Who can be a Trustee – 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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Who can be a Trustee – Mahatma Gandhi

 

The purpose for which the A. I. S. A. has been created is so vast and great that the qualifications to be a trustee of the A. I. S. A. require careful consideration. In my opinion they should be as below:

1. No one should be a trustee merely in name or for the sake of name. A trustee should have the faith that in a country like India where crores remain unemployed for four to six months in the year, everybody can easily be clad in self-spun cloth and need not touch any other if all those who are physically fit spin for a reasonable time every day, say on an average for an hour every day.

 2. A trustee who has this unshakable faith will spin regularly to set a good example to others and for the satisfaction of contributing his or her mite to the service of the country.

3. He or she will try his or her best to attune his or her life with the life in the villages of India.

4. India is made of villages, but our intelligentsia has neglected them. A trustee of the A. I. S. A. would try his or her utmost to remedy the handicaps from which our village life suffers. In doing so he or she should remember that village life must not become a copy or appendage of city life. The cities have to adopt the pattern of village life and subsist for the villages.

5. If a trustee’s husband is connected with the mill industry, she should engage a weaver out of her personal money to weave yarn spun by herself or her friends and relatives and use the cloth thus produced. A trustee should read all the literature about hand-spinning and hand-weaving and understand the economic and moral significance of the cloth-making industry. He or she should know that it is possible to make it universal and explain it to others.

6. A trustee should study and understand the history of the A. I. S. A. from the beginning to date and from it should learn how the various processes connected with cotton, i. e., carding, spinning and weaving, have been revolutionized. I have given my views as suggestions. They cannot be obligatory. I shall welcome all helpful suggestions by way of amendment or addition.

 

Reference:

Harijan, 3-11-1946