TRUE BROTHERHOOD.
The following is a lecture delivered at a Public Meeting held under the auspices of the Historical Society, Pachaiyappa’s College, 1903:
You know that you are provincial—and you are more limited than that—because your horizon is bounded almost by your city, your own community, your own sub-caste, your own college, your own homes, your own relations, your own self. (Loud cheers.) I know I am speaking rightly, because I also in my earlier youth was afflicted with the same sort of short-sightedness of the love. Having travelled, having conceived, having hoped, having enlarged my love, having widened my sympathies, having come in contact with different races, different communities, different religions, different civilisations, friends, my vision is clear. I have no prejudice of race, creed, caste or color. Though, as is supposed, every Brahmin is an aristocrat by instinct, I am a real democrat, because to me there is no difference between a king on his throne and a beggar in the street. And until, you, students have acquired and mastered that spirit of brotherhood, do not believe it possible that you will ever cease to be provincial, that you will cease to be sectarian—if I may use such a word—that you will ever be national. If it were otherwise, there should have been no necessity for all those Resolutions in the Social Conference yesterday.
I look to you and not to the generation that is passing; it is the young that would have the courage to cast aside that bondage to make it impossible for the Social Conference of ten years hence to proclaim its disgrace in the manner in which it was proclaimed yesterday and in which I took part (continued cheers). Students, if facilities come in your way, travel; because the knowledge that comes from living contact with men and minds, the inestimable culture that comes through interchange of ideas, can never be equalled and certainly not surpassed by that knowledge between the covers of textbooks. You read the poems of Shelley on “Liberty.” You read the lecture of Keats on the “Brotherhood of Man,” but do you put them all in practice? Reading is one thing. It is a very different thing to put it into practice by your deeds. It is difficult to follow in reality the proverb that all men are brethren. Therefore, to you, young men, we look for the fulfilment of the dreams that we have dreamed. To you we look to rectify the mistakes we have made. To you we look to redeem the pledges we have given to posterity. I beg of you, young men, nay, I enjoin upon you that duty that you dare not, if you are men, separate from your hearts and mind and spirit. I say that it is not your pride that you are a Madrassee, that it is not your pride that you are a Brahmin, that it is not your pride you belong to the South of India, that it is not your pride you are a Hindu, but that it is your pride that you are an Indian. I was born in Bengal. I belong to the Madras Presidency. In a Mahomedan city I was brought up and married and there I lived; still I am neither a Bengalee, nor Madrassee, nor Hyderabadee but I am an Indian, (cheers) not a Hindu, not a Brahmin, but an Indian to whom my Mahomedan brother is as dear and as precious as my Hindu brother.
I was brought up in a home, that would never have tolerated the least spirit of difference, in the treatment given to people of different classes. There you will find that genuine spontaneous love shown to them. I was brought up in a home over which presided one of the greatest men of India and who is an embodiment of all great lores and an ideal of truth, of love, of justice and patriotism. That great teacher of India, had come to us to give immortal inspiration. That is a home of Indians and not of Hindus or Brahmins. It is because that my beloved father said, “Be not limited even to the Indians, but let it be your pride that you are a citizen of the world,” that I should love my country. I am ready to lay down my life for the welfare of all India. I beg of you, my brothers, not to limit your love only to India, because it is better to aim at the sky, it is better that your ideals of patriotism should extend for the welfare of the world and not be limited to the prosperity of India and so to achieve that prosperity for your country; because, if the ideals be only for the prosperity of your country, it would end where it began, by being a profit to your own community and very probably to your own self. You have inherited great dreams. You have had great duties laid upon you. You have been bequeathed legacies for whose suffrage and whose growth and accumulation you are responsible. It does not matter where you are and who you are. Even a sweeper of streets can be a patriot. You can find in him a moralising spirit that can inspire your mind. There is not one of you who is so humble and so insignificant that can evade the duties that belong to you, that are predestined to you and which nobody but you can perform. Therefore each of you is bound to dedicate his life to the uplifting of his country.