The Political Economy of Khadi
Khaddar (By Jeejay ) (1)
Wilson’s Fourteen points were unlucky for him and disastrous to the Germans who built on them (the reference is to US President Woodrow Wilson’s speech in 1918; the so-called 14 points he defined became the basis for the German surrender in World War I – editors). Let us hope that Anil Baran Ray will have better luck with the fourteen articles of his indictment against Khaddar. But as it happens, Anil Baran Babu, has, to use an expressive vulgarism, got hold of the right end of the stick. Somebody had to speak the unvarnished and unfearing against the great superstition of Khaddar and Anil Baran Ray (Congressman from Bengal – editors) as proved to be that somebody. And where he has led, it is possible for other people to respond to the voice of truth with answering shouts.
Historically Khaddar is the mature and organized expression of Gandhiji’s objection to machinery, an objection which he inherited from Ruskin and which he pursued to the utmost logical end with his patient, fatal, unrested lucidity. While Ruskin denounced machinery and persuaded young University men to dig with the spade, it did not prevent his living the life of his class – that of the rich English middle class. It did not do him any harm; the young men he influenced survived Ruskinism as they survived measles, calf-love and other foibles of extreme juvenility. Unfortunately, for India, Gandhiji’s antipathy to machinery and modernism has resulted in the suspension of political life by some of the finest spirits in the country and in their dedication to, what I am bound to call, the superstition of Khaddar.
Mr. Ray has made out that there is no kind of future for Khaddar. As I ventured to point out a weeks ago in these columns, economically, Khaddar is an impossible proposition. For seven annas you can buy machine milled cloth which handspun and handwoven, costs over a rupee and the stuff wears betters and longer than Khaddar. Patriotism or no patriotism, you are not justified in asking the poor consumer to tax himself to the extent of nearly two hundred percent for justifying his objection to modern machinery.
Consider also the element of sweating involved in it. Mr. Ray would have it that the spinners in Pudupalayam get ten annas a month by way of wages. This, I think, is wrong. But in any event, neither woman nor man gets more than three annas a day for working eight hours as a spinner. Three annas is a terrible figure to offer by way of wages for any human being’s daily work. We know the answer that is usually made; for a woman who earns nothing, three annas is something. This is just the sweater’s argument. The writer has himself seen in England, women who were making six pence a day sewing on buttons or stitching button holes. The women were doing it because they could not help it and they had nothing else to do. But nobody seriously suggested that sweating was justified because sweating was better than starvation. It was condemned for the wicked thing it was, the exploitation of the poor. At a time when the minimum wage for an Indian woman working as an unskilled labourer is six annas, it is wicked for any patriot to suggest that she had better work for three annas as a spinner. It is all very well to speak in praise of cottage industries; but if any cottage industry is going to offer less than the current wage, we can very well dispense with cottage industries.
But my most serious complaint against Khaddar is that it has paralysed some of the finest political intellects in the country. There is Gandhiji himself. They are fools who say that he is an idealist and no politician; he is a saint but that does not prevent his being the finest statesman and man of action alive. In my judgment, there are only two politicians in modern history that can be mentioned in the same breath with him. Lenin and Mussolini. But Khaddar and the spinning wheel have killed him and the service that was meant for India and humanity has been lost in the whirl of the wheel. In our own Province there is C. Rajagopalachari. What is it that the man could not have done in the field of politics if he had remained faithful to its demands and responsibilities? On the other hand he has emasculated himself and immured himself in a historical futility. There a hundred other names that flash across the mind, names and memories of loyal co-operation which make one shed bitter tears. Why do you think Shaukat Ali has gone to bits? He is a brave fighter of big battles and is like an engine that has raced itself to obstruction because there was nothing in it to be attached to. Of him and others and of several others, it may be truly said that the spinning wheel was the undoing of them without the slightest advantage to the nation.
– Revolt, 12 December 1928
Racy
This week ‘G.R.’ (2) is giving our readers a treat. ‘G.R’. is a blue blooded Gandhiite. But he is in a fighting mood, and active khadi service is keeping him in good form. His attempt to give us “a hard hit” has fallen wide of the mark. But he has deigned to praise us and has made us blush. G.R. has fallen in love with ‘Sak’. He is right. For ‘Sak’ is a fine swordsman. But his sally on communal representation has not done him or his keen sword full justice.
