For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Higher Education and Mahatma Gandhi

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net;

dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com

Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

Higher Education and Mahatma Gandhi

It is true that some Indians will have to learn English. Acharya Dhruva seems to have looked at this question only from the point of view of higher education. If, however, we consider it from all angles, it will be seen that two classes of people will need to learn English. 1 All teaching is done through Gujarati. Hence, even persons who possess a high proficiency only in Gujarati will serve the purpose. Since, however, higher education is given entirely through English; the need for men with proficiency in English will remain till such time as we have teachers who can impart higher education through Gujarati. Even so, the teachers at present on the staff being well-equipped in English, the School can take on men with high proficiency in Gujarati; in fact, it wants to encourage such men. 2

I know that in the majority of cases the youth of our country have the determining of their higher education in their own hands. I know cases in which parents find it difficult to wean their children from what to them (the parents) appears to be the infatuation of their children about higher education. I am convinced that I am doing no violence to the feelings of parents when I address our young men and ask them to leave their schools or colleges even in spite of their parents. You will not be astonished to learn that, of the parents of hundreds of boys who have left schools or colleges, I have received only one protest and that from a Government servant whose boys have left their college. The protest is based on the ground that they were not even consulted before their boys decided to leave their college. In fact my advice to the boys was even to discuss with their parents the question of leaving before arriving at a decision. 3 How can I teach you the policeman’s work? You must first acquire the strength to rush up to a place where there may be danger. Do you mean to say that you will work for swaraj at leisure after you have had your higher education? 4

I suppose it is an undeniable fact that the so-called higher education is not so common among the Mussalmans as among the Hindus. I should like my correspondent to examine the figures as to higher education and say whether I am not right. Meanwhile let the students of statistics analyze the returns reproduced above and inform me of any inaccuracy in them. I have taken it for granted that the absence of figures for the provinces not mentioned by the correspondent shows that the figures in respect of them were not favourable to the charge brought by him. So far as literacy among women is concerned, I am glad to find that the percentage among Mussalman sisters in so many provinces is higher than among Hindu women. It shows that the purdah is no bar to literacy. This is no defence of the purdah for I am totally opposed to it. I note the fact as a pleasant surprise. For whilst I knew that many Mussalman sisters though remaining in seclusion were learned, I did not know that literacy among them was higher than among Hindu sisters. 5

But students in India labour less than one very serious disability. Those who go in for this class of education or for higher education are drawn from the middle class. Unfortunately for us and unfortunately for our country, the middle classes have almost lost the use of their hands and I hold it to be utterly impossible for a boy to understand the secrets of science or the pleasures and the delights that scientific pursuits can give, if that boy is not prepared to use his hands, to tuck up his sleeves and labour like an ordinary labourer in the streets. 6 You will perhaps be told that the literacy in India is on the decrease whilst higher education is increasing. Somehow or other, education among the messes is decreasing. Whereas every village had a school 50 years ago, these schools have gone for want of patrons. The Government had established new schools but unfortunately those in charge of the educational system took no notice of these village schools. The proportion of literate people in India today is really less than the proportion that existed 50 years ago. 7 Higher educations makes us foreigners in our country and the primary education being practically of no use in after life becomes almost useless. There is neither originality nor naturalness about it. It need not be at all original if it would only be aboriginal. 8

There is too, for us, the inordinately expensive education. When it is difficult for millions even to make the two ends meet, when millions are dying of starvation, it is monstrous to think of giving our relatives a costly education. Expansion of the mind will come from hard experience, not necessarily in the college or the school-room. When some of us deny ourselves and ours the so-called higher education, we shall find true means of giving and receiving a really high education. Is there not, may there not be, a way of each boy paying for his own education? There may be no such way. Whether there is or there is not such a way is irrelevant. But there is no doubt that when we deny ourselves the way of expensive education seeing that aspiration after higher education is a laudable end, we shall find out a way of fulfilling it more in accord with our surroundings. The golden rule to apply in all such cases is resolutely to refuse to have what millions cannot. This ability to refuse will not descend upon us all of a sudden. The first thing is to cultivate the mental attitude that will not have possessions or facilities denied to millions, and the next immediate thing is to re-arrange our lives as fast as possible in accordance with that mentality. 9

