THE SELECTED WORKS OF MAHATMA GANDHI
Vol-5 : Voice of Truth

SECTION IX : POLITICAL IDEAS

Chapter- 60. Decentralization

Centralization as a system is inconsistent with non-violent structure of society.

Harijan, 18-1-42, p. 5

The centre of power now is in New Delhi, or in Calcutta and Bombay, in the big cities. I would have it distributed among the seven hundred thousand villages of India.

Mahatma Gandhi the last Phase, Vol. 2, (1958), p. 614

In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever widening, never ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose center will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units.

Therefore, the outermost circumference will not wield power to crust the inner circle but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength from it. I may be taunted with the retort that this is all Utopian and, therefore, not worth a single thought. If Euclid’s point, though incapable of being drawn by human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live. Let India live for this true picture, though never realizable in its completeness. We must have a proper picture of what we want, before we can have something approaching it. If there ever is to be a republic of every village in India then I claim verity for my picture in which the last is equal to the first or, in other words, no one is to be the first and none the last.

Harijan, 28-7-46, p. 236