Hind Swaraj by M.K. Gandhi
Colonized India
India is less so oppressed by the colonizing English as both the English and India are oppressed by modernity. Thus, Gandhi’s critique of the condition of India can be read as a grand critique of modernity.
The English Condition
He begin’s his critique by stating that the colonizer’s (British) are no better for they have demagogues in a non-functional parliamentary whose members only care about their own advancement. The people’s opinions change every fear years as opportunist orators command the crowds attention through the newspaper — what the English treat as their bible.
A Broad Critique of Modernity
The first critique is that modernity focuses on the wrong thing: “people living in it make bodily welfare the object of life.” He highlights how the westerner is so proud of the trains, machines, and houses that make his bodily welfare better and cites them as signs of societal progress.
His second critique is that modernity even fails at achieving it’s own misguided goal. He cites how modernity has many workers in conditions that are “worse than beasts” in coal mines and huge factories as well as how it creates a whole hosts of diseases previously unknown to man.
His third critique is that society is becoming irreligious and as a result amoral. Ghandhi himself was heavily influenced by Hinduism. He studied many religions deeply and was a pluralist in the political realm, which eventually led to his assassination. He sees all religions as pointing to the same truth of God and love. “Religion is dear to me and my first complaint is that India is becoming irreligious. Here I am not thinking of the Hindu or the Mohammedan or the Zoroastrian religion but of that religion which underlies all religions. We are turning away from God.”
His fourth critique is that technology has made things too easy. He believes that all the good things in life are hard and the bad things in life are easy, as a result technology, by making things easy, increases the bad in life. “ Good travels at a snail's pace—it can, therefore, have little to do with the railways. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time.” He cites how now anybody can just publish a book: “anybody writes and prints anything he likes and poisons people's minds.” He also describes how transportation has enabled so many unfaithful individuals to travel to holy sites — a place that previously required great sacrifices to arrive at. “The holy places of India have become unholy. Formerly, people went to these places with very great difficulty. Generally, therefore, only the real devotees visited such places. Nowadays rogues visit them in order to practice their roguery.”
His fifth critique is a Marxist critique of capitalism: alienation from product, production, and others as well as a grotesque form of materialism. “According to the teaching of Mohamed this would be considered a Satanic Civilization. Hinduism calls it the Black Age. I cannot give you an adequate conception of it. It is eating into the vitals of the English nation. It must be shunned.”
A Critique of Lawyers
He dislikes lawyers because:
They profit off of dissension, and as a result they flame arguments instead of resolve them.
Even if what they are doing is just, they do what they do not to help others but rather to enrich themselves.
They confirm English authority by bringing forth their notion of law.
A Critique of Railroads
He dislikes railroads because:
They make traveling to holy sites way too easy and increase the amount of unfaithful who are there.
They spread disease faster.
They make the economy much more national and centralized as opposed to local.
A Critique of Doctors
He dislikes doctors because:
They make us indulge in vice more easily by taking away the pain that would have taught us a lesson:”I have indulged in vice, I contract a disease, a doctor cures me, the odds are that I shall repeat the vice. Had the doctor not intervened, nature would have done its work, and I would have acquired mastery over myself, would have been freed from vice and would have become happy.”
They focus on body over mind.
Even if what they were doing is good, they do it out of obtaining honors and riches rather than serving humanity.
A Critique of Machinery
He dislikes machinery/automation because:
It creates big cities that causes diseases.
It promotes laziness.
Work is a part of the noble life, leisure is only good up to a point. “Leisure is good and necessary up to a point only. God created man to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, and I dread the prospect of our being able to produce all that we want, including our food-stuffs, out of a conjuror’s hat.”
It displaces workers.
It concentrates wealth in the hands of the few.
It makes villages more dependent upon one another: “that they manufacture their clothing in their own villages, even as they prepare their own food. These villages cannot retain the freedom they have enjoyed from time immemorial if they do not control the production of prime necessaries of life.”
