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SKETCHES
"We must not surrender our reason into anybody's keeping. Blind surrender to love is often more mischievous than forced surrender to the lash of the tyrant. There is hope for the slave of the brute, none for that of love.
Tagore is the sentinel who warns of the approach of the enemies called Bigotry, Lethargy. Intolerance. Ignorance, and Inertia. But Gandhi does not feel that Tagore's misgivings are justified. The Mahatma always appeals to reason. It is not true. that India is moved by blind obedience only. If the country decided to adopt the spinning-wheel, this has been only after considerable reflection. Tagore speaks of patience and is satisfied with beautiful songs. But there is war. Let the poet lay down his lyre! Let him sing when it is over! When a house is on fire all must go out and take up a bucket to quench the fire.
To a people famishing and idle the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages. God created man to work for his food and said that those who are without work were thieves. We must think of millions who to-day are less than animals, almost in a dying state. Hunger is the argument that is drawing India to the spinning-wheel.
"The poet lives for the morrow and would have us do likewise. He presents to our admiring gaze the beautiful picture of the birds in the early morning singing hymns of praise as they soar into the sky. Those birds had their day's food and soared with rested wings in whose veins new blood had flown the previous night. But I have had the pain of watching birds who for want of strength could not be coaxed even into a flutter of their wings. The human bird under the Indian sky gets up weaker than when he pretended to retire. For millions it is an eternal vigil or an eternal trance. I have found it impossible to soothe suffering patients with a song from Kabir....
"Give them work that they may eat! "Why should I, who have no need to work for food, spin?" may be the question asked. Because I am eating what does not belong to me. I am living on the spoliation of my countrymen. Trace the source of every coin that finds its way into your pocket, and you will realize the truth of what I write. Everyone must spin. Let Tagore spin, like the others. Let him burn his foreign clothes; that is the duty of to-day. God will take care of the morrow. As it says in the Gita, Do right!"
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