4. Communalism

WHILST... I can make room in my mind for various schools of thought, for me there is only one way, I have no faith in communalism even as a stage; or perhaps better still, I have no fitness for work on that stage.

It would be wrong always to think in communal terms. I know that we may not shut our yes to hard facts. But to attribute everything to the communal spirit is a sign of inferiority complex. It may well perpetuate what is yet a temporary distemper in the national life.

Communalism of the virulent type is a recent growth. The lawlessness is a monster with many faces. It hurts all, in the end, including those who are primarily responsible for it.

One Human Family

The golden way is to be friends with the world and to regard the whole human family like members of one family. He who distinguished between one's own family and another's mis-educates the members of his own and opens the way for discord and irreligion.

(We have) the example of England, Russia and other countries when every family had sent as many able-bodied men and women as possible for the defence of their country. This is how unity of heart is actually achieved in the world, and I hope what we, in our country, will be able to rise above small, selfish considerations and create that unity without which life itself will not be worth living.

A man whose spirit of sacrifice does not go beyond his own community becomes selfish himself and also makes his community selfish. In my opinion, the logical conclusion of self-sacrifice is that the individual sacrifices himself for the community; the community sacrifices itself for the district, the district for the province, the province for the nation and the nation for the world. A drop torn from the ocean, it shares the glory of carrying on its bosom a fleet of mighty slips.