March 31:

“My Swadeshi, therefore, chiefly centers around the hand-spun Khaddar and extends to everything that can be and is produced in India.”

–Gandhi (Young India 3-12-1925, p. 88)

Swadeshi was a very important concept for Gandhi and the Indian Freedom Struggle. Swa- meaning ‘one’s own,’ and desh–meaning ‘country,’ the practice of swadeshi was the discipline of restricting one’s purchases and possessions to those things which could be acquired principally locally. Its rough translation for contemporary struggles is simply localism. Home-spun cotton, or khadi (khaddar), was one of the main tools, and symbols, of the Indian Freedom Struggle because it represented a re-claiming of ownership of one’s home resources, such as cotton, and thus meant personal and economic empowerment for its production within India. Gandhi envisioned dignity not through charity, rather, through work. Therefore, we who are also living in a country with a lack of jobs, can try disciplining our consumption to goods and products made locally, not only to create new jobs, but also to, as Gandhi showed us, weaken corporate mass-production and dominance over our daily lives.

Experiment in Nonviolence:

Think about goods and resources produced locally–either within your local community or country. Experiment in increasing your use of locally produced goods by 10 percent or more.

Daily Metta 2015, a service of the Metta Center for Nonviolence, is a daily reflection on the strategic and spiritual insights of Mahatma Gandhi in thought, word and deed. As Gandhi called his life an “experiment in truth,” we have included an experiment in nonviolence to accompany each Daily Metta. Check in every day for new inspiration. Each year will be dedicated to another wisdom teacher.