For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Love and Mahatma Gandhi-XII

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

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

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net;

dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com

Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

Love and Mahatma Gandhi-XII

About your conflicting loyalties I would say that you should endure the pain that your mother is experiencing, regarding it as unavoidable. It is my experience that in the face of their parents’ opposition to any good venture if the children remain as firm as they are humble, their parents give up their opposition. Their opposition as well as their unhappiness increases only when the children waver and the parents hope they will succumb to parental love. Hence if you have not the least doubt about your step and if you are equally confident about your capacity, you should tell your mother of your decision and shake off all anxiety. Ask me anything further if you have to. 1 We cannot love one another, if we hate English-men. We cannot love the Japanese and hate Englishmen. We must either let the Law of Love rule us through and through or not at all. Love among us based on hatred of others breakdown under the slightest pressure. The fact is such love is never real love. It is an armed peace. And so it will be in this great movement in the West against war. War will only be stopped when the conscience of mankind has become sufficiently elevated to recognize the undisputed supremacy of the Law of Love in all the walks of life. Some say this will never come to pass. I shall retain the faith till the end of my earthly existence that it shall come to pass. 2

I must not stir out of Sabarmati at the present moment. I am keeping well. I am trying the experiment of living on fruit alone. This is the 9th day. I am not feeling weak. I do not expect to be able to retain my strength indefinitely on fruit alone. I have commenced the experiment to avoid constipation. I am continuing it for pleasure. I should love to drop milk any time. My food just now is grapes and mangoes. 3 I love teaching people to spin, but I fear that, if you go on working all the time beyond your capacity, you will continue to lose strength. My condition with you, therefore, is that you should work only as much as you can while taking due care of your health. The substance of what I have been saying on the Gita in my discourses is likely to be published in Hindi, sooner or later. But that will take some time. We should never forget that it is our dharma to take proper care of our body. 4

I did not expect the cloud which is now threatening you, but 1 welcome it all the same. This is the only way in which one’s love for dharma is tested. Send me the charge-sheet against you when you get it. I will draft a reply. You may make any changes you like in it, our only aim being that we should maintain the utmost civility. A community has the right to expel from its fold any member who acts against its rules. There is nothing in all your actions for which you need feel ashamed or sorry. Certainly, your influence in the community will diminish, and so will your capacity for getting wealth. I don’t see anything to worry about in this. You should not mind even if you have to take to begging. If we can preserve our dharma, we should welcome being reduced to such a plight. When ultimately the members of your community recognize your love for dharma and your respect for the community, they themselves will become humble. We must bring about reforms in the affairs of communities, and by acting in this manner you will easily succeed in doing that in your community. 5

Of the love, the sanctity of grahastha life, etc., where there is a widow of tender age, the less said the better. But the correspondent has missed the whole of my point. I have never advocated widow remarriage on a wholesale scale. The statistics collected by Sir Ganga Ram and summarized in these pages deal with widows up to 15 years only. These poor were wretched beings know-nothing of Pativrata dharma. They are strangers to love. The truer statement would be to say that these girls were never married at all. If marriage is, as it ought to be, a sacrament, an entrance into a new life, the girls to be married should be fully developed, should have some hand in the choice of companions for life’ and should know the consequences of their acts. It is a crime against God and man to call the union of the children a married state and then to decree widowhood for a girl whose so-called husband is dead. 6 Revival of Indian art will only come when we develop love enough for our country to enable us to cling to one another and sink our differences and to sacrifice our all for the sake of the country. The best way, therefore, to preserve and revive the Indian art is for us to become sufficiently Indian ourselves. But all this I don’t need to say to you. You are saturated with the national spirit. May God give you long life and health for exhibiting that spirit as occasion demands? Those who love to do certain things end by doing those things, and if you are longing to meet Miss Shade whom we call Mirabai and still more to sing to me some of your new bhajans then you will end by coming here at the earliest opportunity. 7

