31

Global Village vs. Gandhian Villages

A Viable Vision

Kuruvilla Pandikattu

In this chapter, while many are lauding the technological marvel as a defining characteristic of the global village, Kuruvilla Pandikattu questions the viability and sustainability of such a vision. He asserts that we should resort to Gandhi’s vision of a “free, democratic, [and] egalitarian” global village that shares means, opportunities, and benefits for all. He articulates this Gandhian vision of the global community that aims to (1) meet the basic human needs, (2) sustain the harmonious relationship between humans and nature, (3) put the last first, and (4) practice non-violence and sarvodaya (the welfare of the whole). Such a communitarian vision is diametrically opposed to the current force of globalization, which is predicated on the myth of unlimited progress and fosters uniformity in thought patterns, value systems, and ways of life. Pandikattu believes that Gandhi’s dedicated commitment to prioritize Harijans (“the least, the lowly, and the rejected”) and firm opposition to the oppressive system through non-violence represent the viewpoint of the majority, that is, “the Leavers” (i.e., “the defeated, the vanquished, the uncivilized, and primitive people”) as opposed to that of “the Takers” (i.e., “the conquerors, the civilized, the survivors”). He cogently argues that in sharp contrast to the machinery and industrialization dominated global village, Gandh’s vision of village economy, as symbolized by charkha (hand-spinning wheel) and khadi (hand-woven cotton cloth), is self-sufficient and secures basic necessities for all. In a similar vein, Dissanayake (Chapter 30) described the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka as a viable alternative path to development.

Introduction

Technocrats and futurologists untiringly announce the “global village.” The concept originated only recently and reflects the networking made possible due to the Internet, the cultural homogeneity brought about by satellite TV, the tremendous speed of transport through advanced technology, the conferencing facilities introduced by “video” telephones, and the tremendous speed of the information transfer made possible by advanced satellite techniques. Critics say it is only a matter of time before the whole world becomes one monolithic, integrated village with one vision, one goal, one life style, language and culture. Of course, there would be some scope for diversity and variety, but within the wider framework of a global village. Such a vision of global village has made the earlier concept of a “unified world community” and “a super-government” almost obsolete.

Global village rightly symbolizes not just the technological advancement of the modern society, but also the cultural and even religious atmosphere of modern or postmodern humans. The future, represented by the global village, it is claimed, is a “free, democratic, egalitarian” life where conveniences are shared, means are available to all, and each individual is given every chance for his/her personal realization.

In this article an attempt is made to show how this vision of a global village is quite different from Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of villages. Mahatma Gandhi visualized village communities which are themselves self-sustainable and viable. His villages are different, distinct, and have their own independent identities, characteristics, and uniqueness. The global village, on the other hand, focuses on a uniform pattern of living, basing itself mainly on technological advancement. We shall try to show that, in the long run, this is non-viable.¹ The ecological problems, the possibility of nuclear disasters and dangers from genetic manipulations are the direct side effects of globalization (technologization). Globalization may point to an insecure and hence non-viable future. It is the assumption in this article that the global village is based on the concept of the supremacy of technology over a simple life style, of humans over nature, of one world over many, of one way of living over many ways of living, and of one culture over many cultures. In short, the global village fosters uniformity, unity in thought patterns, and the myth of “uninterrupted, unlimited progress.” As opposed to this, the Gandhian vision of villages is based on the needs of individual human beings, on a harmonious relationship between humans and nature, on a concern for the lowly and the rejected, on non-violence and satyagraha. Gandhian villages take the individual persons and their needs seriously. Their problems and concerns are respected, and their basic needs are met.

Here we bring in the notion of “Takers” vs. “Leavers,” introduced by Daniel Quinn in his world famous novel Ishmael, to understand the dynamics operational in the two world views presented above.² The “Takers” are the winners in the power game while the “Leavers” are the losers in our civilization, who are still present in small pockets of tribal regions and non-developed areas. We shall then show the Leavers’ way of living to be best represented by the village life advocated by Gandhi.

When it comes to the question of viability, we take the arguments of Quinn that the Leavers have continued to exist in our world for about three million years, and so theirs is obviously a viable way of life. On the other hand, the Takers, in their brief existence of 3,000 years, have brought us to a catastrophic situation, and so their way of life is non-viable.

Gandhi’s option for the Harijans all through his life indicates that he is a Leaver and his life vision is one where the marginalized are seriously taken care of. At the same time, his opposition to the oppressive system (of the Takers) does not make him opposed to the individual persons! This is another characteristic of the Leavers’ civilization B when they oppose the system they do not oppose the persons who belong to the system. His vehement criticism of industrialized society is based on his concern for individual human beings.

Gandhi’s critique of the current Takers’ civilization, symbolized aptly by his common salt struggle, is uniquely a feature of the Leavers’ civilization. Gandhi’s own vision of a village economy, exemplified by the spinning wheel, is based on a simple life style where basic necessities are provided for all.

If charkha (spinning wheel), common salt and Sevagram (Gandhi’s ashram) are the symbols of the Gandhian village, the global village is depicted by the computer network. The symbol for the viable village may be taken as the Sevagram—Gandhi’s own ashram, where the primary concern is the welfare of the whole (sarvodaya).

It must be admitted that many of the ideas of Gandhi are outdated. We cannot imagine a future where we have to return to the romantic village situation of the (imaginary) past. But the concerns and priorities of Gandhi are crucial for the very survival of human society. It is our assumption that only a future based on these concerns can hope to survive. It is our contention that a viable future can be built only on a model similar to the Gandhian villages and not on the model of the globalized village. We do not advocate that a viable future has to be exactly modeled on the Gandhian understanding of villages. But what we are advocating is that the concerns of Gandhian villages and Gandhi’s priorities are crucial for the viability of our future human existence. This has to be carefully kept in mind when we read the ideas of Gandhi on the future civilization.

