Madhusudan_Das

74 Madhusudan Das :
animals. Tannery Experts have told me that beautiful leather-products
can also be prepared from the hides of dead animals like that of
slaughtered animals. I am now experimenting in this direction. Mr
Madhusudan Das of Cuttack has been experiminting it for the last
several years and he has told me regarding his success in this field.
Government Laboratory at Calcutta is also experimenting in this
direction.
VII: LETTER TO MADHUSUDAN DAS
DEAR FRIEND,
SATYAGRAHA ASHARAM,
SABARMATI,
March 16, 1928.
After a great deal of thought and bother I have established at
the Ashram a little bit of a tannery without any power-driven
machinery and without skilled assistance save that of a man who has
received a rough-and -tumble experience of tanning in America and
who is a crank like myself. Though I did not succeed in sharing your
troubles and taking the load off your shoulders in connection with
your own great national enterprise, your inspiration is partly
responsible for the establishment of this little tannery at the Ashram.
Can you please help me with a list of literature on the subject, a
handbook on tanning and the like? If you think that there is nothing
like it in English, will you out of your own wide and varied experience
write out something that may be of use for propaganda, just a few
hints? What is happening at the Tannery? Who is in charge? I may
add that my idea is to make the Ashram Tannery a model for villages
so that the villagers may be able to treat their own dead cattle and
make use of the hide themselves. I have asked many people without
success as to how I can skin dead cattle. Everybody knowing anything
of tanning has something to say about hides after they are received
from the village tanner, but nobody has yet told me if I take charge
of a dead animal I can skin the carcass economically and hygienically
and make use of other contents such as bones, intestine, etc., for
purpose of manure.
Yours sincerely,