Santbal A Saint with a Difference

Author(s): T U Mehta
Publisher: Navjivan Prakashan Mandir

Page 59

CHAPTER 6
Going Alone
The above-referred public statement resulted in his expulsion from the order. All Sthanakvasi Jain institutions were instructed to effectively boycott him by not allowing him to put up at any Upashraya, not offering to him any alms and not to co-operate with him in any manner. Gurudev was also pressurised to disown him which he had to do with poignant heart. Suddenly the whole atmosphere changed for him. He had a sort of devotional attachment with Gurudev and his senior colleague Munishri Chunilalji who was also known as “Chitta Muni”. He was suddenly called upon to write off all these connections. But the main question was where to go and whom to approach. One year's solitary silence had infused in him great courage and imagination. For the next year, i.e. 1938 A.D. he decided to pass his Chaturmas in a hutment at Vaghajipura, a small village between Ahmedabad and Bavla. During this stay he had thought out how to proceed to implement his plans to serve humanity. He himself has explained how his ideas to bring about revolutionary changes based on ethics had taken shape.
He says: “In Samvat 1992 (1936 A.D.) I had written “Ethics and Socialism” as a foreword to a book on socialism. By this time Acharang Sutra was published. Before this I had already written Dharma Pran Lonkashah. From this time onwards the seeds of the necessity to bring out social revolution on ethical basis were already laid.”
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