LETTERS FROM ABROAD
of life’s joy; in the latter it was the eradication of it. The abnormal type of asceticism to which Buddhism gave rise in India revelled in celibacy and mutilation of life in all different forms. Yet the forest life of the Brahmana was not antagonistic to the social life of man, but harmonious with it. It was dike our musical instrument tambura whose duty is to supply the fundamental notes to the music to save it from straying into discordance. It believed in Anandam, the music of the soul, and its own simplicity was not to kill it, but to guide it.
The idea of non-co-operation is political ascetisism. Our students are bringing their offering of sacrifices to what? Not to a fuller education, but to non-education. It has at its back a fierce joy of annihilation, which at its best is asceticism, and at its worst is that orgy of frightfulness in which human nature, losing faith in the basic reality of normal life, finds a disinterested delight in an unmeaning devastation, as has been shown in the late war and on other occasions which came nearer tous. ‘No’ in its passive moral form is asceticism, and in its aetive moral form is violence. The desert is as mucha form of himsa, violence, as is the raging sea in storm ; they both are against life, I remember the day, during the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, when a crowd of young students came to see me in the first floor hall of our Vichitra house. They said to me that if I would order them to leave their schools and colleges they would
