The Wheel of Fortune Part 4

Nothing but hand-spinning can banish pauperism from the land. Paupers cannot become willing sufferers. They have never known the pain of plenty to appreciate the happiness of voluntarily suffering hunger or other bodily discomfort. Swaraj for them can only mean ability to support themselves without begging. To awaken among them a feeling of discontent with their lot without providing them with the means of removing the cause thereof is to court certain destruction, anarchy, outrage and plunder in which they themselves will be the chief victims.

Hand-spinning alone can possibly supply them with supplementary and additional earnings. Hand-weaving for many and carding for a limited number can provide complete livelihood. But hand-weaving is not a lost art. Several million men know hand-weaving. But very few know hand-spinning in the true sense of the term. Tens of thousands are, it is true, turning the wheel to-day but only a few are spinning yarn. The cry all over is that hand-spun yarn is not good enough for warp. Just as half-baked bread is no bread, even so ill-spun weak thread is no yarn.

Thousands of men must know hand-spinning to be able in their respective districts to improve the quality of the yarn that is now being spun in the country. Therefore those who offer civil disobedience for the sake of establis.h.i.+ng Swaraj must know hand-spinning. Mark, they are not required to turn out yarn every day. It would be well if they did. But they must know how to spin even properly twisted yarn. It was a happy omen to me, that in spite of the opposition the amendment was rejected by a large majority. One argument advanced in favour of rejection was, that the Sikh men considered it an undignified occupation to spin and looked down upon hand-weaving. I do hope that the sentiment is not representative of the brave community. Any community that despises occupations that bring an honest livelihood is a community going down an incline. If spinning has been the speciality of women, it is because they have more leisure and not because it is an inferior occupation. The underlying suggestion that a wielder of the sword will not wield the wheel is to take a distorted view of a soldier's calling. A man who lives by the sword does _not_ serve his community even as the soldiers in the employ of the Government do not serve the country. The wielding of the sword is an unnatural occupation resorted to among civilized people only on extraordinary occasions and only for self-defence. To live by hand-spinning and hand-weaving is any day more _manly_ than to live by killing. Aurangzeb was not the less a soldier for sewing caps.

What we prize in the Sikhs is not their ability to kill. The late Sardar Lachman Singh will go down to posterity as a hero, because he knew how to die. The Mahant of Nankhana Saheb will go down to posterity as a murderer. I hope therefore that no man will decline to learn the beautiful life-giving art of hand-spinning on the ground of its supposed inferiority.

_Y. I.--10th Nov. 1921._

THE DUTY OF SPINNING

In "The Secret of Swaraj" I have endeavoured to show what home spinning means for our country. In any curriculum of the future, spinning must be a compulsory subject. Just as we cannot live without breathing and without eating, so is it impossible for us to attain economic independence and banish pauperism from this ancient land without reviving home-spinning. I hold the spinning wheel to be as much a necessity in every household as the hearth. No other scheme that can be devised will ever solve the problem of the deepening poverty of the people.

How then can spinning be introduced in every home? I have already suggested the introduction of spinning and systematic production of yarn in every national school. Once our boys and girls have learnt the art they can easily carry it to their homes.

But this requires organisation. A spinning wheel must be worked for twelve hours per day. A practised spinner can spin two tolas and a half per hour. The price that is being paid at present is on an average four annas per forty tolas or one pound of yarn _i.e._, one pice per hour.

Each wheel therefore should give three annas per day. A strong one costs seven rupees. Working, therefore, at the rate of twelve hours per day it can pay for itself in less than 38 days. I have given enough figures to work upon. Any one working at them will find the results to be startling.

If every school introduced spinning, it would revolutionize our ideas of financing education. We can work a school for six hours per day and give free education to the pupils. Supposing a boy works at the wheel for four hours daily, he will produce every day 10 tolas of yarn and thus earn for his school one anna per day. Suppose further that he manufactures very little during the first month, and that the school works only twenty six days in the month. He can earn after the first month Rs. 1-10 per month. A cla.s.s of thirty boys would yield, after the first month, an income of Rs. 48-12 per month.

I have said nothing about literary training. It can be given during the two hours out of the six. It is easy to see that every school can be made self supporting without much effort and the nation can engage experienced teachers for its schools.

The chief difficulty in working out the scheme is the spinning wheel. We require thousands of wheels if the art becomes popular. Fortunately, every village carpenter can easily construct the machine. It is a serious mistake to order them from the Ashram or any other place. The beauty of spinning is that it is incredibly simple, easily learnt, and can be cheaply introduced in every village.

The course suggested by me is intended only for this year of purification and probation. When normal times are reached and Swaraj is established one hour only may be given to spinning and the rest to literary training.

