ABSTRACT
When Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi thought about how to confront a challenge, first as a student and eventually as the leader of a national independence movement infiltrated by terrorists, his ‘infallible guide of conduct’ was the Bhagavad Gita. Although unconvinced by Krishnavarma and Savarkar, Gandhi felt unprepared to respond. When he tried to put down on paper arguments he wished he could have made more effectively while debating terrorists in London, awareness of his inadequate mastery of the Gita led him to rely mainly on common sense. Hind Swaraj can mean ‘Indian Home Rule’ but also ‘Indian Self-Governance’, understood in both a national and an individual sense. Imaginatively, Gandhi argued that Indians could not expect to govern their own nation unless they first exemplified self-control in their own lives. Gandhi made sure the entire world would be watching when he finally did pick up salt from the ocean shore, and the expected British crackdown occurred.
