Mahatma and the spinning wheel

There are several such songs in different languages of India focused on the spinning wheel that was central to Gandhi’s dream of Swaraj. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “For me, nothing in the political world is more important than the spinning wheel”. For him, it was not just a tool for politics but also a metaphor for an ancient work ethics. Curiously, at the time of writing The Hind Swaraj, Gandhi had neither seen a spinning wheel nor did he understand the difference between loom and the spinning wheel. It was in London in 1909 that he felt first that without the spinning wheel there was no swaraj. He was convinced that ‘everyone had to spin’. He had realised quickly enough that in India weaving and spinning were much more than simply an indigenous way of producing textile goods. Spinning was a part of everyday lives of women of almost all sections of society. In 1921, when Gandhi gave his consent to have a Swaraj flag, he insisted on including an image of the charkha in it. He visualized the flag with strips of three colours: white, green and red. For Gandhi green and red represented Muslims and Hindus as they were deemed to be sacred colours by these communities. But since India as a nation comprised many faiths and communities, he wanted to have a third colour white, representing all other communities of the country.

However, when communal violence reared its head, communities began pressurising the Mahatma to include other sacred colours in the flag. Thus, it became imperative for the Congress to distance the party from the colour scheme and its communal connotations. It decided to adopt a party flag instead, Initially, the Flag Committee recommended a single saffron colour flag with a charkha at the centre. This surprised and irked a large number of people, and in 1931, when the All India Congress party finally came up with an official flag, it included the colours saffron, white and green. A blue spinning wheel continued to occupy the central place in the flag.

For Gandhiji, the charkha represented the common man and their sufferings and their fight against the colonial rule. However, when the design of the flag for the independent nation was adopted and unanimously approved in the Constituent assembly of India on 22 July, 1947, the spinning wheel was replaced by the Ashokan wheel, irking Mahatma to no end. In the beginning, Gandhiji had himself reacted bitterly over the issue of the removal of spinning wheel from the flag. He wrote, “… I must say that if the flag of Indian Union will not contain the emblem of the charkha, I will refuse to salute that flag...” He further wrote, “if we neglect the charkha...we will be acting like a man who remembers God in sorrow and forgets him when he showers happiness”. It may be worth noting that earlier he had even suggested a design of the tricolour with a little Union Jack in the corner of the flag.

He said that this would represent our humble gesture toward our own past ruler. This was a broad and inclusive vision of the Mahatma in which there was no exclusion, no enemy and no otherness. In Gandhiji’s scheme of things, charkha was never a tool for e statecraft, instead in his model of swaraj, state and the society were never separated from each other. Sadly, at another level, the charkha acquired a plurality of meanings, in some cases even connoting corruption! In a song from Phanishwar nath Renu’s celebrated novel, Maila Anchal we find a fagua (Holi) song: Jogi ji, tal na tute jogi ji teen tal par dholak baje jogi ji taak dhina dhin! Charkha kato, khaddhar pehno, rahe hath me jholi Din dahare karo dakaiti bol suraji boli Jogiji sar...ar...ar...ra...! (O pure hearted! Don’t break the rhythm, O pure hearted! The drum will be on three beats, Jogi ji tak dhina dhin, spin, wear khaddar, keep a bag in your hand like a saint or a beggar, but carry out daylight robbery with Swaraj on your lips, jogi ji sar...ar...ar...ra!) Here, the spinning wheel is emptied out of its original meanings and historical purpose assigned to it by the Mahatma. Here is an image of corruption and exploitation of the downtrodden. What remains in this process is a kitsch and the husk of a symbol.