Cognitionseventh edition7eCognitionexplori.docx

Cognition
seventh edition
7eCognition
exploring the science of the mind
Daniel Reisberg
reed college
n
W. W. Norton & Company
New York • London
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Reisberg, Daniel.
Title: Cognition : exploring the science of the mind / Daniel
Reisberg, Reed
College.
Description: Seventh Edition. | New York : W. W. Norton &
Company, [2018] |
Revised edition of the author’s Cognition, [2016]o | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018022174 | ISBN 9780393665017
(hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Cognitive psychology.
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With love

— always —
for the family that
enriches every
aspect of my life.
vii
Brief Contents
CONTENTS ix
PREFACE xiii
PART 1 THE FOUNDATIONS OF COGNITIVE
PSYCHOLOGY 1
1 The Science of the Mind 2
2 The Neural Basis for Cognition 24
PART 2 LEARNING ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND US 61
3 Visual Perception 62
4 Recognizing Objects 106
5 Paying Attention 148
PART 3 MEMORY 193
6 The Acquisition of Memories and the Working-Memory
System 194
7 Interconnections between Acquisition and Retrieval 238
8 Remembering Complex Events 278
PART 4 KNOWLEDGE 323
9 Concepts and Generic Knowledge 324

10 Language 364
11 Visual Knowledge 410
PART 5 THINKING 453
12 Judgment and Reasoning 454
13 Problem Solving and Intelligence 498
14 Conscious Thought, Unconscious Thought 546
Appendix: Research Methods A-1
Glossary G-1
References R-1
Credits C-1
Author Index I-1
Subject Index I-13
PREFACE xiii
PART 1 THE FOUNDATIONS OF COGNITIVE
PSYCHOLOGY 1
1 The Science of the Mind 2
The Scope of Cognitive Psychology 3 • The Cognitive
Revolution 8
• Research in Cognitive Psychology: The Diversity of Methods
17
• Applying Cognitive Psychology 19 • Chapter Review 21
2 The Neural Basis for Cognition 24
Explaining Capgras Syndrome 26 • The Study of the Brain 31
• Sources of Evidence about the Brain 37 • The Cerebral Cortex
44
• Brain Cells 49 • Moving On 55 • Cognitive Psychology and

Education: Food Supplements and Cognition 55 • Chapter
Review 58
PART 2 LEARNING ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND US 61
3 Visual Perception 62
The Visual System 64 • Visual Coding 70 • Form Perception
80
• Constancy 87 • The Perception of Depth 92 • Cognitive
Psychology
and Education: An “Educated Eye” 99 • Chapter Review 103
4 Recognizing Objects 106
Recognition: Some Early Considerations 110 • Word
Recognition 112
• Feature Nets and Word Recognition 116 • Descendants of the
Feature Net 127 • Face Recognition 133 • Top-Down
Influences on
Object Recognition 140 • Cognitive Psychology and Education:
Speed-Reading 142 • Chapter Review 145
Contents
ix
x • Contents
5 Paying Attention 148
Selective Attention 150 • Selection via Priming 158 • Spatial
Attention 164 • Divided Attention 177 • Practice 183 •
Cognitive
Psychology and Education: ADHD 188 • Chapter Review 190
PART 3 MEMORY 193

6 The Acquisition of Memories and
the Working-Memory System 194
Acquisition, Storage, and Retrieval 197 • The Route into
Memory 198
• A Closer Look at Working Memory 205 • Entering Long-
Term
Storage: The Need for Engagement 214 • The Role of Meaning
and Memory Connections 221 • Organizing and Memorizing
224
• The Study of Memory Acquisition 230 • Cognitive
Psychology
and Education: How Should I Study? 232 • Chapter Review
235
7 Interconnections between Acquisition
and Retrieval 238
Learning as Preparation for Retrieval 241 • Encoding
Specificity 244
• The Memory Network 246 • Different Forms of Memory
Testing 250
• Implicit Memory 254 • Theoretical Treatments of Implicit
Memory 261
• Amnesia 267 • Cognitive Psychology and Education:
Familiarity Can
Be Treacherous 273 • Chapter Review 275
8 Remembering Complex Events 278
Memory Errors, Memory Gaps 280 • Memory Errors: A
Hypothesis 282
• The Cost of Memory Errors 288 • Avoiding Memory Errors
296
• Forgetting 297 • Memory: An Overall Assessment 302 •
Autobiographical
Memory 304 • How General Are the Principles of Memory?
315

• Cognitive Psychology and Education: Remembering for the
Long
Term 317 • Chapter Review 320
PART 4 KNOWLEDGE 323
9 Concepts and Generic Knowledge 324
Understanding Concepts 326 • Prototypes and Typicality
Effects 329
• Exemplars 334 • The Difficulties with Categorizing via
Resemblance
337 • Concepts as Theories 343 • The Knowledge Network 350
• Concepts: Putting the Pieces Together 358 • Cognitive
Psychology
and Education: Learning New Concepts 358 • Chapter Review
361
10 Language 364
The Organization of Language 366 • Phonology 368 •
Morphemes
and Words 377 • Syntax 378 • Sentence Parsing 382 • Prosody
390
• Pragmatics 391 • The Biological Roots of Language 392 •
Language
and Thought 399 • Cognitive Psychology and Education:
Writing 404
• Chapter Review 407
Contents • xi
11 Visual Knowledge 410
Visual Imagery 412 • Chronometric Studies of Imagery 415 •
Imagery
and Perception 422 • Visual Imagery and the Brain 424 •

Individual
Differences in Imagery 430 • Images Are Not Pictures 435 •
Long-Term
Visual Memory 439 • The Diversity of Knowledge 447 •
Cognitive
Psychology and Education: Using Imagery 448 • Chapter
Review 450
PART 5 THINKING 453
12 Judgment and Reasoning 454
Judgment 456 • Detecting Covariation 463 • Dual-Process
Models 466
• Confirmation and Disconfirmation 471 • Logic 476 •
Decision
Making 480 • Cognitive Psychology and Education: Making
People
Smarter 491 • Chapter Review 494
13 Problem Solving and Intelligence 498
General Problem-Solving Methods 500 • Drawing on
Experience 504
• Defining the Problem 509 • Creativity 514 • Intelligence 522
• Intelligence beyond the IQ Test 530 • The Roots of
Intelligence 533
• Cognitive Psychology and Education: The Goals of
“Education” 539
• Chapter Review 542
14 Conscious Thought, Unconscious Thought 546
The Study of Consciousness 548 • The Cognitive Unconscious
549
• Disruptions of Consciousness 557 • Consciousness and
Executive
Control 560 • The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness
566

• The Role of Phenomenal Experience 572 • Consciousness:
What Is
Left Unsaid 579 • Cognitive Psychology and Education:
Mindfulness
580 • Chapter Review 583
Appendix: Research Methods A-1
Glossary G-1
References R-1
Credits C-1
Author Index I-1
Subject Index I-13
Preface
I was a college sophomore when I took my first course in
cognitive psy-chology. I was excited about the material then,
and, many years later, the excitement hasn’t faded. Part of the
reason lies in the fact that cognitive
psychologists are pursuing fabulous questions, questions that
have intrigued
humanity for thousands of years: Why do we think the things we
think? Why
do we believe the things we believe? What is “knowledge,” and
how secure
(how complete, how accurate) is our knowledge of the world
around us?

Other questions asked by cognitive psychologists concern more
immediate,
personal, issues: How can I help myself to remember more of
the material that
I’m studying in my classes? Is there some better way to solve
the problems I
encounter? Why is it that my roommate can study with music
on, but I can’t?
And sometimes the questions have important consequences for
our social or
political institutions: If an eyewitness reports what he saw at a
crime, should we
trust him? If a newspaper raises questions about a candidate’s
integrity, how will
voters react?
Of course, we want more than interesting questions—we also
want answers
to these questions, and this is another reason I find cognitive
psychology so excit-
ing. In the last half-century or so, the field has made
extraordinary progress on
many fronts, providing us with a rich understanding of the
nature of memory,
the processes of thought, and the content of knowledge. There
are many things
still to be discovered—that’s part of the fun. Even so, we
already have a lot to say
about all of the questions just posed and many more as well. We
can speak to the
specific questions and to the general, to the theoretical issues
and to the practical.
Our research has uncovered principles useful for improving the
process of educa-

tion, and we have made discoveries of considerable importance
for the criminal
justice system. What I’ve learned as a cognitive psychologist
has changed how I
think about my own memory; it’s changed how I make
decisions; it’s changed
how I draw conclusions when I’m thinking about events in my
life.
On top of all this, I’m also excited about the connections that
cognitive
psychology makes possible. In the academic world, intellectual
disciplines are
often isolated from one another, sometimes working on closely
related problems
xiii
xiv • Preface
without even realizing it. In the last decades, though, cognitive
psychology has
forged rich connections with its neighboring disciplines, and in
this book we’ll
touch on topics in philosophy, neuroscience, law and criminal
justice, econom-
ics, linguistics, politics, computer science, and medicine. These
connections bring
obvious benefits, since insights and information can be traded
back and forth
between the domains. But these connections also highlight the
importance of the
material we’ll be examining, since the connections make it clear
that the issues

before us are of interest to a wide range of scholars. This
provides a strong signal
that we’re working on questions of considerable power and
scope.
I’ve tried in this text to convey all this excitement. I’ve done
my best to describe
the questions being asked within my field, the substantial
answers we can provide
for these questions, and, finally, some indications of how
cognitive psychology is
(and has to be) interwoven with other intellectual endeavors.
I’ve also had other goals in writing this text. In my own
teaching, I try to
maintain a balance among many different elements: the nuts and
bolts of how
our science proceeds, the data provided by the science, the
practical implications
of our research findings, and the theoretical framework that
holds all of these
pieces together. I’ve tried to find the same balance in this text.
Perhaps most
important, though, I try, both in my teaching and throughout
this book, to “tell a
good story,” one that conveys how the various pieces of our
field fit together into
a coherent package. Of course, I want the evidence for our
claims to be in view,
so that readers can see how our field tests its hypotheses and
why our claims must
be taken seriously. But I’ve also put a strong emphasis on the
flow of ideas—how
new theories lead to new experiments, and how those
experiments can lead to
new theory.

