Meaning of Silence 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

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Meaning of Silence and Mahatma Gandhi

This divine silence is no evidence of inertness, of the darkness of ignorance or of weakness. It signifies, rather, serenity, illumination of knowledge and dauntless courage. He who treats his body as mere stone and acts accordingly may sit motionless at one place and yet move the whole world. Will anyone want to hit a stone? You may crush it to powder, but it will never apologize, nor will it act and build a house for you. You will merely spend yourselves hitting at it. The more you hit it, the more obstinately it will refuse to work for you and build. Who can ever vanquish one whose body has been toughened in this way? In man, God and the stone meet. Man is but a stone endowed with consciousness, and so it is that the Shastras tell us that he alone is truly victorious who has subjugated his body.

Silence, therefore, means subjugation of the body. If we have become slaves of the Government, it is because we have become slaves of our bodies, of physical comforts. We can throw off slavery if we can subjugate our bodies. We become free only to the extent that we shed our fond attachment to our bodies. How can the Government suppress us? What could it do if we refused to avail ourselves of its benefits? If we can reject the riches it offers, the peace it has established and the comfort it has made possible, we can shake off our slavery this very day. Not everyone, however, can observe complete silence; can train his body to have the toughness of stone. That is why we live in communities and, adding up small measures of silence, rest content with a little happiness. The way we have found for practising such modest subjugation of the body is that of swadeshi. There is no reason why everyone, whether young or old, cannot make even this small sacrifice, for a little spinning and weaving cannot be burdensome to anyone. The spinning-wheel is the symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity, the thing which brings home to us the fact of our being one, the people in Madras, the Kanamias, the Bengalis, the Gujaratis, the Maharashtrians, the Punjabis, the Sindhis, the Marwaris and the rest.

Anyone who, knowing this refuses to ply the spinning-wheel and yet talks of swaraj is a beggar begging for things to which he has no right. There can be no swaraj for beggars. Hence, those who aspire after it should, silently and ever repeating inwardly God’s name in thoughtful devotion, spin golden yarn as an expression of their love of the country. Only when we see every Indian himself weaving yarn produced in his home or getting it woven by his neighbour and wearing exclusively cloth so, made even as he eats only what Is cooked at home, then shall we have swaraj, and not before. Is there anyone who doubts that what I am suggesting is within the capacity even of a child? Nothing could be easier. We have needlessly made out the thing to be difficult and, having done so, feel helpless, suffer the ravages of famines, and invite misery upon ourselves through our notions of untouchability and feel, that we, Hindus and Muslims, are mutual enemies. 

 

Reference:

Navajivan, 9-10-1921