GANDHI ON TECHNOLOGY

TRANSLATION OF AN EXCERPT FROM ‘INDRAIYA GANDHI’

BY JEYAMOHAN

             To look at Gandhi in the context of technology is to understand that he was a man who had his doubts on modernism and looked beyond that….

       ….When once asked ‘Do you hate machines?’ ‘No’, answered Gandhi ‘While my body on itself is nothing but a meticulous machinery How can I dismiss it? My spinning wheel or even this toothpick, for that matter, is a machine. I hate not the machines, but this growing passion for machines. I hate the passion for the machines which work upon diminishing man power. Some talk about machine which could spare man power when thousands of people are thrown jobless on the streets. Yes, I want the human toil and time to be spared not just for a sect of people but for the humanity. I want the wealth to be accumulated not just in few hands but for all the people in the world. Today machines favor putting handful of people on top thousands.’

          Gandhi at the same time was not against modernization. He was against worshipping technology as a lord of salvation. As he thought salvation can never be brought from outside but attained internally. When one’s soul is intoxicated by greed, Gandhi thought technology inevitably represents it.  

          He was not unaware of the role of tools in human upliftment. In fact, he had great curiosity towards tools. He had accepted many of the modern technological inventions not as a compromise but as a necessity.

         He traveled on trains, busses, and ships. He once studied mechanism of propeller from the motor room while traveling on a ship to England. He reached out to the public through loudspeakers and printing machines. He was against mechanization at the same time.

        This contradiction must be looked upon from his conception on tools. Gandhi though tools are, and must be, mere extensions of our body. Man expanded his body with his creative potential into tools. Tools make it possible for man to do things that are detailed and sophisticated. A thread can be spun by hand but a spinning wheel does it more efficiently. At this level machine remain as a part of man’s creative potency.

              But modern technology diminishes man to a small working part of machinery. Henry Ford’s assembly line mechanism, in particular, demands man to be nothing more than a machine’s servant. Here man’s creative energy is completely depreciated. A link is lost between him and the product.

          Moreover mechanization raises the notion of ‘extensive production’ pushing the public to a point of extensive consumption. Utility is built up, after production, by intense advertisement. Economically, this is walking upside down. Nature can’t bear this production rage. Gandhi thought it would be deleterious.

        

              Let us consider train, an inevitable mode of transportation of the modern times. It connects landscapes, people. But what is it used for today? We floor our houses in Tami nadu with marble from Rajasthan. The labor and money put into this act is utterly meaningless. Why do we do this? It’s because we have got train. Thus technology gives raise to consumption. This is a road to depletion, Gandhi says. 

              Almost everyone of his time were worshippers of technology. Nehru, Ambedhkar, Tagore were all criticizing his allegations on technology. They even laughed him off at certain instances. Technology, according to them, is a human marvel, a boon to ‘toiling’ human race. 

             Not until the after years of World War-2 did the distrusts on modern technology and industrial revolution gained political significance. It is after this point new method of thoughts came to the surface at various fields taking up Gandhi. Post-modernism evolved from them Gandhi was rediscovered on this post-modern era.

                 One can identify many of post-modern economists and technological thinkers with thoughts and views parallel to Gandhi. Being scholars they have analyzed Gandhi’s doubts and rejection with factual information and proposed them with deeper insights.

     

               


                  Three of them are influential. One of them, Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, a British economist is a worldwide environmentalist’s favorite. His book ‘Small Is Beautiful’, considered one of the most influential books of post-world war era, nails down Gandhi’s criticisms on modern technology in an elaborate manner and suggests alternatives. Even the alternatives greatly resemble Gandhian way. He proposes indigenous small-scale production based on local environment and necessity, he terms this “appropriate technology”, as an alternative for centralized large-scale production.                                            

                  

                   Next comes Ivan Illich. He came up with strong criticisms by the end of 1960’s on modernism’s two great establishments medicine and education. His book ‘Deschooling Society’ illustrates how under modernism education is being generalized, institutionalized mechanizing the civic society. His another book ‘Medical Nemesis’ explains how under modernism medicine gives raise to disease and how doctors becoming excessively trained highly specialized elite, have come to dominate over the public. This book formed the foundation for every debate on modern medicine since.

                    Thirdly Masanobu Fukuoka, the Japanese agriculturist. His book ‘One Straw Revolution’ talks about modern agriculture exploiting soil excessively making it infertile piece of wasteland. He also putforth the concept of ‘natural farming’ or ‘do-nothing farming’ as a pioneer.

                 Gandhi, at the dawn of modernism, foretold most of the concepts putforth by environmentalists today. Now he is considered as a pioneer by environmentalists all over the world. One must approach him as a post-modern philosopher from the age of modernism.

               Gandhi thought about shortcomings of modern technology and found out the major one to be ‘self sustainability’. The society satisfied of its basic needs leads a better life. This cannot be rendered by modern technology as it can only exist on exploiting millions. Modern technology, Gandhi said can never be self sustainable.

                 Gandhi imagined a complete self sustained society without exploitation. He formulated this idea on his book ‘Hind Swaraj’. His dream is a nation of villages with small-scale cottage industries not ventured by modern technology. He proposed a way of life, receiving only minimum necessity from nature. Such a nation wouldn’t be dependent on other nation, he said.

             But Gandhi wasn’t inflexible in his views and ideas. He gave up his complete early dismissal of machines, reached a point close to Schumacher’s concept of “Appropriate technology”, where in he came to the conclusion that machines are acceptable as long as they take human creative potential forward.

