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All utopias are extended alternatives, carried to extremes, No text contains as many utopias or alternatives as Hind Swaraj does. It provides a critique of and complex alternatives to the Western project of modemisaton and development, colonial education and history (from the history of kings and wars to the history of periods of love and peace). Further, Gandhi was no naive romantic utopian as artists or poets are, but a practicing activist who experimented with alternatives and implemented them as well. As regards the question of the impracticality of Gandhi's views, one can argue that in their own times, all visionaries like the Buddha, Mahavir, the Christ, Mohammed and Karl Marx remained, and still remain, impractical and unrealistic. The Buddha and the Christ became increasingly impractical even for their followers, else why should there still be so much sectarianism and violence in their fold and the need for practising their principles? Similarly, the marxists have failed Marx in Germany, the land of his birth, and elsewhere. All alternatives allow us to peep into insights and innovation in ideological positioning, and for stratergising and bringing about the desired change in a given situation.
('divorced from reality') and an imaginary world of yester years. The interest in the text and its attitudes has proved Nehru wrong to a good extent.
Hind Swaraj, as is obvious, is in the form of dialogue, an age-old device ever since Plato used it in the West. In the Indian tradition, the samvad (dialogue) between Yagyavalkya and Gargi, and between Yama and Yami prove the time-tested significance and validity of the dialogic mode. It is my concern here not to discuss the dialogic mode, but to consider the role of dialogue in relation to satyagraha. Satyagraha is resistance or disobedience qualified with the adjective 'passive' or 'civil' respectively. In certain quarters, it might suggest the closure of the possibility of dialogue. Gandhi's model of Satyagraha, however, values and respects dissent but does not mean obstructing diaglogue with the individual/object/agency to be resisted. Gandhi himself continued dialogue with all those he resisted at the intellectual, political and spiritual levels. At the spititual level, dialogue assumes the form of silence or dialogue with one's own self or dialogue with the other as if the other were one's own self or dialogue with the other as if the other were one's own self. The Gandhian mode and model of dialogue assume significance in a world in which the clash of civilisations is not an idea but a reality.
Beyond Hind and Its Swaraj
Hind Swaraj is a problematic yet prophetic text. It problematises the institutions and notions that were familiar and fundamental to human existence towards the end of the first decade of the 20th Century. Its ability to problematise fascinates us beyond measure. With its sweeping generalisations against railways, doctors and lawyers, it disturbs and shakes us. In the process, if examined closely, it allows us an insight into Gandhi, the strategist or the tactician. Gandhi's main issue was the colonisation of india by the British. In order to understand this process, he examined the strengths and weaknesses of the colonisers (the British) and પણ જીવનઃ ગાંઘી સાર્ધશતાબ્દી વિશેષાંક ઑક્ટોબર- ૨૦૧૮
Gandhi's Hind Swaraj is a mutiny against mindless modernisation, and he argued vehemently for a new way of looking at development. He expressed his angst against the Western project of modernisation; a larger project that would have led to, what E. Husserl and M. Heidegger referred to as 'the complete Europeanisation of the earth and mankind' (1988: 434-42). In the West, there were many sceptics like A. Schopenhauer and the lesser known P. Hacker (1913-1979) and his contemporary. J.W. Haeur, who had critiqued the project of Western modernisation. The other 'West that went into the making of Gandhi and his Hind Swaraj had already done it. The problem was that the 'other' West was a minority, as was Gandhi in India at the time of his advent; a lone voice in the Indian wilderness. To Nehru, the text was unrealistic
સત્ય-અહિંસા-અપરિગ્રહ
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