How Mahatma Gandhi Influenced Me

                        How Mahatma Gandhi Influenced Me

                            Jawhar Sircar

                                   Prabha, Special Issue on Gandhi

                                          Issue 18, September 2020

           Strange as it may sound, there was a wave of disenchantment about Gandhiji in West Bengal after Independence and it was passed on to us who were born within a few years of freedom. It stemmed, perhaps, from the shoddy treatment that was meted out to Netaji by a group in the Congress that was close to the Mahatma. Many of us, therefore, began with a negative ‘opening balance’ about Gandhi and that is what makes our turnaround more interesting.

            In my closing days in college, I was drawn, quite inexplicably, towards him in a love-hate sort of way that was exacerbated by a youthful judgemental disposition. This is when a senior retired professor invited me to the Gandhi Peace Foundation that had a valuable library and quite near to my house. A special attraction was the standing invitation to attend their programmes to listen to well known erudite personalities. I was keen to learn about new ideas and things and also how to improve near my public speaking. No one asked me to read the several volumes on Gandhi but, after some initial avoidance, I started flipping through his ‘Young India’ articles. I discovered gradually that was not an obscurantist abs that he did make a lot of sense. I stayed with the Foundation and even joined its gentle but firm opposition to Indira Gandhi’s autocratic rule, until it was raided and banned immediately after she declared Emergency on 25th June 1975.

            Within three weeks of this, I left Kolkata for Mussoorie to join the IAS. Our director of the Academy was a strong Gandhian who insisted that our ‘privileged lot’ undertake physical labour for the benefit of society —starting with the digging of channels for rainwater to flow on the mountain slopes. Frankly, till then, I felt that Gandhiji was too biassed in favour of backward rural India and dead against science, industrial and urban progress. It was only when a know-all city dweller like me went to villages  deep in the interior of Barddhaman district next year did I realise that the Mahatma was not exaggerating at all. True, poor villagers in Bengal were not docile victims of socio economic exploitation like in some other parts of India, but their political or vocal stand did not really help in lifting them from poverty.

           Life was, indeed, miserable for them and I soon learnt that unless the poor, especially farmers and landless labourers, picked up some additional income through rural crafts and skills, they would get just one meal a day. Sometimes, not even that. I plunged headlong into assisting them with whatever governmental scheme was available and applicable to them. I came to learn that they heard their stories. One group had to stop manufacturing local soaps that were so popular till a few years ago because mass produced ‘factory soaps’ undercut them. Another group that used to make boards out of straw were out-priced by factory manufactured ones. There were entire castes like sankharis (conch shell goods makers), kansaris (brass and bell metal craftsmen), gharamis (paddy straw thatchers) that had been thrown out of work by cheaper industrial products. I went back to Gandhi for guidance and I soon realised that economics and profits were not everything and that hungry mouths had to be fed. In any case, traditional skills must not be made to die. Gainful employment of the rural communities was certainly more important in such a populous poor country like ours. It was a reality that Gandhiji had realised much before we learnt it first hand. This was 1976, when most anti poverty governmental schemes were in their infancy.

             With the help of two very dedicated Gandhian workers we could reenergise two dormant societies, one to produce hand-made paper, boards, file covers and assorted items from locally available agricultural waste materials and the other was to help jobless tribal brass artisans. The first one was quite successful especially because all government offices started buying file covers and other products that lasted many years more than mass-produced stuff. We could explain that higher costs were quite justifiable in the long run. The brass artisans we refer to are known as Dhokras and they are found in Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bengal and some other states as well. The members of the tribe used to melt down old broken items of brass, copper and bell metal and then mould the metal into paus or open pots of different specific sizes to measure grain, pulses and seeds. When the metric system of measurement by weight replaced this volume-wise or fluid system a decade earlier, they were suddenly thrown out of employment. We set up a camp office at Dariapur village that had a concentration of Dhokra artisans and started training them in better technologies and experimenting with new products. The old paus could be reshaped into ash-trays and flower vases while their ethnic deities could also be tried out in the urban market. They were a hit within a few months before I left the district.

                      But my association with village crafts and employment intensive production had just begun. I understood then that Gandhiji was not against industrialisation per se. All he wanted at least those rural crafts and skills that provided employment to the poorest should not be steam rollered by capital intensive mass produced goods. My preferences and world views in this domain were sharpening and a few years later, I felt good to be posted as the head of handicrafts in West Bengal — even though it came to me as a punishment posting for picking up a quarrel with a very senior minister. I enjoyed the work, in spite of what people said about the sector but the next year I was made the Director in charge of the state’s cottage and small scale industries. There is no point in recalling all that we could do — from introducing the scientific flaying, skinning and preservation of leather to a whole range of small scale industrial products.

            Over the next two decades as one moved from place to place and post to post, the sense of mission inspired by the Mahatma and Tagore continued unabated. Suddenly in 2006 I received my promotion order as Additional Secretary to the Government of India and was made the Development Commissioner for small scale industries for the entire country. The mandate was, however, to modernise this rather archaic sector into ‘micro small and medium industries’ or MSMEs. What had begun as an argumentative journey to test whether Gandhi was right or wrong had transformed on its own into a mission or a guiding compass in life.