ESSENTIALS OF SUCCESS

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

ESSENTIALS OF SUCCESS

 

 

To finish the boycott of foreign cloth programme before the 30th September next it is no doubt necessary to revise our taste, revert to simplicity and cut down our wants to a minimum. No non-cooperator can afford to wear more than three articles of dress. We must not hanker after the Bezwada finery but must be satisfied with the coarsest khadi. But this is only a preliminary. Swadeshi will fail if we are not business-like. We have hitherto tried to act on the students and they have responded to the best of their lights and ability. Many non-co-operating students are doing valiant work as pickets or propagandists. A non-co-operation school attracts to it all public activity. But we cannot achieve full success in swadeshi through the schoolboys only. We must touch the hearts of the weavers of India. We must organize them. Those weavers who for want of scope for their art have left their calling should be induced to come back to it. We must hold their meetings and tell them why they should weave hand-spun yarn even though it may be uneven, and why they should consider it a sin to touch foreign yarn. Similarly we must induce carders (dhunias) to prepare slivers for spinning. We must also induce clothiers to introduce patriotism into their trade and sell hand-spun cloth and give up selling foreign cloth.

We must have for swadeshi shops inspectors who are experts in distinguishing between foreign cloth and swadeshi and between hand-spun and machine-spun. This great work cannot be done unless we are able to organize ourselves on a grand scale. And such organization is utterly impossible unless every Congress body is able to concentrate upon swadeshi, i.e., boycott and production to the exclusion of every other activity. The ideal no doubt is for every village to spin and weave for itself just as today most villages grow corn for themselves. It is easier for every village to spin and weave for itself than to grow all its corn. Every village cannot grow wheat or rice, but every village can stock enough cotton and spin and weave without any difficulty. But it must be some time before we can arrive at that happy state. Meanwhile, those provinces that are at all organized for the work, for instance the Punjab, must not only immediately exclude all foreign cloth from their own markets but must send out to the parts of India that need their superfluous stock of khadi. Punjab, Andhra, Bihar and Gujarat seem to be the best organized provinces for the manufacture of khadi. And they must busy themselves with the work so as to anticipate a famine of khadi. And if we would do this great and glorious work, we must cease to talk, or if we do talk, our talk must take the shape of business. We must cease to wrangle and offer hair-splitting objections to every position as also to take interest in them if anyone insists on indulging in these things.

The Congress must cease to be a debating society of talented lawyers, who will not leave their practice, but it must consist of producers and manufacturers, and those who would understand them, nurse them and voice their feelings. Practicing lawyers can help by becoming silent workers and donors. I sympathize with them for their desire to be in the limelight. But I would urge them to recognize their limitations. Their day will come when the nation is again in a position to go to law-courts and debating assemblies for justice or legislation. Today it has no faith in either, for they are corrupt beyond description. Both law and law-courts fail to do justice when the question is between the Government and the people. The test of their usefulness lies in their ability to adjudicate evenly between the two parties, not in their giving just laws as between different parts composing the people. The latter justice is like that of the lion interposing to keep the lambs from eating one another or dying of disease so that he may have all of them for food.