Gandhi’s Khadi: A history of contention and conciliation By Rahul Ramagundam,
Orient Longman, Rs 695

Mahatma Gandhi’s political engagement has monopolized the attention of scholars. As a result, his ‘real’ and most important concerns — for instance, the constructive programme comprising swadeshi, khadi and village reconstruction — have ended up being marginalized. That seems to be the contention of Rahul Ramagundam, the author of this particular work. Ramagundam sets out to correct this anomaly by writing this interpretive history of khadi.

Khadi has been given different labels: it has been called the “livery of freedom”, as well as the “uniform of rebellion” and “fabric of independence”. It was pivotal in turning the Congress into a mass-based organization. Ramagundam posits khadi as a fabric, which transcended its commodity status to become a political symbol, thanks to Gandhi’s ideological investment.

If swaraj was an end for Gandhi, then swadeshi was the means; he saw khadi as having the potential to usher in ‘true’ freedom for the Indian masses. His relentless campaign for khadi was meant to divide Indians into two categories: those who clung on to self-interest and loyalty towards British imperialism and those who were ready to sacrifice self-interest for the greater common good.

The khadi movement was initially meant to provide a supplementary income for unemployed villagers. It also marked an attempt to produce a commodity of import substitution and plug the drain of wealth from the colony.

Ramagundam states that the Rowlatt Act provided the initial impetus for the khadi movement. He also shows how Gandhi attempted to win over to the cause of swadeshi not just ordinary people but highly-placed Indians as well as powerful British functionaries. Gandhi’s Khadi revisits his obsession with the material between 1915-1945. It also underlines the differences that arose between Gandhi and the Congress: at an All India Congress Committee meeting in Ahmedabad, in 1924, Gandhi demanded that each Congress delegate spin the charkha for half an hour every day. He also proposed to purge Congress executive bodies of members who neither spun nor wore khadi. This, along with his refusal to condone violence against the British, brought him into conflict with the Swarajists. Gandhi, however, was forced to rescind the penalty clause, writes Ramagundam. Not just that, he also failed in winning the Congress over to the cause of khadi. This is evident from the attempts made by Congress delegates to pass off mill-spun yarn by proxy spinners.

Ramagundam describes how the khadi cause kept getting sidelined with the inclusion of foreign textiles and machinery in the annual exhibitions. This development in particular denoted “a clear clash of ideals” between the organizers of such events and Gandhi.

There were differences with other people as well. The author mentions the rift between Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru over khadi in 1927-28, and uses it as a tool to examine whether Gandhi was against science and technology. Gandhi opposed industrialization only because it resulted in the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, argues Ramagundam. He was not a blind critic of technological innovation and his efforts to develop a more advanced charkha point out to this fact, he adds.

Gandhi’s Khadi goes on to show how the khadi movement transformed the lives of women in a significant way. It brought them out into the public sphere, gave them a modicum of economic self-sufficiency and enhanced their interpersonal skills. Ramagundam’s account of the All India Spinners’ Association and its attempts to disseminate a culture of khadi is of particular interest in this context. The author takes readers through the efforts to reorient the population with khadi during the mid-Thirties, and again in 1944. The measures also aimed at ensuring proper benefits for impoverished khadi workers and at shifting the focus on to the village as the primary market. Unfortunately, the rise in wages, Ramagundam points out, only resulted in “rising stock, declining sales, and closure of production units”.

According to Ramagundam, Gandhi failed to wrest control of the Congress for the betterment of Village India. His ploy to make Congress workers act in this direction was not successful. Khadi was destined to degenerate into a symbol of hypocrisy, opportunism and sham patriotism and to be consistently ignored as a viable development model by the post-colonial Indian State. Today, khadi is being repositioned as a brand but is still in the throes of a dilemma. If the fabric is fitted into the template of commerce, it would dilute its original philosophy; if it is made to abstain, it would destroy itself.