The Wheel of Fortune

Many critics and some friends of Mahatma Gandhi have found fault with his desire to introduce simpler methods of spinning and weaving and to do away with much of the complicated machinery of Modern Civilisation. The reason why they object is that they fear such methods mean not progress towards a higher state but relapse into a primitive condition of civilisation or even of barbarism. His denunciation of the age of machinery and of the Industrial System has been criticised by many as the ravings of a visionary and of one who is merely an impracticable idealist. This is a strange criticism to come from those who give their allegiance to a form of civilisation or Culture which has led to the unprecedented horrors of the late European War and the century-old disgraces [pg x] of the Industrial System. Is this present modern civilisation so very desirable that we should wish it to continue in perpetuity?