Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/221

The Need of India your shoulders even as the pilgrim did in that inimitable book Pilgrim's Progress. VOW OF FEARLESSNESS I found through my wanderings in India that all educated India is seized with a paralysing fear. We may not open our lips in public. We may not declare our confirmed opinions in public. We may hold those opinions, and we may talk about them secretly, and we may do anything within the four walls of a house, but those opinions are not for public consumption. If we took a vow of silence, I would have nothing to say, but when we open our lips in public we say things which we really do not believe. I do not know whether this is not the experience of almost every one who speaks in public. I then suggest to you that there is only one Being, if Being is the proper term to be applied, whom we have to fear, and that is God. If you want to follow the vow of truth in any shape or form, fearlessness is the necessary consequence. UNTOUCHABLES We have also a vow in connection with the untouchables. There is an ineffaceable blot which Hinduism carries with it to-day. I have declined to believe that it has been 101