Hind Swaraj

A short book written in Gujarati in November 1909, aboard a ship returning from London to South Africa, and translated by Gandhi himself as Indian Home Rule in 1910. It takes the form of a dialogue between an impatient Reader, who wants India freed by any means including violence, and an Editor who speaks for Gandhi. The Editor argues that the real enemy is not the British but modern civilisation itself, which he treats as a disease that measures progress by bodily comfort. Railways, lawyers and doctors come in for sharp criticism, as do machinery and Western-style parliaments. India, he says, was not taken by the British but given to them, and will be free when Indians stop cooperating. True self-rule (swaraj) is rule over oneself. Because the means shape the end, the book defends passive resistance, or soul-force, over brute force, along with Hindu–Muslim unity and education in Indian languages. Critics, including later admirers, have found its rejection of modern technology and medicine impractical.

It is the founding statement of Gandhi's thought on nonviolence, self-rule and modernity, and its challenge to industrial civilisation still provokes debate about technology and the good life.