Page:Gandhi - The Wheel of fortune.djvu/45

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SWADESHI IN THE PUNJAB
27

more than her speeches, and her songs came next, her speeches last. The good ladies of Lahore flocked round her and left her coarse but beautifully white Sari and admired it. Some took pity on her that she who only the other day was dressed in costly thin silk Saris now decked herself in hand-woven Swadeshi Khaddar. Saraladevi wanted no pity and retorted that their thin foreign scarves lay heavier on their shoulders with the weight of their helpless dependence on foreign manufacture whereas her coarse Khaddar lay light as a feather on her body with the joy of the knowledge that she was free because she wore garments in the manufacture of which; her sisters and her brothers had laboured. This statement so pleased her audience that most of the women present resolved to discard foreign clothes. Saraladevi has now been charged by these ladies to open a shop where they could buy Swadeshi goods. She has since addressed more audiences. She spoke at the District Conference at Sialkot and to a meeting exclusively devoted to ladies numbering over