33. India of My Dreams

Unity, Non-violence

India is finding true independence and self-expression through an imperishable Hindu-Muslim unity and through non-violent means, i.e., unadulterated self-sacrifice, can point a way out of the prevailing darkness.

I believe that nothing remains static, Human nature either goes up or goes down. Let us hope, in India, it is going up. Otherwise, there is nothing but deluge for India, and, probably, for the whole world.

I am not thinking of the eternal law of love, much as I believe in it. If the whole India accepted this, India will become the unquestioned leader of the whole world. Here I merely wish to suggest that there should be no surrender except to reason.

I am only hoping and praying and I want all the friends here and in other parts of the world to hope and pray with me, that this blood-bath will soon end and out of that perhaps inevitable butchery will rise a new and robust India not warlike, basely imitating the West in all its hideousness but a new India learning the best that the West has to give and becoming the hope not only of Asia and Africa, but the whole of the aching world.

I must confess that this is hoping against hope, for, we are today swearing by the military and all that naked physical force implies. Our statesmen have for over two generations declaimed against the heavy expenditure on armaments under the British regime, but now the freedom from political serfdom has come, our military expenditure has increased and still threatens to increase and of this we are proud! There is not a voice raised against it in our legislative chambers. In spite, however of the madness and the vain imitation of the tinsel of the West, the hope lingers in me and many others that India shall survive this death dance and occupy the moral height that should belong to her after the training however imperfect, in non-violence for an unbroken period of thirty two years since 1915.

"Will the war weary Asiatic countries follow in the foot-steps of Japan and turn to militarization?" The answer lies in what direction India will throw its weight. India is becoming the laughing stock of the world. The world asks, where is your non-violence with which you have won your independence? I have to hang down my head in shame. Will a free India present to the world a lesson of peace or of hatred and violence, of which the world a lesson of peace or of halted and violence, of which the world is already sick unto the death.

Hope of Exploited Races

If India fails, Asia dies. It has been aptly called the nursery of many blended cultures and civilizations. Let India be and remain the hope of all the exploited races of the earth, whether in Asia, Africa or in any part of the world.

Paradise on Earth

I remember to have read, I forget whether in the Delhi or the Agra Fort, when I visited them in 1896, a verse on one of the gates, which when translated reads: "If there is paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here." The fort, with all its magnificence at its best, was no paradise in my estimation. But I should love to see that verse with justice inscribed on the gates of Pakistan at all the entrance. In such paradise, whether it is in the Union or in Pakistan, there will be neither paupers nor beggars, or high nor low, neither millionaire employers nor half starved employees, nor intoxicating drinks nor drugs. There will be same respect or women as vouchsafed to men, and the chastity and purity of men and women will be jealously guarded. Where every woman, except one's wife, will be treated by men of all religions, as mother, sister or daughter according to her age. Where there will be equal respect for all faiths. There will be all, proudly, joyously and voluntarily, bread labourers. I hope everyone who listens to me or read these line will forgive me if, stretched on my bed and basking in the sun, inhaling life giving sunshine, I allow myself to indulge in this ecstasy.