Jain Spirit 2000 03 No 03

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 46

Gandhi wrote: "It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions of people have ceased to use their hands as hands. Nature has bestowed upon us this great gift, which is our hand. If the craze for machinery methods continues, it is highly likely that a time will come when we shall be so incapacitated and weak that
we shall begin to curse ourselves for having forgotten the use of living machines given to us by God. Millions cannot keep fit by games and athletics, and why should they exchange the useful, productive, hardy occupations for the useless, unproductive and expensive sports and games?"
Mass production is only concerned with the product, whereas production by the masses is concerned with the product, the producers and the process. The driving force behind mass production is a cult of the individual. What motive can there be for the expansion of the economy on a global scale other than the desire for personal and corporate profit? In contrast, a locally based economy enhances community spirit, community relationships and community well-being. Such an economy encourages mutual aid. Members of the village take care of themselves, their families, their neighbours, their animals, lands, forestry and all the natural resources for the benefit of the present and future generations.
Mass production leads people to leave their villages, their land, their craft and their homestead, and go to work in factories. Instead of dignified human beings and members of a self-respecting village community, people become cogs in the machines, standing at the conveyor belt, living in shantytowns, and depending on the mercy of the bosses. Fewer and fewer people are then needed for work, because the industrialists want greater productivity.
The masters of the money economy want more and more efficient machines to work faster and faster, and the result could be that men and women will be thrown on the scrapheap of unemployment. Such a society generates rootless and jobless millions living as dependents of the state or begging in the streets. In swadeshi, the machine would be subordinated to the worker; it would not be allowed to become the master, dictating the pace of human activity. Similarly, market forces would serve the community rather than forcing the people to fit the market.
GANDHI'S SEVEN SOCIAL SINS
POLITICS....
WEALTH.. COMMERCE....
Without Principles Without Work Without Morality Without Character
EDUCATION
PLEASURE... SCIENCE...
Without Conscience Without Humanity Without Sacrifice
WORSHIP...
Someone asked Gandhi, "What do you think of Western civilization?" He simply replied, "It would be a good idea." For Gandhi, a machine civilization is no civilization. A society in which workers have to labour at conveyor belts; in which
SPIRITUAL ECONOMICS
animals are treated cruelly on factory farms; and in which economic activity necessarily leads to ecological devastation could not be conceived as a civilization. Its citizens could only end up as neurotics, the natural world would inevitably be transformed into a desert, and its cities into concrete
jungles. In other words, global industrial society, as opposed to society made up of largely autonomous communities committed to the principle of swadeshi, is unsustainable. Swadeshi for Gandhi was a sacred principle - as sacred for him as the principle of truth and nonviolence. Every morning and every evening, Gandhi repeated his commitment to swadeshi in his prayers.
Satish Kumar is Chairman and Consulting Editor of Jain Spirit
The temple stands for caring and sharing, not just for self-fulfilment.
March May 2000 Jain Spirit
45
JAYU SHAH