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7/24/2019 Swaraj Swadeshi Satya Sarvodaya
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/swaraj-swadeshi-satya-sarvodaya 1/21
SWARAJ
SWADESHI
SATYA
7/24/2019 Swaraj Swadeshi Satya Sarvodaya
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The only motive is to serve my country, to find out the
Truth, and to follow it. If, therefore my views are proved
to be wrong, I shall have no hesitation in rejectingthem.
If they are proved to be right, I would naturally wish, for
the sake of the Motherland, that others should adopt
them.
7/24/2019 Swaraj Swadeshi Satya Sarvodaya
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Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj is not rejection of the
liberative contribution of modernity. Rather his
effort can be interpreted as an attempt to integratethese positive elements with a liberating re-
interpretation of tradition.
With his critique from within the tradition, Gandhi
becomes the great synthesiser of contraries within
and across traditions.
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Dignity of manual labor
The good of the individual is contained in the
good of all
Each can and should serve society by his own
labor and profession in the field of his choice.
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For Gandhi civilisation was by definition a moral
enterprise: "Civilisation is that mode of conduct
which points out to man the path of duty“
Unacceptable were the two points - ‘might is right’
and the ‘survival of the fittest’.
Also, colonial imperialism, industrial capitalism,
and rationalist materialism.
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Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj presents us with an
idealised version of Indian culture that is
completely counterpunctal to the ‘modern west’. Here we pick out three seminal themes:
swaraj,
swadeshi and
satya.
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Swaraj as ‘self rule’ and as ‘self -government’ The first as self-control, rule over oneself,
was the foundation for the second, self-
government. In this second sense, local self~government was what Gandhi really had in
mind.
Gandhi very decidedly gives priority to self-ruleover self-government, and to both over political
independence, swatantrata.
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Essential to both meanings swaraj, was a sense of
self-respect that is precisely Gandhi’s answer to
colonial rule. For Gandhi freedom in its most fundamental sense
had to mean freedom for self-realisation. But it
had to be a freedom for all, for the toiling masses,
and the privileged classes, and most importantly
for the least and last Indian.
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Clearly, the foundation of swaraj in both its
senses had to be threefold: self-respect, self-
realisation and self-reliance.
This is what Gandhi tried to symbolise with the
charka and khadi, both much misunderstood
symbols today.
Manchester cloth Vs home spun khadi
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For Gandhi real rights are legitimated by duties they
flow from, for both are founded on satya and dharma.
The modern theory of rights reverses this priority and
founds rights on the dignity and freedom of the
individual.
But comprehensive morality can never be adequately
articulated or correctly grasped in terms of rights alone.
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It is this commitment of the individual to his‘desh’ that was Gandhi’s Indian alternative to
western nationalism.
The village Gandhi idealised was not just a
geographic place, or a statistic, or a social
class.
It was an event, a dream, a happening, a
culture. As he used "the term ‘village’ implied not an
entity, but a set of values"
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Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha)
engenders and therefore serves as a synonym
for force. Gandhi thus began to call the Indian
movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force
which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence,
and gave up the use of the phrase ―passive
resistance‖, in connection with it, so much so that
even in English writing we often avoided it and
used instead the word ―satyagraha‖...
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SATYA (Truth): Truthfulness, honesty, transparency,
accountability, expanding conscience, awareness and
responsibility; justice with compassion; taking
responsibility for past mistakes; repentance and
apology; avoidance of repetition of mistakes, freedom
from ignorance, errors; pluralism;
understanding of the multiplicity of truth; humility and
respect for others’ truths; holding on to relative truth butcontinuing quest for further truth; attempting to arrive at
a consensus on key issues; quest for truth.
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Satyagraha as a combination of reason,
morality and politics.
Gandhi defined ‘passive resistance’ as he
called it then as "a method of securing rights by
personal suffering“. It appealed to the opponent’s head, heart and
interests"
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Gandhi was the first leader to bring non-violence to
centre stage in the struggle for freedom with the
British. He was well aware that adopting "methods of
violence to drive out the English" would be a
"suicidal policy".
Hind Swaraj was precisely intended to stymie such
a soul-destroying venture.
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Thus one of the most remarkable re-
interpretations of Hinduism that Gandhi
effected was that of the Gita, a text intended to
persuade a reluctant warrior on the legitimacy
and even the necessity of joining the battle.
Gandhi reworks its ‘nishkama karma’ to
become the basis of his ahimsa and
satyagraha!
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An ecological understanding is now propelling
us to a new and deep realisation of our
interdependence. We have only one earth, we
must learn to share and care. Thus, with regard to the economy and polity,
Gandhi would have the village as his world; but
with regard to culture and religion, it was the
world that was his village! Surely, here we havea viable example of thinking globally and acting
locally.
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For Gandhi, "individuality" must be "oriented to
self-realisation through self-knowledge... in a
network of interdependence and harmony
informed by ahimsa“ Nor was this to be an interdependence of
dominant-subservient relationships so
prevalent in our local communities and global
societies. His swadeshi envisaged a more
personalised and communitarian society on a
human scale
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Gandhi wanted education—reconstructed
along the lines he thought correct—to help
India move away from the Western concept
of progress, towards a different form ofdevelopment more suited to its needs and
more viable, for the world as a whole, than
the Western model of development.
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It is not clear whether he was against the spirit of
modern science and technology, or whether hisopposition to Western-type modernity was
confined to the manner in which science and
technology had been used to exploit non-
European societies.
In the vast body of responses contained in hiscollected works, one finds ample evidence on
both sides
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Sathyagraha and Sarvodaya (uplift of all) are Gandhiji’s
most significant and revolutionary contributions to the
contemporary political thought. Gandhiji’s originality lay
in the way he fused truth and non-violence in both theory
and practice.
Leave alone the ‘hand-spinning austere living syndrome’
dubbed as Gandhism, the broad lessons Gandhi taught
boils down to heroic self reliance and fearlessness,
perched on truth, non-violence, voluntary cooperation
and an abiding concern for the poor masses.