Government of India to be.  We must not throw a few miserable schools at them; we must not adopt the air of superiority towards them.  We must treat them as our blood brothers as they are in fact.  We must return to them the inheritance of which we have robbed them.  And this must not be the act of a few English-knowing reformers merely, but it must be a conscious voluntary effort on the part of the masses.  We may not wait till eternity for this much belated reformation.  We must aim at bringing it about within this year of grace, probation, preparation and tapasya.  It is a reform not to follow Swaraj but to precede it.

Untouchability is not a sanction of religion, it is a devise of Satan.  The devil has always quoted scriptures.  But scriptures cannot transcend reason and truth.  They are intended to purify reason and illuminate truth.  I am not going to burn a spotless horse because the Vedas are reported to have advised, tolerated, or sanctioned the sacrifice.  For me the Vedas are divine and unwritten.  ‘The letter killeth.’  It is the spirit that giveth the light.  And the spirit of the Vedas is purity, truth, innocence, chastity, humility, simplicity, forgiveness, godliness, and all that makes a man or woman noble and brave.  There is neither nobility nor bravery in treating the great and uncomplaining scavengers of the nation as worse than dogs to be despised and spat upon.  Would that God gave us the strength and the wisdom to become voluntary scavengers of the nation as the ‘suppressed’ classes are forced to be.  There are Augean stables enough and to spare for us to clean.

VII.  TREATMENT OF INDIANS ABROAD

INDIANS ABROAD

The prejudice against Indian settlers outside India is showing itself in a variety of ways:  Under the impudent suggestion of sedition the Fiji Government has deported Mr. Manilal Doctor who with his brave and cultured wife has been rendering assistance to the poor indentured Indians of Fiji in a variety of ways.  The whole trouble has arisen over the strike of the labourers in Fiji.  Indentures have been canceled, but the spirit of slavery is by no means dead.  We do not know the genesis of the strike; we do not know that the strikers have done no wrong.  But we do know what is behind when a charge of sedition is brought against the strikers and their friends.  The readers must remember that the Government that has scented sedition in the recent upheaval in Fiji is the Government that had the hardihood to libel Mr. Andrew’s character.  What can be the meaning of sedition in connection with the Fiji strikers and Mr. Manilal Doctor?  Did they and he want to seize the reins of Government?  Did they want any power in that country?  They struck for elementary freedom.  And it is a prostitution of terms to use the word sedition in such connection.  The strikers may have been overhasty.  Mr. Manilal Doctor may have misled them.  If his advice bordered