“Gentlemen, I pass on now to the economical development of the country. Let us see what progress we have made in this direction. Admittedly India is an agricultural country and its real life and strength is in the teeming millions of humanity who live in the villages, principally by agriculture. Has anything really been done to raise them from their poverty-ridden and helpless condition? In spite of the jugglery of figures in which the hearts of statisticians delight, what is the state of the country and its peasantry? Statistics are supposed to prove every theory advanced by men anxious to prove their case, but our eyes are our best witnesses and can not deceive us. India is a country rich in natural resources--resources which are not inferior to any other country in this wide, wide world. Her land bears every variety of crops from cotton and jute to wheat and mustard. Her mines produce every kind of metal from gold and iron ores down to the best coal, and not excluding numerous precious stones. She has a climate ranging from the bitterest cold to the intensest heat. Her rivers and forests are full of life and materials useful to man. In short, India is a self-contained, miniature world. In such a country what is the condition of her inhabitants? No toil or trouble is spared for the cultivation of their fields by the wretched and over-worked peasantry. All that manual labour can do is done, but because of the want of scientific methods and other causes beyond their control, the profits which ought to have been theirs are lost to them. Side by side with green, minutely and industriously cultivated fields, we find tiny and dilapidated mud hovels thatched with old and rotten straw. In these hovels there are neither windows nor floor-cloths, and the only furniture that they boast of is a few earthen vessels and perhaps a _chatai_.[25] Human beings and cattle herd together with no arrangements for sanitation. Such are the conditions in which the great majority of our people pass their miserable existence. “In commerce and industry we are no better off. Our old indigenous industries have been killed by foreign competition and new attempts are crippled in the interests of other peoples than those of India. The instance of the cotton excise duties is before us--duties which have been imposed in the interests of Manchester and Lancashire. “I now pass on to two of the recent repressive measures, the Press Act and the Defence of India Act. These acts have worked harshly and told heavily upon the persons and the properties of some leaders of our community. Musalmans are intensely agitated, and I should be grossly negligent in the discharge of my duties as the spokesman of Muslim India, if I failed to give voice to their feelings on the subject. On principle and by sentiment I object to repression and coercion, be it from the Government or from any section of a disaffected people.