East and West Series - November 2022

SHAKTI CREATIVE

A CALL TO YOUTH SADHU VASWANI

To you, O youths of Sind, I bow with love and humility in my heart. I come to have your blessings. Rohri has thrown up many mystics. It’s dust is sacred; and the sacred River on which Rohri stands is more ancient than the Vedas. I ask you all to bless me. It is evening now. The sun is setting. Look, the sun as it sets gazes at the earth and asks for its blessing. And I come to you in the evening of my life to have your blessings. In my heart sings a line of one of your poets Bekas: “The longing for the Homeland brings tears to mine eyes.” To the Homeland, the Spirit-land, I must depart. Give me your blessings. You that are young know not yet how much I have sought you – sought you and loved you. For you in the darkness of the dawn and the darkness of the night have I shed tears; for you have I prayed again and again. When will the youths of Sind, awake – when?

*From his presidential address at the Sind Students’ Conference held in Rohri (Sind) October 31, November 1 and 2, 1931.

If I had an option in the matter, I would not speak more. But there is a convention that a president must make a speech. And there is yet another convention that he must read a printed speech. Give us your printed speech they tell me. I have no printed speech. Read it in mine eyes, and may I print it on the hearts of some of you. More than anything else I desire that our Conference may be pre-eminently of a practical character.

The first Sind Students’ Conference was held in 1924. I remember when student representatives met me in that year in Karachi and asked me to preside at that Conference, I requested to be excused. I was asked the reason why; and I answered: “Paper resolutions are worse than useless. Are students prepared to do something practical?” The student representatives went back to Hyderabad, then came to Karachi a second time and gave me the assurance that students would strive to do something practical. I consented to preside. That was in 1924. We are now in the year 1931. What has the students movement achieved in these 7 years and more? Conferences should not be spectacles. Conferences should not be platforms for speeches. Conferences should

initiate practical policies and programmes of action. When invited a few months ago to preside at this Conference, I made it clear to the Secretary that I could only come if students promised to do something practical. The Secretary promised that if I would come students would help whole heartedly, in a practical constructive program. I come to remind you of the promise. I come to ask you in all humility, to keep your word with me. If you be ready for real work, my gratitude to you. If you be not ready, come with me and we shall commit the Conference papers to the Sindhu waters.

This conference meets in winter. But you that are young are a symbol of spring. In my heart is a flame. May some fragments of that flame go into your hearts! “Youth” in Sanskrit is named “Yuvak,” it is connected with the word “Yuvan”, and that word means “fire.” I want you to be sons and daughters of Fire. I am glad to greet here some delegates. I am sorry there are not many more. A socio-economic revolution is Sind’s need. Such a revolution will not come without the help of women. Woman is a symbol of shakti. It is a man-made world we live in. And man, we find, has blundered badly. Look! We live in a broken, bleeding

world. Man has believed in himsa, in violence, in physical force, in exploitation and aggression. Humanity cries out for a new world. It will be built by the power of gentleness, the power of the heart, the power of love. This power, shakti, is symbolised by women. The student movement in Sind will not be a force until it is blessed and strengthened by girl-students. The student movement in Germany grew out of a great protest against repression in schools. “The schools”, said the students, “are no better than prisons. We long for liberation.” The movement started with a small number. The number grew and the movement became vital after girls came into it in large numbers.

Many are disappointed in the students of Sind. I know they have done so very little, so far. But I am not disappointed. I am a born optimist. I believe in you. Youth is shakti and history is an overflow of shakti. In you that are young is a shakti. It lies hidden, imprisoned. Let it be set free and you will work wonders. My message to you is in this one word: shakti, shakti!

How may this hidden shakti be drawn out and organised? You students of Sind are not inferior to others in intellectual powers. Your brains are great but your bodies are weak. The

first thing in my programme is body-building. You are delicate, I ask you to be athletic. The body has its demands. Current civilisation is nerve-sick. The civilisation of noise and bustle has a weakening effect on muscles and nerves. In Germany students are fond of walking and mountainclimbing. A new athletic spirit is your need. Athletics are a kind of education. Be athletic! Be pure. Love games and observe brahmacharya. So will you build up bodies along right lines.

