GANDHI’S IDEALS

Evening Star, Issue 23130, 2 December 1938, Page 2

GANDHI’S IDEALS

HIS PROGRAMME BUTLIHEQ DEVELOPING THE SIMPLE LIFE Between the Marxist revolutionaries of its Left Wing and the capitalist milL owners, financiers, and landowners _of its Right, the Congress Party, which to-day governs seven out of the eleven provinces of British India, contains within its ranks tin extraordinary diversity of opinion, _ states the Marquess of Lothian in the ‘ Asiatic Review.’ Probably two things only keep it united—the fact that the movement for Swaraj, or. complete Home Rule, has as-yet .only got. half-way to its objective; and secondly, the personality of Mahatma Gandhi. There is little doubt that the point of view represented by Mr Gandhi and his: friends is as dominant a force in the party to-day as ever it was. And it would be impossible to imagine anything more remote from the ideals of either of the two wings of his party than the future which Mr Gandhi plans for the villages and the countryside ol India. Mr Gandhi’s ideal, in fact, is something entirely different both _ from Socialism and Capitalism. His view is that Western civilisation has gone astray, not in inventing machinery or discovering, natural science, but in falling in love with the results. Because wo now have machines which enable us to transform indefinitely the material surroundings of our life, Western civilisation, he tl links, is obsessed by the urge to get more and more possessions. This surrender to the desire for more and more things—• more food, more clothes, more houses, more motor cars, more movies, more news, more speed—as all the greatest religious teachers ■ have always said, does not bring salvation or happiness. It makes rather for greed and estrangement between individuals, between classes, and between nations. Gandhi considers that fundamentally Socialism does not differ from Capitalism, for while Socialism proposes to produce and distribute' collectively—which may have some advantages— it is dominated as thoroughly as Capitalism by. the desire to hare more i,things.. Moreover, the only .way in which it has ever been put into practice involves a suppression of human individuality and human initiative without which any truly free society is impossible. Therefore Mr Gandhi puts before India as the basis of its future,life, at any rate, so far as the villages are concerned, the ideal of the deliberately simple life, in which all sorts of happiness begin to appear which you miss when you are chasing speed and time as fast as you can. The Mahatma hopes that once it is re-established, this, way of life will make it possible for religion and acquaintance with .the infinite to come back into his people's lives. His method is to hrealk down untouchability in the village, for there can be no real community unless the cliildren can play together; to introduce sanitation, maternity welfare, _ pure water and so on; to base education oh the crafts rather than on literature, though reading, writing, and arithmetic would be a nart of it; to improve the technique of agriculture so as to increase the productivity of the village, which to-day is very low, and so raise, the standard of living to the necessary; minimum for the simple life. Finally he would introduce village handicraft industries—first and foremost the spinning of cotton cloth, but also sugar-making from palm toddy, paper-making and other industries, so that the village will he not only a homogeneous community but also hide-, pendent of the great factory industries for the essentials of its own living.