Quest as Gandhi's Bequest to Gandhians

“Constructive work played an important role in Gandhian (and even pre-Gandhian) strategy. It was primarily organised around the promotion of khadi, spinning and village industries, national education and, Hindu Muslim unity, the struggle against untouchability and the social upliftment of the Harijans, and the boycott of foreign cloth and liquor. Constructive work was symbolised by hundreds of Ashrams which came up all over the country, almost in the entire villages. …It solved a basic problem that a mass movement faces – the sustenance of a sense of activism in the nonmass movement phases of the struggle…..the hardcore of constructive workers also provided a large cadre for the Civil Disobedience Movement. They were Gandhiji’s steel-frame or standing army¹ . ”