While I am in agreement with the thrust of the larger point made by Shri Rajiv Malhotra, may I just highlight

something about the following alleged lexical contributions of Gandhi?

<<<he coined a whole vocabulary of non-translatables like svaraj, satyagraha, swadhyay, svadharma, etc.>>>

Gandhi did not "coin" the above terms with the possible exception of satyAgraha. Far from it, he can not be justly credited to have even been first to have reintroduced or popularized these in context of the contemporary national social and political movement parlance.

Since the times of shivAjI, and especially so during the times of the peshavAs, "svarAjya" (or "svarAj") was a very specific and well understood public term, signifying the immediate political goal of the Hindu society to attain the political self-rule over its nation. 17th and 18th century documents, letters, diaries, and even poetries (see bhUShaNa) are full of the usage of this term in that context. Even in the British colonial era, much before the arrival of Gandhi, the usage of "svarAjya" is fully attested to.

The first significant and popular usage of "svarAjya" in British colonial times, in addition to that of "svadharma" and "svadeshI", can be seen in its fully developed form in the speeches of Maharshi Dayananda Saraswati of Arya Samaj

already in 1860s and 70s. Followed by this, we see its full usage first by Dadabhai Nauroji, and then most popularly by Bal Gangadhar Tilak by the dawn of the 1900s.

"svAdhyAya", far from being "coined" by Gandhi, of course always was a common term first occuring perhaps in the text of yogasUtra-s of pata~njali (yamaniyamau), but the credit for the common popularity of this term even in the modern public parlance, also goes to the Arya Samaj and its founder. Dayananda had established "svAdhyAya" as one of the five limbs (5 "S"-es) of the personal practice of every Arya Samajist (the other four being "sandhyA", "samAja", "svadeshI", and "sevA"). The term "svAdhyAya" was already made quite popular by the early decades of 1900s by the Arya Samaj leaders like Swami Shraddhananda, Mahatma Hansaraj, and Lala Lajpat Rai, much before the arrival of Gandhi. In fact, (not to offend any Svadhyaya Parivar followers), the impact of this impetus on svAdhyaya by Arya Samaj is quite implicit on the founder of the svAdhyAya movement, who was himself a product of those times.

One topic of importance worth pondering over would be, did Gandhi not misinterpret or even subverted the continuity in the meanings of the above terms? On this I have some specific opinions which we can pass for now.

Before closing, let us mention one term the credit for coining which goes fully

to Gandhi is "Harijan", which certainly was an improvement over "Depressed Classes" (translated crudely by our contemporary folks as "Dalit", and used in that loaded sense). Arya Samaj and others (such as Madan Mohan Malaviya) were already doing serious work along those lines before Gandhi, while they were using the nutral and well established Hindu word shUdra, which I personally find better than "Harijan" or "Dalit" that carry loaded meanings.

Also "satyAgraha" was certainly coined by Gandhi, and the genesis of the term is a competition he ran in his journal in South Africa, to give a name to the civil rights movement there. The winning entry was "sadAgraha" which he improved as "satyAgraha".

Warm Regards Sarvesh Tiwari http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RajivMalhotraDiscussion/message/1892