Solution Of Poverty

Q. Do you claim that Charkha will do away with poverty in land?

A. I do claim that if Charkha becomes universal, it will drive away starvation. The whole atmosphere will be revolutionized. You possibly do not know that round the sixty crores of foreign cloth is woven the whole fabric of the Empire – the bulk of the mercantile marine, and quite a number of allied industries. You will save, by excluding foreign cloth, not millions but billions. And then with spinning and weaving coming to their own, there will grow up a number of allied industries. The carpenter, the blacksmith, the washer man and others will find additional work and a lot of skilled labour. In other words, you will reconstruct the Indian village.

Q. But why not Swadeshi mill-made cloth?

A. What will you do with unemployment? Industrialize the whole country and become a nation of exploiters!

Q. All countries living on machinery have to exploit other countries!

A. It is the truth. If you want to become inordinately rich, you must draw on other countries and impoverish them. If you want an inflated head – I know it from experience – you must draw on all the other limbs of the body. In fact, you will have to do more. For, exploitation will not be enough. You will have to arm yourselves to fight with other countries for trade monopolies. I want to save India from the catastrophe of ruinous exploitation.

Q. Is it not Nature’s phenomenon, that some must be rich and others must be poor?

A. It is certainly not Nature’s phenomenon that the head must receive all the blood from the feet and the feet deprived of it.

Young India: Aug. 25, 1927