I have just read a letter published in Prabasi by one who is at the Ashram and it has deeply hurt me. This is the ugliest side of patriotism. For in small minds, patriotism dissociates itself from the higher ideal of humanity. It becomes the magnification of self, on a stupendous scale—magnifying our vulgarity, cruelty, greed; dethroning God, to put up this bloated self in its place.
The whole world is suffering from this cult of Devil worship in the present age, and I cannot tell you how deeply I am suffering, being surrounded in this country by endless ceremonials of this hideously profane cult. Everywhere there is an antipathy against Asia ventilated by a widespread campaign of calumny. Negroes are burnt alive, sometimes merely because they tried to exercise their right to vote, given to them by law. Germans are reviled. Conditions in Russia are deliberately misrepresented. They are furiously busy building their towers of political civilisation upon the quagmire of mob psychology, spreading over it a crust of deliberate lies. They have to subsist upon a continual supply of hatred, contempt, jealousy and lies and lies and lies!
I am afraid I shall be rejected by my own people when I go back to India. My solitary cell is awaiting me in my Motherland. In their present state of mind, my own countrymen will have no patience with me, who believe God to be higher than my country.
I know such spiritual faith may not lead us to political success; but I say to myself, as India has ever said, Even then—what?
The more I live in this country, the more I understand the true meaning of emancipation. It is for India to keep her breast supplied with the true amrita of wisdom, with which to feed the new-born age and nourish it into a mighty future.
The ideas to which politicians still cling belong to a past that is doomed. It is a wreck rushing towards annihilation. The West is beginning to have doubts about its shelter, but its habit of mind is preventing it from leaving the old shelter for a new one. But we unfortunate creatures are getting ready to jump into the stream and swim across to the sinking ship and fight for our place at its corner. Yet I know that our huts are safer than that doomed and drifting monster.
I long to live in the heart of the Peace. I have done my work, and I hope that my Master will grant me leave to sit by Him, and not to talk, but to listen to His own great silence.