Dialogue January-March, 2013, Volume 14 No. 3

Gandhi: Basic Education for Self-Sufficiency

K. Walia*

Context
Mahatma Gandhi was bestowed with a prophetic vision and unique foresight. Through his untiring efforts, he acquired an unparalleled understanding of India; its people, their potential, and also of their aspirations and expectations. He was pragmatic in his ideas and his perceptions and percepts on the growth and development of India were always inclusive. One could even say they were more focused on the weaker sections; those who had suffered since ages socially, economically and culturally were uppermost in his mind. Even when independence was nowhere in sight, he had a plan for Independent India. Hind Swaraj written in 1909 when he was 40 years of age had given glaring evidence of how his mind worked and what practical solutions he had for uplifting every Indian. All the time preoccupied with the concerns of his people, the clarity of his thought could be seen in the following propetic words in a letter he wrote on January 24, 1925:

 “We should remember that immediately on the attainment of freedom our people are not going to secure happiness. As we become independent, all the defects of the system of elections, injustice, the tyranny of the richer classes as also the burden of running administration are bound to come upon us. People would begin to feel that during those days, there was more justice, there was better administration, and there was peace, honesty to a great extent among the administrators compared to the days after independence. The only benefit of independence, however, would be that we would get rid of slavery and the blot of insult resulting therefrom.”

“But there is hope, if education spreads throughout the country. From that people would develop from their childhood qualities of pure conduct, God fearing, love. Swaraj would give us happiness only when we attain success in this task. Otherwise India would become the abode for grave injustice and tyranny of the rulers.”

In a rare happening in freedom struggles of colonial nations, Gandhi conceptualized a model of education that was rooted in Indian soil and suitable for all the Indians. It was known as Basic education or Buniyadi Taleem. He accepted suggestions from stalwarts like Dr. Zakir Husain and made changes accordingly. The model was tested and its utility established even before independence. To have a better comprehension of Gandhian ideas on education which had matured after his personal experiments carried out in South Africa; it would be relevant to recall what Gandhi wrote in The Harijan of October 2, 1937;

“Having spoken strongly in 1920 , against the present system of education and having got the opportunity of influencing, however little it may be, ministers in seven Congress provinces…I have felt an irresistible call to make good the charge that the present mode of education is radically wrong from bottom to top. And what I have been struggling to express in these columns very inadequately has come upon me like a flash, and the truth of it is daily growing upon me. I do, therefore, venture to ask the educationists of this country… to study the two propositions that I have laid down, without allowing their preconceived and settled notions about the existing mode of education to interfere the free flow of their reason…

1.     Primary education, extending over a period of seven years or longer, and covering all the subjects up to the matriculation standard, except English, plus a vocation used as a vehicle for drawing out the minds of the boys and girls in all the departments of knowledge, shall take the place of what passes today in the name of primary, middle and high school education.

2.     Such education, taken as a whole must be self-supporting; in fact; self-support is the acid test of its reality.”

 Gandhi had further elaborated the idea of self-supporting education in the same issue. He wanted children to acquire skills and learn such vocations as would enable them to pay for their education out of the earnings of the products resulting out of their ‘work’! While everyone was overwhelmed by the ideas and propositions, Dr. Zakir Husain focused on the pragmatic aspects and the fact that educationists do agree “that true learning can be imparted only through doing. They also know that children have to be taught various subjects through manual work, no matter whether one believes in rural or urban civilization, in violence or nonviolence...” While agreeing that so much could be taught through Charkha and Takli, there may be some subjects that cannot be taught through Takli.” Dr. Zakir Husain referred to experiments of Jon Dewey in United States on similar lines but the experiments failed. He cautioned against over emphasis on self- sufficiency at this stage of education. Gandhi appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Zakir Husain to draft the resolution that was subsequently adopted by the Wardha Conference and became a historic document. Gandhi had in mind boys and girls both from rural and urban India who need to acquire skills to root out unemployment and give a sense of self-respect to everyone. He knew the ills of modern civilization and industrialization and was concerned about it. His vision of education was vast and wide and aimed at total development of the individual as a contributing and creative member of the society. In the Hind Swaraj he quoted Professor Huxley, the famous British luminary: “That man I think has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is clear, cold, logic engine with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order... whose mind is stored with a knowledge of fundamental truths of nature…whose passions are trained to come to heels by vigorous will, the servant of tender conscience… who has learnt to hate all vileness and to respect others as himself. Such a one and no one other, I conceive, has had a liberal education, for he is in harmony with nature. He will make best of her and she of him.” Most of the subsequent writings of Gandhi on education reflect these ideas in Indian context.

