Mahatma Gandhi spent the last three decades of his life battling for his country’s freedom from British colonial rule. In this time, he rarely wrote or spoke about what he felt a free India should look like. However, in March 1922, he offered a short, succinct definition of swaraj that is worth revisiting today. Here is what he said:
“Removal of untouchability, manufacture of khaddar, Hindu-Muslim unity, cultivation of non-violence are not measures of a temporary nature. They are the four pillars on which the structure of swaraj must for ever rest. Take away any one of them and it must topple down.”
Let us unpack this statement and gloss each of its four elements.
We may take “removal of untouchability” to stand more broadly for the pursuit of social justice, which of course includes removing not just the inequalities of caste but also of gender. Unlike the other savarna leaders of the Congress – Nehru, Patel, Bose, et al – Gandhi was keenly aware of how the prevalence of untouchability undermined the Indian case for freedom. He therefore called it a “sin”, and those who practised it the “Dyers of Hinduism”.
However, Gandhi also paid attention to the emancipation of women. As he put it in a speech in...
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