About Youth4Swaraj in ME 3, Sah Vikas Apartments, 68 IP Extension, New Delhi

Youth for Swaraj seeks to engage the youth of India to recover its past, shape its present and guide its future in the light of Swaraj.

For us, youth is not just about being young in age. It is not about following the latest fad. Youth is about willingness to think afresh, courage to question every 'given', to interrogate every orthodoxy and about ability to come up with out-of-box solutions to age old problems. Youth is not about speaking to people like us inside our comfort zones. It is about discovering the world outside our cocoons, about speaking truth to power. Youth is not about seeking change for its own sake but about seeking meaningful and positive alternatives.

Swaraj shows us the way towards such an alternative. For us Swaraj does not mean merely an end to foreign rule. The ideal of swaraj invites us to think of self-rule in multiple dimensions and at various levels:

•Swaraj for myself as in individual freedom, rule over my bodily and inner self
•Swaraj for my social groups as in gender, caste, community, class, race and orientation; freedom from all forms of oppression and domination;
•Swaraj for my country as in national sovereignty and pursuit of self-rule by regions and communities within;
•Swaraj for my world as in global peace and harmony with nature

We seek a new India, a new world. We stand for

•A political order where each and every state, district, block, village and panchayat of the country enjoys autonomy within its own sphere with accountability and responsiveness at every level;

•An economic order that secures everyone's well-being, that provides universal opportunities for work to earn dignified living, that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship but not greed over need, that protects ecology and the interest of the future generations;

•A social order where state, communities and individuals do not live in conflicts and tension among themselves; a society without discrimination, hatred and subjugation, where accident of birth does not determine one's station in life;

•An education system that offers universal, equal and quality opportunities for acquisition of knowledge and skills; that cultivates constitutional values, that opens us to the cultural heritage of our country and humanity; and

•A global order characterised by harmony among the nations, between men and women, among communities, among people of various religious faiths, sects and culture and between human beings and nature.

We are for Swaraj. For us, being 'for' something is not just a preference. It is not an attitude. We affirm the ideal of swaraj with our being and back it with our life.

We take our inspiration from the revolutionary legacy of our freedom struggle, the philosophy of the Constitution of India and from the various people’s movements and struggles in post independent India. But we are not limited by any ism and holy book or any icon. While learning from our past, we shall learn from our experience and practice seek fresh answers.

Our means must be aligned to our ends. Therefore Youth for Swaraj shall:

•Take decisions in a democratic manner; every voice will be heard, differences will be respected;
•Discourage personality-cult and evolve collective leadership;
•Promote diversity within the organisation with special emphasis on leadership of women and marginal social groups;
•Follow transparent processes and share information about itself with the public; and
•Build a relationship of cooperation with other like-minded student and youth organisations.

Youth for Swaraj seeks to engage the youth not just in their existential issues of education, employment and livelihood, but also in the larger issues of our time. Youth for Swaraj is not affiliated to any political party. But we do not shun politics. For us politics is not a career or profession, but the 'yugdharam' of our times. We are conscious of the crying need for alternative politics and the pivotal role that the youth can play in this historic task.