Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/913



THE FEAR OF DEATH

I have been collecting description of Swaraj. One of these would be Swaraj is the abandonment of the fear of death. A nation which allows itself to be influenced by the fear of death cannot attain Swaraj and cannot retain it if somehow attained.

English people carry their lives in their pockets. Arabs and Pathans consider death as nothing more than an ordinary ailment, they never weep when a relation dies. Boer women are perfectly innocent of this fear. In the Boer war, thousands of young Boer women became widowed. They never cared. It did not matter in the least if the husband or the son was lost, it was enough, and more than enough, that the country's honour was safe. What booted the husband if the country was enslaved? It was infinitely better to hury a son's mortal remains and to cherish his immortal memory than to bring him up as a serf. Thus did the Boer women steel their hearts and cheerfully give up their darlings to the angle of Death.

The people I have mentioned kill and get killed. But what of those who do not kill but are only ready to die themselves? Such people become the objects of a world's adoration. They are the salt of the earth.

The English and the Germans fought one another; they killed and got killed. The result is that animosities have increased. There is no end of unrest, and the present condition of Europe is pitiful. There is more of deceit, and each is anxious to circumvent the rest.