[4] S. Satyamurti, Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru were among a contrasting group of Swarajists who laid the foundation for parliamentary democracy in India.
[5] The student movement against oppressive local and central governments, led by Jayaprakash Narayan, Udit Swaraj and the Bhoodan movement, which presaged demands for land reform legislation throughout India, and which ultimately led to India's discarding of the Zamindari system of land tenure and social organisation, were also inspired by the ideas of Swaraj.
Swami Dayanand Saraswati, beginning with the premise that God had created people free to perform any work they were inclined to choose, questioned the legitimacy of the British colonial rule in India.
However, Gandhi feared that a state moulded with such an aim would ultimately revoke the rights of the citizens and seize the role of grand protector, and would demand total compliance from them.
If Gandhi's close acquaintance with the working of the state apparatus in South Africa and in India strengthened his suspicion of a centralised, monolithic state, his intimate association with the Congress and its leaders confirmed his fears about the corrupting influence of political power and his scepticism about the efficacy of the party systems of power politics (due to which he resigned from the Congress on more than one occasion only to be persuaded back each time) and his study of the British parliamentary systems convinced him that representative democracy was incapable of meting out justice to people.
[10] Adopting Swaraj means implementing a system whereby the state machinery is virtually nil, and the real power directly resides in the hands of people.
Gandhi explained his vision in 1946: Independence begins at the bottom... A society must be built in which every village has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its own affairs...
He said: "It may be taunted with the retort that this is all Utopian and, therefore not worth a single thought... Let India live for the true picture, though never realised in its completeness.
[citation needed] Under Nehru India turned to a socialist model of industrial development, became a leader of non-aligned countries (those refusing to side in the Cold War), and formed an alliance with the Soviet Union (although domestically firmly rejecting Marxism–Leninism).
India does continue with appropriated elements of the British common law, and its rail system was built out from that left by Britain.
[17] The Aam Aadmi Party was founded in late 2012, by Arvind Kejriwal and some erstwhile activists of India Against Corruption movement, with the aim of empowering people by applying the concept of Swaraj enunciated by Gandhi, in the present day context by changing the system of governance.