I do not claim to make an exhaustive study of the different topics dealt with in this article. Many profound and systematic studies on each of these subjects have already been made. Even the very choice of the symbols and the themes of the topic are to some extent arbitrary. What we want to indicate is the relevance of Gandhi in today’s world which seems to be moving towards a global culture. So the contribution of this paper, it is hoped, is to indicate the counter symbol to the global village, using the profound and lively symbols used by Gandhi. So Gandhi’s relevance lies in the correctives to the global culture based on his concept of self-sustaining villages. I do not attempt to criticize the various elements constituting a Gandhian village. On the other hand, I try to point out the fundamental concerns lying behind a Gandhian village and contend that, without giving adequate attention to these fundamental concerns, no viable global village can be achieved. Our crucial aim is to demonstrate the viability (and vulnerability) of Gandhian villages and to show that the globalized village cannot survive without incorporating the vital concerns of these villages.

Takers vs. Leavers

We begin with a very brief exposition of the difference between Takers and Leavers, as developed by Daniel Quinn.³ Quinn uses these pregnant terms to denote two predominant types of cultures prevalent in our world. The Takers (also the conquerors, the “civilized,” the survivors) have been conquering the Leavers (the defeated, the vanquished, the “uncivilized” and primitive people); we, the predominant people of today, are primarily the Takers.⁴

The Takers believe that the world is created for them; so they have the right and the commission to rule the world. That they are created to rule the world, to conquer it, improve it and to bring order and harmony into the world, is an unquestioned premise of our society. “You hear this fifty times a day. You can turn on the radio or the television and hear it every hour. Man is conquering the deserts, man is conquering the oceans, man is conquering the atom, man is conquering the elements, man is conquering the outer space.”⁵ The method that the Takers use is that of cut-throat competition. They go to the extent of systematically destroying the competitors’ space and lives, which is something unheard of in other biological lives.

Their law is that of unlimited growth. They assume that unbridled development or economic growth is the panacea for all their problems. This leads to unrestrained production and uncontrolled expansion, needing more conquering. Their way is the only right way; they are convinced that they have found the one right way of living. They expect all others either to follow their way or to lose the very right to exist. They consider it their holy task to police the world, civilize it and set things right in the wild world around them. Such a view on life leads to the impending consequence: destruction of all other cultures, including in the end their own.

As opposed to the Takers, the Leavers believe in the premise that humans are in the world along with other animals and plants. Since the world and humans are God’s creation, humans need not feel anxious and need not rule the world. The method the Leavers follow is that of cooperation and limited competition. The law followed by the Leavers is that of sustainable growth. It acknowledges that there are many ways and not one right way. Their way is the one found suitable for them and found to work for generations. Since it is a viable way (not the right way), they walk along this way. They, therefore, let the others walk their own ways. Their task is to shepherd the earth or to be the pathfinders in the full development of other cultures and peoples. Thus they are called to shepherd, guard and guide others, not to dominate or rule over them.

It is unfortunate that the Leavers, who have existed in different forms for three million years, have been conquered by the Takers, who came to existence just 3000 years ago, with the advent of the agricultural revolution. The Taker civilization, with their holy zeal of propagating their “right” way, has destroyed other cultures and led the universe to the ecological and atomic catastrophe in which we find ourselves. Obviously theirs is not a viable civilization. So the task for the future of humanity is to rediscover the Leavers’ tradition in our culture B a culture that has enabled us to exist for three million years! Quinn does not advocate going back to the primitive, tribal life style. What he pleads for is to change our attitude and live the Leavers’ values in our contemporary society.

At the risk of generalization and over-simplification, we can identify the Leavers with the colonized Indians and the Takers with the British colonizers. Though there will not be an exact match we see similar patterns between the dominating, “civilized” British and the subjugated, “uncivilized” Indians. It may be noted that some of the Indians may belong to the Takers category,⁶ for ours is only a rough approximation, but this approximation does not affect the conclusions of the paper.

Gandhi would identify himself totally with the dispossessed, the losers, the Leavers. In this section we shall see how Gandhi opted consciously for the Harijans (obviously the least of the Leavers) and stood fearlessly against the system of the British (Takers) without opposing the individuals that constituted the Takers’ world.

Committed to the Harijans

Gandhi identified himself totally with the dispossessed and disadvantaged, the losers of the modern society. How strongly he felt on the subject of untouchability, the paradigm example of losers, was revealed in his speech at the meeting of the Minorities’ Committee on November 13, 1931: “I claim myself in my own person to represent the vast mass of the untouchables. Here I speak not merely on behalf of the Congress, but I speak on my own behalf, and I claim that I would get, if there was a referendum of the untouchables, their vote and that I would top the poll.”

In keeping with his commitment to the untouchables, he pleaded for the opening of temples to Harijans: “Temples are for sinners, not for saints; but who is to judge where no man is without sin?” He ridiculed the superstition that anybody could be unclean by birth, or the shadow or touch of one human being could defile another human being. Bathing was all very well, he told a village audience, but even buffaloes had long daily baths. “I am a Harijan worker, my time is precious,” he scolded a palmist who offered to read his hand. “Is there a cure for untouchability?” he asked a village doctor. In another village a woman barber was brought in to shave him. As she set about her job in a businesslike way, Gandhi noticed she was loaded with gold and silver ornaments. “What are these wretched things?” he said, “They don’t make you beautiful. Indeed they are ugly and harbor dirt.” The poor woman was visibly disappointed. “I borrowed them especially for this occasion,” she replied, “I could not come before you without good ornament.” Before leaving she had contributed her wages to the Harijan Fund.

