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having invited the scars which he received. In those days and nights of his solitude, he had become rooted in a state of equanimity and peace. He felt the touch of the sun of knowledge, and was now convinced that life was not meant to be used for revolution, but instead for evolution.
This insight did not dilute his dedication to the cause of India's freedom. It turned him in the direction of the evolutionary process and toward one living exemplar, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whom he came to know affectionately as Bapuji or Gandhiji.
Message of Non-Violence
At a moment when Rup was seeking absorption of self in the needs of others. Mahatma Gandhi represented that ideal to him. Before meeting the revered leader face to face, Rup's heart opened to him as an externalization of his own innermost feelings.
He signed up to work on a committee of the Provincial Pradesh Congress. For the next year and a half, he planned to become immersed in the non-cooperation movement. At dawn, along with hundreds of students, he was on the streets, moving from village to village. Together they made rounds to awaken the villagers from their slumber, to suggest to them ways in which they could help the cause of freedom.
Leaflets were distributed. They picketed shops which sold foreign goods. They boycotted foreign cloth and urged people to go back to cottage industries and spin their own cloth. The coarse khadi cloth which Gandhiji wore to identify himself with the masses of poor people was cloth which he had spun himself. For half an hour each day, he would spin. It was one of his forms of meditation.
With each turn of the wheel, Gandhi would repeat, "Ram, Ram, Ram," which was his appellation for the Divine Presence. If the thread happened to break, he would know that
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