Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/849

 JAIL LIFE IN INDIA

��THE MEANING OF THE IMPRISONMENTS. *

��[We have in the early part of the book given Mr. Gandhi's jail experiences in South Africa. From time to time in the columns of Young India Mr. Gandhi referred to the treatment of prisoners in Indian jails and as non-co-operators sought imprison- ment in their hundreds in the closing week of 1921, Mr Gandhi had occasion to refer again and again to jail discipline and the way that non-co-operators should conduct themselves within the prison walls The following articles and notes were written for the guidance of his followers and much interest centres on the essay on the "Model Prisoner" in view of the fact that Mr. Gandhi himself is undergoing his prison experience in India It was characteristic of Mr Gandhi too that when Devadas his youngest son and Mr C. Rajagopalachari visited him in the Erravada jail he told them that his prison life should not be made the subject of discussion in the press. Having courted imprison- ment he would not complain of the treatment, but quietly and cheerfully bear the sufferings in the true spirit of the Satyagrahi. It was in this spirit too that he wrote to his friend Mr. Andrews that his ideal of a prison life was to be completely cut off from the world during the period of incarceration.]

HUNGER STRIKE.

I cannot sufficiently warn non-co-operation prisoners against the danger of hastily embarking upon hunger strikes in their prison*. It cannot be justified as a means for removing irksome gaol restrictions. For a gaol is nothing if it does not impose upon us restrictions which we will not submit to in ordinary life. A hunger strike would be justified when inhumanity is practised, food issued which offends one's religious sense or which

��Voung /tuttaNov. 8,JL921.

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