Politics, Ethics and the Self: Re-reading Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj

Description

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. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1 The truncated ethic of modern civilization 1 The originality of Hind Swaraj 2 Gandhi and the debate about civilization 3 English rule without the Englishman: citizenship, subalternity, and Gandhi’s ‘reader’ 4 Reflections on Gandhi’s anti-modernism 5 Hind Swaraj: a historical necessity 6 On the normative structure of Gandhian thought: with special reference to Hind Swaraj Part 2 Empire, politics, and violence 7 Empire and violence, or the foes in Hind Swaraj 8 Political self-rule: Gandhi and the future of democracy 9 Politics and violence: Gandhi’s ambivalence to democracy 10 A nationalism open towards the world Part 3 Colonization of minds 11 Learning from the South: Gandhi and intercultural translation 12 Beyond decolonizing knowledge: revisiting the Svaraj in ideas debate 13 Gandhi and political praxis of Educational reconstruction, 1909–1938 Part 4 Cultivating self 14 Could Hind Swaraj presuppose a theory of judgment? 15 Gandhi: calling to non-violence joined by a strong pragmatism 16 Afterlife of a text: Hind Swaraj and the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha 17 Sheherezade and Hind Swaraj 18 Gandhi’s Twin fasts and the possibility of non-violence Part 5 How to read Hind Swaraj 19 Reading Hind Swarajya/Swaraj in two languages Index