Economic Prosperity and 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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Economic Prosperity and Mahatma Gandhi   

 

 

People in the West generally hold that it is man’s duty to promote the happiness prosperity that is of the greatest number.  Happiness is taken to mean material happiness exclusively, that is, economic prosperity. If, in the pursuit of this happiness moral, laws are violated, it does not matter much. Again, as the object is the happiness of the greatest number, people in the West do not believe it to be wrong if it is secured at the cost of the minority. The consequences of this attitude are in evidence in all western countries. 1 The economic prosperity of India must indirectly affect the course of her political history even using the word “political” in its narrow sense. Lastly, when the exploitation of India by Lancashire ceases by reason of the ability of India through the wheel to clothe herself and consequently to exclude foreign cloth and therefore also Lancashire cloth, England will have lost the feverish anxiety at any cost to hold India under subjection. 2  

Imagine the economic regeneration of England if she is politically subjected to an extraneous power. I can understand the ruthless exploitation of the economic resources of India by a power that has held her in bondage for over 150 years, but that will not be economic prosperity for India. It will spell economic dejection and political degradation. I am amazed that British statesmen who happen to be ruling India today are not satisfied with the mere rejection of a plan conceived in all honesty, but that they should even suggest that the political question should be shelved during the war and that attention should be concentrated on India’s economic salvation. 3 I seem to read a conflict in some clauses of the summary has not the present war shaken one’s confidence in the stability of the economic prosperity of the leading nations, and is not that prosperity co-existent with the deep and distressing poverty of large units of the same nations? 4

 

References:

 

 

1. Sarvodaya Preface
2. Young India, 29-1-1925 
3. The Hindu, 1-8-1944   
4. Letter to M. Vishveshvarayya, June 12, 1945