INDIAN HOME RULE
do they know us. I would certainly advise you and those like you who love the motherland to go into the interior that has yet not been polluted by the railways, and to live there for six months; you might then be patriotic and speak of Home Rule.
Now you see what I consider to be real civilisation. Those who want to change conditions such as I have described are enemies of the country and are sinners.
Reader: It would be all right if India were exactly as you have described it, but it is also India where there are hundreds of child widows, where two-year old babies are married, where twelve-year old girls are mothers and housewives, where women practise polyandry, where the practice of Niyog obtains, where, in the name of religion, girls dedicate themselves to prostitution, and where, in the name of religion, sheep and goats are killed. Do you consider these also symbols of the civilisation that you have described?
Editor: You make a mistake. The defects that you have shown are defects. Nobody mistakes them for ancient civilisation.
70
