An Unlikely Bond: Henry Ford and Mohandas Gandhi

People like Henry Ford, a wealthy industrialist and a famous inventor, are more likely to receive fan letters than to write them, but Ford did write at least one. In July 1941, he wrote a letter to Mohandas Gandhi, expressing his admiration for Gandhi’s work.

The letter took two months to reach Gandhi. Mail from Detroit to India was slowed by WW2.

When Ford wrote the letter, the United States had not yet entered the war. By the time Gandhi received the letter, President Roosevelt was delivering a speech to Congress, and war was declared on December 8, 1941, the day Gandhi got Ford’s correspondence.

But Henry Ford hadn’t written about the war. He was merely expressing his admiration for Gandhi’s work.

One link between Ford and Gandhi was that both men had a thorough understanding of industrial processes and economics. Gandhi’s political work in India was carried out by the concrete process of forming thread on a spinning wheel and by the process of deriving table salt from evaporating seawater.

Both men understood the economic, social, and political impacts of such mechanical processes.

In response to Ford’s letter, Gandhi sent him a spinning wheel, which Ford displayed in his museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The spinning wheel is still there.