In Ahmadebad, India, one of Gandhi's ashrams is preserved as a museum. This issue's cover photo, by Cetta Kenney, is of the tiny cell where Gandhi-ji wrote, meditated, spun thread, and occasionally slept. Visiting the ashram complex is a wonderfully informative experience, but entering this simple chamber can be almost transformative.

Perhaps most evocative for me was the sight of the spinning wheel. For the Mahatma, the idea of "self-reliance" had become one of the principle symbols of the fight for independence from the British Raj. Two symbols of that movement became preeminent. One was salt; the other was the spinning wheel.

When Gandhi led the famous "salt march" in 1930, it was not only an act of civil disobedience but a clarion call to authenticity. The "poorest in the land" could subsist without the British-taxed salt.

But the spinning-wheel movement was even more evocative. The boycott of European-made cloth called Indians back to their ancestral roots. The inexpensive cloth that Gandhi and his followers made (khadi) was a celebration of self-sufficiency.

His wheel (charakha) became the symbol for an age.

Gandhi's Room, Ahmedabad, India; photo Cetta Kenney