The Social Life of Khadi: Gandhi's Experiments with the Indian Economy, c. 1915-1965

Abstract

This dissertation is a historical study of the socio-material and knowledge practices involved in the making of the modern Indian economy between approximately 1915 and 1965. It explores this subject through the lens of the khadi economy, the name I assign to the network of institutions established by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from the late 1910s to ameliorate rural unemployment and underemployment through the reintroduction of village industries in the Indian countryside. In contrast to most accounts of the khadi economy, which portray it as a traditionalizing zone rooted in a nostalgic vision of the past, I situate it at the heart of processes of modern economy formation in late colonial and early postcolonial India.

The history of the khadi economy, I argue, offers critical insights into some of the key developments in twentieth-century Indian economic life, ranging from the changing spatial relationship of agriculture to industry; to the rise of formal organizations and scientific management; to the establishment of standardized weights and measures; to technological innovation. In recuperating the khadi economy as one instance in the making of the modern Indian economy, I provide an alternative perspective on economic modernization. The khadi institutions discussed here did not resist the rise of a modern economy but instead worked to establish a modern economy on their own terms that deployed some of the same tools (scientific management, standardized weights and measures, etc.) in different ways. In attempting to create a modern economy that was nevertheless different from the modern economy that ultimately prevailed in India, khadi institutions offer a unique lens on what exactly was at stake in the modern economy’s creation.