Ethics of Destruction

Love of foreign cloth has brought foreign domination, pauperism and, what is worst, shame to many a home. The reader may not know that, long ago, hundreds of ‘untouchable’ weavers of Kathiawad having found their calling gone, became sweepers for the Bombay Municipality. And the life of these men has become so difficult that many lose their children and become physical and moral wrecks; some are helpless witnesses of the shame of their daughters and even their wives. The reader may not know that many women of this class in Gujarat, for want of domestic occupation, have taken to work on public roads, where, under pressure of one sort or another, they are obliged to sell their honour. The reader may not know that the proud weavers of the Punjab, for want of occupation, not many years ago, took to the sword, and were instrumental on killing the proud and innocent Arabs at the bidding of their officers, and not for the sake of their country but for the sake of their livelihood. It is difficult to make a successful appeal to those deluded hirelings and wean them from their murderous profession. What was once an honourable and artistic calling, is now held by them to be disreputable. The weavers of Dacca, when they wove the world famous shubnum, could not have been considered disreputable.

A Sin

Is it now any wonder, if I consider it a sin to touch foreign cloth? Will it not be a sin for a man with a very delicate digestive apparatus to eat rich foods? Must he not destroy them or give them away? I know what I would do with rich foods, if I had a son lying in bed who must not eat them but would still gladly have them. In order to wean him from the hankering, I would, though able to digest them myself, refrain from eating them and destroy them in his presence, so that the sin of eating may be borne home to him.

If destruction of foreign cloth be a sound proposition from the highest moral standpoint, the possibility of a rise in the price of Swadeshi cloth need not frighten us. Destruction is the quickest method of stimulating production. By one supreme effort and swift destruction, India has to be awakened from her torpor and enforced idleness.

Foreign cloth to India is like foreign matter to the body. The destruction of the former is as necessary for the health of India as of the latter for the health of the body. Once grant the immediate necessity of Swadeshi, and there is no half-way house to destruction.

Swadeshi Spirit

Nor need we be afraid, by evolving the fullest Swadeshi spirit, of developing a spirit of narrowness and exclusiveness. We must protect our own bodies from disruption through indulgence, before we would protect the sanctity of others. India is today nothing but a dead mass moveable at the will of another. Let her become alive by self-purification, i.e. self-restraint and self-denial, and she will be a boon to herself and mankind. Let her be carelessly self-indulgent, aggressive, grasping; and if she rises, she will do so like Kumbhkarna only to destroy and be a curse to herself and mankind.

And for a firm believer in Swadeshi, there need be no Pharisaical satisfaction in wearing Khadi. A Pharisee is a patron of virtue. The wearer of Khadi from a Swadeshi standpoint is like a man making use of his lungs. A natural and obligatory act has got to be performed, whether others do it out of impure motives or refrain altogether, as they do not believe in its necessity or utility.

- Young India: Sept. 1, 1921.