The reconstruction of
the villages along these lines should begin right now. That might necessitate
some modification of the scheme. The reconstruction of the villages should not
be organized on a temporary but permanent basis.
My second difficulty is
that in the scheme under question, craft and education have been divorced from
each other. Graft, art, health and education should all be integrated into one
scheme. Nai Talim is a beautiful blend of all the four and covers the whole
education of the individual from the time of conception to the moment of death.
Therefore, I would not divide village uplift work into watertight compartments
from the very beginning but undertake an activity which will combine all four.
Instead of regarding craft and industry as different from education, I will
regard the former as the medium for the latter. Nai Talim ought to be integrated
into the scheme.
Harijan,
10-11-1946
"Begin with Yourself"
Correspondents have been
writing, and friends have been seeing me, to ask me how to begin the village
industries work and what to do first.
The obvious answer is,
"Begin with yourself and do first that which is easiest for you to
do."
This answer, however,
does not satisfy the enquirers. Let me, therefore, be more explicit.
Each person can examine
all the articles of food, clothing and other things that he uses from day to
day and replace foreign makes or city makes, by those produced by the villagers
in their homes or fields with the simple inexpensive tools they can easily
handle and mend. This replacement will be itself, an education of great value
and a solid beginning. The next step will be opened out to him of itself. For
instance, say, the beginner has been hitherto using a tooth-brush made in a
Bombay factory. He wants to replace it with a village brush. He is advised to
use a babul twig. If he has weak teeth or is toothless, he has to crush one end
of it, with a rounded stone or a hammer, on a hard surface. The other end he
slits with a knife and uses the halves as tongue-scrapers. He will find these
brushes to be cheaper and much cleaner than the very unhygienic factory-made
toothbrush. The city-made tooth-powder he naturally replaces with equal parts
of clean, finely-ground, wood-charcoal and clean salt. He will replace
mill-cloth with village-spun Khadi, and mill-husked rice with hand-husked,
unpolished rice, and white sugar with village-made gur. These I
have taken merely as samples already mentioned in these columns. I have
mentioned them again to deal with the difficulties that have been mentioned by
those who have been discussing the question with me.
Harijan,
25-1-1935
A suggestion has been made that there should be a separate
minister for the work, as, for proper organization, it will occupy all the time
of one minister. I dread to make the suggestion, for we have not yet outlived
the English scale of expenditure. Whether a minister is separately appointed or
not, a department for the work is surely necessary. In these times of scarcity
of food and clothing, this department can render the greatest help. The
ministers have experts at their disposal through the A. I. S. A. and the A. I.
V. I. A. It is possible to clothe today the whole of India in Khadi on the
smallest outlay and in the shortest time possible. Each provincial Government
has to tell the villagers that they must manufacture their own Khaddar for
their own use. This brings in automatic local production and distribution. And
there will undoubtedly be a surplus for the cities at least to a certain extent
which, in its turn, will reduce the pressure on the local mills. The latter
will then be able to take part in supplying the want of cloth in other parts of
the world.
How
can this result be brought about?
The
Governments should notify the villagers that they will be expected to
manufacture Khaddar for the needs of their village within a fixed date after
which no cloth will be supplied to them. The Governments in their turn will
supply the villagers with cotton seed or cotton wherever required, at cost
price and the tools of manufacture also at cost, to be recovered in easy
installments payable in, say, five years or more. They will supply them with
instructors wherever necessary and undertake to buy surplus stock of Khaddar,
provided that the villagers in question have their cloth requirements supplied
from their own manufacture. This should do away with cloth shortage without
fuss and with very little overhead charges.
The
villages will be surveyed and a list prepared of things that can be
manufactured locally with little or no help and which may be required for
village use or for sale outside, such for instance, as ghani-pressed oil and
cakes, burning oil prepared through ghanis, hand-pounded rice, tadgur, honey, toys, mats, hand-made paper,
village soap, etc. If enough care is thus taken the villages, most of them as
good as dead or dying, will hum with life and exhibit the immense possibilities
they have of supplying most of their wants themselves and of the cities and
towns of India.
