t they could only sell their goods if there was a need, or at least a perceived need, for these goods elsewhere. The only way the British could be sure of creating such needs was by colonizing the rest of the world. Of course, in doing so, the British also gained access to resources and, by distorting the local economies made the indigenous populations dependent on Britain's, and other nations', exports. If Indians were employed in industry and were not making their own cloth then the cloth would have to be imported from Britain and the perceived need became real. But the need was real, as Gandhi perceived, only so long as one accepted the need for the occupations that were keeping people from making their own cloth. Once the need was removed by a return to homespun textiles, for example, the consumption of textiles imported from Britain was no need at all.
Thus "Gandhi ha[d] no doubts at all that the source of modern imperialism l[ay] specifically in the system of social production" adopted by the West (Chatterjee 159). Gandhi's solution to the problem of industrialism's allure was to look on machinery as an evil and to change moral values in such a way that people's perception of their social needs is changed. Once people pe
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