Page:Gandhi - The Wheel of fortune.djvu/37

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SWADESHI
19

foreign cloth does. Production of more sugar means more scientific agriculture, more and better machinery for crushing and refining. The sugar industry therefore stands on a different platform. Swadeshi in sugar is desirable, Swadeshi in cloth is an urgent necessity.

The Swadeshi propaganda has been going on in a more or less organised manner now for the past eighteen months. Some of its results are surprising and gratifying. It has taken a fairly firm hold in the Punjab, Madras and the Bombay Presidency. Hand spinning and hand-weaving are steadily increasing in these parts. Several thousand rupees have been distributed in homes where women never did any work before. And if more work of this kind has not been done, it is due to want of workers.

This is however written more to note the mistakes of the past than to sum up the bright side. My observations lead me to the conclusion that whilst the inauguration of the three vows and Swadeshi stores have greatly stimulated the Swadeshi