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This essay1 examines Gandhi's Hind Swaraj, particularly its dialogic form, in order to highlight several theoretical implications for a study of the literary reader. The Gandhian reader is, above everything else, committed and honest: one who might sleep but one who never pretends to sleep. Such a reader is ever-ready for dialogue (for monologue is intrinsically violent), yet not necessarily to agree but to understand even at the point of difference. This unusual understanding can to some extent be explained with the help of Habermas' theory of communication that is summed up in his four "universal validity claims": uttering something intelligibly, giving (the hearer) something to understand, making herself thereby understandable, and coming to an understanding with another person (Habermas 1998, 22). In Gandhi, however, a theory of the reader while it covers Habermas' grounding in the rational goes further to encompass the relevance of the transcendental, what Gandhi calls Truth. The reader, then, is defined as a Truth-seeker. In following up on this theme, this essay establishes the reliance of Hind Swaraj on a discretionary Gandhian reading of the Bhagavad Gita and argues for the centrality of the reader as a Truth-oriented human person rather than primarily a reading process.

DOI: 10.1057/9781403982995_9

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