| |
body, it is an enemy. Fight with your body!
Indian culture is hypocritical. It creates internal strife, divides a man into two. I say to eat with full taste, meticulously. Deeper a man does it, more cultured, developed and refined he will be. And by doing so more chances there are to be free from eating. A fasting man will not eat but food and taste will haunt him day and night. Unnatural suppression is perversion.
In true tradition of our melancholic culture, Gandhiji was, unsubtly, opposed to any ind of joy, happiness. We revere more those who renounce more; clothes, wealth, power. We call him devout who indulges in self-repression. But, unhappiness, pain, is against our nature. No man desires privation unless he is mad. So it is natural for man to become a hypocrite socially. A mahatma advises to stay in huts but immediately after his death the follower looks for a palace to buy.
The Gandhians now stay in palaces. But there also they apply novel techniques. I went to see Rashtrapati Bhavan when Rajendrababu was the president. The gate-keeper told me that the president had spread a mat over the viceroy's seat. What is the sense in spreading mats and loin clothes in a palace which is tended by about a thousand servants? These are the symptoms of madness, result of our extremist philosophy. Stay in a hut if you like, or in a palace if you like, but what is the consolation behind faking the look of a hut in a palace? The two things do not harmonise. And that is because of the internal strife.
Gandhiji told to wear thick khadi. Today khadi is becoming thinner and thinner, and costlier. One who wants to wear the costliest clothes, goes for khadi. The natural tendency is for thinner, smoother and silkier clothes. And, people blame the followers for falling from grace.
But, I say, why not try for that society where everybody can stay in a palace, where every adult and child can wear silk and eat good food? Why the present hypocrisy? The followers are not unfaithful. They respond to their natural urges. Only the severe unnatural principles of the mahatma have enmeshed them. This country has never accepted the naturalness in man -- the
|
|
|