THE ARGUMENT
Chapter II
“SLAVE MENTALITY”
“Let us not put off everything until Swaraj[1] is attained and thus put off Swaraj itself,” pleads Gandhi. “Swaraj can be had only by brave and clean people.”[2]
But, in these days of the former leader’s waned influence, it is not for such teachings that he gains ears. From every political platform stream flaming protests of devotion to the death to Mother India; but India’s children fit no action to their words. Poor indeed she is, and sick—ignorant and helpless. But, instead of flinging their strength to her rescue, her ablest sons, as they themselves lament, spend their time in quarrels together or else lie idly weeping over their own futility.
Meantime the British Government, in administering the affairs of India, would seem to have reached a set rate of progress, which, if it be not seriously interrupted, might fairly be forecast decade by decade. So many schools constructed, so many hospitals; so many furlongs of highway laid, so many bridges built; so many hundred miles of irrigation canal dug; so many markets made available; so many thousand acres of waste land brought under homestead cultivation; so
many wells sunk; so much rice and wheat and millet