Our contention is that separate electorates have an equal claim to be considered along with joint electorates in any scheme of organising constituencies in our county. We did not maintain, as G.R. wrongly supposes we did, that communal electorates are the best method of electing representatives. Joint electorates are synonymous with territorial electorates. But separate electorates are not indentical with communal electorates. A communal electorate is a separate electorate. But a separate electorate need not be a communal one. We welcome communal electorates as temporary expedients for securing peace at the elections and for ensuring adequate representation to the suppressed communities so long as they remain suppressed communities so long as they remain suppressed. It is too late in the day for G.R. to paint ‘red’ the evils of communalism. Of course communalism ought to go, But how shall it? A comprehensive political gesture granting joint electorates and adult franchise to all and sundry will be a fatuous futility. Patient and laborious toil among the masses is hard to contemplate. But there is no escaping it.
G.R. has mystified us by propounding an arithmetical problem involving ‘enough goondas’ and ‘peace loving people’. We confess our inability to see how the rule of three works out in this ease. G.R. would draw a lurid picture of the goonda innate in us as the dose of original sin. We refuse to be drawn into this crystal-gazing mediumistic trance.
But G.R. is racy. G.R. is welcome. There is work for him to do. ‘Jeejay’ has taken his silk hat seriously and has girded up his loins to fight Khadi. There is no cause for alarm, for ‘Jeejay’s armoury consists of familiar weapons: supremacy of machinery, higher cost to the consumer, lower wages, waste of man power. The implements are probably rusty, but ‘Jeejay’ is out for mischief, It looks as though the Khadiwalla must come out of his cloistered seclusion and fight in self defence if he would not be taken as an old time curiosity. Will ‘G.R.’ pick up the gauntlet?
– Revolt, 12 December 1928
Khaddar (By Jeejay)
I observe that the words I said in dispraise of khadi has roused discussion. I doubt whether there has been clear and close argument: there has been anger and warmth of feeling, a suggestion almost of sacrilege, all of which prove that such words as I ventured to utter have gone home. And in all matters of intellect and in the search after truth, there is nothing like controversy to clear things up. I for one do feel that further pursuit of the question will help.
Will Mr.Ramachander allow me a small dialectic victory to start with? The effect I noted of khaddar on the fortunes of Gandhiji, Rajagopalachari and Shaukat Ali laid hold of by him to prove that khaddar was not a futility. I did not say that khaddar was impotent in every sense; all I suggested was that economically it was a futility: as a superstition, it is very potent.
I have considered carefully and respectfully everything that my critics have said: but I am not bound to say I am not convinced. First, there is the high price of khaddar, two hundred per cent above that of mill cloth of similar quality. I am happy my figures have not been challenged; in fact they are unchallengeable. But all that Mr.Ramachander can do is to be contemptuous of percentage and talk of blood. Gandhiji and the A.I.S.A are business-like if they are nothing else. If they cultivated the same disregard of percentages as Mr.Ramachander does, khaddar will be just nowhere at all. What does redeem the A.I.S.A is its business habits and you cannot have business habits ignoring percentages and talking of blood. My simple proposition is that khaddar is economically impossible and will always remain so if the average grihasata-like consumer is asked to pay eighteen annas for the length of cloth which the haberdasher will give him for six annas if only it is not khaddar. Inspite of all talk of blood, the consumer will prefer the cheaper article and resolutely decline to subsidise the A.I.S.A.
Then there is the question of the injustice to the workers. I called it sweating and I say it is. The first fling is at me personally and suggests that I should make it my business to give six annas a day to the khadi spinners after keeping a rupee a day for myself out of my earnings. This confusion of personal righteousness with sane economic conduct is very common. But Tolstoy found out long ago that personal righteousness would not put an end to economic injustice and sweating. If you want a more recent exposure of the fallacy, I shall refer you to an illuminating section in Bernard Shaw’s “The Capitalism”. It is Mr.Ramachander’s business to run khaddar sensibly and without starving the wage-earners. If I point out that he can’t do it and that the failure is due to no fault of his own but to the inherent economic unsoundness of the whole show, instead of judging the question on the merits, he turns round and says that I should live on a rupee a day and double the wages of his workers. I am not going to do anything of the kind. If A.I.S.A is not able to do its business without giving its laborers starvation wages, it is a public danger and the sooner it is wound up the better. Secondly, my critics are altogether mistaken in assuming that I can live on one rupee a day. For the kind of life I lead (and I assure Mr. Ramachander that it is not a lurid or extravagant one), fifty rupees a day is what I want and it is all I can do to get it.
