In 1938, the Seva Sangh, under Gandhi’s broad directions arranged a rural industries and crafts fair in Beraboi village of Delang in Orissa. Delang was a railway station in pre-Independence times, not far from Puri town. Many livelihood activities were showcased in Beraboi that year with help from the provincial government, Puri Zilla Board, and several cooperative societies. Orissa had been declared a separate province just two years prior, after a long and sustained language-based movement.
Spread over 2,60,000 square feet, the Beraboi exhibition was laid out in five separate galleries – Khadi, Village Industries, Health and Education, Farming, and the Arts. Craftworks made from ivory and brass and statues of the Buddha graced the arts stalls. Around 300 graphic posters providing information on topics, such as personal hygiene and alcohol consumption were arranged in the gallery marked Health and Education.
But why was Gandhi attending a week-long crafts fair in Orissa?
At the national level, Subhas Chandra Bose, who was challenging Gandhi, had been elected Congress president only a few weeks earlier. The ongoing Spanish Civil War and Second Sino-Japanese War were foreshadowing the outbreak of a major global conflict, which manifested itself as World War II a year later. In other words, when violence once again threatened to overwhelm the world, was Gandhi frittering away his time and energy at a fair in a remote village in Orissa?
Addressing the public in the Beraboi fair, Gandhi said, “Agriculture alone cannot help us. We cannot sustain ourselves without other allied enterprises. We can now see what fingers can create and how these creations can help us enhance our income as a nation. That is why I ask you to look at the exhibits again and again. Select one of the items on display. The (Seva) Sangh hopes each household turns into a factory of handmade products. Look at the exhibits like a student and learn something that helps you to serve Orissa.”
The Beraboi conclave was not just a self-indulgent display in which the attendees were asked to behold, admire, and disperse. It also organised a seven-day-long seminar in which delegates debated everyday concerns. For example, the advantages of cow milk over buffalo milk were thoroughly debated by the speakers in the presence of large crowds. In other words, Gandhi was ingeniously devising ways of determining what we today call cost benefit analysis.
A violent revolution could not have supported such a discourse because the atmosphere would be saturated with feelings of fear, anger, and revenge. Truth be told, the very idea of having debates within a mass movement seeking transformative change is only possible if it is non-violent. If Gandhi had been leading a militant resistance, there would have been little scope for a spirited public debate as was held in Beraboi. Discussions would have been held in secret and commands would have been imperiously handed down from the top. Violence demands compliance, whereas non-violence leaves room for debate, creativity, and constructive dissent.
Inclusiveness is also another key characteristic of non-violence. In 1937, Orissa province had formed a Congress-led government under Prime Minister Biswanath Das. The Department of Education had arranged for school children to come to the Beraboi fair in large numbers. Not just men, but many women had also assembled to witness the grand exhibition featuring cow welfare, oil pressing, leather book binding, and horn crafts, among other livelihood avenues. Zamindaars and rich landowners rubbed shoulders with sharecroppers and landless labourers. Violent resistance to colonial rule would not have scope for the participation of all ages, classes, and genders. Beraboi’s seven-day conclave, from March 25 to 31, was also attended by Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Acharya Kripalani, Jamunalal Bajaj, and Maulana Azad. It was the non-violent nature of the event that allowed leaders of the movement to interact with the public rather than biding time in some mountainous lair.
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At the Beraboi fair, local vegetables, milk, and ghee were used in cooking for the organisers and those who stayed for more than a day. This decision aligned with Gandhi’s unceasing advocacy for an ethical relationship between producers and consumers. Gandhi envisaged a far more meaningful economic system wherein all that is produced is largely consumed within the same locality. Today, this concept has been tinkered with and remarketed as farm-to-table.
The Beraboi event strikes one, in today’s parlance, as fiscally prudent. It also relied on minimum support from the state. This was a ticketed event that cost each attendee 2 paise. Overall, 75,000 people thronged the fair over seven days. After expenses on the food and accommodation for thousands of visitors, the organising committee was left with a balance of Rs 2,000. While a substantial portion of the revenue was generated from ticket sales, chandaa (subscriptions) was also collected from attending Seva Sangh members. The Orissa government extended financial support only to the tune of Rs 1,000 – a comparatively lighter burden on a poor and newly formed province under the Empire.
The Beraboi gathering was perhaps one out of many projects that were only possible in Gandhi’s non-violent ecosystem. And all these were not faddish, antiquarian projects that were engaged in a quest to retrieve the past. Non-violence created here the space to accommodate modernity.
It allowed the scientist Satish Chandra Das Gupta to work within the movement and conduct experiments on low-cost spinning wheels. His research in chemistry also led to the invention of the iconic Swadeshi Fountain Pen Ink, later named Sulekha by Rabindranath Tagore. Fountain pens used to be expensive commodities because they were imported from Europe. Under the Gandhian non-violent vision, Das Gupta could develop useful and relevant indigenous technology.
History shows that violence is also exploitative and parasitic. Both sides in a conflict engage in it, appealing to a higher cause. Even the resistor, who resorts to violence against the oppressor, demands others support him unquestioningly with their resources. In Beraboi and elsewhere, we see the resistors generating resources, livelihood, jobs, and means of survival for the masses. This spirit also drove Gandhi’s American disciple, Satyanand Stokes, born Samuel Evans, to organise and scale up apple cultivation in Himachal Pradesh, an industry that has to this day sustained the state’s economy as well as its identity.
Gandhi’s non-violence was thus not just an absence of violence. It symbolised certain kinds of freedom, creativity, and means to an end. He used non-violence to demonstrate that revolutions need not be destructive, sinister, and traumatic for the millions that are sucked into them. From ink to apples, and from village crafts to exhibitions, thousands of fingers, instead of pulling triggers and assembling explosives, created a world that empowered the impoverished masses in subtle but significant ways. The conditions generated under non-violence were used by Gandhi to conduct experiments in which the idea of the nation was shaped and tested in miniature forms.
Factual details on the Beraboi exhibition have been taken from the Odia translation of a report titled Seven days of Gandhi Sewa Sangh in Delang, originally in Hindi and published in Wardha in 1938.
Sampad Patnaik is a freelance journalist. Jatindra Nayak is a translator and academic.