Gandhian Concept of Swadeshi in the Short Stories of Premchand

Abstract

The concept of ‘Swadeshi’ became popular during ‘Freedom Struggle’ of India and was discovered by Gandhiji. Etymologically the term ‘swadeshi’ means ‘of one’s own country’. However ‘the country’ component is not its connotation but its sub-characteristics. In fact, ‘swadeshi’ encompasses all the indigenous things – both abstract and concrete i.e. language, wisdom, culture, dress and all other products. Gandhiji himself defined ‘swadeshi’: “that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of remote” (Gandhi 117). The core of the concept is ‘self reliance’ and ‘self governance’. Metaphysically, ‘swadeshi’ is love for soul: in social context, it is love for own cultural and self control; biologically it means to live in and with one’s own nature and environment. From moral point of view it is duty to one’s neighbour ; politically for self government and from economic point of view, it is strong belief in self reliance, balance growth for larger and deeper life not for the profit and market. In this paper I wish to study the impact of Ghandhian concept of ‘Swadeshi’ in the short stories of Munsi Premchand from economic point of view only.