Swadeshi

Mirror of April 1902 write :

Sister Nivedita had a conversational meeting in Gita Society.

The whole gist of Sister Nivedita's practical discourse was a well meant rebuke to the Indians for their strong predilection for attaching importance to anything that is foreign, placing at a discount India's greatness and originality, her vastness of resources, her illustrious past and brilliant antecedents. The warmth of these rebukes couched with the melody of reason and truth was not lost on the group.

Sister Nivedita's estimate of the education of the day was true. It was the Western education of materialism, she said, making no distinction between true knowledge and memory. The sort of education imparted therefore through the medium of such authors as Lee Warness could not be called education in the true sense of the term, and she would, if she could, collect all the books in Calcutta and make a bonfire out of the pile in the Maidan, although she would, by so doing, receive scanty courtesy at the hands of the authors in question. The real wants lay therefore in their want of self-appreciation and self-reliance.