Chapter 1
“O India! With this mere echoing of others, with this base imitation of others, with this dependence on others, with this slavish weakness, this vile detestable cruelty – would you, with these provisions only, scale the highest pinnacle of civilisation and greatness? Would you attain, by means of your disgraceful cowardice, the freedom deserved only by the brave and the heroic? O India! Forget not that the ideal of your womanhood is Sita, Savitri, Damayanti; forget not that the God you worship is the great Ascetic of ascetics, the all-renouncing Shankara, the Lord of Uma; forget not that your marriage, your wealth, your life are not for sense pleasure, are not for your individual personal happiness; forget not that you are born as a sacrifice to the Mother’s altar; forget not that your social order is but the reflex of Infinite Universal Motherhood; forget not that the lower classes, the ignorant, the poor, the illiterate, the cobbler, the sweeper, are your flesh and blood, your brothers. You brave one, be bold, take courage, be proud that you are an Indian, and proudly proclaim, “I am an Indian, every Indian is my brother”. Say, “The ignorant Indian, the poor and destitute Indian, the Brahmin Indian, the Pariah Indian, is my brother”. You, too, clad with but a rag round your loins proudly proclaim at the top of your voice: “All Indians are my brothers, India is my life, India’s gods and goddesses are my God, India’s society is the cradle of my infancy, the pleasure-garden of my youth, the sacred heaven, the Varanasi of my old age”. Say, brother: “The soil of India is my highest heaven, the good of India is my good,” and repeat and pray day and night, “O you Lord of Gauri, O you mother of the Universe, vouchsafe manliness unto me! O You mother of strength, take away all my weakness, take away my unmanliness, and make me a Man!”
Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake, the great ones! The world is burning with misery, can we sleep? We have to plunge into the breach and fill it up with our bodies, our lives. Can we allow the world to go down when we are living? We must be ready to jump into the fire – then only great things can be done.
Throw away everything, even your own salvation, and go to help others. Give up this little life of yours. What matters if you die – you and I and thousands like us – so long as this nation lives? The nation is sinking, the curse of unnumbered millions is on our heads – those to whom we have been giving ditch-water to drink when they have been dying of thirst while the perennial river was flowing past nearby, the unnumbered millions whom we have allowed to starve in sight of plenty, the unnumbered millions to whom we have talked of Advaita and whom we have hated with all our strength, the unnumbered millions for whom we have invented the doctrine of Lokachara (usage), to whom we have talked theoretically that we are all the same and all are one with the same Lord, without even an ounce of practice. Wipe off this blot! “Arise and awake and stop not till the goal is reached!”
Forget your life and death, your pains and pleasures, your name and fame and realize that you are neither the body nor mind but pure spirit. Let us gird up our loins and enter the field of action. We have to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of our people, for the welfare of humanity as that is the use of this life. We are Indians and instinctively believe that our life is eternal.
Great things can be done only by great sacrifices. No selfishness, no name, no fame, your or mine. We will not stop to look back for name or fame or any such nonsense.
Let not the least desire for our name, fame or personal advantage enter into the great work of regeneration of India. Setup a pyre of them and make your heart the burning ground.
Our object is to do good to the world and not to trumpet our own names.
Our lives are too precious to be spent in getting the admiration of the world. We have no time for such things.
Every ounce of fame can only be bought at the cost of a pound of peace and holiness.
I do not think that the Lord will allow His workers to be inflated with vanity at the appreciation of his countrymen.
We are to stem the tide of degeneration of India at the sacrifice of our name and fame, wealth and enjoyment – nay, we will even forgo our own salvation for the good of the people; to bring them out of the living death. Awake and arise! – gird up your loins and apply yourselves heart and soul. What will you do with wealth and fame that are so transitory! We have to struggle unto death to make men of them who have been brought to the level of beasts.
Who cares whether there is heaven or hell, if there is soul or not if there is God or not? Here is the world and it is full of misery. Go out into it as Buddha did and struggle to lessen its misery or die in the attempt.
We desire neither Kingdom nor heaven or salvation. We believe in going even to hell to save others; to buy salvation for others. All we desire is to remove the sorrows and miseries of the living beings. The good life for all is our goal. This life has no other end.
We must make a sensation. Give up your passive attitude, gird up your loins and stand up! We have to work for the rise of fallen India from its dreary long slumber by bringing millions sunk in darkness to light. We have to work for them even at the cost of our lives.
“Let us all work hard my brethren; this is no time to sleep. On our work depends the coming of India of the future. She is ready, waiting. Arise and awake and see her seated on her eternal throne, rejuvenated, more glorious than she ever was – this motherland of ours”.
We have to work for the idea as if it will come tomorrow and as if it only depends on our work, and ours alone. Each one of us will have to believe that every one else has done his work, and the only work remaining to be done, to make India perfect, has to be done by him. The entire burden is on our shoulders.
For the next fifty years this alone should be our keynote – this great Motherland of ours. Let all other vain gods disappear for the time being from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own country.
Devotion to the motherland of an intense, dynamic, uncompromising and fiery type is the life-breath of a free, prosperous and glorious nation. Let the embers lying dormant in our hearts flare up and become a sacred fire of its worship and let her be re-instated in her pristine glory.
I very much believe that India will rise again if one could love it and its people whole-heartedly. It will awake, when hundreds of large hearted men and women giving up all desires of enjoying the luxuries of life will long and exert themselves to their utmost for the well-being of the masses who are gradually sinking lower and lower in the vortex of destitution and ignorance.
When you have men with faith in themselves and love for the country, who are ready to sacrifice their everything for the country, sincere to the backbone – when such men arise, India will become great in every respect. It is the men that make the country! It all depends upon the zeal and self-sacrifice brought to the task.
We want to infuse pulsation of new life into the half-dead body of our Motherland!
What India needs is the new electric fire to stir up a fresh vigour in the national veins.
We want to create such a tidal wave that whosoever comes near will be swept in.
We have to revive the dying will power of our people. If the will to fight, suffer and sacrifice for the sake of the motherland and the well-being of its people becomes extinct, then it will surely sound the death-knell to the freedom and honour of our nation.
Now my one desire is to rouse the country – the sleeping leviathan that has lost all faith in its powers and makes no response. We have to make people to get up from their graves revivified. We have to put life in this dead mass, dead to almost all moral aspirations, dead to all future possibilities and ready always to pounce upon those who would try to do good to them.