"The first step to swaraj lies in the individual. The great truth: 'As with the individual so with the universe', is applicable here as elsewhere"

Gandhi is best known for his leadership of the Indian freedom struggle, that is, for political independence from British colonial rule. Gandhi wrote: "We reap exactly as we sow". If India got freedom from the British by brute force, political liberation would be achieved. This is one meaning of swaraj or self-rule, but there is another deeper meaning which in Gandhi's eyes was more important.

Dalton explained that Gandhi, and Bengalis like Pal and Ghosh before him, felt such freedom would be negative, a mere absence of external rule. Another side of Swaraj was a development and liberation of self through "self-restraint, self-regulation, and self-dependence". Swaraj had a distinctive positive quality. Dalton quotes Raghavan Iyer, who said Swaraj required "a demanding and continuous process of self-cultivation". Gandhi's Swaraj included spiritual freedom, which meant liberation from "illusion and ignorance" . He got this idea of enlightenment from the Bhagwad Gita, the guiding light of his life. For the Indian masses, Gandhi also presented Swaraj as "a movement of self-purification." He meant that to achieve spiritual liberation, the evils in Indian Society - Hindu-Muslim clashes, untouchability, and unequal distribution of wealth - would have to be conquered and eliminated. Swaraj was the banner under which Gandhi and his contemporary Indian leaders appealed to the minds of the Indian people. It was Gandhi's promise to Indians, provided they adhered strictly to Satyagraha - which appealed to their hearts.

For Gandhi, political independence was not an end in itself. Swaraj was above all about individual autonomy, involving self-respect, self-discipline and maturity. Such individuals would resolve differences themselves without resort to external coercion, such as the judicial system. So Gandhi appealed for individual Indians to free themselves mentally and through character development; if this transformation occurred then political freedom would come automatically.

There is another idea that is linked in Gandhi's thought to Swaraj and that is Swadeshi, which has a range of meaning such as self-sufficiency, self-reliance and even patriotism. Specific expressions of swadeshi during the freedom struggle included developing homespun and woven cloth (khadi), which was combined with a boycott of foreign cloth. The idea is that one's attention should first be given to one's own situation, culture and enviroment. In this way one is rooted, but although living be the values of one's own tradition one must be alert to the limitations and even corruptions of this tradition. Moreover one should be ready to learn from traditions other than one's own. Gandhi was in fact particularly good at borrowing from cultures other than his own, such as Christianity, European liberalism and Jainism, and incorporated them into his predominantly Hindu culture. Reforms of the Hindu tradition he emphasised included greater autonomy for women and the abolition of untouchability.