ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Mahatma Gandhi's notion of "self-rule" and its connotations. It delineates the political implications of Gandhi's conception, chiefly by distinguishing it from current ideologies of liberalism and neo-liberalism. The chapter highlights the central contributions that Gandhi's conception makes to contemporary political theory or philosophy. Gandhi's Hind Swaraj can be seen as a "classic" of anti-imperialist literature, a handbook of struggle not only for Indians but for oppressed and colonized people around the world. For Gandhi, the goal of swaraj could not be obtained by simply replacing British rulership with Indian rulership, British power with Indian power. The problem with British rulership, in Gandhi's view, is that it reflects some unenviable and defective features of British civilization, and ultimately of modern Western civilization in general. In a way, swaraj for Gandhi was part, and even the essence, of karma yoga – which, in the Hindu tradition, is a "soteriological" path.
