"The rise of Mahatma Gandhi empowered the people of India. Gandhi and his followers were angered by the laws that sent local Indian cotton back to Britain to be milled into cloth, and then sent back to India in which the people were forced to purchase British loomed cotton rather than hand woven khadi. Gandhi saw the revival of local village economies as the key to India's spiritual and economic regeneration and he envisioned homespun khadi as the catalyst for economic independence. He built his strategy around the revival of traditional craftsmanship and skills that would feed local demand with local production. As part of Gandhi’s policies of civil disobedience and non-cooperation, he encouraged people to boycott British goods, specifically cotton textiles, and encouraged Indians to use homespun and woven khadi. In India, he adopted the charka or spinning wheel as the symbol of his principle of self-sufficiency."