The _Indian Social Reformer_ has published a note from a correspondent
in praise of the spinning-wheel. The correspondent in the course of his
remarks hopes, that the movement will be so organised that the spinners
may not weary of it. Mr. Amritlal Thakkar in his valuable note
(published in the _Servant of India_) on the experiment which he is
conducting in Kathiawad, says that the charkha has been taken up by the
peasant women. They are not likely to weary, for to them it is a source
of livelihood to which they were used before. It had dried up, because
there was no demand for their yarn. Townspeople who have taken to
spinning may weary, if they have done so as a craze or a fashion. Those
only will be faithful, who consider it their duty to devote their spare
hours to doing what is to-day the most useful work for the country. The
third class of spinners are the school-going children. I expect the
greatest results from the experiment of introducing the charkha in the
National Schools. If it is conducted on scientific lines by teachers who
believe in the charkha as the most efficient means of making education
available to the seven and a half lacs of villages in India, there is
not only no danger of weariness, but every prospect of the nation being
able to solve the problem of financing mass education without any extra
taxation and without having to fall back upon immoral sources of
revenue.
The writer in the _Indian Social Reformer_ suggests, that an attempt
should be made to produce finer counts on the spinning-wheel. I may
assure him that the process has already begun, but it will be some time
before we arrive at the finish of the Dacca muslin or even twenty
counts. Seeing that hand-spinning was only revived last September, and
India began to believe in it somewhat only in December, the progress it
has made may be regarded as phenomenal.
The writer's complaint that hand-spun yarn is not being woven as fast as
it is spun, is partly true. But the remedy is not so much to increase
the number of looms, as to persuade the existing weavers to use
hand-spun yarn. Weaving is a much more complex process than spinning. It
is not, like spinning, only a supplementary industry, but a complete
means of livelihood. It therefore never died out. There are _enough
weavers and enough looms in India to replace the whole of the foreign
import of cloth_. It should be understood that our looms--thousands of
them in Madras, Maharashtra and Bengal--are engaged in weaving the fine
yarn imported from Japan and Manchester. We _must_ utilize these for
weaving hand-spun yarn. And for that purpose, the nation has to revise
its taste for the thin tawdry and useless muslins. I see no art in
weaving muslins, that do not cover but only expose the body. Our ideas
of art must undergo a change. But even if the universal weaving of thin
fabric be considered desirable in normal conditions, at the present
moment whilst we are making a mighty effort to become free and
self-supporting, we must be content to wear the cloth that our hand-spun
yarn may yield. We have therefore to ask the fashionable on the one hand
to be satisfied with coarser garments; we must educate the spinners on
the other hand to spin finer and more even yarn.
The writer pleads for a reduction in the prices charged by mill-owners
for their manufactures. When lovers of Swadeshi begin to consider it
their duty to wear khaddar, when the required number of spinning-wheels
are working and the weavers are weaving hand-spun yarn, the mill-owners
will be bound to reduce prices. It seems almost hopeless merely to
appeal to the patriotism of those whose chief aim is to increase their
own profits.
Incongruities pointed out by the writer such as the wearing of khaddar
on public occasions and at other times of the most fashionable English
suits, and the smoking of most expensive cigars by wearers of khaddar,
must disappear in course of time, as the new fashion gains strength. It
is my claim that as soon as we have completed the boycott of foreign
cloth, we shall have evolved so far that we shall necessarily give up
the present absurdities and remodel national life in keeping with the
ideal of simplicity and domesticity implanted in the bosom of the
masses. We will not then be dragged into an imperialism, which is built
upon exploitation of the weaker races of the earth, and the acceptance
of a giddy materialistic civilization protected by naval and air forces
that have made peaceful living almost impossible. On the contrary, we
shall then refine that imperialism, into a common wealth of nations
which will combine, if they do, for the purpose of giving their best to
the world and of protecting, not by brute force but by self-suffering,
the weaker nations or races of the earth. Non-co-operation aims at
nothing less than this revolution in the thought-world. Such a
transformation can come only after the complete success of the
spinning-wheel. India can become fit for delivering such a message,
when she has become proof against temptation and therefore attacks from
outside, by becoming self-contained regarding two of her chief
needs--food and clothing.
_Y. I.--29th June 1921._