Gandhi Before Gandhi

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

Page 44

GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
Mr Virchand Gandhi's speech
You had Washington, We had Ashoka
My brothers and sisters of America, I greet you in the name of India and her three hundred million of sons and daughters. I come to you with a message from that country-a message of peace, of love, of universal brotherhood and therefore of universal fellowship. I stand before you on a common level, not on the relationship of master and servant, nor of the conqueror and the conquered. I hail you, my brothers and sisters, with all my heart and with all my soul, and while I stand before you with that feeling, I represent not myself alone, but the voiceless millions of India. I come to you at your invitation and at your courtesy. It is the first time in the history of nations that this vast country, the American country, sent a cordial invitation to the farthest country, India, on the other side of the globe. It is a crown of glory in the history of this new nation, the nation so progressive, so intellectual, so tolerant. It is an honor to India to partake in the festive board, the intellectual, the religious, the philosophical board which you have spread for her entertainment. You did invite us, not because you are kings and emperors, who have authority to command us, but you bid us as brothers of the same family and as progenitors of the civilization which you and I now enjoy. It is a commemoration of the completion, so to speak, of one cycle of life, a picture of the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega because the first representative of race is invited to commune with the last and best in opportunities of races. That this new American nation, the youngest child in the history of nations has wisely and hospitably invited the aged and well-preserved nation from the farthest country to the entertainment, is without precedent in the history of the world
It is a pleasing thought to my country that she finds parallels of epochs or stages in the development of human lives and races. While you Americans
tell of your Washington, who was "first in peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," so we, also, have our Washington, who many centuries ago embalmed himself; in the institutions of my country. No greater man than King Ashoka has ever reigned in India and no succeeding
monarch has equaled his glory. He was inspired by a liberal and catholic spirit in his internal administration and in his foreign policy, and the profound love of truth and the desire to spread the truth, have made his name a household word from Siberia to Ceylon,
You had Abraham Lincoln, We had Vikram, the great
You have had your Abraham Lincoln who was the regenerator of your country, a second Washington. We had also our Abraham Lincoln, the victor of a great and patriotic war, the patron of reviving Hinduism, the center of all that is best and most beautiful in modern Sanskrit literature,