"The ordinary meaning of education is a knowledge of letters. To teach
boys reading, writing and arithmetic is called primary education".
"What do you propose to do by giving him a knowledge of letters? Will
you add an inch to his happiness? Do you wish to make him discontented
with his cottage or his lot?"
So much for primary education. As to higher education he says he has
learnt Geography, Astronomy, Algebra, Geometry etc., but neither has
that learning benefited him nor any body about him. As to knowledge of
English, it is only useful to enslave people:--
"The foundation that Macaulay laid of education", he says: "has
enslaved us. It is worth noting that by receiving English education, we
have enslaved the nation. Hypocrisy, tyranny etc. have increased;
English-knowing Indians have not hesitated to cheat and strike terror
into the people. Now, if we are doing anything for the people at all,
we are paying only a portion of the debt due to them".
I shall have to deal with this question of education later in connection
with this appeal to the boys to leave the schools and colleges.
After all this, it will not surprise any one to be told that we must
have nothing to do with machinery:--
"It was not that we did not know how to invent machinery, but our
forefathers knew that, if we set our hearts after such things, we would
become slaves and lose our moral fibre. They, therefore, after due
deliberation, decided that we should only do what we could with our
hands and feet. They saw that our real happiness and health consisted
in a proper use of our hands and feet."
He would not therefore have mills for the reason that machinery is the
chief symbol of modern civilisation and it has already begun to desolate
Europe. In his opinion it were better for us to send money to Manchester
and to use flimsy Manchester cloth than to multiply mills in India. I
wonder why he does not ask Lancashire to pay him his crore of rupees.
Lancashire would no doubt do so in consideration of the monopoly of
supplying India with manufactured goods and India would, according to
Mr. Gandhi, get Swaraj. India does not want manufactured goods; he
asks:--
"What did India do before these articles were introduced? Precisely the
same should be done to-day. As long as we cannot make pins without
machinery, so long will we do without them. The tinsel splendour of
glassware we will have nothing to do with, and we will make wick, as of
old, with home grown cotton, and use hand-made earthen saucers for
Lamps". He finally adds: "I cannot recall a single good point in
connection with machinery."
Mr. Gandhi wrote his book in 1908 after a visit to England when the
Liberal and the Labour parties were carrying on their great campaign in
favour of the working men and against the capitalists and Lloyd George
was about to launch his great land campaign. He seems to have been
impressed with the horrors of the condition of the wage earners which
was then portrayed in dark colours in order to support that campaign.
His mind, emotional and ill balanced, seems to have been entirely upset
by the descriptions that he had then read. He is on the fringe of a
large question about which he seems to have been singularly ill
informed. In England there is not at this time and there was not when he
wrote, any question of the destruction of machinery which is a necessary
adjunct to the industrial system. The questions under debate are the
conditions of labour and the distribution of the wealth created by
machinery between capitalists and labour. These questions have been
under consideration now for some years; the condition of the labourers
is being slowly improved, a minimum wage has been introduced and there
is a prospect of a still more equitable distribution of the proceeds
between capital and labour. Mr. Gandhi says that he has read Dutt's book
on the decline of Indian industries but he does not seem to have learnt
the lesson inculcated therein--that it is necessary to improve our
industries not only to meet the needs of the people of the country, find
employment for our labouring population, but also not to force them to
compete with the cultivating classes. In India the same problem as in
England awaits us. We have to see that the condition of the labourers in
the mills and in the other industries is improved. In asking for the
ruin of all our manufacturing industries Mr. Gandhi is only playing into
the hands of our opponents. He will find strong support in this respect
from Lancashire who will, according to some Indian publicists, only be
too willing to take any steps to effect the destruction of our competing
industries. If he had directed half the energy of his non-co-operation
campaign to improving the conditions of the workmen in all our
industries he might possibly have succeeded in getting rid of many of
those evils which in his opinion require elimination of all machinery
and of all industrial undertakings. The other reason for the deplorable
condition of the industrial workmen in England is the congestion and
overcrowding, in the industrial centres. This is due to a great extent
to the action of the landlords who will not allow any expansion of those
industrial centres in order to increase the value of their land and thus
to exploit the community. In India we have not got that trouble. There
is ample room for extension except in Bombay, in all the industrial
centres and even in Bombay the difficulty is not due, so far as I am
informed to the action of landlords but to natural conditions arising
out of the geography of Bombay. Machinery is essential to the creation
of wealth by manufacturing industries. The evils that have been
portrayed by Mr. Gandhi can be and are being removed by patient effort.
His tirade against machinery and mill industries on account of the evils
he has witnessed in the West, is due to his ignorance; a little
knowledge in his case has proved a dangerous thing. It is this feeling
which has led him to advocate the universal use of spinning wheel in
India. This might be useful as a cottage or home industry. It might find
work for some who would otherwise be idle. But he is living in a fool's
paradise if he considers it a substitute for or will supplant, machinery.