The Essential Gandhi (34 page)

 … My invitation to all to spin, if only for half an hour daily, for the sake of the starving millions of this land makes the movement at once both political and spiritual.…
⁶²

In our country manual labor is regarded as a low occupation.… We should spin, therefore, if only to guard against the pernicious tendency of regarding the toilers as being low in the social scale. Spinning is therefore as obligatory on the prince as on the peasant.
⁶³

 … I am interested in producing the spinning atmosphere.… I want that atmosphere so that the idle hands I have described will be irresistibly drawn to the wheel. They will be so drawn when they see people spinning who do not need to.…
⁶⁴

[The spinning wheel] is not remunerative enough for individuals.… It is, however, enough to raise at a bound the national prosperity.… An increase of one rupee [about 20 cents] per head per year may mean nothing to the individual. But 5,000 rupees in a village containing [five thousand inhabitants] would mean the payment of land revenue or other dues. Thus the spinning wheel means national consciousness and a contribution by every individual to a definite constructive national work. If India can demonstrate her capacity for such an achievement by voluntary effort she
is ready for political Swaraj. Any lawful demand of a nation with a will of its own must prove irresistible.…
⁶⁵

 … For me, the spinning wheel is not only a symbol of simplicity and economic freedom, but it is also a symbol of peace. For if we Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Jews, unite in achieving the universalization of the wheel in India, we shall have arrived at not only real unity … but we shall also have acquired self-confidence and organizing ability which render violence wholly unnecessary for regaining our freedom.…
⁶⁶

[The] spinning movement is bringing out women from their seclusion as nothing else could have done.… It has given them a dignity and self-confidence which no university degree could give them. They are realizing that their active assistance is just as indispensable as that of men.…
⁶⁷

 … I cannot imagine anything nobler or more national than that for, say, one hour in the day we should all do the labor the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them, with all mankind. I cannot imagine better worship of God than that in His name I should labor for the poor even as they do.
⁶⁸

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
⁶⁹

[Idleness], whether it be regarded as enforced or voluntary, is killing the very soul of the nation. The more I penetrate the villages, the greater is the shock delivered as I perceive the blank stare in the eyes of the villagers I meet. Having nothing else to do but to work as laborers side by side with their bullocks, they have become almost like them. It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions have ceased to use their hands as hands. Nature is revenging herself upon us with terrible effect for this criminal waste of the gift she has bestowed upon us human beings.… And it is the exquisite mechanism of the hands that among a few other things separates us from the beast.…

The spinning wheel alone can stop this reckless waste. It can do
that now and without any extraordinary outlay of money or intelligence.… With it will at once revive the ancient rustic art and the rustic song. A semi-starved nation can have neither religion nor art nor organization.
⁷⁰

[It] is not merely the wages earned by the spinners that are to be counted but it is the whole reconstruction that follows in the wake of the spinning wheel. The village weaver, the village dyer, the village washerman, the village blacksmith, the village carpenter, all and many others will then find themselves reinstated in their ancient dignity, as is already happening wherever the spinning wheel has gained a footing.
⁷¹

 … The plan … is not merely to induce the peasant to refuse to buy the cheap and nice-looking foreign fabric, but also by teaching him to utilize his spare hours in carding and spinning cotton and getting it woven by the village weavers, to dress himself in khaddar so woven and thus to save him the cost of buying foreign, and for that matter, even Indian mill-made cloth.…

[Enforced idleness or penury] hurt a man’s soul and body just as much as intoxication. Depression is but excitement upside down and hence equally disastrous … and often more so, because we have not yet learnt to regard [it] as immoral or sinful.…
⁷²

[Persons] not wearing khaddar [homespun cloth] or not spinning should [not] be boycotted. On the contrary, it would be our duty to embrace them and win them ultimately to the side of khaddar by our love, certainly not by talking or thinking ill of them.… True boycott can be only … refusal to accept personal service and denying oneself the advantages of association with the person so dealt with, while being ever-ready to render him help in case of need. I would welcome that kind of boycott in the case of a person addicted to drink but not in the case of those who don’t wear khaddar.…
⁷³

[The] vast majority of us … will find it necessary to wear khaddar on all occasions if we have to wear it on all Congress occasions. For an ardent Congressman, every occasion is a Congress occasion
and he and she would be an indifferent Congressman or Congress-woman who has no Congress work during … twenty-four hours. [Congress members] cannot have many uniforms nor can they have money to buy yarn spun by others. They must spin themselves and thus give at least half an hour’s labor to the nation. And a Congress volunteer who does not spin himself will be hard put to it to convince the candidates for Congress membership of the necessity of spinning.…
⁷⁴

[The suggestion to make hand-spinning the test for the vote] may be fantastical, but it is neither immoral nor harmful to the nation. Had it been workmen who had been the most influential people and not capitalists or educated men, and a property or an education test had been proposed, the powerful workmen would have ridiculed the suggestion, and might have even called it immoral. For, they could have argued, while capital or education were the possession of a few, bodily labor was common to all.…
⁷⁵

 … I can only take up the wheel or speak or write about it and commend it.… In my loneliness, it is my only infallible friend and comforter.…
⁷⁶

 … I had a long chat with [a group of nationalists from Poona]. They will not agree to spin and they will not agree to my leaving the Congress. They do not realize that I shall cease to be useful as soon as I cease to be myself. It is a wretched situation but I do not despair.… I know only the moment’s duty. It is given to me to know no more. Why then should I worry?
⁷⁷

[Whilst] everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates. That informing power or spirit is God.…

And is this power benevolent or malevolent? I see it as purely benevolent. For I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the supreme Good.

 … I shall never know God if I do not wrestle with and against evil even at the cost of life itself.…
¹