Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 175
there was room within the discourse fo r Left Gandhians
and Gandhian socialists as well as Gandhian traditionalists
and cultural conservatives. Furthermore, while it's possible
to reject Gandhian discourse for reasons that can be linked
to anarchism, it doesn't follow that one must then reject
anarchism itself. More precisely, one rejects the Gandhian
form of anarchism-as did his historical contemporaries,
militant anarcho-communists Acharya and Singh.
The closest thing we have to a Gandhian manifesto is
"Hind Swaraj:' an essay he wrote in 1909 while on a ship
sailing from London to South Africa, where he lived and
worked at the time. In this imaginary question and answer
between himself as "Editor" and an imagined "Reader" of
the Indian Op inion, he lays out his ideas on the state, modernity,
industrialization, technology, the ideal village community,
and the way to free India.
"The removal of the cause of a disease results in the
removal of the disease itself,' he said, and his diagnosis of
what ailed his country was stark: "It is my deliberate opinion
that India is being ground down, not under the English
heel, but under that of modern civilization. It is groaning
under the monster's terrible weight .... Civilization is like a
mouse gnawing while it is soothing us." One after the other
he panned lawyers, doctors, railroads, machinery, factories,
English education, and the profit motive. "[The English]
hold whatever dominions they have for the sake of their
commerce. Their army and their navy are to protect it ....
lhey wish to convert the whole world into a vast market
for their goods."19 Violence was another symptom of everything
that was wrong with Western civilization.