Then there is the familiar argument. The woman who is paid three annas for eight hours labour by the A.I.S.A. is not able to make even that much elsewhere; ergo she must be duly thankful. In the first place, I am not sure about the fact. I do not think you get any woman to give a day’s labour for an anna and a half as stated. In Madras it is eight annas and even in the districts it is six annas. I do not see why she should take to spinning if all she gets is three annas. But the crux of the matter is something else. I say no human being can get sufficient food for three annas and the sweating consists in giving the woman less than what is essentially necessary for her existence. Let not anybody think that spinning I object to; it is giving the labourer less than the living wage. And the trouble is that the making and selling of khaddar do involve the tragedy of a wage on which life cannot be maintained. I confess I have no patience when people talk about a ‘social ceremony’ in connection with the distribution of a wage of three annas for a full working day of eight hours. Condemn the Mill as much as you please; but they do not give three annas for a full working day.
There is one more confusion that I have space to deal with. We are told that Khaddar is to be produced in the hours of leisure and that the judgment about wages is irrelevant. This answer is based on a mistake. I shall deal with the argument when Khaddar spun during leisure becomes a considerable enough element in the case. Today we are concerned with the A.I.S.A. The A.I.S.A is just a business association dealing with workers, spinners and weavers, sales agencies and consumers. The spinners are paid three annas and my criticism is concentrated on that fact. It is no consolation to me, it is no consolation to the spinners to be told that some day when Khaddar comes back to its pristine glory and universality, they will spin in their leisure hours and get the weaving done in the village and that they will get nothing at all for their spinning not even the miserable three annas.
The truth of the matter is that cloth can be spun and woven cheaper through the mills than by hand. The machine has beaten the handicraftsman in several things, and the manufacture of cloth happens to be one of them. Mr.Ramachander may have seen in the streets of Madras human beings pulling along cart-loads of heavy articles from the harbour to the godown. It is a painful sight and I would far rather have the goods taken along in a motor lorry; it is cleaner, is more efficient and there is more of human mercy in it. It is a similar feeling that comes over me when I think of the activities of the A.I.S.A.
– Revolt, 16 January 1929
Khadi Outlook
The Newspapers have it that certain young men at Trichinopoly made a public demonstration of their dissatisfaction of the working of the khadi organization by making a bonfire of their khadi. The action was thoughtless. It was calculated to rouse popular passions. It would hinder khadi work which, we trust, was not the object of the demonstrators. Khadi as an item of National economy is common ground for khadi workers and will not serve as the basis of disputes as among themselves. Khadi concerns the lives of the millions in the villages while khadi organization is the business of the few at the helm of the A.I.S.A. To visit punishment on the many for the fault committed by the few is neither just nor patriotic. We hope the example of the Trichinopoly demonstrators will not be copied by khadi wearers elsewhere.
But the Trichy event is ominous. It marks a stage in the development of the Khadi movement which it would be wise to take note of and seriously ponder over. While the patriotism of the general public is keeping up the level of production and sale of khadi, the growth of experience and knowledge on the part of khadi workers is stimulating an attempt on their part to revaluate khadi values. The appeal to prevent the annual drain of 60 Crores of National wealth does not any longer create the stir in our heart it used to. If there is the cloth drain, there are also other drains, economic and moral, which are equally serious and claim our attention. The cloth drain, at any rate, is being systematically fought against and countered by the Indian mills while the other drains are still uncared for. The old argument against machinery as such does not any longer hold water. While exploitation by the few and the sweating of the many which are the outstanding features of mechanized industry today are strenuously combated, the struggle has to take the form of assimilation rather than of expulsion. The inhuman characteristics of the machine are slowly getting humanized. We hope for a time when conditions of service inside the mills will so improve that human nature will be tempted to work rather than keep idle. Men and women will begin the day’s work inside the mill with the same exhilaration of enjoyment as when they take their turn at the dance when the tune strikes the waltz. They will handle instruments of large scale production even as they will handle tennis bats, and will derive the same experience of healthful recreation. Machinery so transformed will be a delight and will have no horrors for us. Hoping for the advent of the day of such transformation we cannot continue to sustain an antipathy for machinery as such. After all is not the Charkha also a machine? Nay, does not the takli impelled by the momentum of the twirling fingers, assume the shape of the monster and draw out the fibers and eat up the sliver with avidity even as the machine does? Though of diminutive size and complexity, the instruments which produce khadi are of the same hateful genus, machine.
