After years of learning about philosophers the idea of Gandhi was always thrown around, but I never quite understood fully what he represented. Simply, he rejects the modern civilisation, and the idea that Britain brings. He wants to, however, to bring back the past governing styles of India. The one thing that I did find particularly interesting was thinking of the older generation and the youth. He says “had not the Grand Old Man of India prepared the soil, our young men could not have even spoken about Home Rule”. This idea formulates how ideology forms throughout the ages. At least in present times, Indian ideology has a culture that highly respects their family, especially their elders. Again, as said in another blog, this really does question the theologies from the older generation to the newer, and the persuasion of people. As the reading further goes on it says that “ One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand the popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects” (13). One of the ideas behind this and the use of the newspaper is the lack of knowledge that goes into reading these articles, or at least hearing about them from the youth; in other words how the youth does not know how to filter out knowledge and not to as Gahandi would say “find out the truth, and follow it”(11). Here he may mean of the past of India and the high values it holds.
3 comments:
It was interesting to here the take on the older generation and the youth, since that was not something I focused on much as I read Hind Swaraj. It is true, that not only in Indian cultures, but in other cultures as well, that one has to respect their elders. As a Filipino-American, I too, had to show respect to those who are older than me. However, aside from this respect, there is also that gap in the generations and ideas of their lifetime, and my lifetime. Growing up in America, I always heard stories about my parents and my grandparents time in the Philippines, but of course, I never had to experience them myself. As for India, and the people in the time of Gandhi, I am sure that the younger generation had a much more different view of how to deal with the “British invaders”. While Gandhi wanted passive resistence, the “reader” in the Hind Swaraj, felt that violence was a means to achieving freedom. This “reader” may or may not have been old or young, but it is true that the occurrences that one experiences differs the outlook they may have on life. While those older than us tend to be wiser since they have lived a life on this earth much longer, they may be less aggressive or adamant about certain things than those of the younger generation may be.
I thought it was interesting that you related the (relatively) modern actions of the young to those of the elderly; it's interesting to me because I didn't notice the generational point. It's also true that elders pave the way for youth to make changes in the world around them; however, youth often rebel against the more conservative older generations.
i also think it's really provocative to think about "how ideology forms throughout the ages," as you pose in this post. it does seem like a lot of this is a questions of transmission...
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