April 20, 2015

Every week, we feature excerpts by Gandhi that lend insight into his values and personal practices.

While his first statements on the problems of technology/"cililization" were clearly articulated in Hind Swaraj, Gandhi also wrote in Harijan Newspaper (1935): "I would prize every invention of Science made for the benefit of all." Furthermore, in 1946 he stressed that his "opposition to machinery is much misunderstood." He added, "I am not opposed to machinery as such. I am opposed to machinery which displaces labour and leaves it idle." Here we present some more of Gandhi's views on technology with an inprint of inner-transformation and interconnectedness.

November 13, 1924

"I want the concentration of wealth, not in the hands of a few, but in the hands of all. Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the backs of millions. The impetus behind it all is not the philanthropy to save labour, but greed. It is against this constitution of things that I am fighting with all my might...." (1) 

"Organization of machinery for the purpose of concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few and for the exploitation of many I hold to be altogether wrong. Much of the organization of machinery of the present age is of that type. The movement of the spinning-wheel is an organized attempt to displace machinery from that state of exclusiveness and exploitation and to place it in its proper state. Under my scheme, therefore, women and men in charge of machinery will think not of themselves or even of the nation to which they belong, but of the whole human race." (2)

"I refuse to be dazzled by the seeming triumph of machinery. I am uncompromisingly against all destructive machinery. But simple tools and instruments and such machinery as saves individual labour and lightens the burden of the millions of cottage I should welcome." (3)

M.K. Gandhi

Sources
(1)Young India, 13-11-1924, p. 378
(2) Young India, 17-9-1925, p. 321
(3) Young India, 17-6-1926, p. 218
 

Be The Change

This week pay attention how you use technology in a way that continues to report to our collective humanity and Planet -- and not the other way around.