I had an occasion to visit the Economic Institute at Allahabad. AS Prof. Jesons showed me over it and I was told that it had cost Rs. 30 lakhs (if my memory serves me right), I shuddered. You could not raise these places but by starving millions. Look at New Delhi which tells the same tale. Look at the grand improvements in first and second class carriages on railways. The whole trend is to think of the few and to neglect the poor. If this is not Satanic, what is it? As Sir Lappel Griffen once put it in his speech as member of the South African Deputation, only the toad under the harrow knows where it pinches. The arrangement of our affairs is in their hands and with the best will in the world, the best of them could not order our affairs well as we could. For theirs is a diametrically opposite conception to ours, They think in terms of the privileged few. We must think in terms of the teeming millions…”
(Convocation address. Vidyapith . Bihar. 10/2/1927)
….Englishmen belonging to the most expensive country in the world and who had to flourish on the awe they could inspire in us introduced expensive and massive building for offices and bungalows requiring for their upkeep an army of servants and hangers-on. If we copy their style and habits we will ruin ourselves and carry the country in this ruin. And what was tolerated in the case of the conquerors will not be tolerated in ours…
(Harijan. 16 June 1946)
...Because an institution happens to have plenty of funds it does not mean that it should anyhow spend away every pie that it possesses. The golden rule is not to hesitate to ask for or to spend even a crore, when it is absolutely necessary and when it is not, to hoard up every pie though one may have a crore of rupees at one’s disposal...
(Young India. 21 May 1931)