Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/914

 824 MISCELLANEOUS

Bub fearlessness which we are cultivating ia of a nobler and purer order aad it is therefore that we hope to aobiave a signal victory within a very short time.

When we attain Swart] many of ua will have given up the fear of death or else we shall nob have attained Swaraj. Till now mostly young hoys have died in the cause. Those who died in Aligarh were all below twenty- ooe. No one knew who they were. If Government resort to firing now 1 am hoping that some men of the first rank will have the opportunity of offering up the supreme sacrifice.

Why should we be upset when children or young men or old men die ? Not a moment passes when some one is nob born or is not dead in thin world. We should feel the stupidity of rejoicing in a birth and lamenting a death. Tbose who believe in the soul and what Hindu, Mussulman or Parsi ia there who does not ? know that) the soul never dies, The souU of the hviug as well aa of the dead are all one, Trie eternal processes of creation and destruction are going on ceaselessly. Toere is nothing in it for which we might give ourselves up to joy or sorrow. Even if we extend the idea of relationship only to our countrymen and take all the births in the country as taking place in our own family, how many births shall we celebrate? If we weep for all the deaths in our country the tears in our eyes wjuld never dry, Thin train of thought should help us to get rid of ail fear of death.

ludia, they sty, is a nation of philosophers ; and we have not baan ua willing to appropriate the compliment, Still hardly any other nation becomes so helpless in the face of death as we do. And in ludia again no other community perhaps betray so much of this helplessness as the Hindus. A single birth ia enough for ua to be

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