I do not like the meanings suggested here by the correspondent to the primary, the secondary and the higher education respectively. Why should we want village people to be satisfied merely with primary education? They too have a right to receive secondary and higher education those of them at least who want it. And the boys in the cities cannot do without primary education. The object of all the three should be the prosperity of the villages. I do not understand why grammar, compound interest and higher geometry have all been classed together. I have always believed that grammar is absolutely necessary for the mastery of a language, and that grammar and higher geometry are highly interesting subjects. Both provide innocent, intellectual entertainment. I will, therefore, accord a place to both these subjects in national education for those who go in for higher education or wish to study the science of language. In the same way, he who wants to be good at accounts cannot do so without learning compound interest.

Therefore, all the three things mentioned by the correspondent in the question will have their due place in the syllabus for national education. The point is that there are things which are common to all schemes of education. Today, we have to differentiate between Government education and National education because the former is detrimental to national development. But there are many things in Government schools which will and must also be in our schools. Thus, though there are points of similarity between the two, the atmosphere in Government schools strengthens the bonds of slavery and is used at critical moments to suppress us. Therefore, such schools are to be renounced. Besides, as we have already seen, a portion, at least, of the education imparted there is wholly unnecessary; it is just a burden and nothing more. But I am straying from the subject under discussion. I have thought it fit to offer this clarification under the impression that I might not have grasped the point behind this question. Urdu stands apart from the above-mentioned subjects; the question of its study must be considered separately. Hindus and Muslims will ultimately unite but in our national schools we must continue to strive unremittingly to bring them closer together. For this, we must acquaint ourselves with each other’s religion. If the students forget whatever little of Urdu they learn, evidently they are not serious about its study and must be learning it only because they must. But this can also be said about Hindi. Only God knows how interest in Hindi or Urdu can be created among the students, but there is no doubt in my mind that its knowledge is necessary for the progress of the nation. 10

But the point at issue is not Western culture. The point at issue is the medium of instruction. But for the fact that the only higher education, the only! Education worth the name, has been received by us through the English medium, there would be no need to prove such a self-evident proposition that the youth of a nation to remain a nation must receive all instruction including the highest in its own vernacular or vernaculars. Surely, it is a self-demonstrated proposition that the youth of a nation cannot keep or establish a living contact with the masses unless their knowledge is received and assimilated through a medium understood by the people. Who can calculate the immeasurable loss sustained by the nation owing to thousands of its young men having been obliged to waste years in mastering a foreign language and its idiom of which in their daily life they have the least use and in learning which they had to neglect their own mother tongue and their own literature? There never was a greater superstition than that a particular language can be incapable of expansion or expressing abstruse or scientific ideas. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers. 11

This country needs an industrial climate. In the education of this country, the vocational aspect should constitute its dominant part. When this takes place, the students who will go on learning a craft will support their schools through it. Shri Madhusudan Das had conceived such a plan with regard to his tannery in Cuttack. The plan was a fine one. But it did not materialize as the prevailing atmosphere in the country provided no encouragement to vocational training or a tannery. Why should not carpentry be an indispensable part of our higher education? Education without knowledge of weaving would be comparable to the solar system without the sun. Where such trades are being properly learnt, the students should be able to meet the expenses of their own schools. For this scheme to succeed, the students should have physical strength, will-power and a favourable atmosphere created by the teachers. If a weaver could become a Kabir, why cannot other weavers become, if not Kabir’s, at any rate, Gidwani, Kripalani’s or Kalelkar? If a cobbler could become a Shakespeare, why cannot other cobblers become, if not great poets, at any rate, experts in the fields of chemistry, economics and such other subjects? It is very necessary to understand that, by regarding vocational training as something that is opposed to intellectual education, we are labouring under a great misapprehension and that thereby we are retarding the progress of the people. The Vidyapith has taken in hand the task of explaining this fact. In the mean time, those who have faith in national education should help institutions like the national school in Bombay to the best of their ability. And if the citizens of Bombay will not provide this help, who else will? I hope that no one will excuse himself on the ground that business in Bombay is slack. The citizens of Bombay may be suffering from many shortcomings, but I have not yet discerned in them that of miserliness. Hence I hope that the patriotic citizens of Bombay will fill Acharya Gokulbhai purse and free him from worries. 12

