Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/416

 326 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES

THE VOW OF FEARLESSNESS.

I found, throughout my wanderings in India, that India, 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 talk about them secretly ; and we may do anything we like within the four walls of our house, but those are not for public con- sumption. If we had taken a vow of silence I would have nothing to say. When we open our lips in public, we say things which we do not really believe in. I do not know whether this is not the experience of almost every public man who speaks in India. I then suggest to you that there is only one Being, if Being is the proper term to be used, whom we have to fear, and that is God. When we fear God, we shall fear no man, no matter how high-placed he may be. And if you want to follow the vow of truth in any shape or form, fearlessness is the necessary consequence. And so you find, in the Bha&avad Gita, fearlessness is dec- lared as the first essential quality of a Brahmin. We fear consequence, and therefore we are afraid to tell the Truth. A man who fears God will certainly not fear any earthly consequence. Before we can aspire to the position of understanding what religion is, and before we can aspire to the position of guiding the destinies of India, do you not see that we should adopt this habit of fearlessness ? Or shall we over-awe our countrymen, even as we are over-awed ? We thus see how important this " fearlessne ss 1 ' now is. And we have also

THE VOW REGARDING THE UNTOUCHABLES.

There is an ineffaceable blot that Hinduism to-day carries with it. I have declined to believe that it has been handed to us from immemorial times. I think that

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