LETTERS FROM ABROAD
same thing, if the occasion arose. When a minority of our population claimed its right of inter-caste marriage, the majority cruelly refused to allow it that freedom. It would not acknowledge a difference which was fundamental, but was willing to perpetrate a moral torture far more reprehensible than a physical one. Why? Because power lies in number and in extension. Power, whether in the patriotic or in any other form, is no lover of freedom. It talks of unity—but forgets that true unity is that of freedom, Uniformity is unity of bondage.
Suppose, in our Swaraj, the anti-Brahmin community refuses to join hands with us ; suppose for the sake of its self-respect and self-expression, it tries to keep an absolute independence—- patriotism will try to coerce it into an unholy union. Because patriotism has its passion of power; and power builds its castle upon arithmetic. I love India, But my India is an idea and not a geographical expression, Therefore I am not a patriot-— I shall ever seek my compatriots all over the world, You are one of them, and I am sure there are many others.
S.S. RHYNDAM.
Plato threatened to banish all poets from his Republic. Was it in pity or in anger, I wonder? Will our Indian Swaraj, when it comes to exist, pass a deportation order against all those feckless creatures, who are pursuers of phantoms and
