ABSTRACT
IN this age of prattling politicians, cheap patriots, seekers after notoriety and place-hunters, it is an inestimable delight to hear the voice of one burning with truth and righteousness, and firm in his determination to uphold them, cost what it may. Such a voice heartens and braces us, and inspires in us a conviction—so sorely needed now—that, even in modern India, there are men who will not be bought and sold—to whom truth is the very breath of life, and service in the cause of their country the sole object of existence. Of this type are and have been the prophets who have led humanity through the wilderness to the promised land, standing four square to all the winds that blow. And in India to-day, whose is such a voice? None other than Mahatma Gandhi’s—a man who may be called the highest spiritual peak of his country—shining in radiant splendour, helping, uplifting, beckoning his countrymen to the heights whereon he himself stands. Here is the solitary man who has power to speak out of an independent soul—who is cast in the heroic outlines we miss in others. His words enthral us, set us aflame as no other man’s words do. Christ-like in his love of truth—St. Francis-like in his hatred of wealth—not unlike the Prophet of Arabia in his all-conquering will—Gandhi stands to-day before the astonished, watching world as the supreme type and exponent of all that is loftiest, brightest and best in his motherland. And wherein lies the supreme excellence of this preacher of compelling force and personality? In the union of the practical with the ideal. He is not a visionary roaming in an imaginary paradise—culling flowers and weaving chaplets for a merely ideal world. Nor is he merely a practical hard-headed statesman bent upon the attainment of his purpose, heedless of ways and means. He incarnates in himself the practical and the ideal—the practical leading up to the ideal—the ideal controlling, chastening the practical. And it is this precisely which gives him his incomparable power, his irresistible sway; for, in our age, is not the ideal always in danger of perishing from the spreading, devastating flood of materialism? And it is this wondrous fusion of the two which has made his appeals so widely acceptable—stirring India to her depths. In him the vague mysticism of the East has been happily-wedded to the shrewd practical wisdom of the West. Has he not poured new wine into old bottles? Has he not opened a door to light and liberty? Has he not, by altering old boundaries, added new territories to his own “spiritual” kingdom? His words have the force of law—his personality an all-subduing magic spell. And all this simply because he has given expression to some of the hitherto inarticulate aspirations of his country—because he has gathered together its scattered forces, probed its unsuspected depths—welded and concentrated them—showing, as none else had showed before, India’s capacity for union, co-operation, concerted measures. His insight—not unlike the insight of the prophets of yore—discovered the latent force, the slumbering strength of his country. And yet he is pre-eminently in terms a preacher of peace. Fire and sword are not instruments of his propaganda. He rebukes violence—condemns the revolutionary spirit—and seeks the success of his mission in peaceful progress, “spiritual” conquests. He emphasizes the “spiritual” value of political institutions and the realization of our moral manhood by its expansion into national organization. Even where he suggests resistance—the resistance cour selled is in terms of a pacific—more of a mora: than of a fighting—kind. But of that later.
