The cult of the Charka which Mahatma Gandhi has been preaching with so much warmth and insistence and the acceptance of which he considers essential to our political regeneration has been a veritable bugaboo to a section of our countrymen. They have been unable to find any justification, political, economic or artistic, for a return to the primitive methods of spinning and weaving consequently fight shy of the whole non-co-operation movement because it imposes what they believe to be an absurd condition. We have before tried to show, in the light of our past history and present conditions, why the charka has had to be given so prominent a place in the non-co-operation programme, and we reproduce below an extract from the current issue of “Capital” in order to convince the sceptics of the practical utility of the Charka as a political weapon. Our contemporary writes: “In this period, the total value of the imports of cotton manufacturers, including twist and yarn, into all India was in 1920, Rs. 36 crores odd; whereas in 1921 it was Rs. 16 crores odd, or less than half. Bengal’s share decreased from Rs. 14,73,18,381 in 1920 to Rs. 8,62,60,588; Bombay’s share from Rs. 17,15,88,624 to Rs. 5,94,50,913...”
