Gandhi's peaceful spin
Part two of a three-part series, by Eliza Drummond (from July 2004 SQ)
In the last issue of Spinners' Quarterly I wrote about my thesis entitled "Prayers of Thread: Handspinning as Spiritual Practice." Part of the writing process was a Review of Literature in which I had to read as many books as I could find on the topic of spinning and praying.
No thesis on this topic would be complete without a review of the work of Mahatma Gandhi. I found a gem of a reference, The Gandhian Philosophy of the Spinning Wheel by Mohit Chakrabarti, filled with the words of Gandhi and his devotion to spinning. Gandhi believed so wholeheartedly in the value of spinning and the charkha on which he spun that he claimed to want to die at it.
It was the late 1920s when Gandhi proposed his plan to liberate India from British rule, creating swaraj or self-rule, through the use of the spinning wheel. He believed that if Indians would spin their own cotton to make cloth called khadi instead of buying British-made cloth, they could become self-sufficient. Although Gandhi's spinning campaign was born out of a desire to liberate his people from the oppression of foreign rule and an equally oppressive caste system, he soon grew to recognize that spinning promoted "the education of becoming and being" (Reference).
Gandhi gathered strength through his spinning. It was his time to replenish his soul. Through the wheel, which became a manifestation of the myriad-formed Hindu god, Gandhi prayed for guidance. The charkha became a vehicle for the greatest trait of a divine self, service to others. Spinning combined head and heart, emotion and intellect into a living faith. He wrote:
"We Charkha-pliers are regarded as a dense lot, and indeed we should deserve the description if we ply it unintelligently. [...] And if we could have that faith in the Charkha, it would be a living image for us. And then we would bring to bear on it all our intellect and our will and heart (Reference)."
Although I may not worship the same many-formed God of Gandhi's Hindu faith, I turn to my wheel or spindle when I need guidance. As in the computer games that my son plays, in which the hero must find "manna" or "life energy" in order to complete his mission, I often spin to replenish my energy. And I am not alone. Women and men all over North America sit daily at their wheels, spending time, as Gandhi would have wished, in quiet contemplation.
In order to find out more about why we spin, I sent out 400 questionnaires to 80 spinning guilds across the United States and Canada. In these questionnaires I asked introductory questions such as "how long have you been spinning?" and "how often do you spin?" I also posed questions such as "have you ever thought that spinning is meditative?" and "do you ever spin for the purpose of praying or meditating?" Seventy-five percent of respondents answered that they consider spinning to be meditative, and 40% answered that they actively spin to meditate or pray. Of the latter group, all of them find it effective as a form of meditation and prayer.
The respondents were very adept at pin-pointing the difference between purposely approaching spinning as prayer time and the coincidental, positive side-effects such as peace of mind, lowered heart rate, and patience. Many wrote very eloquently about the prayers that they spin. Sometimes there are prayers for themselves, and sometimes there are prayers for friends in need of comfort. And sometimes they spin, as I think Gandhi often did, to remind themselves that they are part of a master plan. Like the woman who shared these thoughts:
"I find spinning to be immediately centering and calming. I use wheels to produce quantity, but vastly prefer handspindles, and often carry one with me to spin in odd moments. The spindle shaft is the center pole, the world tree. The whorl endlessly revolves--time, earth, generations--constantly moving, but never going anywhere. Individual fibers appear, become one in the thread, and disappear into the cop. Constantly appearing and going on, yet there is seemingly no change, the point of draft is changeless--a continual coming and going. My hands move as hands have moved for tens of thousands of years, as they do now, as hands will. And so it is."
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on his way to evening prayers on January 30, 1948. His legacy of the movement of non-violence remains, fostered by his descendants and followers. And there is a place for spinners in that movement as well. We can honour Gandhi by responding to his request to spin every day, and as we spin, to think of peace and freedom from oppression. The simple work of our hands can liberate our hearts.
Eliza Drummond recently earned a Master's degree in Applied Theology from Marylhurst University in Portland, Oregon. She is currently trying to find creative ways to use all the thread she spun when she should have been reading comparative religion books and finishing papers.
References
Footnotes are page-references to: Chakrabarti, Mohit. The Gandhian Philosophy of the Spinning Wheel. Gandhian Studies for Peace Research Series. New Delhi: Concept Publishing, 2000.
Other reference for this article: M.K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence, http://www.gandhiinstitute.org/, 1 July 2004.