Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/649

 also of Japan, France, and America, Just sae what this has meant to India. We send out of India every year sixty crores (more or less) of rupees for cloth. We grow enough cotton for our own cloth. Is it not madness to send cotton 'Outside India, and have it manufactured into cloth there and shipped to us ? Was it right to reduce India to such a 'helpless state t

A hundred and fifty years ago, we manufactured all our cloth. Our women spun fine yarn in their own cottages, and supplemented the earnings of their husbands. The village weavers wove that yarn. It was an indispensable part of national economy in a vast agricultural country like ours. It enabled us in a most natural manner to utilise our leisure. To-day our women have lost the cunning of their hands, and the enforced idleness of millions has impoverish- ed the land. Many weavers have become sweepers. .Some have taken to the profession of hired soldiers. Half the race of artistic weavers has died out, and the other iialf is weaving imported foreign yarn for want of finer hand- spun yarn.

You will perhap's now understand what boycott of foreign cloth means to India. It is not devised as a punishment. If the Government were to-day to redress the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs and consent to India attaining immediate Swaraj, the boycott movement must still continue. Swaraj means at least the power to conserve Indian industries that are vital to the economic existence of the nation, and to prohibit such imports as may interfere with such existence. Agriculture and hand-spinning are the two lungs of the national body. They must be protected against consumption at any cost,

This matter does not admit of any waiting. The interests of the foreign manufacturers and the Indian importers cannot be considered, when the whole nation is

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