an expression of violence and feared the expansion of state power, as he believed it would stifle individuality. Gandhi declared his ideal society to be a form of self-governed stateless society, which he described as "enlightened anarchy". However, he would end up collaborating with the Indian National Congress and felt that the temporary existence of an Indian state would be necessary in a transition towards anarchy. Gandhi and anarchism The local conditions were pertinent to the development of the heavily anarchic Satyagraha movement in India. George Woodcock claimed Mohandas Gandhi self-identified as an anarchist. Gandhi also considered Leo Tolstoy's book, The Kingdom of God is Within You, a book about practical anarchist organisation, as the text to have the most influence in his life. To Gandhi, the root of all social problems lay in violence and therefore in the state, which maintains a monopoly on violence, holding that "the nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on nonviolence." He advocated for the implementation of Swaraj (self-governance) starting with individuals, before moving up through the village, region and finally the national level. Swaraj was thus based in a form of individualist anarchism, rejecting majority rule, parliamentarism and political parties, while holding that individual morality should be the guiding force of the wider society and that any collective organization should be subordinate to the will of the individuals which make it up. In his essay "Reflections on Gandhi" (1949), George Orwell noted that anarchists and pacifists had claimed Gandhi as an adherent of their own traditions, but argued that in doing so they ignored "the other-worldly, anti-humanist tendency of his doctrines." Orwell argued that Gandhian thought required religious belief, and so could not be reconciled with anarchists' humanism. Bhagat Singh Before 1920, a partly anarchist inspired movement was represented by one of the most famous revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement, Bhagat Singh. Though a Marxist, Bhagat Singh was attracted to anarchism. Western anarchism and communism had influence on him. He studied the writings of Mikhail Bakunin, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Singh wrote in an article: Singh was involved in the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association and Naujawan Bharat Sabha (Translated to 'Youth Society of India'). By the mid-1920s Singh began arming of the general population and organised people's militias against the British. From May 1928 to September 1928, Singh published several articles on anarchism in Punjabi