Summing up his impressions of the Harijan tour, Gandhi declared early in August 1934 that untouchability was on its last legs. He had quickened the conscience of the upper class people to the wrongs they were inflicting on the Harijans, and he had roused the Harijans to the consciousness of their rights. But the battle was by no means over.

On many occasions Gandhi had undertaken fasts for Harijan’s causes. C. F. Andrews even wrote to him (March 12, 1933) from Birmingham: “I hardly think you realize how very strong here is the moral repulsion against fasting unto death. I confess as a Christian I should do it and it is only with the greatest difficulty that I find myself able to justify it under any circumstances” (for the Harijans and against untouchability). The Hindu Leaders’ Conference met at Bombay. The leaders, who included Madan Mohan Malaviya, Tej Bahadur Sapru, M. R. Jaykar, Rajagopalachari, N. C. Kelkar and Rajendra Prasad were anxious for a quick solution. They had, however, to carry with them the leaders of the depressed classes, particularly Ambedkar, who was not only a stubborn advocate of separate electorates but fully conscious of his pivotal position. No solution to which he did not agree was likely to commend itself to the Government. Gandhi was the last person to allow the conference to be stampeded into a wrong decision. He sent a message to the assembled leaders through his son Devadas that he (Devadas) “as his father’s son was prepared to forfeit his father’s life rather than see any injury being done to the suppressed classes in mad haste.” The conference considered a number of proposals; some of its members paid visits to Pune to discuss them with the Mahatma. The meeting had some commendable results.

This commitment to the Harijans and then towards the minorities, the Muslims, was the main reason for his life and for his death. It was a consistent passion for him, for which he lived and for which he died.

Against the System, Not Against the Person

It is obvious that Gandhi was totally against the corrupt and exploitative system perpetuated by the British. But his opposition was not directed against the individuals in the system, and he could really love the persons in the system: a characteristic Leavers’ feature.

One day, after Lord Irwin had returned from a tour of South India and had approached Delhi, a bomb exploded under the Viceroy’s train. Gandhi congratulated the Viceroy on his miraculous escape. Gandhi’s personal faith in non-violence remained absolutely firm. “I cannot intentionally hurt anything that lives, much less fellow-human beings even though they may do the greatest wrong to me. Whilst, therefore, I hold British rule to be a curse, I do not intend to harm a single Englishman or any legitimate interest he may have in India.” That is why during the war Gandhi was still very loyal to the British and helped the Government in recruiting for the war.⁷

“I must not be misunderstood. Though I hold the British rule in India to be a curse, I do not, therefore, consider Englishmen in general to be worse than any other people on earth. I have the privilege of claiming many Englishmen as dearest friends. Indeed, much that I have learnt of the evil of British rule is due to the writings of frank and courageous Englishmen who have not hesitated to tell the unpalatable truth about that rule.” In other words, Gandhi believed in conversion and not compulsion, so that the opponents of today might become the reformers of tomorrow.

In this section we have approximated the Takers to be the British and the Leavers to be the Indians and more specifically the Harijans. Then we view Gandhi as a representative of the Leavers’ tradition, opting for the Harijans. It will be our contention that the Leavers’ traditions (i.e., the Gandhian villages) provide us with a viable paradigm for the survival of the world. In the next section we see how much Gandhi criticizes the Takers tradition, using the simplest of the symbols available to the Leavers’ tradition: the salt!

So far, we have identified some of the cherished concerns of Gandhi for the Leavers as: identification with the “least, lost and lowest,” interest for the individual’s needs, priority to the basic needs of the people and respecting the persons in the system even when opposing the system.

Gandhi’s Critique of Technological Culture: The Common Salt

We shall study the Gandhian critique of the Takers’ technological culture based on two very important facts of his life: his salt struggle and his condemnation of industrialization as a curse for humanity. We need to remind ourselves that the Gandhian critique of technology is not for any romantic or nostalgic reason, but for the sake of the individual villagers whose existence is threatened.

The Decisive Salt Struggle

The tax imposed by the government on salt was a turning point in the history of the freedom struggle. For Gandhi, the imposition of the tax, however low it might have been, was totally unacceptable, since salt symbolized the common person. A struggle between the Congress and the Government was inevitable. In January 1930, Gandhi told Tagore that he was thinking furiously “night and day.” The first step he took was to call for the celebration of “Independence Day” on January 26. On that day, in the towns and villages of India, hundreds of thousands of people took a pledge that it was a crime against human beings and God to submit to British rule, and undertook to join a campaign of civil disobedience and non-payment of taxes if the Congress launched the tax. Independence Day revealed the latent enthusiasm in the country; Gandhi felt the country was ripe for a mass movement. He suggested the inauguration of the movement with the breach of the Salt Laws. The Salt Tax, though relatively light in incidence, hit the poorest in the land, but salt did not quite seem to fit into the plan of a national struggle for liberation. Salt manufacture was confined to the seacoast or salt mines, and, even if a strike could be organized among the politically backward laborers engaged in the industry, the prospect of launching a successful satyagraha struggle did not appear to be bright. These and other doubts assailed Gandhi’s closest adherents even as they followed his lead.

