I have no doubt in my mind that
we add to the national wealth if we help the small-scale industries. I have no
doubt also that true Swadeshi consists in encouraging and reviving these home
industries. That alone can help the dumb millions. It also provides an outlet
for the creative faculties and resourcefulness of the people. It can also
usefully employ hundreds of youths in the country who are in need of
employment. It may harness all the energy that at present runs to waste. I do
not want anyone of those who are engaged in more remunerative occupations to
leave them and take to the minor industries. Just as I did with regard to the
spinning wheel, I would ask only those who suffer from unemployment and penury
to take to some of these industries and add a little to their slender
resources.[1]
The idea behind the village
industries scheme is that we should look to the villages for the supply of our
daily needs and that, when we find that some needs are not so supplied, we
should see whether with a little trouble and organization, they cannot be
profitably supplied by the villagers. In estimating the profit, we should think
of the villager, not of ourselves. It may be that, in the initial stages, we
might have to pay a little more than the ordinary price and get an inferior
article in the bargain. Things will improve, if we will interest ourselves in
the supplier of our needs and insist on his doing better and take the trouble
of helping to do better.[2]
This is a constructive, not a
destructive, programme. The big industries can never, they don't hope to,
overtake the unemployed millions. Their aim is primarily to make money for the
few owners, never the direct one of finding employment for the unemployed
millions. The organizers of Khadi and other village industries don't hope in
the near future to affect the big industries. They may hope to bring a ray of
light into the dark dungeons, miscalled cottages, of the villagers. . . . They
are designed to well utilize the leisure hours of the idle millions.
In this there is no war against
the misuse and abuse of machinery, i.e. its use to the detriment of the
millions. Dead machinery must not be pitted against the millions of living
machines represented by the villagers scattered in the seven hundred thousand
villages of India. Machinery to be well used has to help and ease human effort.
The present use of machinery tends more and more to concentrate wealth in the
hands of a few in total disregards of millions of men and women whose bread is
snatched by it out of their mouths. The movement represented by the A.I.S.A.
and the A.I.V.I.A. has been conceived so as to minimize the evil wrought by the
craze for amassing large fortunes through the use of dead tools in order to
avoid having to deal with very sensitive human tools.[3]
I would say that if the village
perishes, India will perish too. It will be no more India. Her own mission in
the world will get lost. The revival of the village is possible only when it is
no more exploited. 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. Provided this character of the
village industry is maintained, there would be no objection to villagers using
even the modern machines and tools that they can make and can afford to use.
Only they should not be used as a means of exploitation of others.[4]
There is no doubt in my mind that
in a country like ours, teeming with millions of unemployed, something is
needed to keep their hands and feet engaged in order that they may earn an
honest living. It is for them that Khadi and cottage industries are needed. It
is clear to me as daylight that they are badly needed at the present moment.
What the future has in store for them, I do not know, nor do I care to know...
These little things add substantially to the income of the poor villagers. If
you can ensure them three annas instead of the three pice that they get today,
they will think they have won Swaraj. That is what Khadi is trying to do for
the spinners today.[5]
The conception underlying both
the Nai Talim and the village industries programme, including Khaddar, was
rooted in the same thing, viz., concern for the dignity and status of the
village unit as against the big cities and of the individual against the
machine. The concern was further augmented by the fact that India lives not in
a handful of her big cities but in her 7,00,000 villages. The problem was of
reestablishment of justice between the town and the village. As it was, the
balance was heavily tipped in favour of the former to the disadvantage of the
latter.[6]
Causes of decline of Village
Industries
We eat mill-ground flour, and
even the poor villager walks with a head-load of half a maund grain to have it
ground in the nearest flour mill. Do you know that in spite of the plenty of
foodstuffs we produce we import wheat from outside and we eat the 'superfine'
flour from Australia? We will not use our hand-ground flour, and the poor
villager also foolishly copies us. We thus turn wealth into waste, nectar into
poison. For whole meal is the proper meal. Mill-ground flour is vitaminless
flour, mill-ground flour kept for days is not only vitaminless, but poison. But
we will not exert ourselves to produce flour which we must eat fresh every day,
and will pay for less nutritious things and purchase ill-health in the bargain.
