Figure 1 – Mahatma Gandhi at his spinning wheel in the late 1920’s. From the Wikipedia and in the public domain in the United States.

I thought that I would follow-up on yesterday’s blog about spinning and weaving with the iconic image (Figure 1) of Mahatma Gandhi at his spinning wheel. It was, as we discussed, a matter of protest, a matter of breaking the colonial-mercantile system, where the colony produces a raw product like cotton, exports it to the “mother country,” only to re-import it at a high mark-up as cloth. Political meaning aside, and I think a symbolic point not lost on Gandhi, is the sense that he is reweaving, redefining the thread of history.  It is a long thread that required great patience to spin. The photograph of Figure 1 was taken in the late 1920’s and Indian Independence not achieved for another twenty years.