Gandhi’s Swaraj vis-à-vis Mill’s Individual Liberty

This paper is an attempt to understand Gandhi's idea of swaraj in the context of individual freedom with respect to Mill's idea of Liberty. Central question which this paper is trying to find answer is “How the ideas of Gandhi enriches the concept of individual liberty as prescribed by Mill?” Paper has four major sections. First section describes Gandhi's general idea of freedom – “Swaraj”. In the second section, Gandhi's idea of individual liberty has been juxtaposed with three principles of Mill's liberty – liberty of thought and expression, defense of individuality and limits to the authority of society over individual. Here substantive similarity is being seen between Gandhi and Mill. Third section deals with contestations and analysis of Gandhi's three major ideas on liberal ground, namely -critique of modernity, support to certain prohibitions like liquor and trusteeship. It is being inferred that Gandhi's ideas with regard to critique of modernity and trusteeship are more inclined towards liberal approach where as his support for prohibition of liquor need to be seen from the lens of guardianship or trusteeship and social reform rather than anti-individuality. Fourth section shows the enriches of the concept of liberty by Gandhi's idea of Truth and Non- Violence. This section brings the argument that Gandhi's idea of truth and non violence and his penultimate impetus on the two, actually forms the the basis of the idea of liberty of Mill . Without truth and non violence , the whole idea of liberty woud get shattered.