Hind Swaraj : A Fresh Look
By Jai Narain Sharma
Abstract
In
Hind Swaraj Gandhi does not provide a rigorous social analysis from which his
political conclusions could be logically derived. His was a moral response to
what he perceived as the evils of modern civilization. A fresh look at Hind
Swaraj can, then, frustrate a mere intellectual approach that seeks either to
lay bare the structure of Gandhian Thought as a means to reducing Gandhi to a
formulae or to sharpen one's understanding of the forces that have created or
sustained modern civilization in its present form. The sensibility underlying
Hind Swaraj has its roots not in the intellectual but in the moral. As such,
what is thus essentially a moral sensibility cannot be fully grasped by
intellectual effort alone. No doubt, intellectual effort is necessary; but this
intellectual effort will bear fruit only after it has been touched with the
transforming illumination of moral sensibility.