This is not any abstruse economic truth, it is a fact, which is daily happening
before our eyes. The same is the case with rice and gur and oil. We will eat
rice, polished of its substance, and eat less nutritious sugar and pay more for
it than more nutritious gur. We have suffered the village oilman to be driven
to extinction and we eat adulterated oils. We idolize the cow, but kill her by
slow degrees. We eat honey and kill the honey-bee, with the result that honey
is such a rare commodity today that it is only available to a 'Mahatma' like me
or to those who must have it from the physician as a vehicle for the drugs he
prescribes. If we took the trouble of learning scientific and harmless
bee-keeping, we should get it cheaper and our children would get out of it all
the carbohydrates they need. In all our dietetics, we mistake the shadow for
the substance, preferring bone-white sugar to rich brown gur and pale white
bread to rich brown bran-bread.
We are said to be a nation of
daily bathers. That we are, to be sure, but we are none the better for it. For
we bathe with unclean water, we foul our tanks and rivers with filth and use
that water for drinking and bath. We lawyers and degree-holders and doctors
will not learn the elementary principles of sanitation and hygiene. We have not
yet devised the most economic method of disposal of our evacuations and we turn
our open healthy spaces into breeding grounds of disease.
I implore you to throw off your
inertia, to bestir yourselves to study these elementary facts and live more
rational lives and learn how to turn waste into wealth. I have told you simple
truths which we would soon realize and act up to if we threw off the inertia of
ages. But we have shunned body-labour to the, detriment of our brains, and thus
rest content with the irrational ways of diet and living. Let us pull ourselves
together and resolve to make our bodies and brains more active.[7]
Any country that exposes itself
to unlimited foreign competition can be reduced to starvation and therefore,
subjection if the foreigners desire it. This is known as peaceful penetration.
One has to go only a step further to understand that the result would be the
same as between hand-made goods and those made by power-driven machinery. We
are seeing the process going on before our eyes. Little flour mills are ousting
the chakki, oil mills the village ghani, rice mills the village dhenki, sugar
mills the village gur-pans, etc. This displacement of village labour is impoverishing
the villagers and enriching the moneyed men. If the process continues
sufficiently long, the villagers will be destroyed without any further effort.
No Chengis Khan could devise a more ingenious or more profitable method of
destroying these villages. And the tragedy of it all is that the villagers are
unconsciously but none the less surely contributing to their own destruction.
To complete the tale of their woe, let the reader know that even cultivation
has ceased to be profitable. For some crops, the villager does not cover even
the cost of seed.[8]
Dangers of Mechanization
Mechanization is good when the
hands are too few for the work intended to be accomplished. It is an evil when
there are more hands than required for the work, as is the case in India... The
problem with us is not how to find leisure for the teeming millions inhabiting
our villages. The problem is how to utilize their idle hours, which are equal
to the working days of six months in the year. Strange as it may appear, every
mill generally is a menace to the villagers. I have not worked out the figures,
but I am quite safe in saying that every mill-hand does the work of at least
ten labourers doing the same work in their villages. In other words, he earns
more than he did in his village at the" expense of ten fellow-Villagers.
Thus spinning and weaving mills have deprived the villagers of a substantial
means of livelihood. It is no answer in reply to say that they turn out
cheaper, better cloth, if they do so at all. For, if they have displaced
thousands of workers, the cheapest mill cloth is dearer, than the dearest Khadi
woven in the villages. Coal is not dear for the coal miner who can use it there
and then nor is Khadi dear for the villager who manufactures his own Khadi. But
if the cloth manufactured in mills displaces village hands, rice mills and
flour mills not only displace thousands of poor women workers, but damage the
health of the whole population in the bargain. Where people have no objection
to taking flesh diet and can afford it, white flour and polished rice may do no
harm, but in India, where millions can get no flesh diet even where they have
no objection to eating it, if they can get it, it is sinful to deprive them of
nutritious and vital elements contained in whole wheat meal and unpolished
rice. It is time medical men and others combined to instruct the people on the
danger attendant upon the use of white flour and polished rice...
Hence the function of the
All-India Village Industries Association must, in my opinion be to encourage
the existing industries and to revive, where it is possible and desirable, the
dying or dead industries of villages according to the village methods, i.e.,
the villages working in their own cottages as may have done from times
immemorial. These simple methods can be considerably improved as they have been
in hand-ginning, hand-carding, hand-spinning and hand-weaving.
