My difficulty is that when, in my environment, some intense feeling of pride or resentment concentrates its red light within a certain limited area, I lose my true perspective of life and the world, and it deeply hurts my nature. It is not true that I do not have any special love for my own country, but when it is in its normal state it does not obstruct outside reality; on the contrary, it offers a standpoint and helps me in my natural relationship with others. But when that standpoint itself becomes a barricade, then something in me asserts that my place is somewhere else.
I have not yet attained that spiritual altitude from which I can say, with perfect assurance, that such barricading is wrong, or even unnecessary; but some instinct in me says, that there is a great deal of unreality in it, as there is in all passions that are generated through contraction of consciousness, through rejection of a great part of truth.
I remember your wondering why Christ gave no expression to his patriotism, which was so intense in the Jewish people. It was because the great truth of man, which he realised, through his love of God, would only be cramped and crushed within that enclosure. I have a great deal of the patriot and the politician in me, and therefore I am frightened of them; and I have an inner struggle against submitting myself to their sway.
But I must not be misunderstood. There is such a thing as a moral standard of judgment. When India suffers from injustice, it is right that we should stand against it; and the responsibility is ours to right the wrong not as Indians, but as human beings. There your position is higher than most of our countrymen’s. You have accepted the cause of India for the sake of humanity. But I know that most of our people will accept your help as a matter of course, and yet reject your lesson. You are fighting against that patriotism with which the West has humiliated the East—the patriotism which is racial egoism, national egoism. This is a comparatively later growth in European history and a far greater cause of misery and injustice in the human world than the blood-thirsty ferocity, the nomadic savagery, in the primitive history of man. The Pathans came to India and the Moghals, and they perpetrated misdeeds in their heedlessness; but because they had no taint of patriotism, they did not attack India at the very root of her life, keeping themselves superciliously aloof. Gradually they were growing one with us; and just as the Normans and Saxons combined into one people, our Muhammadan invaders would ultimately have lost their line of separateness and contributed to the richness and strength of Indian civilisation.
We must remember that Hinduism is not the original Aryanism; in fact a greater portion of it is non-Aryan. Another great mixture had been awaiting us, the mixture with the Muhammadans. I know there were difficulties in its way. But the greatest of all difficulties was lacking—the idolatry of Geography. Just see what hideous crimes are being committed by British patriotism in Ireland! It is a python which refuses to disgorge this living creature which struggles to live its separate life. For patriotism is proud of its bulk, and in order to hold in a bond of unity the units that have their own distinct individualities, it is ever ready to use means that are inhuman. Our own patriots would do just the same thing, if the occasion arose. When a minority of our population claimed its right of inter-caste marriage, the majority cruelly refused to allow it that freedom. It would not acknowledge a difference which was fundamental, but was willing to perpetrate a moral torture far more reprehensible than a physical one. Why? Because power lies in number and in extension. Power, whether in the patriotic or in any other form, is no lover of freedom. It talks of unity—but forgets that true unity is that of freedom. Uniformity is unity of bondage.
Suppose, in our Swaraj, the anti-Brahmin community refuses to join hands with us; suppose for the sake of its self-respect and self-expression, it tries to keep an absolute independence—patriotism will try to coerce it into an unholy union. Because patriotism has its passion of power; and power builds its castle upon arithmetic. I love India. But my India is an idea and not a geographical expression. Therefore I am not a patriot—I shall ever seek my compatriots all over the world. You are one of them, and I am sure there are many others. *