LETTERS FROM ABROAD
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 partriotism, 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