The notion of “telling a good story” also emerges in another
way: I’ve always
been impressed by the ways in which the different parts of
cognitive psychology
are interlocked. Our claims about attention, for example, have
immediate impli-
cations for how we can theorize about memory; our theories of
object recognition
are linked to our proposals for how knowledge is stored in the
mind. Linkages
like these are intellectually satisfying, because they ensure that
the pieces of the
puzzle really do fit together. But, in addition, these linkages
make the material
within cognitive psychology easier to learn, and easier to
remember. Indeed, if I
were to emphasize one crucial fact about memory, it would be
that memory is
best when the memorizer perceives the organization and
interconnections within
the material being learned. (We’ll discuss this point further in
Chapter 6.) With
an eye on this point, I’ve therefore made sure to highlight the
interconnections
among various topics, so that readers can appreciate the beauty
of our field and
can also be helped in their learning by the orderly nature of our
theorizing.
I’ve tried to help readers in other ways, too. First, I’ve tried
throughout the
book to make the prose approachable. I want my audience to
gain a sophis-
ticated understanding of the material in this text, but I don’t
want readers to

struggle with the ideas.
Second, I’ve taken various steps that I hope will foster an
“alliance” with
readers. My strategy here grows out of the fact that, like most
teachers, I value
the questions I receive from students and the discussions I have
with them. In
Preface • xv
the classroom, this allows a two-way flow of information that
unmistakably
improves the educational process. Of course, a two-way flow
isn’t possible in
a textbook, but I’ve offered what I hope is a good
approximation: Often, the
questions I hear from students, and the discussions I have with
them, focus
on the relevance of the course material to students’ own lives,
or relevance to
the world outside of academics. I’ve tried to capture that
dynamic, and to present
my answers to these student questions, in the essay at the end of
each chapter
(I’ll say more about these essays in a moment). These essays
appear under the
banner Cognitive Psychology and Education, and—as the label
suggests—
the essays will help readers understand how the materials
covered in that chapter
matter for (and might change!) the readers’ own learning. In
addition, I’ve writ-
ten a separate series of essays (available online), titled

Cognitive Psychology and
the Law, to explore how each chapter’s materials matter in
another arena—the
enormously important domain of the justice system. I hope that
both types of
essays—Education and Law—help readers see that all of this
material is indeed
relevant to their lives, and perhaps as exciting for them as it is
for me.
Have I met all of these goals? You, the readers, will need to be
the judges of
this. I would love to hear from you about what I’ve done well in
the book and
what I could have done better; what I’ve covered (but should
have omitted) and
what I’ve left out. I’ll do my best to respond to every comment.
You can reach me
via email ([email protected]); I’ve been delighted to get
comments from readers
about previous editions, and I hope for more emails with this
edition.
An Outline of the Seventh Edition
The book’s 14 chapters are designed to cover the major topics
within cogni-
tive psychology. The chapters in Part 1 lay the foundation.
Chapter 1 pro-
vides the conceptual and historical background for the
subsequent chapters.
In addition, this chapter seeks to convey the extraordinary scope
of the field
and why, therefore, research on cognition is so important. The
chapter also
highlights the relationship between theory and evidence in
cognitive psychol-

ogy, and it discusses the logic on which this field is built.
Chapter 2 then offers a brief introduction to the study of the
brain. Most of
cognitive psychology is concerned with the functions that our
brains make pos-
sible, and not the brain itself. Nonetheless, our understanding of
cognition has
certainly been enhanced by the study of the brain, and
throughout this book
we’ll use biological evidence as one means of evaluating our
theories. Chapter 2
is designed to make this evidence fully accessible to the
reader—by providing
a quick survey of the research tools used in studying the brain,
an overview of
the brain’s anatomy, and also an example of how we can use
brain evidence as a
source of insight into cognitive phenomena.
Part 2 of the book considers the broad issue of how we gain
information from
the world. Chapter 3 covers visual perception. At the outset,
this chapter links to
the previous (neuroscience) chapter with descriptions of the
eyeball and the basic
mechanisms of early visual processing. In this context, the
chapter introduces
the crucial concept of parallel processing and the prospect of
mutual influence
mailto:[email protected]
among separate neural mechanisms. From this base, the chapter
builds toward a

discussion of the perceiver’s activity in shaping and organizing
the visual world,
and explores this point by discussing the rich topics of
perceptual constancy and
perceptual illusions.
Chapter 4 discusses how we recognize the objects that surround
us. This
seems a straightforward matter—what could be easier than
recognizing a tele-
phone, or a coffee cup, or the letter Q? As we’ll see, however,
recognition is
surprisingly complex, and discussion of this complexity allows
me to amplify key
themes introduced in earlier chapters: how active people are in
organizing and
interpreting the information they receive from the world; the
degree to which
people supplement the information by relying on prior
experience; and the ways
in which this knowledge can be built into a network.
Chapter 5 then considers what it means to “pay attention.” The
first half of
the chapter is concerned largely with selective attention—cases
in which you seek
to focus on a target while ignoring distractors. The second half
of the chapter is
concerned with divided attention (“multi-tasking”)—that is,
cases in which you
seek to focus on more than one target, or more than one task, at
the same time.
Here, too, we’ll see that seemingly simple processes turn out to
be more compli-
cated than one might suppose.

Part 3 turns to the broad topic of memory. Chapters 6, 7, and 8
start with a
discussion of how information is “entered’’ into long-term
storage, but then turn
to the complex interdependence between how information is
first learned and
how that same information is subsequently retrieved. A
recurrent theme in this
section is that learning that’s effective for one sort of task, one
sort of use, may
be quite ineffective for other uses. This theme is examined in
several contexts,
and leads to a discussion of research on unconscious
memories—so-called mem-
ory without awareness. These chapters also offer a broad
assessment of human
memory: How accurate are our memories? How complete? How
long-lasting?
These issues are pursued both with regard to theoretical
treatments of memory
and also with regard to the practical consequences of memory
research, including
the application of this research to the assessment, in the
courtroom, of eyewitness
testimony.
The book’s Part 4 is about knowledge. Earlier chapters show
over and over
that humans are, in many ways, guided in their thinking and
experiences by what
they already know—that is, the broad pattern of knowledge they
bring to each
new experience. This invites the questions posed by Chapters 9,
10, and 11: What
is knowledge? How is it represented in the mind? Chapter 9
tackles the question

of how “concepts,” the building blocks of our knowledge, are
represented in the
mind. Chapters 10 and 11 focus on two special types of
knowledge. Chapter 10
examines our knowledge about language; Chapter 11 considers
visual knowl-
edge and examines what is known about mental imagery.
The chapters in Part 5 are concerned with the topic of thinking.
Chapter 12
examines how each of us draws conclusions from evidence—
including cases
in which we are trying to be careful and deliberate in our
judgments, and also
cases of informal judgments of the sort we often make in our
everyday lives. The
chapter then turns to the question of how we reason from our
beliefs—how we
xvi • Preface
check on whether our beliefs are correct, and how we draw
conclusions, based on
things we already believe. The chapter also considers the
practical issue of how
errors in thinking can be diminished through education.
Chapter 13 is also about thinking, but with a different
perspective: This
chapter considers some of the ways people differ from one
another in their abil-
ity to solve problems, in their creativity, and in their
intelligence. The chapter
also addresses the often heated, often misunderstood debate

about how different
groups—especially American Whites and African Americans—
might (or might
not) differ in their intellectual capacities.
The final chapter in the book does double service. First, it pulls
together
many of the strands of contemporary research relevant to the
topic of
consciousness—what consciousness is, and what consciousness
is for. In addi-
tion, most readers will reach this chapter at the end of a full
semester’s work,
a point at which they are well served by a review of the topics
already covered
and ill served by the introduction of much new material.
Therefore, this chapter
draws many of its themes and evidence from previous chapters,
and in that
fashion it serves as a review of points that appear earlier in the
book. Chapter
14 also highlights the fact that we’re using these materials to
approach some of
the greatest questions ever asked about the mind, and, in that
way, this chapter
should help to convey some of the power of the material we’ve
been discussing
throughout the book.
New in the Seventh Edition
What’s new in this edition? Every chapter contains new
material, in most
cases because readers specifically requested the new content!
Chapter 1, for
example, now includes discussion of how the field of cognitive
psychology

emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. Chapter 4 includes coverage of
recent work
on how people differ from one another in their level of face-
recognition skill.
Chapter 5 discusses what it is that people pay attention to, with
a quick
summary of research on how men and women differ in what
they focus on,
and how different cultures seem to differ in what they focus on.
Chapter 8
discusses a somewhat controversial and certainly dramatic study
showing
that college students can be led to a false memory of a time they
committed a
felony (an armed assault) while in high school; this chapter also
now includes
coverage of the social nature of remembering. Chapter 10 now
discusses the
topics of prosody and pragmatics. Chapter 12 discusses the
important dif-
ference between “opt-in” and “opt-out” procedures for social
policy, and
Chapter 14 now includes discussion of (both the myths and the
reality of)
subliminal perception.
In this edition, I’ve also added three entirely new features.
First, my students
are always curious to learn how cognitive psychology research
can be applied to
issues and concerns that arise in everyday life. I’ve therefore
added a Cognition
Outside the Lab essay to every chapter. For example, in Chapter
4, in discuss-
ing how word recognition proceeds, I’ve tackled the question of
how the choice

of font can influence readers (sometimes in good ways and
sometimes not). In
Preface • xvii
Chapter 7, I’ve written about cryptoplagiarism, a pattern in
which you can steal
another person’s ideas without realizing it!
Second, I have always believed that, as someone teaching
cognitive psychol-
ogy, I need to respect the practical lessons of my field. As one
example, research
suggests that students’ understanding and memory are improved
if they pause
and reflect on materials they’ve just heard in a lecture or just
read in a book.
“What did I just hear? What were the main points? Which bits
were new, and
which bits had I thought about before?” Guided by that
research, I’ve added Test
Yourself questions throughout the book. These questions are
then echoed at the
end of the chapter, with the aim of encouraging readers to do
another round of
reflection. All these questions are designed to be easy and
straightforward—but
should, our research tells us, be genuinely helpful for readers.
Third, the topics covered in this book have many implications,
and I hope
readers will find it both fun and useful to think about some of
these implications.
On this basis, every chapter also ends with a couple of Think

