Thoughtful Living and Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

 Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Thoughtful Living and Mahatma Gandhi 

 

In the course of my tours, I get experiences, both sweet and sour. I shall remember my tour through the Central Provinces for a long time. We reached Wardha on the 17th morning. The same day we were to proceed to Arvi and Ashti. It was a distance of nearly sixty miles; we had to start at 1 p.m. and return at 10 p.m. But God had willed otherwise. On our way, our car stopped abruptly but somehow we managed to reach Ashti. On our return trip, even the second car broke down and this time at a place where no help whatever could be had. At last we reached the outskirts of a village. It was decided to proceed thence in a bullock-cart. The journey commenced at 1 a.m. I was tired and felt sleepy too. Why should I bother to see what manner of bullocks they were and who the driver was? Even in my drowsiness I could judge that the bullocks were running at the speed of horses. At times, they would move slowly, but mostly they kept running. Who does not like to see bullocks running? I said to myself: “Good. We shall reach home so much the earlier. The bullocks of this region must be good.” Morning broke and I woke up. To my dismay, I found that the driver’s goad had a sharpened nail fixed in it and he made the bullocks run by frequently piercing their backs with it. Because of this torture, the bullocks had been shedding liquid excreta all along the route.

Let the reader imagine, if he can, my pitiful condition at this sight. I wished to get down from the cart that very moment. I felt that a journey by car was a thousand times better than this. But, then, I thought: “Who knows what the English and American workers in automobile factories suffer? Could it not be a lesser sin to ride in a bullock-cart than drive in a car?” I was reasoning out the matter thus in my mind and watching the torture inflicted on the bullocks. I put up with it for about two minutes. Then I asked for the goad frown the owner of the bullocks, which he handed over to me. He understood. He did not know me and addressed me as Bawaji. I liked Bawaji better than “Mahatmaji”. From my dress he had taken me for a bawa. It is easy to wear a bawaji’s dress, but difficult to acquire the virtues of one. But the simple masses of India have always been, and will always be, taken in by the simplicity of the sannyasi’s dress. I returned the wooden goad to the owner, suggesting that he might use its blunt end. I told him that there was no need to make the bullocks run for my sake and asked him not to worry if I should reach my destination an hour late.

I requested him to remove the nail from the goad. He promised to do so. Whether he will keep his word or not is a different question. This incident affected me deeply. I realized how thoughtless and devoid of pity our way of life was. Every action of ours ought to be informed with thoughtfulness and compassion and I clearly felt there should be more compassion where there are more weakness, helplessness and dumbness. That we feel sympathy for our own species is nothing to admire particularly. We certainly ought to feel it. But are not cattle even more helpless, miserable and dumb than victims of famine? The famine-stricken, when made desperate by their suffering, may even fight with us, but what can the bullock do? It can neither speak nor rebel. I remembered the dialogue of beasts of the text-book. I felt convinced of the truth of its central idea.

How devoid of thought our life is! If I had only thought about it, I would have examined the bullocks and the driver and would have got the nail removed from the stick right at the commencement of the journey. Had the cart-man thought he would have realized how he himself would have felt if someone had prodded his body with a goad. He would not then have fixed a nail in his stick and made the bullocks run by piercing them with it. The more I think, the more numerous grow the conditions for our winning swaraj. If it is our desire to win swaraj through self-purification, where shall we fix a limit to the process? Will the limit be reached when we have come to treat our Bhangi brethren as we do our own blood brothers? What of our other brothers and sisters—the animals? What is the difference between the soul in them and in us? They eat and sleep, feel happiness or suffer, just as we do. At most, we may be their elder brethren. What else can there be, besides this? We ask the other fellow to do his duty by us; if he refuses, we get angry. “Send Dyer to the gallows,” we shout. He who hears the complaint of the beasts against us, what must He be thinking of us?

We Hindus hold cow protection to be as important as safeguarding one’s life. We fight the Muslims as enemies in order to save the cow. What right has we to ask them not to kill cows, when we ourselves prod our bullocks with a goad, load them excessively, give them as little to eat as possible and extract milk from the cow until she bleeds, resorting to blowing for the purpose? Muslims consider it no sin to kill a cow for food. Will the Hindus contend that there is no sin in piercing the bullocks with a goad? We commit a sin, knowing it as such. God, it is said, pardons sins committed unknowingly. Only such sins can be atoned for as are committed in ignorance. Having committed a sin in full knowledge that it is a sin; can we purify ourselves by going through the motions of atoning for it?

Thus, if we only think we shall see that there is no limit to the degree of self-purification to be achieved for winning swaraj. The earlier we achieve it, the sooner shall we get swaraj? Swaraj means the rule of dharma. If the present method of government is replaced by another of the same description, it will not be swaraj; it will not advance people’s welfare. As there are conditions for winning swaraj, so there are signs which are evidence of swaraj. I referred to these in my speech at Nadiad. Someday I shall put them down in an article. Meanwhile, we must understand this at any rate; that if our claim that we are striving for self-purification is true, we must go on improving our conduct day by day. We shall have to examine and concede the rights of all from the smallest ants to the biggest elephant’s. Let no one doubt that, when we have done so, the world will grant us our rights unasked. Before we call this Government or its ways of governing Satanic, we must eschew similar ways. As soon as we do so, the Government’s ways will cease to be what they are. That is why I have been saying that it is possible for us to win swaraj in seven months, because all that needs to be done is to be done by ourselves, and that is to bring about a change in our way of thinking.

If we but change our ideas, it will take us only a second to effect a change in our conduct accordingly. I hope no reader will accuse me of making daily additions to the conditions for swaraj. The thoughtful reader will understand that I have been showing these conditions to be lighter and easier. We must end the Satanic way of the Government either by being more Satanic than it is or by eschewing such ways altogether. Sin and injustice can never exist by themselves. They always require something behind which to shield themselves. Hence the injunction in all religions is that it is one’s highest dharma to non-co-operate with a sinful policy and get it abandoned; we must reflect every moment of our life and save it from sin, so that the evil policy will collapse of itself. 

 

Reference: 

 

Navajivan, 5-4-1921