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among others, advocated the former and Gandhi, the latter. Hind Swaraj end the ambivalence and paves the way for satyagraha as the means of resisting colonisation, injustice and exploitation. Moreover, with his moral stand, Gandhi transformed the paradigm of the colonial struggle. With his intervention, it was no longer a conflict between the coloniser (the British) and the colonised (Indians) but between two sets of value systems - unjust, oppressive, authoritarian and violent brute force on the one hand, and humane, democratic, peaceloving and culturally superior Love/Truth/Soul Force, or Satyagraha, on the other. The latter is needed even more today, though there is no country under colonial rule.
The end of physical external colonisation, however, has not led to a peaceful, equal society. In the case of India, For instance, mere political freedom from the colonial rule has not ensured a conflict - free society. The reason for this is we have failed to dislodge the institutional forms of inequality, injustice and psychological structures which have been perpetuated by years of external and internal colonisation. So, sahishnuata (tolerance), ahimsa (non-violence or non-injury) and Satyagraha still remain relevant as political strategies in the socalled post-calonial society.
Gandhi Hind Swaraj presented a model for the post-colonial world- when colonisation was almost at its peak covering about 80 per cent of the globe and long before the end of physical occupation, as in the case of India. Moreover, the text is not based on perpetual hatred against the colonisers. Gandhi's satyagraha is 'for' all and 'against' none, whereas all other models of resistance and struggle against colonisation and exploitation cannot go beyond the binary mode of 'self' and 'other' and therefore can neither accept the 'other', as it is/was, nor submit to it for a harmonious future.
Gandhi's model of decolonisation and of the struggle for independence differed from his contermporaries because of his insightful reading of the phenomenon. Besides analysing the motives, strengths and weaknesses of the colonisers and the colonised, he was wise enough to realise that the coloniser-colonised discourse and its practices were constructed on inequality, i.e. the high and the low pedestals of relational hierarchy. Gandhi not only levelled the playing field, but also put Indian civilisation on a higher plane by calling it superior to the Western. In his fight against discrimination, he erased the difference by first deflating the myth of the superiority of the coloniser. In south Africa, Gandhi was ignored and humiliated, but he did not either aim at humbling the British (or whites) or take the pledge of expelling or overthrowing them there. After his return to India, he found that about 30 crore Indians, according to Sri Aurobindo's estimate (Aurobindo 1908:5), were rules by about 1,00,000 British. Despite the glaringly plausible evidence of the coloniser's superiority - With the unbelievable ratio of 1:3000- he made the colonised (the blacks/ Asians / Indians) think, feel and be equal to their masters. His prime objective was to shift from servile deference to the colonisers to irreverence (not negative but positive), to the institutions of discrimination of exploitation and injustice like law, policies and governance (including taxation) that were formed as the means of preserving and ઑક્ટોબર- ૨૦૧૮ પણ જીવનઃ ગાંઘી સાર્ધશતાબ્દી વિશેષાંક
Gandhi read colonisation diggerently from others, particularly the colonisers who had peddled the myth of their physical, cultural and intellectural superiority. In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi punctured that myth and proved it an illusion, thereby changing the paradigm of colonisation. He seemed to have rejected colonisation on ethical grounds because it is based on exploitation and injustice. Moreover, it leads to de-humanisation of the colonised because prolonged enslavement leads to inferiorisation of many by a few. Changing the existing perception of colonisation, he proposed that the British are in India not because of their superiority but because Indians are complicit in their colonisation (Gandhi 1931:34-35).
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સત્ય-અહિંસા-અપરિગ્રહ
