The Unique Exhibition - I

I am glad and thankful to be able to come to Lucknow to open this Khadi and other Village Industries Exhibition. This Exhibition, to my mind, brings out concretely for the first time the conception of a true rural exhibition I have nursed in my breast for several years. I have believed, and repeated times without number, that India is to be found not in its few cities but in its 7,00,000 villages. But we who have gathered here are not villagers, we are town-dwellers. We town-dwellers have believed that India is to be found in its towns, and that the villages were created to minister to our needs. We have hardly ever paused to inquire if those poor folks get sufficient to eat and clothe themselves with, whether they have a roof to shelter themselves from sun and rain. Now I do not think any Congress worker has traveled through the length and breadth of India as much as I have done during the past twenty years. That in itself is hardly a thing to be proud of. I, however, humbly claim, as a result of those peregrinations, to know the Indian Villages more than any other Congress worker or leader.

Exploitation Of The Villagers

I have found that the town-dweller has generally exploited the villager; in fact, he has lived on the poor villager’s substance. Many British official has written about the conditions of the people of India. No one has, to my knowledge, said that the Indian villager has enough to keep body and soul together. On the contrary, they have admitted that the bulk of the population live on the verge of starvation and ten per cent are semi-starved, and that millions have to rest content with a pinch of dirty salt and chilies and polished rice or parched grain. You may be sure that if any of us were to be asked to live on that diet, we should not expect to survive it longer than a month, or should be afraid of losing our mental faculties. And yet our villagers go through that state from day to day.

Purpose Of The Exhibition

It is no easy job to bring village artisans from their villages. You will find here villagers from South India who perhaps don’t know where they have come to. It is the purpose of this Exhibition to show that even this starving India of the villages is capable of producing things, which we town-dwellers may use both to the villagers and our own advantage. This Exhibition is not a spectacular show like its predecessors.

You should visit it daily and carefully study every section. If you will do this, you will marvel at the energy and industry expended in organizing it. You will be deeply interested in it, if you approach it in a spirit of service. You will find here craftsmen and craftswomen from Kashmir and South India, from Sind and Assam, and learn how they earn their scanty living. You will find that it is within your power to add a little to their income and to enable them to have a square meal, if only you will make up your minds to pay for their wares enough to ensure them a living wage.

Art Gallery

You will not expect me to describe all or even one of the numerous sections of the Exhibition. It is impossible for me to do so. Let me tell you that you will have an inking of the inside even from where you are sitting. For, in front of you are no triumphal arches but there are simply but exquisitely decorated walls done by Sjt. Nandalal Bose, the eminent artist from Shantiniketan and his co-workers who have tried to represent all the villager’s crafts in simple artistic symbols. And when you go inside the Art Gallery, on which Babu Nandalal Bose has lavished his labours for weeks, you will feel, as I did, like spending there hours together. But even the other sections will attract you. You may not find in the Exhibition anything to amuse you like music or cinema shows, but, I assure you, will find much to learn.

I want you all to be voluntary advertising agents of the Exhibition so that numbers may be attracted to see it. The Exhibition has not been organized for the villagers, it is organized for the city-dweller to enable him to see how the villager lives and what he is capable of. Commission I can promise none, though I dare say you will get it for work dutifully done when you appear before the Great White throne.

Harijan; April 8, 1936.