He thinks concentrated machinery is responsible for all the plites of our economic system: “When production and consumption both become localized, the temptation to speed up production, indefinitely and at any price, disappears. All the endless difficulties and problems that our present-day economic system present, too, would then come to an end….. There would be no unnatural accumulation of hoards in the pockets of the few and want in the midst of plenty in regard to the rest.”
However, it is not fair to read Ghandhi as against all machinery and scientific innovation, as long as it doesn’t displace labor, leave people idle and produce the above consequences. He is a fan of slight improvements but not total displacement:
I would welcome every improvement in the cottage machine, but I know that it is criminal to displace hand labour by the introduction of power-driven spindles unless one is, at the same time, ready to give millions of farmers some other occupation in their homes.
…
I am not opposed to machinery as such. I am opposed to machinery which displaces labour and leaves it idle.
Swaraj: Ideal India
The Swaraj (self rule) that Ghandi wants isn’t a system of the English with Indian rulers. “You want the tiger's nature, but not the tiger; that is to say, you would make India English. And when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englistan. This is not the Swaraj that I want… The tendency of the Indian civilization is to elevate the moral being, that of the Western civilization is to propagate immorality.”
Ghandi is one of the rare individuals in modernity (although this was an often shared opinion in older times) that we have been going fully in the wrong direction. Yes, maybe there have been some slight improvements in science that is good but he essentially wants to fully revert back to the old days.
Firstly, it is characterized by a focus on virtue:
Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent for civilization means "good conduct".
He thinks that the ideal India already existed in antiquity and all we have to do is to revert back to it. “India, as so many writers have shown, has nothing to learn from anybody else, and this is as it should be. We notice that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled.”
Secondly, it is characterized by life centered around in villages rather than big cities, where everyone participates in a localized production process:
They saw that our real happiness and health consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet. They further reasoned that large cities were a snare and a useless encumbrance and that people would not be happy in them, that there would be gangs of thieves and robbers, prostitution and vice flourishing in them and that poor men would be robbed by rich men. They were, therefore, satisfied with small villages. They saw that kings and their swords were inferior to the sword of ethics, and they, therefore, held the sovereigns of the earth to be inferior to the Rishis and the Fakirs. A nation with a constitution like this is fitter to teach others than to learn from others.
How to Obtain the Ideal
Satyagraha
In the face of violent oppression Gandhi advices Satyagraha “a grasping of truth”. He thinks that non-violent disobedience is the best way to fight oppression.
There are three layers of meaning I take in this word. The first is the equivalence in Religion between love and truth, it is repeated in both Christianity and Buddhism that only when you love your enemy can you see the truth. To say that Satyagraha is a grasping of truth is also to say that it annihilates antagonisms, it makes you love and pity your oppressor. The second is a deontological reading, that our actions must abide by moral truth, namely to love. The last is pragmatic, that it is through the truth of one’s non-violent resistance being broadcasted that we change the oppressors.
The reasoning he proposes this form of reform is six-fold: one virtue-ethics based, one deontological, three consequential, and one historical.
1. Virtue Ethics: He believes that violence corrodes the character of the person who commits violence.
2. Deontological He believes that the means are inseparable from the ends. “ Your reasoning is the same as saying that we can get a rose through planting a noxious weed.” His buddhist background really comes through in this idea of karmic seeds. He thinks that the end state fundamentally contains the process of its becoming and thus we have a duty for its means to be just: “If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay you for it; and if I want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation.” He thinks that ONLY fair means can produce fair ends. (I guess this could still be considered consequentialist)
3. Consequentialist: He thinks that violence is hardly effective. It usually spirals out of control into a mimetic escalation.
4. Consequentialist: He believes that by showing kindness and love to your oppressor they can be motivated internally to change and pity you. This is the only means to produce the fair ends if you consider the fair ends to be a fundamental moral transformation of your oppressor.