Gandhi announced that he himself would perform the first act of civil disobedience by leading a group of satyagrahis to the seashore for the breach of the Salt Laws. He communicated his plans to the Viceroy in a letter, which was an indictment of British rule, as well as an appeal for restoring to India what was her due: “Dear friend, before embarking on civil disobedience and taking the risk I have dreaded to take all these years, I would approach you and find a way out.” Then he continues:

Gandhi had realized that in embarking on non-violence, he would be running what might be fairly termed a “mad risk,” but the victories of truth have never been won without risks, often of the gravest character. For Gandhi, conversion of a nation that has consciously or unconsciously preyed upon another far more numerous, far more ancient and no less cultured than itself, is worth any amount of risk. He was ready to pay the price and take the risk. So he asserted his desire to convert the nation and the people:

The first impulse of the Government, as of the Congress intellectuals, was to ridicule “the kindergarten stage of political revolution,” and to laugh away the idea that the King-Emperor could be unseated by boiling seawater in a kettle. The experts of the Government of India did not take the breach of the Salt Tax seriously. Tottenham, a member of the Central Board of Revenue (the department which dealt with the Salt Tax), described the breach of Salt Laws as “Mr. Gandhi’s somewhat fantastic project.” A committee of two senior officers reported early in February that salt did not appear to be a promising field for initiating a no-tax campaign; that the most that could happen was that small quantities of inferior salt would be sporadically produced in certain areas and consumed locally; that neither government revenues, nor the price of salt were likely to be affected.

In spite of these remarks, Gandhi could mobilize the ordinary masses in the name of the simple common salt. The Collector of Kaira, one of the districts through which Gandhi’s itinerary lay, was so apprehensive of the political effects of Gandhi’s march that he recommended to the Bombay Government that the march should be prohibited. “So long as it is conducted peacefully,” wrote the Government of Bombay to the Government of India, “there is no provision of law which permits prohibition of the march.” The Government of India concurred with the view and added that the time for arrest would come when the matter had passed from the “sphere of words to that of action.” Section 117 of the Indian Penal Code, under which the arrest was proposed, being bailable, there was nothing to prevent Gandhi from continuing the march if he chose to be bailed out. Moreover, neither the Bombay Government nor the Government of India could rule out the possibility that Gandhi’s march might end in a fiasco: if the “salt earth” collected by Gandhi’s party, after it reached the seashore were confiscated and no one was prosecuted, would not Gandhi “look ridiculous”? The Government of India, therefore, saw the wisdom of “waiting on events” and taking action only when the results of the march became clear. The district magistrates through whose districts Gandhi was to march were, therefore, directed to telegraph daily reports simultaneously to New Delhi and Bombay to enable the policy-makers of the provincial and central governments to adjust the official policy to the exigencies of the political situation.

From Dandi, where he had made the first symbolic breach of Salt Laws, Gandhi sent a message that “at present Indian self-respect is symbolized, as it were, in a handful of salt in the satyagrahi’s hand. Let the fist be broken, but let there be no surrender of salt.” No less than 60,000 Indians were jailed. The story of the historical salt satyagraha has become intimately linked to the freedom of India. That was indeed the beginning of the end of the British Empire.

Just before his arrest Gandhi had planned a more aggressive phase of his “non-violent rebellion” by “raiding” and taking possession of the salt depots at Dharsana. The raid, which was led by the aged Imam Sahib, an inmate of the Sabarmati Ashram, took place on May 21st. The leaders were arrested and the rank and file beaten up; an account of this raid was given in the New Freeman by an American correspondent Webb Miller: “In eighteen years of reporting in twenty-two countries I have never witnessed such harrowing scenes as at Dharsana. Sometimes the scenes were so painful that I had to turn away momentarily. One surprising feature was the discipline of volunteers. It seemed they were thoroughly imbued with Gandhi’s non-violent creed.”

In its resolution of September 14, 1939, the Congress Working Committee expressed its sympathy for those who were resisting Nazi aggression and offered its cooperation in the war against Nazism. Cooperation was, to be “between equals by mutual consent for a cause which both consider to be worthy.”¹⁰

Curse of Industrialization

Gandhi had very harsh words against industrialism and machinery. He is categorical in maintaining that “it is machinery that has impoverished India.”¹¹ For him, machinery is the chief symbol of modern (Takers’) civilization; it represents a great sin. It is the villain. We shall first see his harsh criticism of machinery and industrialization and then find underlying reasons for Gandhi’s criticism. Finally, we shall find that Gandhi is open to viable industrialization and machines.

He is clear in his affirmation: “My own view [unlike that of Nehru] is that the evils are inherent in industrialism and no amount of socialism can eradicate them.”¹² But he adds his customary caution: “What I object to, is the craze for machinery not machinery as such. The craze is for what they call labor-saving machinery. Men go on ‘saving labor’ till thousands are without work and thrown on the open streets to die of starvation.”¹³ This reminds us that his criticism is not for its own sake but for the sake of those “thrown on the open streets to die of starvation.” Again he is consistent when he asserts: “I am not against machinery as such, but I am totally opposed to it when it masters us.”¹⁴

Gandhi would categorically state his conviction that the mania for mass production is responsible for the world crisis. Granting for the moment that machinery may supply all the needs of humanity, still, it would concentrate production in particular areas, so that you would have to proceed in a round-about way to regulate distribution; whereas, if there is production and distribution both in the respective areas where things are required, it is automatically regulated, and there is less chance for fraud, none for speculation.¹⁵ The reason for his vehement criticism is also given by Gandhi himself. “Industrialization on a mass scale will necessarily lead to passive or active exploitation of the villagers as the problems of competition and marketing come in. Therefore, we have to concentrate on the village being self-contained, manufacturing mainly for use.”¹⁶

He is never tired of repeating this: “Industrialism is, I am afraid, going to be a curse for mankind. Exploitation of one nation by another cannot go on for all time. Industrialism depends entirely on your capacity to exploit, on foreign markets being open to you, and on the absence of competition.”¹⁷

Elsewhere he states explicitly. “I want the dumb millions of our land to be healthy and happy and I want them to grow spiritually. As yet for this purpose we do not need the machine.”¹⁸ Therefore he affirms: “My fundamental objection to machinery rests on the fact that it is machinery that has enabled these nations to exploit others. In itself it is a wooden thing and can be turned to good purpose or bad.”¹⁹

