Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/10

 taken. This series, which, I am told, will consist of over fifty volumes, has its raison d’etre in this very trait of Mahatma Gandhi.

By undertaking to bring out this series, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry of the Government of India has provided the most essential basis for a study of Mahatma Gandhi, his teachings, his beliefs and his philosophy of life. It will be for students and thinkers to do what Mahatma Gandhi never attempted. With all the material thus made available, they will be able to formulate, as it were, in the form of a thesis his philosophy of life, his teacings, his ideas and programmes, and his views on the innumerable problems which arise in life, in a logical and philosophical manner and classified under different heads and categories. In his scheme of things, there was room for matters big and small, for problems of world-wide importance and of limited personal import. Though nearly all his life he had to grapple with large political issues, a very substantial part of his writings relates to social, religious, educational, economic and linguistic problems.

He was a very regular correspondent. There was hardly a letter calling for a considered reply which he did not answer himself. Letters from individuals, dealing with their personal and private problems, constituted a considerable portion of his correspondence and his replies arc valuable as guidance to others with similar problems. For a great period of his life, he did not take the assistance of any stenographer or typist, and used to write whatever he required in his own hand, and even when such assistance became unavoidable, he continued writing a great deal in his own hand. There were occasions when he became physically unable to write with the fingers of his right hand and, at a late stage in his life, he learnt the art of writing with his left hand. He did the same thing with spinning. Private correspondence, which absorbed much of his writing in this way, constituted an important and significant part of his teachings, as applied to particular problems of the ordinary man in his everyday life.

If ever there was a man who took a total view of life and who devoted himself to the service of mankind, it was certainly Gandhiji. If his pattern of thinking was sustained by faith and the lofty ideals of service, his actions and actual teachings were always influenced by considerations at once moral and eminently practical. Throughout his career as a public leader extending over nearly sixty long years, he never allowed exigencies to shape his views. In other words, he never allowed himself to use wrong means to attain the right ends. His punctiliousness in the choice