Saturday, March 9, 2013

Gandhi Journal Article - III


Hind Swaraj : A Fresh Look

By Jai Narain Sharma

Abstract
In Hind Swaraj Gandhi does not provide a rigorous social analysis from which his political conclusions could be logically derived. His was a moral response to what he perceived as the evils of modern civilization. A fresh look at Hind Swaraj can, then, frustrate a mere intellectual approach that seeks either to lay bare the structure of Gandhian Thought as a means to reducing Gandhi to a formulae or to sharpen one's understanding of the forces that have created or sustained modern civilization in its present form. The sensibility underlying Hind Swaraj has its roots not in the intellectual but in the moral. As such, what is thus essentially a moral sensibility cannot be fully grasped by intellectual effort alone. No doubt, intellectual effort is necessary; but this intellectual effort will bear fruit only after it has been touched with the transforming illumination of moral sensibility.

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