Brahmacharya was the very basis of Aryan civilisation in India. Again and again did the Rishis pray for “Ojas”. Ojas is the radiance reflected by brahmacharya. Purity is beauty. There is a current, a creative force, which descends; there is another current which ascends. Brahmacharya is reverence for this current, this creative force. When this current is downward, it is entangled in lower chakras — animal chakras of bhoga and pleasure. But when the current ascends, it nourishes the memory centre and the brain centre. He who controls his sex-impulse builds up a fine memory and a good brain. The current rises yet higher and ascends to the centre — the chakra of intuition. When this centre is opened, the man becomes

a rishi, a seer, a sage. Many students alas, have disobeyed the laws of brahmacharya and are unhappy. It is time to form a little League of Ahimsa to give practical help to those who wish to grow in an atmosphere of brahmacharya. Books will help little. Ashrams are needed, individuals are needed to teach the science and art of brahmacharya. Bhoga is himsa, is injury to oneself. Brahmacharya is ahimsa non-violence to the body, is reverence for the creative force.

The very first thing the Sindhi student must do is to build up the body. And the body is built by brahmacharya and games. President Masaryk is regarded by some as perhaps, the greatest of world’s living statesmen. He is President of the Czecho-Slovakian Republic. He believes in the nationbuilding value of games. And every year in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, is held a big athletic exhibition. Recently over a lakh of people assembled to witness the games in Prague. Schiller rightly said, “Play is the man”. Build up physical culture Institutes. Those will have two sections, (1) Akharas: for physical culture, and (2) reading rooms and libraries. To students of Sind I say, Play! Play the games! For play builds up manhood; Play develops team-

spirit and sense of humour. Play reveals qualities of character.

If the first thing emphasised in my program is body-building, the second thing is the swadeshi spirit. Swadeshi is an expression of Matrupuja, worship of the Mother, reverence for India and Indian ideals. Without matuipuja, we may not hope to advance and achieve.

The swadeshi spirit has a triple aspect: (1) Swadeshi in clothes and other things of daily use. Be international in your outlook; be national in your economics. Your country has claims on you; only see that in answering these claims you have no hate for any nation.

(2) Swadeshi in literature, culture, and civilisation. Sindhi literature is a rich treasure house. But you the young have neglected it. One of the great poets of Rohri was Bekas. So rich in poetic gift. And he died so young. I have listened to this young poet’s lyrics with tear-filled eyes. He may well be called the Shelley of Sind. Do you celebrate his day? It should be an all-Sind day. Another day should be celebrated throughout Sind, the day sacred to the memory of Shah Abdul Latif. This I humbly claim for him that he is a world-poet. Shah Abdul

Latif is the uncrowned king of Sind. If you would grow in the true swadeshi spirit, study Sindhi poetry, the kafi poetry, and songs of Sufi mystics. A rich treasure have they for the world. Guard it! Enrich it! And spend it in the service of the new age that is dawning.

Study, also, Indian culture. Study the Gita, the great scripture of shakti! Study the Vedas and Upanishads! Study the great literature of the Hindu and Muslim periods. Study carefully Indian ideals. They have a message for the world.

(3) Swadeshi in life. To be swadeshi in heart is to be simple. To be simple is to be real.

The English-educated Sindhi youth is often an imitative animal. Imitation undermines sturdiness. Simplicity is strength. There is a tendency in the Sindhi youth to imitate Europeans. Great is the West in science, art and literature. Study them with care. They have values for the life of India. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, are names we must revere. Each one is unique. But you must not let the superficial in Western Civilisation dominate you. Don’t let the West sap your loyalty to Indian ideals. The meaning of India, the value of Indian culture, the truth of Indian civilisation, the call of the world-spirit to the

Indian soul for bringing to birth a New Renaissance, all this and more should stir Young Sind to a new faith in the nation’s destiny.