                                                                  

           Long recorded conversations of Gandhi with Ramachandran, of Kanya Kumari, who had been with him in his later years, best reveal Gandhi’s views on technology. Sinker tailoring machine, according to Gandhi, is a fantastic machine. It enhances user’s creativity and inspires him to be more productive, he explains.

            “Machines have their purpose and they will always be there sharing their space among us. But they shouldn’t ever knock off last set of human contribution from a working unit”, Gandhi felt this contribution above mentioned is inevitable, of course, not for the system but for man himself. “An advanced plough is great, but if one could plough entire Indian farmlands with a technology, thousands are left with no work to do and they, therefore, starve to death”. This was his view on technology in nutshell.

               Thereby, Gandhi emphasized on ‘gram swaraj’. “Reconstructing our villages is not possible until we reach a point when they are no more exploited. Large scale production and commercialization only gives way to competition and rigorous marketing leaching rural public at the end. So, we must look into the ways of making villages self-sustained”

             A fairly small island of Britton needed wealth of no less than ten countries the size of India to modernize, world wouldn’t be enough for India to attain such a state, said Gandhi. Today the naked reality in front of us is that, in the process of modernization, we are committing to Africa, what America did to us.

            We witness countless villages being deteriorated and reports of farmers killing themselves as we march towards modernism. Gandhi repeatedly warned this with rightful vehemence of a prophet that he is. The voice of a philosopher, who had foreseen limitations of modern technology.

               The ‘charkha’ (spinning wheel) Gandhi took up has two sides to it. One as an economical tool. A plan he devised to employ thousands of weavers unemployed due to mass industrial production of British. History has it that it fed mouth of thousands for more than thirty years as a successful economical organization.  

             On the other side, it stands there as an icon, a symbol of appropriate technology Gandhi proposed, a symbol of confidence on self-reliance. It represents any individual protest against engulfing tyranny of ultra-technology, in IT too!

             Gandhi’s ways over and over stress upon minimal consumption, acquiring just the needs from the nature. ”Nature can serve man’s need but not greed” he said. He thought about giving them back to nature. ‘Charkha’ symbolises these attitudes collectively.  

                 Modern technology, which moved on dismissing Gandhi as orthodox, has drained most of our groundwater resources over the second half of 19’Th century. Three fourth of our forests are clear-felled. Our lands are dumped with non-decomposable wastes and buried with nuclear wastes. Farming has become largely unprofitable hanging on to government aided subsidies. After all, poverty still exists.                    

                Gandhi identified modernism’s deadly cycle of ultra technology-big business-consumerism, the one which western researchers later brought to limelight. Today, any one affiliated with technology, somehow, has questions of conscience to face. Gandhi’s solutions might not be completely palpable, but that doesn’t make his doubts and questions meaningless. He was the starting point of the lookout for alternatives. Sooner or later, world would have to get there but Gandhi launched the quest.

               Lately, books with similar viewpoints are swarming, making it impossible for literary reader like myself to follow through. I read what my friends recommend and in that way, Robert W Hunt’s ‘An American Looks at Gandhi; Essays In Satyagraha, Civil Rights And Peace’ is a significant book, it talks about Gandhi’s limitations as well. His essay ‘Mohandas K. Gandhi: Citizenship and Community for an Industrial Age’ discusses of Gandhi’s view on technology.

             What would tomorrow be like? Today’s greed for profit might warily spawn some kind of international constraint for consumption. International restrictions on destroying nature for technological growth would possibly be implemented. Less fuel consumption, minimizing mobility can all be anticipated. May be in future, waste pile generating cities might degrade decentralizing civilization towards self-sustained villages. Those villages might opt appropriate technologies like solar power plants as energy resource. That is, modern technology might itself find its lesser destructive alternatives. Gandhi’s dream of Self-sustained villages has more possibilities to it than he would have possibly imagined, say Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph in their book ‘Postmodern Gandhi And Other Essays’

              Gandhi is a significant figure for one who approaches with such an understanding. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND THE BOOK

               Jeyamohan, one of the leading figures of modern Tamil literary scene in both fiction and non fiction, has always been interested in Gandhian views. But not until he wrote the book 'Indraiya Gandhi'(Gandhi today), was his Gandhian  views and thoughts completely expressed. The book has the form of brief skeptical questions of his readers answered in an elaborate manner. Thus the book, inevitably, has an argumentative tone to it. The above article legitimately leaves out such portions. Most of the book deals with common political deceptions and factual fallacy embedded in Tamil minds, while last third of the book, where this article takes part explains Gandhian ideologies, on an introductory level.

            This book is to aware people of Gandhi's significance in post modern way of thought, author says, it should be start not a final reading of him. The prose here, arguably the among the best of Tamil non-fictional writing, is more interested in ideas rather than facts. Though facts are almost foolproof author does not wait to prove them. The way to read it is not to find minor factual errors and arguing against it but to get the apparent idea and giving a thought in that direction, for which the prose offers plenty of scope. 

            The book gives raise to the notion of looking at Gandhi as a western thinker deeply influenced by his Jain roots. It also puts a light on contradictory view points between Gandhi and his contemporaries. It talks about how Gandhi looked at system from down below while others looked at it from above and consequently while Gandhi fought for freedom of individual others fought for independent rule. Had he been  still alive at present, he would probably still be fighting, perhaps with more vigor than he ever had