We are ashamed to have to refer to the evil custom of deti-leti. In spite of having received higher education we do not hesitate to squeeze thousands of rupees from the wife’s relations. Some of us regard it as our birthright to obtain money through our wives. Many have no sense of self-respect. In spite of the higher education amongst girls, hardly half-a-dozen have been courageous enough to resent it as insult to have to buy their husbands. Recently there has been a boycott resolution against those who countenance deti-leti. But people have not yet freed themselves from the evil. 13 No originality is claimed for the method advocated here. Booker T. Washington tried it with considerable success. If I recollect rightly, even the higher education he gave was self-supporting. In America, it is the most usual thing for even college boys to pay fully for their education by engaging in some kind of remunerative work. The plan is different but the idea underlying is not. 14

It is a fact that before the British rule was established in India, primary education was much more widespread than it is today and higher education too was imparted in a great measure. Have we fallen so low today that by ending Government-sponsored education our education will come to an end? This student should know that national schools exist in India today and thousands of youths are receiving national education there. Even if all the boys boycott Government schools they need not remain uneducated. Yes, they will certainly not have grand school buildings built with the money soaked in the blood of the poor nor will they receive an education that destroys independence. 15 He says that every well-to-do Hindu should bear the expense of giving, if possible under his own observation, higher education to a Harijan young man or girl so that these after finishing their education might work for the uplift of fellow-Harijans. Both the suggestions are worthy of consideration and adoption. I would ask all who have made fruitful suggestions to pass them on to the newly established League. Correspondents should recognize my limitations. From behind the prison gates, I can only tender advice to the League and the people. I can take no part in the real execution of plans. They should also recognize that my opinions, based as they must be on insufficient data, and often on second-hand information, are liable to revision in the light of new facts and should, therefore, be received with caution. 16

I hope all those who are interested in the removal of untouchability are familiar with Mr. David’s scheme for the higher education of selected Harijans by caste Hindus. The scheme was published some time ago in the Bombay Press after being enthusiastically accepted by the Servants of Untouchables Society. In Mr. David’s words, “It aims at enabling a large number of untouchables to enjoy the benefits of the best higher education (including technical instruction) possible in this country.” Under it, “well-to-do caste Hindus is expected throughout India each to bear the expenses for such education of at least one Harijan student for a period of five years. Scholarships should be given to selected candidates and the expenses imply the provision of educational fees, books and living expenses on a modest scale”. Mr. David thinks that Rs. 500 per year per Harijan would be required for college education and half as much for high school education. He advises donors to subscribe, wherever it is possible, the whole amount covering five years in one lump sum. “In order to build up the self-respect of Harijan scholars”, says Mr. David, “it should be laid down that each scholar would be expected to reimburse the amount originally advanced for his education as soon as he is in a position to do so. Thus a student under this scheme is provided by means of a loan and not a gift.” And if a large number of students discharge these debts of honour, Mr. David anticipates that a permanent fund will be created.

Mr. David advises the formation of a committee or committees in Provinces which will frame rules for the selection of candidates, and the disbursements of subscriptions will be subject to the recommendation of such committee or committees. He is emphatic that the scheme if carried out, should “produce important and sustained results”, and make possible within a comparatively short period the creation of a large number of lawyers, teachers, doctors and engineers from among Harijans. The existence of a considerable number of such persons would be of material help in raising the social status of the depressed classes, and, he adds, “it is framed on strictly non-controversial lines, thus widening to the maximum its potential field of response. It should win the support of even the staunchest sanatanists. It is an opportunity at hand for caste Hindus to give concrete expression of their feeling towards untouchables.” Let me hope, with Mr. David, that the scheme will commend itself to the “staunchest sanatanists” and that in any case it would receive liberal support. I do not know whether the Central Board or the Bombay Board has received any donations. I venture to suggest to the Bombay Board that, if it has not already done so, it should form a small committee getting, if possible, a sanatanist to work on it, frame rules and get scholarships. Whilst it would be the most proper thing to get 1,000 donors who would contribute Rs. 2,500 or 1,250, as the case may be, for full five years’ expenses, it is not necessary to confine oneself to the letter of Mr. David’s scheme, so long as its spirit is observed. The central point of the scheme is that there should be a decent fund at once collected from caste Hindus for the higher education of a select number of Harijan boys or girls. I, therefore, invite subscriptions for the scheme. They will be duly acknowledged in these columns. Donors should send moneys to the Manager, Sjt. A. V. Patwardhan, marking the envelopes ‘the David Scheme’. Acknowledgements will be published from week to week, and the money will be handed to the Central Board for their disposal strictly in accordance with the donor’s instructions. As soon as the first full subscription is received, I would advise the Central Board to make its selection. Donors may make their own choice of the Province from which Harijan boys or girls may be selected, or they may even make their own selection of such boy or girl and hand the donation to the Central Board or Provincial Board for disbursement to, and supervision of, the candidate so selected. 17

