The Social Life of Khadi: Gandhi's Experiments with the Indian

The Social Life of Khadi: Gandhi’s Experiments with the Indian Economy, c. 1915-1965 by Leslie Hempson A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in the University of Michigan 2018 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Farina Mir, Co-Chair Professor Mrinalini Sinha, Co-Chair Associate Professor William Glover Associate Professor Matthew Hull Leslie Hempson [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5195-1605 © Leslie Hempson 2018 DEDICATION To my parents, whose love and support has accompanied me every step of the way ii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii LIST OF FIGURES iv LIST OF ACRONYMS v GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS vi ABSTRACT vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: THE AGRO-INDUSTRIAL DIVIDE 23 CHAPTER 2: ACCOUNTING FOR BUSINESS 53 CHAPTER 3: WRITING THE ECONOMY 89 CHAPTER 4: SPINNING EMPLOYMENT 130 CONCLUSION 179 APPENDIX: WEIGHTS AND MEASURES 183 BIBLIOGRAPHY 184 iii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 2.1 Advertisement for a list of businesses certified by AISA 59 3.1 A set of scales with coins used as weights 117 4.1 The ambar charkha in three-part form 146 4.2 Illustration from a KVIC album showing Mother India cradling the ambar 150 charkha 4.3 Illustration from a KVIC album showing giant hand cradling the ambar charkha 151 4.4 Illustration from a KVIC album showing the ambar charkha on a pedestal with 152 a modified version of the motto of the Indian republic on the front 4.5 Illustration from a KVIC album tracing the charkha to Mohenjo Daro 158 4.6 Illustration from a KVIC album tracing a genealogy of the ambar charkha 161 4.7 Illustration from a KVIC album showing village life in the absence of the ambar 167 charkha 4.8 Illustration from a KVIC album showing village life after the ambar charkha 168 4.9 Illustration from a KVIC album showing village life after the ambar charkha 169 4.10 Illustration from a KVIC album depicting the ambar charkha as a sort of 174 unemployment insurance iv LIST OF ACRONYMS AICC – All India Congress Committee AISA – All India Spinners Association AIVIA – All India Village Industries Association BoT – Board of Trustees CLA – Central Legislative Assembly GoI – Government of India IDA – International Decimal Association IDS – Indian Decimal Society INC – Indian National Congress KP – Khadi Pratisthan KVIB – Khadi and Village Industries Board KVIC – Khadi and Village Industries Commission SGA – Shri Gandhi Ashram SSS – Sarv Seva Sangh v GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS Ashram – A utopian living community Bobbin – A reel around which yarn is wound Carding – The act of disentangling cotton fibers and arranging them in neat parallel rows called slivers Charkha – A hand-powered spinning wheel Ginning – The act of removing dirt, seeds, and other impurities from cotton fibers Hank – (1) A skein of yarn; (2) A measure of length for yarn (see Appendix) Pareta – A bobbin Reeling – The act of winding spun yarn around a bobbin, or pareta Sliver – A bundle of cotton fibers that has been ginned and carded Spinning – The act of turning (cotton, silk, or wool) slivers into yarn Weaving – The act of turning yarn into cloth Yarn count – A numerical expression of the relative coarseness or fineness of yarn. It indicates the length per unit mass or the mass per unit length of yarn vi ABSTRACT This dissertation is a historical study of the socio-material and knowledge practices involved in the making of the modern Indian economy between approximately 1915 and 1965. It explores this subject through the lens of the khadi economy, the name I assign to the network of institutions established by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from the late 1910s to ameliorate rural unemployment and underemployment through the reintroduction of village industries in the Indian countryside. In contrast to most accounts of the khadi economy, which portray it as a traditionalizing zone rooted in a nostalgic vision of the past, I situate it at the heart of processes of modern economy formation in late colonial and early postcolonial India. The history of the khadi economy, I argue, offers critical insights into some of the key developments in twentieth-century Indian economic life, ranging from the changing spatial relationship of agriculture to industry; to the rise of formal organizations and scientific management; to the establishment of standardized weights and measures; to technological innovation. In recuperating the khadi economy as one instance in the making of the modern Indian economy, I provide an alternative perspective on economic modernization. The khadi institutions discussed here did not resist the rise of a modern economy but instead worked to establish a modern economy on their own terms that deployed some of the same