Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

Page 152

GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
that your philosophers and socialists can present many reasons for this state of things and many arguments in its defense, but to the Hindu mind, the basic principle of the family and the ties which bind into unity its several members, are violated by you, and that for this reason it must be impossible for you to attain the highest social state.
Divorce is a common and sometimes a coveted feature in your social civilization
The reason of this, which I may not do more than state, is found in our conception of the ground and reasons for marriage and the family tie. These are sacred and inviolable and they hold through all circumstances and cannot be weakened nor set aside. Marriage in our view is spiritual as well as physical matehood. The husband and wife are one and indivisible
his view; they have no two roads, and two destinies, and separate attractions, and different objects of desire of devotion. They are one in thought, in purpose, in religious devotion, in sacred destiny and in the true light that is also not divided. It is of course, impossible to bring before our limited view in this earthly state, the full and perfect relations, and the blissful conditions of the souls of men and women, but the Hindu widow is forever a wife and prays every day that in future of perfect bliss, she may join her husband, and believes that she will. This does not mean in any physical sense, but that the perfection which is attained by the religious observances and soul growth of the husband shall also be hers so that the unity in the marriage relations, in the spiritual interpretation of them, is perpetual
Government of your great country
Another thing that I have learned is that divorce is a common and sometimes a coveted feature in your social civilization. I will say that this
feature also impresses me unfavorably. It would seem that there is a lack of something--you may call it wisdom, love, power of selection lying at the bottom of this fact. The truth, however, must be conceded, that thousands of persons who marry and start out in the separate, and independent way of life which I have spoken, away from the family of the husband, soon for some cause, grow tired of each other and are separated by the strong hand of your legal civilization, by divorce. With us, what you call divorce is not known, except in the lowest class of society, which class is not of the Aryan origin-in other words, not real Hindu; What I mean to say, with more explicitness is that Hindu jurisprudence and books do not provide for or recognize divorce.
I must also speak of the impressions that I have received in relation to the government of your great country. I will say that as far as I have been able to grasp it, your theory of freedom, is also among the monuments of West. I cannot command words to express the greatness of that theory, if I take the theory, and quote the words of that great man, Abraham Lincoln, who said that "this is a government of the people, for the people and by the people." That statement is too great to be discussed in one hour, or in one year or in many years. It is a statement that opens up possibilities and