About It questions,
inviting readers to extend the chapter’s lessons into new
territory. For example,
at the end of Chapter 3, I invite readers to think about how
research on attention
might help us understand what happens in the focused exercise
of meditation
(including Buddhist meditation). The question at the end of
Chapter 7 invites
readers to think through how we might explain the eerie
sensation of déjà vu.
A question at the end of Chapter 8 explores how your memory is
worse than a
video recorder, and also how it’s better than a video recorder.
Other Special Features
In addition, I have (of course) held on to features that were
newly added in
the previous edition—including an art program that showcases
the many
points of contact between cognitive psychology and cognitive
neuroscience,
and the “What if . . .” section that launches each chapter. The
“What if . . .”
material serves several aims. First, the mental capacities
described in each
chapter (the ability to recognize objects, the ability to pay
attention, and so
on) are crucial for our day-to-day functioning, and to help
readers under-
stand this point, most of the “What if . . .” sections explore
what someone’s
life is like if they lack the relevant capacity. Second, the “What
if . . .” sections
are rooted in concrete, human stories; they talk about specific
individuals

who lack these capacities. I hope these stories will be inviting
and thought-
provoking for readers, motivating them to engage the material
in a richer
way. And, third, most of the “What if . . .” sections involve
people who have
lost the relevant capacity through some sort of brain damage.
These sections
therefore provide another avenue through which to highlight the
linkage
between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
This edition also includes explicit coverage of Research
Methods. As …
Hind Swaraj is Mahatma Gandhi's fundamental work. It is a key
to
understanding not only his life and thought but also the politics
of
South Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. For the
first time
this volume presents the 1910 text of Hind Swaraj and includes
Gandhi's
own Preface and Foreword (not found in other editions) and
anno-
tations by the editor. In his Introduction, Anthony Parel sets the
work
in its historical and political contexts. He analyses the
significance of
Gandhi's experiences in England and South Africa, and
examines
the intellectual cross-currents from East and West that affected

the
formation of the mind and character of one of the twentieth
century's
truly outstanding figures. The second part of the volume
contains some
of Gandhi's other writings, including his correspondence with
Tolstoy,
Nehru and others. Short bibliographical synopses of prominent
figures
mentioned in the text and a chronology of important events are
also
included as aids to the reader.
CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN MODERN POLITICS
EDITORS
John Dunn
King's College, Cambridge
Geoffrey Hawthorn
Faculty of Social and Political Science, University of
Cambridge
Political aspirations in the twentieth century are usually
expressed in the
political languages of Western Europe and North America. In
Latin America,
Africa and Asia, however, in the movements of 'national
liberation' from
colonial rule, in the justification of new states, and in the
opposition to such

states, these aspirations have also drawn on other traditions, and
invented
new ones. Outside the West, the languages of modern politics
and the ideas
these languages embody are nowhere simple, and almost
nowhere deriva-
tively Western. But for students and scholars access to the
relevant texts is
not easy.
Cambridge Texts in Modern Politics are intended to remedy this
by
providing editions in English (often for the first time) of texts
which have
been important in the politics of Latin America, Africa and Asia
in the later
nineteenth century and twentieth century, and which will
continue in
importance into the twenty-first. The editions will be
authoritative and
accessible, and can be used with confidence by students and
teachers as a
source. Each text will be edited by a specialist in the history
and politics of
the area concerned, whose introduction will explain its context,
provenance
and significance. Readers will also be provided with a
chronology of events,
brief biographies of relevant individuals and guides to further
reading.
CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN MODERN POLITICS

M.K.GANDHI
Hind Swaraj and other writings
Portrait of Gandhi in London, 1909.
Taken from Gandhi's Collected works, volume ix (Navajivan
Trust).
M.K.GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
and other writings
edited by
ANTHONY J. PAREL
University of Calgary, Canada
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s
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First published 1997
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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948
[Selections. 1997]
Hind swaraj and other writings / by M. K. Gandhi; edited by
Anthony J. Parel.
p. cm. - (Cambridge texts in modern politics)
Includes index.
ISBN 0 521 57405 6 (hardcover). — ISBN 0 521 57431 5 (pbk)

1. India - Politics and government - 1919-1947. 2. Nationalism -
India. i. Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948. Hinda Svaraja. English.
ii. Parel, Anthony, m. Title. iv. Series.
ds480.45.g242 1997
954.03'5- dc20
96-13035 cip
ISBN 978-0-521-57405-1 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-57431-0 paperback
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To Rolande

Contents
Acknowledgements [xi]
Editor's introduction [xiii]
A note on the history of the text [Ixiii}
Principal events in Gandhi's life [Ixv]
Biographical synopses [Ixixj
Guide to further reading [Ixxv]
Glossary and list of abbreviations [Ixxvij
HIND SWARAJ [1]
SUPPLEMENTARY WRITINGS [127]
Gandhi's letter to H. S. L. Polak [129]
Gandhi's letter to Lord Ampthill [133]
Preface to Gandhi's edition of the English translation
of Leo Tolstoy's Letter to a Hindoo [136]
Gandhi-Tolstoy letters [138]
Gandhi-Wybergh letters [139]
Gandhi-Nehru letters [149]
Economic development and moral

development (1916) [156]
Gandhi on machinery, 1919-47 [164]
Constructive programme: its meaning and
place (1941), 1945 [170]
x * Contents
Gandhi's 'Quit India' speech, 1942 [181]
Gandhi's message to the nation issued before
his arrest on 9 August 1942 [188]
Gandhi's political vision: the Pyramid vs the
Oceanic Circle (1946) [188]
Draft Constitution of Congress, 1948 [191]
Bibliography [194]
Index [200]
Acknowledgements
In preparing this work for publication I have been very
fortunate in

receiving generous help from a number of colleagues from
different parts
of the world - Canada, India, Great Britain, the United States
and South
Africa - and it gives me great pleasure to express my gratitude
to each of
them. T. K. N. Unnithan first encouraged me to undertake this
project;
Christopher A. Bayly, Philip Charrier, Margaret Chatterjee,
Dennis
Dalton, James Hunt, Bhikhu Parekh and Anil Sethi read various
versions
of my introduction and notes and suggested ways of improving
them.
Jayshree Joshi, Nathubhai Joshi, Ramanbhai Modi and C. N.
Patel spent
many hours with me going over the Gujarati background of
Gandhi and
Hind Swaraj. Umesh Vyas very generously checked the
references to the
Gujarati text. Richard Bingle, Martin Moir and Edward Moulton
helped
me find valuable bibliographical data. Irene Joshi of the
University of

Washington Library found for me the Tolstoy-Taraknath Das
material.
Hasim Seedat of Durban put at my disposal his private Gandhi
library.
I am most grateful to the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute for a
Senior
Research Fellowship for the 1990 fall term and to the
University of
Calgary for a Killam Resident Fellowship for the 1992 winter
term. A
Visiting Fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge for the 1994 Lent
and Easter
terms helped me greatly in the final stages of this work. Carolyn
Andres
of the Department of Political Science, University of Calgary,
has been
very diligent in getting the typescript ready.
My special thanks go to John Dunn and Geoffrey Hawthorn for
inviting
me to contribute to their series and for their editorial advice.
John Haslam and Anne Dunbar-Nobes of Cambridge University
Press
have exercised mahatma-like patience and skill in getting this
volume

ready for publication. To them my sincere thanks.
xii * Acknowledgements
It is with great pleasure that I thank the Navajivan Trust and the
Nehru
Trust for their permission to use materials under their control.
Finally I thank my long-suffering wife Rolande who, Kasturba-
like,
endured cheerfully my absences from home on visits to India,
South
Africa and Cambridge. This work is dedicated to her in partial
fulfilment
of my family obligations and abiding love.
Editor's introduction
Hind Swaraj is Gandhi's seminal work. It is also a work which
he himself
translated from Gujarati into English: no other work of his, not
even
the Autobiography (translated by his secretary), enjoys this
distinction. As

such, the English text of this work, which is being presented
here,
possesses an authority all of its own. It was this text that
Tolstoy and
Romain Rolland, Nehru and Rajaji read and commented upon. It
was
through this, not the Gujarati text, that he hoped, as he put it,
'to use the
British race' for transmitting his 'mighty message of ahimsa' to
the rest of
the world (Watson 1969, 176). And it was to this text that he
returned
throughout his career as if to the source of his inspiration.
Hind Swaraj is the seed from which the tree of Gandhian
thought has
grown to its full stature. For those interested in Gandhi's
thought in a
general way, it is the right place to start, for it is here that he
presents his
basic ideas in their proper relationship to one another. And for
those
who wish to study his thought more methodically, it remains the
norm
by which to assess the theoretical significance of his other

writings,
including the Autobiography. It can also save them from the
danger of
otherwise getting drowned in the vast sea of Gandhian
anthologies. No
wonder that it has been called 'a very basic document for the
study of
Gandhi's thought' (M. Chatterjee 1983, 89), his 'confession of
faith'
(Nanda 1974, 66), 'a rather incendiary manifesto' (Erikson 1969,
217), 'a
proclamation of ideological independence' (Dalton 1993, 16),
and 'the
nearest he came to producing a sustained work of political
theory' (Brown
1989, 65). It has been compared to such diverse works as
Rousseau's Social
Contract (Heard 1938, 450), the Spiritual Exercises of St
Ignatius Loyola
(Catlin 1950, 215), and chapter IV of St Matthew or St Luke
{The Collected
Works of Mahatma Gandhi (hereafter cited as CW) 10: viii).
This last