What I am asked, is Sindh’s urgent need? My answer is: She needs now awakeners, men who will be in touch with culture of the West but will not be Westernised; men of study and simplicity; men who place truth above popularity. My prayer for Sind is: Give us men! More men! Men filled with love of the simple life. Look, how much you spend over dresses, cinemas, theatres, over socks and kerchiefs. There are boys who have taken to smoking. There are girls who think that to be educated is to wear extravagant saris! See how the deti leti (dowry) evil is growing. This evil is a rakshasa, a social monster. You cannot kill it unless you simplify your lives. A new mental and social revolution is the need of Sind students.

The third point in my program of work for you is village work. Sind villages are being devitalised. They are insanitary and in appalling ignorance. So many of the village-folk succumb to malaria every year. You, students, can do something to save the village-folk.

Knowledge and The Call of Life

SADHU VASWANI

Vidya is a word used, again and again, in the Hindu Scriptures. It is one of the few central words in the Vedanta Sutras. It is often translated as “knowledge.” Yet of Western ‘nationalism’ with its empirical emphasis I find little in the Vedanta. The empirical data is referred to in the Books as maya; and we read, again and again, that Vidya is not for him who will not rise above the plane of maya. The Heart of the Universe is not maya. It is something deeper. The Hindu attitude is not antiintellectualistic; but neither is

*Published in The Collegian, May 1923.

it empirical. Over and again we are told that Vidya is not ‘mere knowledge’. ‘Knowledge’, ‘philosophical’, or ‘scientific’, does not always help humanity: when applied in a selfish way, it does harm to civilisation. ‘Mere knowledge’ may explain some changes and modifications in the world of phenomena; it does not explain Life nor the Inner Side of the Cosmic Movement. The War showed to what sordid purposes such ‘knowledge’ could be put by ‘civilised’ nations. Such ‘knowledge’ has invented poison gas and high explosives

and machine-guns and the paraphernalia of ‘progress’!

Vidya is a spiritual activity. Vidya is energy of the soul. Vidya is not mere awareness or conceptual understanding of some phenomenal relations. It is knowledge charged with spiritual emotion. May I not say Vidya is Knowledge, not of mere facts, but of ultimate values?

From the Hindu point of view, the Ultimate is not pleasure. Sensations are not what a wise man seeks. Pleasure is for the animal in us; it is not what an evolved soul seeks.

‘Freedom’ is regarded by many, today, as the Ultimate of life. Recent French thought bears upon the ‘philosophy of freedom’. And Young India can think today of nothing greater, nothing nobler, than freedom. There is a sense, indeed, in which Freedom is the highest, holiest thing we know of. The Hindu books name it mukti. But ‘political’ freedom is not synonymous with mukti and is not the ultimate of life. Nation cults in Europe have degenerated into cults of ‘power’. The result is expansion of Europe. True freedom does not seek to dominate others. True freedom is self-realisation for the service of Humanity.

Vidya is a spiritual activity, an activity, therefore, which knows the Atman, the Self. Such ‘knowledge’, charged with spiritual emotion, becomes worship. Indeed, in one passage Vidya is defined as “worship of the Atman”. And the Atman has been called ‘Purusha’, the Supreme Self. So in an Upanishad, the Rishi sings, “I know the purusha of sunlike lustre beyond the darkness. To know Him is to cross death; there is no other Path to go.” To know the Self is to worship Him; and to worship Him is to be Immortal. True Knowledge is thus more than what may be gained by discursive, analytic intellect. It is insight. And when one is filled with true knowledge, filled with a sense of harmony, what more natural than to sing with the seers of the Upanishads, “The Ultimate is Joy, is Ananda”?

