IDEAL OF CIVIC LIFE.
At the Fourteenth Anniversary of the ## Young Men’s Literary Association, Guntur, held on July 5, 1915, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu delivered the following speech:—
President, Ladies, Gentlemen, and my Friends the Students:—It is of course in accordance with the right of etiquette of the moment and the occasion to say how deeply honored I am by being asked to address you on this auspicious occasion, but, believe me when I say it is not merely in fulfilment of a conventional point of etiquette, but because I feel it with all my heart to be a source of not merely pleasure but honour and privilege to me to be asked to meet you this evening when you are gathered here in your hundreds to celebrate the 14th Anniversary of the institution which, if it has not already, will, I hope, in time, become the very heart-beat of the life of this great and increasingly prosperous and progressive city.
As I was listening to the report—so clearly written and effectively read by the earnest secretary, I was looking around on this ocean of faces representing all generations that have hitherto contributed to the progress of Guntur and who are going in future to contribute something better than their old generations could offer because of their more limited opportunities.
This morning a most earnest member of this society said to me that a few students started it some years ago which was the centre of their own life and that with them it grew up. As students expanded into larger life, they expanded it with their growth into manhood from its infancy of earlier days. It seems to me a symbolic thing because what one would say to impress on the growing generation that they must carry into expanded intellectual public life all those dreams and all ambitions of dreams. They are merely dreams to them because they are too young to realise them, but when once they had crossed the threshold of manhood and come into the horizon of responsibility and opportunity they are to transmute into deeds; so the origin of this association seems to me to carry its own guarantee of unbroken continuity. To-day, after 14 years, the men who started it as students for the use of themselves carried it giving it the best energies, vitality and sacrificing many things, personal pleasures, wealth and comfort because they wished it to grow and become a real heartbeat of the country.
Do you not think that it is not merely a prophecy but an actual guarantee of promise almost fulfilled. To-day I do not wish to speak to those who were students 14 years ago when they started this institution. But I wish to speak to those who are going to be the future sustainers of this institution, those who are going to be the inheritors of all the active achievements and even in a greater degree of all the dreams that we dreamt 14 years ago. But I want to tell them what it means to be citizens—the type of citizens. They must be an ideal for the world to follow. Curiously enough it is during the last 14 years that the bygone generation of students were dreaming dreams and that the institution is a focus of all their dreaming, discussion, of all their hopes of the future. I, too, was young, dreaming dreams, and I too started carrying my dreams not focussing them in one institution but going on from place to place to speak for the younger generation, to tell them how real were their dreams and how it was possible to realise those dreams. Today, after 14 years of speaking to young men and young women all over the country, I come to this centre of the Andhra country to speak with the citizens of the Andhra Province. I want to tell you what the ideal of civic life is for you.
All over India today there is a new spirit awake that thrills the heart of the young generation from end to end, from north and south, east and west, the spirit that is called the renaissance, not a new spirit but a spirit reborn and revitalised in the past that held exactly such ideals and dreams that taught by precept and example, such principles as you wish to fulfil in your life for the service of your country, whether you go to Bengal and speak with young men with the passionate spirit of ideals, whether you go to the Mahratta country and see those intellectual youths with their spirit focussed and ready for any sacrifice, and if you go to South India and see those vigorous and intellectual types of eyes drinking every word set before them, you realise the young spirit is the same, though it speaks in different vernaculars. Vernaculars are different, races are different, castes are different; but the thing that makes you all is the one spirit that is abroad to-day. You know that the students’ movement in Bengal is so much a vital part of the everyday life of the people, that one cannot conceive of the future, not even to-day. In Bengal the student’s ideal, fervour and capacity for service does not count the most inspiring factor in the national life.
