In khadi, Gandhi came closest to finding such a science and his ideal practitioner ~ the satyagrahi scientist, Maganlal Gandhi. In the khadi movement, Gandhian understanding of science was translated into practice leading to the coinage of new terms such as the ‘science of the spinning wheel’ and later ‘khadi science’. Gandhi’s extensive use of the term ‘science’ is found in speeches and discussions with khadi workers. He wanted these workers to become satyagrahi scientists.
The Satyagraha Ashram at Ahmedabad provided the necessary institutional base for training satyagrahi scientists needed for the khadi movement. Foremost amongst them was Maganlal Gandhi, the manager of the Satyagraha Ashram and a long-standing associate of Gandhi. The Ashram in Ahmedabad functioned as a laboratory, educational and training institution, and a production house. For Gandhi, the knowledge of the ‘science of spinning’ was critical to the success of the khadi movement and he, therefore, urged all community workers to be well versed in it. Gandhi believed that only those who had a thorough knowledge of both theoretical and practical aspects of the science of spinning could become village workers. The rigorous technical criteria for khadi workers indicate how Gandhi envisaged the community worker as a scientist.
The worker was to know the different varieties of cotton and the method of picking cotton suitable for hand spinning. The worker had also to be able to test the strength, evenness, and counts of yarn, differentiate a good charkha from a bad one, be able to put dilapidated charkhas under repair and be able to straighten an incorrect spindle (CW 33: 151-52). Apart from improvements in the spinning wheel, Gandhi was also on the lookout for a machine that would produce good spindles. It was this concern that made him and the All-India Spinners Association (AISA) search for a machine to straighten spindles. From the above, one would observe that he was no Luddite or traditionalist.
Where ‘absolutely necessary’, he advised the khadi worker not to hesitate to introduce machinery (CW 36: 347; 37: 211, 41: 511). One of Gandhi’s earliest experiments, both at the Ashram and outside was in the field of science education. Gandhi’s educational scheme was based on an emphasis on the role of manual work, practical training, and the use of the vernacular as a medium of instruction. He cited Japan as an example of an educational system that taught science in the vernacular. Amongst Gandhi’s other major institutional innovations in the 1930s was Nai Talim (or basic education).
It is in his writings on Nai Talim that we find Gandhi’s unique explanation to the question that has troubled many sociologists of science, namely, “Why did India not have the industrial revolution?” Significantly, most of Gandhi’s attempts at institutional reorganization were based on scientific research. For Gandhi, India was an ideal site for experiments on the self and he saw himself as a scientist experimenting to prove the fallacies of the dominant argument on science. A month before his assassination, he wanted the various Sanghs to become research laboratories.
He desired that members of the Sanghs become experts by doing research and discovering new things in the laboratories. From being a serious critic of modern science in his early years, Gandhi later focused more on the possibilities of a new science and its practice. In Gandhi’s scheme, the agency of the scientist was of critical importance. The scientist had to be conscious and self-reflecting. He believed that the right place of the scientist lay with the people. All of Gandhi’s experiments in science attempted to carve out and articulate this domain. (CW 89: 125). He wanted scientists to work on those areas that required ‘tender nursing” which neither the state nor the market could institutionally provide for. This considered and deliberate choice of the subject matter was the first step in his science. To aspiring scientists, he pointed out the need to link external research to internal research. By internal research, Gandhi did not mean a private incommunicable domain of mystic experience but a public space where the questions of science, both moral and societal, would be kept within the purview of common persons.
Gandhi did not provide a blueprint for a scientific method but gave general guidelines for experimentation. He saw his community workers as scientists. Though he was one of the foremost spokespersons of traditional technologies and the artisanal class in contemporary politics, he did not believe in a simple valorisation of the artisanal class. His community workers had, therefore, to go beyond learning the skill. They were to see spinning and weaving not as a trade but as a science. Mastery of the art of spinning was a necessary, but not sufficient condition in his scientific scheme.
This mastery had to be transformed into a science and this was the duty, though not exclusive right, of the educated classes. Gandhi emphasized that the practice of science would need an attitude for research, more than scientific qualifications. More than money, Gandhi emphasised that there was a need for persons with strong faith and willing hands. By insisting that scientists are to provide meaning to what they do, he made clear that he was not interested in mere technical solutions to a problem. The role of the scientist lay not in the realm of fact alone but in creating value.
The charkha for Gandhi was the symbol of a new technology ~ a new relationship of man with nature, a relationship that could be brought into existence only by active, mutually cooperating persons. We have in this paper shown that Gandhi is not anti-science as is commonly misunderstood. Through a look at his various experiments, many unrealised in his time, one would see that Gandhi’s life defined a space for an alternative science for civil society that would operate with different methods. Gandhi’s focus on the non-physical resources in organising for science, the satyagrahi scientist, for instance, is a radical departure from science policy as expressed by Nehru in his famous Scientific Policy Resolution of 1956 and followed in India since independence.
Gandhi also had a universal message by providing a new cosmology of man-nature and fact-value relations that he articulated and put in place through his various experiments. In Gandhi’s science, the agency of the scientist was important. If scientists are not conscious of the condition of society in the perspective of their self-reflecting nature, the basic purpose of using science as a tool of improvement and growth of intrinsic value of the society and its components is lost. Gandhi’s concept of science needs to be understood with this basic tenet.
(The writer is Director & CEO, Sayantan Consultants Pvt. Ltd.)