Glimpses of this Knowledgestate come in moments of the purest love; not love as it is described in most of the ‘novels’, but Love as it is sung in the great Sufi poems and the lives of mystics and saints. True love knows the Truth, not analytically but by union. As a Muslim mystic says, “There is no admission for separate personality within Thy Sacred Chamber.” Such knowledge is, indeed, worship.

Vidya is worship of the Atman. And the great truth is set forth in the Scriptures that we must worship Him for life. The mysticism of Vedanta is not sundered from dharma, the obligations and appointments of life. In more than one passage, we read that maya is not illusion, but appearance of the Atman, a self-revelation of the Eternal. All things, all creatures, we read, are a “body” of the Atman. “The Self”, we read, “must be seen through hearing, thinking and reflecting.” We are to worship the Self in the exercise of our natural functions. Again and again the teaching is given that Vidya itself is not open to him who will neglect karma. And the highest form of karma is Sacrifice.

The Vedanta sages, themselves were not ‘ascetics’ standing aloof from life. They worshipped the Lord in Life. Many of them were good householders. Some indeed, shaped with their counsels the conduct of kings and laws of the Land. The Rishis entered into the great Realm of Silence, but they were, also servants of the People.

And India fell into a state of distracted anarchy in the day she ceased to worship the Lord of life. Many of her sons put on the yellow robe giving up

the simple duties of life. Many, in the pride of ceremonial ‘religion’, looked down upon millions of their countrymen as “untouchable”. And Sons of India ceased to be Sons of Liberty when they ceased to respond to the Call of Life.

Will India be great again? Then must we worship the Atman in life, realising the truth that religion and nation-service are inseparable. For to worship God in life is to fight injustice, is to combat wrong, is to oppose the autocrat who sins against the weak, is to stand boldly for human value above caste and colour and creed. If we strive to worship God in Life, India would become a nation of the free. If the West worships God in life, it would not suffer from the orgy of industrialism or that cult of domination which has resulted, again and again, in wars and violence. Europe’s avidya has been the world’s tyrant.

There are conditions to be fulfilled by those who would have ‘Knowledge’. Three of them, according to my reading of the Vedanta Sutras, deserve special notice. The first is discipline, through fellowship with a master or sangha. “Knowledge,” like Character, cannot be externally taught; it must be caught as spark from a living Flame. It must pass

into you as an influence from a Great Soul. Modern universities in India prescribe many textbooks. But in the absence of great teachers, most of the students are little better than ‘dead souls.’ If students were truly alive, they would respond to the call of the country at this supreme crisis in our life and they would suffice to break the bonds of this long-suffering Nation.

Another condition of Vidya is heart-purity. Today many of the students seek pleasures, bhoga, when India is in mourning. Today many are reluctant to live the simple life. And how many today are true brahmacharins? One of the Upanishads says the great Mystery is not to be taught to him whose “passions have not been subdued.” Science is studied with eagerness; but how many students of science have in their hearts love for Humanity? Yet, science without love, science without goodwill is a danger, not a gain, to the life of man. There are scientific men who employ their knowledge and talents to help cruel, aggressive imperialisms. Is it that we have known too early some of the secrets of Nature? Many of us have not yet disciplined ourselves. Science, as applied today, is often a servant of Mammon and materialism.

Science is not often applied for the good of Humanity. Mighty stores of energy lie in Nature; men are discovering them more and more; but if they have not love in their hearts and the discipline of humanity, they will only misdirect Nature’s sources of power, and Sciences will become, as it became in the War, a mighty weapon of destruction. The man of Vidya must have an unselfish heart, so may he use his knowledge for the service of Humanity.

Yet another condition of having vidya is dhyan, meditation. It is said in the Scriptures that vidya, even if acquired, does not stay with him who has not the power of meditation or spiritual assimilation. Much of what passes current as ‘knowledge’ today is the result of sravan and manan (listening and memorising); it has not developed in and through meditation. “The world is too much” with us! Much hurry has made us poor! One malady of modern life is its fatigue. We use our energy too fast. We feel fatigued; and fatigue is systempoisoning. Meditation is needed for the system to recoup its health. Periods of silence are needed for renewal of the soul’s youth. Modern life needs the healing power of meditation.

