Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/698

 608 NON-CO-OPERATION

of the fact that blind surrender to love is often more mischievous than a forced surrender to the lash of the tyrant. There is hope for the slave of the brute, none for that of love. Love is needed to strengthen the weak, love becomes tyrannical when it exacts obedience from an unbeliever. To mutter a " mantra " without knowing its value is unmanly. It is good, therefore, that the Poet has invited all who are slavishly mimick- ing the cail of the " charkha " boldly to declare their revolt. His essay serves as a warning to us all who in our impatience are betrayed into intolerance or even violence against those who differ from us : I regard the Poet as a sentinel warning Us against the approach of enemies called Bigotry, Lethargy, Intolerance, Ig- norance, Inertia and other members of that brood.

But whilst I agree with all that the Poet has said as to the necessity of watchfulness lest we cease to think, I must not be understood to endorse the proposition that there is any such blind obedience on a large scale in the country to-day. I have again and again appealed to reason, and let me assure him that, if happily the coun- try has come to believe in the spinning-wheel as the giver of plenty, it has done so after laborious thinking, after great hesitation. I am not^ sure, that even now educated India has assimilated the truth underlying the " charka." He must not mistake the surface dirt for the substance underneath. Let him go deeper and see for himself, whether the " charka" has been accepted from blind faith or from reasoned necessity.

I do indeed ask the Poet and the sage to spin the wheel as a sacrament. When there is war, the poet lays down the lyre, the lawyer his law reports, the school boy his books. The Poet will sing the true note

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