xiv * Introduction
comparison, though its allusion to Jesus would have
embarrassed Gandhi,
still merits attention. Just as it is in these Gospel chapters that
we find
Jesus first announcing his messianic mission, so it is in Hind
Swaraj that
we find Gandhi first announcing his own life-mission. This is
nothing
other than showing the way for the moral regeneration of
Indians and the
political emancipation of India.
The very composition of Hind Swaraj has something of the
heroic about
it. It was written in ten days, between 13 and 22 November
1909, on board
the ship Kildonan Castle on the author's return trip from
England to South
Africa, after what proved to be an abortive lobbying mission to
London.
The whole manuscript was written on the ship's stationery, and
the
writing went on at such a furious pace that when the right hand

got tired,
Gandhi continued with the left: forty of the 275 manuscript
pages were
written by the left hand. And he wrote as if under inspiration. In
the
entire autograph, only sixteen lines have been scratched out and
only a
few words changed here and there (Prabhudas Gandhi 1957, 87-
8). Critics
speak of Gandhi's 'profound experience of illumination' on
board the
Kildonan Castle and compare it to Rousseau's on the road to
Vincennes
(Murry 1949,424). At any event, Gandhi himself felt that he had
produced
'an original work', for that was how he described it in a letter to
his friend
Hermann Kallenbach, the first to know about the book's
completion
(Gandhi 1909-46,1, 94).
GANDHI'S INTENTIONS
The book is addressed to a mixed audience: the expatriate
Indians greatly

attracted to terrorism and political violence, the Extremists and
Moderates of the Indian National Congress, the Indian nation,
and 'the
English' (ch. xx). By the Indian nation Gandhi means ordinary
Indians,
irrespective of their religious, linguistic, regional or caste
differences, as
well as the new emerging middle class, referred to in the text as
'doctors',
'lawyers' and 'the wealthy'. And by 'the English' he means both
the British
ruling class living in India and Britons living in Great Britain.
As to why he wrote the book, there was first of all the question
of an
Introduction * xv
inner illumination and the consequent urge to communicate.
'The thing
was brewing in my mind', he wrote to his friend Henry Polak a
month
before the actual writing. 'I, therefore feel that I should no
longer
withhold from you what I call the progressive step I have taken

mentally
. . . After all they [the ideas] are not new but they have only
now assumed
such a concrete form and taken a violent possession of me.' The
Foreword
reflected the same sense of urgency: 'I have written because I
could not
restrain myself.' Years later he recalled the experience: 'Just as
one cannot
help speaking out when one's heart is fall, so also I had been
unable to
restrain myself from writing the book since my heart was fall'
(CW 32:
489).
Secondly, he wanted to clarify the meaning of swaraj, the
concept that
provides the theoretical framework of the book. This is done by
intro-
ducing a distinction between swaraj as self-government or the
quest for
home rule or the good state, and swaraj as self-rule or the quest
for self-
improvement.

Thirdly, he felt it necessary to respond specifically to the
ideology of
political terrorism adopted by the expatriates. The book was
written in
order to show that they were following 'a suicidal policy'. He
recalled
in 1921 how on his 1909 visit to London he had come into
contact with
'every known Indian anarchist' there, and how he had wanted to
write a
book 'in answer to the Indian school of violence*. 'I felt that
violence was
no remedy for India's ills, and that her civilisation required the
use of a
different and higher weapon for self-protection' (CW 19: 277).
Fourthly, Gandhi was anxious to teach the Indians that 'modern
civilisation' posed a greater threat to them than did colonialism.
They
appeared to him to take it for granted that modern civilisation
was an
unmixed blessing, and colonialism an unmixed evil, forgetting
that
colonialism itself was a product of modern civilisation. 'My
countrymen,

therefore, think', states the Preface, 'that they should adopt
modern
civilisation and modern methods of violence to drive out the
English.'
This point is further elaborated in the Preface to the second
Gujarati
edition of 1914: 'it is not the British that are responsible for the
mis-
fortunes of India but we who have succumbed to modern
civilisation . . .
xvi * Introduction
The key to an understanding of Hind Swaraj lies in the idea that
worldly
pursuits should give way to ethical living. This way of life has
no room for
violence in any form against any human being, black or white'
(CW 12:
412). And in 1929 he came back to the same idea: 'The Western
civilisation
which passes for civilisation is disgusting to me. I have given a
rough
picture of it in Hind Swaraj. Time has brought no change in it'

(CW 40:
300). And in 1939: 'The key to understand that incredibly
simple (so
simple as to be regarded foolish) booklet is to realise that it is
not
an attempt to go back to the so-called ignorant, dark ages. But it
is an
attempt to see beauty in voluntary simplicity, [voluntary]
poverty and
slowness. I have pictured that as my ideal' (CW 70: 242). 'I
would ask you
to read Hind Swaraj with my eyes', he exhorts the reader, 'and
see therein
the chapter on how to make India non-violent. You cannot build
non-
violence on a factory civilisation, but it can be built on self-
contained
villages' (CW 70: 296).
Fifthly, he wanted to contribute towards the reconciliation of
Indians
and Britons. This is evident from the 'exhortation' to 'the
English' in
chapter xx. Modern civilisation posed as much a problem for
them as it

did for the Indians. 'At heart you belong to a religious nation',
he tells
them. And the desire for reconciliation can come about 'only
when the
root of our relationship is sunk in a religious soiF (ch. xx).
Finally, Gandhi believed that through Hind Swaraj he would be
able to
give Indians a practical philosophy, an updated conception of
dharma,
that would fit them for life in the modern world. In the past
dharma
was tied to a hierarchical system of duties and obligations and
to the
preservation of status. It gave little or no attention to the idea of
democratic citizenship. Gandhi felt that the time had come to
redefine
the scope of dharma to include notions of citizenship, equality,
liberty,
fraternity and mutual assistance. And in Hind Swaraj he
presents in
simple language his notion of such a redefined dharma, the
vision of a
new Indian or Gandhian civic humanism, one that the Gita and

the
Ramayana had always contained in potentia, but something
which Indian
civilisation had not actualised fully in practice. In Hind Swaraj
a conscious
attempt is being made to actualise that potential. 'This is not a
mere
Introduction * xvii
political book', he writes. 'I have used the language of politics,
but I have
really tried to offer a glimpse of dharma. What is the meaning
of Hind
Swaraj? It means rule of dharma or Ramarajya' (CW 32:489).
'We may read
the Gita or the Ramayana or Hind Swaraj. But what we have to
learn from
them is desire for the welfare of others' (CW 32:496).
These are the exalted aims of the book. Yet on a casual reading
the
book may strike the reader as being a rather simple one. This
would not
be an unwarranted reaction, since Gandhi sought simplicity in

all things,
including the way he presented his ideas. But first impressions
in this case
can be, and are, deceptive, for the book contains in compressed
form the
author's conception of what modern India ought to become and
how
politics may be made into the highest form of the active life. It
is there-
fore a book that needs to be read reflectively, the way one
would read, for
example, a dialogue of Plato. Such a reading can be made easier
if the
reader keeps in view the historical and intellectual contexts
within which
the book was written.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: MODERN CIVILISATION
Modern civilisation forms the broad historical context of Hind
Swaraj. Its
critique of that civilisation is one of its main contributions to
modern
political thought. In historical terms, it is Gandhi's
apprehensions about

certain tendencies in modern civilisation that made him the
thinker and
the political innovator that he is. The tone of his criticism is
sometimes
harsh and intemperate and is likely to mislead the reader. It is
all the
more necessary therefore to say at once that his attitude towards
modern
civilisation, though critical, is not wholly negative. Being
critical implies
the desire to improve the object criticised. So it is with Gandhi
and
modern civilisation. Thus he welcomes a number of its
contributions
- civil liberty, equality, rights, prospects for improving the
economic
conditions of life, liberation of women from tradition, and
religious
toleration. At the same time, the welcome is conditional in that
liberty
has to harmonise with swaraj, rights with duties, empirical
knowledge
with moral insight, economic development with spiritual
progress,

xviii * Introduction
religious toleration with religious belief, and women's liberation
with the
demands of a broader conception of humanity.
Gandhi's admiration for the British constitution helps to put his
attitude towards colonialism in its right perspective. In his
Autobiography
he speaks of the two passions of his life: the passion for loyalty
to
the British constitution and the passion for nursing (CW 39:140-
3). 'The
history of British rule is the history of constitutional evolution.
Under
the British flag, respect for the law has become a part of the
nature of the
people' (CW 4: 322). Specifically, Queen Victoria's
proclamation of 1858
was for him 'the Magna Carta of British Indians', 'a document of
freedom
for the people of India' giving them the 'full privileges and
rights of
British subjects' (CW 3: 357-8). The British constitution

remained the
standard by which to measure the quality of colonial
administration:
policies in conformity with it were thought to be good, and
those contrary
to it, evil. This was true even in the context of his doctrines of
satyagraha. As
he saw it, there was no inconsistency between these and loyalty
to the con-
stitution, for, as he said, a 'love of truth' lay at the root of both
(CW 39:140).
Gandhi has his own definition of civilisation: civilisation is
'that mode
of conduct which points out to man the path of duty' (sudharo,
ch. xin) .
Barbarism (kudharo) is the absence of civilisation. By modern
or Western
civilisation (he often used these terms interchangeably) he
meant that
'mode of conduct' which emerged from the Enlightenment, and
more
exactly, from the Industrial Revolution. 'Let it be remembered',
he wrote
in 1908, 'that western civilisation is only a hundred years old,