In the days of the Revolutionary Movement of Young Bengal, over a decade ago, there were young men restless with the longing for India’s freedom. Several of them, shadowed by the police, would stand on the river-bank or move about in noisy cities with the dream of swaraj in their eyes and with the prayer on the lips: “Deliver Thy children, O Mother!” The bureaucracy had recourse to indiscriminate arrests, to wholesale arrests. Many young men were sent to jail without any trial, on mere suspicion. Government felt compelled to conciliate the country. The indominable spirit of the nation’s youth and the world war – not the petitions and paper-resolutions of the

*Published in The Collegian, June 1923.

THE NATION’S YOUTH

SADHU VASWANI

‘politicians’ – wrung from Britain the Reforms Act. Once again it will be the Nation’s youth who will take the country forward and yet forward until the goal is reached and India stands erect among the Nations.

It is being increasingly admitted that the “Reforms” are a failure. Official apologists, it is true, are still harping upon the one theme: the ‘glory’ of the ‘Reforms’! The country remains unconvinced. Prof. Rushbrook Williams in a recent pamphlet (issued by the central Bureau of Information) on “India’s Parliament at Delhi” waxes eloquent over the “achievements” of the “Legislative Assembly.” It is absurd to talk of this “Assembly”

as “India’s Parliament at Delhi.” “Parliament,” indeed, when the Viceroy can flout the Assembly by exercise of “reserve” powers! An exMinister says the “Liberals” are not ‘cooperators’ but the “Party of Constitutional Opposition.” This “Constitutional” opposition has proved to be impotent. The bureaucracy is well entrenched against attacks of these “Legislators”. Prof. Rushbrook Williams says in the pamphlet referred to: “Judging by the important answers elicited, resolutions passed and legislation achieved, the supporters of the ‘Reforms’ may well be proud of what those who have worked them have been able to accomplish.” “Proud,” indeed, when the Viceroy can fling his “certification” in the face of these “Legislators” and of united public opinion! The Assembly which debates without the power of the purse is little better than a Debating Society.

The future is not with Councils but with the nation’s youth. Several young men and women are dreaming to-day the Dream of Freedom. But they are not yet organised into a Great Body. Youth movements have, in other countries, done great things. Much was done by “The Order of Young Italy” to liberate the forces of freedom in that country. Garibaldi was greatly

helped in his work by young Volunteers. Ireland owes much to Young Sinn Feiners.

There is a “Youth Movement” in Germany, it has two wings. The one is the “Workers’ Youth,” i.e. young people of the Industrial Class. The second consists of Young Men and Women drawn not from the workshops but from the Universities and High Schools. The workers’ youth had not a little to do with upsetting the monarchy and bringing about the German Revolution. They believe in social reform and simple life, they believe in the doctrine of International Peace. The young people of the Universities and High Schools believe in freedom and return-to-nature. Many of them, even those belonging to big families––go about bare headed and barefooted. They denounce luxury. They denounce cramping conventions. They live in the open air. They believe in passive resistance. They form several groups of Wandervogel (Wander-birds) and wander about the country on Sundays and other holidays collecting folk-songs and stories from the village folk. They believe in the national value of folk-literature and music. The “workers’ youth” and the “universities’ youth” scorn smoking and drinking and stiff collars and cropped hair. And deep in their hearts is faith in Freedom. These young

men and women are building the future of Germany. India’s young men and women are rich in emotion. In them the Nation has a splendid material for the building of its Future.

Promise me half your vacations, every year and we shall go in humility and love to the poor village-folk. We shall meet them and serve them and be blessed. I have a plan of village work. I shall explain it as soon as a students’ band of service is ready, a band which I propose to call “Sons and Daughters of Sind.”

