READER: You have deprived me of the consolation I used to
have regarding peace in India.
EDITOR: If you or anybody has wrong understanding or
misunderstanding of anything including peace in India or
anywhere else in the world then it is your fault, what I can say that
peace is misnomer; peace is achieved only when one is reduced
in pieces, which is at death. What is achieved is harmony/rhythm
and is to be desired in life.
On the same question reply of Mr. Gandhi is:
ANS: I have merely given you my opinion on the religious aspect,
but when I give you my views as to the poverty of India, you will
perhaps begin to dislike me because what you and I have hitherto
considered beneficial for India no longer appears to me to be so.
QST: What may that be?
ANS: Railways, lawyers and doctors have impoverished the
country so much so that, if we do not wake up in time, we shall
be ruined.
QST: I do now, indeed, fear that we are not likely to agree at all.
You are attacking the very institutions which we have hitherto
considered to be good.
ANS: It is necessary to exercise patience. The true inwardness
of the evils of civilization you will understand with difficulty.
Doctors assure us that a consumptive clings to life even when he
is about to die. Consumption does not produce apparent hurt? it
even produces a seductive colour about a patient’s face so as to
induce the belief that all is well. Civilization is such a disease and
we have to be very wary.
QST: Very well, then. I shall hear you on the railways.
ANS: It must be manifest to you that, but for the railways, the
English could not have such a hold on India as they have. The
railways, too, have spread the bubonic plague. Without them, the
masses could not move from place to place. They are the carriers
of plague germs. Formerly we had natural segregation. Railways
have also increased the frequency of famines because, owing to
facility of means of locomotion, people sell out their grain and
it is sent to the dearest markets. People become careless and so
the pressure of famine increases. Railways accentuate the evil
nature of man. Bad men fulfill their evil designs with greater
rapidity. The holy places of India have become unholy. Formerly,
people went to these places with very great difficulty. Generally,
therefore, only the real devotees visited such places. Nowadays
rogues visit them in order to practise their roguery.
QST: You have given a one-sided account. Good men can visit
these places as well as bad men. Why do they not take the fullest
advantage of the railways?
ANS: Good travels at a snail’s pace? It can, therefore, have little
to do with the railways. Those who want to do well are not selfish,
they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with
good requires a long time. But evil has wings. To build a house
takes time. Its destruction takes none. So the railways can become
a distributing agency for the evil one only. It may be a debatable
matter whether railways spread famines, but it is beyond dispute
that they propagate evil.
QST: Be that as it may, all the disadvantages of railways are
more than counterbalanced by the fact that it is due to them that
we see in India the new spirit of nationalism.
ANS: I hold this to be a mistake. The English have taught us that
we were not one nation before and that it will require centuries
before we become one nation. This is without foundation. We
were one nation before they came to India. One thought inspired
us. Our mode of life was the same. It was because we were one
nation that they were able to establish one kingdom. Subsequently
they divided us.
QST: This requires an explanation.
ANS: I do not wish to suggest that because we were one nation
we had no differences, but it is submitted that our leading men
travelled throughout India either on foot or in bullock carts. They
learned one another’s languages and there was no aloofness
between them. What do you think could have been the intention
of those farseeing ancestors of ours who established Setubandha
(Rameshwar) in the South, Jagannath in the East and Hardwar
in the North as places of pilgrimage? You will admit they were
no fools. They knew that worship of God could have been
performed just as well at home. They taught us that those whose
hearts were aglow with righteousness had the Ganges in their
own homes. But they saw that India was one undivided land
so made by Nature. They, therefore, argued that it must be one
nation. Arguing thus, they established holy places in various
parts of India, and fired the people with an idea of nationality in
a manner unknown in other parts of the world. And we Indians
are one as no two Englishmen are. Only you and I and others who
consider ourselves civilized and superior persons imagine that
we are many nations. It was after the advent of railways that we
began to believe in distinctions, and you are at liberty now to say
that it is through the railways that we are beginning to abolish
distinctions. An opium-eater may argue the advantage of opium-
eating from the fact that he began to understand the evil of the
opium habit after having eaten it. I would ask you to consider
well what I had said on the railways.
