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Except in Peshawar, where the political propaganda of a somewhat militant colony of Bengalees has stimulated the latent antagonism between Hindus and Mahomedans, our difficulties in the new Frontier Province, as well as along the whole North-West frontier, are of quite a different order, and though the turbulence of Pathan tribes and the occasional outbreaks of Moslem fanaticism amongst them are a cause of constantly recurring anxiety to the Government of India, it is not amongst those hardy and only half-tamed hillsmen that the cry of Swadeshi and Swaraj from Bengal or of "Arya for the Aryans" from the Punjab is likely to elicit any response.
"A Bande Mataram procession to-day, a conference or congress to-morrow, a flourish of Swadeshi speeches the day after, and so on."
Such rooms are silent barriers to friendship: proclaiming that East may go to the West but West cannot come to the East." "In a way that's true, isn't it?" "Yes in a way. This room, of course, is not like my inner apartments. It is like myself, however; cultivated but still Indian. It is my way of preaching true Swadeshi: Be your own self, even with English guests. But so far I have few followers.
Plaques of the sacred olive tree from the Holy Land, delicate laces and embroideries from Belgium and Holland, Persian carpets, finely woven Kashmiri shawls, everlastingly fragrant sandalwood trays from Mysore, Shiva "bull's eye" stones from Central Provinces, old Indian coins of dynasties long fled, bejeweled vases and cups, miniatures, tapestries, temple incense and perfumes, SWADESHI cotton prints, lacquer work, Mysore ivory carvings, Persian slippers with their inquisitive long toe, quaint old illuminated manuscripts, velvets, brocades, Gandhi caps, potteries, tiles, brasswork, prayer rugs-booty of three continents!
And now for the last division of Swadeshi, much of the deep poverty of the masses is due to the ruinous departure from Swadeshi in the economic and industrial life. If not an article of commerce had been brought from outside India, she would be today a land flowing with milk and honey. But that was not to be. We were greedy and so was England.
The rising movements of internationalism, of Pan-Islam, the Swadeshi movement, the rising toward freedom in India; all these are largely directed from Westminster.
The Partition was indeed little more than the signal for an explosion, not merely in Bengal, of which premonitory indications had been witnessed, but had passed almost unheeded, some ten years earlier in the Deccan. The cry of Swaraj was caught up and re-echoed in every province of British India. In Calcutta the vow of Swadeshi was administered at mass meetings in the famous temple of Kali.
But how many Extremists who shelter behind his name are not already speculating on the failure of the Swadeshi movement to which their dupes are committed, in order that when disillusionment comes it shall add to the area of popular discontent in which racial hatred is most easily sown?
The objectors consider it to be a most selfish doctrine without any warrant in the civilised code of morality. With them to practise Swadeshi is to revert to barbarism. I cannot enter into a detailed analysis of the position. But I would urge that Swadeshi is the only doctrine consistent with the law of humility and love.
What wonder that many Orientals ascribe their troubles, not to the process of economic transition, but to the political control of European governments and the economic exploitation of Western capital. The result is agitation for emancipation from Western economic as well as Western political control. A similar movement has arisen among the Hindus of India the so-called "Swadeshi" movement.
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