Sjt. Madanjit’s estimate without caring to examine it, and told Mr. West to expect a profit.
work than I can manage is a source of worry more to my co-workers than to myself.
5 g the journey, which he said I was sure to like. It was Ruskin’s Unto This Last.
x ge my life in accordance with the ideals of the book.
THE PHÆŒNIX SETTLEMENT 221 latent in the human breast. Poets do not influence all alike, for everyone is not evolved in an equal measure. í The teachings of Unto This Last I understood to be: 1. That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. 2. That a lawyer’s work has the same value as the barber’s inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work.
3. That a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living.
The first of these I knew. The second I had dimly realized. The third had never occurred to me. Unto This Last made it as clear as daylight for me that the second and the third were contained in the first. I arose with the dawn, ready to reduce these principles to practice.
XIX THE PHÆŒNIX SETTLEMENT I talked over the whole thing with Mr. West, described to him the effect Unto This Last had produced on my mind, and proposed that Indian Opinion should be removed to a farm, on which everyone should labour, drawing the same living wage, and attending to the press work in spare time. Mr. West approved of the proposal, and £3 was laid down as the monthly allowance per head, irrespective of colour or nationality.
But it was a question whether all the ten or more workers in the press would agree to go and settle on an out-of-the-way farm, and be satisfied with bare maintenance. We therefore proposed that those who could not fit in with the scheme should continue to draw their salaries and gradually try to reach the ideal of becoming members of the settlement.
I talked to the workers in the terms of this proposal. It did not appeal to Sjt. Madanjit, who considered my proposal to be foolish and held that it would ruin a venture on which he had staked his all: that the workers would bolt, Indian Opinion would come to a stop, and the press would have to be closed down.
Among the men working in the press was Chhaganlal Gandhi, one of my cousins. I had put the proposal to him at the same time as to West. He had a wife and children, but he had from childhood chosen to be trained and to work under me. He had full faith in me. So without any argument he agreed to the scheme and has been with me ever since. The machinist Govindaswami also fell in with the 222 MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH proposal. The rest did not join the scheme, but agreed to go wherever I removed the press.
I do not think I took more than two days to fix up these matters with the men. Thereafter I at once advertised for a piece of land situated near a railway station in the vicinity of Durban. An offer nice little spring and a few orange and mango trees. Adjoining it was a piece of 80 acres which had many more fruit trees and a dilapidated cottage. We purchased this too, the total cost being a thousand pounds.
The late Mr. Rustomji always supported me in such enterprises. He liked the project. He placed at my disposal second-hand corrupersonal risk, stayed with the carpenters and masons. The place, un- inhabited and thickly Overgrown with grass, was infested with snakes and obviously dangerous to live in. At first all lived under Phoenix station.
Only one issue of Indian Opinion had to be printed outside, in the Mercury press.
I now endeavoured to draw to Phoenix those relations and friends who had come with me tion stands foremost among my original co-workers in my ethical experiments. As a self-taught handicraftsman his place among them is unique, Thus the Phoenix Settlement was started in 1904, and there in spite of numerous odds Indian Opinion continues to be published.
„But the initial difficulties, the changes made, the hopes and the disappointments demand a separate chapter, < XX THE FIRST NIGHT It was no easy thing to issue the first number i ni from Phoenix. Had I not taken two precautions, an ee PS have had to be dropped or delayed. The idea of having an ee work the press had not appealed to me. I had thought that h s A power would be more in keeping with an atmosphere where ney cultural work was also to be done by hand. But as the idea had not appeared feasible, we had installed an oil-engine. I had, oner am suggested to West to have something handy to fall back upon in pe the engine failed. He had therefore arranged a wheel which od be worked by hand. The size of the paper, that of a daily, was consi- dered unsuitable for an out-of-the-way place like Phoenix It was reduced to foolscap size, so that, in case of emergency, copies might be struck off with the help of a treadle.: In the initial stages, we all had to keep late hours before the da; of publication. Everyone, young and old, had to help in folding ‘ae sheets. We usually finished our work between ten o’clock and mid- night. But the first night was unforgettable. The pages were locked, but the engine refused to work. We had got out an engineer from Durban to put up the engine and set it going. He and West tried their hardest, but in vain. Everyone was anxious. West, in despair, at last came to me, with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘The engine will not work, I am afraid we cannot issue the paper in time.’
