280 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES
community were to take the Swadeshi vow even though it may, for a time, cause considerable inconvenience. I hate legislative interference, in any department of life. At best it is the lesser evil. But I would tolerate, wel- come, indeed, plead for a stiff protective duty upon foreign goods. Natal, a British colony, protected its ugar by taxing the sugar that came from another Bri- tish colony, Mauritius. England has sinned against India by forcing free trade upon her. It may have been food for her, but it has been poison for this country.
It has often been urged that India cannot adopt Swadeshi in the economic life at any rate. Those who advance this objection do not look upon Swadeshi as a rule of life, With them it is a mere patriotic effort not to be made if it involved any self-denial. Swadeshi, aa defined here, is a religious discipline to be undergone in utter disregard of the physical discomfort it may cause to mdn iduals. Under its spell the deprivation of a pin or a needle, because these are not manufactured in India, need cause no terror. A Swadeshist will learn to dG without hundreds of things which to-day he considers neces'jary. Moreover, those who dismiss Swadeshi from their minds by arguiug the impossible, forget that Swa- deshi, after all, is a goal to be reached by steady effort. And we would be making for the goal even if we confined Swadeshi to a given set of articles allowing ourselves as a temporary measure to use such things as might not be procurable in the country,
There now remains for me to consider one more ob- jection that has been raised against Swadeshi. The objec- tors consider it to be a most selfish doctrine without any warrant in the civilized code of morality. With them to practice Swadeshi is to revert to barbarism. I -cannot
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