Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule

When Lord Lothian was at Segaon he asked me if I could give him a copy of Hind Swaraj, for, as he said, all that Gandhiji was teaching now lay in the germ in that little book which deserved to be read and re-read in order to understand Gandhiji properly.Curiously enough, about the same time, Shrimati Sophia Wadia was writing an article on the book exhorting all our Ministers and M. L. A.s, all the British and Indian Civil Servants, indeed everyone who wanted the present non-violent experiment in democracy to succeed, to read and re-read the book. "How can a non-violent man be a dictator in his own home?" she asks. "How can he be a wine- bibber? How can a lawyer advise his client to go to court and fight? The answers to all these questions raise highly important practical issues. The people's education in Hind Swaraj, in which these problems are dealt with from the point of view of principles, should be extensively carried on."Her appeal is timely. The book was written in 1908, during Gandhiji's return voyage from London, in answer to the Indian school of violence and published serially in the columns of the Indian Opinion, edited by Gandhiji.