"The Vow of Swadeshi
The vow of swadeshi is a necessary vow. But you are conversant with the swadeshi life and the swadeshi spirit.
I suggest to you we are departing from one of the sacred laws of our being when we leave our neighbour and go
out somewhere else in order to satisfy our wants.
If a man comes from Bombay here and offers you wares, you are not justified in supporting the Bombay servant
or trader so long as you have got a merchant at your very door, born and bred in Madras. That is my vow of
swadeshi. In your village, so long as you have got your village barber, you are bound to support him to the
exclusion of the finished barber who may come to you from Madras. If you find it necessary that your village
barber should reach the attainment of the barber from Madras, you may train him to that. Send him to Madras
by all means, if you wish, in order that he may learn his calling. Until you do that, you are not justified in going
to another barber. That is swadeshi.
So when we find that there are many things that we cannot get in India, we must try to do without them. We may
have to do without many things which we may consider necessary, but believe me, when you have that frame of mind,
you will find a great burden taken off your shoulders, even as the pilgrim did in that inimitable book, Pilgrim's
Progress: there came a time when the mighty burden that the pilgrim was carrying on his shoulders was
unconsciously dropped from him, and he felt a freer man than he was when he started the journey. So you will feel
freer men than you feel now, immediately you adopt the swadeshi life."
This was Mohandas Gandhi. I can see some instances when this principle might save a number of countries from the shock of being swept into some other culture. If I were to obey this rule, what land would be my homeland? Would it extend as far as the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, etc... or would it stop at the edges of my city, or the edges of my state?
Thoughts? |
