Charkha :sign and decoding

                                                                          

                                    

                                            A society as a structure has many dimensions and layers and within this structure, cultural, political, religious happenings take place continuously and these happenings evolve gradually in different forms and manners.  It may be economical, political or religious; power creates hierarchy in the society and dictates the norms for the society. Power play, hierarchy, dictate, submission, and marginalization – all silently, work as coded messages and communicate within the structures of the society. This huge network plays in a significant way through signs and the communication is conveyed in a subtle way. Signs act and communicate as languages. To decode a sign and to understand its meanings and implications, one has to study it in the context of history, politics, culture, and the studies reveals how signs have been evolved over time and are coded and assigned significant value in contextual levels.

 Charkha is a simple wooden spinning wheel, through which cotton and silk yarns were hand-spinned in India, in large quantity,the rural handicrafts and their economy was imperatively depending on it before the British colonized India.  The charka is an important sign; it stands for freedom, non-violence, independence, self- sufficiency, and simplicity. Studying the sign in the light of semiotics,  the charka reflects not only the ideology but also exposes the  underlying dyads and stands for handmade against machine made products, simplicity against showoff, independence against dependence, rural against urban.  Placed in the Indian context, this sign gains a greater importance and significance and communicates, and reveal as a tool how it secured independence and economic liberation for India from the clutches of the British.

  The famous and popular photograph of Gandhiji with Charkha speaks of Swadeshi Movement, which Gandhiji started with the spinning wheel – charkha - inspired every Indian to weave his cloth himself and ban foreign clothes, so that Indian economy could be improved and balanced. With this movement, everyone got involved in the freedom movement and torched machine produced foreign fabrics. This incident led to Freedom Movement in India. Looking into history, sources tell that earlier only women used to spin yarn for clothes. During this Swadeshi Movement, Gandhiji himself started spinning and encouraged others to involve into the movement. This sign has political and cultural significance. Due to Industrialization in India, many handicraft units were closed down affecting the rural economy. All finer handicrafts of which India was proud of were destroyed permanently to boost market for industry-produced products. Agitation started when one by one handicraft started dying and machine made clothes were forced upon unwilling locals at high prices. Behind all this frustration and agitation stands the simple charkha, which gave a call for freedom movement.          

Charkha is not just a spinning wheel; it stands for freedom, independence, equality, dignity of labour and simplicity, more than that – for Gandhian economy.