Gandhi’s Freedom Through Being
The creation of modern India was a triumph of the power of Being used politically and peacefully to transform a people and their country during the difficult years of 1915-1948. This is the period beginning with Mohandas Gandhi’s return from South Africa to India to plunge into its political and social reformation and ending with his assassination. In the 70 years since his death, it is clear that except for the Indian independence from the British, almost all of the causes that he held dear are yet to be substantially realized. Gandhi was remarkably attuned to the problems of modern civilization such as inequality and communal issues. While new problems have since been added to the list, such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and artificial intelligence, the ailments of modern civilization that Gandhi discussed, and some of his cures, remain relevant even today.
One place to begin is Gandhi’s broad conception of swaraj or human liberation. In 1908, on his way back to South Africa from London, Gandhi had penned Hind Swaraj, a description of what swaraj meant for India. In his mind, it was an answer to the Indian extremists who were prescribing violence as the means for overthrowing British rule in India. While popular imagination in India and the West has focused more on swaraj as political independence, for Gandhi, swaraj was more than that. “I am not interested in freeing India merely from English yoke. I am bent upon freeing India from any yoke whatsoever,” he said.
While defining swaraj, Gandhi gave duty more importance than rights. People who had real swaraj did their duty to their parents, their spouse, their children, their community and their nation. The performance of these duties was only possible when a person had mastered the mind and its passions. This mastery freed people to pursue higher goals such as Truth and meaning, and for such a people, no alien ruler could take away their freedom or ability to enforce their demands. Swaraj was therefore ultimately about individual freedom.
From this starting point, swaraj meant the democratic will of the people to assert their own form of political and economic governance. But this governance would only be considered swaraj if it ensured these freedoms for the least of its people. “To me, it has but one meaning: the eradication of the poverty of India and freedom for every man and woman,” Gandhi said. “Ask the starving men and women of India. They say that their swaraj is their bread.”
Besides poverty, Gandhi focused on removing the practice of “untouchability” in Hinduism, improving Hindu-Muslim relations and eradicating violence from one’s heart. For him, the violence following the Partition of India was the final mark of his failure to convince his countrymen of the real meaning of swaraj.
Gandhi admitted that Hind Swaraj was “a severe condemnation of ‘modern civilization.’” He believed that Western civilization was founded on possessions, self-interest, automation that degrades human labor, the pursuit of pleasures through consumption, fast travel that leads to anxious time awareness, the amoral reduction of everything into monetary terms, and the deterioration of quality, patience and the pursuit of non-monetary goals.
In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi wrote that the institutions of Western civilization, such as modern industry and the railways, had speeded up producing and transporting goods that promote greed and luxuries, while abasing labor through poor working conditions and wages. These institutions also promoted the interests of the industrial capitalists who could now exploit labor and consumers far more than in the past. By placing Mammon above God, Western civilization was making people less religious and therefore less interested in their duties and their relationships with other people.
In contrast, Indian civilization (despite the evils of “untouchability” and other prejudices) was moral, centered in duty to others rather than self-interest, followed God and emphasized self-control. But India risked losing its way due to its adoption of the most corrupt features of Western civilization.