Let me not detain you long. Let my words be few but in our practical work let us be earnest, true. And this let me say to you before I close: A new age is dawning! Listen to voices of the Dawn. The age of selfish, aggressive cruel domination of man by man is passing.

Knowledge which grows into us in these three ways becomes a mighty constructive force. “While small and vulgar people,” says a Scripture, “are always quarrelling, back-biting and abusing each other, great men seemed to have obtained a portion of the gift of dhyan (meditation).” How many such men, men of true Knowledge,

Let them be organised in an India-wide Movement. It will be a movement of Idealism. And when Idealism acts, it becomes a thing of Fire, invincible, unconquerable.

•

The age of exploitation and sectarianism. A New Religion is dawning, not a religion of dogmas and creeds; dogmas are dying, creeds are reeds. But a religion of service and sacrifices. Say boldly ye that are young, say to your countrymen that you have nothing to do with dogmas of a dead past, with creeds of narrowing communalism. Say boldly: We believe in the Gospel of sacrifice and love. We believe in the religion of reverence for the poor. God bless the Conference. God bless you and awaken your young aspiring hearts to the truth that the secret at once of true religion and true swaraj is: service of the poor. •

Knowledge and the Call of Life Contd. from page 13

has India today? Yet only such men may do the dynamic work of national emancipation. Only such men may take us to a New Dawn in our History, passing on to India’s waiting millions the Ancient Message: You alone are your own obstacle. Arise in faith and love and achieve your freedom!

Creative Shakti — A Call To Youth Contd. from page 9

Sadhu Vaswani: An Awakener

DADA J. P. VASWANI

An anniversary tribute to a great son of India, whose teaching is that in the love of God and the service of man is the secret of true life.

Born sixty-seven years ago, Vaswaniji has spent the best years of his life in awakening the youths of India whom he has loved to call as “the greatest guarantee of the future.” “An eternal shakti lies locked up within you, young men!” his words ring clear and sharp. “Call it up and use it for the service of India and India’s

chains will break. And she who led civilisation, will march on again to Her great mission. She will be a teacher of the nations and a healer of humanity.”

He urges upon young men to build up their manhood. “Freedom,” he says, “will not come as a gift received at alien doors. Freedom can only be the creation of India’s blood

*Re-printed from The Bombay Chronicle Weekly – December 1, 1946.

and determination to work out her salvation out of her own eternal strength.” Carrying this message, he moves on from place to pace with the Flame of Freedom in his soul, the Dream of Independence in his eyes.

PURPOSE OF LIFE

He was Principal of the Dyal Sind College, Lahore: he was still in his thirties when the call came to him to give up his all at the altar of service and sacrifice. “Why do you give up such a lucrative job?” — they said to him. “You are still young: you have a bright future before you: you can make money, heaps of money.” “Life is not given to make money,” he replied. And they asked him: “What is the purpose of life?” He replied: “To dedicate it to Love Divine: to serve and be poured out as a sacrifice!”

Over 37 years ago, Vaswaniji — then senior professor in the D. J. Sind College, Karachi — went to Berlin as one of India’s representatives to the World Congress of Religions. His speech before that august assembly and his subsequent lectures in different parts of Europe on India’s message to the nations aroused deep interest in Indian thought and religion and linked up many with him in India’s mission of help and healing to

humanity — so much so, that his name came to be coupled with those of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore as one of the three leaders of India.

India, he profoundly believes, has a message to give to the modern nations. Addressing a meeting of the “Association of Indian Culture” at Calcutta, two years ago, he said: “To a Europe in ruins, to a West in the flames of war, India’s message is of renewal and freedom from greed and violence so that the technical civilisation of today may become one of brotherliness, sympathy and service. The restless energies of Europe lead to fever and frustration; these energies need to be used in the service of Man by being linked up to the spirit!”

