All true ideals claim our best, and it cannot be said with regard to them, that we can be content with the half, when the whole is threatened. Ideals are not like money. They are living reality. Their wholeness is indivisible. A beggar woman may be satisfied with an eight anna bit, when sixteen annas are denied her; but a half-portion of her child she will never consent to accept!
I know that there is a call for me to work towards the true union of East and West. I have unconsciously been getting ready for this mission. When I wrote my Sadhana lectures, I was not aware that I had been fulfilling my destiny. All through my tour, I was told that my Sadhana had been of real help to my western readers. The accident which made me translate Gitanjali, and the sudden and unaccountable longing which took me over to Europe at the beginning of my fiftieth year—all had combined to push me forward to a path, whose destination I did not clearly know when I first took it. This, my last tour in Europe, has made it definitely known to me.
But, as I have said before, the claims of all great ideals have to be fully paid. Not merely the negative moral injunction of non-violence will suffice. It is a truism to say that the creative force needed for true union in human society is love. Justice is only an accompaniment to it, like the beating of a tom-tom to the song. We in the East have long been suffering humiliation at the hands of the West. It is enormously difficult for us, either to cultivate, or express, any love for Western races—especially as it may have the appearance of snobbishness or prudence. The talk and behaviour of the Moderate Party in India fail to inspire us because of this—because their moderation springs from the colourless principle of expediency. The bond of expediency between the powerful and the weak must have some element in it which is degrading. It brings to us gifts for which we can claim no credit whatever, except perhaps persistency of expectation and unbaffled employment of importunity.
Self-sacrifice on the part of the gainer, and not solely on the part of the giver, imparts true value to the gift. When our claims are feeble, and our method of realising them is altogether unheroic, then the very boons granted to us make us poorer.
That is why the Moderates in India look so pitifully obscure by the side of the Extremists. I feel almost certain that Englishmen themselves are somewhat ashamed of their partnership with a party suffering from the last stages of moral anaemia.
However, my point is that, as an idealist, it is immensely difficult for me to nourish any feeling of love for those people, who themselves are neither eager to offer it to us, nor care to claim it from us. But let me never look at that condition as an absolute one. There are screens between us, which have to be removed—possibly they are due to the too great inequality of circumstances and opportunities between the two parties. Let us, by every means in our power, struggle against our antipathies—all the while taking care to keep wide open channels of communication through which individuals, from both sides, may have facilities to meet in the spirit of good fellowship. I cannot tell you how thankful I feel to you, who have made it easier for me to love your people. For, your own relationship with India has not been based upon sense of duty, but upon genuine love. It makes me feel sad when I see this lesson of your love being lost—when it fails to inspire our people with the realisation that love of humanity is with you far truer than patriotism.
I deeply regret that you could not accompany me in my last tour in Europe, though I understand the reasons that prevented you. If you had been with me you would have been able fully to realise the great truth of the mission we have undertaken. To the majority of my countrymen, the course of experience, through which I passed, will ever remain vague; and my appeal to them to view the history of our own country in the large background of humanity is not likely to carry any force. For my work, I shall ever depend upon your comradeship; and therefore I feel sad, that the reality of the ideal, which has possessed me, has missed its one signal chance of coming close to your heart.
The perspective against which you have been recently setting up your scheme of life has been vastly different from mine. You have taken up responsibilities that may have to follow their own channels away from those that I shall have to choose; and the loneliness of my task, which has been my fatality in my past life, will follow me to the end of my days. But I must not complain. I shall follow the call of my providence and I know that to respond to it, in my own manner, is fulfilment in itself, whatever may be its results. *