The Drain Inspector's report of MK Gandhi begins with the verse and its translation:
On the lips of the good vice becomes virtue,
And even virtue appears as vice in the mouth of the evil-minded: this need not surprise us.
For, do not the mighty clouds drink the salt waters of the ocean and return it as sweet refreshing rain,
And does not the cobra, drinking sweet milk, belch it forth as the deadly poison?
Rivers drink not of their own waters, the trees do not themselves eat the fruit which they bear.Nor do the clouds partake of the grains they grow; even so the good devote their powers to the good of others.
Mahatma Gandhi, wrote about Katherine Mayo's Mother India as follows (further elaborated in the full text of his Drain Inspector's Report embedded):
This book is cleverly and powerfully written. The carefully chosen quotations give it the false appearance of a truthful book. But the impression it leaves on my mind is that it is the report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported upon, or to give a graphic description of the stench exuded by the opened drains. If Miss Mayo had confessed that she had come to India merely to open out and examine the drains of India, there would perhaps be little to complain about her compilation. But she declared her abominable and patently wrong conclusion with a certain amount of triumph: 'the drains are India'.
From: The collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol34, English by Navajivantrust (Pages 539-547) Young India, 15 September 1927