Page:Gandhi - The Wheel of fortune.djvu/113

Rh All for themselves, eat sin and drink of sin. By food the living live; food comes of rain.

And rain comes by the pious sacrifice, And sacrifice is paid with tithes of toil;

Thus action is of Brahma, who is one, The Only, All—pervading; at all times

Present in sacrifice. He that abstains To help the rolling wheels of this great world,

Glutting his idle sense, lives a lost life, Shameful and vain.

Work here undoubtedly refers to physical labour, and work by way of sacrifice can only be work to be done by all for the common benefit. Such work—such sacrifice can only be spinning. I do not wish to suggest, that the author of the Divine Song had the spinning wheel in mind. He merely laid down a fundamental principle of conduct. And reading in and applying it to India I can only think of spinning as the fittest and most acceptable sacrificial body labour. I cannot imagine anything nobler or more national than that for say one hour