AND THEN WE FOLLOW HAND-WEAVING.
You may ask : "Why should we use our hands?" aad say "the manual work has got to be done by those who are illiterate. I can only occupy myself with read- ing literatMre and political essays." I think we have t^ realise the dignity of labour. If a barber or shoe-maker attends a college, he ought not to abandon the profes- sion of barber or shoe-maker. I consider that a barber's profession is just as good as the profession of medicine.
Last of all, when you have conformed to these rules think that then, and not till then, you may come to
POLITICS
and dabble in them to your heart's content, and certain- ly you will then never go wrong. Politics, divorced of religion, has absolutely no meaning. If the student- world crowd the political platforms of this country, to my mind, it is not necessarily a healthy sign of national growth ; but that does not mean that you, in yoisr student life, ought not to study politics. Politics are a part of our being ; we ought to understand our national institutions, and we ought to understand our national growth and all those things. We may do it from our infancy. So, in our Ashrama, every child is taught to understand the political institutions of our country, and to know how the country is vibrat- ing with new emotions, with new aspirations, with a new life. But we want also the steady light, the in- fallible light, of religious faith, not a faith which merely appeals to the intelligence, but a faith which is indelibly inscribed on the heart. First, wa want to realise that religious consciousness, and immediately we have done that, I think the whole department of life is open to us, and it should then be a sacred privilege o
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