_Y. I.--2nd Feb. 1921._

THE DUTY OF SPINNING

[Speaking at a monster meeting of students held in Mirzapur Park, Calcutta, Mahatma Gandhi appealed to them to withdraw from educational inst.i.tutions. In the course of that speech he spoke on the duty of spinning, which portion is printed here.]

Our education has been the most deficient in two things. Those who framed our education code neglected the training of the body and the soul. You are receiving the education of the soul but the very fact of non-co-operation for non-co-operation is nothing less and nothing more than withdrawing from partic.i.p.ation in the evil that this Government is doing and continuing to do. And if we are withdrawing from evil conscientiously, deliberately, it means that we are walking with our face towards G.o.d. That completes or begins the soul training. But seeing that our bodily education has been neglected, and seeing that India has become enslaved because India forgot the spinning wheel, and because India sold herself for a mess of pottage, I am not afraid to place before you, the young men of Bengal, the spinning wheel for adoption. And let a training in spinning and production of as much yarn as you can ever do const.i.tute your main purpose and your main training during this year of probation. Let your ordinary education commence after Swaraj is established, but let every young man, and every girl, of Bengal consider it to be their sacred duty to devote all their time and energy to spinning. I have drawn attention to the parallel, that presents itself before us, from the war.

_Y. I.--2nd Feb. 1921._

THE DOCTRINE OF CHARKA

[The opening session of the National College, Calcutta, under the auspices of the Board of Education, formed by Srijuts Chittaranjan Das, Jitendralal Banerjee and other non-co-operation leaders, took place on Friday the 4th February 1921. In opening this College, Mahatma Gandhi addressed the students and professors, from which the following is culled.]

We have sufficiently talked about Charka and how it is going to free India--how a nation that came through the Charka to this country as traders, merchants and travellers settled themselves down as rulers with our co-operation, and how non-co-operation and by means of that very Indian _Charka_ they will go back to their own country if they cannot live as fellow-citizens in India.

There are peoples who say--"how can you expect the Mahomedans to be non-violent." How, I do not want to speak out. I want the _Charka_ itself to speak out. The whole Europe will know when we place these Charkas in our mosques. Something like 800 Charkas had been ordered for the mosques so that the people who come there should be able to produce Indian yarn with which Indian clothes should be woven by Indian hands in Indian homes to clothe our nakedness or at least to provide home-spun shrouds for us. Thus every revolution of the _Charka_ I can a.s.sure you, will bring the success of this bloodless revolution the nearer every day. That is the doctrine of _Charka_. Therefore I ask you to work up this doctrine which will be a great advertis.e.m.e.nt both of our determination to win freedom, and if possible, through peaceful means.

If you are determined to have the freedom of your country, if you want to see the cessation of our slavery in which we are living for close upon two centuries, it requires from you a peaceful battle--the battle of the _Charka_.

_Y. I.--9th Feb. 1921._

THE MESSAGE OF THE CHARKA

The _Indian Social Reformer_ has published a note from a correspondent in praise of the spinning-wheel. The correspondent in the course of his remarks hopes, that the movement will be so organised that the spinners may not weary of it. Mr. Amritlal Thakkar in his valuable note (published in the _Servant of India_) on the experiment which he is conducting in Kathiawad, says that the charkha has been taken up by the peasant women. They are not likely to weary, for to them it is a source of livelihood to which they were used before. It had dried up, because there was no demand for their yarn. Townspeople who have taken to spinning may weary, if they have done so as a craze or a fas.h.i.+on. Those only will be faithful, who consider it their duty to devote their spare hours to doing what is to-day the most useful work for the country. The third cla.s.s of spinners are the school-going children. I expect the greatest results from the experiment of introducing the charkha in the National Schools. If it is conducted on scientific lines by teachers who believe in the charkha as the most efficient means of making education available to the seven and a half lacs of villages in India, there is not only no danger of weariness, but every prospect of the nation being able to solve the problem of financing ma.s.s education without any extra taxation and without having to fall back upon immoral sources of revenue.

The writer in the _Indian Social Reformer_ suggests, that an attempt should be made to produce finer counts on the spinning-wheel. I may a.s.sure him that the process has already begun, but it will be some time before we arrive at the finish of the Dacca muslin or even twenty counts. Seeing that hand-spinning was only revived last September, and India began to believe in it somewhat only in December, the progress it has made may be regarded as phenomenal.