You think that this stealing habit must be a disease with him. Henceforth, you, therefore, keep your doors and windows open, you change your sleeping-place, and you keep your things in a manner most accessible to him. The robber comes again and is confused as all this is new to him; nevertheless, he takes away your things. But his mind is agitated. He inquires about you in the village, he comes to learn about your broad and loving heart, he repents, he begs your pardon, returns you your things, and leaves off the stealing habit. He becomes your servant, and you find for him honorable employment. This is the second method. Thus, you see, different means have brought about totally different results. I do not wish to deduce from this that robbers will act in the above manner or that all will have the same pity and love like you, but I only wish to show that fair means alone can produce fair results, and that, at least in the majority of cases, if not indeed in all, the force of love and pity is infinitely greater than the force of arms. There is harm in the exercise of brute force, never in that of pity.
5. Consequentialist: He believes that by getting the sympathy of the international community, you can pressure your oppressor through external means as well. It clearly highlights the oppressors as the bad guys. This is why Gandhi thinks the Soul-force/truth-force of Satyagraha is more powerful.
6. Historical: when asked what historical example he can give of this form of resistance, he replies that all of time has been sustained by this truth-force. “Recorded-history” is merely the small blimps when this force failed to work, thus most of our issues have actually been resolved by love rather than violence.
The fact that there are so many men still alive in the world shows that it is based not on the force of arms but on the force of truth or love. Therefore, the greatest and most unimpeachable evidence of the success of this force is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the wars of the world, it still lives on. Thousands, indeed tens of thousands, depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. Little quarrels of millions of families in their daily lives disappear before the exercise of this force. Hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not and cannot take note of this fact. History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul.
With that said, Gandhi did not have a universal deontological commitment against violence, he supported violence when fighting for one’s country. And even in alleviating oppression, he says that violence is to be preferred to cowardice. But obviously Satyagraha is to be preferred to all.
Education
He says that STEM and science education is not pivotal. It might be great as an ornament, but compared to the education that builds character and ethics, it is nothing.
All I have now shown is that we must not make of [science] a fetish. It is not our Kamadhuk. In its place it can be of use and it has its place when we have brought our senses under subjection and put our ethics on a firm foundation. And then, if we feel inclined to receive that education, we may make good use of it. As an ornament it is likely to sit well on us. It now follows that it is not necessary to make this education compulsory. Our ancient school system is enough. Character-building has the first place in it and that is primary education. A building erected on that foundation will last.
This is indeed a core part of our training that has been lost. Gandhi is adamant that western values and eastern values are incompatible, as opposed to the Dalai Lama who encourages the study of science:
In order to restore India to its pristine condition, we have to return to it. In our own civilization there will naturally be progress, retrogression, reforms, and reactions; but one effort is required, and that is to drive out Western civilization. All else will follow.
Miscellaneous
Gandhi talks about an epistemology of both love and pain. The former enables us to see the moral truth, to know the right action, only when we pity our oppressors can we really make meaningful progress. The latter helps us learn and remember, this was regarding his commentary on how doctors take away our opportunities to correct our vices.
Gandhi’s proposals are not radical/unrealistic at all considering the ends he wants to achieve. Fanon recommended violence because he wanted his country to be liberated and be materially well-off. Gandhi want’s to have a sphere that is highly moral. If those are his goals, he is not far off for saying that we have little to learn from the west, or that the only way to obtain the “fair ends” he wants is through nonviolence. As long as we keep in mind the end society, Gandhi wants to establish, it makes his recommendation all the more plausible. The interesting question is: is Fanon’s ends worth having without the moral transformation? Gandhi makes more sense and becomes more plausible when you read him as fighting two wars: the first war externally against the colonizers and the second war internally against the worldview of the colonizers. To win both wars, that is to establish political independence and be free from the spiritual bondage of materialism, what Gandhi proposed is not only effective but also necessary. Fanon only wants to win the external war and thus violence is a perfectly fine measure to do so.