Ahmedabad & the Gandhi Ashram

Rest stop on the way to Ahmedabad

Example of Color Hierarchy in India

We took a two hour drive to Ahmedabad. It is a city named for an Islamic royal named Ahmed. Two host teachers hired a taxi for us. On the way, at several rest stops, I began to notice people staring at me with contemptuous looks.  They were not looking at Chris in the same way or our Indian hosts. It was because I was Black. I almost started crying in the taxi. You have to understand how isolated I felt. I was isolated in a country that seemed to hate blackness, even its own. I prayed a small prayer in my heart and held my emotions in check. I was polite. I was gracious. I was dying inside. How did this first trip portend of the week to come?

Entrance to Gandhi Ashram

Visiting the Gandhi ashram was a wonderful experience, but it was bitter sweet. India was the first nation to throw off British colonial oppressors. They gained independence in 1947. This movement was led by Mahatma Gandhi.  An ashram is a hermitage or a monastic community. The ashram has his room on display – the room where he would receive guests from all over the world. Why did Gandhi always spin cotton? Why did he always wear that simple cotton shroud? I learned that these were visible acts of protest. Let me explain. 

During the time of the Silk Road one of the many trade items from India was cotton. Others were pepper and all kinds of spices. Other items were jewels like diamonds, rubies and pearls. The first diamond mine was in India. It was cotton traded via the Silk Road that excited the European demand for cotton. Hence, the cotton plantations in United States and the Deep South (and Peru and other New World countries.) After the cotton gin was invented, enslaved US Blacks produced raw cotton that was then shipped to textile factories in England. From there cotton cloth was manufactured and sold all over Europe. At the start of the British colonial period in India, the British chopped off the thumbs of the Indian cotton weavers. Why? To stop cotton cloth from being produced in India in order to limit competition in the world market. Very evil. The result? Once the British destroyed that generation of cotton weavers, the craft knowledge was lost. Indians were forced to purchase cotton cloth from the British, a textile that they originally produced. Gandhi instituted weaving cotton cloth as an activity in the ashram to protest this violent history and to boycott the purchase of the fabric manufactured in Britain. This is  the reason why he spent his days weaving cloth and always wore a white shroud.

Garden Space at the Gandhi Ashram

Gandhi's Spinning Wheel

Photo of Gandhi and his wife

Gandhi Ashram

Gandhi Ashram

Beautiful Grounds at the Gandhi Ashram

These and other non – violent resistance methods inspired Dr. King to lead the non – violent African – American civil rights movement. A photograph of Dr. King is in the ashram’s museum. When I saw it I started to cry. Look at the impact of the leader of my African – American nation. His life and work honored thousands of miles away on the other side of the world. I took many pictures and bought five or six books about Gandhi’s life and work. My visit to Gandhi’s ashram was definitely a high point of the trip. 

Why was it bittersweet then? While I was making my way around the ashram, groups of young Indian women kept pointing and laughing at me. Not my white colleague, but me. Our hosts offered me no explanation and no apology. I was left to deal with it on my own. I made the best of the situation and tried to learn as much as I could. There was more of this soon to come.

Salt March Bridge where Gandhi led the first non-violent protest of the Indian Independence Movement - March 12, 1930.

It was a 24 day direct action campaign against the British salt monopoly