Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/102

 over feel a quickened sense of its own divinity as it peruses the same golden record? Has not another chapter been added to the world's Acts of the Apostles?

Let us now reckon the tale of the martyrs to whom it was given to give their lives to the cause. There was that young girl, Valiamma of whom Mr. Gandhi has said: "Simple-minded in faith she had not the knowledge that he had, she did not know what passive resistance was, she did not know what it was the community would gain, but she was simply taken up with unbounded enthusiasm for her people—went to gaol, came out of it a wreck, and within a few days died." There were the two youths from the Tamil land, Nagappan and Narayanaswamy—the former died shortly after his release from prison, and the latter at Delgoa Bay after having vainly attempted to land in South Africa as already told. And lastly there was the old man Harbatsingh, a Hindustani stalwart who went to gaol as a passive resister when he was seventy-five, and who when questioned by Mr. Gandhi why he had come, had answered. "What does it matter? I know what you are fighting for. You have not to pay the £3 tax