
In general, ‘khadi’ means homespun or handmade cloth. In particular, Gandhi argued for the concept of ‘khadi’. As a result, members of the Indian National Congress (including Gandhi) began to express the importance of swadeshi. This arrangement deprived India from developing its own economy and sent large amounts of wealth back to England. At the time, Britain benefitted economically by selling goods to India from their factories in England. In general, it involved Indians producing their own goods (or consuming domestically made goods) and rejecting foreign goods. One of the ways that Gandhi promoted the idea of economic non-cooperation was through the concept of ‘swadeshi’. He argued that the best way for Indian to obtain self-government (swaraj) was through a non-cooperation movement in which the Indian people refused to follow British laws. Gandhi believed that India could gain its independence and achieve swaraj if it stopped cooperating with British laws, thus forcing the British to adapt to the Indian people instead of the other way around. In general, civil disobedience is when individuals refuse to follow the orders or laws of a society that they feel are unjust or discriminatory.


He did this through several different ways, but Gandhi is most famous for his non-cooperation movement based on civil disobedience.

In general, the term swaraj means self-government or self-rule and refers to the idea that Gandhi (along with other members of the Indian Independence Movement) wanted India to gain its independence from British imperial rule. Gandhi’s concept of independence is often referred to as ‘swaraj’. In fact, Gandhi became the leader of the Indian National Congress in 1920, and quickly began to organize and carry out protests calling for an end to British imperialism in India.

He used this experience in South Africa to carry out similar actions in India. Before arriving in India in 1915, Gandhi had helped lead an Indian nationalist movement in South Africa, in which he argued for more rights and better treatment of Indians there. As stated above, the Indian Independence Movement expanded in 1915 when Mahatma Gandhi returned to India following his time in South Africa.