or to be
more precise, fifty' (CW 8: 374). The Industrial Revolution for
him was
much more than a mere change in the mode of production. As he
interprets it, it brought into being a new mode of life,
embracing a
people's outlook on nature and human nature, religion, ethics,
science,
knowledge, technology, politics and economics. According to
this out-
look, nature was taken to be an autonomous entity operating
according
to its own laws, something to be mastered and possessed at will
for the
satisfaction of human needs, desires and political ambitions.
This outlook
brought about an epistemological revolution which in turn
paved the
way for the secularisation of political theory. The satisfaction
of the desire
Introduction * xix
for economic prosperity came to be identified as the main object

of
politics. Religion, when it was not dismissed as mere
superstition, was
valued only for its social and psychological use. The Industrial
Revolution
altered the concept of labour, now accepted mainly for its
ability to
produce profit, power and capital. Manual labour was looked
upon as
fit only for the unlettered and the backward. With the
technological
revolution that followed the industrial revolution, machines,
hitherto
allies of humans, seemed to assert their autonomy.
Modern political theory provided the general ethical framework
within which the changes occurring in the scientific,
technological and
economic fields were to be integrated. Two types of political
theory
emerged, one for the industrialised societies and the other for
the rest of
the world. Liberalism and liberal institutions were thought
appropriate

for industrialised societies; imperialism and colonialism for the
non-
industrialised societies such as India. By the third quarter of the
nineteenth century, the world for all practical purposes was
divided into
the industrialised and the non-industrialised, or the 'civilised'
and the
'non-civilised', parts. Even the saint of liberalism, J. S. Mill,
accepted this
civilisational partition of the world. He would in all sincerity
use the very
doctrine of liberty to justify imperial rule over India.
It was perhaps James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-94), law member
of
the Viceroy's council, who most candidly articulated the
meaning of
imperialism in terms of modern civilisation. In his famous essay
'Foundations of the government of India' (1883), Stephen argued
that
every political theory whatever is a doctrine of or about force.
The
foundations of the government of India rest on conquest not
consent.

Such a government must therefore proceed upon principles
different
from and in some respects opposed to those which prevail in
England.
Representative government is a requirement of European
civilisation,
while absolute government is that of Indian civilisation. Only
by such a
government can any real benefit accrue to Indians. If suttee,
other human
sacrifices, infanticide, disability to marry on account of
widowhood or
change of religion were to be abolished, as indeed they were to
be, only an
absolute imperial government could have done it. Though,
generally
xx * Introduction
speaking, absolute government must be a temporary expedient
for the
purpose of superseding itself, in the case of India 'the
permanent
existence' of such a government would not in itself be a bad
thing. For, as

Stephen saw it, India in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century gave
little sign of producing the material and moral conditions
necessary for
self-government. How then was India to be governed? - by
introducing
'the essential parts of European civilisation'. According to
Stephen, the
latter included 'peace, order, the supremacy of law, the
prevention of
crime, the redress of wrong, the enforcement of contracts, the
develop-
ment and concentration of the military force of the state, the
construc-
tion of public works, the collection and expenditure of the
revenue
required for these objects in such a way as to promote the
utmost public
interest'. Modern European morality, modern European political
economy, and modern European conceptions of security of
property and
person - these, in Stephen's view, were what India needed. And
if

European civilisation, 'in the sense explained', is to be
introduced into
India, certain consequences followed - the most important,
which
included all the rest, being 'an absolute government, composed
in all its
most important parts of Europeans'. An Indian parliament or
collection
of Indian parliaments would produce unqualified anarchy: 'the
English in
India are the representative of a belligerent civilisation. The
phrase is
epigrammatic, but it is strictly true. The English in India are the
rep-
resentatives of peace compelled by force.' Only a belligerent
civilisation
can suppress by force the internal hostilities between Indians
and teach
them 'to live in peace with, and tolerate each other'. The
introduction of
such a civilisation into India, the Pax Britannica, was 'the great
and char-
acteristic task' of Britain in India.
It is in the context of arguments such as Stephen's that Gandhi

devel-
ops his critique of modern civilisation.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: THE POLITICS OF SOUTH
AFRICA
The actual development of Gandhi's critique of modern
civilisation takes
an indirect route, for Gandhi entered the world historical stage
not in
Introduction * xxi
India but in South Africa. A grasp of the significance of this
fact is
absolutely essential for a full understanding of the teachings of
Hind
Swaraj. In the first place, it was in South Africa, not in India,
that he first
acquired his vision of Indian nationalism, a fact which
differentiates
his nationalism from that of the other Indian nationalists. His
idea of
nationalism does not start with the locality and then gradually
extend
itself to the province and finally to the nation. Quite the

reverse. He was
first an Indian, then a Gujarati, and only then a Kathiavadi. And
South
Africa has a lot to do with this. Secondly, it is in the politics of
the
Transvaal, not Champaran or Bardoli, that he first developed his
unique
political philosophy and political techniques.
The account of his South African experiences - his leadership
role in
the Natal Indian Congress and the Transvaal British Indian
Association,
his campaigns against discriminatory legislation against
indentured
Indian labourers, traders and settlers, the discovery of the
techniques of
satyagraha, his career as a lawyer and as a journalist running
the weekly
journal Indian Opinion, his ventures into the field of education,
and the
establishment of the Phoenix Settlement for the formation of the
new
Gandhian personality, his incarcerations, his tussle with General
J. C.

Smuts - these and other pertinent matters are treated well in the
available secondary literature (Huttenback 1971; Swann 1985;
Brown
1989), so they do not require anything more than a mention
here.
However, three issues associated with South Africa need
highlighting.
The first is that it was in South Africa that Gandhi for the first
time
became aware that modern civilisation was at the root of the
colonial
problem. If Lenin connected colonialism to capitalism, Gandhi
went one
step further and connected colonialism to modernity itself. The
good that
colonialism secured for the colonised - and there is no doubt
that it did
secure that - was not intrinsic to it. What was intrinsic to it was
com-
mercial expansion, the lust for domination and the glory
resulting there-
from. When the two forces - good of the colonised and the glory
of empire

- clashed, there was no doubt which would prevail. The first
recorded
expression of these insights are found in his after-dinner speech
on
Christmas Day 1896. These are given in some detail in the
Autobiography:
xxii * Introduction
how he and his fellow passengers were quarantined in the
Durban
…
Essay Questions POLSC100
Word-Count: 1000 words
I. Essays: Each student will be responsible for submitting
one essay during the course.
Length of essay: 1000 words
Due date: Thursday, July 20, at the end of the lecture. Late
papers will be accepted with a late penalty. No late papers
accepted.

II. Essay Questions:
The essay should have two parts: 500 word literature review,
500 word analysis using one of the methods below. Your
analysis needs to include at least two cases within a country, or
between countries. Cases can be from the same country or two
different countries. Make the scope as specific as possible, due
to the short length of the paper. Indicate the dependent and
independent variables. Your research question should be on a
major concept/issue discussed in class and should be framed in
the form of a Why? question.Approaching the Research
Question
Sample question: Comparetwo of the following thinkers on
whether violence should be used as an instrument in politics:
Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Machiavelli, Gandhi or Bhagat
Singh
1. Read the question carefully.
2. Make a list of what the question is asking you to do. For
example, the question above is asking you to argue whether
violence should be used as an instrument in politics through a
comparative analysis of the ideas and politics of two thinkers.
3. Identify the key concepts. In this question, the key concepts
are violence as a political instrument.
4. Identify the problem that is being set up in the question. In
this example, the issue is a moral and ethical one in which you
have to figure out whether the thinkers make a moral argument
for the use of violence, its consequences and benefits etc.
5. Ask more questions.
6. Re-frame the general essay question in different ways to
narrow down the scope of your research by breaking down the
key concepts. With some quick research into your topic, you can
make a stronger ,more focused research question to guide your
writing. This will lead to more focused arguments, as opposed
to the weaker argument of “Violence should be used as an

instrument”.
7. Unclear question: Compare Bhagat Singh and Mahatama
Gandhi on violence.
8. Clearer questions:
“Which political instruments did Bhagat Singh and Mahatama
Gandhi use in their quest for national liberation and how did
they justify their choices?”
“Which features of Gandhi and Bhagat Singh’s respective
frameworks of ethics produce different answers on the use of
violence in politics?
“According to Bhagat Singh and Mahatam Gandhi, which
scenarios justify the use of violent and non-violent civil-
disobedience?
9. Evaluate your research question
Is it clear?
Is it focused?
Is it critical/complex?
10. Set the scope for your research. The scope of an argument is
the filed of –all that is relevant- to your argument. A strong
argument’s scope is not too broad/general and not too specific.
For example, if we wanted to make an argument on gender
inequality in a democracy:
11. Too general: As seen in the cases of India, Pakistan, Canada
and America, gender equality exists in democracy in the form of
economic and social discrimination against women.
12. Problem: way too many case studies and economic/social
discrimination is way too broad of a concept/issue to tackle in
one paper. Instead, narrow down the number of case studies and
focus on just one dimension/element/branch of the main concept
of gender inequality.
13. Too specific: Gender inequality exists in Cairo in the case
of mother’s not allowing daughters to go to school.
14. Problem: way too specific and the language is very unclear.
What is implied and needs to be stated more clearly in this
argument is that the right to education is a core dimension of
the concept of gender inequality. What remains unclear is the

strategic/analytical leverage of focusing on Cairo as a case
study to explore this, which means more research is required to
push this argument beyond its specificity. Another major issue
is that this argument is a statement that “gender inequality
exists”, it does not go beyond this and is thus, lacking an
argumentative dimension.
Tool: Sartori’s Ladder of Abstraction
The idea that we can organize concepts on the basis of their
specificity/generality.The higher the concept is on the ladder,
the more general/abstract it is. The lower it is on the ladder, the
more specific it is. The trick to a strong argument is finding a
balance, not too hot, not too cold, just enough information as
your argument needs.
Example: Columbia College Instructor
Too General: living organism
Less general: warm-blooded mammal
General: male, Human being
Range of argument: teacher at Columbia college
More specific: a teacher at Columbia college with a PhD at
UBC
Too specific: a teacher at Columbia college with two eyes, one
nose and long hair.
Concept:
Regime liberal democracy --> westminister democracy
Concept:
Political party mass party business firm model party
A good way to help choose where to fine-tune your scope is
asking yourself, what is the context of my argument, who is my
audience, which scope is appropriate for the research question?

