Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/432

 Bahadur Man-ibhai Jushbhai initiated it. It remains for us to consider whether we shaH water the seed sown by them. I feel that every moment's d^lay means so much harm done to us. In receiving education through English at least sixteen years are required. Many experienced teachers have given it as their opinion that the same subjects can be taught through the vernaculars in ten years' time. Thus by sajving six years of their .lives for thousands of our children we might save thousands of years for the nation.

The strain of receiving instruction through a foreign medium is intolerable. Our children alone can bear it, but they have to pay for it. They become unfit for bearing any other strain. For this reason our graduates are mostly without stamina, weak, devoid of energy, diseased and mere imitators. Originality, re- search, adventure, ceaseless effort, courage, dauntless- ness and such other qualities have become atrophied. We are thus incapacitated for undertaking new enter- prises, and we are unable to carry them through if we undertake any. Some who can give proof of such qualities die an untimely death. An English writer had said thai the non-Europeans are the blotting-sheets of European civilisation, What ever truth there may be in this cryptic statement, it is not due to the natural unfitness of the Asiatics. It is the unfitness of the medium of instruction which is responsible for the result. The Zulus of South Afrita are otherwise inter- prising, powerfully built and men of character. They afre not -hampered by child -marriages and such other defects. And yet the position of their educated class is the same as ours. With them the medium of instruc- tion is Dutch. They easily obtain command over Dutch

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