Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches/Mrs. Sarojini Naidu
By Mrs. SAROJINI NAIDU
Mrs. Sarojini Naidu has addressed the following letter to Lady Mehta:—
Dear Lady Mehta,—I venture to write to you as I see by the papers that you are the presiding genius of the forthcoming function to welcome my friend Mrs. Gandhi home again. I feel that though it may be the special privilege of the ladies of Bombay to accord her this personal ovation, all Indian women must desire to associate themselves with you in spirit to do honour to one who by her race, qualities of courage, devotion, and self-sacrifice has so signally justified and fulfilled the high traditions of Indian womanhood.
I believe I am one of the few people now back in India who had the good fortune to share the intimate homelife of Mr. and Mrs. Gandhi in England: and I cherish two or three memories of this brief period in connection with the kindly and gentle lady, whose name has become a household word in our midst with her broken health and her invincible fortitude—the fragile body of a child and the indomitable spirit of a martyr.
I recall my first meeting with them the day after their arrival in England. It was on a rainy August afternoon last year that I climbed the staircase of an ordinary London dwelling house to find myself confronted with a true Hindu idol of radiant and ascetic simplicity. The great South African leader who, to quote Mr. Gokhale's apt phrase, had moulded heroes out of clay, was reclining, a little ill and weary, on the floor eating his frugal meal of nuts and fruit (which 1 shared) and his wife was busy and content as though she were a mere modest house-wife absorbed in a hundred details of household service, and not the world-famed heroine of a hundred noble sufferings in a nation's cause.
I recall too the brilliant and thrilling occasion when men and women of all nationalities from East and West were gathered together to greet them in convincing proof that true greatness speaks with a universal tongue and compels a universal homage. She sat by her husband's side, simple and serene and dignified in the hour of triumph as she had proved herself simple and serene and dauntless in the hour of trial and tragedy.
I have a vision too of her brave, frail, pain worn hand must have held aloit the lamp of her country's honour undimmed in one alien land, working at rough garments for wounded soldiers in another . . . . Red Cross work.
But, there is one memory that to me is most precious and poignant, which I record as my personal tribute to her, and which serves not only to confirm but to complete and crown all the beautiful and lofty virtues that have made her an ideal comrade and helpmate to her husband. On her arrival in England in the early days of the war, one felt that Mrs. Gandhi was like a bird with eager outstretched wings longing to annihilate the time and distance that lay before her and her far-off India, and impatient of the brief and necessary interruption in her homeward flight. The woman's heart within her was full of yearning for the accustomed sounds and scenes of her own land and the mother's heart within her full of passionate hunger for the beloved faces of her children . . . And yet when her husband soon after, felt the call, strong and urgent to offer his services to the Empire and to form the Ambulance Corps that has since done such splendid work, she reached the high watermark of her loyal devotion to him for she accepted his decision and strengthened his purpose with a prompt and willing renunciation of all her most dear and pressing desires. This to me is the real meaning of Sati. And it is this ready capacity for self-negation that has made me recognise anew that the true standard of a country's greatness lies not so much in its intellectual achievement and material prosperity as the undying spiritual ideals of love and service and sacrifice that inspire and sustain the mothers of the race.
I pray that the men of India may learn to realize in an increasing measure that it is through the worthiness of their lives and the nobility of their character alone that we women can hope to find the opportunity and inspiration to adequately fulfil the finest possibilities of our womanhood even as Mrs. Gandhi has fulfilled hers.