For example, a research paper on teacher performance at
Columbia college does not need to know whether the teachers
are mammals, or if they have two eyes.
Tool: 3 Units of Analysis
One way to narrow down the scope of your argument to engage
with a concept/issue in a more clearer and focused way is
choosing a unit of analysis to frame your argument. In social
sciences, there are three different units/levels of analysis: the
individual, global/international and state/society. Use these
frames to narrow down the scope of a research question or
argument at the beginning of your paper.
Unit of Analysis
What you will be studying/analyzing
Individual
Public opinion, personal narratives/stories, oral histories,
behavior/beliefs/patterns of social interaction,
memory/reflections etc.
State/Society
Domestic institutions, relationships between individuals,
relationships between the individual and institutions,
relationships across communities (race, gender, class, disability,
religion etc.), domestic policy, discourses (state-level
discourses, traditional and new forms of media, acts of
communication)
Global/International
Discourses/acts of communication in international
organizations, transnational communities, global political
histories, comparing two or more countries, or two or more
cases from different historical/social contexts etc.
Example: How did Martin Luther King’s politics of non-
violence influence the civil rights movement?
Example: Did Martin Luther King’s politics of non-violence in
the civil rights movement instigate institutional change at the

level of the state?
Example: Compare and contrast the historical and social
contexts in which Gandhi and Martin Luther King articulated
their respective politics of non-violence. How did their
respective contexts shape their approach to national liberation?
Create a hypothesis to begin the research hunt. What do you
think you will end up arguing? Which personal biases will
affect your argumentation?
Grading Secrets
Instructors always check to see if student has answered –ALL-
sections of the research question.
Instructors deduct marks if the scope/frame of analysis is too
broad/general.
Instructors deduct marks if the argument is weak and does not
go beyond the “should” dimension of the question. By refining
the scope, you can go deeper into the concept/context to avoid
the general argument of “violence should be used in politics”.
Instructors always look for whether the student has answered –
ALL- sections of the research question.Research Process
For a research paper in the social sciences, your argument
should be grounded in at least 3 scholarly academic journals or
books. Papers with a weak theoretical grounding from
texts/research often have weaker unqualified arguments, broad
scopes and lack of focus. Instead of locating 3 random sources
for the sake of meeting this minimum, be more strategic with
which sources you use and how you use them to setup and
qualify your argument. The following is a step-by-step process
in how to conduct research for a social sciences paper.
Do not aimlessly read. Keep in mind that a social sciences
research paper requires you to perform three steps in critical
thinking. With this in mind, find sources that are rich in

information and will support you in accomplishing these tasks.
Set-up the problem through a literature review/summary of key
concepts
1. Critically engage with the concept by applying it to a case,
other studies, or alternative theoretical frameworks
2. Provide new language for articulating the problem and its
solutions. When we apply a concept to a case study, a new
theoretical framework, how we set up the problem and framed
the concept originally is challenged or affirmed. Either way,
how we understand the concept is expanded and your
application gives us new ways of looking at the problem or
thinking of solutions.
3. Finding sources. The amount of sources you should use
depends on how long the essay will be. A paper 3-5 pages
should have at least 3 books or academic/scholarly journal
articles, whereas a longer 8 page paper should have at least 5-6.
4. In social sciences, whenever possible consult primary
sources, original documents, such as essays, speeches, letters,
diaries, creative works, interviews, books by the central theorist
such as Gandhi, Machiavelli, Fanon etc. to explain main
concepts.
5. In social sciences, the heart of your argument and critical
analysis is in your interpretation of the concepts and problem.
6. Use secondary sources such as scholarly journal articles,
publications on the theorist’s concepts, reviews, encyclopedias
etc. to provide historical context, critique or further explanation
of the theorist’s concept. If the essay question does not focus on
a theorist, then use secondary sources to build a literature
review of the main concepts. Secondary sources are also helpful
for bringing in alternative theoretical frameworks to critique the
concept.
7. Read. Cite. Transcribe. Paraphrase. Write.
8. Once you have found your sources, read them as closely or as
briefly as needed to qualify your argument. One way to save
time is to annotate and collect quotes and page numbers as you
read.

9. As you collect sources, generate citations through the library
portal by adding the source to your folder and then exporting
data as brief citations.
10. Create a short transcription of notes on each reading
explaining main argument/approach. Paraphrase jot notes into
your own words in the form of paragraphs. This will come in
handy when creating your literature review in your essay.
11. Once you have an extensive summary of the readings and
concepts, add your own critical analysis of each source. For
every quote you use or reference, you have to provide a few
sentences of analysis/interpretation. Once you weave in critical
analysis, re-arrange summaries into a very line of reasoning to
show the development of the concept in your paper.
12. Now you have a very rough first draft! Time to organize, re-
structure and build an argument!
13. Moving Beyond the 5 paragraph Essay
14. In the Social Sciences/Humanities, in an essay you are
expected to critically engage with concepts and theoretical
frameworks through interpretative and empirical analysis.
Analyzing real-life case studies of policies, institutions etc. are
one method of empirical analysis. Studying how the text of
stories, narratives and primary sources is structured, expressed
etc. is one method of interpretative analysis called discourse
and content analysis. In this section, you will learn a simple 3-
step guide to building a strong line of reasoning and some basic
methods in social science research.
3 Stages of a Line of Reasoning
Step I: Deconstruction
1. Deconstruct/unpack major concepts you will be engaging in
your paper. For example, violence, political ethics, freedom,
sovereignty, etc. This is also the place to provide context,
qualify your argument or illustrate a gap in the literature on
such concepts. This is where you set up the problem you will
address in your essay.
2. Try to rely on PARAPHRASING, not direct quotes.

3. Do not use oxford dictionary or encyclopedias for definitions.
Provide interpretations of primary and secondary sources to
present your own literature review of the problem/concept.
4. This should be 1/3 of your paper.
5. Note: A comparative analysis paper may require to organize
your paper in a different way. The two main ways to structure a
comparative analysis are:
Step II: Re-Construction
6. Having given a general interpretation of your main concepts
or the problem above, in this section choose a specific
dimension of the concept to focus on and explore whether
challenging it through application changes how we understand
the entire concept.
7. This is where you –apply- your knowledge/definitions etc.
You can use a case study, real life examples, counter-points etc.
The point is to expand the original definition, look at it more
critically.
8. Some methods include case analysis, discourse analysis,
comparative analysis.
9. See how the original concepts you introduced change, move,
grow, as you add in more literature/alternative approaches etc.
10. This should be 1/3 of your paper
Step III: Synthesis
11. This is the A+ area of the paper, where your voice and
contributions sit. Synthesize all of the work you just did above,
to answer the question “So What?” What was the point of all the
research you just did, why should we care if Bhagat Singh’s
definition of violence is unethical or that Gandhi’s prescription
of non-violence is not practical in the context of national
liberation.
12. Show how your theoretical contributions add to the
conversation, how we see the concept, our understanding of the
problem.
13. This should be 1/3 of your paper.

Methods: Content Analysis
1. Content analysis is a simple research method in social
sciences for analyzing texts and any written forms of
communication. You can use it to analyze everything from
speeches, to books, to essays, to newspaper articles.
2. Write down a preliminary research question to guide your
reading. Make sure it identifies the issue, the texts you will be
analyzing and the key words you will be looking for. For
example, “Was news coverage of the Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump debate gendered?”. The issue is how media
outlets covered the debate and the texts that will be analyzed
are newspaper articles, and the key words you will be looking
for will depend on how you define/operationalize the concept
“gendered” such as highlighting comments on Hillary Clinton’s
hair, age, style etc.
3. Select a few samples of texts to analyze based on your
question and make sure to select samples that reflect the time-
sensitivity and context of the research question. For example,
choose newspaper articles from the Trump-Clinton presidential
campaign, not from other time periods/contexts of elections,
choose news articles in the USA, choose news articles from a
diverse set of newspaper organizations to avoid a biased sample
etc.
4. Briefly read the samples and make a quick note on what each
is generally arguing.
5. Make a code/list of units of analysis (specific words, phrases,
themes) you will be looking for to track. For example, you can
create a system of categories/themes to measure the concept of
gender such as comments on physical appearance/beauty,
comments on competency etc.
6. Mark up/annotate the text with this code, use pens,
highlighters, sticky notes etc. and mark each moment in the text
when these categories are mentioned. Keep a calculation of how
many times each category is brought up in the text to study the
data later.
7. Interpret and report your findings. You can offer a qualitative

analysis or use the calculations for a more quantitative analysis.
Method: Discourse/Textual Analysis
Another name for this method is, close reading. There are many
ways to do a discourse analysis, this is the simplest way to
incorporate it as a method into any social sciences course. A
discourse is how we make sense of the form and content of a
text and the many layers of meaning that are embedded in the
text itself. The purpose of this method is to reveal the frames
that give meaning to a text to explore the different ways
knowledge is produced.
1. Choose a text to analyze, it can be a written text, a painting,
the choreography of a dance, an interview, a speech, a
story/narrative etc.
2. Do research on the historical, cultural and social context of
the text. For example, lets use the text, Hind Swaraj, written by
Gandhi in the form of a conversation between a newspaper
editor and a reader. The form of the text seems like a play, but
it is actually a political document through which Gandhi
expressed his views on national liberation to the everyday
Indian in simpler language. He wrote it as a response to the
colonial occupation of India by the British Empire. It is also the
primary source in which he introduces his ideas on non-
violence.
3. Do research on the source and medium of the text. What are
the political/private orientations of those who published it?
Who is the target audience? Which institutions played a role in
producing it? What is the medium (radio, newspaper, social
media etc.) used to communicate the message?What kind of
format is it—for example, in a newspaper, there can be many
article formats such as op-ed, editorial, news report etc.
4. Mark up/annotate the text using a coding system. For
example, highlighting everywhere Gandhi discusses non-
violence and circling everywhere he discusses freedom in Hind
Swaraj. A quick way to do this in a digital document is CTRL +

