A friend has placed in my hands a bulletin on Indian Piece Goods Trade
prepared by Mr. A. C. Coubrough C. B. E. by order of the Government of
India. It contains the following prefatory note: 'The Government of
India desire it to be understood that the statements made and the views
expressed in this bulletin are those of the author himself.' If so, why
has the Government of India burdened the tax-payer with the expense of
such bulletins? The one before me is 16th in the series. Do they publish
both the sides of the question?
The bulletin under review is intended to be an answer to the Swadeshi
movement. It is an elaborate note containing a number of charts showing
the condition of imports and home manufacture of piece goods including
hand-woven. But it does not assist the reader in studying the movement.
The painstaking author has bestowed no pains upon a study of the
present movement or its scope. That the Government of India treats the
greatest constructive and co-operative movement in the country with
supreme contempt and devotes people's money to a vain refutation instead
of a sympathetic study and treatment is perhaps the best condemnation
that can be pronounced upon the system under which it is carried.
The author's argument is:
(1) The movement if successful will act not as a protective but a
prohibitive tariff.
(2) This must result in merely enriching the Indian capitalist and
punishing the consumer.
(3) The imports are non-competitive in that the bulk of the kind of
piece goods imported are not manufactured in India.
(4) The result of boycotting such piece goods must be high prices
without corresponding benefit.
(5) The boycott therefore being against the law of supply and demand and
against the consumer must fail in the end.
(6) The destruction of hand spinning which I have deplored is due to
natural causes, _viz._ the invention of time-saving appliances and was
therefore inevitable.
(7) The Indian farmer is responsible for his own ruin in that he has
indolently neglected cotton culture which was once so good.
(8) The best service I can render is therefore to induce the
agriculturist to improve the quality of cotton.
(9) The author concludes, 'If instead of filling homes with useless
_Charkhas_ he were to start a propaganda for the more intensive
cultivation of cotton and particularly for the production of longer
staple cotton, his influence would be felt not only at the present day
but for many generations to come.'
The reader will thus see, that what I regard as the supreme necessity
for the economical salvation of India, the author considers to be rank
folly. There is therefore no meeting ground here. And in spite of the
prefatory note of the Government of India reproduced by me, the author
does represent the Government attitude. I have invited them and the
co-operators definitely to make common cause with the people in this
movement at any rate. They may not mind its political implications
because they do not believe in them. And surely they need not feel sorry
if contrary to their expectation, the rise of the _Charkha_ results in
an increase in the political power of the people. Instead of waging war
against _Khadi_, they might have popularised its use and disarmed the
terrible suspicion they labour under of wishing to benefit the foreign
manufacturer at the expense of the Indian cultivator. My invitation is
open for all time. I prophesy that whatever happens to the other parts
of the national programme, Swadeshi in its present shape will bide for
ever and must if India's pauperism is to be banished.
Even though I am a layman, I make bold to say that the so-called laws
laid down in books on economics are not immutable like the laws of Medes
and Persians, nor are they universal. The economics of England are
different from those of Germany. Germany enriched herself by bounty-fed
beet sugar. England enriched herself by exploiting foreign markets. What
was possible for a compact area is not possible for an area 1,900 miles
long and 1,500 broad. The economics of a nation are determined by its
climatic, geological and temperamental conditions. The Indian conditions
are different from the English in all these essentials. What is meat for
England is in many cases poison for India. Beef tea in the English
climate may be good, it is poison for the hot climate of religious
India. Fiery whisky in the north of the British Isles may be a
necessity, it renders an Indian unfit for work or society. Fur-coats in
Scotland are indispensable, they will be an intolerable burden in India.
Free trade for a country which has become industrial, whose population
can and does live in cities, whose people do not mind preying upon other
nations and therefore sustain the biggest navy to protect their
unnatural commerce, may be economically sound (though as the reader
perceives, I question its morality). Free trade for India has proved
her curse and held her in bondage.
And now for Mr. Coubrough's propositions.
(1) The movement is intended to serve the purpose of a voluntary
prohibitive tariff.
(2) But it is so conceived as neither unduly to benefit the capitalist
nor to injure the consumer. During the very brief transition stage the
prices of home manufactures may be, as they are, inflated. But the rise
can only be temporary as the vast majority of consumers must become
their own manufacturers. This cottage manufacture of yarn and cloth
cannot be expensive even as domestic cookery is not expensive and cannot
be replaced by hotel cookery. Over twenty-five crores of the population
will be doing their own hand-spinning and having yarn thus manufactured
woven in neighbouring localities. This population is rooted to the soil
and has at least four months in the year to remain idle.
If they spin during those hours and have the yarn woven and wear it, no
mill-made cloth can compete with their _Khadi_. The cloth thus
manufactured will be the cheapest possible for them. If the rest of the
population did not take part in the process, it could easily be supplied
out of the surplus manufactured by the twenty-five crores.
(3) It is true that non-competitive imports are larger than those that
compete with the manufactures of Indian mills. In the scheme proposed by
me the question does not arise, because the central idea is not so much
to carry on a commercial war against foreign countries as to utilise the
idle hours of the nation and thus by natural processes to help it to get
rid of her growing pauperism.
(4) I have already shown that the result of boycott cannot in the end be
a rise in the price of cloth.
(5) The proposed boycott is not against the law of supply and demand,
because it does away with the law by manufacturing enough for the
supply. The movement does require a change of taste on the part of those
who have adopted finer variety and who patronise fantastic combinations
of colours and designs.
(6) I have shown in these pages, that the destruction of hand-spinning
was designed and carried out in a most inhuman manner by the agents of
the East India Company. No amount of appliances would ever have
displaced this national art and industry but for this artificial and
systematically cruel manner of carrying out the destruction.
(7) I am unable to hold the Indian farmer responsible for the
deterioration in cotton culture. The whole incentive was taken away when
hand-spinning was destroyed. The State never cared for the cultivator.
(8) My activity, I am proud to think, has already turned the
cultivator's attention to the improvement of cotton. The artistic sense
of the nation will insist on fine counts for which long staple is a
necessity. Cotton culture by itself cannot solve the problem of India's
poverty. For it will still leave the question of enforced idleness
untouched.
(9) I therefore claim for the _Charkha_ the honour of being able to
solve the problem of economic distress in a most natural, simple,
unexpensive and business-like manner. The _Charkha_, therefore, is not
only not useless as the writer ignorantly suggests, but it is a useful
and indispensable article for every home. It is the symbol of the
nation's prosperity and therefore, freedom. It is a symbol not of
commercial war but of commercial peace. It bears not a message of
ill-will towards the nations of the earth but of good-will and
self-help. It will not need the protection of a navy threatening a
world's peace and exploiting its resources, but it needs the religious
determination of millions to spin their yarn in their own homes as
to-day they cook their food in their own homes. I may deserve the curses
of posterity for many mistakes of omission and commission but I am
confident of earning its blessings for suggesting a revival of the
_Charkha_. I stake my all on it. For every revolution of the wheel spins
peace, good-will and love. And with all that, inasmuch as the loss of
it brought about India's slavery, its voluntary revival with all its
implications must mean India's freedom.
_Y. I.--8th Dec. 1921._