MACHINERY
READER: When you speak of driving out Western civilization, I suppose
you will also say that we want no machinery.
EDITOR: By raising this question, you have opened the wound I had
received. When I read Mr. Dutt's Economic History of India I wept; and,
as I think of it, again my heart sickens. It is machinery that has
impoverished India. It is difficult to measure the harm that Manchester
has done to us. It is due to Manchester that Indian handicraft has all
but disappeared.
But I make a mistake. How can Manchester be blamed? We wore Manchester
cloth, and that is why Manchester wove it. I was delighted when I read
about the bravery of Bengal. There are no cloth-mills in that
Presidency. They were, therefore, able to restore the original
hand-weaving occupation. It is true Bengal encourages the mill-industry
of Bombay. If Bengal had proclaimed a boycott of _all_ machine-made
goods, it would have been much better.
Machinery has begun to desolate Europe. Ruination is now knocking at the
English gates. Machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilization; it
represents a great sin.
The workers in the mills of Bombay have become slaves. The condition of
the women working in the mills is shocking. When there were no mills,
these women were not starving. If the machinery craze grows in our
country, it will become an unhappy land. It may be considered a heresy,
but I am bound to say that it were better for us to send money to
Manchester and to use flimsy Manchester cloth than to multiply mills in
India. By using Manchester cloth we would only waste our money, but by
reproducing Manchester in India, we shall keep our money at the price of
our blood, because our very moral being will be sapped, and I call in
support of my statement the very mill-hands as witnesses. And those who
have amassed wealth out of factories are not likely to be better than
other rich men. It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockfeller
would be better than the American Rockfeller. Impoverished India can
become free, but it will be hard for an India, made rich through
immorality, to regain its freedom. I fear we will have to admit that
moneyed men support British rule; their interest is bound up with its
stability. Money renders a man helpless. The other thing is as harmful
as sexual vice. Both are poison. A snakebite is a lesser poison than
these two, because the former merely destroys the body, but the latter
destroys body, mind and soul. We need not, therefore, be pleased with
the prospect of the growth of the mill-industry.
READER: Are the mills, then, to be closed down?
EDITOR: That is difficult. It is no easy task to do away with a thing
that is established. We, therefore, say that the non-beginning of a
thing is, supreme wisdom. We cannot condemn mill-owners, we can but pity
them. It would be too much to expect them to give up their mills, but we
may implore them not to increase them. If they would be good, they would
gradually contract their business. They can establish in thousands of
households the ancient and sacred handlooms, and they can buy out the
cloth that may be thus woven. Whether the mill-owners do this or not,
people can cease to use machine-made goods.
READER: You have so far spoken about machine-made cloth, but there are
innumerable machine-made things. We have either to import them or to
introduce machinery into our country.
EDITOR: Indeed, our gods even are made in Germany. What need, then, to
speak of matches, pins, and glassware? My answer can be only one. 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 wicks, as of old, with
home-grown cotton, and use hand-made earthern saucers for lamps. So
doing, we shall save our eyes and money, and will support Swadeshi, and
so shall we attain Home Rule.
It is not to be conceived that all men will do all these things at one
time, or that some men will give up all machine-made things at once.
But, if the thought is sound, we will always find out what we can give
up, and will gradually cease to use this. What a few may do, others will
copy, and the movement will grow like the cocoanut of the mathematical
problem. What the leaders do, the populace will gladly follow. The
matter is neither complicated nor difficult. You and I shall not wait
until we can carry others with us. Those will be the losers who will not
do it, and those who will not do it, although they can appreciate the
truth, will deserve to be called cowards.
READER: What, then, of the tram-cars and electricity?
EDITOR: This question is now too late. It signifies nothing. If we are
to do without the railways, we shall have to do without the tram-cars.
Machinery is like a snake-hole which may contain from one to a hundred
snakes. Where there is machinery there are large cities; and where there
are large cities, there are tram-cars and railways; and there only does
one see electric light. English villages do not boast any of these
things. Honest physicians will tell you that, where means of artificial
locomotion have increased, the health of the people has suffered. I
remember that, when in a European town there was a scarcity of money,
the receipts of the tramway company, of the lawyers and of the doctors,
went down, and the people were less unhealthy. I cannot recall a single
good point in connection with machinery. Books can be written to
demonstrate its evils.
READER: It is a good point or a bad one that all you are saying will be
printed through machinery?
EDITOR: This is one of those instances which demonstrate that sometimes
poison is used to kill poison. This, then, will not be a good point
regarding machinery. As it expires, the machinery, as it were, says to
us: "Beware and avoid me. You will derive no benefit from me, and the
benefit that may accrue from printing will avail only those who are
infected with the machinery-craze." Do not, therefore, forget the main
thing. It is necessary to realise that machinery is bad. We shall then
be able gradually to do away with it. Nature has not provided any way
whereby we may reach a desired goal all of a sudden. If, instead of
welcoming machinery as a boon, we would look upon it as an evil, it
would ultimately go.