Gandhi’s singular insight was that self-government would never be achieved by the resolutions passed by a self-regarding and unelected elite, pursuing the politics of the drawing-room. To him, self-government had to involve the empowerment of the masses, the toiling multitudes of India in whose name the upper classes were clamouring for Home Rule. This position did not go over well with India’s political class, which consisted in those days largely of maharajahs and lawyers, men of means who discoursed in English and demanded the rights of Englishmen. Nor did Gandhi’s insistence that the
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