234 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES
And so it is that you have sung that beautiful national song, on hearing which all of us sprang to our feet The poet has lavished all the adjectives that he possibly could to describe Mother India. He describes Mother India as sweet smiling, sweet-speaking, fragrant, all-powerful, all good, truthful, land flowing with milk and honey, land having ripe fields, fruits and grains, land inhabited by a race of men of whom we have only a picture in the great Golden Age. He pictures to us a land which shall embrace in its possession the whole of the world, the whole of humanity by the might or right not of physical power but of soul-power. Can we sing that hymn ? I ask myself, " can I, by any right, spring to my feet when I listen to that song." The poet no doubt gave us a picture for our realisation, the words of which simply remain prophetic, and it is for you, the hope of India, to realise every word that the poet has said in describing this motherland of ours. To day, I feel that these adjectives are very largely mis- placed in his description of the motherland, and it is for you and for me to make good the claim that the poet has advanced on behalf of his motherland. THE REAL EDUCATfON.
You, the students of Madras, as well as the students all over India are you receiving an education which will make you worthy to realise that ideal and which will draw the best out of you, or is it an education which has become a factory for making Government employees or clerks in commercial offices ? Is the goal of the educa- tion that you are receiving that of mere employment whether in the Government departments or other departments ? If that be the goal of your Education, if that is the goal that you have set before yourselves, I
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