The writer's complaint that hand-spun yarn is not being woven as fast as it is spun, is partly true. But the remedy is not so much to increase the number of looms, as to persuade the existing weavers to use hand-spun yarn. Weaving is a much more complex process than spinning. It is not, like spinning, only a supplementary industry, but a complete means of livelihood. It therefore never died out. There are _enough weavers and enough looms in India to replace the whole of the foreign import of cloth_. It should be understood that our looms--thousands of them in Madras, Maharashtra and Bengal--are engaged in weaving the fine yarn imported from j.a.pan and Manchester. We _must_ utilize these for weaving hand-spun yarn. And for that purpose, the nation has to revise its taste for the thin tawdry and useless muslins. I see no art in weaving muslins, that do not cover but only expose the body. Our ideas of art must undergo a change. But even if the universal weaving of thin fabric be considered desirable in normal conditions, at the present moment whilst we are making a mighty effort to become free and self-supporting, we must be content to wear the cloth that our hand-spun yarn may yield. We have therefore to ask the fas.h.i.+onable on the one hand to be satisfied with coa.r.s.er garments; we must educate the spinners on the other hand to spin finer and more even yarn.

The writer pleads for a reduction in the prices charged by mill-owners for their manufactures. When lovers of Swades.h.i.+ begin to consider it their duty to wear khaddar, when the required number of spinning-wheels are working and the weavers are weaving hand-spun yarn, the mill-owners will be bound to reduce prices. It seems almost hopeless merely to appeal to the patriotism of those whose chief aim is to increase their own profits.

Incongruities pointed out by the writer such as the wearing of khaddar on public occasions and at other times of the most fas.h.i.+onable English suits, and the smoking of most expensive cigars by wearers of khaddar, must disappear in course of time, as the new fas.h.i.+on gains strength. It is my claim that as soon as we have completed the boycott of foreign cloth, we shall have evolved so far that we shall necessarily give up the present absurdities and remodel national life in keeping with the ideal of simplicity and domesticity implanted in the bosom of the ma.s.ses. We will not then be dragged into an imperialism, which is built upon exploitation of the weaker races of the earth, and the acceptance of a giddy materialistic civilization protected by naval and air forces that have made peaceful living almost impossible. On the contrary, we shall then refine that imperialism, into a common wealth of nations which will combine, if they do, for the purpose of giving their best to the world and of protecting, not by brute force but by self-suffering, the weaker nations or races of the earth. Non-co-operation aims at nothing less than this revolution in the thought-world. Such a transformation can come only after the complete success of the spinning-wheel. India can become fit for delivering such a message, when she has become proof against temptation and therefore attacks from outside, by becoming self-contained regarding two of her chief needs--food and clothing.

_Y. I.--29th June 1921._

THE CHARKA IN THE GITA

In the last issue I have endeavoured to answer the objections raised by the Poet against spinning as a sacrament to be performed by all. I have done so in all humility and with the desire to convince the Poet and those who think like him. The reader will be interested in knowing, that my belief is derived largely from the Bhagavadgita. I have quoted the relevant verses in the article itself. I give below Edwin Arnold's rendering of the verses from his Song Celestial for the benefit of those who do not read Sanskrit.

Work is more excellent than idleness; The body's life proceeds not, lacking work.

There is a task of holiness to do, Unlike world-binding toil, which bindeth not The faithful soul; such earthly duty do Free from desire, and thou shalt well perform Thy heavenly purpose. Spake Praj.a.pati In the beginning, when all men were made, And, with mankind, the sacrifice--"Do this!

Work! Sacrifice! Increase and multiply With sacrifice! This shall be Kamadhuk, Your 'Cow of Plenty', giving back her milk Of all abundance. Wors.h.i.+p the G.o.ds thereby; The G.o.ds shall yield ye grace. Those meats ye crave The G.o.ds will grant to Labour, when it pays t.i.thes in the altar-flame. But if one eats Fruits of the earth, rendering to kindly heaven, No gift of toil, that thief steals from his world."

Who eat of food after their sacrifice Are quit of fault, but they that spread a feast All for themselves, eat sin and drink of sin.

By food the living live; food comes of rain.

And rain comes by the pious sacrifice, And sacrifice is paid with t.i.thes of toil; Thus action is of Brahma, who is one, The Only, All--pervading; at all times Present in sacrifice. He that abstains To help the rolling wheels of this great world, Glutting his idle sense, lives a lost life, Shameful and vain.

Work here undoubtedly refers to physical labour, and work by way of sacrifice can only be work to be done by all for the common benefit.

Such work--such sacrifice can only be spinning. I do not wish to suggest, that the author of the Divine Song had the spinning wheel in mind. He merely laid down a fundamental principle of conduct. And reading in and applying it to India I can only think of spinning as the fittest and most acceptable sacrificial body labour. I cannot imagine anything n.o.bler or more national than that for say one hour in the day we should all do the labour that the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them with all mankind. I cannot imagine better wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d than that in His name I should labour for the poor even as they do. The spinning wheel spells a more equitable distribution of the riches of the earth.

_Y. I.--20th Oct. 1921._

SPINNING AS FAMINE RELIEF