Eternal India Encyclopedia

WISDOM OF INDIA

ETERNAL

INDIA

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the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease. There are certain

things which all must do in all climes. The spinning wheel is the thing

which all must turn in the Indian clime for the transition stage at any rate

and the vast majority must for all time.

It was our love of foreign cloth that ousted the wheel from its

position of dignity. Therefore I consider it a sin to wear foreign cloth.

1 must confess that I do not draw a sharp or any distinction between

economics and ethics. Economics that hurt the moral well- being of an

individual or a nation are immoral and therefore sinful. Thus the

economics that permit one country to prey upon another are immoral.

It is sinful to eat American wheat and let my neighbour the grain dealer

starve for want of custom. Similarly it is sinful for me to wear the latest

finery of Regent Street, when I know that if I had but worn the things

woven by the neighbouring spinners and weavers, that would have

clothed me, and fed and clothed them. On the knowledge of my sin

bursting upon me, 1 must consign the foreign garments to the flames and

thus purify myself, and henceforth rest content with the rough khadi

made by my neighbours. On knowing that my neighbours may not,

having given up the occupation, take kindly to the spinning wheel, I

must take it up myself and thus make it popular.

I venture to suggest to the Poet that the clothes I ask him to burn

must be and are his. If they had to his knowledge belonged to the poor

or the ill-clad, he would long ago have restored to the poor what was

theirs. In burning

foreign clothes I burn my shame. I must refuse

to insult the naked by giving them clothes they do not need, instead of

giving them work which they sorely need. I will not commit the sin of

becoming their patron, but on learning that I had assisted in impover-

ishing them, I would give them a privileged position and give them nei-

ther crumbs nor cast off clothings, but the best of my food and clothes

and associate myself with them in work.

Nor is the scheme of non - cooperation or Swadeshi an exclusive

doctrine. My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house

top that the message of non - cooperation, non - violence, and Swadeshi,

is a message to the world. It must fall flat, if it does not bear fruit in the

soil where it has been delivered. At the present moment India has

nothing to share with the world save her degradation, pauperism and

plagues. Is it her ancient Shastras that we should send to the world?

Well they are printed in many editions, and an incredulous and idol-

atrous world refuses to look at them, because we, the heirs and custo-

dians, do not live them. Before, therefore, I can think of sharing with

the world, I must possess. Our non - cooperation is neither with the

English nor with the West. Our non - cooperation is with the system the

English have established; with the material civilisation and its attendant

greed and exploitation of the weak. Our non - cooperation is a re-

tirement within ourselves. Our non - cooperation is a refusal to coop-

erate with the English administrators on their own terms. We say to

them, "Come and cooperate with us on our terms, and it will be well for

us, for you and the world": We must refuse to be lifted off our feet. A

drowning man cannot save others. In order to be fit to save others, we

must try to save ourselves. Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor ag-

gressive, nor destructive. It is health-giving, religious, and therefore

humanitarian. India must learn to live before she can aspire to die for

humanity. The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cat's

teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.

True to his poetical instinct the Poet lives for the morrow and

would have us to do likewise. He presents to our admiring gaze the

beautiful picture of the birds early in the morning singing hymns of

praise as they soar into the sky. These birds had their day's food and

soared with rested wings in whose veins new blood had flown during

the previous night. But I have had the pain of watching birds which for

want of strength could not be coaxed even into a flutter of their wings.

The human bird under the Indian sky gets up weaker than when he pre-

tended to retire. For millions it is an eternal vigil or an eternal trance.

It is an indescribably painful state which has to be experienced to be

realised. I have found it impossible to soothe suffering patients with a

song from Kabir. The hungry millions ask for one poem-invigorating

food. They cannot be given it. They must earn it. And they can earn

only by the sweat of their brow.

From Gandhi,

Young India

Looking back upon those moments of my boyhood when all my

mind seemed to float poised upon a large feeling of the sky, of the light,

I cannot help feeling that my Indian ancestry has left in my being the

legacy of its deep philosophy, the philosophy which speaks of fulfil-

ment through harmony with nature. It awakens in us a great desire to

seek our freedom, not in the man-made world but in the depths of the

universe; it makes us offer our worship to the divinity inherent in fire,

water and trees, in everything moving and growing. The founding of

my school had its origin in the memory of that longing for freedom, for

returning to the roots.

- Rabindranath Tagore

As I stand here, Sir, I feel the weight of all manner of things crowd-

ing upon me. We are at the end of an era and possibly very soon we shall

embark upon a new age; and my mind goes back to the great past of

India, to the 5,000 years of India's history, from the very dawn of that

history which might be considered almost the dawn of human history,

till today. All that past crowds upon me and exhilarates me and, at the

same time, somewhat oppresses me. Am I worthy of that past? When

I think also of the future, the greater future I hope, standing on this

sword's edge of the present between the mighty past and the mightier

future, I tremble a little and feel overwhelmed by this mighty task. We

have come here at a strange moment in India's history. I do not know,

but I do feel, that there is some magic in this moment of transition from

the old to the new, something of that magic which one sees when the

night turns into day and even though the day may be a cloudy one, it is

day after all, for when the clouds move away, we can see the sun again.

Because of all this I find a little difficulty in addressing this House and

putting all my ideas before it and I feel also that in this long succession

of thousands of years, I see the mighty figures that have come and gone

and I see also the long succession of our comrades who have laboured

for the freedom of India.' And now we stand on the verge of this passing

age, trying, labouring, to usher in the new. I am sure the House will feel

the solemnity of this moment and will endeavour to treat this Resolu-