Thus Gandhi not only negated the idea of the author at the centre of the production of meaning, he also practised inter-textuality, predating the poststructuralist theory of the death of the author. He weaved in the ideas of Plato, Tolstoy, Ruskin, Thoreau, Edward Carpenter, Dadabhai Naoroji, and many others, in
Gandhi conceived of his writing as bricolage, an assemblage of different modes of thought. In the appendix he gives a list of books that influenced him. He says that the views expressed in the book are not his because they were formed after reading several books. Hind Swaraj because he could not restrain himself after having read and pondered much. The steamer, like prison, provided an enabling space to reflect and write.Īs Gandhi explains in the foreword, he wrote The journey had been preceded by an intense period of thinking, reading and discussion on the issues he dealt with in
The pull of writing was so overwhelming that Gandhi used his left hand when the right got tired. Hind Swaraj, Suresh Sharma and Tridip Suhrud reconstruct the history of its composition. Hind Swaraj in Gujarati in 1909, aboard a steamer, when he was on the way to South Africa from England. Besides, he was an obsessive letter-writer, penning thousands of epistles in his lifetime. His experience of drafting documents constantly for the Congress might have shaped his art of composition too. His direct and simple prose devoid of artificiality was honed over the years, chiefly through his reading of the Bible and the English authors. Gandhi’s involvement with print culture - journalism, editing, publishing, translating and authoring books - invites one more biography. In examining Gandhi’s writerly self, I would like to focus on two of his classics, How did Gandhi manage to write so much despite his hectic schedule? Since writing is a public act performed privately, what did writing mean to Gandhi - the public personality and the private self? Why did he write at all?
He is one of the most prolific writers of all times, having provided enough material for the nearly hundred-volumeĬollected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, besides numerous rough drafts and unpublished material. Gandhi’s writings matter to us today, the writer in him should matter more, especially for humanist scholars.
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