If we do not mind the drain and if we do not object to the machine what is it which sustains our faith in khadi? Frankly, it is the personal equation. Foreign cloth is hateful to us because it symbolizes the foreign exploitation of India’s wants. It displays callousness to the problem of Indian unemployment that wounds our sense of Self-respect. Foreign cloth is red with the blood of the millions who die of starvation in our villages. The Indian Mill cloth is equally distasteful because it is an emblem of sweated labour. It multiplies the idle rich and displays an indifference to the sufferings of the masses. It outrages our sense of economic justice. Indian Mill cloth is red with the blood of thousands who die in the streets of our cities. Khadi is welcome because, it implies no harm or injustice to anyone else. It is not a super-imposition. It preserves our Self-respect. It is our own handiwork and symbolizes our ability for national self-reliance. The labour involved is essentially voluntary. It is the harbinger of Swaraj. Khadi is not a piece of cloth. Khadi is an idea, capable of infinite expansion and infinite application. That khadi is now the product of the Charkha is but a historical accident due to the limitations of knowledge and of resources pertaining to the age and to the people concerned. In a different age or for a different people khadi will have a different manifestation. Under the ideal conditions we described above, of the prevalence of transformed machinery devoid of its present horrors we can well conceive of khadi being a Mill product. In an age when unemployment, sweating and starvation are unknown, we can afford to confine the hand spinner in a lunatic asylum and to consign the Charkha to a museum. Thus conceived, khadi is but part of a much wider movement for the assertion of the fundamentals of life. It is the expression, on the economic side, of an awakening to the full implications of human rights and human duties. Today therefore we are unable to have a clearer perspective of khadi in its full setting than we had in the earlier days of the movement. If we now find limitations to khadi work, we also realize in a fuller measure the implications and the details of the khadi activity. This necessitates a change of perspective and an adaptation of our methods to meet the new situation. Our responsibilities have, as a result, increased in that there is now an extra need for us to keep vigilant and take the bend at the proper angle. We should restrain haste if we would avoid a crash. The Trichy demonstration is just the wrong way of bringing about the change. It would have served its purpose if we take it as a warning to increase our vigil.
– Revolt, 6 February 1929
Fraud, the finest of fine arts (By Kirk)
Mr. Gandhi is no more the farmer and weaver of old. The Calcutta incident has fired in him the spirit of a barrister. Setting fire to the foreign cloth, in spite of the police order, is not civil disobedience according to him. Neither is it a defiance of authority. It is a test case, a question of law. Whether a park is in a highway or not is a question of great national importance. That certainly requires immediate solution, at least before the declaration of independence on the august morning of the coming New Year’s Day. The magistrate has fined Mr. Gandhi a Rupee and the question is yet to be settled in the highest law court of the land. Bravo, Gandhi!
But why should you gag the poor lawyer who paid the fine imposed upon you? It is true you are a pauper and can’t pay a fine of one Rupee. That is why you are in loin-cloth. You have discarded your Kurtha and have substituted it with a Chaddar. But is not the fine imposed upon you a national dishonor? The lawyer is probably a well-meaning patriot who wants to avert a national dishonour. Your body, as you have often said, is a national trust, though your barrister conscience is in the keeping of the barrister Sen Gupta. If the nation can find for you Dodge cars and comfortable Railway conveyance, and to defray these expenses, there can be donors who can be hailed as nation’s best friends. Why should the lawyer who paid the fine imposed on be blackmailed? This is Gandhian comedy.
