WHAT IS HINDUISM?
Europe, as centres for the development of large scale
manufacturing industry – employing wage-labour drawn
from an exploited or landless peasantry, and destroying
ancient arts and handicrafts. The destruction of rural
handicrafts and creation of rural poverty only came about
through English colonialism, the export of raw materials
for industrial manufacture in England and the creation of a
land-owning class on the English model.
“By ruining handicraft production in other countries,
machinery forcibly converts them into fields for the supply
of its raw material. In this way East India was compelled to
produce cotton, wool, hemp, jute, and indigo for Great
Britain. [...] A new and international division of labour, a
division suited to the requirements of the chief centres of
modern industry springs up, and converts one part of the
globe into a chiefly agricultural field of production, for
supplying the other part which remains a chiefly industrial
field.”
Now of course, globalisation has created a reversal or
mirror image of this process – transforming Indian cities
into centres for capitalist economic development and the
manufacture of exportable commodities through the
exploitation of cheap labour from the countryside, resulting
in the ever-greater impoverishment of hitherto self-
sufficient rural farming communities, and even in the mass
suicide of farmers. Individual artisans no longer produce