Gandhi also appeals to the generosity and the common sense of the English.[73] He calls the English his "dear friends" and points out that he has been their faithful companion for more than thirty years. He asks them to make up for the Government's perfidy, which by its treachery has completely shattered his faith in its good intentions. But he still believes in English bravery and in English respect for other people's bravery. "Bravery on the battle-field is impossible for India, but bravery of the soul remains open to us. Non-coöperation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice. I expect to conquer you by my suffering."
In the first four or five months' preliminary campaign Gandhi was not trying to paralyze the Government through non-coöperation; his idea was rather to lay the foundation for the building up of a new India which would be independent mentally, morally, and economically. Gandhi expresses the idea of India's economic independence by the term Swadeshi, and he takes the word in its narrow and physical sense.
India must learn to go without many comforts and to accept hardships without a murmur. A salutary discipline, this; necessary moral hygiene. The nation's health as well as its character will benefit thereby. Gandhi's first move is to free India from the curse of drink. Groups must be formed to advocate temperance. European wines must be boycotted; liquor-dealers must be induced to surrender their licenses.[74] All India responded to the Mahatma's appeal. Such a strong wave of temperance swept over India that Gandhi had to interfere to prevent the crowds from sacking and looting the wine-shops and closing them by force. "You must not try to compel another by physical force to become good," he explained to the masses.
But if it was a relatively easy matter to rid India of the curse of drink, it was much more difficult to provide her with means of subsistence. If cooperation with England ceased, what would India live on? What would she clothe herself in if European products were tabooed? Gandhi's solution is one of utmost simplicity and reveals the medieval turn of his mind: he undertakes to reestablish the old Indian industry of home spinning, introduce the spinning-wheels.
This patriarchal solution of the social problem has naturally met with ridicule.[75] But conditions in India and Gandhi's interpretation of the term charka must, be taken into consideration. Gandhi has never claimed that spinning alone would constitute a means of livelihood except for the very poor; but he does claim that it could supplement agriculture during the months when work in the fields is at a standstill. India's problem is not theoretical, but real and pressing. Eighty per cent of the population of India is agricultural, and is therefore without employment virtually four months of the year. One tenth of the population is normally exposed to famine. The middle class is underfed. What has England done to remedy these conditions? Nothing. On the contrary, she has aggravated them, for English manufactures have ruined local industries, pumped the resources of India, bleeding the country for more than sixty million rupees a year. India, who grows all the cotton she requires, is forced to export millions of bales to Japan and Lancashire, whence it is returned to her in the form of manufactured calico, which she must buy at exorbitant prices. The first thing for India to do, therefore, is to learn to do without ruinous foreign goods, and in order to do this she must organize workshops of her own to give employment and food to her people. There is no time to lose. Now, nothing can be organized more rapidly and economically than the industry of spinning and weaving at home. The idea is not to induce well paid agricultural laborers to give up their work and to spin, but to urge the unemployed, and all those who do not have to work for a living, such as women and children, as well as all Hindus who may have some spare time during the day, to spin in their leisure hours. Gandhi orders, therefore, (1) the boycotting of foreign goods, (2) the teaching of spinning and weaving, (3) the buying of hand-woven cloth only.
Gandhi gives himself up tirelessly to this idea. He says spinning is a duty for all India.[76] He wants poor children to pay for their tuition at school by a certain number of hours of spinning; he wants every one, man and woman, to contribute at least one hour a day, as charity, to spinning. He gives the most precise directions as to the choice of cotton, spinning-wheels, etc., and information on all sorts of technical details of spinning and weaving; he gives practical advice to those who wish to buy hand-woven cloth, to the fathers of large families, as well as to pupils in the schools. He explains, for instance, how one may start a Swadeshi shop—a shop dealing in the products of Hindu industry—with but little capital, make ten per cent profits, etc. He becomes lyrical when he describes the "music of the spinning-wheel,"[77] the oldest music in India, which delighted Kahir, the poet-weaver, and Aureng-Zeb, the great emperor, who wove his own caps.
Gandhi was able to fire public enthusiasm. The great ladies of Bombay took up spinning. Hindu and Moslem women agreed to wear only national cloth, which became all the fashion. Tagore, too, praised this khaddar or khadi, as the hand-woven cloth was called, which he said was in excellent taste. Orders poured in. Some came from as far as Aden and Baluchistan.
But the disciples of Swadeshi went a little too far when they began boycotting foreign materials, and even Gandhi, usually sane and well balanced, was carried away. In August, 1921, he ordered the binning of all foreign goods in Bombay, and as in the days of Savonarola in Florence, Christo regnante, magnificent family heirlooms, priceless stuffs and materials, were piled into huge heaps and devoured by the flames in the midst of riotous cheers and enthusiasm. In this connection one of the most broad-minded Englishmen in India, C. F. Andrews, a great friend of Rabindranath Tagore, wrote a letter to Gandhi. While expressing his great admiration for the Mahatma, he deplored that such valuable materials should have been burned instead of having been given to the poor. He added that he believed the process of destruction called forth the worst instincts of the masses, and he protested against the outbursts of a nationalism which virtually set destruction up as a religious dogma. He could not help feeling that it was sinful to destroy the fruits of human toil. Andrews had approved Gandhi's campaign and had even begun wearing khaddar but now he wondered whether it was right to continue to do so. The burning cloth in Bombay had shaken his faith in the Mahatma.
In publishing Andrews's letter in "Young India" Gandhi said he regrets nothing. He does not bear ill will to any race whatsoever, nor does he demand the destruction of all foreign goods. He merely wants to destroy the goods which harm India. Millions of Indians have been ruined by English factories, which, by taking work away from India, have turned thousands upon thousands of Indians into pariahs and mercenaries and their women into prostitutes. India is already inclined to hate her British dominators. Gandhi does not wish to strengthen this hatred. On the contrary, he wants to side-track it, to turn it away from people to things. The Indians who bought the materials are as guilty as the British who sold them. The materials were not burned as an expression of hatred for England, but as a sign of India's determination to break with the past. It was a necessary surgical operation. And it would have been wrong to give these "poisonous" materials to the poor, for the poor too, have a sense of honor.