Contemporary Context

How valid are the ideas of Gandhi in the current and contemporary milieu? This is the most frequently posed question whenever educational reforms and developments are deliberated upon in scholarly and academic circles.

For Gandhi, education is the means to draw out the comprehensive best in every individual. He emphasized the proper training of organs i.e. the hand, feet, eyes, ears, nose etc. He was of the opinion that education of the intellect can come through only by proper exercise and learning of the body organs i.e. the intelligent use of the organs in a child provides the best and quickest way of developing his/her intellect. “Man is neither mere intellect, nor the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone. A proper and harmonious combination of all the three is required for the making of the whole man and constitutes the true economics of education.”

Gandhi did not believe in the then, existing system of education. He was in search of true education system based on what he himself learnt through experiments carried out in his ashrams in South Africa, experiences gained in understanding the needs and aspirations of Indian people. He desired that each student must learn some useful manual vocation. He himself learnt shoe making and taught to those who were ready to take it up. Likewise carpentry was also taught at the Tolstoy farm. The student had never thought that they would learn shoe making and carpentry besides the three R’s. He felt that spinning must be taught seriously like other subjects.

“If spinning is to be revived as an indispensable industry; it must be treated seriously and must be taught in a proper and scientific manner like the other subjects taught in well-managed schools. The wheels will then be in perfectly good order and condition, will conform to all the tests laid down in these columns from time to time, the pupils’ work would be regularly tested from day to day just as all their exercise would be or should be.”

Gandhi wanted to introduce Takli in the classroom more than the spinning wheel as he felt that the Takli was the most economical and the most profitable of the instrument that could be available to one and all. “Now you might well ask me why I picked up the Takli out of many other existing handicrafts. Because Takli was one of the first crafts that we found out and which has subsisted through the ages. In the earliest ages all our cloth used to be made of Takli yarn. The spinning wheel came later, and as the finest counts could not be produced on the spinning wheel one had to go back to the Takli. In devising the Takli man’s inventive genius reached a height that had not been reached before. The cunning of the fingers was put to the best possible use. But as the Takli was confined to the artisans who were never educated, it fell into disuse. If we want to revive it today in all its glory, if we are to revive and reconstruct village life, we must begin the education of children with the Takli. My next lesson would therefore be to teach the boys the place Takli used to occupy in our daily life. Next I would take them into a little history and teach them how it declined. Then would follow a brief course in Indian history, starting from the East India Company, or even earlier from the Muslim period, giving them a detailed account of the exploitation that was the stock-in-trade of the East India Company, how by a systematic process our main handicraft was strangled and ultimately killed. Next would follow a brief course in mechanics— construction of the Takli.”

Gandhi believed that there is a need for bold experiments in education based upon deep thought. “The field of education which holds the seeds of the future of the children of the soil requires absolute sincerity, fearlessness in the pursuit of truth and boldest experiments, provided always that they are sound and based upon deep thought”.

Gandhi had always cultivated close contact with the students. He felt that existing education was unnatural. In his address to the students in Pune 1948 he said that the students must do sacrificial spinning in a scientific manner. Their tools should always be neat, clean and in good order and condition. He further added that if possible the students must learn to make the tools themselves. He desired that the students learn the literature about spinning with all its economic, social and moral implications.

In his address to the students in 1929, he asked them if they had ever considered at what cost to the country they are receiving their education. “Have you ever considered at what cost to the country you are receiving your education? As students of economics you might know that the fees that you pay hardly cover a fraction of the amount that is spent on education out of the public exchequer. Have you ever thought as to where the rest of the money comes from? It comes from the pockets of the poor, the walking skeletons of Orissa. They do not know what college education means their eyes lack lustre; their bodies are emaciated……….Nor should you forget that your education is financed out of the notorious ‘excise revenue’ which spells the moral ruin of so many of our fellow-countrymen”. When Gandhi speaks this language, he is in fact emphasizing on human values to consider one’s obligations to the society and the people. It also points out on economic aspects that one must always weigh the process of his earnings and financial gains in terms of ethical and moral standards.”