You go to Bombay, the second to London in its commercial greatness, and you find that the greatness and the glory of Bombay does not lie in its beautiful buildings, not in the glory of merchant princes and women hung about in diamonds, but rather it is in the movement to be carried in the small scale of brotherhood because the force of it was so strong and it answers so strongly the need of young generation. It has become to-day the most representative thing of the new spirit of Bombay. The historian writing of the future of Bombay will not speak of the palaces on the Malabar hill, or of the factories vomiting smoke, or of the motor cars but rather of those young students very many of them ill-clad but whose faces shine like lamp-lights dazzling by night. Take my native State — Hyderabad, — the new spirit is awake there in the city and it is so awake that already it has solved without any consciousness that it has done so, the greatest problem that all our political reformers are trying to solve i.e. , the question of Hindu-Muslim unity, and that is the greatest contribution to the future of India that the young generation can make in such places where there exists a problem and an imminent necessity for the solution.
That the young generation has done already in the city of Hyderabad. And now coming to the Andhra Province will you believe me that it fills and thrills me with pride to say that while even in those great presidencies that have achieved so much I have even found more the light of rhetoric than of action, I find that within a few years after, the Andhra Provinces began to wake and set their ideals before them and assert their individual entity because they wished to contribute their characteristic share and their united right to contribute to the future of the federated culture in India. (Shouts of joy.) In these few years we find not merely rhetoric from platform from people loving rhetoric but hard work, self-sacrificing devotion, enthusiasm and daily and early sacrifice and personal service. That is what I have found in Andhra country.
It is my great privilege to go to Masulipatam for the fifth anniversary of the National College there. I found there and since then I have come very intimately in contact with some of the older and younger men who represented the spirit of what I called the Andhra renaissance. Once more it has been my privilege to come closer to the heart-beat of that Andhra spirit. I was in Pittapur two days ago. There I found not only men but women who began to realise their inviolable right to cooperate with men in re-establishing the historic distinction of their province. They say: “all what we want to do in our little sphere, the little practicable work which is to offer a beautiful and priceless offering to the feet of our motherland.” That is the spirit in which the women of the Andhra Province are working.
What I want to bring to these young citizens before me is this. That it is your duty—you who are in a state of apprenticeship and who are learning the knowledge from the textbooks. You will have in a few years to learn in a more difficult university lessons that no man will teach you by the hand. Many of the dreams you dream today so light-heartedly will taste bitter in your mouth because you will find so much opposition and so many difficulties. Be true to yourself.
I want each one of you to be a worthy worshipper of that great name that is representative of the past ideals that moulded your historic dynasties. It is to realise by the building up of character, however great the opposition in life may be, however obscure your life may be, however insignificant and unknown the position in which you live, it does not matter; each of you can make yourselves worthy devotees of that flame of spirit. Each of you in doing so will be doing the best possible service to your country and to your race in the world. It is the best way in which you will be able to serve humanity by building up these traits of character that have distinguished your people, viz., valour, intellectual capacity and spiritual devotion.
Passing on she said: “The thing which is very necessary for us to remember is that as modern civilisation progresses, as the world becomes more and more international in giving and receiving enlightenment, we are absorbing from other countries as we are giving to other countries. With such ideas, such treasures of knowledge and experience of wider horizon and scientific thought, the responsibility of personal service becomes greater. Life is more complex. I ask you to dedicate your life to this cause, to make your lights ready to be kindled at the flame of devotion, to serve your country worthily. I do not say to you to become teachers to preach or politicians by this or by that. Whatever your sphere in life is, however small you are, remember, you are an indispensable unit in making up that vast social organisation which makes the country a nation. I want you all to remember that the greatness of a country will not lie in its great men, but in its average good men, who realised the daily life of purity, truth, courage in overcoming such obstacles that stand in the way of progress by giving equal opportunities to all human beings, of all castes and creeds and not to withhold from any man or woman his or her God-given, inviolable right to live to the fullest capacity. That is the meaning of social reform.
Give education to low castes. Do give to your women, who are cooperators with you in your generation, for you are building the national character, such a right to qualify themselves for the high and great responsibility of motherhood. In this institution, the most valuable asset—an asset more valuable than all the funds of Zamindars—is the actual spirit of service on the part of the members of the society.
Finance is one of the wants of the Institution; it seems to me it is a supreme want. If to-day I have come from so far, loving to see the spirit that animates you, you will let me go away with the hope that this Institution will not die simply from want of this help of money (cries of emphatic “no”). I beg all of you to rise as one man to make this Institution really a representation of the ideals that you believe — the ideals that you wish your children and children’s children to inherit.