Gandhi's Spinning Wheel and the Making of India

ISBN-13: 9780415494311 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 176 str.

Rebecca Brown

Opis

Gandhi’s programme of spinning as practice and deployment of the spinning wheel as an icon represents one of the most significant unifying elements of the nationalist movement in India. Gandhi decided to revive the craft of hand-spinning of cotton into thread. He saw spinning as both an economic and political activity that could bring together the diverse population of South Asia. Spinning allowed the formerly elite nationalist movement to connect to the broader Indian population.

This book probes the politics of spinning both as a visual symbol and as a symbolic practice. It traces the genealogy of spinning from its early colonial manifestations in Company painting (1830s) to its reinterpretation, deployment and manipulation by the anti-colonial movement (1920s-40s). The book argues that this complex of visual imagery and performative ritual elided or erased crucial elements of labour, gender, and religion and thereby produced an accessible and effective symbol for the Gandhi-led aspect of the anti-colonial movement. It unpacks the politics of the spinning wheel by thoroughly examining all aspects of this symbol’s deployment; and it provides a model for the analysis of political symbols elsewhere and an explanation of the successes of India’s particular anti-colonial movement.

Spis treści

Introduction - Spinning, Anticolonial Nationalism, and the Visual  1. Action and Identity: Colonial Representations of Spinning  2. Capturing the Wheel in Motion: Photography and Spinning  3. Discovering Spinning: Towards Gandhi's Visual Rhetoric  4. Gender and the Modern Charkha  5. National Symbols: Gandhi and the Spinning Wheel

O autorze

Rebecca M. Brown is visiting Associate Professor in Political Science and the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University, US, researching colonial and post-independence in South Asia. Her publications include Art for a Modern India, 1947–1980 (2009) and Asian Art (co-edited with Deborah S. Hutton, 2006).