And so the effort undoubtedly is. It is not possible without love of one’s kind; and it is love of the poor, love of God, love of ‘the country’ that is behind the charkha movement. 8 But I think there is difference between the author’s standpoint and that of my friends and my own when abstinence is practised “under the false idea that the instinct is but a low pleasure” it may produce “irritability and the weakening of love”. But when abstinence is practised for the purpose of self-realization, for the purpose of husbanding vitality and for the seeking, basing love not on physical pleasure but upon soul contact, it soothes one’s nerves and purifies and therefore strengthens the bond between the two. Most of the ills that you describe spring, in my opinion, from a wrong view of love and a wrong view of sexual relation. Under my own plan husband and wife need not live separately, that is, under separate roofs, but they certainly ought not to share the same room and lock themselves in. Long course of habit blinds us to the ugliness of men and women passing nights after nights in privacy, without any moral purpose whatsoever in doing so we become less even than animals. I can see nothing wrong in husband and wife seeking privacy only for sexual act which they will perform in due humility and purely for the sake of procreation. There will, I know, still be animal pleasure left in the act. I would call that lawful animal pleasure. And if we could only set our thought right and strive, in spite of the present practice to the contrary, to shape our own in accordance with the thought, I doubt not that restraint will not only be easy, but the most natural thing in the world.

I may have the handsomest girl as my sister and if the custom of kissing my sister is in vogue and in accordance with it I kiss my sister, surely no lustful thought will spring up in my breast. Why should it be different as between husband and wife? That it is different I know to my cost but the difference lies in our mental attitude. We kiss our wives with the intention of satisfying the lustful pleasure. We kiss our sisters or daughters out of Lustless affection. 9 This is both for you and Millie because Charlie has asked me after his own fashion to write to both of you about him. I suppose he wants me to certify to you that his love for India is as green as ever and not a whit less than his love for England, and his love for humanity is equally great and deep. He was none too well when he sailed, but he would not listen to anybody. He could easily have given himself a fortnight’s rest and taken next boat, but his heart was in South Africa. I therefore did not strive with him. 10

If we have no love for our neighbours, no change however revolutionary can do us any good. And if we love our neighbours, the paupers of India, for their sakes, we shall use what they make for us; for their sakes we, who should know, shall not engage in an immoral traffic with the West in the shape of buying the foreign fineries and taking them to the villages. 11 Those who come to the prayer meeting but do not follow the readings from the Gita should be regarded as not attending the prayers. We shall have truly welcomed the guest who has arrived at our place only if we receive him into the home with love, help him to wash, offer him a clean seat and serve him the best food prepared for ourselves, and ourselves eat only what remains after he has finished. We shall have welcomed him, shall have acted truthfully, only if we act in this manner. But if one frowns at the guest, does not speak to him with love, places before him a dirty, unwashed plate and serves stale food, fails to ask him if he would have another helping and then claims to have welcomed him and offered him a meal, one would have done nothing of the sort but would in fact have insulted the guest. Such conduct, therefore, would be a violation of truth. Rotten and foul-smelling food or, food which has been left over ought not to be offered even to a beggar. If at all we wish to offer food to a beggar, we should offer clean grain. If we would rather give him nothing, we should tell him so discreetly. This would be acting truthfully. We can thus, by exercising our discrimination, decide what is truthful and what is not. 12

We can offer Satyagraha only against a person who has some love in his heart. We can control another only if there is mutual love between us; where there is no such love, the only course for us is non-co-operation with the other party. Tulsidas advised non-co-operation with the wicked. 13 No one has yet succeeded in laying down a universal rule about how we should act towards a thief. We should, however, bear in mind that however we act we should be inspired by love for him. We must think and find out how we may win him over with love. We should assume that it is not in human nature to steal. Even as rational beings we should be convinced that there is no human being in the world who is beyond all hope of change. Love is a kind of force of attraction. Science tells us that even dust has the property of attracting other things. Even a particle of dust possesses some kind of power of attraction; that is why Mirabai sings about the bond of love. That bond is much stronger than that of a slender thread can ever be. Why should we be filled with passion or get angry whenever we lose anything? 14

