Madhusudan_Das

His Life and Achievements: 73
ready to receive instruction in the three R's . This I know would appear
to some to be utterly absurd and to others to be totally unworkable.
But those who so think do not know the condition of the millions.
Nor do they know what it means to educate the millions of children
of Indian peasantry. And this much-needed education cannot be given
unless educated India which is responsible for the political awakening
in the country will appreciate the dignity of labour and unless every
young man would consider it his imperative duty to learn the art of
hand-spinning and then re-introduce it in the villages.
IV : SWADESHI vs FOREIGN
. . . Raw materials worth crores of rupees are produced in this
country and, thanks to our ignorance, lethargy and lack of invention,
exported to foreign countries : the result is, as Shri Madhusudan Das
has pointed out, that we remain ignorant like animals, our hands do
not get the training which they ought to and our intellects do not
develop as they should. As a consequence, living art has disappeared
from our land and we are content to imitate the West. As long as
we cannot make the machines required for utilizing the hide of dead
cattle, worth nine crores, available in our country, I would be ready
to import them from any part of the world and would still believe
that I was scrupulously keeping the vow of swadeshi. I would believe
that I would be only discrediting that vow by refusing, out of obstinacy,
to import those machines. .
V: SPEECH AT OPENING OF KHADI EXHIBITION,
BANGALORE.
. . Madhusudan Das was a brilliant lawyer in Cuttack. The
poverty of Orissa woke him from his dreams and he saw that necessary
as work with plough and oxen in our fields was, we should soon be
reduced to the status of the bovine species unless we added to our
agriculture some industry which called forth the cunning of the hand,
and he has himself become a finished artisan.
VI: COW-PROTECTION
It is true that now leather is tanned from the hides of slaughtered
cattle. But during the last World War Government of India had spent
huge amount of money to prepare good leather from the skin of dead