In spite of these criticisms, he is not dogmatically opposed to machines of every kind. “At the same time I believe that some key industries are necessary. I do not believe in armchair or armed socialism. I believe in action according to my belief, without waiting for wholesale conversion.”²⁰ Further, he affirms: “I refuse to be dazzled by the seeming triumph of machinery. I am uncompromisingly against all destructive machinery. But simple tools and instruments … [that] save individual labor and lighten the burden of millions of cottages, I should welcome.”²¹

Gandhi is realistic and concedes that machinery has its place; machines have in fact come to stay. But they must not be allowed to displace human labor. He would welcome every improvement in the cottage machine, but he knows that it is criminal to displace hand labor by the introduction of power-driven spindles. He is aware that persons cannot live without industry. “Therefore, I cannot be opposed to industrialization. But I have a great concern about introducing machine industry.”²² The principle that governs the use of machinery is clearly the welfare of all. “That use of machinery is lawful which subserves the interest of all.”²³Once we have shaped our life on ahimsa, we shall know how to control the machine. So he does not give up hope that machinery can be put to good use.

It is not surprising that a serious criticism against Gandhi’s village work was that he was turning his back on science and industry and advocating a primitive economy which would perpetuate poverty. In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi had mercilessly criticized machinery, mills and industrial civilization, but during the next forty years of his life he further elaborated his ideas on machinery, relating them to his fundamental doctrine of non-violence. His principal objection to mechanization was that it tended to concentrate the production of wealth in a few hands. In a country where the hands were too many and the work too little, machinery could add to unemployment and poverty. “I would favor,” he had written in 1921, “the use of the most elaborate machinery if thereby India’s pauperism and resulting idleness could be avoided.” There was a distinction in his mind, however, between “mass production” and “production for the masses”; the former under free enterprise often made the rich richer and the poor poorer. He was not opposed to machinery as such. Even his beloved spinning-wheel was machinery, but it was “machinery reduced to the terms of the masses.” He welcomed simple tools and instruments which “lightened the burden of the millions of cottages” without atrophying the limbs of persons. He also recognized that some of these comparatively simple machines, such as sewing machines required factories for their manufacture. “I am socialist enough to say,” he added, “that such factories should be nationalized or state-controlled. They ought only to be working under the most attractive and ideal conditions, not for profit but for the benefit of humanity, love taking the place of greed as motive.”

The concerns evinced by Gandhi in this section are: simplicity of life, significance of symbols, need based technology vs. need creating technology and realistic assessment of human situation without giving up hope.

Gandhian Vision of Village Economy: The Charkha

Khadi (homespun cotton cloth) and charkha (hand-spinning), symbolized for Gandhi the village economy and its self-sufficiency. What is needed is that each village be self-sufficient for its basic needs. Although we may not be able to agree with the details which Gandhi gives here, we can very well agree with his fundamental insight.²⁴ His vision of the village economy is that of self-sufficient and independent units where the basic necessities of all the villagers are met and where the Leavers’ life style is fostered.

Even at the risk of looking old fashioned, Gandhi speaks of the greatness of Khadi. According to him it “connotes the beginning of economic freedom and equality of all in the country. … It must be taken with all its implications. It means wholesale swadeshi mentality, a determination to find all the necessaries of life in India and that, too, through the labor and intellect of the villagers.”²⁵ For Gandhi, Khadi mentality means decentralization of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life. Therefore, the formula so far evolved is, every village to produce all its necessaries and a certain percentage in addition for the requirements of the cities.

Further, the “message of the spinning wheel is much wider than its circumference. Its message is one of simplicity, service of humanity, living so as not to hurt others, creating an indissoluble bond between the rich and the poor, capital and labor, the prince and the peasant.”²⁶ The charkha restores the villages to their rightful place and abolishes distinctions between high and low.

Actually, Gandhi’s propagation of charkha can be traced to his actual encounter with the situation of the poor. He discovered that there were numerous Harijan families that subsisted on spinning. Thus Khadi is the poor person’s staff of life. It helps the poorest, including the Harijans, who are the most helpless among the poorest. They are so because many occupations which are available to the others are not available to the Harijans.²⁷ That is what urged Gandhi to promote the charkha as the symbol of Indian nationhood.

Charkha for Gandhi is intimately connected to the village life. Ever since Gandhi entered Indian public life in 1915, he had been pleading for a new deal for the village. The acute pressure on land and the absence of supplementary industries had caused chronic unemployment and underemployment among the peasants whose appalling poverty never ceased to weigh upon Gandhi’s mind. His advocacy for the spinning wheel was derived from its immediate practical value as a palliative. The All-India Spinners’ Association, to which he had given a good deal of his time during the years of political quiescence, had in a period of ten years extended its activities to 5,300 villages, and provided employment to 220,000 spinners, 20,000 weavers and 20,000 volunteers and disbursed more than 20,000,000 rupees in Indian villages. These figures may not seem impressive today in the context of large scale state-sponsored planning, but they represented solid work on the part of an organization often against heavy odds.

Nobody knew better than Gandhi that the All-India Spinners’ Association had only scratched the surface of the problem of rural poverty, but he began to think and plan for the revival of the village economy as a whole. His Harijan tour had revealed to him how, with the decay of village industries, Harijans had sunk deeper and deeper into poverty; the reform of untouchability was thus linked with the economic amelioration of these unfortunate people. The revival of village industries thus acquired a new urgency.