A critic objects that the ancient
plan is purely individualistic and can never bring about corporate effort. This
view appears to me to be very superficial. Though articles may be manufactured
by villagers in their cottages, they can be pooled together and profits
divided. The villagers may work under supervision and according to plan. The
raw material may be supplied from common stock. If the will to co-operative
effort is created, there is surely ample opportunity for co-operation, division
of labour, saving of time and efficiency of work. All these things are today
being done by the All-India Spinners' Association in over 5,000 villages.[9]
When production and consumption
both become localized, the temptation to speed up production, indefinitely and
at any price, disappears. All the endless difficulties and problems that our
present-day economic system presents, too, would then come to an end. Take a
concrete instance. England today is the cloth shop of the world. It, therefore,
needs to hold a world in bondage to secure its market. But under the change
that I have envisaged, she would limit her production to the actual needs of her
45 millions of population. When that need is satisfied, the production would
necessarily stop. It won't be continued for the sake of bringing in more gold
irrespective of the needs of a people and at the risk of their impoverishment.
There would be no unnatural accumulation of hoards in the pockets of the few,
and want in the midst of plenty in regard to the rest, as is happening today,
for instance, in America. America is today able to hold the world in fee by
selling, all kinds of trinkets, or by selling her unrivalled skill, which she
has a right to do. She has reached the acme of mass production, and yet she has
not been able to abolish unemployment or want. There are still thousands,
perhaps millions of people in America who live in misery, in spite of the
phenomenal riches of the few. The whole of the American nation is not benefited
by this mass production.[10]
Well, now the economics and
civilization of a country where the pressure of population on land is greatest
are and must be different from those of a country where the pressure is least.
Sparsely populated, America may have need of machinery. India may not need it
at all. Where there are millions upon millions of units of idle labour, it is
no use thinking of labour-saving devices. If someone devised a machine which
saved us the trouble of using our hands to eat, eating would cease to be a
pleasure, it would become a torture. The reason of our poverty is the
extinction of our industries and our consequent unemployment. Some years ago
India's agricultural population was said to be 70 per cent. Today it is said to
be 90 per cent. It does not mean that 90 per cent are agriculturists, but that
instead of 70 per cent who depended on land, 90 per cent are now driven to
depend on land. In other words, whereas there were industries and crafts enough
to feed the 20 per cent some time ago, these are no longer there and the people
have thus been thrown on land. They thus steal their living, not because they
want to, but because there is no more land.[11]
I have no partiality for return
to the primitive method of grinding and husking for the sake of them. I suggest
the return, because there is no other way of giving employment to the millions
of villagers who are living in idleness. In my opinion, village uplift is impossible,
unless we solve the pressing economic distress. Therefore, to induce the
villagers to utilize their idle hours is in itself solid uplift work.[12]
Rehabilitation of Village
Industries
We may profess to gratuitously
help textile, sugar and rice mills and, respectively, kill the village spinning
wheel, the handloom and their product, Khadi, the village cane crusher and its
product, the vitamin-laden and nourishing gur or molasses and the hand-pounder
and its product, unpolished rice, whose pericarp, which holds the vitamins, is
left intact by these pounders. Our clear duty is, therefore, to investigate the
possibility of keeping in existence the village wheel, the village crusher and
the village pounder, and, by advertising their products, discovering their
qualities, ascertaining the condition of the workers and the number displaced
by the power-driven machinery and discovering the methods of improving them,
whilst retaining their village character, to enable them to stand the
competition of the mills. How terribly and criminally we have neglected them!
Here, there is no antagonism to the textile or the sugar or the rice mills.
Their products must be preferred to the corresponding foreign products. If they
were in danger of extinction from foreign competition they should receive the
needed support. But they stand in no such need. They are flourishing in spite
of foreign competition. What is needed is protection of the village crafts and
the workers behind them from the crushing competition of the power-driven
machinery, whether it is worked in India or in foreign lands. It may be that
Khadi, gur and unpolished rice have no intrinsic quality and that they should
die. But, except for Khadi, not the slightest effort has been made, so far as I
am aware, to know anything about the fate of the tens of thousands of villagers
who were earning their livelihood through crushing cane and pounding rice.
