Personal Reflections on Reading Hind Swaraj and Indian Reactions

Abstract

Hind Swaraj is often regarded as Gandhi’s most important work. This rather brief review of my reactions to my reading and rereading of Hind Swaraj, starting with my youthful year of 1963–4 in Banaras (Varanasi) and at Banaras Hindu University and continuing to the present, is not only personally instructive, but also reveals changing attitudes of influential Gandhians and anti-Gandhians in India and in the contemporary world. This personal journey of encounters with the text and its changing contextual situatedness discloses contradictions and dramatic changes within India and the world and with peace and justice scholars and activists.