Thinking Radically With Gandhi

There is a great and natural tendency to think that Hind Swaraj represents the reactionary Gandhi who opposed modernity, a position from which he slowly back-pedaled over the next few decades, as he allowed the experience of the long anti-colonial struggle he led, to educate him towards more progressive ideas and ideals. As I said, this is a natural reading of Gandhi, but it is not a reading that shows much sympathy for or comprehension of his deepest intellectual and political motives. It is a reading which, from the very outset, rules out the possibility that one might interpret his anti-modernism as itself being progressive.