Higher education should be left to private enterprise and for meeting national requirements whether in the various industries, technical arts, belles-lettres or fine arts. The State Universities should be purely examining bodies, self-supporting through the fees charged for examinations. Universities will look after the whole of the field of education and will prepare and approve courses of studies in the various departments of education. No private school should be run without the previous sanction of the respective Universities. University charters should be given liberally to anybody of persons of proved worth and integrity, it being always understood that the Universities will not cost the State anything except that it will bear the cost of running a Central Education Department. The foregoing scheme does not absolve the State from running such seminaries as may be required for supplying State needs. It is claimed that if the whole scheme is accepted, it will solve the question of the greatest concern to the State training of its youth, its future makers. 18

The Rt. Hon. Shri Srinivasa Sastri has criticized, as he had a perfect right to do, the views I timidly and very briefly expressed some time ago on higher education. I entertain a very high regard for him as man, patriot and scholar. It is therefore always painful to me when I find myself disagreeing with him. And yet duty compels me to re-express my views on higher education more fully than before, so that the reader may make out for himself the difference between his views and mine. I admit my limitations. I have no university education worth the name. My high school career was never above the average. I was thankful if I could pass my examinations. Distinction in the school was beyond my aspiration. Nevertheless I do hold very strong views on education in general, including what is called higher education. And I owe it to the country that my views should be clearly known and taken for what they may be worth. I must shed the timidity that has led almost to self-suppression. I must not fear ridicule, and even loss of popularity or prestige. If I hide my belief, I shall never correct errors of judgment. I am always eager to discover them and more than eager to correct them. Let me now state my conclusions held for a number of years and enforced wherever I had opportunity of enforcing them:

(1) I am not opposed to education even of the highest type attainable in the world.

(2) The State must pay for it wherever it has definite use for it.

(3) I am opposed to all higher education being paid for from the general revenue.

(4) It is my firm conviction that the vast amount of the so-called education in arts, given in our colleges, is sheer waste and has resulted in unemployment among the educated classes. What is more, it has destroyed the health, both mental and physical, of the boys and girls who have the misfortune to go through the grind in our colleges.

(5) The medium of a foreign language through which higher education has been imparted in India has caused incalculable intellectual and moral injury to the nation.

We are too near our own times to judge the enormity of the damage done. And we who have received such education have both to be victims and judges an almost impossible feat. I must now give my reason for the conclusions set forth above. This I can best do, perhaps, by giving a chapter from my own experience. Up to the age of 12 all the knowledge I gained was through Gujarati, my mother tongue. I knew then something of arithmetic, history and geography. Then I entered a high school. For the first three years the mother tongue was still the medium. But the schoolmaster’s business was to drive English into the pupil’s head. Therefore more than half of our time was given to learning English and mastering its arbitrary spelling and pronunciation. It was a painful discovery to have to learn a language that was not pronounced as it was written. It was a strange experience to have to learn the spelling by heart. But that is by the way, and irrelevant to my argument. However, for the first three years, it was comparatively plain sailing. The pillory began with the fourth year.

