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The last two generations were intoxicated with the wine of Western civilization; they were enchanted by the comparative luxuries and comforts introduced by England. A few were infatuated with Mill and Spencer. The intelligentsia, "a microscopic minority," were aroused. The existing political injustices afforded them a good cause for which to fight. Poverty was stalking abroad in the land because of economic exploitation-this they would remedy. The teeming millions of India were in the jaws of famine and death: to rescue them became a religious duty to those that had seen the light. Above all, were they anxious to assert their selfrespect and to regain national pride, which had been lost to them by the wholesale emasculation of the nation for over a century and a half. The World War, which had been an occasion for the enunciation of many a beautiful idea, gave a new impulse and vitality to their long-cherished desires and ideals.

"Now or Never," was the suppressed feeling. But the moderate elements in the nation prevailed and the repetition of the Easter Rebellion of Ireland was avoided in India. People helped England and the Allies during the war with men and money under the profound conviction that the destruction of German Kaiserism would mean the application of the Right of Self-Determination to all the subject nations of the world. But that was not to be. Reforms in the existing political machinery of bureaucratic government in India, embodied in the Montagu-Chelmsford Reform Scheme, were "unsatisfactory and disappointing." The Versailles Treaty was regarded as an insult to the dignity of manhood, a jumble of falsehood and idiocy! People were ready to act-to demand justice by "all legal, constitutional methods”—and down came the "Black" Rowlatt Acts of 1919 upon them! Relief there was none. In gasping breath was again whispered, "Now or Never. Tenser became the atmosphere. Por

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tents of the impending catastrophe were in the air. The inchoate masses were ablaze with indigation, but they were stifled. To make their feelings articulate was needed a man among men, a hero-their man. "The part of the people," says a well-known French psychologist, "has been the same in all revolutions. It is never the people that conceives or directs them. Its activity is released by means of leaders." Especially is this true of a country like India where eighty-five per cent of the population is agricultural and indifferent to politics. Nonetheless the country was seething with discontent. With significant stupidity did the bureaucrat's iron hand of repression descend on the people, and the worst would have happened, but Gandhi, the Personification of Peace, came upon the scene, as if to say: "Behold, I give unto you a new gospel and a new commandment: that ye kill not your (so-called) enemy, but kill yourself if you must. Non-Violent Resistance is the true way of Freedom and SelfRealization. Let us not oppose brute force to brute force; rather, let us pit soul force against brute force. Success is assured to Truth Force, to Love Force!" And lo! they responded! The inheritors of Christna and Buddha, of Zarathustra and Jesus, of Mohammed and Moses, became participants in the Satyagraha or Passive Resistance movement, propounded and launched by India's Saint.

A "Saint"!-yes: his frail figure, weighing less than a hundred pounds, Gandhi is more spirit than body. There is the spark of unquenchable fire in his eyes. A prominent forehead, a sweet expression, the kind eyes and a happy smile-he is the typical Hindu idealist. His moustaches are closely clipped and his aquiline nose reminds one of his Aryan heredity. Fruit is his daily food-perhaps rice, rarely milk-and he is active for eighteen hours a day. The inward purity of the soul finds its outward expression in his charmingly simple, spotless, white garments made of home-spun Khadi, woven by him

self or perhaps by some of his pupils, and sewn by his wife. His bare and rugged feet are ever ready at the service of the Motherland. The pleasure of incessant work is the only respite he gets. In his heart is burning the fiery Idealism for the Uplift of Humanity. Devotion to an ideal-from beginning to end! In the true sense of the word is his a consecrated life! Such is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, called by the people in loving reverence and gratitude Mahatma (Great Soul: Saint).

How was the leader to bring deliverance unto his oppressed people? In days gone by, Moses had led the oppressed Jews out of Egypt and had newly given unto them the laws which are as old as the human race. Not by leading Indians out of the field of oppression, however, but by leading them into the very heart of the most active centre of oppression, namely prison walls and bars, did Mahatma Gandhi give unto his people the age-old laws of Non-Violence and Passive Resistance, of kindness, gentleness, peace and love. Against the brute force of the European colonials in South Africa, Gandhi opposed the soul force of the Indian community. For two weary decades (1894-1914) the struggle went on the trying, purifying ordeal, which, in the words of Lord Ampthill, meant for the Indians "suffering and ruin," while for the Colony it meant "a scandal and a disgrace." But the Son of Righttousness, beclouded for a moment, shone triumphant on the horizon in the East. Through suffering and privation, with the weapon of Passive Resistance, did the Indian Community rectify the wrong done to it and obtained justice-for itself and for humanity. The Twentieth Century came knocking at the door of Humanity, when the fight between Moral Force and brute force was going on. Everywhere violence and bloodshed, plots and conspiracies, ammunitions and armaments-it was a loathsome sight to our tender distinguished Guest! Enraged at the stupidity of man, like the Hindu Goddess Maha Kali,

she began in 1914 to make a clean cut of man's follies, and today the process is still going on! She seems to be quite determined to keep steadily at her job, until all the follies, and therewith the makers of them, are swept away. Woe betide the human race if this fight between moral force and brute force be not decided within a generation! If the human race is to be saved, if the social system is to be rescued from complete collapse, if we are to be spared extinction, then must we fall back upon the eternal principle: He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.

Unless sanity prevails in human society, we are done. But in spite of overwhelming evidence, we are not rushing headlong to destruction. A faint glimmer on the horizon-the rays of Light are penetrating from the East. The dawn of the new day has broken! In the words of Gandhi: "Non-Violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher lawto the strength of the spirit." Such is India's message, of which Gandhi is the personification.

Chapter II

LIFE-STORY OF GANDHI

Mahatma Gandhi! What a richness of romance that name recalls. What tales of a young Passive Resister who dared to express himself against the menacing tyranny of Imperialism-of the "white man's burden!" An aristocrat, son of a Prime Minister, a Barrister-at-law, who gave up everything for his people; a Washington who is leading the masses to freedom by education, by self-discipline, instead of bayonets; watched, scrutinized, respected, arrested, imprisoned, treated like an ordinary felon in the dark cell of British prison-houses, brought back under the flaming banner of hope and success, honored and loved as no other man of modern times has been honored or loved, misunderstood and maligned, hoping for success in suffering and working to the end of self-discipline, the best loved and the most hated man in the world today, Gandhi's career of thirty years has been one of self-discipline, of organization of masses, a clean record of "something attempted, something done"; a career lived in the abundance and fullness of life. Mahatma Gandhi, the Savior of his people-the prophetic voice of a New World!

On the 2nd of October, 1869, was born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Porbunder, his birthplace, is a seacoast town in Kathiawar, which is a province in the Bombay Presidency. The Gandhi clan belong to the Bunnia community (Vaishya), which is the

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