Svaraj and self-reliance: Translating the self and its rule from the 'Bhagavad-Gita' and 'Manusmr&dotbelow;ti' to the works of Emerson, Thoreau, and Gandhi (Mohandas K. Gandhi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Wilkins, William Jones)

This dissertation examines the translation of texts and their appropriation in new contexts using the insights of semiotics and hermeneutics. The self and its rule are depicted in classical Sanskrit texts, transformed through translation by British Orientalists, reinterpreted by American Transcendentalists, and radicalized by the Indian nationalist reformer, M. K. Gandhi. The Bhagavad-Gita and Manusmr&dotbelow;ti, composed in ancient India, are culturally sensitive religious texts delivering metaphysical speculation and moral strictures in poetic form. In the 18th century, Charles Wilkins and William Jones translated them into English for the East India Company to serve colonial interests. However, the transformation enacted through translation allowed the texts to be transported and appropriated in a non-colonial context in mid-19th century America. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau discovered a self far more radical than that of American Unitarianism or English rationalism, which they described in essays advocating self-reliance and individual resistance to civil government. These essays inspired Gandhi in his resistance against the successors of the very colonizers who had translated those two works.; The Bhagavad-Gita and the Manusmr&dotbelow;ti view the self as the locus of divine authority, but they struggle with the social implications. Jones and Wilkins filtered their translations through a Neoplatonic Christian lens with a liberal Enlightenment tint, while also weakening the political implications. Emerson, fueled by the Romantic drive for originality, restored these elements: the power of self-trust arose from reliance on God within. Thoreau cultivated himself by the asceticism of The Laws of Manu, and he transformed the Bhagavad-Gita's reflections on action into the grounds for political resistance. Gandhi recombined the Transcendentalists with Indian ideas to develop his satyagraha (holding to the truth in a good cause), swadeshi swadharma (self imposed duties of self-reliant individuals for their own communities), and true swaraj (self control as the key to political independence). The idea of self-rule was extended by these interconnections, from the self-mastery to harness the power of truth of classical Hinduism, to the liberal truth and emancipated self of European thought, to the reforming power of soul-force. It developed as a result of its translation by active interpreters.