Gandhi placed prime importance to industrial training. He suggested that in order to make education compulsory in the initial stages, or even available to every boy or girl who wishes to receive higher education, schools and colleges should become self-supporting, not through donations or State aid or fees taken from students, but through remunerative work done by the students themselves and that could be done only by making industrial training compulsory. “Apart from the necessity which is daily being more and more recognized of students having an industrial training side by side with literary training, there is in this country the additional necessity of pursuing industrial training in order to make education directly self-supporting. This can only be done when our students begin to recognize the dignity of labour and when the convention is established or regarding ignorance of manual occupation a mark of disgrace. In America, which is richest country in the world and where therefore perhaps there is the least need for making education self-supporting, it is the most usual thing for students to pay their way wholly or partially. Thus says the Hindustani Student, the official bulletin of the Hindustan Association of America, 500 Riverside Drive, New York City:

Approximately 50 per cent of the American students use the summer vacation and part of their time during the academic year to earn money. ‘Self-supporting students are respected’, writes the bulletin of the California University. With reasonable diligence a student can devote from 12 to 25 hours per week (during the academic year) to outside work without seriously interfering with college work of 12 to 16 units (credits) involving 36 to 48 hours a week …………………… a student should have some sort of practical knowledge of the following: carpentry, surveying, drafting , bricklaying, plastering, auto-driving, photography, machine-shop work, dyeing , field work, general farm work, instrumental music and so on. Such common work as waiting on table for two hours, etc. is available during the academic year, which relieves a student from expenses for board.

If America has to model her schools and colleges so as to enable students to earn their scholastic expenses, how much more necessary it must be for our schools and colleges? Is it not far better that we find work for poor students than that we pauperize them by providing free studentships? It is impossible to exaggerate the harm we do to Indian youth by filling their minds with the false notion that it is ungentlemanly to labour with one’s hands and feet for one’s livelihood or schooling. The harm done is moral and material, indeed much moral than material. A free scholarship lies and should lie like a load upon a conscientious lad’s, mind throughout his whole life. No one likes to be reminded in after life that he had to depend upon charity for his education. Contrarily where is the person who will not recall with pride those days if he had the good fortune to have had them when he worked in a carpentry-shop or the like for the sake of educating himself — mind, body and soul?” Today, it is well established that the skill orientation and vocational training in schools and colleges has contributed most effectively in the progress and growth of countries like Korea and China.

For Gandhi the teaching of handicrafts was central to the whole education programme. His plan was to impart primary education through the medium of village handicrafts like spinning and carding, etc., as the spearhead of a silent social revolution fraught with the most far-reaching consequences. He felt that it would provide a healthy and moral basis of relationship between the city and the village and thus go a long way towards eradicating some of the worst evils of social insecurity and poisoned relationship between the classes. Gandhi was very keen to have schools that could be self-supporting. A school which would have a spinning and weaving institution with a cotton field attached to it which would revolutionize the ideas of financing education.

The quotations given below very clearly indicate the total philosophy of Gandhi on education that liberates every person from the bonds of humiliation, exploitation, misery, dependence and subservience. These if incorporated in educational plans of India could create a new system that would receive far greater acceptance from the masses, would also incorporate the modern techniques and technologies in appropriate manner as Gandhi Ji was always in favour of a dynamic approach to life and every area of human activity. He was always ready to receive new ideas from outside and put them to the best use in the India context.

“We can work a school for six hours per day and give free education to the pupils. Supposing a boy works at the wheel for four hours daily, he will produce every day 10 tolas of yarn and thus earn for his school one Anna (one-sixteenth of a Rupee) per day. Suppose further that he manufactures very little during the first month, and that the school works only twenty six days in the month. He can earn after the first month Rs. 1-10-0 per month. A class of thirty boys would yield, after the first month, an income of Rs. 48-12-0 per month. I have said nothing about literary training. It can be given during the two hours out of the six. It is easy to see that every school can be made self-supporting without much effort and the nation can engage experienced teachers for its schools”.

The difficulty Gandhi found in working out the scheme was the spinning wheel which would require thousands of wheels. He felt that, every village carpenter could easily construct the machines. “It is a serious mistake to order them from the Ashram or any other place. The beauty of spinning is that it is incredibly simple, easily learnt, and can be cheaply introduced in every village. The course suggested by me is intended only for this year of purification and probation. When normal times are reached and Swaraj is established, one hour only may be given to spinning and the rest to literary spinning.”