F(ind) or searching for keywords. One thing to include in your
coding system is a mark for all intertextual references in the
text. Intertextual references are when the text refers to other
books, other events, other theorists in the line of reasoning.
This will provide critical insight into how the historical and
cultural context in which the text was written/produced has
shaped the intentions of the author and the text’s meaning.
5. Structure of the text: what can we learn about the argument
from how the author has organized the text? Look closely at
which topics are discussed more than others, which headings are
used, how words are translated, which information the author
includes or excludes etc. What role does each part of the text
play in furthering/developing the argument.For example, does
Gandhi’s discussion of non-violence in chapter 1 contradict his
discussion of non-violence in chapter 3? Look for
contradictions, echoes, any clues in the rhetoric of the text that
may reveal another a layer of the text’s meaning. This is a good
exercise for mapping the text’s line of reasoning and whether it
is sound and valid.
6. Collate/collect all comments in the text that mention your
category of analysis, (non)violence in our example, and put
them all in one document. This is called a discourse strand. You
can now analyze how a theme is developed in the text.
7. Interpret the data. Build a story from your findings. How do
your findings on the form/content of the text affect the meaning
of the concepts in the text?
Method: Comparative Analysis
A comparative analysis is a method for making an argument on
how two or more things are the same or different, and why. You
can compare texts, theoretical frameworks, processes, narratives
etc. There are many ways to organize and conduct a
comparative analysis, choose the approach that best fits your
research question and scope. For this, we will work with the
sample question above and choose the politics of Bhagat Singh
and Mahatama Ghandi.

1. Choose the cases you want to compare (Singh/Gandhi). Set a
frame of reference to avoid making a general/empty argument.
There are many ways to compare Singh/Gandhi (religious
views, political orientations etc.) In our case, the frame of
reference is: the use of violence as an instrument in the Indian
national liberation movement. A frame of reference can be a
question, a theme, a concept, a historical time-frame etc.
2. A comparative analysis requires you to make an argument.
Listing differences and similarities in paragraphs is not an
argument. You have to make an argument on what about the
context or the specific cases produces the
similarities/differences. For example, the reason Bhagat Singh
and Gandhi have opposing views on the use of violence is
because they have different frameworks of ethics due to their
respective definitions of freedom. Your paper would ground the
list of similarities/differences in a deeper argument on how
Gandhi and Bhagat Singh understand freedom in the context of
national liberation.
3. Make sure your analysis of both cases, of Bhagat Singh and
Gandhi is equal and weighted. Often times, students lose grades
for focusing too much on one side and leave the other side
underdeveloped, making the argument much weaker.
4. Two ways to structure a comparative analysis:
5. Text by Text: introduction-all things Gandhi-all things
Bhagat Singh-analysis-conclusion
6. Point by Point: introduction-point 1 G/B, point 2 G/B, point 3
G/B-conclusion
7. The thesis statement must illustrate how the two cases relate
to one another. Ask yourself are they in debate? In
contradiction? In the same conversation? Etc. The following is
an example of an strong thesis statement that illustrates the
frame of reference, the underlying point that explains the
similarities/differences and the method.
8. Through a comparative analysis, I will argue that though both
Gandhi and Bhagat Singh present civil disobedience as a
method of national liberation, their respective understanding of

freedom, result in differing views on the permissibility of
violence as a means in politics. In particular, Bhagat Singh’s
grounds his ideology in freedom as freedom from the fear of
death, and Gandhi grounds his ideology in freedom as freedom
through soul-force.
Building a Strong Thesis Statement
1. The thesis statement is the road map, a blueprint of your
argument. It should be placed at the end of the introduction. A
good thesis statement should do two things:1) tell the reader
what you will be arguing and 2)showing the reader how you will
be making your argument. The thesis statement should provide
insight into how your line of reasoning will develop, the method
you will use and what your argument will be. Use sign-posts
thesis statement should be woven into each paragraph of the
paper. The following are some tips to build a strong thesis
statement and increase the internal consistency of your
argument.
2. Example: “Through a comparative analysis of the political
thought of Bhagat Singh and Gandhi, I will argue against the
use of violence as a political instrument. Working off of
Gandhi’s configuration of the means-end relationship, I argue
that Bhagat Singh’s approach not only leaves little space for
political ethics, but also, does not account for the liberation of
the community beyond the freedom fighter’s act of violence.
3. “In this paper I will argue, _________”, use sign posts and
transitional sentences throughout your paper to refer back to
your thesis and show how your argument is developing. Each
transitional sentence should connect to the paragraph before and
indicate where in the line of reasoning you are.
4. Definitions and questions are not thesis statements:
“sovereignty is state has the monopoly over force” “what is
sovereignty?” “bhagat singh believes in violence as a tool for
politics”
5. One trick to locate the weak, tangential or underdeveloped
areas in your line of argument is to do a reverse outline.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/689/1/

Date: February 2, 1931
Transcription/Source: www.shahidbhagatsingh.org
HTML Markup: Mike B. for MIA, 2006
Copyright: © Shahidbhagatsingh.org. Published on MIA with
the permission of Shahidbhagatsingh.org
and Shahid Bhagat Singh Research Committee.
[Written on February 2, 1931, this document is a sort of behest
to young political workers of India. At
that time the talk of some sort of compromise between the
Congress and the British Government was in
the air. Through this document Bhagat Singh explained as to
when a compromise is permissible and
when it is not. He also made out that the way Congress is
conducting the movement it was bound to
end in some sort of compromise. After analysing to the
conditions then prevailing, he finally advised
the youth to adopt Marxism as the ideology, work among the
people, organize workers and peasants
and form the Communist Party.

After Bhagat Singh's execution this document was published in
a mutilated form. All references to
Soviet Union, Marx, Lenin and the Communist Party were
carefully deleted. Subsequently, the GOI
published it in one of its secret reports in 1936. A photostat
copy of the full report is preserved in the
library of the Martyrs' Memorial and Freedom Struggle
Research Centre at Lucknow.]
To The Young Political Workers.
DEAR COMRADES
Our movement is passing through a very important phase at
present. After a year's fierce struggle some
definite proposals regarding the constitutional reforms have
been formulated by the Round Table
Conference and the Congress leaders have been invited to give
this [Original transcription is unclear --
MIA Transcriber]…think it desirable in the present
circumstances to call off their movement. Whether
they decide in favour or against is a matter of little importance
to us. The present movement is bound to
end in some sort of compromise. The compromise may be
effected sooner or later. And compromise is
not such ignoble and deplorable an thing as we generally think.
It is rather an indispensable factor in
the political strategy. Any nation that rises against the
oppressors is bound to fail in the beginning, and
to gain partial reforms during the medieval period of its
struggle through compromises. And it is only at
the last stage — having fully organized all the forces and
resources of the nation — that it can possibly
strike the final blow in which it might succeed to shatter the
ruler's government. But even then it might
fail, which makes some sort of compromise inevitable. This can

be best illustrated by the Russian
example.
In 1905 a revolutionary movement broke out in Russia. All the
leaders were very hopeful. Lenin had
returned from the foreign countries where he had taken refuge.
He was conducting the struggle. People
came to tell him that a dozen landlords were killed and a score
of their mansions were burnt. Lenin
responded by telling them to return and to kill twelve hundred
landlords and burn as many of their
palaces. In his opinion that would have meant something if
revolution failed. Duma was introduced.
The same Lenin advocated the view of participating in the
Duma. This is what happened in 1907. In
1906 he was opposed to the participation in this first Duma
which had granted more scope of work than
this second one whose rights had been curtailed. This was due
to the changed circumstances. Reaction
was gaining the upper hand and Lenin wanted to use the floor of
he Duma as a platform to discuss
socialist ideas.
Again after the 1917 revolution, when the Bolsheviks were
forced to sign the Brest Litovsk Treaty,
everyone except Lenin was opposed to it. But Lenin said:
"Peace". "Peace and again peace: peace at
http://www.shahidbhagatsingh.org/index.asp?linkid=6
any cos t— even at the cost of many of the Russian provinces to
be yielded to German War Lord".
When some anti-Bolshevik people condemned Lenin for this
treaty, he declared frankly that the
Bolsheviks were not in a position to face to German onslaught

and they preferred the treaty to the
complete annihilation of the Bolshevik Government.
The thing that I wanted to point out was that compromise is an
essential weapon which has to be
wielded every now and then as the struggle develops. But the
thing that we must keep always before us
is the idea of the movement. We must always maintain a clear
notion as to the aim for the achievement
of which we are fighting. That helps us to verify the success and
failures of our movements and we can
easily formulate the future programme. Tilak's policy, quite
apart from the ideal i.e. his strategy, was
the best. You are fighting to get sixteen annas from your enemy,
you get only one anna. Pocket it and
fight for the rest. What we note in the moderates is of their
ideal. They start to achieve on anna and they
can't get it. The revolutionaries must always keep in mind that
they are striving for a complete
revolution. Complete mastery of power in their hands.
Compromises are dreaded because the
conservatives try to disband the revolutionary forces after the
compromise from such pitfalls. We must
be very careful at such junctures to avoid any sort of confusion
of the real issues especially the goal.
The British Labour leaders betrayed their real struggle and have
been reduced to mere hypocrite
imperialists. In my opinion the diehard conservatives are better
to us than these polished imperialist
Labour leaders. About the tactics and strategy one should study
life-work of Lenin. His definite views
on the subject of compromise will be found in "Left Wing"
Communism.
I have said that the present movement, i.e. the present struggle,
is bound to end in some sort of

