Page:Gandhi The Man and His Message.djvu/11

 lofty professions by his own personal conduct. He has passed through all the trying years of his stormy life and stood firm in his noble convictions, with his faith unchallenged, his veracity unquestioned, his love untainted, and his courage undaunted. No criticism, however sharp and cutting, no abuse, however base and bitter, did ever taint the large and loving heart of Gandhi. In the knowledge of his life-long political associates, members of the Indian National Congress and other such organizations, Mr. Gandhi, even at moments of the most violent excitement and heated controversies, when criticisms were showered upon his program in the most light-hearted manner by his younger and inexperienced colleagues, and when he was made the target for the bitterest sarcasm of his older associates, he is never known to have revealed, even in the tone of his voice, the slightest touch of anger or the slightest show of contempt. His limit of tolerance has not yet been reached.

During the last year and a half of his free life in India when he guided the destinies of his countrymen as leader of a great movement Mr. Gandhi once again gave unmistakable proofs of the vastness of the all-inclusive horizon of his love. That his love is not reserved only for his compatriots, but that it extends even to his bitteres enemies in its undiminished intensity and lustre, he revealed clearly throughout the most critical period of his life. His enemies, the British bureaucrats, used all the cards in their hands to discredit him in the eyes of his countrymen and the world outside, and to nip his whole movement in its very bud. Calumnies were heaped upon him from all sides. He was called a “hypocrite,” an “unscrupulous agitator,” a “disguised autocrat,” with the vast number of his followers branded as “dumb-cattle,” hundreds of thousands of whom were flogged, imprisoned and in some cases even shot for no other offense than that of wearing the coarse, hand-spun “Gandhi cap” and singing the Indian national hymn. Even in such trying moments he remained firm in his faith, true and loyal to his lofty professions. Evidence as to the undisturbed, peaceful condition of his mind and spirit is amply furnished