The Hind Hind Swaraj Analysis

The Hind Swaraj is a book written by Mohandas Gandhi in 1909 in which he expresses his contempt for modern civilization and by extension colonialism. The book is Gandhi’s fundamental work and lucidly presents his reasons for advocating nonviolence, self-sacrifice, and love in India’s independence movement, as opposed to violence and hate. Gandhi asserts India can gain its independence (Swaraj) only by rejecting modern civilization and its social institutions. He wrote his monograph while traveling from London to South Africa between November 13 and November 22, 1909. In his piece, he illustrates his diagnosis of what plagues contemporary society, its causes, and his solution through a dialogue between two characters, The Reader and the Editor. The Editor depicts Gandhi while the Reader symbolizes the typical Indian peasant of whom the text is directed at. In his piece, Gandhi the Editor dispels the common beliefs and ideals of Indian independence and modern civilization expressed by the Reader. Gandhi claims that modern civilization is an evil entity that promotes immorality through its social institutions and rejection of religion. The very entities it boasts of: its legal system, medicine, and railways perpetuate immoral practice and deprive individuals of self-efficacy. These social institutions are the mainstays of British colonialism and they serve to maintain the power dynamics of modern imperialists. To break free from colonialism and to achieve “Swaraj” or self-rule India had to free itself from the manacles of modern institutions.

Gandi issues with modern medicine arise from its business centric philosophy of “curing” outward symptoms instead of promoting a lifestyle that will prevent illness and disease altogether. Anthropology professor Joseph Alter delves into Gandhi’s criticism of the medical field in his piece “Gandhi’s Body” where he asserts that Gandhi is critical of a lifestyle that is dependent on medical prevention. “Gandhi was dogmatically critical of allopathic medicine and regarded biomedicine as dangerous, in part because he saw it providing violent, symptomatic cures for specific illnesses rather than holistic therapies to remedy poor health” (Alter, 12). Altar claims that Gandhi is driven by a biomoral imperative of personal health and public health by his moral convictions. For example, Gandhi attests that disease arises from self-indulgence and negligence and that modern biomedicine deprives us of our self-control. It 's too easy just to take a pill and not worry about the consequences of your actions. Modern medicine doesn’t hold individuals accountable for their own health and doesn’t actually address the conditions of disease in the first place, “The fact remains that the doctors induce to indulge, and the result is what we have become deprived of self-control” (Gandhi, 44). This lack of discipline which arises from contemporary medicine also translates into a dependent society, “In these circumstances we are unfit to serve the country. To study European medicine is to deepen our slavery” (Gandhi, 44). Additionally, as Joseph Altar points out Gandhi was also critical of a lifestyle that was dependent on medical intervention, “An undisciplined lifestyle of gastronomical excess in particular but also erratic habits in general which in his view caused illness” (Alter, 12). Furthermore, according to Alter, Gandhi’s