Swadeshi Goods

The Working Committee of the Congress has now given us a workable definition of Swadeshi goods. It is as follows:

“Swadeshi goods, not being cloth or yarn, are those goods which are wholly made in India and out of raw material, whether indigenous or imported, by a manufacturer with not less than 75% Indian-owned share capital, provided that no goods will be considered Swadeshi the manufacture of which is controlled by foreigners.”

Note – For the purpose of this definition, the word “controlled” refers to Boards of Directors and/or Managing Agents.

“It shall be open to the Working Committee to publish a list from time to time of goods classed as Swadeshi, though they may not fully comply with the foregoing definition.”

The definition is open to the objection that it allows of raw materials being imported. This latitude was deliberately kept. There is no harm in importing raw material when it cannot be found in India. It is the skill that has been banished from the land or left undeveloped owing to the absence of the Swadeshi spirit. A country remains poor in wealth, both material and intellectual, if it does not develop its handicrafts and its industries and lives a lazy parasitic life by importing all the manufactured articles from outside. There was a time when we manufactured almost all we wanted. The process is now reversed and we are dependent upon the outside world for most manufactured goods. The past year brought forth a remarkable awakening of the Swadeshi spirit. It has, therefore, become necessary to define Swadeshi goods. But in giving a definition care has to be taken not to make the definition so narrow as to make manufacture all but impossible, or so wide as to become farcical and Swadeshi only in name. We do not want to follow the frog-in-the well policy nor, in seeming to be international, lose our individuality, i.e., nationality.

The reader will also note that cloth or yarn, whether cotton, woolen or silken, is excluded from the definition. One reason is that it is sufficiently known what is Swadeshi cloth. But the second, and for me the most important, is that Swadeshi cloth for Congressmen means only and exclusively hand-spun and hand-woven Khadi. Indigenous mill cloth is meant for those whom the Congress message cannot or does not reach.

It will also be noticed that since, at the present stage of our evolution, we have to be satisfied about many things being not wholly Swadeshi, the Working Committee has reserved the right to issue a list from time to time of such articles as may not wholly satisfy the definition and yet to exclude them would be injurious to the best interest of the country.

- Young India: Aug. 20, 1931