2.

Gandhi’s Idea of
Swaraj
Dr. Karan Sharma
INDIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT
1. Setting the Scene: Why Swaraj?
• Gandhi treated swaraj not as a tidy constitutional demand but as the
organising principle of India’s moral‑political renaissance.
• He refused to give a neat dictionary definition; instead he scattered
clues—“abandonment of the fear of death,” “the ability to suffer
without rancour,” and “disciplined rule from within”—leaving
interpreters to reconstruct the full architecture from these fragments.
• This strategic “vagueness” allowed him to address diverse
constituencies simultaneously: to the Anglicised elite it still sounded like
parliamentary self‑government, whereas to peasants it whispered of
dignity and freedom from oppressive landlords; to himself it meant
nothing less than inner self‑mastery.
2. Genealogy of the Concept
• Pre‑Gandhian strands: The term was already in circulation: Dadabhai
Naoroji spoke of “swaraj within the Empire,” while Bal Gangadhar Tilak
infused it with a Vedantic emphasis on self‑control and inner freedom.
• Tilak’s synthesis of Vedic spirituality and Western nationalism offered
Gandhi two key insights: (a) that political liberty without moral autonomy
is hollow, and (b) that rhetoric rooted in indigenous culture mobilises
more deeply than borrowed liberal slogans.
• Gandhi inherited this semantic range but decisively re‑weighted it.
“English rule without the Englishmen,” he warned, would merely turn
“Hindustan” into “Englishstan” and keep the tiger’s nature after removing
the tiger. Swaraj had to re‑make, not just re‑name, power.
3. De‑colonising the Concept
• Four Dimensions: Chakrabarty lists four concentric circles of meaning
in Gandhi’s mature view:
• (a) national independence, (b) political freedom of the individual, (c)
economic freedom, and (d) spiritual self‑rule.
• The first three are negative—freedom from foreign domination,
arbitrary authority, and poverty—while the fourth is positive: an
achieved state of self‑realisation once external fetters fall away.
• 3.1 National Independence: For Gandhi this was indispensable yet insufficient.
His 1930 “Declaration of Independence” insists that any government must both
emanate from popular will and secure life‑opportunities for all. Mere transfer
of flag without transformation of governance would betray the ideal.
• 3.2 Political Freedom of the Individual: Swaraj meant awakening the “average
villager” to the fact that he is his own legislator. Panchayati self ‑government,
transparent deliberation, and the right—and duty—to resist unjust laws were
its concrete expressions.
• 3.3 Economic Freedom: Colonialism produced a “four‑fold disaster”: ruinous
de‑industrialisation, loss of self‑determination, mental servility, and militarised
coercion. Restoring local industry, fair exchange, and dignity of labour
(symbolised by the spinning wheel) became non ‑negotiable pillars of swaraj.
• 3.4 Spiritual Self‑Rule: Drawing on advaita metaphysics, Gandhi saw swaraj as
the kingdom of the self—a recognition that “you and I are not other than one
another”. Colonial domination was therefore not only political but epistemic
and spiritual; overthrowing it required seeing through the illusion (māyā) of
inferiority and separateness.
4. Means and Ends: Satyagraha and
Non‑Violence
• For Gandhi, the how mattered as much as the what. Nationalists of
the Moderate wing petitioned, Extremists bombed; both prioritised
the goal over the path.
• Gandhi inverted this calculus: “swaraj through violence will be no
swaraj”.
• Satyagraha—“securing rights by personal suffering” rather than
body‑force—was the operational grammar of swaraj.
• Rooted in satya and ahimsa, it aimed to transform, not humiliate, the
adversary; hence its contrast with duragraha, coercion fuelled by
resentment. Without this moral capital “in the shape of character,”
the struggle would relapse into another cycle of domination.
5. Swadeshi: The Empirical Pathway
• If swaraj is the theory, swadeshi is the practice—“the spirit which
restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings”.
• Gandhi’s oft‑ quoted village‑economy blueprint envisaged every
settlement as a “self‑supporting and self‑contained unit,” trading only
what it could not locally produce.
• The motive was neither isolationism nor romantic pastoralism but
resistance to exploitative circuits of colonial capital and the cultivation
of ethical reciprocity among neighbours.
6. Swaraj as Social Leveller
• Because it demanded active participation—spinning cotton, attending village
councils, courting arrest—swaraj was a great leveller, drawing “hitherto
socio‑politically marginal sections of society” into public life.
• Diverse castes, classes, and genders discovered new civic identities in the
shared discipline of non‑violent struggle.
7. Inner Revolution: “Disciplined Rule from Within”
- Gandhi repeatedly called swaraj a “self‑transformative activity,” “a mental
revolution” that yields “the constantly confirmed consciousness of being in
charge of one’s destiny”.
- Political structures mattered, but without internal conversion they would
become fresh machinery of coercion. Thus his Constructive Programme—
Khadi, basic education, communal harmony, abolition of untouchability—
sought to prefigure the liberated society within the shell of the old.
10. Practical Institutions of Swaraj
• Panchayati Raj: local self‑government as the nursery of democratic
habits.
• Khadi and Village Industries: economic decentralization as both
livelihood security and moral discipline.
• Constructive Work: adult literacy, sanitation, communal amity—
preparing citizens to wield freedom responsibly.
• Satyagraha Training: spinning, fasting, jail‑going, and open public
debates forged the civic courage necessary to guard swaraj from
relapse into tyranny.
• Each initiative embodies the logic that freedom must be practised to
be possessed.