One might like to endow the village school with a chemical laboratory, another might want to decorate the village hall with reproductions of famous pictures, another might suggest removing all the hedges and planting the roadsides and lanes with gooseberry bushes, currant bushes, and fruit trees, as they do in some German communes today. The teaching in the village school would be altered to suit the new social order, and the children of the community would, we may be certain, be instructed in everything necessary for the intelligent conduct of the communal business. Intelligence would be organized as well as business. The women would have their own associations, to promote domestic economy, care of the sick and the children. They would have their own industries of embroidery, crochet, lace, dress-making, weaving, spinning, or whatever new industries the awakened intelligence of women may devise and lay hold of as the peculiar labor of their sex. The business of distribution of the produce and industries of the community would be carried on by great federations, which would attend to export and sale of the products of thousands of societies. Such communities would be real social organisms. The individual would be free to do as he willed, but he would find that communal activity would be infinitely more profitable than individual activity. We would then have a real democracy carrying on its own business, and bringing about reforms without pleading to, or begging of, the State, or intriguing with or imploring the aid of political middlemen to get this, that, or the other done for them. They would be self-respecting, because they would be self-helping above all things. The national councils and meetings of national federations would finally become the real Parliament of the nation, for wherever all the economic power is centered, there also is centered all the political power. And no politician would dare to interfere with the organized industry of a nation.”
As there is nothing to prevent such communities being formed in Ireland so there is nothing to prevent the formation of similar communities in India. We have here a practical policy of Swaraj which has been actually applied in Ireland and which could equally well be applied in India. There would no doubt be slight differences of detail in the co-operative organisations which would have to be started in rural districts of Bengal and other Provinces of India, but the main lines would be similar to those which have been successfully started in Ireland, in Germany and in Denmark. The rural community needs to be helped in its growth and the seed which must be planted is the seed of Co-operation. For whatever purpose a Co-operative Society may be started it has proved in Ireland to be an omniverous feeder. It exercises a magnetic influence on all agricultural activities. It will do the same in India. From the wide experience of men like “A. E.” and Sir Horace Plunkett it has been proved that the appeal has first to be made to the farmer and agriculturist on economic grounds, and it has to be proved that it is to his advantage financially to co-operate. The rest will follow. The idealist will come into his own when the economist has built the foundations. What ought now to be done in India is to start in every district where workers can be found, Co-operative Societies based on the natural desire of the people to buy cheaply what they need for the success of their farming and to sell their produce at the highest price possible. To do this workers must be trained and taught the elements at least of co-operation by those who have studied the subject either theoretically or practically. Would it not be possible for classes to be started in Calcutta and other great centres where students anxious to serve the rural population could study “Principles of Co-operation”? Where possible trained economists and those who have had some practical experience of the needs of the agricultural population should be employed to teach.
Already the seed of co-operation has been planted at Shantiniketan, Bolpur, for there is a co-operative store there, and an attempt is being made to extend the influence of the co-operative idea to the villages near by so that the agricultural population of the neighbourhood may learn by practical demonstration the economic advantages of co-operation.
Wherever such an experiment is started there would be an expression of practical Swaraj, for there we would have men trained in that spirit of independence which is the only real independence because it is the independence of the spirit.