Surely, there is in this work enough for an army of patriots. The reader will
say, 'But this is very difficult work.' I admit. But it is most important and
equally interesting. I claim that this is true, fruitful and cent per cent
Swadeshi![13]
In a nutshell, of the things we
use, we should restrict our purchases to the articles which villages
manufacture. Their manufactures may be crude. We must try to induce them to
improve their workmanship, and not dismiss them because foreign articles or even
articles produced in cities, that is, big factories, are superior. In other
words, we should evoke the artistic talent of the villager. In this manner,
shall we repay somewhat, the debt we owe to them. We need not be frightened by
the thought whether we shall ever succeed in such an effort. Within our own
times, we can recall instances where we have not been baffled by the difficulty
of our tasks when we have known that they were essential for this nation's
progress. If, therefore, we as individuals believe that revivification of
India's villages is a necessity of our existence, if we believe that thereby
only can we root out untouchability and feel one with all, no matter to what
community or religion they may belong, we must mentally go back to the villages
and treat them as our pattern, instead of putting the city life before them for
imitation. If this is the correct attitude, then, naturally, we begin with
ourselves and thus use, say, hand-made paper instead of mill- made, use village
reed, whenever possible, instead of the fountain pen or the penholder, ink made
in the villages instead of the big factories, etc. I can multiply instances of
this nature. There is hardly anything of daily use in the home, which the
villagers have not made before and cannot make even now. If we perform the
mental trick and fix our gaze upon them, we immediately put millions of rupees
into the pockets of the villagers, whereas at the present moment we are
exploiting the villagers without making any return worth the name. It is time
we arrested the progress of the tragedy. To me, the campaign against
untouchability has begun to imply ever so much more than the eradication of the
ceremonial untouchability of those who are labeled untouchables. For the
city-dweller, 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 the city life there. This would be tolerable, if we could bring into
being cities which would accommodate 30 crores of human beings. This is much
more impossible than the one of reviving the village industries and stopping
the progressive poverty, which is due as much to enforced unemployment as to
any other cause.[14]
These (i.e. village industries
other than Khadi) stand on a different footing from Khadi. There is not much
scope for voluntary labour in them. Each industry will take the labour of only
certain, number of hands. These industries come in as a handmaid to Khadi. They
cannot exist without Khadi, and Khadi will be robbed of its dignity without
them. Village economy cannot be complete without the essential village
industries such as hand-grinding, hand-pounding, soap-making, paper-making,
match-making, tanning, oil-pressing etc. Congressmen can interest themselves in
these and, if they are villagers or will settle down in villages, they will
give these industries a new life and a new dress. All should make it a point of
honour to use only village articles whenever and wherever available. Given the
demand, there is no doubt that most of our wants can be supplied from our
villages. When we have become village-minded, we will not want imitations of
the West or machine- made products, but we will develop a true national taste
in keeping with the vision of a new India in which pauperism, starvation and
idleness will be unknown.[15]
Difficulties in the way
My difficulties are two. One is
whether it is possible to sell hand-made articles as cheaply as machine-made
ones. The second is that out of the articles that have been enumerated in the
scheme there is hardly any except Khadi which can become universal. They will
not, in a large measure, be consumed locally and so will have to be sold in the
cities. This is as it should be. The villagers should, develop such a high
degree of skill that articles prepared by them should command a ready market
outside. When our villages are fully developed there will be no dearth in them
of men with a high degree of skill and artistic talent. There will be village
poets, village artists, village architects, linguists and research workers. In
short there will be nothing in life worth having which will not be had in the
villages. Today the villages are dung heaps. Tomorrow they will be like tiny
gardens of Eden where dwell highly intelligent folk whom no one can deceive or
exploit.
