Texts, like individuals, have biographies. One of the most curious biographies of texts in recent times has been that of MK Gandhi’s 1909 tract Hind Swaraj. It was proscribed in India by the British soon after its publication in South Africa. The Gujarati interpreter who read the text and filed the report was baffled by the strangeness of the text. The book he said did not advocate revolt or use of physical force against the British and it was for this reason the book was dangerous and had to be banned. Since that first official reader the Hind Swaraj has continued to invite misreading. Many continue to hold the mistaken and exaggerated belief that it was written as a direct response to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a man who would eventually be charged for the conspiracy to kill Gandhi. Savarkar dismissed the text as archaic. Nehru confessed to having only a “vague picture” of it. Not surprisingly it was only the Theosophists who took the text seriously and brought out a special issue of the Aryan Path. It lay as a forgotten text for almost five decades till it was re-discovered as an anti-colonial manifesto, as a curious challenge to modernity, as a harbinger of the environmental movements. This year we celebrate the centenary of Hind Swaraj amidst the gloom of global economic crises.

In a curious transposition the recently concluded BJP meet in Nagpur celebrated the message of Hind Swaraj, as a Swadeshi manifesto. This attempt by the BJP to claim Hind Swaraj and through that Gandhi for itself is a result of at least two kinds of misreadings of the man and the text. First, it arises from a belief that a man that was killed 61 years ago by the men and ideologies that BJP continues to revere is available for selective appropriation. The fundamental reason for Gandhi’s assassination was the challenge that he posed to the “Sanatan Hinduism”, while claiming to be a “Sanatani” himself. The other reason was that Gandhi seemed to be an obstacle in creation of India as a hard, modern, nation-state. The BJP recognises that Gandhi and Ambedkar (not Gandhi vs. Ambedkar) continue to be the most powerful challenge to their social and cultural vision. Gandhi for his attempts to make space for spirituality in the realm of the political and Ambedkar through his conversion to Buddhism and his rejection Hindu social order are the only two counter-points to BJP’s religious politics from within the realm of religiosity.

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