Many people in the present generation, however, have a mistaken idea that manual labor is undignified. The higher and the middle classes in our country are apt to look down upon the manual work done by the poorer classes to earn their daily bread.
Though in these hard days when the struggle for existence is getting keener and keener, the old ideas about respectability are fast giving place to new ones, yet educated young men are still very slow in appreciating the dignity of labour. They would rather starve than earn their living by honest labour by taking to humble pursuits like dairy-farming, poultry farming etc., in which illiterate people have so far been generally engaged.
Now, when we talk of dignity of labour, we mean manual work such as has to be done by the cultivator, the artisan or the craftsman. But why should physical labour be regarded as less respectable than mental labour? Is not the very production of food we eat dependant on the hard and tough labour of the farmers? such is the hold of customs and old practices in our society that the man who works continually day and night, in sun and rain, to produce the corn which keeps us alive, is looked down as mere 'labour' by the self-styled 'higher' classes.
In the western countries, people do recognise the dignity of labour. There is no servant class in the West. The people of the higher classes, ladies and gentlemen, have to do their household work themselves. They do not feel offended in doing this. It is only in countries like India that this theory has to be continually preached. There are many people in our country who consider it beneath their dignity to do their own purchases from the market or brush their own shoes or wash their own clothes.
Such a false idea of