Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/269

 Passive Resistance

HOW THE IDEA ORIGINATED

In answer to a question put to him by the Rev. Joseph Doke his biographer, as to the birth and evolution of this principle so far as he was concerned, Mr, replied as follows: —

I remember, " he said, " how one verse of a Gujatrati poem, which, as a child, I learned at school, clung to me, In substance it was this: —

"If a man gives you a drink of water and you give him a drink in return, that is nothing.

Real beuty consists in doing good against evil."

"As a child, this verse had a powerful influence over me, and I tried to carry it into practice. Then came the 'Sermon on the Mount.'"

"But, " said I, " surely the Bhagavad-Gita came first?"

"No," he replied, " of course I knew the Bhagavad-Gita in Sanskrit tolerably well, but I had not made its teaching., in that particular a study. It was the New Testament which really awakened me to the rightnees and value of Passive Resistance. When I read in the 'Sermon on the Mount' such passages as Resist not him that is evil but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also and 'Love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you, that ye may