the plan, above three hundred thousand persons, as it is said, deserted their houses, shut up their shops, suspended the labour of their farm, forebore to light fires, dress victuals, many of them even to eat, and sat down with folded arms and drooping heads, like so many sheep, on the plain which surrounds Banares."
This familiarity with the idea of Passive Resistance, no doubt, accounts to some extent for the comparative readiness with which it has been adopted by the Indians in the Transvaal. Probably, too, it affected insensibly their leader. Mr. Gandhi himself attributes the birth and evolution of this principle, so far as he is concerned, to quite other influences.
"I remember," he said, "how one verse of a Gujarati poem, which, as a child, I learned at school, clung to me. In substance it was this:—
"If a man gives you a drink of water and you give
him a drink in return, that is nothing.
Real beauty consists in doing good against evil."
As a child, this verse had a powerful influence over me, and I tried to carry it into practice. Then came the “Sermon on the Mount”."
