A Village Experiment – Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

 

 

A Village Experiment – Mahatma Gandhi

 

This is in many respects a remarkable experiment. Quiet work has gone on without fuss, without advertisement, and practically without capital and this has been possible because the people were willing to revise their taste in dress material and to make use of their idle hours. The population of the village is 640. The cloth budget is estimated at Rs. 3,640. Therefore, when all the villagers are clothed in khaddar, they will add to their annual income Rs. 3,640 by simply using their waste moments. There is no village reconstruction scheme which can possibly yield such brilliant, tangible and quick results. This khaddar work is also an object-lesson in co-operation. And by the time khaddar becomes a permanent part of the village life, selfless village workers can, if they will, promote sanitation, education and social reform. This is practical self-government. Imagine thousands of such villages bound together by a common tie through khaddar, and you have swaraj for the asking. For when India learns to deny itself the use of foreign cloth, she will have sterilized the many undesirable activities of the British people and paved the way for real swaraj. I hope that the good people of Kanpur will not rest content till every man, woman and child living in it habitually wears khaddar. It is to be hoped, too, that the infection will not be confined to Pudur only, but that it will spread from village to village.

 

Reference:

Young India, 10-9-1925