Rethinking Swadeshi in Trumpian Era

Gandhi's concept of swadeshi and swaraj were hospitable and caring. To reinvigorate the ideas in today's age, Indians must question policy at the linguistic, ethical and aesthetic levels

- SHIV VISVANATHAN

This essay is an attempt to explore the relation between the word and the world in the domain of policy. One must confess the domain of policy has become an esoteric world—full of arcane interpretations of ordinary language.

The recent exchange of words between Donald Trump and Narendra Modi escalated a lot in the news. It has been seen as a battle between two nations on tariffs and trade. It is also a struggle for dignity. Modi has raised the word 'swadeshi' in this context. One hopes to explore the fate of this word.

Modi's use of the word is strictly economic; but one has to locate this sense of swadeshi within a wider historical and philosophical context. The most fruitful way of doing this is to contrast Modi's construct of swadeshi with a Gandhian imagination.

One has to, first of all, emphasize that while Modi exudes the official, Mahatma Gandhi's is a playful performance. Gandhi displayed a cultural confidence against the British. One can see the power of his attitude in two small anecdotes. Once an American journalist asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization. He replied, 'It would be a good idea.' Gandhi went further. He said the task of the Indian national movement was not just to overthrow the British, but to rescue them from the travails of modernity.

To the cultural confidence that underlay swadeshi and swaraj to its playfulness, one must add a polysemic power. For Gandhi, these two words conveyed a spectrum of meanings. Swadeshi implied the indigenous, the local, and the vernacular. Each summoned a different domain of meaning. Each mapped a different angle to life. The word that immediately comes to mind is 'local'. It implied a geography, a sense of neighborhood. Swadeshi implied that the local was primary.