Everything had to be learnt through English geometry, algebra, chemistry, astronomy, history, geography. The tyranny of English was so great that even Sanskrit or Persian had to be learnt through English, not through the mother tongue. If any boy spoke in the class in Gujarati which he understood, he was punished. It did not matter to the teacher if a boy spoke bad English which he could neither pronounce correctly nor understand fully. Why should the teacher worry? His own English was by no means without blemish. It could not be otherwise. English was as much a foreign language to him as to his pupils. The result was chaos. We the boys had to learn many things by heart, though we could not understand them fully and often not at all. My head used to reel as the teacher was struggling to make his exposition on geometry understood by us. I could make neither head nor tail of geometry till we reached the 13th theorem of the first book of Euclid. And let me confess to the reader that in spite of all my love for the mother tongue I do not to this day know the Gujarati equivalents of the technical terms of geometry, algebra and the like. I know now that what I took four years to learn of arithmetic, geometry, algebra, chemistry and astronomy I should have learnt easily in one year if I had not to learn them through English but Gujarati. My grasp of the subjects would have been easier and clearer. My Gujarati vocabulary would have been richer. I would have made use of such knowledge in my own home. This English medium created an impassable barrier between me and the members of my family, who had not gone through English schools.

My father knew nothing of what I was doing. I could not, even if I had wished it, interest my father in what I was learning for though he had ample intelligence, he knew not a word of English. I was fast becoming a stranger in my own home. I certainly became a superior person. Even my dress began to undergo imperceptible changes. What happened to me was not an uncommon experience. It was common to the majority. The first three years in the high school made little addition to my stock of general knowledge. They were a preparation for fitting the boys for teaching them everything through English. High schools were schools for cultural conquest by the English. The knowledge gained by the three hundred boys of my high school became a circumscribed possession. It was not for transmission to the masses. A word about literature, we had to learn several books of English prose and English poetry. No doubt all this was nice. But that knowledge has been of no use to me in serving or bringing me in touch with the masses.

I am unable to say that if I had not learnt what I did of English prose and poetry, I should have missed a rare treasure. If I had, instead, passed those precious seven years in mastering Gujarati and had learnt mathematics, sciences, and Sanskrit and other subjects through Gujarati, I could easily have shared the knowledge so gained with my neighbours. I would have enriched Gujarati, and who can say that I would not have, with my habit of application and my inordinate love for the country and the mother tongue, made a richer and greater contribution to the service of the masses? I must not be understood to decry English or its noble literature. The columns of Harijan are sufficient evidence of my love of English. But the nobility of its literature cannot avail the Indian nation any more than the temperate climate or the scenery of England can avail her. India has to flourish in her own climate and scenery and her own literature, even though all the three may be inferior to the English climate, scenery and literature. We and our children must build on our own heritage. If we borrow another, we impoverish our own. We can never grow on foreign victuals. I want the nation to have the treasures contained in that language, and for that matter the other languages of the world, through its own vernaculars. I do not need to learn Bengali in order to know the beauties of Rabindranath’s matchless productions. I get them through good translations. Gujarati boys and girls do not need to learn Russian to appreciate Tolstoy’s short stories. They learn them through good translations.

It is the boast of Englishmen that the best of the world’s literary output is in the hands of that nation in simple English inside of a week of its publication. Why need I learn English to get at the best of what Shakespeare and Milton thought and wrote? It would be good economy to set apart a class of students whose business would be to learn the best of what is to be learnt in the different languages of the world and give the translation in the vernaculars. Our masters chose the wrong way for us, and habit has made the wrong appear as right. I find daily proof of the increasing and continuing wrong being done to the millions by our false de-Indian zing education. Those graduates who are my valued associates themselves flounder when they have to give expression to their innermost thoughts. They are strangers in their own homes. Their vocabulary in the mother tongue is so limited that they cannot always finish their speech without having recourse to English words and even sentences. Nor can they exist without English books. They often write to one another in English. I cite the case of my companions to show how deep the evil has gone.

For we have made a conscious effort to mend ourselves. It has been argued that the wastage that occurs in our colleges need not worry us if, out of the collegians, one Jagdish Bose can be produced by them. I should freely subscribe to the argument if the wastage was unavoidable. I hope I have shown that it was and is even now avoidable. Moreover, the creation of a Bose does not help the argument. For Bose was not a product of the present education. He rose in spite of the terrible handicaps under which he had to labour. And his knowledge became almost in transmissible to the masses. We seem to have come to think that no one can hope to be like a Bose unless he knows English. I cannot conceive a grosser superstition than this. No Japanese feels so helpless as we seem to do. Nothing but a heroic remedy can deal with the deep-seated evil which I have endeavoured to describe. The Congress Ministers can, if they will, mitigate it if they cannot remove it. Universities must be made self-supporting. The State should simply educate those whose services it would need. For all other branches of learning it should encourage private effort. The medium of instruction should be altered at once and at any cost, the provincial languages being given their rightful place.