“Tf that is the case, we cannot help it. No use shedding tears. Let us do whatever else js humanly possible. What about the hand- wheel?’ I said, comforting him.
n to work?’ he replied. ‘We are not ‘Where have we the me enough to cope with the job. It requires relays of four men each, and our own men are all tired.’ Building work had not yet been finished, so the carpenters were still with us. They were sleeping on press floor. I said pointing to them, ‘ But can’t we make use of these carpenters? And we may have a whole night of work. I think this device is still open to us.’ ¿I dare not wake up the carpenters. And our men are really too tired,’ said West. «Well, that’s for me to negotiate,’ said I.
‘ Then it is possible that we may get t replied. I woke up the carpenters and requested their co-operation. They needed no pressure. They said, ‘If we cannot be called upon in an emergency, what use are we? You rest yourselves and we will work the wheel. For us it is easy work.’ Our own men were of course ready.
hrough the work,’ West 224 MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH West was greatly delighted and started singing a hymn as we set to work. I partnered the carpenters, all the rest joined turn by turn, and thus we went on until 7 a.m. There was still a good deal to do. I therefore suggested to West that the engineer might now be asked to get up and try again to start the engine, so that if we succeeded we might finish in time.
West woke him up, and he immediately went into the engine room. And lo and behold! the engine worked almost as soon as he touched it. The whole press rang with peals of joy. ‘How can this be? How is it that all our labours last night were of no avail, and this mormog it has been set going as though there were nothing wrong with it? I enquired. s ‘It is difficult to say, said West or the engineer, I forget which. “Machines also sometimes seem to behave as though they required rest like us.’
For me the failure of the engine had come as a test for us all, and its working in the nick of time as the fruit of our honest and earnest labours.
The copies were despatched in time, and everyone was happy.
This initial insistence ensured the regularity of the paper, and created an atmosphere of self-reliance in Phenix. There came a time when we deliberately gave up the use of the engine and worked with hand-power only. Those were, to my mind, the days of the highest moral uplift for Phoenix XXI POLAK TAKES THE PLUNGE expected turn that Phoenix were certainly not injurious, were better than our original expectations, In order to enable eve labour, we parcelled out the land round the H POLAK TAKES THE PLUNGE 225 such as would become ordinary peasants, but it could not be. They would have been more expensive and would have meant more time, and everyone was eager to settle down as soon as possible.
The editor was still Mansukhlal Naazar. He had not accepted the new scheme and was directing the paper from Durban where there was a branch office for Indian Opinion. Though we had paid compo- sitors, the idea was for every member of the Settlement to learn type-setting, the easiest, if the most tedious, of the processes in a printing press. Those, therefore, who did not already know the work learnt it. I remained a dunce to the last. Maganlal Gandhi surpassed us all. Though he had never before worked in a press, he became an expert compositor and not only achieved great speed but, to my agreeable surprise, quickly mastered all the other branches of press work. I have always thought that he was not conscious of his own capacity.
We had hardly settled down, the buildings were hardly ready, when I had to leave the newly constructed nest and go to Johannes- burg. I was not in a position to allow the work there to remain with- out attention for any length of time., On return to Johannesburg, I informed Polak of the important changes I had made. His joy knew no bounds when he learnt that the loan of his book had been so fruitful. ‘Is it not possible, he asked, ‘for me to take part in the new venture?’ ‘Certainly,’ said I. ‘You may if you like join the Settlement.’ ‘I am quite ready,’ he replied, ‘if you will admit me.’
His determination captured me. He gave a month’s notice to his chief to be relieved from The Critic, and reached Phoenix in due course. By his sociability he won the hearts of all and soon became a member of the family. Simplicity was so much a part of his nature that, far from feeling the life at Phoenix in any way strange or hard, he took to it like a duck takes to water. But I could not keep him there long. Mr. Ritch had decided to finish his legal studies in Eng- land, and it was impossible for me to bear the burden of the office single-handed, so I suggested to Polak that he should join the office and qualify as an attorney. I had thought that ultimately both of us would retire and settle at Phoenix, but that never came to pass. Polak’s was such a trustful nature that, when he Teposed his confi- dence in a friend, he would try to agree with him instead of arguing with him. He wrote to me from Phoenix that though he loved the life was perfectly happy, and had hopes of developing the Settle- e was ready to leave and join the office to qualify as an attorney, if I thought that thereby we should more quickly realize our ideals: I heartily welcomed the letter. Polak left Phoenix, came to Johannesburg and signed his articles with me.
e time a Scotch theosophist, whom I had been rns ae eal legal examination, also joined as an articled there, ment, still h 15 226 MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH clerk, on my inviting him to follow Polak’s example. His name was Mr. MacIntyre.
