The Wheel of Fortune/Chapter 17
THE DOCTRINE OF CHARKA
[The opening session of the National College, Calcutta, under the auspices of the Board of Education, formed by Srijuts Chittaranjan Das, Jitendralal Banerjee and other non-co-operation leaders, took place on Friday the 4th February 1921. In opening this College, Mahatma Gandhi addressed the students and professors, from which the following is culled.]
We have sufficiently talked about Charka and how it is going to free India—how a nation that came through the Charka to this country as traders, merchants and travellers settled themselves down as rulers with our co-operation, and how non-co-operation and by means of that very Indian Charka they will go back to their own country if they cannot live as fellow citizens in India.
There are peoples who say—"how can you expect the Mahomedans to be non-violent." How, I do not want to speak out. I want the Charka itself to speak out. The whole Europe will know when we place these Charkas in our mosques. Something like 800 Charkas had been ordered for the mosques so that the people who come there should be able to produce Indian yarn with which Indian clothes should be woven by Indian hands in Indian homes to clothe our nakedness or at least to provide home-spun shrouds for us. Thus every revolution of the Charka I can assure you, will bring the success of this bloodless revolution the nearer every day. That is the doctrine of Charka. Therefore I ask you to work up this doctrine which will be a great advertisement both of our determination to win freedom, and if possible, through peaceful means.
If you are determined to have the freedom of your country, if you want to see the cessation of our slavery in which we are living for close upon two centuries, it requires from you a peaceful battle—the battle of the Charka. Y. I.—9th Feb. 1921.