BPSE 141 Gandhi and the Contemporary World Solved Question Paper June 2026 for IGNOU BA (General) and BA (Honours) Political Science

Question 1 (Section I): What is Gandhian concept of Alternative Modernity ?

Answer

Gandhi’s concept of alternative modernity is his argument that India could become independent, prosperous and dignified without copying the industrial, market-driven modernity of the West. He set it out most fully in Hind Swaraj, written in Gujarati in November 1909 aboard the ship Kildonan Castle on his way back from London to South Africa. The book first appeared in Indian Opinion and was banned by the Bombay government in 1910.

1. Critique of modern civilisation

Gandhi judged a civilisation by the conduct it encourages, not by the goods it produces. Modern civilisation, he wrote, makes bodily comfort the test of progress, multiplies wants without limit and places machines above people. He used railways, lawyers and doctors as examples: railways helped spread plague and worsened famines by carrying grain away, lawyers profited from quarrels and helped the British hold India, and doctors encouraged careless living.

2. What true civilisation means

Against this, Gandhi defined civilisation as “that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty”. Duty, self-control and mastery over one’s mind and passions were its marks. In his reading, India’s older way of life had kept wants limited on purpose, which let people live with less greed and less violence.

3. Main features of the alternative

The alternative rests on a few linked ideas. Swaraj means rule over oneself first, not English rule without the Englishman. Swadeshi and bread labour make villages self-reliant. Satyagraha keeps the means as pure as the ends. Sarvodaya, drawn from John Ruskin’s Unto This Last, which Gandhi read in 1904, asks for the welfare of all and not only of the majority.

4. Alternative, not anti-modern

Gandhi was not against everything modern. He ran newspapers on printing presses, travelled by train to organise campaigns and praised the Singer sewing machine as a useful invention. What he opposed was machinery that threw people out of work and gathered wealth in a few hands. He also pushed modern ideas such as the equal dignity of women and the end of untouchability further than many reformers of his time.

5. Influences and Gandhi’s later view

His thinking drew on Tolstoy, Ruskin, Thoreau and Edward Carpenter’s Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, as well as the Bhagavad Gita. Scholars such as Ashis Nandy and Bhikhu Parekh read Hind Swaraj as a critical, non-Western modernity. Gandhi stood by the book: in a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru dated 5 October 1945, he wrote that he still held to the system of government it described.

Criticism and conclusion

Critics argued that the idea romanticised village life. Dr B.R. Ambedkar saw the Indian village as a site of caste oppression, and Nehru chose planned industrial growth for independent India. Even so, debates on climate change, consumerism and jobless growth have made Gandhi’s questions current again. His alternative modernity works best as a moral test for progress: development must leave people freer and more self-reliant, not more dependent.

Question 2 (Section I): Explain ‘Swadeshi’ concept and its relevance today.

Answer

Swadeshi literally means “of one’s own country”. For Gandhi it meant far more than buying Indian goods. In a speech at the Missionary Conference in Madras on 14 February 1916, he described it as the spirit that restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings in preference to the more distant. It was a duty towards one’s neighbours and community.

Background

The word became a national cry during the Swadeshi movement, launched on 7 August 1905 at the Calcutta Town Hall against the partition of Bengal. Gandhi took this boycott-based idea and turned it into a constructive programme that every Indian, rich or poor, could practise daily at home.

Three spheres of Swadeshi

Gandhi applied Swadeshi in three areas. In religion, a person should stay with the faith of their birth and reform it from within. In politics, Indians should use and improve their own institutions, such as village panchayats. In economics, people should use goods made by their neighbours and help revive local industries that colonial trade had ruined.

Khadi and the charkha

Khadi became the symbol of Swadeshi. Gandhi argued that cheap Lancashire cloth had destroyed India’s handloom weavers and drained wealth abroad. During the Non-Cooperation Movement, foreign cloth was burnt in public bonfires, including one in Bombay on 31 July 1921, and in 1925 he founded the All India Spinners’ Association to spread hand-spinning as a source of village income.

Not narrow nationalism

Gandhi insisted that Swadeshi was not hatred of foreigners. Goods that India could not make, or that genuinely helped its people, could still be bought from abroad. The aim was dignity of labour, full employment in villages and a fair link between producer and consumer. He saw Swadeshi as the practical base of Swaraj.

Relevance today

Swadeshi still shapes Indian policy and debate. Make in India (2014) and the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (2020) speak the language of self-reliance, and the vocal for local campaign echoes Gandhi directly. The Khadi and Village Industries Commission, set up in 1957, and National Handloom Day on 7 August, observed since 2015, keep his economic idea alive.

The idea also fits today’s concerns. Buying local cuts transport emissions and supports sustainable living. The supply shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic showed the value of local production capacity. Small and micro enterprises, which employ millions, gain when consumers prefer goods made near them, and GI tags protect regional crafts.

Conclusion

Swadeshi has limits in a global economy bound by trade rules and shared technology, and blind protectionism can raise prices and slow innovation. Read in Gandhi’s spirit, though, Swadeshi today means thoughtful self-reliance with a moral core: care for neighbours, fair work and responsible consumption. That keeps it as relevant now as it was in 1916.