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.[16]
"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.[17]
Pattern of State Assistance
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.[18]
Spinning Wheel - The
life-giving Sun
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.[19]
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.[20]
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.[21]
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.[22]
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.[23]
Dairying
Criminal negligence is the only
cause of the miserable condition of our cattle. Our pinjrapols, though they are
an answer to our instinct for mercy, are a clumsy demonstration of its
execution. Instead of being model dairy farms and great profitable national
institutions, they are merely depots for receiving decrepit cattle. Whilst
professing the religion of cow protection, we have enslaved the cow and her
progeny, and have become slaves ourselves.[24]
An ideal goshala would supply the
city of its domicile with cheap and wholesome milk from cattle of its own
keeping, and cheap and lasting foot-wear not out of slaughtered hide but of the
hide of dead cattle. Such a goshala will not be on one or two acres of ground
in the heart of a city or in its immediate neighbourhood but it would have at
some distance, but within easy reach, fifty to a hundred acres of ground where
a modern dairy and a modern tannery would be conducted on strictly business but
national lines. Thus there would be no profits and no dividends to be paid and
there would be also no loss incurred. In the long run such institutions dotted
all over India would be a triumph of Hinduism and , would be proof of Hindu
earnestness about cow, that is, cattle protection and it would provide decent
employment for thousands of men including educated men; for both dairy and
tannery work requires expert scientific knowledge. Not Denmark but India should
be a model State for the finest dairy experiments, and India should not to her
shame have to export nine crore rupees worth of dead cattle hide annually and
for her consumption use slaughtered cattle hide. If such a state of things is a
shame for India it is a greater shame for Hindus. I wish that all the Goshala
Committees will take to heart the remarks I made in reply to the Giridih
address and make their goshalas into ideal dairies and tanneries and a refuge
for all worn out and maimed cattle.[25]
Every goshala or pinjrapol should
have a tannery adequate to its needs attached to it. In other words, the
manager in charge of every such institution should have a thorough knowledge of
the immediate steps necessary for utilizing the remains of dead cattle. If this
is done, the question, viz. how many heads of cattle should a particular
goshala contain, would not arise at all.
I do not know what the rate of
mortality of cattle in goshalas is nor is it relevant to my proposition. So
long as there is a single head of cattle in a goshala its manager ought to know
how to dispose of its remains after it is dead, just as he is expected to know
how to look after it while it is alive.
Such humanitarian institutions
for the protection of cattle as I have described should normally take charge of
the remains of the cattle that might die in the village. Therein lies the
interest of the cattle, the depressed classes and the general public alike. In
villages where there are no goshalas or the concomitant tanneries, some local
person who believes in cow protection should take it upon himself to get the
carcasses removed to the nearest tannery or get the preliminary processes
performed upon it and send the useful parts there.
The establishment of such
tanneries as I have described does not require much capital outlay. Only some
initial expenditure would be needed to train up workers for this work.[26]
Jaggery
Take the sugar industry. The
largest major industry next to the textile is that of the manufacture of sugar.
It stands in no need of our assistance. Sugar factories are fast multiplying.
Popular agencies have done little to help the growth of this industry. It is
indebted for its growth to favourable legislation. And today the industry is so
prosperous and expanding that the production of jaggery is becoming a thing of
the past. It is admittedly superior to refined sugar in nutritive value. It is
this very valuable cottage industry that cries out for your help. This by
itself furnishes large scope for research and substantial help. We have to
investigate the ways and means of keeping it alive. This is but an illustration
of what I mean.[27]
The advantages, attributed to
tadi, are all available from other foodstuffs. Tadi is made out of khajuri
juice. Fresh khajuri juice is not an intoxicant. It is known as nira in
Hindustani and many people have been cured of their constipation as a result of
drinking nira. I have taken it myself though it did not act as a laxative with
me. I found that it had the same food value as sugar-cane juice. If one drinks
a glass of nira in the morning instead of drinking tea etc., he should not need
anything else for breakfast. As in the case of sugar-cane juice, palm juice can
be boiled to make palm jaggery. Khajuri is a variety of palm tree. Several
varieties of palm grow spontaneously in our country. All of them yield
drinkable juice. As nira gets fermented very quickly, it has to be used up
immediately and therefore on the spot. Since this condition is difficult to
fulfill except to a limited extent, in practice, the best use of nira is to
convert it into palm jaggery. Palm jaggery can well replace sugarcane jaggery.
In fact some people prefer it to the latter. One advantage of palm jaggery over
sugarcane jaggery is that it is less sweet and therefore one can eat more of
it. The All India Village Industries Association has done a great deal to
popularize palm jaggery, but much remains to be done. If the palms that are
used for making tadi are used for making jaggery, India will never lack sugar
and the poor will be able to get good jaggery for very little money. Palm
jaggery can be converted into molasses and refined sugar. But the jaggery is
much more useful than refined sugar. The salts present in the jaggery are lost
in the process of refining. Just as refined wheat flour and polished rice lose
some of their nutritive value because of the loss of the pericarp, refined
sugar also loses some of the nutritive value of the jaggery. One may generalize
that all foodstuffs are richer if taken in their natural state as far as
possible.[28]
Other Village Industries
Compost Manure: The
excreta of animals and human beings mixed with refuse can be turned into golden
manure, itself a valuable commodity. It increases the productivity of the soil
which receives it. Preparation of this manure is itself a village industry. But
this, like all village industries, cannot give tangible results unless the crores
of India co-operated in reviving them and thus making India prosperous.[29]
Given the willing co-operation of
the masses of India, this country can not only drive out shortage of food, but
can provide India with more than enough. This organic manure ever enriches,
never impoverishes the soil. The daily waste, judiciously composted, returns to
the soil in the form of golden manure causing a saving of millions of rupees
and increasing manifold, the total yield of grains and pulses. In addition, the
judicious use of waste keeps the surroundings clean. And cleanliness is not
only next to godliness, it promotes health.[30]
Hand-made Paper
I was told that, if there were
enough orders, the paper could be supplied at the same cost as the mill-made
article. I know that hand-made paper can never supply the daily growing demand
for paper. But lovers of the seven hundred thousand villages and their
handicrafts will always want to use handmade paper, if it is easily procurable.
