Question

write essay on freedom struggle in India

Answer 1

The Indian Freedom Struggle history essay. It was during the Indian freedom struggle when the concept of Swaraj or Self rule developed. Hind Swaraj is a small book written by Mahatma Gandhi. He wrote it while he was on his way back to South Africa after his brief stay in India.

Answer 2

It was during the Indian freedom struggle when the concept of Swaraj or Self rule developed. Hind Swaraj is a small book written by Mahatma Gandhi. He wrote it while he was on his way back to South Africa after his brief stay in India. It is generally said that Gandhi completed it during voyage itself. Hind Swaraj appeared first in instalments in a newspaper that was founded by Gandhi. He was also the editor of the news paper. It took the shape of the book when it was published in 1909. It is very short book of around 80 pages. The book consists of twenty chapters. The narration of the book is in the form of a dialogue between Gandhi, “The Editor”, and his interlocutor, “The Reader.”
In Hind Swaraj Gandhi has attempted to clarify the meaning of Swaraj. According to him Swaraj is much more than simply, a system of rule without the Englishmen. Gandhi had both traditional (Indian) and modern (western) ideas. The book itself is the combination of the two type of ideas. In Hind Swaraj Gandhi presents an argument for Indian self-rule which has characteristics of both Western and Indian thought. Gandhi has taken a Western attitude in his political arguments, such as his support for Indian nationalism and how to govern India. Many of his ideas can be considered modern simply because they are novel to India, such as nationalism. Hind Swaraj displays both Western and Indian thought, for it was meant by Gandhi for both moderate and extremist audience, the British and the rest of the world.
The most important point of his argument is centered on the belief that the socio-spiritual support of British political, economic, bureaucratic, legal, military, and educational institutions was inherently unjust and exploitive. He was in particular critical of the deeply embedded principles of ‘might is right’ and ‘survival of the fittest’. On another level the demand for Swaraj represents a genuine attempt to regain control of the self respect, self responsibility and capacity for self realisation from all exploitive institution. Gandhi states that it will be a great achievement if we will be able to rule ourselves on our own. He wanted all those who believed in Swaraj to reject and completely uproot the British rule and to create systems and structures which will enable individual and collective social development. It is a system where everyone will have an opportunity to pursue their goals and develop his personality.
Hind Swaraj is Mahatma Gandhi’s primary work. The book allows to understand his philosophy and his vision for South Asian politics in the twentieth century. In his foreword which is titled, “A Word of Explanation”, he writes that he had in London come into contact with Indian extremists. Gandhi writes that he was struck by their bravery and their pure desire to achieve independence. But he thought of them as a misguided group because they wanted to achieve independence through violence. Political assassination and use of bombs were their methods, however, Gandhi out rightly rejected these methods. Gandhi had been experimenting non-violent methods of resistance in South Africa, and he firmly believed that these methods can help India achieve its independence. As such his book, Hind Swaraj, is a book that can be put even into the hands of a child because it teaches the lesson of love in place of hate. Its aim is to replace violence with self-sacrifice.
However, it is not the only reason that Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj, though it is generally regarded as a treatise on non-violence. Gandhi continued to write on non-violence for remaining forty years of his life, which itself shows that the purpose of Hind Swaraj must have been much more than just preaching non-violence. Gandhi inaugurated the most far-reaching critique of modernity that one can imagine, and though it must have struck the predominant number of his contemporaries as an absurd piece of writing. Hind Swaraj for the reader of late modernity means a work of extraordinary prescience and insight. Throughout, Gandhi remains clear that the replacement of British (white) rulers by Indian (Brown) rulers would be of little consequence to the people.
Gandhi put Hind Swaraj with characteristic forthrightness, addressing his imaginary interlocutor, ‘we want English rule without the Englishman.’ you want the tiger’s nature, but not the tiger. That is to say, you would make India English. And when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englistan. As he further writes, that it is not the kind of Swaraj that we want. Hind Swaraj in this sense can be read as a critique to the western thought because Swaraj in this sense means to be against modern industrial civilization. It again shows Gandhi’s knowledge of western ideology. But Gandhi remained unequivocally bound to the view that India had been grounded into submission not so much by the British as by modern civilization. It is the modernisation that subjugated India.
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