Penguin Gandhi Reader , livre ebook

The Penguin Gandhi Reader


Edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Introduction

Critique of Modern Civilization

Hind Swaraj: Preface
Chapter I: The Congress and its Officials
Chapter II: The Partition of Bengal
Chapter III: Discontent and Unrest
Chapter IV: What is Swaraj?
Chapter V: The Condition of England
Chapter VI: Civilization
Chapter VII: Why was India Lost?
Chapter VIII: The Condition of India
Chapter IX: The Condition of India (continued) : Railways
Chapter X: The Condition of India (continued) : The Hindus & the Mahomedans
Chapter XI: The Condition of India (continued) : Lawyers
Chapter XII: The Condition of India (continued) : Doctors
Chapter XIII: What is True Civilization?
Chapter XIV: How Can India Become Free?
Chapter XV: Italy and India
Chapter XVI: Brute Force
Chapter XVII: Passive Resistance
Chapter XVIII: Education
Chapter XIX: Machinery
Chapter XX: Conclusion
Swaraj and Swadeshi

Pure Swadeshi [11 July 1920]
A True Congressman [19 November 1925]
Independence vs Swaraj [12 January 1928]
The Law of Swadeshi [18 June 1931]
Enlightened Anarchy [January 1939]
Question Box [18 July 1942]
Speech at a Prayer Meeting [22 December 1945]
Independence [29 April 1946]
Independence [21 July 1946]
Extract from a Speech at Prayer Meeting [12 February 1947]
Talk with Y.M. Dadoo and O.M. Naicker [11 April 1947]
Talk with Englishwomen [19 April 1947]
Swadeshi [20 June 1947]
Note [August 1947]
The Creed of Non-violence

On Ahimsa [October 1916]
The Doctrine of the Sword [11 August 1920]
Non-violence [9 March 1922]
Problems of Non-violence [9 August 1925]
Excerpt from a Letter to Narandas Gandhi [28-31 July 1930]
Both Happy and Unhappy [29 June 1940]
The Best Field for Ahimsa [15 July 1940]
Is Non-violence Impossible [11 August 1940]
My Idea of a Police Force [1 September 1940]
The Mass Movements

Satyagraha-Not Passive Resistance [2 September 1917]
Fifteen Instructions to Volunteers [17 April 1918]
Non-Co-operation [4 July 1920]
Democracy vs Mobocracy [8 September 1920]
Civil Disobedience [4 August 1921]
The Momentous Issue [10 November 1921]
The Immediate Issue [5 January 1922]
The Crime of Chauri Chaura [16 February 1922]
Some Rules of Satyagraha [27 February 1930]
A New Orientation [12 March 1930]
Speech at AICC Meeting [8 August 1942]
Message to the Country [5 a.m., 9 August 1942]
Women and Sex

Women of Gujarat [15 January 1922]
Speech at Women s Conference, Sojitra [16 January 1925]
Reply to Women s Address, Noakhali [14 May 1925]
What Women Should Do in a Difficult Situation [4 September 1932]
Interview to Margaret Sanger [3/4 December 1935]
Message to the All-India Women s Conference [23 December 1936]
What is Woman s Role? [12 February 1940]
Message to Chinese Women [18 July 1947]
Brahmacharya or Chastity1
Caste and Untouchability

Speech at Tanjore [16 September 1927]
Excerpt from a Speech at Trivandrum [17 September 1927]
Varnadharma and Duty of Labour [13 February 1930]
Introduction to Varnavyavastha [23 September 1934]
Caste Has to Go [16 November 1935]
Caste and Varna [28 November 1935]
Answers to Questions at Gandhi Sevak Sangh [6 May 1939]
Removal of Untouchability1
Socialism and Trusteeship

My Path [11 December 1924]
Answers to Zamindars [25 July 1934]
Extract from an Interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose [9/10 November 1934]
Extract from a Speech at a Meeting of Village Workers, Nagpur [23 February 1935]
Excerpt from an Interview with an Egyptian [22 January 1937]
Answers to Questions at Gandhi Seva Sangh Meeting [6 May 1939]
Answers to Questions at Constructive Workers Conference [24 January 1946]
Talk with Zamindars [18 April 1947]
Question Box [1 June 1947]
Who is a Socialist? [6 July 1947]
Hindu-Muslim Unity, Partition & Independence

