GANDHI'S SPINNING WHEEL AND THE MAKING OF INDIA . By Rebecca M. Brown . Routledge Studies in South Asian History. London : Routledge , 2010 . Pp. x + 151 . $130.00 .
摘要
This short monograph applies the evolving new field of the study of visual and material culture to one of the best‐known icons of the Gandhian movement for Indian independence and self‐reliance, the charkha or spinning wheel. Brown traces the history of the visual representation of the spinning wheel in nineteenth‐century illustrations in the “Company painting” style and then the new nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century technology of photography. Because spinning was not limited by caste, religion, or region, it provided a fertile ground for Gandhi's appropriation of it as a vibrant symbol. Because it was associated with women's domestic work, it fed into his agenda of redefining gender roles and the public–private divide within the nation‐building project. Spinning thereby became for Gandhi a “visual political rhetoric.” Eventually, however, the charkha lost its centrality within the Gandhian visual canon and was replaced by the simpler wheel (chakra) with its historical connections to the imagined Indian golden age of the Buddhist emperor Ashoka. This book is an excellent addition to the ever‐increasing library of studies of Gandhi, and also marks an important contribution to studies of the visual culture of modern India.
