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.

The second misreading arises when they seek to reduce Hind Swaraj to a Swadeshi manifesto. Hind Swaraj is a civilisational text. It argues that modernity seeks to make machines as measure of men. It is for this reason modernity is characterised as ‘black age’ or ‘Satanic civilisation.’ The purpose of civilisation for Gandhi is that it should allow each person to know oneself, and so doing we learn to rule ourselves. It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. To rule one self is to be moral, to be just and have a sense of equability towards all religions. Hind Swaraj provides one of the most articulate critiques of the modern tendency to use religious identity as a ground for political mobilisation and violence that it inevitably breeds. Hind Swaraj also provides a fundamental meditation on the question of means and ends. It argues against the modern belief that ends justify the means. For Gandhi means and ends share an inviolable relationship. And therefore both means and ends have to be good, pure and virtuous. Finally, Hind Swaraj is an immensely hopeful text. It seeks not the destruction of England but wishes to rescue Europe from its modernity. It sees this as India’s unique possibility and challenge.

If the BJP wishes to appropriate Hind Swaraj for itself, it will have to eschew use of religious identity as grounds for political mobilisation. It cannot seek the annihilation and destruction of its ideological and political opponents but aspire to rescue them. The BJP and the Congress remain committed to use of violence as a means of legitimate political action, albeit through a theory of ‘legitimate violence’ or ‘counter-violence.’ Hind Swaraj does not distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate forms of violence and it is for this reason that it remains an arresting text. If the BJP wishes to contend with Gandhi it would need to contend with its own unconscious, its own past. It has another option. It can, like Narendra Modi, seek to turn Mohandas into a Mohanlal, a petty shop-keeper who has no future in our cities of malls.

The writer is an Ahmedabad based academic