Those who use hand-made paper know that it has a charm of its own. Who does not
know the famous Ahmedabad paper? What mill-made paper can beat it in durability
or polish?
The account-books of the old
style are still made of that paper. But it is probably a perishing industry
like many such others. With a little encouragement, it ought never to perish.
If there was supervision, the processes might be improved and the defects that
are to be noticed with some of this hand-made paper may be easily removed. The
economic condition of the numberless people engaged in these little known
trades is well worth investigating. They will surely allow themselves to be
guided and advised and feel thankful to those who would take interest in them.[31]
Machine Oil and Ghani Oil
Shri Jhaverbhai has also examined
the cause of the decline of the village ghani. The most potent cause is the
inability of the oilman to command a regular supply of seeds. The villages are
practically denuded of seeds after the season. The oilman has no money to store
the seeds, much less to buy them in the cities. Therefore he has disappeared or
is fast disappearing. Lakhs of ghanis are today lying idle causing a tremendous
waste of the country's resources. Surely it is the function of the State to
resuscitate the existing ghanis by conserving seeds in the places of their
origin and making them available to the village oilman at reasonable rates. The
Government loses nothing by giving this aid. It can be given, so Shri
Jhaverbhai contends, through co-operative societies or Panchayats. If this is
done, Shri Jhaverbhai is of opinion, based on research, that ghani oil can
compete with the machine product and villager can be spared the infliction of
the adulterated oil he gets today. It should be borne in mind that the only fat
the villager gets, when he gets any, is what the oils can give him. To ghee he
is generally a stranger.
He (Shri Jhaverbhai) has found
out why this machine oil is at all cheaper than the ghani oil. He gives three
reasons, two of which are unavoidable. They are capital and the ability of the
machine to extract the last drop of oil and that too in a shorter time than the
ghani. These advantages are neutralized by the commission the owner of this oil
mill has to pay to the middleman. But Shri Jhaverbhai cannot cope with the
third reason, adulteration, unless he also takes to it. This naturally he will
not do. He therefore suggests that adulteration should be dealt with the law.
This can be done by enforcing the Anti- Adulteration Act if there is one or by
enacting it by licensing oil mills.[32]
Bee-keeping
Bee-keeping seems to me to
possess immense possibilities. Apart from its village value, it may be
cultivated as a hobby by moneyed young men and women. They will add to the
wealth of the country and produce the finest health-giving sugar for themselves.
If they are philanthropically inclined, they can distribute it as health-giving
food among sickly Harijan children. There is no reason why it should be a
luxury of the rich or an expensive medicinal vehicle in the hands of the hakims
and vaidyas. No doubt, my hope is based on inferences drawn from meagre data.
Experiments that may be made in villages and in cities by young men and women
should show whether honey can become a common article of food or has to remain
an uncommon article, which it is today.[33]
Hand-pounding of Rice
In my writing on cent per cent
Swadeshi, I have shown how some aspects of it can be tackled immediately with
benefit to the starving millions both economically and hygienically. The
richest in the land can share the benefit. Thus if rice can be pounded in the
villages after the old fashion, the wages will fill the pockets of the
rice-pounding sisters and the rice-eating millions will get some sustenance
from, the unpolished rice instead of pure starch which the polished rice provides.
