1st Edition
Politics, Ethics and the Self Re-reading Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj
Hind Swaraj by Mahatma Gandhi is arguably the greatest text to have emerged from the anti-colonial movement in India and the first to seriously challenge the cultural and civilizational premises of the colonizers’ mentality. It is also the first text in India that falls within the broad tradition of modern political philosophy, advancing a complex cluster of theses with conceptual sensitivity, analytical precision, and sustained argument.
This book critically engages with Hind Swaraj and explores the fascinating and subtle dialogue set up by Gandhi between the characters of the reader and the editor. With essays from leading contemporary thinkers on Gandhi, the volume looks at themes such as Gandhi on epistemic servitude, decolonization, and intercultural translation; his complex critique of modern civilization; his views on the empire, democracy, citizenship, and violence; the normative structure of Gandhian thought; Gandhi and the political praxis of educational reconstruction; and how to read this text.
An important intervention in Gandhian studies, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of peace studies, political philosophy, Indian philosophy, Indian political thought, political sociology, and South Asian studies.
Introduction
Rajeev Bhargava
Part 1: The truncated ethic of modern civilization
1. The Originality of Hind Swaraj
Anthony J. Parel
2. Gandhi and the Debate about Civilization
Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
3. English Rule Without the Englishman: Citizenship, Subalternity, and Gandhi's ‘Reader’
Ajay Skaria
4. Reflections on Gandhi’s Anti-Modernism
Akeel Bilgrami
5. Hind Swaraj: A Historical Necessity
Nandkishore Acharya
6. On the Normative Structure of Gandhian Thought: With Special Reference to Hind Swaraj
Satish K. Jain
Part 2: Empire, politics, and violence
7. Empire and Violence, or the Foes in Hind Swaraj
Rajmohan Gandhi
8. Political Self-Rule: Gandhi and the Future of Democracy
Fred Reinhard Dallmayr
9. Politics and Violence: Gandhi’s Ambivalence to Democracy
Uday Singh Mehta
10. A Nationalism Open Towards the World
Jeremy Webber
Part 3: Colonization of minds
11. Learning from the South: Gandhi and Intercultural Translation
Boaventura de Sousa Santos
12. Beyond Decolonizing Knowledge: Revisiting the Svaraj in Ideas Debate
Shail Mayaram
13. Gandhi And Political Praxis of Educational Reconstruction, 1909–1938
Joseph Bara
Part 4: Cultivating self
14. Could Hind Swaraj Presuppose a Theory of Judgment?
Sasheej Hegde
15. Gandhi: Calling to Non-Violence Joined by a Strong Pragmatism
Gangeya Mukherji
16. Afterlife of a Text: Hind Swaraj and the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha
Hilal Ahmed
17. Sheherezade and Hind Swaraj
Lucy Nusseibeh and Sari Nusseibeh
18. Gandhi’s Twin Fasts and the Possibility of Non-Violence
Sudhir Chandra
Part 5: How to read Hind Swaraj
19. Reading Hind Swarajya/Swaraj in Two Languages
Tridip Suhrud
Biography
Rajeev Bhargava is former Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India.