“Our education should not be financed out of the excise revenue, neither out of land revenue. Under Swaraj its main prop should be the spinning wheel. If the spinning wheel and the loom are introduced in every school and college, our education would easily pay its way. Today, I would like our boys to give all their time to spinning. After Swaraj is attained, at least one hour will have to be given. Swaraj must react in each and every department of our life. Our schools today are so many factories to turn out slaves from. Education under Swaraj will aim at making boys self-supporting from their youth. Any other profession may be taught them, but spinning will be compulsory. The spinning wheel ought to be the solace of the miserable. Nothing else has its virtues for it alone can supplement agriculture. All cannot be carpenters, nor smiths, but all must be spinners, and must spin either for their country or to supplement their own earnings. Because the need of clothing is universal the presence of the spinning also needs to be universal. Let us have spinning introduced from now as a necessary adjunct to literary education, so that under Swaraj we may not have to fight over this question anew.

Gandhi said that it was a matter of deep humiliation for the country to find its children educated from the excise revenue. “We shall deserve the curse of posterity if we do not wisely decide to stop the drink evil, even though we may have to sacrifice the education of our children. But we need not. I know, many of you have laughed at the idea of making education self-supporting by introducing spinning in our schools and colleges. I assure you that it solves the problem of education as nothing else can. The country cannot bear fresh taxation. Even the existing taxation is unbearable. Not only must we do away with the opium and the drink revenue, but the other revenues have also to be very considerably reduced if the ever-growing poverty of the masses is to be combated in the near future.                                                                 Who does not know what questionable things fathers of families in need of money for their children’s education have considered it their duty to do? I am convinced that we are in for far worse times, unless we change the whole system of our education. We have only touched the fringe of an ocean of children. The vast mass of them remain without education, not for want of will but of ability and knowledge on the part of the parents. There is something radically wrong, especially for a nation as poor as ours, when parents have to support so many grown up children, and give them a highly expensive education without the children making any immediate return. I can see nothing wrong in the children, from the very threshold of their education, paying for it in work. The simplest handicraft suitable for all, required for the whole of India, is undoubtedly spinning along with the previous processes. If we introduced this in our educational institutions, we should fulfill three purposes, make education self-supporting, train the bodies of the children as well as their minds, and pave the way for a complete boycott of foreign yarn and cloth. Moreover, the children thus equipped will become self-reliant and independent.

Gandhi expected, every boy and girl of school going age to attend school and for that there were no means to finance education nor were millions of parents able to pay the fees that are at present imposed. Education to be universal must therefore be free. “I fancy that even under an ideal system of Government, we shall not be able to devote two thousand million rupees which we should require for funding education for all the children of school going age. It follows, therefore, that our children must be made to pay in labour partly or wholly for all the education they receive. Such universal labour to be profitable can only be (to my thinking) hand-spinning and hand-weaving. But for the purposes of my proposition, it is immaterial whether we have spinning or any other form of labour, so long as it can be turned to account. Only, it will be found upon examination that on a practical, profitable and extensive scale, there is no occupation other than the processes connected with cloth production which can be introduced in our schools throughout India.”

It was thought that introduction of manual training would serve a double purpose in a poor country like India. It would pay for the education of children and teach them an occupation on which they could fall back, if they choose for earning a living. Such a system would make the children self-reliant. “Nothing will demoralize the nation so much as that we should learn to despise labour.”

As a lover of the Gurukula, I may be permitted to offer one or two suggestions to the Committee and the parents. The Gurukula boys need a thorough industrial training if they are to become self-reliant and self-supporting. It seems to me that in our country in which 85 per cent of the population is agricultural and perhaps10 per cent occupied in supplying the wants of the peasantry, it must be part of the training of every youth that he has a fair practical knowledge of agriculture and hand-weaving. He will lose nothing if he knows a proper use of tools can saw a piece of board straight and build a wall that will not come down through a faulty handling of the plumber’s line. A boy, who is thus equipped, will never feel helpless in battling with the world and never be in want of employment. Elementary knowledge of the laws of hygiene and sanitation, as well as the art of rearing children, should also form a necessary part of the Gurukula lads. The sanitary arrangements at the fair left much to be desired. The plague of flies told its own tale. These irrepressible sanitary inspectors incessantly warned us that in point of sanitation all was not well with us. They plainly suggested that the remains of our food and excreta need to be properly buried. It seemed to me to be such a pity that a golden opportunity was being missed of giving to the annual visitors’ practical lessons on sanitation. But the work must begin with the boys. Thus the management would have at the annual gathering three hundred practical sanitary teachers. Last but not least, let the parents and the Committee not spoil their lads by making them ape European dress or modern luxuries. These will hinder them in their afterlife and are antagonistic to brahmacharya. They have enough to fight against in the evil inclinations common to us all. Let us not make their fight more difficult by adding to their temptations.