Human greed, which takes no account of the health or the wealth of the people
who come under its heels, is responsible for the hideous rice-mills one sees in
all the rice-producing tracts. If public opinion was strong, it will make
rice-mills impossibility by simply insisting on unpolished rice and appealing
to the owners of rice-mills to stop a traffic that undermines the health of a
whole nation and robs the poor people of an honest means of livelihood.[34]
I regard the existence of power
wheels for the grinding of corn in thousands of villages as the limit of our
helplessness. I suppose India does not produce all the engines or grinding
machines.... The planting of such machinery and engines on a large scale in
villages is also a sign of greed. Is it proper to fill one's pockets in this
manner at the expense of the poor? Every such machinery puts thousands of
hand-chakkis out of work and takes away employment from thousands of housewives
and artisans who make these chakkis. Moreover, the process is infective and
will spread to every village industry. The decay of the latter spells too the
decay of art. If it meant replacement of old crafts by new ones, one might not
have much to say against it. But this is not what is happening. In the
thousands of villages where power machinery exists, one misses the sweet music
in the early morning of the grinders at work.[35]
Village Exhibitions
If we want and believe that the
village should not only survive but also become strong and flourishing, then
the village perspective is the only correct view-point. If this is true then in
our exhibitions there can be no place for the glamour and pomp of the cities.
There should be no necessity for games and other entertainments that belong to
the cities. An exhibition should not become a "Tamasha", nor a source
of income; it should never become the advertising medium for traders. No sales
should be allowed there. Even Khadi and village industry products should not be
sold. An exhibition should be a medium of education, should be attractive and
it should be such as to in fuse in the villager the impulse to take to some
industry or the other. It should bring out the glaring defects, and drawbacks
in the present day village life, and show methods to be adopted to set them
right. It should also be able to indicate the extent of achievement in that
direction ever since the idea of village uplift was sponsored. It should also
teach how to make village life artistic.
Now let us see what an exhibition
will be like if it is to conform to the above conditions.
1. There should be two models of
villages-one as is existing today and the other an improved one. The improved
village will be clean all throughout. Its houses, its roads, its surroundings
and its fields will be all clean. The condition of the cattle should also
improve. Books, charts, and pictures should be used to show what industries
give increased income and how.
2. It must show how to conduct
the various village industries, wherefrom to obtain the needed implements, how
to make them. The actual working of each industry should be demonstrated. Along
with these the following should also find place:
a) Ideal village diet
b) Comparison between village
industry and machine industry
c) Model lessons on rearing
animals
d) Art section
e) Model of village latrine
f) Farm-yard manure, v. chemical
manure
g) Utilization of hides, bones,
etc. of animals
h) Village music, musical
instruments, village dramas
i) Village games, village akhadas
and forms of exercise
j) Nai Talim
k) Village medicine
l) Village maternity home
Subject to the policy enunciated
in the beginning, this list may be further expanded. What I have indicated is
by way of example only, it should not be taken to be exhaustive. I have not
made any mention of the Gharkha and other village industries as they are taken
for granted. Without them the exhibition will be absolutely useless.[36]
[1] Cent
Per Cent Swadeshi, p. 5, Edn. 1958
[2] Harijan,
23-11-1934, p. 324
[3] Harijan,
14-9-1935
[4] Harijan,
29-8-1936, p. 226
[5] Harijan,
2-1-1937
[6] Harijan,
25-8-1946
[7] Harijan,
11-5-1935
[8] Harijan,
20-6-1936
[9] Harijan,
16-11-1934
[10] Harijan,
2-11-1934, p. 302
[11] Harijan,
11-5-1935
[12] Harijan,
30-11-1934
[13] Harijan,
10-8-1934
[14] Harijan,
30-11-1934
[15] Constructive
Programme, Edn. 1948, p. 14-5
[16] Harijan,
10-11-1946
[17] Harijan,
25-1-1935
[18] Harijan,
28-4-1946
[19] Young
India, 21-7-1920
[20] Young
India, 8-12-1921
[21] Young
India, 21-8-1924
[22] Harijan,
19-2-1938
[23] Harijan,
7-9-1934
[24] Young
India, 6-10-1921
[25] Young
India, 22-10-1925
[26] Young
India, 3-11-1927
[27] Harijan,
10-8-1934
[28] Key
to Health, pp. 33-34, Edn. 1956
[29] Delhi
Diary, pp. 270-71
[30] Harijan,
28-12-1947
[31] Harijan,
14-9-1934
[32] Harijan,
2-9-1939
[33] Harijan,
1-2-1935
[34] Harijan,
26-10-1934
[35] Harijan,
10-3-1946
[36] Gram
Udyog Patrika, July, 1946
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