The swadeshi cult, which insisted on the use of articles made in India and had swayed the country during periods of intense political excitement, received a new twist in the 1930s. It was not enough, argued Gandhi, that an article should be of Indian origin; it was equally important that it should be made in a village. He appealed to town-dwellers to examine each article of daily consumption which was manufactured in India or abroad, and to find a substitute for it from the village. The broom could replace a brush; a tooth-stick of a tree for a toothbrush; hand-pounded rice for factory polished rice; handmade sugar for factory sugar, and handmade paper for the products of the paper mills. Village products might sometimes cost more, but they distributed wages and profits among those whose need was the direst. For nearly 150 years, the cities had drained villages of wealth and talent. “For the city dweller,” wrote Gandhi, “the villages have become untouchable. He does not know them; he will not live in them, and if he finds himself in a village he will want to reproduce city life there. This would be tolerable, if we could bring into being cities which would accommodate thirty crores [300,000,000] of human beings.”²⁸

So Gandhi could unashamedly proclaim: “Khadi to me is the symbol of unity of Indian humanity, or the economic freedom and equality and, therefore, … in the poetic expression of Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘the livery of India’s freedom.’”²⁹ Within this background of the poverty of the villages and the possibility opened up by the Charka, Gandhi could boldly assert: “The spinning wheel is an attempt to produce something out of nothing.”³⁰

Such a change of attitude towards the charkha is difficult and demanding. This needs a revolutionary change in the mentality and taste of many. Easy though the non-violent way is in many respects, it is very difficult in many others. The revival of the charkha cannot take place without an army of selfless Indians with intelligence and patriotism, working with a single mind in the villages to spread the message of the charkha and bring a ray of hope and light into their drab eyes. At the same time, Gandhi is of course realistic enough to know that charkha and khadi alone are not sufficient. “Now I feel that khadi alone cannot revive the villages. Village upliftment is possible only when we rejuvenate village life as a whole, revive all village industries and make the entire village industrious.”³¹

The Ideal: Simple Village Life

Rural Economics

The Bombay session of the Indian National Congress in October 1934, authorized the formation of the All-India Village Industries’ Association under Gandhi’s guidance. This Association, “unaffected by and independent of the political activities of the Congress,” was to work for the revival and encouragement of the village industries and the moral and physical advancement of the village. The resolution was an index of the new orientation that Gandhi was giving to his own activities and those of the Congress.

Since eighty-five per cent of the population of India lived in villages, their economic and social resuscitation was a sine qua non for freedom. Gandhi described the exploitation of the village in the interest of the town as a species of violence. The growing gap in economic standards and social amenities between the village and the town had to be bridged. This could best be done by volunteers from the towns who spread themselves in the countryside to revive dead or dying rural industries and to improve standards of nutrition, education and sanitation. Gandhi expected these public-spirited men and women to support themselves on “a village scale”; if they put on their work, a price which villages could not sustain, village economy would face bankruptcy. Voluntary work alone could overcome the financial hurdle which made official programs of rural uplift a snail-paced affair.

Gandhi felt that the villagers could be educated out of this inertia by bands of selfless workers “infiltrating” into the villages, helping the villagers to revive village industries, running village schools, improving sanitation and popularizing a balanced diet. Labor and material were available in the village; they had only to be harnessed in its service.

Transforming Villages

“How to turn waste into wealth,” was how Gandhi summed up the objects of the All-India Village Industries Association to Lord Farringdon who visited him. Gandhi explained that his program did not cover rural indebtedness, because “it requires state effort. I am just now discovering things people can do without state aid. Not that I do not want state aid. But I know I cannot get it on my terms.”

Among the things which villagers could do, but often failed to do, was to keep their villages clean. Gandhi attributed this to the complex of untouchability: “to the fear of touching our own dirt and, therefore, of cleaning it.” He exhorted everyone to be his own “scavenger,” to join in a campaign to keep village tanks, wells and streets clean, and to remove the cause for that reproach of Lionel Curtis that Indian villages were “dung heaps.”

Nutrition was another problem on which Gandhi wrote and spoke. Nutrition took on a new urgency as a problem of the Indian masses when he realized (with something of a shock) that apart from their poverty their food habits were responsible for their undernourishment. The deficiency in vitamins was inexcusable, when green leaves were available for the asking. He appealed to the Indian scientists to pursue research into Indian diets in the context of Indian conditions:

It was obvious to Gandhi that rural India could not be transformed without the help of the urban intellectuals. To make the country village-conscious, he advised Congress to hold its annual sessions in villages. The Faizpur Congress was the first to be held in a village; Gandhi noted that the session was free from the scramble and hustle inevitable in big towns, that village hedges could be a better substitute for barbed wire, and exhibitions of village handicrafts could entertain as well as instruct.

He interpreted every problem in terms of the needs of the village. The educational system had always struck him as inadequate and wasteful. The vast majority of the people had been denied the rudiments of education; but even those who went to village primary schools soon unlearned what was taught to them because it had little to do with their daily lives and environment.

Work in the villages was an arduous and slow affair; it was “plodder’s work,” as Gandhi put it. It did not earn banner headlines in the press and did not seem to embarrass the Government. Many of Gandhi’s colleagues did not see how this innocuous activity could help India in advancing to the real goal of political freedom. Gandhi was accused of side-tracking the main political issue. His answer was: “I do not see how thinking of these necessary problems (of village uplift) and finding a solution for them was of no political significance and how any examination of the financial policy of the Government has necessarily a political bearing. What I am asking the masses to do is such as can be done by millions of people, whereas the work of examining the policy of our rulers will be beyond them. Let those few who are qualified do so. But until these leaders can bring great changes into being why should not millions like me use the gifts that God has given them to the best advantage? Why should they not clean their doors and make of their bodies fitter instruments?”³³

Socialistic Economy Gandhi’s picture of the ideal Indian village was of a “republic,” independent of its neighbors for its vital wants, yet interdependent in other ways, growing its own food and cotton and (if surplus land was available) money crops. As far as possible, its activities were to be done on a co-operative basis; it was to have its own theater, school and public hall; elementary education was to be free and compulsory; an elected panchayat was to decide disputes; guards selected by rotation from a register were to police the village.