Hindu-Muslim Unity [8 April 1919]
Hindu-Muslim Unity [15 May 1924]
Trust Begets Trust [29 May 1924]
Hindu-Muslim Unity [26 December 1924]
My Answer to Qaid-e-Azam [26 March 1940]
A Baffling Situation [1 April 1940]
My Position [9 April 1940]
Interview to The Hindu [Before 11 June 1942]
Speech at a Prayer Meeting [7 September 1946]
Excerpts from Gandhi s Prayer Speeches [12 September 1947]
Appendices

Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Notes
Follow Penguin
Copyright
About the Author
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbander. He was called to the Bar. He was not very successful as a Barrister-at-law in India and he moved to South Africa in 1893. In South Africa, he was unable to accept the official policy of racial discrimination and launched a series of non-violent protests.
On the basis of his South African experience, Gandhi elaborated a critique of Western civilization and a theory of passive resistance. In India he began his political career by organizing protests against the oppressive Rowlatt Act and by the peaceful mobilization of peasants in Champaran in Bihar and in Kheda in Gujarat. He was the key figure in the three great mass movements-the Non-Co-operation Movement (1920-22), the Civil Disobedience Movement (1931-32) and the Quit India Movement (1942)-which were the most important milestones in India s struggle for freedom. He was a champion of handspun cloth, Hindu-Muslim unity and the removal of untouchability. Non-violence remained right through his life the first article of his creed.
Gandhi chose to absent himself from the celebrations in New Delhi which marked India s independence on 15 August 1947. He could not accept the two nation theory and its logical sequel, the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan.
He was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic on 30 January 1948 while he was addressing a prayer meeting.
*
Rudrangshu Mukherjee was born in 1952 and educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was awarded a D.Phil. in Modern History in 1981 by the University of Oxford. He is the author of Awadh in Revolt 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance ; and an editor of Trade and the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour of Ashin Das Gupta.
Rudrangshu Mukherjee is Editor, Editorial Pages, The Telegraph and lives in Calcutta.
For GC, PC, NA and D who help me to scrabble through life.
Introduction
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbander in the western coast of India. His father was an official of a small native state. He had an orthodox upbringing but went to London to train as a lawyer. He enrolled at the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar in the summer of 1891. Back in India, he could not make a successful career as a lawyer and moved to South Africa in 1893. Confronted with the rampant racism in vogue there, he began the first of, what he was to call later, his experiments with truth . The main thrust of this experiment was to resist racial discrimination non-violently. It involved the peaceful violation of certain laws, the courting of arrests collectively, hartals and spectacular marches.
The South African experiment was to serve as a model of Gandhi s involvement in mass movements in India. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Indian National Congress and the Indian national movement was in disarray. In the aftermath of the swadeshi movement in Bengal, the Indian National Congress was split between Moderates and Extremists. There was, however, a growing awareness in the country of the various dimensions of imperialist exploitation and oppression. It was in this atmosphere that Gandhi made his first mark in Indian politics by organizing mass, non-violent protests in Champaran, Kheda and against the Rowlatt Act.
But before his emergence in the Indian political scene, Gandhi had already worked out some of his fundamental ideas. He articulated these in a booklet called Hind Swaraj. All commentators on Gandhi recognize this to be the most coherent exposition of Gandhi s world-view. 1 Gandhi himself saw the text as representing the views . . . held by many Indians not touched by what is known as civilization. His motive, he said, was to serve my country, to find out the Truth and to follow it. 2
Hind Swaraj is a trenchant critique of modern civilization but it also contains a statement of Gandhi s alternative to modern civilization and a programme for Indians to actualize such an alternative. Gandhi was emphatic about the superiority of Indian civilization and its inherent ability to withstand the onslaughts of modernity. Throughout his life, in all his major writings, Gandhi returned again and again to these themes.
The critique attacked all the major aspects of the modern philosophy of life, -Gandhi emphasized that it was called Western because its principal site was the West. 3 On the surface, Gandhi s position has similarities with the romantic criticism of the moral and social depredations of advancing capitalism. Indeed, the two major influences on Gandhi, in the formulation of these ideas, were Edward Carpenter s Civilization: Its Cause and Cure and John Ruskin s Unto This Last. The former influenced Gandhi s ideas on science especially modern medicine. And Gandhi liked especially Carpenter s argument that the ever-increasing powers of production engendered by modern science and technology alienated man (1) from Nature (2) from his true self (3) from his Fellows and it worked in every way to disintegrate and corrupt man. . . to break up the unity of his nature. 4 From Ruskin came the criticism of political economy based on self-interest. Ruskin s suggestion that that country is richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, o