Hand spinning -- India; India -- Economic conditions; Manufactures -- India
(4) I have already shown that the result of boycott cannot in the end be
a rise in the price of cloth.
(5) The proposed boycott is not against the law of supply and demand,
because it does away with the law by manufacturing enough for the
supply. The movement does require a change of taste on the part of those
who have adopted finer variety and who patronise fantastic combinations
of colours and designs.
(6) I have shown in these pages, that the destruction of hand-spinning
was designed and carried out in a most inhuman manner by the agents of
the East India Company. No amount of appliances would ever have
displaced this national art and industry but for this artificial and
systematically cruel manner of carrying out the destruction.
(7) I am unable to hold the Indian farmer responsible for the
deterioration in cotton culture. The whole incentive was taken away when
hand-spinning was destroyed. The State never cared for the cultivator.
(8) My activity, I am proud to think, has already turned the
cultivator's attention to the improvement of cotton. The artistic sense
of the nation will insist on fine counts for which long staple is a
necessity. Cotton culture by itself cannot solve the problem of India's
poverty. For it will still leave the question of enforced idleness
untouched.
(9) I therefore claim for the _Charkha_ the honour of being able to
solve the problem of economic distress in a most natural, simple,
unexpensive and business-like manner. The _Charkha_, therefore, is not
only not useless as the writer ignorantly suggests, 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
to-day 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 stake 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.
_Y. I.--8th Dec. 1921._
HOW TO BOYCOTT FOREIGN CLOTH
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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