Page:Masani - Gandhi's story.pdf/60



All this made Gandhiji realize that he must turn away from politics and go back to the people in the villages. He knew that his real work lay there. Before India could achieve her freedom, her people must first be worthy of it. He left it to the men of the Congress Party to fight for India's freedom through politics. He saw the sad state of the masses and the poverty; the degradation and the suffering of his people made his heart bleed. He sought desperately to weld them into a fine and noble people. He became a champion of the poor and lowly. He appealed to the rich to show more fellow feeling for their poorer brethren. And it was for these downtrodden people that he worked, and “out of dust he made them men.”

He first set out to make the people forget that they belonged to different religions, for how could India ever be a nation if the Hindus and Mohammedans were always quarreling over their religious difference and killing each other? Gandhiji had learned from his father that there was good in every religion for all