Then
there is the limitless cattle wealth of India suffering from criminal neglect.
Goseva Sangh, as yet not properly experienced, can still supply valuable aid.
Without
the basic training the villagers are being starved for education. This
desideratum can be supplied by the Hindustani Talimi Sangh.
Harijan,
28-4-1946
I feel convinced that
the revival of hand-spinning and hand-weaving will make the largest
contribution to the economic and the moral regeneration of India. The millions
must have a simple industry to supplement agriculture. Spinning was the cottage
industry years ago, and if the millions are to be saved from starvation, they
must be enabled to reintroduce spinning in their homes, and every village must
repossess its own weaver.
Young
India, 21-7-1920
I... claim for the Charkha
the honour of being able to solve the problem of economic distress in a most
natural, simple, unexpensive and businesslike manner. The Charkha, therefore,
is not only not useless... but it is a useful and indispensable article for
every home. It is the symbol of the nation's prosperity and, therefore,
freedom. It is a symbol not of commercial war but of commercial peace. It bears
not a message of ill-will towards the nations of the earth but of good-will and
self-help. It will not need the protection of a navy threatening a world's
peace and exploiting its resources, but it needs the religious determination of
millions to spin their yarn in their own homes as today they cook their food in
their own homes. I may deserve the curses of posterity for many mistakes of
omission and commission, but I am confident of earning its blessings for
suggesting a revival of the Charkha. I take my all on it. For every revolution
of the wheel spins peace, good-will and love. And with all that, inasmuch as
the loss of it brought about India's slavery, its voluntary revival with all
its implications must mean India's freedom.
Young
India, 8-12-1921
What is claimed for
spinning is that:
1. it supplies the
readiest occupation to those who have leisure and are in want of a few coppers;
2. it is known to the
thousands;
3. it is easily learnt;
4. it requires
practically no outlay of capital;
5. the wheel can be
easily and cheaply made. Most of us do not yet know that spinning can be done
even with a piece of tile and splinter;
6. the people have no
repugnance to it;
7. it affords immediate
relief in times of famine and scarcity;
8. it alone can stop the
drain of wealth which goes outside India in the purchase of foreign cloth;
9. it automatically
distributes the millions thus saved among the deserving poor;
10. even the smallest
success means so much immediate gain to the people;
11. it is the most
potent instrument of securing co-operation among the people.
Young
India, 21-8-1924
I have often said that
if seven lakhs of the villages of India were to be kept alive, and if peace
that is at the root of all civilization is to be achieved, we have to make the
spinning wheel the centre of all handicrafts. Thus my faith in the spinning
wheel is growing every day and I see it more and more clearly that the Sun of
the wheel will alone illumine the planets of other handicrafts. But I go a step
further and say that just as we go on discovering new stars and planets in the
vast solar system, even so we shall go on discovering fresh handicrafts every
day. But for the sake of this thing, we have to make the spinning wheel the
really life-giving Sun.
Harijan,
19-2-1938
Tanning
It is estimated that rupees nine crores worth of raw hide is
annually exported from India and that much of it is returned to her in the
shape of manufactured articles. This means not only a material, but also an
intellectual, drain. We miss the training we should receive in tanning and
preparing the innumerable articles of leather we need for daily use.
Tanning
requires great technical skill. An army of chemists can find scope for their
inventive talent in this great industry. There are two ways of developing it.
One for the uplift of Harijans living in the villages and eking out a bare
sustenance living in filth and degradation and consigned to the village ghetto,
isolated and away from the village proper. This way means part re-organization
of villages and taking art, education, cleanliness, prosperity and dignity to
them. This means also the application of chemical talent to village uplift.
