¹ Keer, Dhananjay, Lokamanya Tilak: Father of Our Freedom Struggle (Bombay: S. B. Kangutkar, 1959), 413–14Google Scholar.

² Ibid., 414.

³ Ibid., 414.

⁴ Clough, Bradley S., “Gandhi, Nonviolence, and the Bhagavat-Gita,” in Rosen, Stephen J., ed., Holy War: Violence and the Bhagavat Gita (Hampton, VA: A. Deepak Publishing, 2002), 61Google Scholar.

⁵ Ibid., 61

⁶ Our approach also connotes some friendly disagreements with certain strands of the arguments presented in Ajay Skaria's thoughtful essay “Gandhi's Politics: Liberalism and the Question of the Ashram,” in Dube, Saurabh, ed., Enchantments of Modernity: Empire, Nation, Globalization (Delhi: Routledge, 2009), 199–233Google Scholar; and in Chatterjee's, Partha influential book Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed, 1986), 109Google Scholar.

⁷ See Jordens, J. T. F., “Gandhi and the Bhagavadtgita,” in Minor, Robert N., ed., Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavadgita (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986), 88, 90Google Scholar.

⁸ Clough, “Gandhi,” 61.

⁹ Reading Faisal Devji's essay in this volume, one could date the change in Gandhi's relationship with politics to his great disappointment over the violence of Chauri Chaura and the consequent withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation movement. The disappointment, in our terms, led to the realization that while satyagraha necessarily involved deep engagement with politics, politics could not be transformed wholesale into the business of satyagraha.

¹⁰ On this see Sharpe, Eric J., The Universal Gita: Western Images of the Bhagavatgita—a Bicentenary Survey (London: Duckworth, 1985)Google Scholar. See also Christopher Bayly's contribution to this volume.

¹¹ Sharpe, Universal Gita, 67, 85. For a handy treatment of the “classical” Indian interpretations of the Gita see Sharma's, ArvindThe Hindu Gita: Ancient and Classical Interpretations of the Bhagavatgita (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1986)Google Scholar; and his translation of and introduction to Abhinavagupta Gitarthasangraha (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983).

¹² Sharpe, Universal Gita, 71.

¹³ Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, Srimad Bhagavatgita-Rahasya or Karma-Yoga Sastra, 2nd edn, trans. Sukhtankar, Bhalchandra Sitaram (Poona: Tilak Bros., 1915)Google Scholar, “Author's Preface,” xix, xxv. See also Shruti Kapila's essay in this volume and Seth, Sanjay, “The Critique of Renunciation: Bal Gangadhar Tilak's Hindu Nationalism,” Postcolonial Studies 9/2 (June 2006), 137–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ Sharpe, Universal Gita, 82.

¹⁵ Yajnik, Indulal, Shaymji Krishnavarma: Life and Times of a Revolutionary (Bombay: Lakshmi Publications, 1950), 261Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Sharpe, Universal Gita, 78. Sharpe makes the point that Aurobindo did not know much Bengali or Sanskrit around 1903 and his interpretation of the text may have been influenced by Annie Besant's expositions. See ibid., 80.

¹⁷ Ibid., 79. The whole speech is reproduced in The Penguin Aurobindo Reader, ed. Makarand Paranjape (Delhi: Penguin, 1999), pp. 18–27.

¹⁸ Cited in Thomas, P. M., 20th Century Indian Interpretations of Bhagavatgita: Tilak, Gandhi & Aurobindo (Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1987), 81Google Scholar.

¹⁹ See, for example, the essays “The Core of the Teaching,” “Kurukshetra,” and “Man and the Battle for Life” in Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1966), 28–34, 35–41, 41–8, and Andrew Sartori's essay in this volume.

²⁰ Sharpe, Universal Gita, 81

²¹ Cited in ibid., 82

²² Indian Sociologist, Jan. 1913, 2.

