- Gandhi came back to India after his successful South African initiative to find the Indian economy in a state of absolute disarray. He was pained by the way the rural economy was broken down and debased beyond redemption by the British authorities. He assumed a twofold action.
- First, he had to instil in India the moral courage to be economically self-sufficient, producing and fulfilling its own primary needs in home-grown, indigenous ways. This would not only revive the rural economy of India, but it would also break down the British economic motives that led them to stay in India. This was indeed an uphill task.
- He knew it would be difficult for him to make the Indian elite, groomed to a system of caste-based economy for centuries truly accept the dignity of labour and work.
- Gandhi had only one way out and he immediately embarked on that. He turned his life into a living example of his ideals and led every resident of his Sabarmati ashram to do the same.