QST: I will gladly do so but one question occurs to me even
now. You have described to me the India of the pre-Mahomedan
period, but now we have Mahomedans, Parsis and Christians.
How can they be one nation? Hindus and Mahomedans are old
enemies. Our very proverbs prove it. Mahomedans turn to the
West for worship, whilst Hindus turn to the East. The former look
down on the Hindus as idolaters. The Hindus worship the cow,
the Mahomedans kill her.
The Hindus believe in the doctrine of non-killing, the Mahomedans
do not. We thus meet with differences at every step. How can India
be one nation?
ANS: Your last question is a serious one and yet, on careful
consideration, it will be found to be easy of solution. The question
arises because of the presence of the railways, of the lawyers
and of the doctors. We shall presently examine the last two. We
have already considered the railways. I should, however, like to
add that man is so made by nature as to require him to restrict
his movements as far as his hands and feet will take him. If we
did not rush about from place to place by means of railways
and such other maddening conveniences, much of the confusion
that arises would be obviated. Our difficulties are of our own
creation. God set a limit to a man’s locomotive ambition in the
construction of his body. Man immediately proceeded to discover
means of overriding the limit. God gifted man with intellect that
he might know his Maker. Man abused it so that he might forget
his Maker. I am so constructed that I can only serve my immediate
neighbours, but in my conceit I pretend to have discovered that I
must with my body serve every individual in the Universe. In thus
attempting the impossible, man comes in contact with different
Natures, different religions, and is utterly confounded. According
to this reasoning, it must be apparent to you that railways are a
most dangerous institution. Owing to them, man has gone further
away from his Maker.”
READER: Very well, you have given excerpts from Hind Swaraj,
but what is your view, do you agree?
EDITOR: 1) Mr. Gandhi himself travelled a lot by train in India.
If Mr. Gandhi feels ‘It must be manifest to you that, but for the
railways, the English could not have such a hold on India as they
have” then I can just add that by travelling in railway Mr. Gandhi
has become an instrument in the hands of English to stabilize the
rule of British in India. Mr. Gandhi first by criticizing railway
than by travelling in the railway has inherently provided more
than required publicity to railway and British, which made
them success like what is being presently done by Bollywood/
Hollywood i.e. criticize the film in print and visual media and
film will be super-duper, such is the case with Mr. Gandhi and
British rule in India. It appears that Mr. Gandhi knowingly or
unknowingly worked as their brand ambassador.
Generally good travel only after bad provokes it to travel, and
considered to be very slow, but certainly good people have to
take full advantage of communication methods available, one
to check the evil forces and secondly to encourage good forces.
Good people have to find out the basic method of communication
so that their, fear and phobia, worries and botheration evaporates
and their view and feeling reaches to the larger mankind.
India was one with more or less same culture throughout the
land. It was after the advent of faster communication that we
hear more of differences than underlying unity. Mind travels very
fast, hence in Bharat they say listen to the mind and accept of the
heart. Generally all faster communication makes life miserable
and death difficult.
Only roads lead to nowhere; for a country to develop as a whole and
as a single unit, two most important factors of connectivity, audio/
video and transport communication are considered essential. With
the growth of communication methods-flooding of information,
flooding of Virus and consequential system corruption/illness
has risen to many folds. Lawyer, so called judges, doctors and
so called diagnostic methods, mobile/multimedia it’s so called
networking signals and consequential radiation, satellites/space
shuttle, it’s so called strength for space war are becoming bigger
disease and threat.
Unhappiness is then and there, happiness is here and now. Faster
communication is requirement of the unhappy lot, the busy lot
who feels happiness will be then when we will have money of
entire world in our coffer. With faster communication one clings
to communicate even when one is at crematorium.
Silence between two indicates deep love, whereas
noise indicates appearance of clash/fight/war, rhythm indicates
wholesome life whereas faster communication indicates
appearance of wider differences/disturbance.