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By M.K. Gandhi
My Picture Of Free India
Chapter I
India And Her Message
INDIA is to me the dearest country in the world, not because it is my country but because I have discovered goodness in it. It has been subject to foreign rule, it is true: but its subjection too is a proof of its goodness. The status of a slave is preferable to that of a slave holder.
Everything in India attracts me. It has everything that a human being with the highest Possible aspirations can want.
India is essentially Karmabhoomi (land of duty) in contradistinction to Bhogabhoomi (land of enjoyment).
(Vishnu Purana-Ch. III-22)
Ancient India Still Living
Just as in the West they have made wonderful discoveries in things material, similarly Hinduism has made still more marvellous discoveries in things of religion, of the spirit, of the soul. But we have no eye for these great and fine discoveries. We are dazzled by the material progress that Western science has made. I am not enamoured of that progress. In fact, it almost seems as though God in His wisdom has prevented India from progressing along those lines, so that it might fulfil its special mission of resisting the onrush of materialism. After all, there is something in Hinduism that has kept it alive up till now. It has witnessed the fall of Babylonian, Syrian, Persian and Egyptian civilizations. Cast a look around you. Where is Rome and where is Greece? Can you find to-day anywhere the Italy of Gibbon, or rather the ancient Rome, for Rome was Italy? Go to Greece. Where is the world-famous Attic civilization? Then coming to India, let one go through the most ancient records and then look around you and you would be constrained to say: 'Yes, I see here ancient India still living. 'True, there are dung-heaps, too, here and there. But there are rich treasures buried under them. And the reason why it has survived is that the end which Hinduism set before it was not development along material but spiritual lines.
Our civilization. our culture, our Swaraj depend not upon multiplying our wants-self-indulgence, but upon restricting our wants-self-denial.
Authors : Shri M. Rama Jois
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