Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/59

 through a sieve-sometimes a useless process when the butter is quite pure-and then allowed to become cool-say a teaspoonful to a pound of flour--is mixed with the flour, a sufficient quantity of water is poured on it, and then it is kneaded with the hands until it forms itself into one homogeneous mass. This lump is divided into small equal parts, each as big as a tangerine. These are rolled into thin circular pieces about six inches in diameter with a wooden stick made specially for the purpose. Each piece is separately and thoroughly baked in a flat dish. It takes from five to seven minutes to bake one cake. This cake is eaten while hot with butter, and has a very nice flavour. It may be, and is, eaten even quite cold. What meat is to the ordinary Englishman, the cake is to the Indian, be he a vegetarian or a meat-eater, for in India a meat-eater does not, in the writer's opinion, regard his meat as an absolute necessity, but takes it rather as a side dish to help him, so to speak, in eating the cakes. Such in outline, and only in outline, is the ordinary food of a well-to-do Indian vegetarian. Now a question may be asked, "Has not the British Rule effected any change in the habits of the Indian people?" So far as the food and drink are concerned "yes", and "no". No, because ordinary men and women have stuck to their original food and the number of meals. Yes, because those who have learnt a little bit of English have picked up English ideas here and there, but this change too--whether it is for the worse or for the better must be left to the reader to judge--is not very perceptible. The last-mentioned class have begun to believe in breakfast, which usually consists of a cup or two of tea. Now this brings us to the question of drink. The drinking of tea and coffee by the so-called educated Indians, chiefly due to the British Rule, may be passed over with the briefest notice. The most that tea and coffee can do is to cause a little extra expense, and general debility of health when indulged in to excess, but one of the most greatly-felt evils of the British Rule is the importation of alcohol--that enemy of mankind, that curse of civilization--in some form or another. The measure of the evil wrought by this borrowed habit will be properly gauged by the reader when he is told that the enemy has spread throughout the length and breadth of India, in spite of the religious prohibition; for even the touch of a bottle containing alcohol pollutes the Mohammedan, according to his religion, and the religion of the Hindu strictly prohibits the use of alcohol in any form whatever, and yet, alas! the Government, it seems, instead of stopping, are aiding and abetting the spread of alcohol.