Thus, with the laudable object of quickly realizing the ideals at Phoenix, I seemed to be going deeper and deeper into a contrary current, and had God not willed otherwise, I should have found my- self entrapped in this net spread in the name of simple life.
It will be after a few more chapters that I shall describe how I and my ideals were saved in a way no one had imagined or expected.
XXII WHOM GOD PROTECTS I had now given up all hope of returning to India in the near future. I had promised my wife that I would return home within a year. The year was gone without any prospect of my return, sO I decided to send for her and the children.
On the boat bringing them to South Africa, Ramdas, my third son, broke his arm while playing with the ship’s captain. The cap- tain looked after him well and had him attended to by the ship’s doctor. Ramdas landed with his hand in a sling. The doctor had advised that, as soon as we reached home, the wound should be dressed by a qualified doctor. But this was the time when I was full of faith in my experiments in earth treatment. I had even succeeded in persuading some of my clients who had faith in my quackery to try the earth and water treatment.
What then was I to do for Ramdas? He was just eight years old. I asked him if he would mind my dressing his wound. With a smile he said he did not mind at all. It was not possible for him at that age to decide what was the best thing for him, but he knew very well the distinction between quackery and proper medical treat- ment. And he knew my habit of home treatment and had faith enough to trust himself to me. In fear and trembling I undid the bandage, washed the wound, applied a clean earth poultice and tied the arm up again. This sort of dressing went on daily for about a month until the wound was completely healed. There was no hitch, and the wound took no more time to heal than the ship’s doctor had said it would under the usual treatment.
This and other experiments enhanced my faith in such household remedies, and I now proceeded with them with more self-confidence. I widened the sphere of their application, trying the earth and water and fasting treatment in cases of wounds, fevers, dyspepsia, jaundice and other complaints, with success on most occasions. But nowadays I have not the confidence I had in South Africa and experience has even shown that these experiments involve obvious risks.
The reference here, therefore, to these experiments is not meant to demonstrate their success, I cannot claim complete success for WHOM GOD PROTECTS 227 any experiment. Even medical men can make no such claim for their experiments. My object is only to show that he who would go in for novel experiments must begin with himself. That leads to a quicker discovery of truth, and God always protects the honest experimenter.
The risks involved in experiments in cultivating intimate contacts with Europeans were as grave as those in the nature cure experi- ments. Only those risks were of a different kind. But in cultivating those contacts I never so much as thought of the risks.
I invited Polak to come and stay with me, and we began to live like blood brothers. The lady who was soon to be Mrs. Polak and he had been engaged for some years, but the marriage had been postponed for a propitious time. I have an impression that Polak wanted to put some money by before he settled down to a married life. He knew Ruskin much better than I, but his Western sur- roundings were a bar against his translating Ruskin’s teaching imme- diately into practice. But I pleaded with him: ‘When there is a heart union, as in your case, it is hardly right to postpone marriage merely for financial considerations. If poverty is a bar, poor men can never marry. And then you are now staying with me. There is no question of household expenses. I think you should get married as soon as possible.’ As I have said in a previous chapter, I had never to argue a thing twice with Polak. He appreciated the force of my argument, and immediately opened correspondence on the subject with Mrs. Polak, who was then in England. She gladly accepted the proposal and in a few months reached Johannesburg. Any expense over the wedding was out of the question, not even a special dress was thought necessary. They needed no religious rites to seal the bond. Mrs. Polak was a Christian by birth and Polak a Jew. Their common religion was the religion of ethics.
