ABSTRACT
‘Our villages are dung heaps’ cried Gandhi on one occasion, and there could be no more sincere or more influential champion of the 200 million souls who lived in them. Now dung was the symbol of wealth, not misery, in the countryside; and certain critics, unable to resist this chance to be flippant, rejoined: ‘Hooray and hurrah! With so much and to spare, the peasant can at long last plough it into his field instead of burning it away as fuel.’ An orthodox Hindu, in private conversation and with a humour which would have tickled Gandhi himself, asked me: ‘Has our Mahatma forgotten that tale in the Mahabharat where the peerless goddess Shri chooses to take up her abode in the dung of the sacred cow?’
