GANDHI’S HIND SWARAJ: ANALYZING IDEAS ON MODERNITY AND COLONIALISM 0 0

Abstract

`Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most-read writers of the 20th century. Gandhi’s work and writing have many admirers as well as critics; his writings, in general, and Hind Swaraj in particular, have been interpreted in various ways. Some authors have called him an enemy of modernity, while others have interpreted him as a forerunner of post-modern thinking. What is essential here is to look at Gandhi not just as someone against modernity but as someone who provides us an alternate understanding of modernity.’ By alternative understanding of modernity, I mean Gandhi understood modernity very differently from his contemporaries. He did not reject every idea linked to modernity, but he attacked the ills of modernity, most clearly its manifestation in Western civilization and institutions of modernity. Moreover, his critique of Western civilization should be considered a moral and cultural challenge to modernity.

His ideas of colonialism are also intermingled with his understanding of the ills of modernity, particularly the inherent obsession with material wealth that comes with Western modernity. Moreover, colonialism starts with economic and political control but goes further to colonizing consciousness. So, Gandhi’s idea of Swaraj is not limited to political or economic freedom but also spiritual freedom of individuals or self-rule, which comes only with the decolonization of the mind.