Life is Unity

 I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.I do not believe that the spiritual law works on a field of its own. On the contrary, it expresses itself only through the ordinary activities of life. It thus affects the economic, the social and the political fields.Several correspondents had complained to him that he was utilizing his prayer meetings for the propagation of his favourite political ideas. But the speaker never suffered from any feeling of guilt on that account. Human life being and undivided whole, no line could ever be drawn between its different compartments, nor between ethics and politics. A trader who earned his wealth by deception only succeeded in deceiving himself when he thought that his sins could be washed away by spending some amount of his ill-gotten gains on so-called religious purposes.

Faith in Man

100. I refuse to suspect human nature. It will, is bound to respond to any noble and friendly action.

–YI, 4-8-20, Tagore, 559.

101. My proposal for British withdrawal is as much in Britain’s interest as India’s. Your difficulty arises from your disinclination to believe that Britain can never do justice voluntarily. My belief in the capacity of nonviolence rejects the theory of permanent inelasticity of human nature.

-H, 7-6-42, 177.

102. In the application of the method of nonviolence, one must believe in the possibility of every person, however depraved, being reformed under humane and skilled treatment.

–H, 22-2-42, 49.

103. When I was a little child, there used to be two blind performers in Rajkot. One of them was a musician. When he played on his instrument, his fingers swept the strings with an unerring instinct and everybody listened spell-bound to his playing. Similarly there are chords in every human heart. If we only know how to strike the right chord, we bring out the music.

—H, 27-5-39, 136.