Hind Swaraj (1909), chapter XX
Real Home-Rule
In November 1909 Mahatma Gandhi was on the ship Kildonan Castle, travelling from London back to South Africa. He had spent four months in London trying to get rights for Indians in the Transvaal, and the British government had turned him down. While he was there, he met young Indian revolutionaries who lived at India House. They told him that India would only win its freedom with guns and bombs. Gandhiji disagreed. On the voyage home, he sat down with ship stationery to write an answer. He wrote so fast that when his right hand grew tired, he switched to his left hand.
His book was a dialogue between a reader who wanted violence and an editor who answered him. The reader thought freedom meant driving out the British army and running the country the same way the British did. Gandhiji told him that would only give India English rule without the Englishman. A country does not become free just by putting its own people inside the old offices. In the final chapter he wrote: "Real home-rule is self-rule or self-control." If people cannot govern their own habits and anger, giving them power just changes who holds the whip.
Therefore
Before you try to change how a company, a committee, or a household is run, start with your own conduct. You cannot build a decent place if you run it with the same temper you complained about.
Indian Opinion, December 1909
Gandhiji reached Cape Town on 30 November 1909 with Hajee Habib, his fellow delegate from the Transvaal. He printed the text in Gujarati across two December issues of Indian Opinion, his paper in South Africa. In January 1910 he printed it as a booklet. Two months later, the British government in Bombay banned the booklet as dangerous writing and seized the copies. Gandhiji responded by translating the whole book into English so readers across the world could judge the argument for themselves. He titled the English edition Indian Home Rule, and he never took back a single sentence.
A small reminder, on the desk or the notebook, that taking charge of a room begins with taking charge of yourself.
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