In September 1921, during Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to Calcutta, Rabindranath Tagore told him: “Poems I can spin, Gandhiji, songs and plays I can spin, but of your precious cotton what a mess I would make!” Gandhi and Tagore shared an enduring friendship that lasted from 1914-15 till the latter’s death in 1941. But they also shared profound disagreements about political, social and economic matters. And perhaps no object symbolised their deepest philosophical differences more than the charkha. Tagore recoiled from Gandhi’s insistence that every true Indian must spin, while Gandhi remained unwavering in his belief that spinning carried deep moral and symbolic significance. On Tagore’s 165th birth anniversary, we revisit the Gandhi-Tagore debates on the spinning wheel. An inevitable conflict Jawaharlal Nehru once observed: “No two persons could probably differ so much as Gandhi and Tagore!” The conflict between them, despite a deep friendship rooted in respect, was probably inevitable.…