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Gandhi
Hind Swaraj, gandhi's critique of capitalism, the individual…
Gandhi
Hind Swaraj
hind swaraj is about how gandhi does not care about either the constitutional or the violent (non-constitutional) approach to resistance.
He cares about Ahimsa and Satyagraha
this is a political text, more like a pamphlet.
The structure is a dialogue, and its aim is to persuade
it is important to read gandhi in his own terms. A paragraph must be read within the context of the part of the text that it comes from.
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the individual self is material (biological), is sentient, and possesses morality
to be able to make moral judgements presupposes the ability to think.
We learn how to think and make judgements through the context that we are brought up in; socialization.
hind swaraj is a self-critique, and also a critique of indians who embraced modernity
it is fundamentally a critique of modernity.
however, he wants to retain some things from modernity.
one of these things is democracy.
in enlightenment thought, the self is conceived in the abstract concept of the human.
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french revolution: liberty, equality, frateriity
french colonialism: civilising mission
Humans as "all being equal" is thus a colonial construction, even though we are not the same.
today, equality can often be seen as we are different and deserve to be treated in the with equality.
Through the colonial ideology, it was that we are different, and this difference emphasises the inferiority of the other. For true equality, it must involve the civilisation of the inferior.
1496: Vasco De Gama arrives into India for spices, links to Ottoman empire and controlling spice trade.
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india has so much communal violence because that is what was introduced during colonialism. For Europeans, religious diversity means going to war with someone else. This enlightenment thought permeates through communal violence today
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anti-colonialism is a diasporic phenomenon: gandhi went to england, fanon went to france
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theoretical equality, even despite material inequality is enough to get us to consent to be ruled over by this social order.
we then create myths that if there is equal opportunity, anyone can be as rich as elon musk
gandhi's inability to recognise the contributions of the hierarchial system of caste and how that led to different degrees of exploitation from colonialism
religious distinction as a product of colonialism
class distinction as a product of capitalism
caste distinction as a product of internal hierarchy
criticality: we often think that to be critical is to take the oppositional stance against a text.
Criticality is to engage with a text on its own terms, recognise its contributions, and then notice its drawbacks
institutions of modernity:
- the capitalist market
- the nation state - nationalism
- democracy
the birth of colonialism, racism, nationalism, and capitalism is intertwined
democracy is the product of social uprisings against, capitalism, not capitalism itself.
It is the process of particular relations of power and resistance to those relations of power.
yogesh says that capitalism perceives it's biggest threat to be democracy.
I think he is referring to a theoretical democracy based on ethics, not the capitalist democracy that exists rn.
equality as operation within: we are all different yet equal, as opposed to we are equal, meaning we have to be the same.
through the connectivity that modern colonialism's technology has facilitated around the world, gandhi talks about how colonialism tries to create a universal morality (pg 51)
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for gandhi, most indians were shaped by the community that they were born in. This includes the morality of deity worship. Gandhi's argument against colonialism was that it destroyed all indian morality. Therefore, a protection of this indian morality meant the protection of caste communities