Humanity of India 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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Humanity of India and Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

The fallen sisters are only a small part of the fallen humanity of India. The skin and bone of Orissa are also in a sense part of that humanity. They are the victims of our ignorance as the first are of our lust. In their case it is not our animal lust but the lust for wealth that reduces them to skin and bone. They bleed so that we may become rich. But now, thank God, we the educated middle class are hungering to identify ourselves with our fallen sisters and our starving brothers. We desire swaraj so that they may live. We cannot all go to the villages and help the villagers. The fallen sister is a perpetual reminder to us to become pure. How then can we think of and feel for them from day to day? What may we all do for them every day? We are so weak that we want to do as little as possible. What is that little? I can think of nothing else but the spinning-wheel. The work must be easy, capable of being done by all, the learned and the ignorant, the good and the bad, young and old, men and women, boys and girls, the strong and the weak, no matter to what religion they belong. The work to be effective must be the same for all. The spinning-wheel satisfies all these conditions.

Therefore he or she who spins for half an hour every day serves the masses in the most efficient manner possible. And he renders whole-hearted conscious service to the fallen humanity of India and thus brings swaraj nearer for that service. The spinning-wheel for us is the foundation for all public corporate life. It is impossible to build any permanent public life without it. It is the one visible link that indissolubly binds us to the lowest in the land and thus gives them a hope. We may or must add many things to it, but let us first make sure of it, even as a wise mason makes sure of his foundation before he begins to build the superstructure, and the bigger the structure the deeper and stronger the foundation. For the result to be obtained therefore spinning should become universal in India. But spinning will be not only the connecting link between the masses and the classes; it will be the link between the different political parties. It will become common to all the parties. They may disagree on all other things if they like, but they can agree on this at the least. I ask therefore everyone who loves the country, loves the poorest and the fallen, to give half an hour’s labour daily to spinning even and well-twisted yarn for their sake and in the name of God. As this must be a gift to the nation, it must be delivered to the All-India Khadi Board with religious regularity. 1 

The women of Calcutta, what do I ask of you, half an hour, in the name of God, for the sake of perishing and famishing humanity of India? Is it too much for you to give half an hour of your time to doing that to spinning for the sake of these poor people so that you can cheapen khaddar, so that I can tell the villagers of Bengal that the daughters and sons of millionaires are spinning? Why will you not spin? Do you know that the villagers have lost faith in us, in them and in God Himself? Because they find that we often go to them, sometimes to collect money, sometimes with one programme and sometimes with another programme. They do not know where we want to lead them and so they are distrustful of us and when we take in our simplicity, the spinning-wheel to their homes, they smile at us the smile of no-confidence. They do not say: “We do not understand this instrument of yours. We do not know what meaning lies behind the spinning-wheel.” So when the villagers have forgotten the use and the beauty, the life-giving beauty of the spinning-wheel, they do not take to it kindly.

If you want them to take to this home industry of yours kindly, then it is necessary for you to spin the wheel yourself. And remember again that, unless you take to spinning yourselves, you will not be able to make necessary improvements on it, you will not be able to re-establish this almost lost industry of India. No agricultural country in the world has yet lived which has not added a supplementary industry to it. And I defy any Indian, no matter how distinguished an economist he may be to show me an effective substitute for the millions of India who are scattered all over the land which is 1900 miles long and 1500 miles broad and scattered in 700 thousand villages most of which are outside even the railway tracts. I defy anybody to propose or to show any effective substitute. But till such an effective substitute is placed before you, do not idle away your time, do not grudge the poor, down-trodden humanity of India, the half an hour that I ask of you, the Congress asks of you. And then, if you take to the spinning-wheel, what about its product? Why is this spinning-wheel a necessity? Because we want clothes made not in Manchester or Japan, made not in Ahmadabad or Bombay which did not stand Bengal in good stead at the time of Partition, but we want beautiful khaddar manufactured in our own village homes which always stands us in good stead. We want the villagers to be smiling with plenty; we want the people of Khulna, when again they have got famine, to know that they are not to live on doles of rice thrown at their face by a Dr. Ray, but I want the people of Khulna to feel that they do not need the assistance of even a Ray, because they have got the spinning-wheel to fall back upon. Let them not become beggars when they have got ready in their hands an instrument of living, an instrument which shall be insurance, a permanent insurance against famine. That is why I ask you to take up the spinning-wheel and khaddar and that is what has brought me to Bengal. 2

Village tanks are promiscuously used for bathing, washing clothes and drinking and cooking purposes. Many village tanks are also used by cattle. Buffaloes are often to be seen wallowing in them. The wonder is that, in spite of this sinful misuse of village tanks, villages have not been destroyed by epidemics. It is the universal medical evidence that this neglect to ensure purity of the water supply of villages is responsible for many of the diseases suffered by the villagers. This, it will be admitted, is a gloriously interesting and instructive service, fraught with incalculable benefit to the suffering humanity of India. I hope it is clear from my description of the way in which the problem should be tackled, that, given willing workers who will wield the broom and the shovel with the same ease and pride as the pen and the pencil, the question of expense is almost wholly eliminated. All the outlay that will be required is confined to a broom, a basket, a shovel and a pickaxe, and possibly some disinfectant. Dry ashes are, perhaps, as effective a disinfectant as any that a chemist can supply. But here let philanthropic chemists tell us what is the most effective and cheap village disinfectant that villagers can improvise in their villages. 3

 

References:

 

1. 1.      Young India, 4-9-1924
2. 2.      Amrita Bazar Patrika, 2-5-1925
3. 3.      Harijan, 8-2-1935