Satyagraha and Swadeshi: Gandhian Principles for Life
Satyagraha and Swadeshi are fundamental to Gandhi’s philosophy of life. According to Gandhi, the whole gamut of human activities constitutes an indivisible whole. Life cannot be segregated into watertight compartments like social, economic, political, religious, and so on. So the ideas and concepts he developed during his relentless experiments with truth were an attempt to integrate the various aspects of life. The concept of Swadeshi was not an exception. It was not merely an economic doctrine. In fact, the concept of Swadeshi covered all aspects of human life. Gandhi’s vision of Swadeshi is a universal concept even though he propounded it in the context of India’s struggle for freedom. He used Swadeshi as a means to achieve India’s Swaraj. India’s struggle for freedom was a source of inspiration for many non-violent struggles in different parts of the globe. Swaraj through Swadeshi is a principle of universal application, and it can be emulated by people in their struggle for freedom. It was one of the eleven vows Gandhi prescribed for a Satyagraha way of life. This paper attempts to understand Gandhi’s concept of Swadeshi and its manifestation in important facets of human life. Swadeshi as a generic concept covers almost every aspect of human life, all his ideas, concepts, methods, and programs. However, the scope of the present paper has been limited to areas such as economic, political, social, religious, educational, and health.
Gandhi’s Vision of Swadeshi
Gandhi described Swadeshi as the “law of laws” ingrained in the basic nature of human beings. It is a universal law. Like nature’s law, it needs no enacting. It is self-acting. When one neglects or disobeys it due to ignorance or other reasons, the law takes its own course to restore to the original position, like the laws of nature. The necessity for the inclusion of Swadeshi as a vow is due to the fact that the people have forgotten this law; to use Gandhi’s own words, the law is “sunk into oblivion.” A person by temperament following this law need not follow it as a vow, that is, a rare thing. According to Gandhi, Swadeshi in its ultimate and spiritual sense stands for the final emancipation of the soul from her earthly bondage. Therefore, a votary of Swadeshi has to identify oneself with the entire creation in the ultimate quest to emancipate the soul from the physical body, as it stands in the way of realizing oneness with all life. This identification is possible only by performing the primary duty, that is, the service of one’s immediate neighbor. In outward appearance, it may look like exclusion or disservice to others, i.e., the rest of humanity. Pure service can never result in disservice to the far-away person. In Swadeshi, there is no distinction between one’s own and other people. With the temptation of serving the whole world, if one fails to perform the duty towards the immediate neighbors, it is a clear violation of the very principle of Swadeshi. The very first step of serving the world starts with the immediate neighbor. Service to the nearest individual is service to the Universe. According to Gandhi, Swadharma in Gita interpreted in terms of one’s physical environment gives us the Law of Swadeshi. Gandhi quotes Gita “It is best to die performing one’s own duty or Swadharma. Paradharma, or another’s duty, is fraught with danger.” Further Gandhi explains: “What the Gita says with regard to Swadharma equally applies to Swadeshi also, for Swadeshi is Swadharma applied to one’s immediate environment.” The law of Swadeshi demands that one should not take more than required to discharge the legitimate obligations towards the family. In Swadeshi, there is no space for selfishness and hatred. It is the highest form of altruism and acme of universal service in the Gandhian scheme.
In light of the above understanding and after much thinking and reflection, Gandhi defined Swadeshi as the “spirit in us which restricts us to the use and services of our immediate surroundings, to the exclusion of the more remote.” This definition is perhaps the best explanation of his concept.
Economic Dimension of Swadeshi
Let us first look at the implications of Swadeshi in the field of economics. Gandhi was convinced that the deep poverty prevailing among the masses was mainly due to the ruinous departure from the path of Swadeshi in economic and industrial life. Gandhi advocated that one who follows the spirit of Swadeshi should use only things that are produced by our immediate neighbors and serve those industries by making them efficient and strengthening them in areas where they are found deficient. During the time of India’s struggle for independence, Gandhi realized that the economic salvation of India consists in encouraging and reviving indigenous industries.
Gandhi found Khadi as the necessary and most important corollary of the principle of Swadeshi in its practical application to society. Khadi fulfills the kind of service envisaged in Swadeshi. Gandhi himself asked the question: “What is the kind of service… the teeming millions of India most need at the present time, that can be easily understood and appreciated by all, that is easy to perform and will at the same time enable the crores of our semi-starved countrymen to live?” He found the answer, that it was universalizing Khadi or the spinning wheel which fulfill these conditions. For him, Khadi is the Sun of the village solar system. The various industries are the planets which can support Khadi. Khadi mentality means decentralization of production and distribution of the necessities of life. Gandhi advocated the concept of Swadeshi in the spirit of universal love and service. A votary of Swadeshi will give preference to local products even if they are of inferior grade or dearer in price than things manufactured elsewhere and try to remedy the defects of local manufacturers. Gandhi warned the votary of Swadeshi against making it a fetish. “To reject foreign manufactures merely because they are foreign, and to go on wasting national time and money in the promotion in one’s country of manufactures for which it is not suited, would be criminal folly, and a negation of the Swadeshi spirit. A true votary of Swadeshi will never harbor ill-will towards the foreigner: he will not be actuated by antagonism towards anybody on earth. Swadeshism is not a cult of hatred. It is a doctrine of selfless service that has its roots in the purest Ahimsa, i.e. Love.” In the Swadeshi economic order, there will be a healthy exchange of products and not cut-throat competition through the play of market forces. Gandhi explains this ideal situation in the following words: “If we follow the Swadeshi doctrine, it would be your duty and mine to find out neighbors who can supply our wants and to teach them to supply them where they do not know how to proceed, assuming that there are neighbors who are in want of healthy occupation. Then every village of India will almost be a self-supporting and self-contained unit, exchanging only such necessary commodities with other villages where they are not locally producible.” In such an economic system, there will be an organic relationship between production, distribution, and consumption.
