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who has not stood in our shoes and has not known where they pinch, bite, and inflame, who does not know that we have come to dread "this doing everything for us." It is like the grievance of the vacuous minded person who puts the bird in a cage, feeds it, cleanses its barred habitation, talks to it endearingly and wonders why he is told that it cannot be happy under this state of protection. Doing everything for another is doing him in fact the worst service—and under this philanthropic guardianship, the nation has

      become fit only to dream of its past glories, wallowing in foreign good offices, aimless and nerveless. Barren in everything that makes a people respected by others, we have become habitual seekers of salvation in another

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      world—rather in another state of existence. Such a mental condition is by no means to be despised, as after all is said and done, this world and its problems cannot absorb all our devotion. But existence in this world is a necessary preparation for a future state of existence–otherwise, there is no meaning in birth and death. How do we exist in this world?–defended and ruled by others, educated by others, clothed by others, carried in our own country from place to place by others! What is wrong in such an existence? Nothing except that it leaves us perpetual infants. And what is there wrong in being perpetual infants on the material plane, when we are all grey-beards in spiritual understanding? "Forbid them not; for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs"—was the injunction of the Lord Jesus as to children. Why should we not consent to remain a race of perpetual infants under the ward and protection of a more energetic nation–whichever it may be for the time being? In reality, this question has again and again occurred not to doubting Thomases, but to men who are ready to leap into any fire for any cause, but do not "know what cause it is that they should do so

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      for? Man being in his nature spiritual, is there a spiritual basis for

       political

      self-dependence? If not, why need we bother about what counts only on the material plane? The reply to it is—if this spiritual yearning at least is ours, how can we preserve it as the only yearning worth satisfying, unless our civilisation is of our own mould—unless in fact we belong to ourselves? It is one thing in regard to ideals and civilization to be influenced as a free people, and another to be influenced as a people that has no option of its own in its primary concerns. It is one thing to say what we should do with our mental, moral and physical energies, when we are free to reject or accept the advice, and another to direct our energies, when we have no option but to obey. In the latter course we are not on the path of evolution—in fact the process of evolution is arrested for the time being. Without liberty there is no evolution. It is in making mistakes, in making fewer mistakes after making mistakes, it is in this endless process of elimination and acquisition, that the secret of Evolution lies. But what is the secret of this secret?

       Liberty

      . So, where there is no Evolution, there is no spiritualisation; and where there is no liberty there can be

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      Heroes of the Hour

      no Evolution, i.e., where there is no liberty there is no spiritualisation. Good government is no substitute for Self-government was said by Mr. Campbell-Bannerman as a purely political proposition; but there is a deep, spiritual significance underlying it. The truth is that where good government is not the outcome of Self-government the good government does not belong to the people so long as it is not Self-government also. If it is not of the people, of what avail is it to the people ? Ergo, good government is no substitute for Self-government—least of all in the case of a country whose ideal of Government is to make for man's spiritual advancement. All these truths have been seen by many and have yet to be seen by many more. The danger lies however in taking a truth to the knowledge of a people. There is the safe but ineffectual way, and a risky but fruitful way. The risky and fruitful way has been trodden fearlessly by Gandhi, Tilak and Subramanya Iyer among a few others. They are not any of them politicians primarily, they are even patriots only secondarily; they are all essentially seekers of emancipation. But finding the soul-stifling limitations that have their

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      origin in our political condition, they have in an increasing measure realised the imperious necessity for a change in our political status. When the spiritual fire animates a person in any sphere of action he becomes a hero unconsciously, and the lives of these three men will illustrate how each in his own sphere has acted and endured for the sake of his country with the faith of the heroes—and the sterling sincerity of him who offers himself unreservedly for a cause. A common possession of these three men is not only faith in the righteousness of their cause with their readiness to suffer for it, but also the possession of a

       heart

      dedicated to the service of their country—in an uncompromising avowal of

      what they are about. If, in acting this conviction, they are prepared to suffer rather than retract, their countrymen cannot help presenting them to a future generation as the heroes of an hour when the destinies of India lay committed into the hands of its sons, irrespective of creed and caste, bereft of cloaks and clothing, as children of the country, when in the thick of an era of War among nations for the safeguarding of rights of nations, they stood not indifferently, but bore the standard ​of their country bravely, with rectitude in every fibre, regardless of consequences, indifferent to the result, mindful only that they failed not in their duty at once to their sovereign and their motherland. The story of their heroism will not lapse into oblivion, but, mingling with the life of the nation, will impart to it a new strength of purpose enabling it to march unfatigued from Victory to Victory, not for material aggrandizement but for the fulfilment of the destiny of the race for which its prophets and martyrs have so nobly striven.

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