compromise or complete failure.
I said that, because in my opinion, this time the real
revolutionary forces have not been invited into the
arena. This is a struggle dependent upon the middle class
shopkeepers and a few capitalists. Both these,
and particularly the latter, can never dare to risk its property or
possessions in any struggle. The real
revolutionary armies are in the villages and in factories, the
peasantry and the labourers. But our
bourgeois leaders do not and cannot dare to tackle them. The
sleeping lion once awakened from its
slumber shall become irresistible even after the achievement of
what our leaders aim at. After his first
experience with the Ahmedabad labourers in 1920 Mahatma
Gandhi declared: "We must not tamper
with the labourers. It is dangerous to make political use of the
factory proletariat" (The Times, May
1921). Since then, they never dared to approach them. There
remains the peasantry. The Bardoli
resolution of 1922 clearly denies the horror the leaders felt
when they saw the gigantic peasant class
rising to shake off not only the domination of an alien nation
but also the yoke of the landlords.
It is there that our leaders prefer a surrender to the British than
to the peasantry. Leave alone Pt.
Jawahar lal. Can you point out any effort to organize the
peasants or the labourers? No, they will not
run the risk. There they lack. That is why I say they never
meant a complete revolution. Through
economic and administrative pressure they hoped to get a few
more reforms, a few more concessions
for the Indian capitalists. That is why I say that this movement
is doomed to die, may be after some sort
of compromise or even without. They young workers who in all

sincerity raise the cry "Long Live
Revolution", are not well organized and strong enough to carry
the movement themselves. As a matter
of fact, even our great leaders, with the exception of perhaps Pt.
Motilal Nehru, do not dare to take any
responsibility on their shoulders, that is why every now and
then they surrender unconditionally before
Gandhi. In spite of their differences, they never oppose him
seriously and the resolutions have to be
carried for the Mahatma.
In these circumstances, let me warn the sincere young workers
who seriously mean a revolution, that
harder times are coming. Let then beware lest they should get
confused or disheartened. After the
experience made through two struggles of the Great Gandhi, we
are in a better position to form a clear
idea of our present position and the future programme.
Now allow me to state the case in the simplest manner. You cry
"Long Live Revolution." Let me
assume that you really mean it. According to our definition of
the term, as stated in our statement in the
Assembly Bomb Case, revolution means the complete overthrow
of the existing social order and its
replacement with the socialist order. For that purpose our
immediate aim is the achievement of power.
As a matter of fact, the state, the government machinery is just
a weapon in the hands of the ruling
class to further and safeguard its interest. We want to snatch
and handle it to utilise it for the
consummation of our ideal, i.e., social reconstruction on new,
i.e., Marxist, basis. For this purpose we
are fighting to handle the government machinery. All along we

have to educate the masses and to create
a favourable atmosphere for our social programme. In the
struggles we can best train and educate them.
With these things clear before us, i.e., our immediate and
ultimate object having been clearly put, we
can now proceed with the examination of the present situation.
We must always be very candid and
quite business-like while analysing any situation. We know that
since a hue and cry was raised about
the Indians' participation in and share in the responsibility of
the Indian government, the Minto-Morley
Reforms were introduced, which formed the Viceroy's council
with consultation rights only. During the
Great War, when the Indian help was needed the most, promises
about self-government were made and
the existing reforms were introduced. Limited legislative
powers have been entrusted to the Assembly
but subject to the goodwill of the Viceroy. Now is the third
stage.
Now reforms are being discussed and are to be introduced in the
near future. How can our young men
judge them? This is a question; I do not know by what standard
are the Congress leaders going to judge
them. But for us, the revolutionaries, we can have the following
criteria:
1. Extent of responsibility transferred to the shoulders of the
Indians.
2. From of the Government institutions that are going to be
introduced and the extent of the right of
participation given to the masses.
3. Future prospects and the safeguards.
These might require a little further elucidation. In the first

place, we can easily judge the extent of
responsibility given to our people by the control our
representatives will have on the executive. Up till
now, the executive was never made responsible to the
Legislative Assembly and the Viceroy had the
veto power, which rendered all the efforts of the elected
members futile. Thanks to the efforts of the
Swaraj Party, the Viceroy was forced every now and then to use
these extraordinary powers to
shamelessly trample the solemn decisions of the national
representatives under foot. It is already too
well known to need further discussion.
Now in the first place we must see the method of the executive
formation: Whether the executive is to
be elected by the members of a popular assembly or is to be
imposed from above as before, and further,
whether it shall be responsible to the house or shall absolutely
affront it as in the past?
As regards the second item, we can judge it through the scope
of franchise. The property qualifications
making a man eligible to vote should be altogether abolished
and universal suffrage be introduced
instead. Every adult, both male and female, should have the
right to vote. At present we can simply see
how far the franchise has been extended.
I may here make a mention about provincial autonomy. But
from whatever I have heard, I can only say
that the Governor imposed from above, equipped with
extraordinary powers, higher and above the
legislative, shall prove to be no less than a despot. Let us better
call it the "provincial tyranny" instead
of "autonomy." This is a strange type of democratisation of the
state institutions.

The third item is quite clear. During the last two years the
British politicians have been trying to undo
Montague's promise for another dole of reforms to be bestowed
every ten years till the British Treasury
exhausts.
We can see what they have decided about the future.
Let me make it clear that we do not analyse these things to
rejoice over the achievement, but to form a
clear idea about our situation, so that we may enlighten the
masses and prepare them for further
struggle. For us, compromise never means surrender, but a step
forward and some rest. That is all and
nothing else.
HAVING DISCUSSED the present situation, let us proceed to
discuss the future programme and the
line of action we ought to adopt. As I have already stated, for
any revolutionary party a definite
programme is very essential. For, you must know that
revolution means action. It means a change
brought about deliberately by an organized and systematic
work, as opposed to sudden and unorganised
or spontaneous change or breakdown. And for the formulation
of a programme, one must necessarily
study:
1. The goal.
2. The premises from where were to start, i.e., the existing
conditions.
3. The course of action, i.e., the means and methods.

Unless one has a clear notion about these three factors, one
cannot discuss anything about programme.
We have discussed the present situation to some extent. The
goal also has been slightly touched. We
want a socialist revolution, the indispensable preliminary to
which is the political revolution. That is
what we want. The political revolution does not mean the
transfer of state (or more crudely, the power)
from the hands of the British to the Indian, but to those Indians
who are at one with us as to the final
goal, or to be more precise, the power to be transferred to the
revolutionary party through popular
support. After that, to proceed in right earnest is to organize the
reconstruction of the whole society on
the socialist basis. If you do not mean this revolution, then
please have mercy. Stop shouting "Long
Live Revolution." The term revolution is too sacred, at least to
us, to be so lightly used or misused. But
if you say you are for the national revolution and the aims of
your struggle is an Indian republic of the
type of the United State of America, then I ask you to please let
known on what forces you rely that
will help you bring about that revolution. Whether national or
the socialist, are the peasantry and the
labour. Congress leaders do not dare to organize those forces.
You have seen it in this movement. They
know it better than anybody else that without these forces they
are absolutely helpless. When they
passed the resolution of complete independence — that really
meant a revolution — they did not mean
it. They had to do it under pressure of the younger element, and
then they wanted to us it as a threat to
achieve their hearts' desire — Dominion Status. You can easily
judge it by studying the resolutions of
the last three sessions of the Congress. I mean Madras, Calcutta

and Lahore. At Calcutta, they passed a
resolution asking for Dominion Status within twelve months,
otherwise they would be forced to adopt
complete independence as their object, and in all solemnity
waited for some such gift till midnight after
the 31st December, 1929. Then they found themselves "honour
bound" to adopt the Independence
resolution, otherwise they did not mean it. But even then
Mahatmaji made no secret of the fact that the
door (for compromise) was open. That was the real spirit. At the
very outset they knew that their
movement could not but end in some compromise. It is this half-
heartedness that we hate, not the
compromise at a particular stage in the struggle. Anyway, we
were discussing the forces on which you
can depend for a revolution. But if you say that you will
approach the peasants and labourers to enlist
their active support, let me tell you that they are not going to be
fooled by any sentimental talk. They
ask you quite candidly: what are they going to gain by your
revolution for which you demand their
sacrifices, what difference does it make to them whether Lord
Reading is the head of the Indian
government or Sir Purshotamdas Thakordas? What difference
for a peasant if Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru
replaces Lord Irwin! It is useless to appeal to his national
sentiment. You can't "use" him for your
purpose; you shall have to mean seriously and to make him
understand that the revolution is going to
be his and for his good. The revolution of the proletariat and for
the proletariat.
When you have formulated this clear-cut idea about your goals

you can proceed in right earnest to
organize your forces for such an action. Now there are two
different phases through which you shall
have to pass. First, the preparation; second, the action.
After the present movement ends, you will find disgust and
some disappointment amongst the sincere
revolutionary workers. But you need not worry. Leave
sentimentalism aside. Be prepared to face the
facts. Revolution is a very difficult task. It is beyond the power
of any man to make a revolution.
Neither can it be brought about on any appointed date. It is
brought can it be brought about on an
appointed date. It is brought about by special environments,
social and economic. The function of an
organized party is to utilise an such opportunity offered by
these circumstances. And to prepare the
masses and organize the forces for the revolution is a very
difficult task. And that required a very great
sacrifice on the part of the revolutionary workers. Let me make
it clear that if you are a businessman or
an established worldly or family man, please don't play with
fire. As a leader you are of no use to the
party. We have already very many such leaders who spare some
evening hours for delivering speeches.
They are useless. We require — to use the term so dear to Lenin
— the "professional revolutionaries".
The whole-time workers who have no other ambitions or life-
work except the revolution. The greater
the number of such workers organized into a party, the great the
chances of your success.
To proceed systematically, what you need the most is a party
with workers of the type discussed above
with clear-cut ideas and keen perception and ability of initiative
and quick decisions. The party shall

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