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Mahatma GandhiHind Swaraj
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1909A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introductory MaterialsChapter Summaries & Analyses
Introductory Materials Summary: “To the Reader”
Gandhi says to the “diligent reader of my writings” (2) that his beliefs have evolved and his writings are not, therefore, always consistent over time. Should one of his quotes contradict another, the reader is advised to “choose the later of the two on the same subject” (2).
Introductory Materials Summary: “Preface to the New Edition”
The editor of the 1938 English-language edition, Mahadev Desai, adds comments on some of the major issues raised by readers of prepublication copies.
First, “[t]he principle of non-violence and love was enunciated by Buddha and Christ centuries ago” and has worked “on small clear-cut issues” (2), but can it work across an entire nation that tries to free itself from a colonial power? It may be possible but only through “love, and pure unselfish love is impossible without unsullied purity of mind and body” (2).
Critics worry that Gandhi’s rejection of machinery will become unsustainable to his followers. The editor responds that Gandhi condemns not machines per se, but their misuse; of mechanized civilization, Gandhi says that “[t]he impetus behind it all is not the philanthropy to save labour, but greed” (2). Thus, many machines serve only the ambitions of the wealthy and should be discarded.
Should Western civilization itself be discarded by India? Gandhi believes the defects of the West are not inherent and can be mended, perhaps by men of character who can help Europe find its own liberation, and “Gandhiji’s object in the book was to contrast the tendencies of the Indian civilization with those of the Western” (2).
Wars erupt in many places in 1938, prompting some critics to question nonviolence in such dangerous times. The answer is that “faith in non-violence does not begin to shake at the mention of Italian or Japanese barbarities. For violence breeds the results of violence, and once you start the game there is no limit to be drawn” (2). When shooting at the opponent, we fire on “guiltless people” (2) who are mere pawns of the real enemy, the hostile foreign government.
Introductory Materials Summary: “Preface”
Editor Desai notes that the original book Hind Swaraj appears in 1908 and is promptly banned by the British in India. Gandhi translates the book into English in 1912 and republishes it, essentially unchanged, for a wider audience in 1938. The book presents “the twin principles of Truth and Non-violence” (3).
Introductory Materials Summary: “A Message”
Gandhi welcomes the 1938 publication of the English-language version of Hind Swaraj and notes that his views, as expressed in the book, remain essentially unchanged after thirty years.
Introductory Materials Summary: “A Word of Explanation”
Writing for the 1921 English-language edition, Gandhi says that his theory of Satyagraha, formed during his work among the Indian population of South Africa and tested there for two years, “had developed sufficiently to permit me to write of it with some degree of confidence” (3). The book “replaces violence with self-sacrifice. It pits soul force against brute force” (3). Gandhi believes India should abandon “modern civilization” (3), but “[i]t requires a higher simplicity and renunciation than the people are today prepared for” (4).
Introductory Materials Analysis
Hind Swaraj has a large influence on the course of events in India between 1909 and 1948. Gandhi believes strongly in nonviolence and advocates it as the enlightened approach to political conflict, including resistance to illegitimate authority. He suggests that a country can achieve freedom in a single day if all its citizens join together in nonviolent action. Beginning in South Africa among Indians immigrants, who suffer discrimination, and continuing in India itself, where the people live under the lash of the English colonial rule—the “Raj”—Gandhi applies Satyagraha, or truth-force, time and again, with startling results.
His Salt March of 1930, when Gandhi and a crowd of supporters walk 240 miles to the coast to distill salt from seawater in defiance of a British salt tax, makes world headlines. Other actions include peaceful sit-ins conducted in the face of police beatings and death. This calm and loving defiance against raw power and bigotry marks the beginning of the civil disobedience movement. That movement spreads across the world to the United States, where Martin Luther King Jr., a Gandhi adherent, leads nonviolent demonstrations and sit-ins in the 1950s and 1960s in support of equal rights for African Americans.
Gandhi, like King, is arrested many times. At one point Gandhi serves two years in prison. Briefly he leads the Indian National Congress, a progressive political organization that works for liberation from Britain and later becomes the dominant political party after Indian independence.
In a way, the 1938 English-language re-release of Hind Swaraj sounds the starting bell for the last big push toward Indian liberation, which is finally achieved nine years later. Gandhi lives to see his dream of independence fulfilled, and he comes to be known as the Father of the Nation.
Sadly, and like Martin Luther King, Gandhi is assassinated. It happens shortly after independence. His ideas and his book, Hind Swaraj, however, continue to influence world political movements that support self-determination and justice.
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