THE MESSAGE OF LIFE.
The following address was delivered to the Students’ Brotherhood, in Bombay, on August 21, 1915—
Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, in the course of a long speech, said that her message of life would never come amiss to the Students’ Brotherhood and to the members of that greater human brotherhood, who had gathered that afternoon in their hundreds, and that it filled her with pride and thrilled her with hope. Sometime ago when the invitation of the Students’ Brotherhood reached her and she was asked to have the honour to deliver the annual address to its members, she hesitated for reasons which were other than personal. Not because her health did not permit but because the poverty of her spirit that had not enough wealth to give to so many hungry and clamouring spirits.
But, considering it to be her duty as well as her privilege, she accepted that invitation, because she felt that a young generation standing, as Dr. Scott said, on the threshold of life was waiting for a message and inspiration to make them ready and ripe for the responsibilities and duties which awaited them. She felt it to be a privilege to be there that day. The subject of the lecture, she said, came to her as an inspiration while she was seated by the window of her hotel watching the great stream of life that flowed past, and she was thinking of the message which was given to her by her father, in his last days, who had exercised the greatest influence on her life. And that message was of perennial light and hope, of eternal life and eternal truth.
She thought she could do no greater service to the young generation, or no greater honour to the memory of her dead father than to impart the inspiration of his final message. Nothing struck her as more paradoxical than the history of this great country, and of the immortal history of this great nation. Civilizations had come and gone, civilisations had died, as all living things had died, and become mere memories. But when one came to India from many of those ancient civilisations one realised how marvellous, how inexhaustible was the spiritual vitality which had kept up her life to-day. One did not think of India as dead, to be reconstructed with the fragments of a piece of sculpture or from one coin, looking at the superstructure or image thereof. Rather coming to India one felt that life there in spite of those historic vicissitudes, was progressing in unbroken historic continuity. Though the drums of conquest had rolled over India, all those foreign conquests, all through the many centuries, had left no permanent mark to obliterate her spiritual civilisation. Spirituality was the mainstay of her vitality and she saw when she travelled through the length and breadth of India the same ancient temples from which still resounded the invocations to the same deities which were heard in ancient times, side by side with the modern spinning mills, and girls’ schools and other things.
She had been spending a great many years in going from city to city not to see the buildings, not to see the signs of wealth and power, not to be feted at social gatherings, nor indeed to make holiday pleasure, but rather to feel the pulse of that younger generation whose destinies seemed to her to be bound up with the future of India. The special message of life for India today was the message of unity. No longer divided by anything save a difference of mere language, no longer divided by any real or any blasting differences of aspiration, no longer divided by anything through lack of that one thing that makes an intellectual and spiritual meeting ground, that is a common education, one realised that it was the same cry which she heard on all hands, and that was that they wanted to serve their mother country and achieve something.
Human souls and human destinies were guided and moulded and shaped by the special race consciousness and race ideals to which they belonged. Youth’s duty lay in so shaping the daily life that never for one moment shall the India of the immemorial yesterday be the same till he knew the destiny of India’s tomorrow. So it was for them to take stock of themselves as to what were their possibilities, their opportunities, their obligations and their duties and what special section of that great duty of that complex, that manifold and multiform, duty fell to their share. And then they began to say to themselves that the work was so great and they as individuals so small: but then they had to remember that no human being was so small as not to be able to fill a niche in the great scheme of life, some little corner that could only be filled by that one individual. But life said to him—to the child—however small and however weak he might be, it had a place for him to fill, unless the child had been faithless in fulfilling that duty, and so in that spirit they accepted their responsibilities, realising that greater men were called upon to play greater parts, and smaller men to fulfil smaller duties, but that each man had his unique destiny, his unique privilege, his immutable responsibilities to fulfil, as best lay in his power—that of service and of sacrifice. Whether they failed or triumphed, it did not matter.
It was from far off Hyderabad, that great Native State, which, as she had said the other day, was the great melting pot of the different races of India, of the Indian religions, she came with a message for not only her children, but for all and every Indian. That message was one of unity. It was a message for all, whether Hindu or Muhammadan. She came fresh with enthusiasm, fresh with sympathy for them, no matter that hundreds of miles separated them from her, for their hearts beat with the same impulse, they had the same yearning spirit of a young generation, so full of desire to achieve, so full of courage and unity, because life was life, because there was no death, there was no birth, but from day to day, from life to life, from eternity to eternity, there was always human endeavour and the need for the human spirit of God whose temple was built in the heart of man.