Slowly but surely the music of perhaps the most ancient machine of India
is once more permeating society. Pandit Malaviyaji has stated that he is
not going to be satisfied until the Ranis and the Maharanis of India
spin yarn for the nation, and the Ranas and the Maharanas sit behind the
handlooms and weave cloth for the nation. They have the example of
Aurangzeb who made his own caps. A greater emperor--Kabir--was himself a
weaver and has immortalised the art in his poems. The queens of Europe,
before Europe was caught in Satan's trap, spun yarn and considered it a
noble calling. The very words, spinster and wife, prove the ancient
dignity of the art of spinning and weaving. 'When Adam delved and Eve
span, who was then a gentleman,' also reminds one of the same fact. Well
may Panditji hope to persuade the royalty of India to return to the
ancient calling of this sacred land of ours. Not on the clatter of arms
depends the revival of her prosperity and true independence. It depends
most largely upon re-introduction, in every home, of the music of the
spinning wheel. It gives sweeter music and is more profitable than the
execrable harmonium, concertina and the accordian.
Whilst Panditji is endeavouring in his inimitably suave manner to
persuade the Indian royalty to take up the spinning wheel, Shrimati
Sarala Devi Chaudhrani, who is herself a member of the Indian nobility,
has learnt the art and has thrown herself heart and soul into the
movement. From all the accounts received from her and others, Swadeshi
has become a passion with her. She says she feels uncomfortable in her
muslin saris and is content to wear her _khaddar_ saris even in the hot
weather. Her _khaddar_ saris continue to preach true Swadeshi more
eloquently than her tongue. She has spoken to audiences in Amritsar,
Ludhiana and elsewhere and has succeeded in enlisting the services, for
her Spinning Committee at Amritsar, of Mrs. Ratanchand and Bugga
Chowdhry and the famous Ratan Devi who during the frightful night of the
13th April despite the Curfew Order of General Dyer sat, all alone in
the midst of the hundreds of the dead and dying, with her dead husband's
cold head in her lap. I venture to tender my congratulations to these
ladies. May they find solace in the music of the spinning wheel and in
the thought that they are doing national work. I hope that the other
ladies of Amritsar will help Sarala Devi in her efforts and that the men
of Amritsar will realise their own duty in the matter.
In Bombay the readers are aware that ladies of noted families have
already taken up spinning. Their ranks have been joined by
Dr. Mrs. Manekbai Bahudarji who has already learnt the art and who is
now trying to introduce it in the Sevasadan. Her Highness the Begum
Saheba of Janjira and her sister Mrs. Atia Begum Rahiman, have also
undertaken to learn the art. I trust that these good ladies will,
having learnt spinning, religiously contribute to the nation their daily
quota of yarn.
I know that there are friends who laugh at this attempt to revive this
great art. They remind me that in these days of mills, sewing machines
or typewriters, only a lunatic can hope to succeed in reviving the
rusticated spinning wheel. These friends forget that the needle has not
yet given place to the sewing machine nor has the hand lost its cunning
in spite of the typewriter. There is not the slightest reason why the
spinning wheel may not co-exist with the spinning mill even as the
domestic kitchen co-exists with the hotels. Indeed typewriters and
sewing machines may go, but the needle and the reed pen will survive.
The mills may suffer destruction. The spinning wheel is a national
necessity. I would ask sceptics to go to the many poor homes where the
spinning wheel is again supplementing their slender resources and ask
the inmates whether the spinning wheel has not brought joy to their
homes.
Thank God, the reward issued by Mr. Rewashanker Jagjiwan bids fair to
bear fruit. In a short time India will possess a renovated spinning
wheel--a wonderful invention of a patient Deccan artisan. It is made out
of simple materials. There is no great complication about it. It will be
cheap and capable of being easily mended. It will give more yarn than
the ordinary wheel and is capable of being worked by a five years old
boy or girl. But whether the new machine proves what it claims to be or
it does not, I feel convinced that the revival of hand-spinning and
hand-weaving will make the largest contribution to the economic and the
moral regeneration of India. The millions must have a simple industry to
supplement agriculture. Spinning was the cottage industry years ago and
if the millions are to be saved from starvation, they must be enabled to
reintroduce spinning in their homes, and every village must repossess
its own weaver.
