in court and read it in newspapers is “a sign of slavery” (58). For this Gandhi blames not the English but English-speaking Indians.

Instead, Gandhi proposes that Indians first teach native languages to their children, “but when they have grown up, they may learn English, the ultimate aim being that we should not need it” (58). Understanding English can help Indians better understand their overlords and, on occasion, pick up some useful knowledge of science, which they can then translate into native Indian tongues. For a common national language Gandhi recommends Hindi, written in regional alphabets as appropriate.

Religious education should be primary. Otherwise, “one effort is required, and that is to drive out Western civilization. All else will follow” (60).

For Gandhi, it is “machinery that has impoverished India […] that Indian handicraft has all but disappeared […] The workers in the mills of Bombay have become slaves” (60). He contends that Britain itself, purveyor of machinery, suffers as well: “Machinery has begun to desolate Europe. Ruination is now knocking at the English gates” (60). Overall, Gandhi believes machinery “represents a great sin” (60).

It is bad enough that the Indians buy “flimsy Manchester cloth,” but they also import the manufacturing mills, which bring unhappiness and demoralize the people: “[I]t will be hard for any India made rich through immorality to regain its freedom” (61).

It is difficult to remove all the mills, but the owners ought to reduce their size or the amount they produce and instead encourage “in thousands of households the ancient and sacred hand-looms” and purchase their cloth (61). Meanwhile, the Indian people can “cease to use machine-made goods” (61). By refusing such products, India will “support Swadeshi [self-sufficiency] and so shall we attain Home Rule” (61).

Of course, machines produce this book, but “[t]his is one of those instances which demonstrate that sometimes poison is used to kill poison” (62). 

Gandhi’s views suggest that he would form a third party that differs from India’s two main factions, but he does not wish to be so restricted: “I would serve both the moderates and the extremists” (63).

He would, however, tell the extremists that “it would not be proper for you to say that you have obtained Home Rule if you have merely expelled the English,” as their culture would still remain (63). To the moderates, Gandhi would say, “Mere petitioning is derogatory; we thereby confess inferiority” (63). Moderates’ fear of postcolonial chaos is baseless: “There is no occasion for a third party to protect the weak […] Such protection can only make the weak weaker,” and any uprising “must have its vent” (63).

To the English, Gandhi would say that “although you are the rulers, you will have to remain as servants of the people. It is not we who have to do as you wish, but it is you who have to do as we wish” (64). Furthermore, “[w]e consider our civilization to be far superior to yours,” and “you should only live in our country in the same manner as we do” (64). This includes speaking Hindi, observing the religious laws, restoring Indian schools and courts, and in commerce “not drain[ing] riches henceforth” (64).

To the Indian people, Gandhi would say that only soul-force and peaceful resistance can remove the British rulership. Lawyers should quit and instead instruct the people; doctors should likewise resign, and each one “understand that rather than mending bodies, he should mend souls” (66). If a man is wealthy, “he will devote his money to establishing hand-looms” (67). All should be forthright, fearless, and virtuous and not blame the English for the fallen state of India. Most of all, it should be understood “that, even in physical warfare, the true test is suffering and not the killing of others, much more so in the warfare of passive resistance” (67).

Of freedom for India, Gandhi declares that “my life henceforth is dedicated to its attainment” (68).

In Appendix I, Gandhi lists twenty recommended books, including works by Tolstoy, Thoreau, Mazzini, and Plato.

Appendix II includes short essays by several prominent figures of the time. Parliamentarian and banker J. Seymour Keay confesses that the India found by the British is already a sophisticated civilization with “highly intellectual” people who are “shrewd in business, acute in reasoning, thrifty, religious, sober, charitable, obedient to parents, reverential to old age, amiable, law-abiding, compassionate towards the helpless and patient under suffering” (69).

Philosopher Victor Cousin declares that Europeans find in India “truths, so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which the European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before that of the East” (69).

Friedrich Max Muller believes that Europeans, “who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish,” should, for a “corrective” to their inner lives, turn to India for wisdom (69).

Frederick von Schlegel praises Indian religious thought: “[A]ll their writings are replete with sentiments and expressions, noble, clear and severely grand, as deeply conceived and reverently expressed as in any human language in which men have spoken of their God” (69).

Clergyman J.A. Dubois notes that the women elders of Indian families manage their broods with great skill and work beside their husbands on the farm or in trades, often more capably than the men.

Academic J. Young finds, even among the poor of India, a people who are hard-working, pious, cheerful, and devoted to their spouses.

Colonel Thomas Munro admires Indian civilization to the point that, “if civilization is to become an article of trade between the two countries, I am convinced that this country (England) will gain by the import cargo” (69).

Finally, Baronet Sir William Wedderburn describes the typical Indian village as “self-contained, industrious, peace-loving, conservative in the best sense of the word” as well as “picturesque and attractive” (69).