Spinning franchise

Lahore, Tuesday, October 21, 1924

IN the latest issue of Young India, Mahatma Gandhi has written a short article in which he beautifully sums up the case for making spinning the qualification for membership of the Congress. “If a monetary qualification, that is, restriction,” he writes, “may be imposed, why not a working qualification? Is it more honourable to pay than to labour?” The last question raises a somewhat irrelevant issue. We are not aware that among the hundreds of critics who have objected to the spinning franchise, even one has based his objection on the ground of spinning being dishonourable or even less honourable than the payment of a subscription of four annas per annum. How, indeed, could anyone consider a thing dishonourable which is done by the foremost man in the country and by hundreds of others held in universal respect and admiration? Mahatmaji is in this matter less than just to himself and is clearly forgetting that one glorious achievement that lies to his credit is that he has materially changed the country’s standard of honour and respectability. With tens of thousands of persons, including many who do not wear it themselves, the wearing of khaddar has today become a sure insignia of honour and respectability. If anything, the danger lies just the other way about. So far from anyone, anyone that really matters, considering spinning to be dishonourable, there is a tendency among some people to make too much of the wearing of khaddar, to look upon it not as a symbol of patriotism and national self-respect but as a substitute for them.