Page:Gandhi and Saklatvala - Is India different.pdf/13

 It is the duty of every sincere public man in India to find out how and why this tremendous enthusiasm was created, how and why it died out and how far the faults or the mistakes of your followers have been responsible for this state. The present condition of affairs demands a criticism and not a condemnation of criticism.

The methods adopted by other countries of organising labour and peasantry and guiding and leading the workers in factories or farms to obtain their rights, have produced far more benevolent and efficient results in human life than the two annas-a-day charka movement will ever do. The Government schemes of canals, scientific manuring and carrying on agricultural work by machinery, will add ten times more to the economic propriety of the peasantry than the charka, but you have already described this Government to be Satanic. Let us have a clear idea as to your position in this matter. Is a person adding to the economic value of the poor peasantry a friend or an enemy of the poor ?

I want you to put one question to your own conscience, irrespective of public articles — had you come out in this country after the general failure of your attempts to free Indians in South Africa from political and civic slavery, and after the mess you made with some young Indians in London, in drawing them into some direct or indirect service of war, would India have given you any importance, would India have allowed you to take the political leadership, would India have poured in lakhs of rupees in response to your demands if you had said that you wanted all this only for the purpose of adding As. 2 a day to the income of barely three per cent. of the Indian peasantry ?

Were not all these great powers laid at your entire disposal because you made a definite political promise and allowed the people at least to believe that you had some plan or method which would quickly, within a limited period of less than two years, give to India political freedom from the British yoke ? Now, where do we stand with regard to the primary object of the charka movement and its position today? Are you shifting your limit of two years to four years or to twenty years or to two hundred years ? Do you suggest that a rise of As. 2 income say of the whole population is a process which is going to drive the British out of this country or do you suggest that a still higher figure will have to be