Admittedly, my explanation is abstract. Admittedly, it sounds like bla bla and gobbledygook if one does not already before reading it have a clear idea of what I mean. Please be patient. I will draw on Gandhi’s concrete experiences with the khadi movement in an effort to make the abstractions concrete. I hope to be able to pour easily understandable meanings into the empty containers designated by the concepts “dynamic” and “dominant paradigm.” If I succeed, then the reader will understand clearly why Shiva’s writings defending indigenous cultures and advocating women’s perspectives, and her attacks on “the monoculture of the mind” at an epistemological level, are not just frosting on the cake. They are practical necessities. Her food security program will not work without the cultural changes she advocates. Although Gandhi ultimately failed, he too knew that a different dynamic was needed, and he worked hard to practice and to preach one. (17) That is why Gandhi counts as a pioneer of an approach to peace and justice that in principle would really work. It could be followed, and if it were followed it really would bring peace and justice into existence, in India and around the world. 

In its early days Gandhi justified khadi with what he regarded as a slam dunk argument. In India there were tens of millions of laborers with nothing to do for much of the year. The cost of labor –most obviously in the case of home spinners and weavers who made cloth for their own use—was therefore in a sense zero. India’s climate made it easy to grow cotton. Hence the cost of raw material –again most obviously when the villagers grew their own—was therefore small. A spinning wheel is a very inexpensive piece of capital equipment. Therefore, khadi is a way to get something almost for nothing. Its major input has zero cost, and its other inputs are so cheap that their cost can be approximated as zero. Similarly, Gandhi argued that if khadi replaced the sixty crores (tens of millions) of rupees spent annually to import cloth, then India’s net gain would be sixty crores. Giving work to idle hands created a large fund for poor relief. Remarkably, the particular means chosen for poor relief would, in its ordinary daily operations, deposit the bulk of the sixty crores of rupees directly in the pockets of the poorest of the poor. 

To be sure, from the first Gandhi enjoined what he called “sacrificial” spinning as a virtue and as the practice of a religious duty. “Sacrificial” spinning was done by middle and upper class people for free, without pay, in order to set a good example for the poor (following the sociological principle that people tend to emulate those whose social standing is higher than their own), and in order to increase the stock of available yarn. Sacrificial spinning was also supposed to calm the nerves and to purge the soul of disorderly passions. But among religious duties sacrificial spinning had the distinction of being an obligation deduced from a premise that asserted a particular relationship between cause and effect. It was a duty to spin because it was a duty to alleviate the suffering of the semi-starved masses. It was also a duty to spin in order to bring about Swaraj, self-rule for India, which, in turn, would open the way to more alleviation of the suffering of the semi-starved masses. The empirical premise of the theological conclusion was that spinning would in fact cause the effects desired.