DESIRES, MACHINES, AND SWARAJ
civilization - disease - empires - europe - modernity - materialsm - limits - machinery - consumption - liberation - nonviolence -
How does the concept of civilization inform M.K. Gandhi’s understanding of empire in Hind Swaraj (1909)?
Gandhi likens industrialized European civilization to a disease. The empires whose aim had been to “civilize” their colonies can be seen as having cultivated and diffused the “disease of civilization”, which is associated with a particular notion of European modernity. The empires themselves, in Gandhi’s view, are deeply afflicted by modernity. This critique of empires as the inventors, harbourers and spreaders of disease flips the “moral justification narrative” of colonization on its head. Rather than imparting the “goodness” of civilization on their colonies, empires have unleashed an illness upon them. This essay will focus on a discussion of desires and machines, and the effects that the empire has on each of them, as well as Gandhi’s solution to the pathology of civilization.
A symptom of civilization-induced desire is consumption. As the industrial revolution freed large swaths of the population from land-based work, and funneled them into other types of work (such as factory-based labour or intellectual labour), a shift occurred. A culture of commodification was created, and became a typical feature of modern European civilization. This “commodification culture” leads to two things. First, this means that civilization predates upon and enslaves humans through their own desires, which creates a new form of slavery. This leads to the second effect— the tendency of European modernity to be preoccupied with material wealth. In turn, such desire for wealth creates life-corroding competition and actively encourages the neverending accumulation of more wealth. These effects demonstrate the modern empire’s goal to turn the entire world into a “consumer market”— Gandhi notes of the British empire that “Many problems can be solved by remembering that money is their God…They wish to convert the whole world into a vast market for their goods” . Subsequently, the empire’s goals are not to civilize, but to extort and destroy the morality of its subjects. The reason for this ambition is twofold. First, when basic life conditions improved as a result of industrialization, people living in modern civilizations made “bodily welfare the object of life” . Second, as a result of this change, Gandhi states, “Formerly, men were made slaves under physical compulsion, now they are enslaved by temptation of money and of the luxuries money can buy” . Modern slavery is slavery to one’s own desires, created under the conditions of civilization. Worked into these arguments is that the concept that civilization “propagates immorality” through the perversion of such desires. This is why Gandhi critiques the modern empire as a destructive force.
The subject of destruction is related to Gandhi’s critique of the machine, in which he insists that speed brought about by modern inventions destroys our humanity. To Gandhi, “Machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilization; it represents a great sin” . He argues that a certain kind of prejudice, arising out of living within civilization, orients us towards applauding the kind of “progress” achieved by machinery. Our desire for more convenience leads to the machination of everything, as we are “intoxicated by modern civilization” , and unable to see its harmful effects. As Gandhi says, “Our difficulties are of our own creation. God set a limit to a man’s locomotive ambition… man immediately proceeded to discover means of overriding the limit” . In overriding our human limits, we stray further from God, which is characteristic of Gandhi’s moral critique of the empire’s civilizing mission. Railways have “spread the bubonic plague…increased the frequency of famines…accentuate[d] the evil nature of man” and so on and so forth, emphasizing the empire’s disregard for humanity and distribution of evil. He further argues that India’s ancestors “dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasures… they saw that our real happiness and health consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet” , both of which are habits that the empire encourages the opposite of.
In order to cure the diseases caused by the empire, and stop the spread of modern civilization, Gandhi proposes several remedies. He states that “Consumption does not produce apparent hurt… it induce[s] the belief that all is well. Civilisation is such a disease” . The only way to cure ourselves of such hidden illnesses is to exercise autonomy outside of the consumption-obsession framework that is encoded in the conduct of empires. Gandhi suggests two key practices. First is swaraj. Swaraj is how we can recognize ourselves beyond the constrictions of modernity. In learning to self-liberate and “learn to rule ourselves” , we are freed from the enslavement of the empire. Second is nonviolence. Nonviolence is the only response through which we can demonstrate strength against and outside of the structures of violence that are encoded in the way of empires. As Gandhi states, empires can “govern us only so long as we remain the governed”, and therefore, that “force of arms is powerless when matched against the force of love or the soul”.
As the empire seeks to spread civilization, Gandhi understands the empire to be the spreader of disease. Empires circulate and perpetuate the sins of industrialization, and create slaves of desire. Whilst their messaging is that of “progress” and “technology”, these things create a culture of commodification, which only serves to alienate us from our humanity, and further us from God and morality in the process. In order to remedy these pathologies, Gandhi suggests to operate outside of the empire by practicing self-liberation and resisting to engage in violence.