The story of his South Indian counterpart, Mr. Rajagopalachari nick-named Chota Gandhi beats the short stories of his own that bristle in the columns of Young India. Famine is rife in the south. Men and women in thousands are emigrating from the villages to far off countries. A few Pavayeess and Marathals (generic names of rural Tamil women – editors) are alone left behind, because they have either their old husbands or helpless off-springs to look to. They are basking in the sunshine of an anna per day vouchsafed to them through the Khadi and Famine Relief which in reality is Brahmin Relief. The Acharya (C. Rajagopalachari – editors) and a host of his Brahmin colleagues are the people’s demi-gods. The Acharya is the Jehovah of the old spinsters. It is no wonder then that the old democratic Spinners’ Association has undergone a silent transformation and the infallible Acharya and a few of his adherents are life trustees of the Spinners’ Association, in pursuance of a scheme drafted by the Acharya himself.
Khadi work has got an art about it, which the Acharya has suddenly discovered. “Wells have all dried too”, he says, “but the patient women by a dint of miracle fill up their water-pots from the dry wells”. This, he calls, “the fine art of filling up the water-pots”. The angry gods of the Pudpupalayam Ashram that demand of Jeejays the sacrifice of their wealth when they speak of Khadi work as amounting to sweating the poor are satisfied with their glorious bounty of an anna per day.The poor have their javari and their unsatisfied hunger. What of these Puduppalayam gods themselves? They are a “happy family” who have fat salaries. They have their rice and dhal with ghee to boot. There is of course no news of their Ashram wells having dried up; but how can they be immured to the suffering of the poor on account of the scarcity of water? As a mark of sympathy for them, the demi-gods have minimized the consumption of water by substituting it with milk and coffee. They have their migrations too, from the kitchen, to the prayer hall.
After all, we can’t blame them for it, for as the old proverb goes, “the Brahmin is fond of his dish.” You cannot at the same time deny the truth that the art of filling up their stomachs is as fine as the art of filling up the water jugs. They won’t stop with this.
This is only a preparation for the coming elections and they hope that their labours shall be amply rewarded ere long. Keep awake, or when you rise up from your stupor you will find that fraud would have developed into the finest of fine arts.
– Revolt, 10 April 1929
Profiteering in Khadi A Reply to Mr. C.Rajagopalachar Mr. S. Ramanathan, M.A., B.L., ex-member of the Khadi Service, writes:
Mr. C. Rajagopalachari, in a letter to the press, dated 25th September, complains against what he calls “ill-informed criticism” by a section of the press which he insinuates, has “motives”. I am not aware of the allegations he seeks to answer, but am so amazed at the remarkable statements he makes in the course of his letter, regarding the fundamentals of the Khadi movement, that I think it necessary to draw public attention to them. Mr. Rajagopalachari is the de facto chief of the All India Spinners Association and is the virtual dictator of the khadi movement. His words are weighty utterances and cannot be lightly brushed aside as “ill-formed criticism”.
Mr. Rajagopalachari says: “If only we had made khadi business so profitable from the private commercial point of view, our goal would have been already reached. There is enough selfishness and business interest in the country, at once to attract capital and energy into any really thriving business. Unfortunately, however khadi is not a businessgiving fat dividends”. Mr. Rajagopalachari regrets that the profits accruing from khadi are not yet sufficiently attractive: his goal is to be reached through ‘fat dividends’. The great progenitor of the khadi movement had promised the advent of Ram Raj if we would but adhere to his programme. His successor treats us now to the prospect of an Elysium of “fat dividends”. We had dreamt a dream – of the dawn of freedom of the awakening of a people, of the quickening of dormant energies, of the springing up of a mighty organization to lead the onward march of civilization. The youth of India was called upon to renounce worldly prospects, to suffer physical discomforts to go into villages to educate and to organize. The charka signified a national revival. Khadi was the rallying call of the leader to dare and to achieve. After eight years of ceaseless endeavour, Mr. Rajagopalachari permits us a glimpse of the approaching “goal”: toiling spinners, sweating weavers, willing buyers, low costs, fixed prices, ready profits, quick return and ‘fat dividends’ – an el dorado where the khadi merchant rolls over heaps of rupees! Well, may one be tempted to exclaim, “Look here, on this picture and on this!”