I may mention in passing an amusing incident in connection with this wedding. The Registrar of European marriages in the Transvaal could not register marriages between black or coloured people. In the wedding in question, I acted as the best man. Not that we could not have got a European friend for the purpose, but Polak would not brook the suggestion. So we three went to the Registrar of marriages. How could he be sure that the parties to a marriage in which I acted as the best man would be whites? He proposed to postpone registration pending inquiries. The next day was a Sunday. The day following was New Year’s Day, a public holiday. To postpone the date of a solemnly arranged wedding on such a flimsy pretext was more than one could put up with. I knew the Chief Magistrate, who was head of the Registration Department. So I appeared before him with the couple. He laughed and gave me a note to the Registrar and the marriage was duly registered. Europeans living with us had been more or less the Up to now e. But now an English lady who was an utter known to me befor 228 MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH er to us entered the family. I do not remember our ever oe had a difference with the newly married couple, but even if Mrs. Polak and my wife had had some ee they would have been no more than what happen in the ber regulated homogeneous families. And let it be remembered a mine would be considered an essentially heterogeneous family, where people of all kinds and temperaments were freely admitted. whe we come to think of it, the distinction between heterogeneous an homogeneous is discovered to be merely imaginary. We are all one family. f A I had better celebrate West’s wedding also in this shapa a this stage of my life, my ideas about brahmacharya had not fad matured, and so I was interesting myself in getting all my bac & nt friends married. When, in due course, West made a pigrmabR Louth to see his parents, I advised him to return married if possible. Phoenix was the common home, and as we were all supposed to have become farmers, we were not afraid of marriage and its usual ee sequences. West returned with Mrs. West, a beautiful young la y from Leicester. She came of a family of shoemakers working in a Leicester factory. Mrs. West had herself some experience of wore in this factory. I have called her beautiful, because it was her mora beauty that at once attracted me. True beauty after all consists in purity of heart. With Mr. West had come his mother-in-law too.
The old lady is still alive. She put us all to shame by her industry and her buoyant, cheerful nature.
In the same way as I persuaded these European friends to marry, I encouraged the Indian friends to send for their families from home. Phoenix thus developed into a little village, half a dozen families having come and settled and begun to increase there.
XXIII A PEEP INTO THE HOUSEHOLD It has already been seen that, though household expenses were heavy, the tendency towards simplicity began in Durban. But the Johannesburg house came in for much severer overhauling in the light of Ruskin’s teaching..
I introduced as much simplicity as was possible in a barrister’s house. It was impossible to do without a certain amount of furni- ture. The change was more internal than external. The liking for doing personally all the physical labour increased. I therefore began to bring my children also under that discipline.
Instead of buying baker’s bread, we began to prepare unleavened wholemeal bread at home according to Kuhne’s recipe. Common mill flour was no good for this, and the use of handground flour, it was thought, would ensure more simplicity, health and economy: A PEEP INTO THE HOUSEHOLD ` rA So I purchased a hand-mill for £ 7. The iron wheel was too heavy to be tackled by one man, but easy for two. Polak and I and the children usually worked it. My wife also occasionally lent a hand, though the grinding hour was her usual time for commencing kitchen work. Mrs. Polak now joined us on her arrival. The grinding proved a very beneficial exercise for the children. Neither this nor any other work was ever imposed on them, but it was a pastime to them to come and lend a hand, and they were at liberty to break off when- ever tired. But the children, including those whom I shall have occasion to introduce later, as a rule never failed me. Not that I had no laggards at all, but most did their work cheerfully enough. I can recall few youngsters in those days fighting shy of work or pleading fatigue.
We had engaged a servant to look after the house. He lived with us as a member of the family, and the children used to help him in his work. The municipal sweeper removed the night-soil, but we personally attended to the cleaning of the closet instead of asking or expecting the servant to do it. This proved a good training for the children. The result was that none of my sons developed any aversion for scavenger’s work, and they naturally got a good ground- ing in general sanitation. There was hardly any illness in the home at Johannesburg, but whenever there was any, the nursing was willingly done by the children. I will not say that I was indifferent to their literary education, but I certainly did not hesitate to sacrifice it. My sons have therefore some reason for a grievance against me. Indeed they have occasionally given expression to it, and I must plead guilty to a certain extent. The desire to give them a literary education was there. I even endeavoured to give it to them myself, but every now and then there was some hitch or other. As I had made no other arrangement for their private tuition, I used to get them to walk with me daily to the office and back home — a dis- tance of about 5 miles in all. This gave them and me a fair amount of exercise. I tried to instruct them by conversation during these walks, if there was no one else claiming my attention. All my children, excepting the eldest, Harilal, who had stayed away in India, were brought up in Johannesburg in this manner. Had I been able to devote at least an hour to their literary education with strict regularity, I should have given them, in my opinion, an ideal edu- cation. But it has been their, as also my, regret that I failed to ensure them enough literary training. The eldest son has often given vent to his distress privately before me and publicly in the press; the other sons have generously forgiven the failure as unavoidable. I am not heart-broken over it and the regret, if any, is that I did not prove an ideal father. But I hold that I sacrificed their literary training to what I genuinely, though may be wrongly, believed to be service to the community. I am quite clear that I have not been negligent in doing whatever was needful for building up their cha- racter. I believe it is the bounden duty of every parent to provide 230 MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH for this properly. Whenever, in spite of my endeavour, my sons have been found wanting, it is my certain conviction that they have reflected, not want of care on my part, but the defects of both their parents.
Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent: attribute of the soul.
Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desira- bility or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their co social heritage of th for the service of t point of always ta’ liked this. He thought I was spoilin, been all to their and the country’s good, i XXIV THE ZULU ‘REBELLION’ Even after I thought I had settled down in Johann was to be no settled life for me. Just when I felt that etal ‘Be breathing in peace, an unexpected event happened. The papers brought the news of the outbreak of the Zulu ‘rebellion’ in Natal, I bore no grudge against the Zulus, they had harmed no Indian I had doubts about the ‘ rebellion’ itself. But I then believed that the British Empire existed for the welfare of the world. A genuine sense of loyalty prevented me from even wishing ill to the Empire. The rightness or otherwise of the ‘rebellion’ was therefore not likely to affect my decision. Natal had a volunteer Defence Force, and it was open to it to recruit more men. I read that this force had already been mobilized to quell the ‘ rebellion ’.
I considered myself a citizen of Natal, being intimately connected with it. So I wrote to the Governor, expressing my readiness, if necessary, to form an Indian Ambulance Corps. He replied imme- diately accepting the offer.
I ‘had not expected such prompt acceptance. Fortunately I had made all the necessary arrangements even before writing the letter. If my offer was accepted, I had decided to break up the Johannesburg home. Polak was to have a smaller house, and my wife was to go and settle at Phoenix. I had her full consent to this decision. I do not remember her having ever stood in my way in matters like this. As soon, therefore, as I got the reply from the Governor, I gave the landlord the usual month’s notice of vacating the house, sent some of the things to Phcenix and left some with Polak.
I went to Durban and appealed for men. A big contingent was not necessary. We were a party of twenty-four, of whom, besides four were Gujaratis. The rest were ex-indentured men from excepting one who was a free Pathan.
e a status and to facilitate work, as also in accordance with the existing convention, the Chief Medical Officer appointed me to the temporary rank of Sergeant Major and three men selected by me to the rank of sergeants and one to that of corporal. We also received our uniforms from the Government. Our Corps was on active service for nearly six weeks. On reaching the scene of the ‘rebellion ’, I saw that there was nothing there to justify the name of ‘rebellion’. There was no resistance that one could see. The reason why the disturbance had been magnified into a rebellion was that a Zulu chief had advised non-payment of a new tax imposed on his people, and had assagaied a sergeant who had gone to collect the tax. At any rate my heart was with the Zulus, and I was delighted, on reaching headquarters, to hear that our me, South India, In order to give m 232 MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH ing, and that he was at his w godsend for those innocent people, and he equipped us with banda- ges, disinfectants, etc., and took us to the improvised hospital. The Zulus were delighted to see us. The white soldiers used to peep through the railings that separated us from them and tried to dis- suade us from attending to the wounds. And as we would not heed them, they became enraged and poured unspeakable abuse on the these gentlemen were volunteers, training and experience, The wounded in our charge of them had been taken friendlies, Although these had badges given th them from the ‘enemy’, they had been shot at mistake, Besides this work I had to compound and dispense prescriptions for the white soldiers. This was easy enough for me as I had received a year’s training in Dr. Booth’s little hospital. This work brought me in close contact with many Europeans.
We were attached to as march wherever danger w: em to distinguish by the soldiers by S good work to do, having to carry to iendlies who had been XXV HEART SEARCHINGS The Zulu ‘rebellion’ was full of new experiences and gave me much food for thought. The Boer War had not brought home to me the horrors of war with anything like the vividness that the ‘rebellion’ did. This was no war but a man-hunt, not only in my opinion, but also in that of many Englishmen with whom I had occasion to talk. To hear every morning reports of the soldiers’ rifles exploding like crackers in innocent hamlets, and to live in the midst of them was a trial. But I swallowed the bitter draught, especially as the work of my Corps consisted only in nursing the wounded Zulus. I could see that but for us the Zulus would have been uncared for. This work, therefore, eased my conscience.
