You cannot build nonviolence on a factory civilization, but it can be built on self-contained villages... Rural economy as I have conceived it, eschews exploitation altogether, and exploitation is the essence of violence. You have, therefore, to be rural-minded before you can be non-violent, and to be rural-minded you have to have faith in the spinning wheel.
We have to make a choice between
India of the villages that are as ancient as herself and India of the cities
which are a creation of foreign domination. Today the cities dominate and drain
the villages so that they are crumbling to ruin. My Khadi mentality tells me
that cities must subserve villages when that domination goes. Exploiting of
villages is itself organized violence. If we want Swaraj to be built on
nonviolence, we will have to give the villages their proper place.