A limited edition copy of Dreaming It Forward, hand embroidered completely cover to cover by women of the Kadam Phool Katna in Murshidabad, W, Bengal.

There are now three copies of this book available with delivery in August, 2025.

Dreaming It Forward is the third and final book of the 5 Year Plan Project begun in 2009. The book’s focus is organic cotton farmers and the handloom khadi cloth created by Gandhian ashrams in India today. The khadi was made from one metric ton of organic cotton commissioned from two small farm families in Umri village, Maharashtra, India at the very beginning of their planting season in July 2021. A time lapse film of the cotton growing was made for the edition.

The project is a collaboration of Aaron Sinift in the US with Kahakashan Khan & Jitendra Kumar in India, and Mr. Vijay Kumar Handa, an elder at the Gandhi Hindustani Sahitya Sabha, in New Delhi. It is a fusion of women’s, Muslim, Dalit, Gandhian, farmer, and transgender voices to create a living portrait of India through the lens of cotton, labor, and khadi. Twelve Gandhian service organizations throughout India created the book by hand using traditional means to create a swadeshi artifact consistent with Gandhi’s vision. Just spinning the thread took approx. 100 people about 6000 days of work.

Dreaming It Forward features 27 artists (19 from India and Pakistan, with Turkey, Haiti, Mexico, S. Korea, America) responding to rural agriculture, domestic life, and the stages of creating handloom khadi. The idea is to present an artifact (art & fact) of a living reality in India of 6.5 million cotton farmers, 70% of whom support their families on less than 4 acres of land. It documents the processes of creating khadi and the sarvodaya (universal uplift) workers whose lives are committed to serving India’s poorest people. Most people involved in organizing the project are farmers, or from farm families, even the wood block-cutters are farmers.

The edition is designed as a resource for educators and researchers with complete contacts.

Pictures of the embroiderers follow the book slideshow.