Gandhiji believed that India had a definite mission to fulfill, he said “An India, awakened and free, has a message of peace and good-will to a groaning world.”
Gram Swaraj
India is made of villages, but our intelligentsia has neglected them… village life must not become a copy or appendage of city life. The cities have to adopt the pattern of village life and subsist for the villages. We must identify ourselves with the villagers who toil under the hot sun beating on their bent backs and see how we would like to drinks water from the pool in which the villagers bathe, wash their clothes and pots, and in which their cattle drink and roll. Then and not till then shall we truly represent the masses and they will as surely as I am writing this, respond to every call.
Laying down the duties of the village worker who naturally occupies the pivotal position in the planning of Village Swaraj of Gandhiji’s conception, he says that the village worker will organize the villages so as to make them self-contained and self-supporting through agriculture and handicrafts, will educate the village folk in sanitation and hygiene and will take all measures to prevent ill-health and disease among them and will organize the education of the village folk from birth to death along the lines of Nai Talim (Nai Talim/New Education, was popularly and correctly described as education through handicrafts, vocational skills that earn gainful livelihood). India lives in its villages, and development of villages will be critical if we want to close the gap between the “haves and have not’s” for better human development.
The cities are capable of taking care of themselves. It is the villages we have to turn to. We have to disabuse them of their prejudices, their superstitions, their narrow outlook, and we can do so in no other manner than that of staying amongst them and sharing their joys and sorrows and spreading education and intelligent information among them. The moment you talk to them (the Indian peasants) and they begin to speak, you will find wisdom drop from their lips. Behind the crude exterior you will find a deep reservoir of spirituality. I call this culture-you will not find such a thing in the West. You try to engage a European peasant in conversation and you will find that he is uninterested in things spiritual. In the case of the Indian villager, an age-old culture is hidden under an entrustment of crudeness. Take away the encrustation, remove his chronic poverty and his illiteracy and you will find the finest specimen of what a cultured, cultivated, free citizen should be.
The village movement is as much an education of the city people as of the villagers. Workers drawn from cities have to develop village mentality and learn the art of living after the manner of villagers. This does not mean that they have to starve like the villagers. But it does mean that there must be a radical change in the old style of life? While the standard of living in the villages must be raised the city standard has to undergo considerable revision, without the worker being required in any way to adopt a mode of life that would impair his health. To serve our villages is to establish Swaraj. Everything else is but an idle dream.
No movement or organization having vitality – dies from external attack. It dies of internal decay. What is necessary is character above suspicion, ceaseless effort accompanied by ever increasing knowledge of the technique of the work and a life of rigorous simplicity. Workers without character, living far above the ordinary life of villagers, and devoid of the knowledge required of them for their work, can produce no impression on the villagers.
I know that the work (of shaping the ideal village) is as difficult as to make of India an ideal country… But if one can produce one ideal village, he will have provided a pattern not only for the whole country but perhaps for the whole world. More than this a seeker may not aspire after.
We stand today in danger of forgetting how to use our hands. To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves. To think that your occupation of the Ministerial chair will be vindicated if you serve the cities only would be to forget that India really resides in her 7,00,000 village units. What would it profit a man if he gained the world but lost his soul into the bargain?
A man whose spirit of sacrifice does not go beyond his own
community, himself becomes, and makes his community, selfish. The logical
sequel of self-sacrifice is that the individual sacrifices himself for the
community, the community for the district, the district for the Province, the
Province for the nation, and the nation for the world.
Cleanliness and Sustainability
Mahatma’s oft quoted statement is – “Earth has enough resources for everybody’s need and not for anybody’s greed.”
Gandhiji realized the importance of living close to earth as part of ecosystem. All the buildings here in the Talimi Sangh (Sevagram) are built of local material and with the help of local artisans. We have thereby established a living link between ourselves and the people. That by itself is an education for the people and constitutes the foundation of our future educational work. If you thoroughly assimilate this ideal of simplicity and its importance in the New Education, you will have justified your training here. You will then appreciate your work. That work consists of cleaning up. No dirt could be found anywhere on the ashram ground. All rubbish was buried in pits; peelings of vegetables and left-over food was dumped in a separate manure pit and composted. The night-soil, too, was buried and later used as manure. Waste water was used for gardening. The farm was free from flies and stink though there was no puckka drainage system.
Cleanliness of the mind and body is the first step in education. Prayer does for the purification of the mind what the bucket and the broom do for the cleaning up of your physical surroundings. That is why we always commence our proceedings with prayer. No matter whether the prayer we recite is the Hindu prayer or the Muslim or the Parsi, its function is essentially the same, namely, purification of the heart. God has innumerable names but the most beautiful and suitable in my opinion is Truth. Let Truth, therefore, rule every action of our life, be it ever so insignificant. Let every morsel of food that we eat be sanctified with His name and consecrated to His service. If we eat only to sustain the body as an instrument of His service not only will it make our bodies and minds healthy and clean, the inner cleanliness will be reflected in our surroundings also. We must learn to make our latrines as clean as our kitchens.
As with the individual so with society. A village is but a group of individuals and the world, as I see it, is one vast village and mankind one family. The various functions in human body have their parallel in the corporate life of society. What I have said about the inner and outer cleanliness of the individual, therefore, applies to the whole society. In the mighty world, man, considered as an animal, occupies but an insignificant place. Physically, he is a contemptible worm. But God has endowed him with intellect and the faculty of discrimination between good and evil.
Khadi
Khadi to me is the symbol of unity of Indian humanity, of its economic freedom and equality and, therefore, ultimately in the poetic expression of Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘the livery of India’s freedom’, said Gandhiji. Moreover, Khadi mentality means decentralization of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life. Therefore, the formula so far evolved is, every village to produce all its necessaries and a certain percentage in addition for the requirements of the cities.
Production of Khadi includes cotton growing, picking, ginning, cleaning, carding, slivering, spinning, sizing, dyeing, preparing the warp and the woof, weaving, and washing. These, with the exception of dyeing, are essential processes. Every one of them can be effectively handled in the villages as is being so handled throughout India. Imagine the unifying and educative effect of the whole nation simultaneously taking part in the processes up to spinning! Consider the levelling effect of the bond of common labour between the rich and the poor! The message of the spinning wheel is much wider than its circumference. Its message is one of simplicity, service of mankind, living so as not to hurt others, creating an indissoluble bond between the rich and the poor, capital and labour, the prince and the peasant.
In Hind Swaraj, he wrote of industrialization at odds with moral values: “The incessant search for material comforts and their multiplication is an evil. I make bold to say that the Europeans will have to remodel their outlook, if they are not to perish under the weight of the comforts to which they are becoming slaves.” Further, with a prophetic vision, Gandhiji warned: “A time is coming when those who are in mad rush today of multiplying their wants, will retrace their steps and say; what have we done?” This is true of climate change and the disasters that the world is facing today due to environment-damaging products and unsustainable activities.
Gandhiji said, “Let’s start with ourselves. I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you have seen and ask yourself: If the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore to him control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melt away”.
We need to recollect these words of the Mahatma every moment. We can learn to live simply so that others can simply live – sharing more and consuming less for the simplified life. Instead of asking the question, why should I, let us ask the question, why should I not? A drop from the ocean perishes without doing any good. As a part of the ocean, it shares the glory of carrying on its bosom whole fleets of mighty ships!
– Excerpts from Young India, Harijan, various letters and conversations between 1925~1946, compilations in a book Village Swaraj, published by Navjivan Trust.
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