The importance of constructive work
SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION Alongside his struggle against the imperial rule, Gandhi paid attention to a range of social and economic interventions that fell under the rubric of what he called the constructive programme
In December 1941, Mahatma Gandhi travelled by train from Wardha to Bardoli to attend an important Congress Working Committee meeting. The Second World War had created a political crisis for the Congress and it needed to decide on its position and strategy. Since his weekly Harijan had suspended publication, while on the train, Gandhi wrote a pamphlet to explain his priorities to the public at large. The result was not a political tract, rather it was titled Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place. Therein, as the Congress prepared for an inevitable confrontation with the Raj, Gandhi listed 13 indicative issues of importance such as communal unity, removal of untouchability, prohibition, khadi and village industries, basic education, and the promotion of economic equality.
Gandhi was unique among anti-colonial leaders for his attention to both politics and social transformation. He recognised that the transfer of political power into Indian hands was necessary but not sufficient to address the numerous challenges of equity, justice and social harmony. Therefore, along with the struggle against British rule, he paid constructive work or the constructive programme. As in his time, later scholarly interest has focused largely on the political Gandhi. But for him constructive work was as important as satyagraha in building a non violent, just and harmonious social order.
Gandhi identified the collapse of India’s famed textile economy as fundamental to the economic devastation visited upon agrarian India by the East India Company and the Raj. He embarked on an ambitious plan to revive India’s traditional manufacture of textiles using hand-spun yarn on handlooms. The improbable idea of khadi was born and rapidly came to symbolise Indian nationalism. While khadi gave material form to the economic critique of colonisation, Gandhi also had other objectives in mind. For him, khadi represented the quest for self-sufficiency and a sense of dignity and purpose. All of these psychological transformations were as important as the meagre but vital earnings the khadi movement offered to spinners.
Although khadi achieved political significance, many did not accept its economic argument. For Gandhi, economic manufacture was not a matter of efficient production