Politics, Ethics and the Self : Re-reading Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj

Hind Swaraj by Mahatma Gandhi is arguably the greatest text to have emerged from the anti-colonial movement in India and the first to seriously challenge the cultural and civilizational premises of the colonizers’ mentality. It is also the first text in India that falls within the broad tradition of modern political philosophy, advancing a complex cluster of theses with conceptual sensitivity, analytical precision, and sustained argument. This book critically engages with Hind Swaraj and explores the fascinating and subtle dialogue set up by Gandhi between the characters of the reader and the editor. With essays from leading contemporary thinkers on Gandhi, the volume looks at themes such as Gandhi on epistemic servitude, decolonization, and intercultural translation; his complex critique of modern civilization; his views on the empire, democracy, citizenship, and violence; the normative structure of Gandhian thought; Gandhi and the political praxis of educational reconstruction; and how to read this text. An important intervention in Gandhian studies, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of peace studies, political philosophy, Indian philosophy, Indian political thought, political sociology, and South Asian studies. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of contributors 10 Acknowledgements 15 Introduction 18 Part 1 The truncated ethic of modern civilization 40 1 The originality of Hind Swaraj 42 2 Gandhi and the debate about civilization 59 3 English rule without the Englishman: citizenship, subalternity, and Gandhi’s ‘reader’ 78 4 Reflections on Gandhi’s anti-modernism 96 5 Hind Swaraj: a historical necessity 120 6 On the normative structure of Gandhian thought: with special reference to Hind Swaraj 127 Part 2 Empire, politics, and violence 136 7 Empire and violence, or the foes in Hind Swaraj 138 8 Political self-rule: Gandhi and the future of democracy 153 9 Politics and violence: Gandhi’s ambivalence to democracy 165 10 A nationalism open towards the world 179 Part 3 Colonization of minds 208 11 Learning from the South: Gandhi and intercultural translation 210 12 Beyond decolonizing knowledge: revisiting the Svaraj in ideas debate 241 13 Gandhi and political praxis of Educational reconstruction, 1909–1938 258 Part 4 Cultivating self 288 14 Could Hind Swaraj presuppose a theory of judgment? 290 15 Gandhi: calling to non-violence joined by a strong pragmatism 304 16 Afterlife of a text: Hind Swaraj and the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha 321 17 Sheherezade and Hind Swaraj 337 18 Gandhi’s Twin fasts and the possibility of non-violence 342 Part 5 How to read Hind Swaraj 352 19 Reading Hind Swarajya/Swaraj in two languages 354 Index 368