Speech of Mahatma Gandhi at Prayer Meeting, Sabarmati Ashram-III

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Speech of Mahatma Gandhi at Prayer Meeting, Sabarmati Ashram-III

 

How can I go back on the principles I have held dear all my life, when I find that it is these principles that are being put to the test? I have no doubt in my mind that vaccination is a filthy process, that it is harmful in the end and that it is little short of taking beef. I may be entirely mistaken. But holding the views that I do, how can I recant them because I see child after child passing away? No, not even if the whole of the Ashram were to be swept away, may I insist on vaccination and pocket my principle. What would my love of truth and my adherence to principle mean if they were to vanish at the slightest touch of reality? . . .3 But God is putting me through a greater test. On the eve of what is to be the final test of our strength, God is warning me through the messenger of death. I have tried hydropathy and earth treatment with success in numerous cases. Never has the treatment failed as it seems to have done during the month. But does that mean that I must therefore lose faith in the treatment and faith in God? Even so my faith in the efficacy of non-violence may be put to the severest test. I may have to see not three but hundreds and thousands being done to death during the campaign I am about to launch. Shall my heart quail before that catastrophe, or will I persevere in my faith?

No, I want you, everyone, to understand that this epidemic is not a scourge, but a trial and preparation, a tribulation sent to steel our hearts and to chain us more strongly and firmly to faith in God. And would not my faith in the Gita be a mockery if three deaths were to unhinge me? It is as clear to me as daylight that life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin. In fact tribulations and death seem to me to present a phase far richer than happiness of life. What is life worth without trials and tribulations which are the salt of life? The history of mankind would have been a blank sheet without these individuals. What is Ramayana but a record of the trials, privations and penances of Rama and Sita? The life of Rama, after the recovery of Sita, full of happiness as it was, does not occupy even a hundredth part of the epic. I want you all to treasure death and suffering more than life, and to appreciate their cleansing and purifying character.

 

Reference:

Young India, 12-3-1930