Rationale of prices
In his anxiety to please “selfishness and business interests”, Mr. Rajagopalachari goes to the length of maintaining that at current prices khadi profits are “little over” an anna per rupee. He moreover, quotes “unimpeachable figures” to support his assertion. I would humbly submit that his figures are wrong and do not warrant his conclusion. To understand the argument, a little examination of the rationale of khadi prices is necessary. Khadi is a commodity whose raw material costs over a third of the value of the finished product. The raw material for this essentially cottage industry has to be bought at the competitive international market which is subject to frequent fluctuations dependent upon world conditions. Hence the production cost of khadi varies with the speculative changes in the commerce of the world. The spread of the Boll Weevil disease, meteorological forecasts of rains or no rains in a certain corner of America, panicky reports of damages due to floods, adroit attempts by financiers to corner goods, industrial disputes, strikes and lock-outs, declarations of war or threatened conclusions of armistice between remote countries, these and similar causes have violent repercussions on the cotton market which, in turn, react upon the poor spinner at the cottage. This eminently unsatisfactory state of affairs was sought to be remedied two years ago by fixing permanently the sale price of khadi so as to permit a margin for the producer to enable him to build up a reserve fund which would be utilized to contract the fluctuations of the cotton market thereby ensuring steady conditions of work for the spinner. The average price of cotton was assumed at Rs. 300 per candy of 520 Ibs. and the sale prices of the varieties of the finished product were worked out so as to yield one anna per rupee for the producer for every turn over of the capital.
On the one hand the A.I.S.A. which held the monopoly of the retail sales throughout the country undertook to maintain the sale prices permanently at the agreed rates. On the other hand the khadi merchants for whom Mr. Rajagopalachari now pleads solemnly agreed in the presence of the Mahatma to co-operate and build up the reserve fund. It was no doubt an ambitious programme involving a thorough overhauling of the production machinery and a corporate organization of the producers. The private merchant, intent upon quick returns and wide margins of profit, would not easily agree to the scheme. But the A.I.S.A. undertook the task with eyes wide open.
No reserve fund built
How did the scheme work? After the fixation of khadi prices there was a phenomenal fall in the cotton market and for considerable period cotton sold at rock bottom prices. There was a margin, sometimes, of Rs. 80 for every candy of cotton purchase. On former occasions, when there were similar falls, khadi prices also naturally came down. But now, the A.I.S.A. had a scheme on hand and in accordance with it, it maintained the sale prices at the higher artificial level already fixed. The private merchants, however, did not keep to the terms of the agreement but appropriated to themselves the huge margin of unearned profit, instead of utilizing it to build up the reserve fund. The A.I.S.A. felt powerless to enforce the scheme and as a result, an artificial surplus created for specific purposes has been allowed to be misappropriated. The public has been taxed to fill in private coffers. If Mr. Rajagopalachari was unable to persuade “selfishness and business interest” to adhere to the scheme he should at least have done justice to the consumer by lowering the sale price of khadi. The khadi wearer is, after all, a poor person and deserves Mr. Rajagopalachari’s protection as much as the khadi merchant who is intent on “fat dividends”.
Let us examine Mr. Rajagopalachari’s “unimpeachable figures”. He assumes for the purpose of his calculation the price of cotton to be Rs. 282 per candy. But he does not tell us since when and for what length of period did cotton sell at Rs. 282. Even at the 282 market there is an unearned profit of Rs. 18 which Mr. Rajagopalachari seeks to ignore by using the phrase “little over”. A six percent margin on the mere purchase of raw material is not an item which any manufacturer would ignore. And for a long period, as I have already stated, the margin has been not 8 but 180. I would invite A.I.S.A. executives to calculate and tell the public the total amount yielded by this margin during the last two years, taking into consideration the actual cost price of the value of cotton purchased and consumed by every producer. That amount or rather that portion of that amount, which has gone into private pockets instead of to a reserve fund, represents the penalty which the public has paid for having indulged in the luxury of A.I.S.A. management of khadi affairs.
Mr. Rajagopalachari seeks to enlist public sympathy by cataloguing the many and various difficulties of khadi administration. He wants us to know and be impressed by the fact that he is running a really very huge and extensive organization in fact “spread over all the provinces in India”. People “conversant with the details of business can understand what it means”! Let the mere man, therefore, who is bound to be “ill-informed”, stand at a respectful distance and gape in wonder. May I however, take courage in both my hands and humbly suggest that almighty as the A.I.S.A. may be, and extensive in its sway, the profiteer leads it by the nose.
– Revolt, 20 October 1929
Notes
- ‘Jeejay’ was the pseudonym of George Joseph, a leading lawyer and Congressman of the time and a participant in the Vykom satyagraha
- Ramachandran was the President of A.I.S.A. – All India Spinners’ Association.
