The Unique exhibition- II

When I told you the other day that the Exhibition was not a cinema show, I meant more than I said. When you go to a cinema show, you meet with things there to captivate in a sensual way your eyes and ears. I may tell you that we have tried to boycott from this Exhibition everything that has no educative value. We have tried to make the Exhibition a sacred and a holy place, a feast for your eyes and ears, a spiritual feast capable of purifying the senses. I shall tell you why. Do you know Orissa and its skeletons? Well, from that hunger-stricken, impoverished land of skeletons have come men who have wrought miracles in bone and horn and silver. Go and see these things not only readymade but in the making and see how the soul of man, even in an impoverished body, can breathe life into lifeless horns and metal. A poor potter has also worked miracles out of miracles out of clay. Things which I thought would be worth several annas, are worth only a copper or a couple of coppers, and yet they are delicate little pieces of art. A dear sister purchased the other day a little ‘Krishna’ in ivory. She was not given to worshiping Lord Krishna, but she now tells me that she has begun to worship the exquisite little form.

A Fairyland

The Exhibition is thus not a spectacular show but a kind of fairyland. But our tastes have been so debased that miracles happening before our very eyes appear like so much dust or clay, and trifles coming from abroad become exquisite piece of art. Water, from spring in far-off Europe with the witchery of an unintelligible name, becomes invested with miraculous quality, while the water of the holy Ganges, which is said to be a purifier and a natural disinfectant, seems to be no better than water from a dirty pool.

Learn to Like Indian things

If a vision of the kind I have described to you fails to stir your hearts and urge you to make some little sacrifice for the ill-fed and the underfed. God help you. Iqbal, whose poem Hindustan Hamara still stirs our hearts with emotion, must have had some such vision before his mind’s eye when he described India with her eternal sentry the Himalayas, and Ganges the eternal witness of the numerous stages through which our civilization has passed. We attend flag hoisting ceremonies and are proud of our National Flag. Let me tell you that our pride has no meaning if you do not like things made in India and hanker after foreign ones. It is idle for whose heart is not stirred at the sight of things made by our poor craftsmen and craftswomen, and to make a little sacrifice for them, to talk of Independence for India.

Harijan: April 18, 1936.