Not Lonely- 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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Not Lonely- Mahatma Gandhi

 

A friend wrote to me the other day how lonely he felt in the midst of company. This remark was prompted by my telling him that I distrusted the word of the official world. He did not, and had thought that I might share his trust. Behold his disappointment when he found me wanting. It may be that was not what he meant by his cryptic letter.

Anyway that was my interpretation and I replied that as a man of God, he must never feel lonely. For God was ever with him.  Why should he care even if the whole world deserted him? Let him trust in spite of me, as long as the trust came from his heart and not his head. I feel differently. Mutual trust and mutual love are no trust and no love. The real love is to love them that hate you, to love your neighbour even though you distrust him. I have sound reasons for distrusting the English official world. If my love is sincere, I must love the Englishman in spite of my distrust. Of what avail is my love, if it be only so long as I trust my friend? Even thieves do that. They become enemies immediately the trust is gone. See what is happening in Bombay the Bombay where I have passed so much time, which has given the public causes so much money, and which I had thought had fairly imbibed something of ahimsa. Will it prove the burial ground of ahimsa? I am unable to think that the incendiarism, the looting and the insults heaped upon Englishmen are, or were, acts of hooligans. Who are hooligans? Will there be none when English rule is no more? The fashion of blaming the hooligan ought to be given up.

We are the makers of the brand. They respond to the air about them. Imagine the senselessness of looting grain shops. The looters did not help themselves. Even if they did, they were not starving. The grain was meant for the starving. If it was being misused, looting could not prevent that misuse. Usurpers will always replace the looted grain while there is any to usurp. Between the two sets of looters the starving will be more starved than before. They who incited the mutineers did not know what they were doing. The latter were bound to submit ultimately. Or was it meant as a lesson in violence? That is not the way to understand history. I ask myself, and perhaps others are asking, why I am not repeating what I did after Chauri Chaura. I have no call in that direction. When or if it comes, nothing in the world will prevent me, ill or well. Let me reaffirm the truth that I love the Englishman as well as the Indian. Both are humans. Yet I want the rule of and for the masses of India. Lokamanya has taught us that Home Rule or swaraj is our birthright. That swaraj is not to be obtained by what is going on now in Bombay, Calcutta and Karachi. Let every Congressman, whether four-anna member or not, think for himself where Congress should stand. Let us not deceive ourselves and the world.  

 

Reference:

Harijan, 3-3-1946