Indian Home Rule Part 10

3. In order to exert this force, Swadeshi in every sense is necessary.

4. What we want to do should be done, not because we object to the English or that we want to retaliate, but because it is our duty to do so. Thus, supposing that the English remove the salt-tax, restore our money, give the highest posts to Indians, withdraw the English troops, we shall certainly not use their machine-made goods, nor use the English language, nor many of their industries. It is worth nothing that these things are, in their nature, harmful; hence, we do not want them. I bear no enmity towards the English, but I do towards their civilization.

In my opinion, we have used the term "Swaraj" without understanding its real significance. I have endeavoured to explain it as I understand it, and my conscience testifies that my life henceforth is dedicated to its attainment.

APPENDICES:

Some Authorities.

Testimonies by Eminent Men.

APPENDICES.

Some Authorities.

The following books are recommended for perusal to follow up the study of the foregoing:--

"The Kingdom of G.o.d is Within You"--_Tolstoy_.

"What is Art?"--_Tolstoy._

"Slavery of Our Times"--_Tolstoy_.

"The First Step"--_Tolstoy_.

"How Shall We Escape"--_Tolstoy_.

"Letter to a Hindoo"--_Tolstoy_.

"The White Slaves of England"--_Sherard_.

"Civilization: Its Cause and Cure"--_Carpenter_.

"The Fallacy of Speed"--_Taylor_.

"A New Crusade"--_Blount_.

"On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"--_Th.o.r.eau_.

"Life Without Principle"--_Th.o.r.eau_.

"Unto This Last"--_Ruskin_.

"A Joy for Ever"--_Ruskin_.

"Duties of Man"--_Mazzini_.

"Defence and Death of Socrates"--From _Plato_.

"Paradoxes of Civilization"--_Max Nordau_.

"Poverty and Un-British Rule in India"--_Naoroji_.

"Economic History of India"--_Dutt_.

"Village Communities"--_Maine_.

Testimonies by Eminent Men.

The following extracts from Mr. Alfred Webb's valuable collection, if the testimony given therein be true, show that the ancient Indian civilization, has little to learn from the modern:--

Victor Cousin.

(_1792--1867_). _Founder of Systematic Eclecticism in Philosophy._

"On the other hand when we read with attention the poetical and philosophical movements of the East, above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe, we discover there so many truths, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which the European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before that of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy."

J. Seymour Keay, M. P.

_Banker in India and India Agent._

(_Writing in 1883._)

"It cannot be too well understood that our position in India has never been in any degree that of civilians bringing civilization to savage races. When we landed in India we found there a h.o.a.ry civilization, which, during the progress of thousands of years, had fitted itself into the character and adjusted itself to the wants of highly intellectual races. The civilization was not prefunctory, but universal and all-pervading--furnishing the country not only with political systems but with social and domestic inst.i.tutions of the most ramified description. The beneficent nature of these inst.i.tutions as a whole may be judged of from their effects on the character of the Hindu race.

Perhaps there are no other people in the world who show so much in their characters the advantageous effects of their own civilization. They are shrewd in business, acute in reasoning, thrifty, religious, sober, charitable, obedient to parents, reverential to old age, amiable, law-abiding, compa.s.sionate towards the helpless, and patient under suffering."

Friedrich Max Muelier, LL.D.

"If I were to ask myself from what literature we hear in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semetic race, the Jewish may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only but a transfigured and eternal life--again I should point to India."

Michael G. Mulhall, F.R.S.S.

_Statistics_ (_1899_).

Prison population per 100,000 of inhabitants: Several European States 100 to 230 England and Wales 90 India 38

--"_Dictionary of Statistics_," _Michael G. Mulhall, F.R.S.S._, _Routledge and Sons, 1899_.