The image of this “perfect democracy based on individual freedom” could be dismissed as utopian, but to Gandhi it was the only form a non-violent society could take. He did not care what label was applied to his ideas. Indian socialists, who by 1935 were a strong wing within the Congress, sometimes criticized him. Gandhi claimed that he was a socialist long before many Indian socialists had avowed the creed. “But my socialism,” he wrote, “was natural to me, and not adopted from any book. It came out of my unshakable belief in non-violence. No man could be actively non-violent and not rise against social injustice wherever it occurred.”

He did not accept the inevitability of class war or of violence; he believed his non-violent technique could end social injustice no less than foreign rule. By eschewing force, his socialism did not become a pious futility; in spite of its humanitarian and ostensibly gentle methods, it had revolutionary implications. Unlike capitalists and socialists, he considered property as an evil; he saw the unreality of the debate about ownership of property which had little relevance for millions of people who were no more than at a subsistence level, if not below it. Addressing the women of India, he exhorted them to remember that millions of men have no property to transmit to posterity. “Let them learn from them that it is better for the few to have no ancestral property at all. The real property that a parent can transmit to all equally is his or her character and educational facilities.”

Coming to his economic vision, he tolerated the institution of property, not because he loved it or considered it essential for the progress of humanity, but because he wished to abolish it through a non-violent technique. Gandhi would have vested the ownership of property neither in the individual nor in the state, but in God. Those who possessed property were thus to consider themselves as trustees; but they were not to be its primary, let alone exclusive, beneficiaries. No one was to keep more to himself than he needed; everyone was to work according to his or her capacity and to receive according to his or her real need. This theory of trusteeship might seem a rationalization of the privileged position of the princes, landlords and business magnates. In fact, it was a radical theory which called for voluntary sacrifices from the “haves” in the interest of the “have-nots.”

How were the propertied few to be persuaded to subordinate their own greed to the good of the community as a whole? The first step was to reason with the rich; if argument failed, non-violent non-cooperation was to be invoked. Just as no government could survive for long without the cooperation (willing or forced) of the people, economic exploitation was impossible without the active or passive acquiescence of the exploited.

Gandhi did not seek refuge from hard realities in the safety of a rigid doctrine. His ideas were evolved in response to the social and economic conditions around him. He had once criticized Indian socialists, but as years passed the latter saw that their ideas were present in the Gandhian programs, though sometimes under a guise which they did not readily recognize. Gandhi was not a theorist, but a practical man, dealing with practical problems. In pre-independent India, he had to function without the help of the Government and often in the face of its opposition. The problems of poverty, disease, ignorance and inertia are too serious a problem to be postponed to a distant date.

It was all a question of perspective; those who had learnt to think of India in terms of the economics they learnt at the university were not always able to appreciate the real problems of India. As early as 1911, Keynes, while reviewing the work, Economic Transition in India, wrote: “Sir Theodore Morrison [the author of the book] argues too lightly from the West to the East without a full enough consideration of the deep underlying factors upon which depends the most advantageous direction of the resources of the nation. … The mills of Bombay and Calcutta figure too much in the public eye.”³⁵

Keynes went on to say that these mills hardly influenced the general well-being of India which could be improved only by applying the brains and the capital of new India to her fields and villages. The central idea in Gandhi’s mind was to relieve the grinding poverty which stalked the village; he shrank from the idea of further pauperizing the village for the greater prosperity of a few big towns. Rather than turn the wheels of a few gigantic plants, he wished the hundreds of thousands of cottages in the countryside to hum with activity, to cater to their own needs, as well as to send their wares to the towns. If in Switzerland and Japan work and wages could be carried to thousands of cottages, why could it not be done in India?

In one important respect, conditions in India differed from those in other countries; an alien government had neither the incentive nor the organization to undertake radical changes in the country’s economy. When Gandhi had torn himself away from politics to work in the villages, the Government even suspected him of an astute and deeply laid plan to prepare the rural masses for a countrywide civil disobedience campaign. For Gandhi, it was no strategy, but the essence of his life for the villagers.

Gandhi could look into the heart of the villagers. “In the case of the Indian villages, an age-old culture is hidden under an entrustment of crudeness. Take away the encrustation, remove his chronic poverty and his illiteracy and you have the finest specimen of what a cultured, cultivated, free citizen should be.”³⁶

The Goal: Basic Necessities for All

The primary goal of Gandhi’s insistence on the village life was to provide the basic necessaries for all. Such a possibility was ruled out in the Indian cities. Gandhi contends: “I have no historical proof, but I believe that there was a time in India when village economies were organized on the basis of such non-violent occupations, not on the basis of the rights of man but on the duties of man. Those who engaged themselves in such occupations did earn their living, but their labor contributed to the good of the community.”³⁷

If Gandhi asked for a return to the villages, it is not for any nostalgic reason but for the sole purpose of making them self-supporting, self-sustaining, and self-developing. He did foresee that in the villages some extra materials needed for cities would be produced. But he would never imagine that villages (or even nations) would be totally bought up to produce only items for the cities as in the case of the “Banana republics.”

He imagined a simple life style in the villages. At the same time the villages will be hygienic, clean and healthy. The village panchayats will be able to take up the works needed to maintain villages free from dreaded sicknesses.

It is to be noted that Gandhi himself practiced this simple life and he could meet the basic necessities of life by himself. He narrates, in his autobiography, the interesting incident of how he learned to shave and cut his own hair himself. Gandhi also learnt cooking as part of his simple and self-supporting life style.