CHARACTER, NOT MONEY

He teaches by precept and example that life is larger than livelihood. He urges that character, not money should rule the world: and character must grow out of courage. He is careful to point out that courage must be distinguished from the will-to-power which makes men and nations aggressive and selfish. He asks young men to study the truths of modem life but he pleads with them not to forget their own culture. He warns them that schools and

colleges in India are a home neither of English culture nor of Indian wisdom: they are at best so many “caves” in which students receive “blurred images”. Come out of the caves, he says to them, and “turn to the light of the sun, the light of Indian culture, and you will know what share India can have in the international exchange of thought and life.”

This great one whom the Irish poet Dr. Cousins, greeted, many years ago, as India’s modern mystic, is a seer. What does he see? In his heart he sees the grandeur of an India going upon a mission of help and healing to the nations. He sees India being accepted by the nations of the East and the nations of the West as their teacher and preceptor. In his heart he sees the birth of a New India “strong in the strength of her ancient wisdom

and in touch with modern science and culture.” These and other things he sees in his heart more clearly than a man beholds a distant star through a telescope. But he is not blind to the realities of the situation around him. A great and mighty future awaits this ancient land, it is true: but what is the situation in India to-day?

HIS STRONGEST PASSION

In a recent letter to a friend, he summed up the situation thus: “I confess my heart becomes sad, sometimes, as it surveys the situation. The tragedy of to-day is that chaotic dements are rising: the structure of a society and morality reared by poets and prophets, whose vision embraced the Hindu and the Muslim, the believer and the agnostic, is being engulfed in a rising sea of accumulated rage

and inflamed sectarianism. The peasant and the village-folk are falling, alas, into the hands of the priest; the industrialists, enslaving the workers, accumulate and exchange, while the sense of beauty and worship decays in the cities where money becomes Lord and there is no soul.”

How can such an India find its place in the counsels of the nations? How can such an India make her message heard in the modem world? India must become herself before she can be honoured by the nations of the earth. And to be herself, India must be free. This freedom is to be not merely political: it is, also, freedom from the bondage of customs, institutions, creeds which for centuries have choked the current of our life. If India is to be born anew in vigour and in strength, India must be truly free.

Passionate is his love for Indian freedom. He expresses it in his social, political and religious views and, above all, in his actions. Love of freedom is, perhaps, the strongest passion of his soul — freedom not of action merely but of thought.

SECRET OF TRUE LIFE

To-day politics are the passion and pursuit of the nation. According to Vaswaniji,

politics is merely one of the four aspects of freedom — the other three being civil, social and religious. In his “Apostles of Freedom”, he urges that a nation, to be free, must take note of all the four aspects. Politics is only one channel of a nation’s life. Home, workshop, school, profession — all are to him symbols of the National Spirit. When in our enthusiasm for the political, we neglect the other spheres and they cease to be organs of the spirit of Freedom, then, indeed, politics gets easily corrupted and the country wanders from distraction to distraction.

His message is so simple. He preaches no abstruse philosophy, advocates no unintelligible theology. His teaching, in brief, is that in the love of God and the service of man is the secret of true life.

The modem man, he knows, fights shy of God and religion. To Vaswaniji God is the supreme reality of life. The modem world, he says, has divorced God and has forgotten the golden rule of Love, and so is unhappy, restless. “Our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in Thee” — declared the Jewish seer. “Call Him by any name you will,” says Vaswaniji; Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Joy. His is the power that thrills the worlds from end

to end. In his outlook upon life, he is profoundly religious.

But religion to him is not a creed, not a dogma, not submission to an external authority of a priest, a dictator, a temple or scripture. Religion is a Way of Life, a Way of Understanding. He believes that behind economics lies ethics and right ethics springs from spiritual life. He feels that man needs a religion, a spiritual chart to lead him through darkness into light. The dream is in his eyes — of a New Religion — a Religion cleansed of creeds, dogmas, a New Religion essentially practical, a Religion building on this earth, and not merely promising in Heaven, a Kingdom of Happiness.

