Mahatma Gandhi describes western civilization as a force in the world that even though can be seen as a great idea is essentially everything that’s wrong with the modern world. Gandhi gives the notion that the more people give in to the culture of western civilizations the more they give up on what truly makes humans human. Gandhi states the difference between cultures when he states, “But from the present civilization, or, rather, from western civilization, there flow two propositions which have almost become maxims to live by I call them fallacious maxims. They are might is right and survival of the fittest. Those who have propounded these two maxims have given a meaning to them. I am not going into the meaning that might be attached in our minds to them, but they have said undoubtedly, by saying “might is right”, that physical might is right, that physical strength is right and supreme. Some of them have also combined intellectual strength with physical strength, but I would replace both these with heart-strength, and I say that nobody with merely physical might and intellectual might can ever enjoy that strength that can proceed from the heart. It never can be that mere intellectual or mere physical strength can ever supersede the heart-strength or, as Ruskin would say, social affections. A quickening and quickened soul responds only to the springs of the heart. To Gandhi the difference between western and eastern is that It appears that western civilization is destructive, eastern civilization is constructive. Western civilization is centrifugal and eastern civilization is centripetal. He feels Western civilization naturally disruptive and is without a goal whereas eastern civilization has always had the goal before it.
Although the word swaraj means self-rule, Gandhi gave it the content of an integral revolution that encompasses all spheres of life. "At the individual level swaraj is vitally connected with the capacity for dispassionate self-assessment, ceaseless self-purification and growing swadeshi or self-reliance". Politically swaraj is self-government and not good government and it means continuous effort to be independent of government control, whether it is foreign government or whether it is national. In the other words, it is sovereignty of the people based on pure moral authority.
Gandhi distinguished satyagraha from the passive resistance which does not exclude the use of force or violence. He believed that satyagraha is not a method of the weak, like passive resistance, but it is a tool for the strong that excludes the use of violence in any shape or form. Satyagraha is the law of love for all, and it renounces violence absolutely. The idea is not to destroy or hurt the adversary but to convert them by sympathy, patience, and self-suffering. The satyagrahi hates all evil and never compromises with it but approaches the evildoer with love. Satyagraha is insisting on the truth and can be offered in relation to one’s family, rulers, fellow citizens, or even the whole world. I believe Gandhi wanted an India where life is simply and to be a place where everyone is humble and thankful for what they have than a society that separates people through wealth and social classes.