We do a sum in mathematics with the help of our reasoning faculty. It does not matter whether or not we have faith in mathematics. But, for spiritual knowledge, faith is essential. Does a child have to train his intellect in order to love its mother or father? An illiterate mother loves her child with her heart. We may have a love relationship of any kind with God. The poet has presented to us only a few aspects of Divine love. A person who has no conception of the vast sea may be given some idea of it by telling him of rivers and streams. 15 To love God means to be free from attachment to any work. We should of course do work, but without egotistic attachment to it, simply for the love of God. A lustful man forgets his love for parents and children when seeking gratification of his lust and abandons himself blindly to it. This also is a form of non-attachment. But the cause is a filthy one, whereas love for God is good and now for the meaning of the verse with which we began. 16

The only thing I love is simple heart-to-heart conversation and an elucidation of difficulties. I would like you to cancel the contemplated visit without reference to me, if you arrive at the conclusion that not much good is to be expected out of it. My own opinion is, that in the present disturbed state of China, the visit will miscarry. My message is one of unadulterated non-violence and truth. People are ill-fitted to receive such a message when feeling runs high and blood is hot. Nothing but a clear, proper call, therefore, should move me to China. Even if our friends in China are insistent and you also come to the conclusion that the visit should be paid, you will of course leave the final decision to me. Let there be the fullest material possible sent to me so as to arrive at a proper decision. In all such matters, it is the answer to the prayer that enables me to arrive at my decision. 17

Today there is no love between the two communities. There is no trust. Both do realize that at the end they have to live together like brothers, but meanwhile each, conscious of its weakness, wants to fight with the other, become strong and then unite. In these circumstances, and with the poison that is spread in the newspapers, it is difficult to say what this deed will lead to. That was why I wanted to keep silent. I cannot calm the storm that is raging within me, I cannot suppress it and I cannot express it before you. This world is held together by bonds of love. History does not record the day-to-day incidents of love and service. It only records incidents of conflict and wars. Actually, however, acts of love and service are much more common in this world than conflicts and quarrels. We see innumerable villages and towns flourishing in the world. If the world were always full of discord, they could not possibly exist. 18

You must know, friends, that excepting things which have a special artistic value and which I can hand over to Prof. Malkani who is collecting such things at the Gujarat Vidyapith, I cannot afford to carry these caskets with me. For one thing I carry no steel trunks with me, nor have I any provision at the Ashram to keep them. The only course left for me therefore is to sell them. Don’t you think that in doing so I am in any way disregarding or belittling the love with which they are being given? On the contrary, I propose to return the love in the best manner I can, and that is by converting the caskets into money for the work which is nearest my heart and for which you are showering your love on me. 19 I do not want a single pice offered through love for me; I want people to appreciate my mission and help it with money. Through love you can give me another thing. Through it you can give me your foreign clothes, but not money. The truth is that business men give me money in the belief that, if my business thrives, it will harm neither them nor the country. They know that ultimately they will have to deal in khadi. They understand the position correctly but today they lack strength of will. They ask me to pray to God that He may grant them that strength. Meanwhile, they donate money and help this movement. They do not give me money in order to deceive me. 20

If those who love cannot transfer their love to the thing for which I stand, their love is blind and of little value. I do not know if one should live to provide mere enjoyment for friends. Friendship means loving mutual service, and sometimes it is a positive disservice to indulge one’s friends and to expose them to temptations. And if there are friends who would spend lavishly for providing luxuries for me, but would not spend for the cause I espouse, it is my clear duty to resist such luxuries. Friends to be friends must first provide me with necessaries of life before they think of indulging me with luxuries; and khaddar work is a vital necessary of life for me, more vital than food. Reception Committees please note. 21 I had come entirely unprepared for these tokens of love, love not only for me, but for the poor, and my greatest joy is due to the shape these tokens have taken. The donation of Rs. 63-3-04 reminds me of a sacred donation that I received from the late Swami Shraddhanand for my work in South Africa and which represented the value of the labour of love rendered by his brahmacharis. It is worth more than millions to me and it makes my responsibility for utilizing the funds all the greater. Your yarn also is worth its weight in gold, for what is the value of gold, but the price of labour spent in obtaining it? Is your labour and the less? And it is more sacred inasmuch as it has been all done in the spirit of sacrifice. 22

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