Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/864

 the farm, and have not time to produce more of the articles abovementionod than we need for ourselves.

THE RATIONALE OF SUFFERING

[Mr. Gandhi has explained the philosophy of Passive Resistance and the need for sziferiozg in the following terms:—]

The one view is why one should go to jail and there submit himself to all personal restraints, a place where he would have to dress himself in the coarse and ugly prison garb of a felon and to live upon non-nutritious and semi-starvation diet, where he is sometimes kicked about by jail officials, and made to do every kind of work whether he liked it or not, where he has to carry out the behests of a warder who is no better than his household servant, where he is not allowed to receive the visits of his friends and relatives and is prohibited from writing to them, where he is denied almost the bare necessities of life and is sometimes obliged to sleep in the same cell that is occupied by actual thieves and robbers. The question is why one should undergo such trials and sufferings. Better is death than life under such conditions. Far better to pay up the fine than to be thus incarcerated. May God spare his creatures from such sufferings in jail. Such thoughts make one really a coward, and being in constant dread of a jail life, deter him from undertaking to perform services in the interests of his country which might otherwise prove very valuable.

The other view is that it would be the height of one's good fortune to be in jail in the interests and good name