_Y. I.--21st July 1920._
"HANDLOOMS OR POWERMILLS?"
Whenever an attempt has been made, as it is being made to-day, to
encourage the use and production of hand-spun and hand-woven cloth, many
have looked askance whether it is intended in this age of mechanical
industrialism to supplant the latter by medieval handlooms. The issue is
placed between the hand power and the power mill. A correspondent of the
_Janmabhumi_ falls into this common error. Apparently agitated at the
idea of reviving the home industries, he exclaims, "The real question
for consideration with us or with any people to-day is not whether the
handloom will or will not be able to hold its own against the power
loom, or whether it cannot feed millions of families or clothe millions
more in home-made dress; but which will contribute to the economic and
political power of a nation or country, whether it is the handloom or
the power-mill? Handicrafts or machine industries--that is the real
issue."
It is not quite clear from the above what the notions of the
correspondent are about the economic and political power of this
country. We cannot imagine him to seriously believe--though his argument
runs as if he does--that that power can be achieved without feeding and
clothing the millions of our half-starving and half-naked men, women and
children. The political and economic power of a nation depends even in
this "age of mechanical industrialism," not on its powerful machines but
on its powerful men. Germany was equipped with the best and most
powerful and modern machinery, but it failed because at the last moment
the power of its nation failed. We want to organise our national power.
This can be done not by adopting the best methods of production only but
by the best method of _both_ the production and the distribution.
Production that is the manufacture of cloth in this particular instance
can be brought about in two ways; (1) by establishing new mills and
increasing the output or producing capacity of each mill and (2) by
increasing the number of hand-looms and improving them. All these
activities can go together. The notion of a competition between the
hand-loom and the power mill has been shown by such an eminent economist
as Prof. Radha Kamal Mukerjea to be "altogether wrong." Says
Mr. Mukerjea in his _Foundations of Indian Economics_:
"The hand-loom does not compete with the mill, it supplements it in the
following way:
(1) It produces special kinds of goods which cannot be woven in the
mills.
(2) It utilizes yarn below and above certain counts which cannot at
present be used on the power-mill.
(3) It will consume the surplus stock of Indian spinning mills which
need not then be sent out of the country.
(4) Being mainly a village-industry, it supplies the local demand, at
the same time gives employment to small capitalists, weavers and other
village workmen and
(5) lastly it will supply the long-felt want of, and honest field of,
work and livelihood for educated Indians."
But even this is not all that can be said in favour of hand-loom
industry. Mill industry no doubt can be a powerful aid to the promotion
of Swadeshi. But apart from the bitter struggle, strife and
demoralisation of the capitalist and the workman (as explained by the
eminent scholar, administrator and economist, the late Mr. Romesh
Chundra Dutt) it has led to, the question is: Can it solve the problem
which pure Swadeshi is designed and sought to do and which arises only
because of its abandonment? Every writer of note on the industries of
India, whatever his ideas and conclusions about the future of Indian
Industrialism may be, has shown that there was a time and that was even
till the Early British Rule in India--where spinning and weaving, only
next to agriculture, were the great national industries of India, when
all the cotton was spun by hand and every portion of the work was done
by the farming population which augmented its resources by spinning and
weaving. Mr. Dutt has given extracts from the statistical observations
of Dr. Francis Buchanan's economic enquiries in Southern and Northern
India, conducted between 1798 and 1814. They show how many hundreds of
thousands of our men, women and children worked on this industry--mostly
in their leisure time--each day and earned crores of rupees annually.
How our home-industries came to the sad plight they are in to-day is an
open secret, admitted by all authorities and need not be repeated here.
Suffice it to say that the problem to-day is not to bring about that
political and economic re-organisation of our country, which disturbs
the West to-day--an organisation which has led to the breaking up of the
society by ceaseless struggles, bitterness and rupture between Capital
and Labour. We want to work out the real political and economic
regeneration of the country by Swadeshi. And the problem of the Swadeshi
is the problem of 80 per cent. of our population who spend more than six
months of the year in enforced idleness, eking, throughout the year, a
miserable, half-starving and half-naked existence. We must find out
suitable work for them during their idle hours. We must make them a real
asset and power to the nation. Pure Swadeshi alone can do it.
_Y. I.--28th July 1920._