Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/710

Rh solution, as I say, is a question of change of mentality.

It is not difficult to issue from outside the mandates: Let Hindu and Moslem unite. At this the obedient Hindus may flock to join the Khilafat movement, for such conjunction is easy enough. They may even yield some of their worldly advantages in favour of the Moslems, for, though that be more difficult, it is still of the outside. But the real difficulty is for Hindus and Moslems to give up their respective prejudices which keep them apart. That is where the problem now rests. To the Hindu, the Mussalman is impure: for the Mussalman, the Hindu is a Kafir. In spite of their longing for Swaraj, neither can forget this inward obsession. I used to know an anglicised Hindu who had leanings towards European fare. Everything else he would heartily relish, but he drew the line at hotel-cooked rice, — rice touched by Mussalman cooks, said he, refused to pass his lips. The same kind of prejudice which makes such rice taboo, stands in the way of cordial relationship. The habit of mind which religious injunctions have ingrained in us constitutes the age old fortress which holds our anti-Moslem feeling secure against penetration by outside ententes, whether on the basis of the Khilafat movement or of pecuniary pacts.

Such-like problems in our country become so difficult because they are of the inside: the obstructions are all within our own mind, which is at once in revolt if there be any proposal for getting rid of them. That is why we feel so strongly attracted if some external solution be suggested. It is when his own character stands in the way of making a living along the beaten track, that a person becomes ready to court disaster in a desperate gamble for becoming suddenly rich. If our countrymen accept the proposition that the charka is the principal means of attaining Swaraj, then it has to be admitted that in their opinion Swaraj is an external achievement. And therein lies the reason why, when the defects of character and the perversions of social custom which obstruct its realisation are kept out of sight, and the whole attention is concentrated on home-spun thread, no surprise is felt but rather relief.

In these circumstances, if we take the view that the external poverty of our country claims our foremost attention, — that one of the chief obstacles to Swaraj will be removed if our cultivators employ their leisure in productive occupations, then it is for our leaders to think out the ways and means whereby such spare time may be utilised to the best advantage. And does it not then become obvious that such advantage is best to be secured in the line of cultivation itself?

Suppose that poverty should overtake me, then it would surely behove any adviser of mine, first of all to consider that literary work is the only one in which I can claim any length of practice. However great may be my mentor’s contempt for this profession, he cannot well ignore it in advising me on how to earn a living. He may be able to shew by statistical calculations that a tea-shop in the students’ quarters would yield 75% profit; for accounts which neglect the human element easily run into large figures. And if such tea-shop enterprise should but assist in completing my ruin, that is not because my intellect is of a lower order than that of the successful tea vendor, but because my mind is differently constituted.

It is not feasible to make the cultivator either happier or richer by thrusting aside, all of a sudden, the habits of body and mind which have grown upon him through his life. As I have indicated before, those who do not use their minds, get into fixed habits for which any the least novelty becomes an obstacle. If an undue love for a particular programme leads one to ignore this psychological truth, that makes no difference to psychology, it is the programme which suffers. In other agricultural countries the attempt is being successfully made to lead the cultivators towards a progressive improvement of production along the line of cultivation itself, and there agriculture has made long strides forward by an intelligent application of science, the yield per unit of land being many times larger than in our country. The path which is lit up by the intellect is not an easy, but a true path, the pursuit of which shews that manhood is at work. To tell the cultivator to turn the charka instead of trying to get him to employ his whole energy in his own line of work, is only a sign of weakness. We cast the blame for being lazy on the cultivator, but the advice we give him amounts rather to a confession of the laziness of our own mind.

The discussion, so far, has proceeded on the assumption that the large-scale production