True Swadeshi

If I have to use the adjective ‘true’ before Swadeshi, a critic may well ask: “Is there also false Swadeshi? Unfortunately, I have to answer ‘yes’. As, since the days of khadi, I am supposed to be an authority on Swadeshi, numerous conundrums are presented to me by correspondents. And I have been obliged to distinguish between the two kinds of Swadeshi. If foreign capital is mixed with indigenous or if foreign talent is mixed with indigenous is the enterprise Swadeshi? There are other questions, too. But I had better reproduce the definition I gave to a Minister the other day: “Any article is Swadeshi if it subserves the interests of the millions, even though the capital and talent are foreign but under effective Indian Control.” Thus, Khadi of the definition of the A.I.S.A would be true Swadeshi, even though the capital may be all foreign and there may be Western specialists employed by the Indian Board. Conversely, Bata’s rubber or other shoes would be foreign, through the labour employed may be all Indian and capital also found by India. Manufactures will be doubly foreign because the control will be in a foreign hands and the articles, no matter how cheap it is, will oust the village tanner mostly and the village mochi always. Already the mochis of Bihar have begun to feel the unhealthy competition. The Bata shoe may be saving of Europe; it will mean the death of our village shoe-maker and tanner. I have given two telling illustrations, both partly imaginary. For, in the A.I.S.A., capital is all indigenous and the whole of the talent also. But I would have to secure the engineering talent of the West to give me a village Wheels, which will beat the exiting wheels, though deep own in me I have to belief that the improvements that indigenous talent has made are by no means to be despised. But this is a digression. I do hope that those Ministers and others who guide or serve the public will cultivate the habit of distinguishing between true and false Swadeshi.

Harijan: Feb.25, 1939.