Many of the pages of Hind Swaraj are devoted to denying that the vaunted modernization of India lauded by the British as their great accomplishment had in fact accomplished anything worthwhile. In this vein Gandhi criticized railways, machinery in general, cities, doctors, and lawyers. It is easy to look at the book as one whose central message is an attack on the various institutions that Gandhi criticizes, of which the central one seems to be machinery. (11)

But in later life Gandhi appeared to backtrack on many of the specific points on he touched in Hind Swaraj. (12) It turned out that he did not really mean that anything the British had brought to India was per se evil, but rather that many things tended to become evil because they were not properly employed. They were employed for the wrong motives and for the wrong ends. But to the end of his life Gandhi never ceased to proclaim that he still stood firmly behind what he had said in Hind Swaraj. (13) He did not retract a word of it. A puzzle then arises: How can a book be wholly right if it is hard to find any specific point stated in the book that Gandhi did not modify in subsequent years ?

I suggest, in line with my general idea about how to understand Gandhi, that the central thread of the book, which holds its various parts together, is a passion for dharma. The central point of Hind Swaraj, which the book illustrated in several ways, was that modern so-called civilization was adharma. It had no soul. Consider the following passage in this light: “This civilization is irreligion [adharma], and it has taken such a hold on the people in Europe that those who are in it appear to be half mad. They lack real physical strength or courage. They keep up their energy by intoxication. Women, who should be the queens of households, wander in the streets, or they slave away in factories. For the sake of a pittance, half a million women in England alone are labouring under trying circumstances in factories or similar institutions. This awful fact is one of the causes of the daily growing suffragette movement.