 Gandhi's proposal to make handicrafts the centre of his pedagogy had as its aim to bring about a "radical restructuring of the sociology of school knowledge in India" in which the 'literacies' of the lower castes--"such as spinning, weaving, leatherwork, pottery, metal-work, basket-making and book-binding"—would be made central.The other aim of this use of handicrafts was to make schools financially and socially independent of the state—an even more radical concept.Thus in his influential article on education in "Harijan" in 1937 he argued