²³ Indian Sociologist, May 1907, 19. Earlier, in Nov. 1905, an article in the Indian Sociologist had made a categorical distinction between Tilak, whom it described as an “unbending patriot,” and Gokhale, whom it called a “professional politician.” See “The President-Elect of the Indian National Congress: Contrast between Mr. Gokhale and Mr. Tilak,” Indian Sociologist, 4 Nov. 1905, 42–4.

²⁴ Indian Sociologist, April 1907, p. 20. Indulal Yajnik, in Shaymji Krishnavarma, 200, names Har Dayal as the writer of these lines. The article in the Indian Sociologist even put forward an institutional structure for the training of political missionaries. For details see Indian Sociologist, June 1907, 23–4.

²⁵ Hardiman, David, Gandhi in His Times and Ours: The Global Legacy of His Ideas, (London: Hurst and Company, 2003), 67–8Google Scholar.

²⁶ Gandhi, M. K., Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. Parel, Anthony J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, 5 Oct. 1945, 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ Ibid., 30

²⁸ Ibid., 30; editor's note, 39.

²⁹ Weber, Tom, “Gandhi Moves,” in Ganguly, Debjani and Docker, John, eds., Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 85Google Scholar.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Cited in Jordens, J. T. F., “Gandhi and the Bhagavadgita,” in Minor, Robert, ed. Modern Indian Interpretations of the Bhagvadgita (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986), 88Google Scholar; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (hereafter CWMG), 55: 10 Feb. 1932–15 June 1932, 33.

³² Sharpe, Universal Gita, 90–94, 103–5, 116–17. Sharma, Abhinavagupta Gitarthasangraha, claims that this strategy had precedents in the precolonial Indian interpretive tradition.

³³ That the theosophists were one of the first groups in the late nineteenth century to describe the Gita as principally an allegorical text is well established in the researches of Sharpe. Sharpe, Universal Gita, pp. 90–94, 103–5, 116–17.

³⁴ CWMG), 37: 11 Nov. 1926–1 Jan. 1927, 75–6.

³⁵ Ibid., 88–9.

³⁶ Ibid., 76.

³⁷ CWMG, 37: 11 Nov. 1926–1 Jan. 1927, 82. A biography of Savarkar gives this interesting account of a meeting between Gandhi and Savarkar in London. Gandhi dropped in at the India House one Sunday evening when Savarkar was cooking prawns. On Gandhi's declining to eat prawns, Savarkar is reported to have taunted him by saying, “this is just boiled fish . . . while [we] want people who are ready to eat the Britishers alive (zo angrezo ko zinda aur kachcha chaba sake . . .).” Srivastava, Harindranath, Five Stormy Years: Savarkar in London, June 1906–June 1911 (Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1983), 28–9Google Scholar.

³⁸ CWMG, 37: 11 Nov. 1926–1 Jan. 1927, 131–2.

³⁹ Ibid., 338

⁴⁰ Ibid., 82.

⁴¹ Ibid., 100.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ The history of this word would repay examination. In Maratha historical memory, the word would have had some resonances with Shivaji's use in 1645 of the expression Hindavi Swaraj (“the self-government of the Hindus” is how A. R. Kulkarni translates it). A. R. Kulkarni, Explorations in Deccan History (Delhi: Pragati, 2006), 60. Indian Sociologist, March 1907, 11, mentions an Anglo-Gujarati journal called Hind Svarajya in existence at least two years before Gandhi writes his Hind Swaraj.

⁴⁴ CWMG, 37: 11 Nov. 1926–1 Jan. 1927, 77.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 105.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 86.

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 86–7.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 125.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 116.

⁵¹ Ibid., 117.

⁵² Ibid., 118.

⁵³ Ibid., 111.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 112.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 341.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 104.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Devji in this issue describes this process pithily as “action without a subject.”

⁶¹ CWMG, 37: 11 Nov. 1926–1 Jan. 1927, 100.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Ibid., 121.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 102.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 122.