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13
Gandhi and Shrimad Rajchandra, p.9 cited in Stephen N Hay, Jain Influences on Gandhi's Early thought', (Promilla Publishers, New Delhi, 1993), p.35; SPEECH ON BIRTH ANNIVERSARY OF RAJCHANDRA, AHMEDABAD November 16, 1921: Today's occasion is twice welcome as affording an opportunity for reflection over the meaning of compassion. We revere the person for honouring whose memory we have gathered here. I, too, rank myself among his adorers. A critic can never be this. - - - I assume, therefore, that only those who love the poet and hold him in reverence have come to this meeting. It is to these persons that I say that today's occasion is twice welcome. The man in whose hallowed memory we have gathered here was the living embodiment of this religion of compassion. He understood it well and had perfected it in his life. This same compassion inspires our present activities in the country. It is not anger which prompts them. The situation as it has developed has given us sufficient reason to be angry and has hurt us deeply. But, even at this unhappy hour we pause and think how we may act so as not to hurt the opponents; how, on the contrary, we may do a good turn even to them. Non-cooperation springs from compassion and not from anger. Afraid that we may be in the wrong, we refuse to be angry with the opponent and, instead, ourselves flee from him. I have often declared that I have learnt, and learnt much, from the lives of many persons. But it is from the Poet's life that I have learnt most. It was from his life that I understood the way of compassion. There can be no act which will not hurt the feelings of someone or another, but the pain must have been inflicted out of compassion. 14 CWMG, M. K. Gandhi, Vol.9, op.cit., pp.212-3, Letter to H.S.L.
15
Polak, 26 April 1909.
Mahatma Gandhi ane Srimad Rajchandra (Mahatma Gandhi and Shrimad Rajchandra) (Oza Ayurvedic Pharmasi, Ahmedabad, 1993), p.11 cited in Stephen N. Hay" Jain Influences on Gandhi's Early Thought" in Sibnarayan Ray, ed., Gandhi India and the World (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1970), p.31.
16 J.T.F. Jordens, "Gandhi and the Bhagavadgita", in Robert N. Minor, Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavad Gita Ed. (State University of New York, New York, 1991), pp. 107-8.
Pg.208 Gandhi & Jainism.