Swadeshi in Politics
The application of Swadeshi in politics calls for the revival of indigenous institutions and strengthening them to overcome some of their defects. Gandhi pleaded the need for internal governance (Swaraj) as early as 1909 in his noted booklet Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. He wanted to empower the people through political self-governance. His vision of a decentralized political system was Panchayati Raj by which the innumerable villages of India were governed. He succinctly describes it as follows: “The government of the village will be conducted by the Panchayat of five persons annually elected by the adult villagers, male and female, possessing minimum prescribed qualifications. Since there will be no system of punishment in the accepted sense, this Panchayat will be the legislature, judiciary and executive combined to operate for its year of office. Here there is perfect democracy based upon individual freedom. The individual is the architect of his own government. The law of non-violence rules him and his government. He and his village are able to defy the might of a world.” Gandhi further outlined his vision of village Swaraj by introducing the concept of the oceanic circle in opposition to the pyramidical structure of society, placing the individual at the center of the society. “In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever-widening, never-ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose center will be the individual always ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in arrogance but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units.”
Social Dimension of Swadeshi
Applying the spirit of Swadeshi in the context of the Indian social structure, Gandhi initially accepted the institution of Varna associated with it. He welcomed the four-fold division of society purely based on duties performed by different sections of people. Gandhi considered all professions as equally important. He made an earnest attempt to overcome the defects of the caste system by discarding certain obnoxious practices which he considered as historical accretion, which was not an integral part of the original system. He vehemently opposed the prevailing caste system based on birth and the social status attached to it. That was the reason why he launched one of the most relentless battles against the curse of untouchability which was a part and parcel of the caste system in India. Gandhi looked at the scourge of untouchability as a blot on Hinduism. He was so much convinced that he did not even hesitate to take up cudgels on behalf of untouchables against the upper caste Hindu orthodoxy. In the process, so much animosity was created among orthodox upper caste, and several attempts were made to eliminate him. Unmindful of the risks involved, he stuck to the position till the end of his life. He totally identified with the untouchables, and their uplift became his primary concern. Similarly, he was deeply concerned about the problems and plight of the vulnerable sections of the society viz., Dalits, women, tribals, lepers, and so on. He believed that true Swaraj could be attained only by uplifting these deprived sections of the society. Gandhi included the uplift of these sections in his 18-point Constructive Program. It was primarily drawn taking into account the social realities of our country. Gandhi’s Constructive Program aimed at the reconstruction of society through voluntary and participatory social action. In a sense, constructive work plays the role of civil society/NGOs. Gandhi looked upon Constructive Program as a “truthful and nonviolent way of winning Poorna Swaraj.”
Swadeshi in Religion
To follow the spirit of Gandhi’s Swadeshi in the field of religion one has to restrict to the ancestral religion. It calls for the use of one’s immediate religious surroundings. It is the duty of a person to serve one’s own religion by purging its defects, if necessary, to purify and keep it pure. There is no need to renounce one’s religion because of imperfections in it and embrace another. On the contrary, one should try to enrich one’s own religion by drawing the best from other religions. However, Gandhi was not against true conversion, and he differentiated it from proselytization. According to Gandhi conversion in the sense of self-purification, self-realization is the crying need of the hour. His attitude was not of patronizing toleration but developing the spirit of fellowship. His veneration for other faiths was the same as that of his own faith. He believed in the fundamental equality of all religions, what he called Sarvadharma Samabhava. Gandhi’s Swadeshi approach to religion has great significance in the context of growing communal divide and religious fundamentalism in India and other parts of the globe. This approach is essential to promote harmony among the followers of various faiths and preserving the composite culture of a country like India.
Conclusion
It is obvious from the above analysis that Swadeshi is key to understanding the edifice of Gandhi’s philosophy of life. He successfully demonstrated that the Swadeshi spirit could be integrated into every walk of our national life. What is more, he did not stop only at the conceptual level of Swadeshi. He suggested a concrete institutional setup in most of the areas of his concern. As stated earlier, for Gandhi, life was holistic and indivisible, and hence he presented an integrated plan covering virtually all aspects of human life. And that is the most distinctive nature of his thought which could really become a guiding principle for human resurgence. In fact, he went beyond it and underlines the oneness of entire creations, including sentient and non-sentient beings. It is a real pity that independent India failed to grasp the revolutionary nature of his thought and discarded them in the very initial years of freedom. Now it is more than clear that sooner or later, India, even the world, would have to take to the Gandhian path to meet the challenges effectively. If not, it will be totally going against the law of the universe which aeons ago our ancestors called Rita.