108. A Rebuke to Banias

When Gandhiji arrived in Dhulia in February of 1927 in the course of his Harijan tour of Maharashtra, the local merchants, who consisted mostly of Banias, insisted on presenting him an exclusive address as well as a purse in the address claimed him as one of them, as belonging to the Vaishya i.e. Bania class. But they had not taken a true measure of their "casteman". This is what he told in the course of his reply:

"It is not the Brahmanas nor Kshatriyas nor the Shudras that lost India; it is the Vaishyas who lost India, it is the Vaishyas alone who can regain it. Indian history is replete with instances of Banias who helped and served the English shop-keepers to the prejudice of India. The shop-keepers who came here in search of trade became warriors to protect their trade and became Brahmanas too to maintain their dominion based on trade. Our Varna-shrama Dharma does not say that a Bania may not be a Kshatriya and fight for the honour of his mother and sister, nor does it say that a Bania may not acquire knowledge like a Brahmana and serve like the Shudra. The Englishman combined all the qualities in himself and dazzled at his feat we forgot our dharma, we became cowards, we forgot the real work of the Bania, agriculture, cow-protection and and trade, and became traitors to the motherland. You can retrieve the situation today by becoming true Banias again, by capturing again the whole of the national trade....I want us to be the Vaishyas of the Bhagavadgita, the Vaishyas whose natural calling is protection of the cow, agriculture and trade, for his own country."