albin james’s Reviews > Gandhi: Selected Political Writings > Status Update

An individual's success will be like a millionaire doling free food to millions of starving people. We should, therefore, bend our energies to a fulfillment of the thirteenfold constructive programme. It may or may not bring swaraj, but we shall surely have the satisfaction of having done our best.

By good food I do not mean that they will eat sweets//I know I am talking tall because the poor today do not even know what fruit is. During the mango season, they get a few mangoes and during the guava season they get a few guavas//I wish everyone gets what they call a balanced diet as also a clean and comfortable house. This according to me is real freedom.

I may be taunted with the retort that this is all Utopian and, therefore, not worth a single thought. If Euclid's point, though incapable of being drawn by human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live. Let India live for this true picture, though never realizable in its completeness. We must have a proper picture of what we want, before we can have something approaching it.

You may say that trusteeship is a legal fiction. But if people meditate over it constantly and try to act up to it, then life on earth would be governed far more by love than is at present. Absolute trusteeship is an abstraction like Euclid's definition of a point, and is equally unattainable. But if we strive for it, we shall be able to go further in realizing a state of equality on earth than by any other method.

Satyagraha is gentle, it never wounds. It must not be the result of anger or malice. It is never fussy, never impatient, never vociferous. It is the direct opposite of compulsion. It was conceived as a complete substitute for violence.

Even fasts may take the form of coercion. But there is nothing in the world that in human hands does not lend itself to abuse. The human being is a mixture of good and evil, Jekyll and Hyde. But there is the least likelihood of abuse when it is a matter of self-suffering.

This is big talk, I know. For a fallen India to aspire to move the world and protect weaker races is seemingly an impertinence. But in explaining my strong opposition to this cry for independence, I can no longer hide the light under a bushel. Mine is an ambition worth living for and worth dying for.

This letter to Irwin surely represents Gandhi at his best, informing his adversary in advance of his intentions and reasons, even the details of his battle plans. Beginning in Gandhi's classic style with "Dear Friend," it sets the tone of congeniality and trust that served to create ambivalence in the British and make them hesitate, for them a fatal concession to the campaign.

A coward is incapable of bearing love, it is the prerogative of the brave. ~~~~ Even a Nero becomes a lamb when he faces love. This is no exaggeration. It is as true as an algebraic equation. This satyagraha is India's distinctive weapon.

Nonviolent Noncooperation