You may ask: “Why should we use our hands?” and say’ the manual work has got to be done by those who are illiterate. I can only occupy myself with reading literature and political essays.’ I think we have to realize the dignity of labour. If a barber or shoemaker attends a college, he ought not to abandon the profession of a barber or shoemaker. I consider that a barber’s profession is just as good as the profession of medicine.

Whatever may be true of other countries, in India at any rate where more than eighty per cent of the population is agricultural and another ten per cent industrial, it is a crime to make education merely literary, and to unfit boys and girls for manual work in afterlife? Indeed I hold that as the larger part of our time is devoted to labour for earning our bread; our children must from their infancy be taught the dignity of such labour. Our children should not be so taught as to despise labour. There is no reason why a peasant’s son after having gone to a school should become useless, as he does become, as agricultural labourer. It is a sad thing that our schoolboys look upon manual labour with disfavour, if not contempt.

Gandhi was of the firm view that in any curriculum of the future, spinning ought to be a compulsory subject. Just as we cannot live without breathing and without eating, so is it impossible for us to attain economic independence and banish pauperism from this ancient land without reviving home-spinning. I hold the spinning wheel to be as much a necessity in every household as the hearth. No other scheme that can be devised will ever solve the problem of the deepening poverty of the people.

The Emerging Context

It may surprise many how Gandhian ideas are being studied with great interest and appreciation in the current times. Many world leaders, scholars and academics proudly claim that they owe their rise in life and capabilities to contribute effectively in public life was inspired by the ideas and thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi. Somehow, in education policy formulations, the continuity took precedence over transition to the Gandhian model that was deeply rooted in the Indian ethos. It is being realized that somewhere in the process of national development, rural India has not reaped the benefits to the extent Gandhi would have liked. In the second edition of Basic National Education published in May 1938, he wrote in the foreword that “a more correct though much less attractive description” of the scheme would be “Rural National education through Village Handicrafts”. It indicates what was paramount in his mind; he wanted to transform village crafts and traditional skills in to scientifically assisted vocations. Now that India has set up the National Mission on Skill Development and targets equipping millions and millions of young boys and girls in skills suitable for current and emerging vocations; it is indeed the right time to reconsider Gandhian ideas which have the potential and practicability to transform the rural economy, revitalize rural youth power and ensure a reasonable and acceptable distribution of economic gains; which at present are not filtering down to the weak, deprived and deficient.

The future policy formulations could also give far greater emphasis on Common School System towards which a partial attempt has been made through certain provisions of the Right to Education Act of 2009 which has been implemented from April 01, 2010 onwards. There is also a need to reemphasis elementary education through mother tongue as was envisaged in the Wardha Conference Resolution. People often express their apprehensions on the “overemphasis’ given to Takli. It has to be understood and appreciated in the contemporary context. If Gandhi was writing Hind Swaraj in 2012, he would certainly have pleaded for the use of computers and more prominently of the Internet. It is a great medium to spread the message of Truth, Peace, Nonviolence, Righteous Conduct and Universal love. Skill orientation must always be viewed in the context of ‘drawing out the best out of body, mind and spirit’. Skill is necessary but that alone cannot be the objective of education. Here it must be added that while skill is necessary for any work that alone is not the end. Dr. Zakir Husain while addressing the Second Basic Education Conference held in Jamia Millia Islamia in April 1941 had stated; “…work can be truly educative only if it serves values higher than mere personal ends, values beyond ourselves, which we acknowledge and revere. He who works for himself without doubt becomes skilled, but we would not consider him really educated.”

Gandhian concept of Basic education is far more relevant today than in the past when it was initially proposed. In a world torn between violence and deprivation in times of unhindered materialistic pursuits, it is the trusted path towards comprehensive education that instills human values and prepares everyone for a decent and dignified life.

Further Reading

   1.  Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule; Navjivan Publishing House;  Ahmadabad.

   2.  Mohan-Mala; A Gandhian Rosary; Navjivan Publishing House,  Ahmadabad.

   3.  Gandhi on Education; NCTE, New Delhi.

   4.  My experiments with Truth, Navjivan Publishing House; Ahmadabad.

   5.  Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj; A fresh look; Kanti Shah; Other India Press,  Mapusa, Goa; 403507.

   6.  Gandhi Katha;  Narayan Desai; Ahmedabad Management association;  Ahmadabad.

   7.  Gandhi’s Philosophy of Education; Glyn Richards; Oxford University Press.