Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editor's introduction
- A note on the history of the text
- Principal events in Gandhi's life
- Biographical synopses
- Guide to further reading
- Glossary and list of abbreviations
- HIND SWARAJ
- SUPPLEMENTARY WRITINGS
- Gandhi's letter to H. S. L. Polak
- Gandhi's letter to Lord Ampthill
- Preface to Gandhi's edition of the English translation of Leo Tolstoy's Letter to a Hindoo
- Gandhi–Tolstoy letters
- Gandhi–Wybergh letters
- Gandhi–Nehru letters
- Economic development and moral development (1916)
- Gandhi on machinery, 1919–47
- Constructive programme: its meaning and place (1941), 1945
- Gandhi's ‘Quit India’ speech, 1942
- Gandhi's message to the nation issued before his arrest on 9 August 1942
- Gandhi's political vision: the Pyramid vs the Oceanic Circle (1946)
- Draft Constitution of Congress, 1948
- Bibliography
- Index
Gandhi on machinery, 1919–47
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editor's introduction
- A note on the history of the text
- Principal events in Gandhi's life
- Biographical synopses
- Guide to further reading
- Glossary and list of abbreviations
- HIND SWARAJ
- SUPPLEMENTARY WRITINGS
- Gandhi's letter to H. S. L. Polak
- Gandhi's letter to Lord Ampthill
- Preface to Gandhi's edition of the English translation of Leo Tolstoy's Letter to a Hindoo
- Gandhi–Tolstoy letters
- Gandhi–Wybergh letters
- Gandhi–Nehru letters
- Economic development and moral development (1916)
- Gandhi on machinery, 1919–47
- Constructive programme: its meaning and place (1941), 1945
- Gandhi's ‘Quit India’ speech, 1942
- Gandhi's message to the nation issued before his arrest on 9 August 1942
- Gandhi's political vision: the Pyramid vs the Oceanic Circle (1946)
- Draft Constitution of Congress, 1948
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
No other question treated in Hind Swaraj, not even that of the lawyers, doctors and hospitals, has provoked as much controversy as has the question of machinery – in the current idiom, ‘technology’. Gandhi's thinking on machinery underwent gradual development, the main features of which are traced below.
[Ed.]1919
‘There is thus room in the country for both the mill industry and the handloom weaving. So let mills increase as also spinning-wheels and handlooms. And I should think that these latter are no doubt machines. The handloom is a miniature weaving mill. The spinning-wheel is a miniature spinning-mill. I would wish to see such beautiful little mills in every home. But the country is fully in need of the hand-spinning and hand-weaving industry. Agriculturists in no country can live without some industry to supplement agriculture … Even if we have sufficient mills in the country to produce cloth enough for the whole country, we are bound to provide our peasantry, daily being more and more impoverished, with some supplementary industry, and that which can be suitable to crores of people is hand-spinning and hand-weaving. Opposition to mills or machinery is not the point. What suits our country is the point. I am not opposed to the movement of manufacturing machines in the country, nor to making improvements in machinery.
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- Information
- Gandhi: 'Hind Swaraj' and Other Writings , pp. 164 - 170Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997