Gandhi is where I get Swaraj, and these days I read Swaraj as grounded agency. His reply to Tagore, the bit about the windows and refusing to be blown off his feet, is also my working definition of cognitive sovereignty.
How the word moved
In January 2025 he came up as part of the independence struggle, which I was reading then as a liberal movement. By May 2026 I was quoting the windows passage - "I refuse to be blown off my feet by any" - as the stance cognitive sovereignty asks for. Then in October 2026, writing about the future of Socratus, Swaraj turned into grounded agency. That's the reading I'm sticking with for now.
In my words
"In Hind Swaraj, he connects self-rule with self-control"
from Infrastructure for Agency, 28 Oct 2026
Related
- Related Swaraj - his concept, and the one I keep coming back to.
- Related Grounded Agency - my reading of his Swaraj.
- Related Cognitive Sovereignty - the windows passage is its best one-line statement.
- Related Rabindranath Tagore - I pair the two of them at the close of Cognitive Sovereignty.