Mahatma Gandhi`s Self-Sufficiency Concept
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Mahatma Gandhi`s Self-Sufficiency Concept
By Mr. Narayan Desai
4 February 2008
Dear friends, Self-Sufficiency is a term which expresses this idea of
being parts of one another.
I may greet you by using a Hindi word
Jay Jagat
which means
“Victory to the World”. It is not victory to one country and defeat of
another country, but it is the victory to the world
“Jay Jagat”
. As Latha
Reddy
Garu
and the distinguished speaker before me have already touched
some of the points on Gandhi’s economic thought. I would like to speak
more about the total concept of Gandhian ideas and the idea of Gandhi’s
self-sufficiency in that context.
The first point that I would like to make is to not to divide Gandhi
into pieces: the economic Gandhi, the political Gandhi, the spiritual Gandhi,
and so on and so forth. Gandhi must be considered in his totality. He
cannot be considered in different pieces. For him
economics away from
morality
meant immorality or immoral economics. So morality and
economics go together. Politics and spirituality go together. To divide these
different aspects of thought is to divide truth, is to divide life. And therefore,
my first point is let us think about Gandhi’s concept in totality.
Think of a tree and, coming from India, I think of the mango tree.
The seed and the roots, the trunk and the branches, the fruit and the
flowers- they cannot be divided. They are all part of the tree. Gandhi’s