India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947; Pamphlets
an almost fatal departure from the Swadeshi spirit. We, the educated
classes, have received our education through a foreign tongue. We have
therefore not reacted upon the masses. We want to represent the masses,
but we fail. They recognise us not much more than they recognise the
English officers. Their hearts are an open book to neither. Their
aspirations are not ours. Hence there is a break. And you witness not in
reality failure to organise but want of correspondence between the
representatives and the represented. If during the last fifty years we
had been educated through the vernaculars, our elders and our servants
and our neighbours would have partaken of our knowledge; the discoveries
of a Bose or a Ray would have been household treasures as are the
Ramayan and the Mahabharat. As it is, so far as the masses are
concerned, those great discoveries might as well have been made by
foreigners. Had instruction in all the branches of learning been given
through the vernaculars, I make bold to say that they would have been
enriched wonderfully. The question of village sanitation, etc., would
have been solved long ago. The village panchayats would be now a living
force in a special way, and India would almost be enjoying
self-government suited to its requirements and would have been spared
the humiliating spectacle of organised assassination on its sacred soil.
It is not too late to mend. And you can help if you will, as no other
body or bodies can.
And now for the last division of Swadeshi, much of the deep poverty of
the masses is due to the ruinous departure from Swadeshi in the economic
and industrial life. If not an article of commerce had been brought from
outside India, she would be today a land flowing with milk and honey.
But that was not to be. We were greedy and so was England. The
connection between England and India was based clearly upon an error.
But she does not remain in India in error. It is her declared policy
that India is to be held in trust for her people. If this be true,
Lancashire must stand aside. And if the Swadeshi doctrine is a sound
doctrine, Lancashire can stand aside without hurt, though it may sustain
a shock for the time being. I think of Swadeshi not as a boycott
movement undertaken by way of revenge. I conceive it as religious
principle to be followed by all. I am no economist, but I have read some
treatises which show that England could easily become a self-sustained
country, growing all the produce she needs. This may be an utterly
ridiculous proposition, and perhaps the best proof that it cannot be
true, is that England is one of the largest importers in the world. But
India cannot live for Lancashire or any other country before she is able
to live for herself. And she can live for herself only if she produces
and is helped to produce everything for her requirements within her own
borders. She need not be, she ought not to be, drawn into the vertex of
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