Messages of Mahatma Gandhi; Part-12

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338

E-mail- [e-mail]

 

Messages of Mahatma Gandhi; Part-12

 

Mahatma Gandhi a different man. He met a lot of persons daily. He had a lot of work and their concerning people. He gave a message everybody time to time. Those messages had a lot of meaning. The person who had gotten it, change his life according to it. Those messages may be useful today.

Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to Punjab Congressmen; “Surely there is no cause for depression. I have never condemned Punjab Congressmen. I have faith that the average Congressman in the Punjab is as good as the average in the other provinces. Let the Punjab Congressmen take heart and qualify themselves by spinning, and regarding Harijans and other Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, etc., as blood-brothers. Let them have a living faith in the virtue of non-violence, and they will all be chosen for civil disobedience.”325

Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to Gujrat College Students; “The action of the Principal, if it is such as you describe, calls certainly for a protest. You should negotiate with him respectfully; you should seek the assistance of leading citizens and you should cultivate public opinion. Still if you do not obtain justice you have the right to strike. To exercise that right or not is dependent upon the strength of the students.”326 Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to Punjab Congressmen; “Have belief in service and work. This is a greater duty. Mahatma Gandhi, it is learnt, has insisted on the necessity for intensifying constructive work which is as equally important as Satyagraha. Do not flatter your opponents but try to win them over by work and love and convert them to your view or bring them into the Congress fold as true believers in the Congress programme.”327

Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to M.R. Jayakar; “Tell Mr. Jayakar that I should always be delighted to meet old friends. But while I may personally discuss every aspect with them, I could not, without consultation with the members of the Working Committee, give them any assurance, armed with which they might go to the Viceroy. For they would need the assurance on behalf of the Congress Working Committee and I have no authority to give it. There will be this obvious handicap, but otherwise I should be only too glad to meet them. They may come with great expectations and I may fail to satisfy them. Otherwise of course I could not have the slightest objection to meeting them.”328 Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to Basic Education Conference; “I hope that the Conference will realize that success of the effort is dependent more upon self-help than upon Government, which must necessarily be cautious even when it is well-disposed. Our experiment to be thorough has to be at least somewhere made without alloy and without outside interference.”329

Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to Mysore provincial Congress Meeting; “I am firmly of the opinion that, if the constructive programme is assiduously and successfully worked out to its end, the helpless will find them possessing power they never had before, and that is the truest foundation for the swaraj of millions based on non-violence.”330 Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to People of Ahmadabad; “The more I ponder the more I consider the spinning-wheel as the saviour of the poor. Its beauty lies in the fact that if only women and children under 12 years devote themselves to the production of khaddar for a little time daily India will get all the cloth she needs. If this experiment is carried out in Ahmadabad itself on a small scale, I feel confident that the truth of my words would be amply demonstrated.”331

Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to States’ People; “I hold strong and decided views on the relationship between the Princes and the people. I am convinced that, in the new world order, which is bound to follow the insensate butchery, dignified by the name of war, the Princes will have place only if they become true servants of the people, deriving their power not from the sword but from the love and consent of the people.

Such being my fixed view, I advise the people of the States to cultivate patience and prepare themselves for the responsibilities that will devolve on them, willy-nilly, by assiduously doing mute constructive work. This does not mean submission to active and acute tyranny, of which I have so many accounts coming to me. This the victims must resist in the best manner they can. The only best manner I know is the way of non-violence, otherwise called conscious and deliberate self-suffering. But cases of individual torture and degradation have come under my notice. If they are true and if the tortured persons do not know the way of non-violence, they will resist the tortures with all the violence they can summon from within and die in the attempt to resist the torture and the degradation. That violent resistance will almost count as non-violence, even as the resistance of a mouse to a ferocious cat will count. I have in mind an unarmed man under torture by an armed company of torturers. No man, however weak in body, if he has the will to resist and the capacity to die bravely, need feel helpless against odds, however heavy.

I would like the Princes to accept my claims to be their true friend. As such, I would like to tell them that the way to read the signs of the times is to realize the utter helplessness of the sword. The Biblical saying is going to prove true sooner than we had expected: For all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.”332

Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to Frontier People; “Mahatma Gandhi wants every person in the Frontier Province and tribal areas to devote some portion of his daily time to spinning on the dhanush takli.”333 Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to Bhangi Samaj Bombay; “I hope the silver jubilee of the Bhagini Samaj will be celebrated in a splendid manner and the Samaj will grow from day to day.”334 Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to All-india Women’s Conference; “The most important work before the Conference is to recognize the special obligation of the women of India to enforce the constru ctive programme which I have put before the nation in my recent pamphlet1. It should satisfy the highest ambition for service of the tallest woman in India.”335

Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to Mahathi Harijan; “I am very glad that Marathi Harijan is coming out. I hope the Maharashtrian community will appreciate it”.336

Mahatma Gandhi gave a message; “This is an occasion when everyone rich and poor, young and old, men and women—ought to take up spinning for the sake of the country. If the charkha is not there, there is a distinct possibility of a time coming when we shall have to go about naked.”337 Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to The Daily Herald; “Amid universal bullying, The Daily Herald’s is the unkindest cut. This bullying seems inspired, for it has no foundation.”338 Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to China; “Let China know that this struggle is as much for her defence as it is for India’s liberation, for, in that liberation is involved her ability to give effective assistance whether to China or to Russia or even to Great Britain or America.”339

Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to Karnataka; “I hope the people of Karnataka will all participate in this yajna.”340 Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to The Country; “Everyone is free to go the fullest length under ahimsa. Complete deadlock by strikes and other non-violent means. Satyagrahis must go out to die not to live. They must seek and face death. It is only when individuals go out to die that the nation will survive. Karenge ya marenge.”341 Mahatma Gandhi gave a message to The Country; “Let every non-violent soldier of freedom write out the slogan ‘do or die’ on a piece of paper or cloth and stick it on his clothes, so that in case he died in the course of offering satyagraha, he might be distinguished by that sign from other elements who do not subscribe to non-violence.”342

 

References:

 

 

325.MESSAGE TO THE PUNJAB CONGRESSMEN; On or after January 10, 1941

326.The Bombay Chronicle, 24-1-1941

327.The Bombay Chronicle, 14-2-1941

328.MESSAGE TO M. R. JAYAKAR; Before March 23, 1941

329.MESSAGE TO BASIC EDUCATION CONFERENCE; April 6, 1941

330.The Bombay Chronicle, 8-4-1941

331.MESSAGE TO PEOPLE OF AHMEDABAD; September 8, 1941

332.The Hindu, 3-10-1941

333.The Hindu, 23-11-1941

334.MESSAGE TO BHAGINI SAMAJ, BOMBAY; December 20, 1941

335.The Hindu, 31-12-1941

336.Marathi Harijan, 1-3-1942

337.A MESSAGE; July 15, 1942

338.The Hindu, 28-7-1942

339.Amrita Bazar Patrika, 9-8-1942

340.MESSAGE TO KARNATAKA; August 8, 1942

341.MESSAGE TO THE COUNTRY; 5 a.m., August 9, 1942

342.Gandhiji’s Correspondence with the Government, 1942-44, p. 53