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puzzles me why you did not let us cut the crop from the first field! Had you some motive behind it?"
"Ah, yes! Are we not all actuated by some motive, some self-interest: If not of this world, of the other; if not material gain, spiritual gain? The first field was my neighbour's," he muttered softly. ..
"Your neighbour's!” exclaimed the man. “Then, whose is this? Your enemy's?"
The old man smiled, “No, it is mine; my very own," he replied. “How could I forget my duty to my neighbour, stand by and, watch you destroy his field: Would it not be better to let you pillage mine, so that I would not have to blush with shame at the thought that I had betrayed my neighbour, whom I am morally bound to help in his difficulties ? It is better so—as it is,” he nodded thoughtfully. "If I were to die this moment, I could die with a clear conscience; with the joy that I had fulfilled my moral obligations to my neighbour, as our religion, our culture enjoins us to do,” he concluded.
The officer left, wondering if a land that could produce such high-minded, self-sacrificing men even among the humblest of rustics, could ever be really subjugated:
The perennial tree of Bharat's ancient culture did not yield to the storms of violence from outside. But will it survive much longer if her own people cease to foster it with the life-giving waters of
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