Conclusion The Long Life of Difference: Gandhi and the Politics of Crafts after 1920

Abstract

When the Indian National Congress staged an industrial exhibition in association with its annual meeting in Ahmedabad in 1902, the Gaekwar of Baroda Sayajirao III gave the opening speech. An acknowledged leader in industrial matters, the Gaekwar had provided generous support for industrial development in his state, including founding the technical institute Kala Bhavan, launching experiments to improve handlooms, introducing artisanal schools, starting demonstration factories, and providing scholarships to send promising students overseas to investigate new technologies. In his speech at the exhibition, the Gaekwar offered an overview of the current state of the Indian economy and suggestions for future development. First, though, he established the need for development via a direct contrast between India and the West on industrial grounds. In Europe, he argued, technical knowledge, collective effort, individual and national ambition, carefully honed intelligence, and a general striving to make nature provide greater human comfort all came together to produce dramatic technical and material achievements. In India, by contrast, he recalled “the market in my own Baroda city—where the artisans were preparing things in the same methods and same goods as they have been doing for centuries, living in low and shapeless houses and dreamless lives.”