tools (scientific management, standardized weights and measures, etc.) in different ways. In attempting to create a modern economy that was nevertheless different from the modern economy that ultimately prevailed in India, khadi institutions offer a unique lens on what exactly was at stake in the modern economy’s creation. vii INTRODUCTION Between 1957 and 1959, the Indian government published three pamphlets chronicling the past, present, and future of what it called the “silent economic revolution.”1 Elaborately illustrated and printed on handmade paper, these pamphlets told the story of a campaign established by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in the late 1910s to create a new economy for modern India. This campaign centered on rural India, home to over eighty percent of the Indian population, much of it unemployed or underemployed for large stretches of the year. Gandhi and a revolving cast of lawyers and scientists, writers and accountants, social theorists and bureaucrats attempted to reestablish the production of khadi, or handspun, handwoven cloth, in the Indian countryside as a way of combating the rural unemployment and underemployment crisis. Simultaneously, they worked to reconstitute the economy on what they regarded as a more egalitarian, cooperative, and self-limiting footing. It is unclear whether Gandhi ever used the phrase “silent economic revolution” himself. Some of his fellow travelers did, however, including some of the khadi campaign’s leading luminaries. In their hands, the phrase came to signal a specific approach to economic change, one grounded in the belief that it is the outcome of a “long and laborious evolutionary process,” not a one-time event culminating in “thunder, storm, explosion, sound and fury.”2 The Indian nationalist leader J. B. Kripalani, for example, was fond of commenting, “It must be some kind 1 Vijayadev, Ambar Charkha: The Silent Revolutionary (Bombay: United Asia Publications, 1957); The Story of a Silent Economic Revolution (Bombay: Khadi and Village Industries Commission, 1958); Vijayadev, The Silent Revolution (Bombay: Khadi and Village Industries Commission, 1959). 2 J. B. Kripalani, Politics of Charkha (Bombay: Vora & Co., Publishers, Ltd., 1946), 31-2. 1 of intellectual and visual jaundice that fails to see beauty in small things and is impressed by the big and the powerful alone.”3 A long-time colleague of Gandhi’s, he was perhaps the second- or third-most influential figure in the khadi campaign. In his hands, “silent economic revolution” took on an additional meaning—it was an admonishment to look beyond the obvious forces driving economic change to uncover those hidden from view. This dissertation is a historical study of the socio-material and knowledge practices involved in the making of the modern Indian economy between approximately 1915 and 1965. I approach this subject through the framework of the khadi economy, the name I assign to the network of institutions, individuals, ideas, and material objects established by Gandhi and his associates to accomplish a variety of ends, including ameliorating rural poverty and inequality; presenting an alternative to market capitalism; and making cooperation, and not competition, the central feature of Indian? economic life. I argue that the history of the khadi economy offers key insights into some of the critical developments in twentieth-century Indian economic life, ranging from the changing spatial relationship of agriculture to industry; to the rise of formal organizations and scientific management; to the establishment of standardized weights and measures; to the invention of technologies to create new forms of employment. The Modern Economy Two concepts provide conceptual coherence to this dissertation, the first of which is “modern economy.” “Modern economy” is a notoriously difficult term to define, in no small part because it is often treated as the inverse of the “traditional economy.” Rather than presupposing the nature of the modern economy, this becomes the focus of my inquiry. I examine the modern 3 Ibid, 23. 2 economy as it is constituted across multiple sites and scales of analysis—from a corporate boardroom in Bombay to the home workshop of an amateur technology enthusiast, from the pages of a mathematics textbook to poetry written in praise of the spinning wheel. All the while, I ask what the modern economy looks like and what it takes to produce one. In doing so, I follow the lead of the historical actors who are the subject of this study, asking when they thought their efforts would lead to the creation of a modern economy and why. This approach, derived partly from science and technology studies (STS) literature, allows me to move beyond the tired framework of “success” and “failure” that has structured so many histories of the modern economy. Signal

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