Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/296

M. K. Gandhi this question. There is one party that wants the mother tongue Gujarati to be the medium. The other party supports English. 'Both are prompted by pure motives. Both have the good of the country at heart but purity of motives alone is not sufficient for the achievement of the desired end. Experience of the world shows that often a pure motive lands us on impure ground. Let us therefore examine the merits or otherwise of the two views and see if we can arrive at unanimity on this point. This difficult question concerns the whole of India. But that does not mean that each province cannot solve it for itself, but must wait for general unanimity.'

Of course, it would help us to some degree in the solution of this problem if we review the agitation and efforts of other provinces. Bengal during the excitement of the 'partition' days tried to impart instruction in Bengali. Schools were established, funds poured in but the experiment failed. In my humble opinion it failed, because the organisers and teachers had not sufficient faith in their own experiment. The educated Bengali could not get out of the fascination of the English language. It was suggested that Bengali literature owes its 176