Concepts Gandhi gave us

SWARAJ
SWADESHI
SATYA
SATYAGRAHA
SARVODAYA

 The only motive is to serve my country, to find out
the Truth, and to follow it. If, therefore my views
are proved to be wrong, I shall have no hesitation
in rejecting them.
 If they are proved to be right, I would naturally
wish, for the sake of the Motherland,
that others should adopt them.

 In ‘Hind Swaraj’ Gandhi combined rejection of
the liberative contribution of modernity with an
attempt to integrate these positive elements
with a liberating re-interpretation of tradition.
 With his critique from within the tradition,
Gandhi becomes the great synthesiser of
contraries within and across traditions.

 For Gandhi civilisation was by definition a moral
enterprise: "Civilisation is that mode of conduct
which points out to man the path of duty“
 Unacceptable were the two points - ‘might is right’
and the ‘survival of the fittest’.
 Also, colonial imperialism, industrial capitalism,
and rationalist materialism.

 Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj presents us with an
idealised version of Indian culture that is
completely counterpunctal to the ‘Modern West’.
 Here we pick out three seminal themes:
 Swaraj (Self rule),
 Swadeshi (Self governance) and
 Satya (Truth).

 Swaraj as ‘self rule’ and as ‘self-government’
 The first as self-control, rule over oneself,
was the foundation for the second, self-
government. In this second sense, local self
~government was what Gandhi really had in
mind.
 Gandhi very decidedly gives priority to self-rule
over self-government, and to both over political
independence, swatantrata.

 Essential to both meanings swaraj, was a sense of
self-respect that is precisely Gandhi’s answer to
colonial rule.
 For Gandhi freedom in its most fundamental sense
had to mean freedom for self-realisation. But it
had to be a freedom for all, for the toiling masses,
and the privileged classes, and most importantly
for the least and last Indian.

 Clearly, the foundation of Swaraj in both its
senses had to be threefold: self-respect, self-
realisation and self-reliance.
 This is what Gandhi tried to symbolise with the
charka and khadi, both much misunderstood
symbols today.
 Manchester cloth Vs home spun khadi

 For Gandhi real rights are legitimated by duties they
flow from, for both are founded on satya and dharma.
 The modern theory of rights reverses this priority and
founds rights on the dignity and freedom of the
individual.
 But comprehensive morality can never be adequately
articulated or correctly grasped in terms of rights alone.

 It is this commitment of the individual to his
‘desh’ that was Gandhi’s Indian alternative to
western nationalism.
 The village Gandhi idealised was not just a
geographic place, or a statistic, or a social
class.
 It was an event, a dream, a happening, a
culture.
 As he used "the term ‘village’ implied not an
entity, but a set of values"

 SATYA: Truthfulness, honesty, transparency,
accountability, expanding conscience,
awareness and responsibility; justice with
compassion; taking responsibility for past
mistakes; pluralism;
 understanding of the multiplicity of truth;
humility and respect for others’ truths; holding
on to relative truth but continuing quest for
further truth; attempting to arrive at a
consensus on key issues; quest for truth.

 Gandhi called the Indian movement for
independence as Satyagraha, that is to say,
the Force which is born of Truth and Love or
non-violence.
 Satyagraha was a combination of reason,
morality and politics

 Sarvodaya is upliftment or welfare of all.
 Gandhi first encountered this noble notion in the
book titled ‘Unto This Last’ by John Ruskin, in
1904.
 The impact of this reading was powerful that it
proved to be a life changing experience for
Gandhi.
 He was determined to change his life in
accordance with the ideals of the book.

Ruskin’s ideology was based on three fundamental
tenets;
• That the good of the individual is contained in the
good of all.
• That a lawyer’s work has the same value as the
barber's in as much as all have the same right of
earning their livelihood from their work.
• That a life of labor, i.e., the life of the tiller of the
soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living

Sarvodaya was a social ideology in its fundamental
form. Emancipation of disparity between social
classes was its objective. and it could be best
implemented by political will and state machinery.
It would affect in letter and spirit the singular
objective of Sarvodaya; inclusive growth and
progress. For Gandhi and for India, this meant
grassroot level uplift which began from the villages
and from the most deprived classes.

 Purity of means and ends; welfare of all and
welfare of last first.
 Peaceful resolution of conflicts, constructive
work to build up a nonviolent world order,
 Relief and rehabilitation work; removing
structural (indirect) violence.

 Satyagraha was a combination of reason,
morality and politics.
 Gandhi defined ‘passive resistance’ as he
called it then as "a method of securing rights by
personal suffering“.
 It appealed to the opponent’s head, heart and
interests.

 Gandhi was the first leader to bring non-violence to
centre stage in the struggle for freedom with the
British.
 He was well aware that adopting "methods of
violence to drive out the English" would be a
"suicidal policy".
 Hind Swaraj was precisely intended to stymie such
a soul-destroying venture.

 Thus one remarkable re- interpretations of
Hinduism that Gandhi effected was that of the
Gita.
 This text intended to persuade a reluctant
warrior on the legitimacy and even the
necessity of joining the battle.
 Gandhi reworks its ‘nishkama karma’ to
become the basis of his ahimsa and
satyagraha!

 An ecological understanding now requires a new
and deep realisation of our interdependence. We
have only one earth, we must learn to share and
care.
 Thus, with regard to the economy and polity,
Gandhi would have the village as his world.
 With regard to culture and religion, it was the
world that was his village! Surely, here we have a
viable example of thinking globally and acting
locally.

 For Gandhi, "individuality" must be "oriented to
self-realisation through self-knowledge... in a
network of interdependence and harmony
informed by ahimsa“
 Nor was this to be an interdependence of
dominant-subservient relationships so
prevalent in our local communities and global
societies.
 His Swadeshi envisaged a more personalised
and communitarian society on a human scale.

Gandhi wanted education to help India move
away from the Western concept of progress,
towards a different form of development
more suited to its needs and more viable, for
the world as a whole. True education is that
which trains all the three abilities, spiritual,
intellectual, and economic, simultaneously.

It is not clear whether he was against the spirit of
modern science and technology, or whether his
opposition to Western-type modernity was
confined to the manner in which science and
technology had been used to exploit non-
European societies. Gandhi implied need for
ethical and sustainable science and technology.

Sathyagraha and Sarvodaya (uplift of all) are
Gandhi’s most significant and revolutionary
contributions to the contemporary political thought.
Gandhi’s originality lay in the way he fused truth and
non-violence in both theory and practice.
Leave alone the ‘hand-spinning austere living
syndrome’ dubbed as Gandhism, the lessons
Gandhi taught: heroic self reliance fearlessness,
perched on truth, non-violence, voluntary
cooperation and an abiding concern for the poor.

 Dignity of manual labor; Attention to Sanitation.
 The good of the individual is contained in the good
of all.
 Each can and should serve society by his own labor
and profession in the field of his choice.
 There is no colonialism today, it is for us bear
responsibility for improving our village, city and
India.

Concepts Gandhi gave us

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