Indian conditions which are to be found only in her 700,00a villages. The half a dozen modern cities are an excrescence, and serve at the present moment the evil purpose of draining the life-blood of the villages. Khaddar is an attempt to revise and reverse the process, and establish a better relation ship between the cities and the villages. The cities with their insolent torts are a constant menace to the life and liberty of the villagers.
Khaddar has the greatest organising power in it because it has itself to be organised and because it affects all India. If Khaddar rained from heaven it would be a calamity. But as it can only be manufactured by the willing co-operation of starving millions and thousands of middle class men and women, its success means the best organisation conceivable along peaceful lines. If cooking had to be revived and re quired the same organisation, I should claim for it the same merit that I claim for Khaddar.
Triumph of Non-violence
My Communist comrade finds fault with my work among the labourers in Jamshedpur because I accepted an address in Jamshedpur, not from the Tatas but from the employees. His disapprobation is due, I expect, to the fact that the late Mr. Ratan Tata was in the chair. Well, I am not ashamed of the honour. Mr. Tata appeared to me to be a humane and considerate employer. He readily granted, I think, all the prayers of the employees, and I heard later that the agree ment was being honourably kept. I do ask and receive dona tions for my work from the rich as well as the poor. The former gladly give me their donations.
This is no personal triumph. It is the triumph of non violence, which I endeavour to represent, be it ever so in adequately. It is to me a matter of perennial satisfaction that I retain generally the affection and the trust of those whose principles and policies I oppose. The South Africans gave me personally their confidence and extended their friend ship. In spite of my denunciation of British policy and system I enjoy the affection of thousands of English men and women, and in spite of unqualified condemnation of modern materialistic civilisation, the circle of European and American friends is ever widening. It is again a triumph of non-violence.
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