I would prefer temporary chaos in higher education to the criminal waste that is daily accumulating. In order to enhance the status and the market value of the provincial languages, I would have the language of the law courts to be the language of the province where the court is situated. The proceedings of the Provincial Legislatures must be in the language, or even the languages of the province where a province has more than one language within its borders. I suggest to the legislators that they could, by enough application, inside of a month, understand the languages of their provinces. There is nothing to prevent a Tamilians from easily learning the simple grammar and a few hundred words of Telugu, Malayalam and Kanarese, all allied to Tamil. At the centre Hindustani must rule supreme. In my opinion this is not a question to be decided by academicians. They cannot decide through what language the boys and girls of a place are to be educated. That question is already decided for them in every free country. Nor can they decide the subjects to be taught. That depends upon the wants of the country to which they belong. Theirs is the privilege of enforcing the nation’s will in the best manner possible. When this country becomes really free the question of medium will be settled only one way.

The academicians will frame the syllabus and prepare text-books accordingly. And the products of the education of a free India will answer the requirements of the country as today they answer those of the foreign ruler. So long as we the educated classes play with this question. I very much fear we shall not produce the free and healthy India of our dream. We have to grow by strenuous effort out of our bondage, whether it is educational, economical, social or political. The effort itself is three fourths of the battle. Thus I claim that I am not an enemy of higher education. But I am an enemy of higher education as it is given in this country. Under my scheme there will be more and better libraries, more and better laboratories, more and better research institutes. Under it we should have an army of chemists, engineers and other experts who will be real servants of the nation and answer the varied and growing requirements of a people who are becoming increasingly conscious of their rights and wants. And all these experts will speak not a foreign language but the language of the people. The knowledge gained by them will be the common property of the people. There will be truly original work instead of mere imitation. And the cost will be evenly and justly distributed. 19

I am not against higher education. But I am against only a few lakhs of boys and girls receiving it at the expense of the poor taxpayer. Moreover I am against the type of higher education that is given. It is much cry and little wool. The whole system of higher education and for that matter all education needs radical overhauling. But your difficulty is about unemployment. In this you have my sympathy and co-operation. On the principle that every labourer is worthy of his hire, every graduate who goes to a village to serve it is entitled to be housed, fed and clothed by the villagers. And they do it too. But they will not when the graduate lives like saheb log and costs them ten times as much as they can afford. His life must accord as nearly as possible with that of the villagers and his mission must find appreciation among them. 20

Many of my countrymen have received and are still receiving higher education in America. I know too that several have taken shelter there. I have profited greatly by the writings of Thoreau and Emerson. I say this to tell you how much I am connected with your country. Of Great Britain I need say nothing beyond mentioning that in spite of my intense dislike of British rule, I have numerous personal friends in England whom I love as dearly as my own people. I had my legal education there. I have therefore nothing but good wishes for your country and Great Britain. You will therefore accept my word that my present proposal, that the British should unreservedly and without reference to the wishes of the people of India immediately withdraw their rule, is prompted by the friendliest intention. I would like to turn into goodwill the ill will which, whatever may be said to the contrary, exists in India towards Great Britain and thus enable the millions of India to play their part in the present war. 21

All of you are college students, receive higher education in your colleges and follow the Western way in every detail of your daily lives, from your mode of dressing to the food you eat. It is not your fault that you do so; it is only the result of the fascination the British Government exercises on us. But I will continue to believe ourselves slaves as long as all these things do not disappear completely. For example, every Indian, whether educated or uneducated, has learnt to have tea and biscuits the first thing in the morning. It is little wonder to me that you have not felt the glow of freedom when I see you hugging to yourselves the symbols of your cultural slavery. You are wearing socks in this intolerable heat. I can go on citing such instances without end. My Point, in brief, is that till we have eschewed, even in small matters, all Western things and ways which harm the country, the society and our family life, we shall remain slaves. Some features of their civilization are admirable indeed. But we hardly see anybody emulating those. 22

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