A positive spin

Let those who spin wear khaddar, and let no one who wears [khadi] fail to spin," Mahatma Gandhi has said. Musaddilal Gupta, 75, is an embodiment of this injunction by the father of the nation – he only wears clothes made of yarn that he himself has spun on a charkha.

Gupta spins every day, using the portable, box-type Bardoli charkha that Mahatma Gandhi is said to have invented, whenever he has the time. "My charkha goes with me wherever I go. If I have to wait two hours in the hospital, I just take out my charkha and spend the time spinning. My charkha keeps me from wasting time; it helps to keep my attention focused," says Gupta, who retired as senior accounts officer in the accountant general's office of the Madhya Pradesh government around 10 years ago.

Though Gupta says he had been influenced by Gandhi's thoughts since he was in school, first coming across him in the stories of Munshi Premchand, it was only after retirement that he began to spin in earnest. "I didn't have the time earlier." Now that he has, he travels far and wide to spread Gandhi's message of spinning. "I am a regular at the Gandhi Memorial and Rajghat, where we spend two hours every Friday, which was the day he died, in spinning and prayers. Besides, I get a lot of invitations to demonstrate at khadi exhibitions and I go however far it is," says Gupta, who until two years ago rode everywhere on his bicycle, but stopped after his family pleaded that it was too dangerous. Interestingly, Gupta's family is fairly well-to-do, lives in a large house in Delhi's upscale Safdarjung Enclave and owns two cars.

"From 2011 to 2018, when the government put a stop to demonstrations at Jantar Mantar, I also sat on a dharna to stop cow slaughter and the trade in beef, where I spun the charkha. I spoke to people about the charkha and showed then how to spin cotton," says Gupta, who also supported Anna Hazare's India Against Corruption movement in 2011 by spinning cotton at the Ramlila Maidan.

In a year, says Gupta, he produces around 12 kilogram of yarn, which he then sends to Gram Sewa Mandal in Nalwadi village near Wardha, Maharashtra, set up by Vinoba Bhave in 1934, to be woven. "It's enough to make eight to 10 bolts, each of 10-metre length," says Gupta. He keeps enough for his needs, giving them to a tailor who teaches at the Gandhi Memorial to be cut into kurtas which he then stitches himself by hand. The buttons most often are taken from old kurtas. The rest of the cloth he gifts to friends and family, and donates to widows at an NGO.

As for the cotton, Gupta now sources it from Ahmedabad and Wardha but soon he hopes to get it from his friend Ram Swarup in his native village in Bansur block of Alwar district, Rajasthan when he begins cultivating
cotton soon.       

"Self-sufficiency was Gandhiji's motto and it was the cornerstone of his philosophy of gram swaraj. I have dedicated my life to this principle. It is possible to solve many of our country's problems by following this principle. Most of our youngsters complain that they do not have the time to sit with the charkha. But it is not difficult to make enough to clothe oneself. It is possible to make khadi for free," says Gupta.