But there was much else to set one thinking. It was a sparsely populated part of the country. Few and far between in hills and dales were the scattered Kraals of the simple and so-called ‘un- civilized’ Zulus. Marching, with or without the wounded, through these solemn solitudes, I often fell into deep thought.
I pondered over brahmacharya and its implications, and my con- victions took deep root. I discussed it with my co-workers. I had not realized then how indispensable it was for self-realization, but I clearly saw that one aspiring to serve humanity with his whole soul could not do without it. It was borne in upon me that I should have more and more occasions for service of the kind I was render- ing, and that I should find myself unequal to my task if I were engaged in the pleasures of family life and in the propagation and rearing of children.
In a word, I could the present occasion, not live both after the flesh and the spirit. On for instance, I should not have been able to throw myself into the fray, had my wife been expecting a baby. Without the observance of brahmacharya service of the family would be inconsistent with service of the community. With brahmacharya they would be perfectly consistent.
So thinking, I became somewhat impatient to take a final vow. The prospect of the vow brought a certain kind of exultation, Imagina- tion also found free play and opened out limitless vistas of service.
Whilst I was thus in the midst of strenuous physical and mental work, a report came to the effect that the work of suppressing the ‘rebellion’ was nearly over, and that we should soon be discharged. A day or two after this our discharge came and in a few days we got back to our homes.
After a short while I got a letter from the Governor specially thanking the ‘Ambulance Corps for its services.
234 MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH On my arrival at Phoenix I eagerly broached the subject of brahma- charya with Chhaganlal, Maganlal, West and others. They liked the idea and accepted the necessity of taking the vow, but they also represented the difficulties of the task. Some of them set themselves bravely to observe it, and some, I know, succeeded also.
I too took the plunge — the vow to observe brahmacharya for life. I must confess that I had not then fully realized the magnitude and immensity of the task I undertook. The difficulties are even today staring me in the face. The importance of the vow is being more and more borne in upon me. Life without brahmacharya appears to me to be insipid and animal-like. The brute by nature knows no self-restraint. Man is man because he is capable of, and only in so far as he exercises, self-restraint. What formerly appeared to me to be extravagant praise of brahmacharya in our religious books seems now, with increasing clearness every day, to be abso- lutely proper and founded on experience.
I saw that brahmacharya, which is so full of wonderful potency, is by no means an easy affair, and certainly not a mere matter of the body. It begins with bodily restraint, but does not end there. The perfection of it precludes even an impure thought. A true brahmachari will not even dream of satisfying the fleshly appetite, and until he is in that condition, he has a great deal of ground to cover, For me the observance of even bodily brahmacharya has been full of difficulties, Today I may say that I feel myself fairly safe, but I have yet to achieve complete mastery over thought, which is So essential. Not that the will or effort is lacking, but it is yet a problem to me wherefrom undesirable thoughts spring their insi- dious invasions. I have no doubt that there is a key to lock out undesirable thoughts, but every one has to find it out for himself. Saints and seers have left their experiences for us, but they have given us no infallible and universal prescription. For perfection or freedom from error comes only from grace, and so seekers after God have left us mantras, such as Ramanama, hallowed by their own austerities and charged with their purity. Without an unreserved Surrender to His grace, complete mastery over thought is impossible. This is the teaching of every great book of religion, and I am realizing the truth of it every moment of my striving after that perfect brahmacharya.
But part of the histor in chapters to follow. I si Thus brahmacharya, which I had been observing willy-nilly since 1900, was sealed with a vow in the middle of 1906.
XXVI THE BIRTH OF SATYAGRAHA Events were so shaping themselves in Johannesburg as to make this self-purification on’ my part a preliminary as it were to Satya- graha. I can now see that all the principal events of my life, culmi- nating in the vow of brahmacharya, were secretly preparing me for it. The principle called Satyagraha came into being before that name was invented. Indeed when it was born, I myself could not say what it was. In Gujarati also we used the English phrase “passive resistance’ to describe it. When in a meeting of Europeans I found that the term ‘passive resistance’ was too narrowly con- strued, that it was supposed to be a weapon of the weak, that it could be characterized by hatred, and that it could finally manifest itself as violence, I had to demur to all these statements and explain the real nature of the Indian movement. It was clear that a new word must be coined by the Indians to designate their struggle.