Hind Swaraj
November 13, 2023
On November 13, 1909, Gandhi left London on the S.S. Kildonan Castle and headed back to South Africa. He had been petitioning the British for reforms, but was now returning home in defeat. The week-long voyage was put to good use: Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj, a short book of around 29,000 words. The title means Indian self-rule, and carries a double meaning: self-rule for India and rule of self for the Indian people.
Gandhi had turned 40 while in London, so this was an opportunity to codify his accumulated wisdom from the first half of his life. The book takes the form of dialog between a Reader and an Editor. Gandhi’s perspective was represented by the Editor—not surprising for a man whose name appeared on newspaper mastheads. The 20 chapters are reminiscent of a dialogue of Plato; the Reader asks leading questions and the Editor offers explanations.
Gandhi spent time in London talking with Indian anarchists who advocated violence as a means of achieving independence. The Reader sometimes speaks for them: in Chapter 14, they say “At first, we will assassinate a few Englishmen and strike terror…. We will undertake guerrilla warfare, and defeat the English.” Of course, the Editor persuades them that nonviolence is superior.
The book is often and justly considered to be anti-technology. The Editor speaks against the mills whose looms displaced artisan craftsmen, describes trains as “a distributing agency for the evil one,” and explains that doctors were “injurious to mankind.” Although he later softened some of his language, Gandhi continued to advocate for a simpler life.
One of my favorite chapters trashes lawyers. Gandhi, of course, had had a law practice for 15 years, and his income might plausibly have put him in the top 1%. But lawyers, the Editor points out, “will as a rule, advance quarrels, instead of repressing them.” Like politicians and doctors, if they were effective in solving the problems brought to them, they’d be out of business. Some years later, Gandhi advocated for a single-payer system; doctors and lawyers “should be paid a certain fixed sum by the State and the public should receive their services free.”1
The Editor concludes by reminding the Reader that “One’s rule over one’s own mind is real swaraj,”2 and “The way to it is passive resistance: that is soul-force or love force.” The book’s last eight words describe the course Gandhi would take over the second half of his life: “my life henceforth is dedicated to its attainment.”
If you wrote a book which brought a Reader around to an Editor’s point of view, what would that opinion be?
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, March 5, 1928
This is the original Gujarati; the English version rephrased it at “Real home-rule is self-rule or self-control.”