In this section the main concerns manifested by Gandhi are: socialistic economy, meeting the basic necessities of all, spontaneous, creative interaction and transforming village life.

Conclusion: Viable vs. Vicious Village

As we assumed, the Takers’ civilization and the global village as its technological marvel is not viable in the long run. It is vicious and venal. It had led to the destruction of the Leavers’ culture and to the destruction of the tribal and village communities. It leads to a monolithic and uniform pattern. It has led to the brink of total destruction.

It is both a vicious and venal way of life. It also brings the other cultures into its powerful grasp. Any community or culture that does not fit in with its preconditions and goals is not allowed to exist.³⁸ Either one has to swim with it or is forced to drown. To that extent it is also venal. It perpetuates a corrupt and a self-destructive system on the assumption that if it does not work now, more of it will work later. The phenomenon of unlimited growth, through which it attempts to achieve a harmonious society, is based on a false or even sinister attempt to refuse to see the consequences of one’s way of life.

On the other hand, because the Gandhian village is not that convenient and comfortable it is vulnerable, but obviously it is also viable. The village set-up where diversity and cooperation are stressed, may not be able to bring in all facilities. To that extent it is vulnerable to the temptations offered by the technological conveniences. But the village community as envisaged by Gandhi is life supporting, self-sustaining and community fostering. Therefore, it is viable.

At the same time I do not and cannot agree with all the assumptions of Gandhi. In this essay no attempt is made to justify Gandhi’s vision of a village economy. There are many elements which are utopian, misguided and outdated. But we do affirm that the basic vision which Gandhi fosters is much more sound and viable than the vision that the global village fosters. We cannot simply go back to the village or the tribal culture advocated by Gandhi. But without giving serious thought to the concerns introduced by Gandhi for the poor, underprivileged Leavers, no viable civilization can be built and sustained. Today the simple symbols of common salt, charkha and sevagram, may not evoke that same profound impact which they once did, but what they stand for can be ignored only at the very risk of losing our human nature. The global village has to take a radically different turn, keeping with the Gandhian concerns of village life, if it has to have any future existence.

Some of the cherished concerns of Gandhi that we have pointed out in this essay are: identification with the “least, lost and lowest,” interest in the needs of an individual, giving priority to the basic needs of the people, respecting the persons in the system even when opposing the system, simplicity of life, significance of symbols, need-based technology vs. need-creating technology and realistic assessment of the human situation without giving up hope. Further, he stressed a socialistic economy, meeting the basic necessities of all, spontaneous and creative interaction to transform village life, welfare for all, a religious basis for life, a holistic outlook on life and cooperation through networking. We can also notice in him: openness to change, joy in life, the conviction that truth is freedom and the integration of politics with religion. Only a village based on these concerns can be Gandhian and viable.

Notes

1.We take the global village as a paradigm for the technologically advanced, uniformist and religiously neutral world. Here we do not intend to give a criticism of the global village. Since our main effort is to see the relevance of the Gandhian village concept and since ours is more a philosophical than an economical concern, we do not go into a direct and methodic criticism of the global village. We take the global village as a powerful symbol that can be contrasted to the Gandhian villages.

2.Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (New York: A Bantam Book, 1995), pp. 38ff. We assume Quinn’s theory and develop on it.

3.See Ishmael, p. 39.

4.For a detailed analysis see KuruvillaPandikattu, “Beyond the Colonial Past: A New Story-ing,” Jnanadeepa, 1/2 (July 1998), pp. 23–33.

5.Ishmael, p. 73.

6.In my article mentioned above, I have tried to identify the Takers with the colonizers and the Leavers with the colonized people.

7.See URL http://web.mahatma.org.in/books/tendul/tendmain.asp.

8.B.R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi B A Biography. As found online at http://web.mahatma.org.in. Since found on the website, no page numbers are given.

9.Nanda.

10.Nanda. See also http://gandhi.virtualave.net/. See further Shriman Narayan (ed.), The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1968), VI, p. 188 (Abridged as SW).

11.SW, IV, p. 188.

12.SW, VI, p. 378.

13.SW, VI, p. 380.

14.SW, VI, p. 382.

15.M.K. Gandhi, India of My Dreams (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1992), pp. 20–30 (Abridged as Dreams).

16.Dreams, p. 31.

17.SW, VI, p. 377.

18.SW, VI, p. 384.

19.SW, VI, p. 377.

20.Dreams, p. 31.

21.Dreams, pp. 30–31.

22.SW, VI, p. 384. See also Nanda.

23.SW, VI, p. 379.

24.Cf.SW, VI, p. 385

25.SW, VI, p. 385.

26.SW, VI, p. 386.

27.Cf.SW, VI, pp. 389–390.

28.Nanda.

29.SW, VI, p. 385.

30.SW, VI, p. 389. See also http://gandhi.virtualave.net/.

31.SW, VI, p. 391.

32.As a practiced cook, Gandhi wrote on the modes of cooking which did not destroy the nutritive value of foods and on the superiority of hand-ground wheat and hand-polished rice to the factory products. “The textile mills,” he explained, “had brought unemployment in their wake, but rice and flour mills have also brought in undernourishment and disease.” See Nanda.

33.It is interesting to note that the first reaction of the Government to Gandhi’s village uplift work was to consider it a well laid plan to revive civil disobedience on an unprecedented scale with the support of the rural masses; a circular was in fact issued to the Provincial Governments by the Government of India in 1934 to be on their guard and to carry on counter-propaganda in the villages.

34.Nanda.

35.Nanda.

36.Dreams, p. 91.

37.SW, VI, p. 395.

38.Details can be found in Quinn, Ishmael. We cannot elaborate here due to paucity of space.