DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2014.v02i02.023

Pages: 270-274

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule in 1909 aboard the SS Kildonan Castle on his way from London to South Africa. It has been a hundred and five years from then and still this little book finds new readers every day. Hind Swaraj has for long been hailed as Gandhi's diagnosis of modern civilization with both prognosis and prescription. The modern civilization which he discusses has assumed ever humongous proportions today. This article therefore is a re-reading of Hind Swaraj to understand the criticism of modern civilization offered by Gandhi. Does his criticism hold true today as well? Who does he blame? Was his criticism solely of the material interests which man was being lured into or was it also a strong evocation of the slipping away of individualism? This article shows that all along it was not machine or modernity which Gandhi truly despised as is usually believed. He offered a critique of modern civilization but through it he bemoaned and decried the loss of autonomy of the individual.