UNITY WITH THE POOR

His own feeling of unity with the poor is intense. With child-like, wonder-filled eyes he moves among them, serving them with singular devotion. In his dress and food he is always simple, and as the greatest only are, he is in his simplicity sublime. He eats very little; and his clothes are of hand-spun, hand-woven khaddar. For years together he has not known what it is to have one’s stomach full. This prince amongst men has subjected to himself to the discipline of eating very little because he knows that millions

of his countrymen do not get even that little. It is enough, he says, if our clothes protect us from cold and our food gives us sufficient strength to be able to serve the distressed and the needy.

In St. Mira’s New Building which has cost over two and a half lakhs, they wished to build for him the best quarters that modern architecture could devise: but he would have nothing of it. A simple mud hut will do for me, he said. He is fond of scratching his back with a small wooden stick. A rich admirer,––a partner in a well-known firm of Calcutta jewellers — got a pretty “scratcher” made of silver for him. “I cannot accept such a useless gift,” he said; “give me things which I can give away to the poor and needy.”

He always feels happy when he gives to the needy. He gives them his money, his time, his energy. A beggar whose body was bare, asked for his shirt: he parted with the shirt on the spot. The beggar demanded his cap: he gave away the cap, also; and on his face played a beautiful smile which is visible only on the faces of those who have realised the joy of a life of renunciation.

HEALER OF HEARTS

He shuns meeting many people, he is happy in the

company of a few simple souls. He speaks to them of the simple life, of how to walk the little way, avoiding the world’s gilded vanities, and of how to greet God’s simplicities that wander in the world asking for home in the hearts of the poor in spirit. Is it a wonder that those who come in contact with him get linked up with him in a spirit of tender devotion? They obey him implicitly and spontaneously; they call him their Dada. We read in one of Hans Anderson’s Tales about a man who had the mysterious power of opening people’s hearts and seeing what was inside them. Such a man is T. L. Vaswani; and many of those who meet him say that he can read the hearts of men like the pages of an open book.

He is a born orator. He addresses large crowds of men and women. They hear him: they marvel at his words. He awakens new aspirations in the hearts of those that listen to him. When he speaks he fills the hall with the rich music of his words and the richer music of his heart.

He works on, day after day — wanting nothing for himself, seeking only opportunities to serve the poor and lowly, the distressed and oppressed. His body is frail but he feels he has the strength of ten because in his

heart is love and every fibre of his being thrills with faith in the living Lord. “In His love,” he says, “the Lord has broken, is breaking my life into innumerable fragments and scattering them in different directions. May every fragment serve Him, singing His Name — the Name of the Beloved!”

He heals many sorrowing hearts: and in wisdom and love he helps many of those who struggle through the dark forest of this life. His face radiates the love which fills his heart: and on his countenance is the calm born of deep faith in God. “Happy is my heart,” reads an entry in his Jail Diary, “which rejoices in doing simple daily tasks and leaves the rest to God, the Builder of destiny.”

With this conviction, in this faith, he has gone to many climes in East and West, carrying everywhere the message of Ancient Wisdom, voicing everywhere the greatness and glory of Aryavarta, comforting men and women with words of hope, cheering them on life’s pilgrim way, encouraging them in the good path, restraining them from the path of evil, imploring all to believe in the brotherhood of religions, the unity of all races and the fellowship of all nations.

CHILDREN’S CORNER

I have gills and scales. I swim in water. I lay eggs. What am I?

ANIMAL RIDDLES:

Sadhu Vaswani would say, ‘These hands are given us to help and heal, not to harm.’ One way to cultivate kindness is to know our animal families.

Can you guess the animals described below?

I live in a pond. I am green and smooth. I eat flies.

What am I?

I lay eggs. I have feathers.

I can fly. What am I?

I am big and brown I eat fish and berries. I have fun. What am I?