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ADVICE TO YOUNG JAINAS
THE one thing which I want Jaina young men to note is that success and prosperity are fair damsels that may not be wooed except by the "brave." Certainly good things are not to be had by begging, whether that art be practised with a gentle persuasive tongue or resort be had to importunity and clamour. As the proverb has it, if wishes could bide beggars would ride'; and even if wishes did bide once by an enviable fluke, we should certainly lose again, through sheer incapacity and lack of talent, what luck had placed in our hands that way.
Efficiency, fitness, competency, then, are the qualities which lead to greatness and insure its abiding. Everyone who wishes success to crown his efforts must, therefore, acquire efficiency. In politics also efficiency must precede swarajya. Statecraft is like water which will drown and destroy everyone who is not an expert swimmer. No doubt, swimming cannot be learnt, if you are not allowed to approach water; but it would be madness to insist on being thrown in the midst of a raging sea for that reason! As for the question, how are you to acquire the mastery over the sea, when you are not allowed to approach it? well, you must perfect yourself in the dirty pools and puddles in your village, if a military cordon be placed on the seashore.
The problem, then, in the first instance, is not how to acquire swarajya, but how to become efficient? Now, political efficiency means national efficiency, which, in its turn signifies individual efficiency, because politics is the science which governs the relations of nations with one another, and nations are but composed of individuals having a common aspiration and purpose.
Individual efficiency in itself includes and implies:
1. a strong, healthy, energetic body,
2.
a powerful mind capable of knowing its own good,
3.
an iron will that adheres to what is right and despises every
kind of failing, and
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