Tanning chemists have to discover improved methods of tanning. The village
chemist has to stoop to conquer. He has to learn and understand the crude
village tanning, which is still in existence but which is fast dying owing to
neglect, not to say want of support. But the crude method may not be summarily
scrapped, at least not before a sympathetic examination. It has served well for
centuries. It could not have done so, if it had no merit. The only research I
know in this direction is being carried on in Santiniketan, and then it was
started at the now defunct Ashram at Sabarmati. I have not been able to keep
myself in touch with the progress of the experiment at Santiniketan. There is
every prospect of its revival at the Harijan Ashram, which the Sabarmati Ashram
has now become. These experiments are mere drops in the ocean of possible
research.
Cow-preservation
is an article of faith in Hinduism. No Harijan worth his salt will kill cattle
for food. But, having become untouchable, he has learnt the evil habit of
eating carrion. He will not kill a cow but will eat with the greatest relish
the flesh of a dead cow. It may be physiologically harmless. But
psychologically there is nothing, perhaps, so repulsive as carrion-eating. And
yet, when a dead cow is brought to a Harijan tanner's house, it is a day of
rejoicing for the whole household. Children dance round the carcass, and as the
animal is flayed, they take hold of bones or pieces of flesh and throw them at
one another. As a tanner, who is living at the Harijan Ashram, describing the
scenes at his own now forsaken home, tells me the whole family is drunk with
joy at the sight of the dead animal. I know how hard I have found it working
among Harijans to wean them from the soul-destroying habit of eating carrion.
Reformed tanning means the automatic disappearance of carrion-eating.
Well,
here is the use for high intelligence and the art of dissection. Here is also a
mighty step in the direction of cow-preservation. The cow must die at the hands
of the butcher, unless we learn the art of increasing her capacity of
milk-giving, unless we improve her stock and make her male progeny more useful
for the field and carrying burdens, unless we make scientific use of all her
excreta as manure, and unless, when she and hers die, we are prepared to make
the wisest use of her hide, bone, flesh, entrails, etc.
I
am just now concerned only with the carcass. It is well to remember here that
the village tanner, thank God, has to deal only with the carcass, not the
slaughtered animal. He has no means of bringing the dead animal in a decent
way. He lifts it, drags it, and this injures the skin and reduces the value of
the hide. If the villagers and the public knew the priceless and noble service
the tanner renders, they will provide easy and simple methods of carrying it,
so as not to injure the skin at all.
The
next process is flaying the animal. This requires great skill. I am told that
none, not even surgeons, do this work better or more expeditiously than the
village tanner does with his village knife. I have inquired of those who should
know. They have not been able to show me an improvement upon the village tanner.
This is not to say that there is none better. I merely give the reader the
benefit of my own very limited experience. The village tanner has no use for
the bone. He throws it away. Dogs hover round the carcass whilst it is flayed,
and take away some, if not all, of the bones. This is a dead loss to the
country. The bones, if powdered fine, apart from their other uses, make
valuable manure. What remains after the dogs have taken away their share is
transported to foreign countries and returns to us in the shape of handles,
buttons, etc.
The
second way is urbanizing this great industry. There are several tanneries in
India doing this work. Their examination is outside the scope of this article.
This urbanization can do little good to the Harijans, much less to the
villages. It is a process of double drain from the villages. Urbanization in
India is slow but sure death for her villages and villagers. Urbanization can
never support ninety per cent of India's population, which is living in her
7,00,000 villages. To re-remove from these villages tanning and such other
industries is to remove what little opportunity there still is for making
skilled use of the hand and the head. And when the village handicrafts
disappear, the villagers working only with their cattle on the field, with
idleness for six or four months in the year, must, in the words of Madhusudan
Das, be reduced to the level of the beast and be without proper nourishment,
either of the mind or the body, and, therefore, without joy and without hope.
Here
is work for the cent per cent Swadeshi lover and scope for the harnessing of
technical skill to the solution of a great problem. The work fells three apples
with one throw. It serves the Harijans, it serves the villagers, and it means
honourable employment for the middle class intelligentsia who are in search of
employment. Add to this the fact that intelligentsia have a proper opportunity
of coming in direct touch with the villagers.
Harijan, 7-9-1934