Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/369

 industry is in a dying condition. I took special care during my wanderings last year to see as many weavers as possible, and my heart ached to find how they had lost, how families had retired from this once flourishing and honourable occupation. If we follow the Swadeshi doctrine, it would be your duty and mine to find out neighbours who can supply our wants and to teach them to supply them where they do not know how to proceed, assuming that there are neighbours who are in want of healthy occupation. Then every village of India will almost be a self-supporting and self- contained unit, exchanging only such necessary com- modities with other villages where they are not locally producible. This may all sound nonsensi- cal. Well. India is a country of nonsense. It is non- sensical to parch one's throat with thirst when a kindly Mahomedan is ready to offer pure water to drink. And yet thousands of Hindus would rather die of thirst than drink water from a Mahomedan household. These non- sensical men can also, once they are convinced that their religion demands that they shonld wear garments manufactured in India only and eat food only grown in India, decline to wear any other clothing or eat any other food. Lord Curzon set the fashion for tea-drinking. And that pernicious drug now bids fair to overwhelm the nation. It has already undermined the digestive apparatus of hundreds of t housands of men and women and constitutes an additional tax upon their slender purses. Lord Hardinge can set the fashion for Swadeshi, and almost the w hole of India forswear foreign goods. There is a verse in the Bhagavat Gita, which, freely rendered, means, masses follow the classes. It is easy to undo the evil if the thinking portion of the

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