India of My Dreams

must go. There is enough employment in India for all who will work with their hands
and feet honestly. God has given everyone the capacity to work and earn more than his
daily bread and whoever is ready to use that capacity is sure to find work. No labour is
too mean for one who wants to earn an honest penny. The only thing is the readiness
to use the hands and feet that God has given us.
Harijan, 19-12-36

I hold that a working knowledge of a variety of occupations is to the working class what
metal is to the capitalist. A labourers skill is his capital. Just as the capitalist cannot
make his capital fructify without the co-operation of labour, even so the working man
cannot make his labour fructify without the co-operation of capital. And, if both labour
and capital have the gift of intelligence equally developed in them and have
confidence in their capacity to secure a fair deal, each at the hands of the other, they
would get to respect and appreciate each other as equal partners in a common
enterprise. They need not regard each other as inherently irreconcilable antagonists.
But the difficulty is that whilst today capital is organized and seems to be securely
entrenched, labour is not. The intelligence of the working man is cramped by his
soulless, mechanical occupation which leaves him little scope or chance to develop his
mind. It has prevented him from realizing the power and the full dignity of his status.
He has been taught to believe that his wages have to be dictated by capitalists instead
of his demanding his own terms. Let him only be organized along right lines and have
his intelligence quickened, let him learn a variety of occupations, and he will be able
to go about with his head erect and never be afraid of being without means of
sustenance.
Harijan, 3-7-37

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India of My Dreams

Chapter 13
DARIDRANARAYAN
Daridranarayan is one of the millions of names by which humanity knows God who is
unnamable and unfathomable by human understanding and it means God of the poor,
God appearing in the hearts of the poor.
Young India, 4-4-29

For the poor the economic is the spiritual. You cannot make any other appeal to those
starving millions. It will fall flat on them. But you take food to them and they will
regard you as their God. They are incapable of any other thought.
Young India, 5-5-27

With this very hand I have collected soiled pies from them tried tightly in their rags.
Talk to them of modern progress. Insult them by taking the name of God before them
in vain. They will call you and me fiends if we talk about God to them. They know, if
they know God at all, a God of terror, vengeance, a pitiless tyrant.
Young India, 15-9-27

I am able to restrain myself from committing suicide by starvation because I have faith
in Indias awakening and her ability to put herself on the way to freedom from this
desolating pauperism. Without faith in such a possibility I should cease to take interest
in living.
Young India, 3-4-31

I dare not take before them the message of God. I may as well place before the dog
over there the message of God as before those hungry millions who have no luster in
their eyes and whose only God is their bread. I can take before them a message of God
only by taking the message of sacred work before them. It is good enough to talk of
God whilst we are sitting here after a nice breakfast and looking forward to nicer
luncheon, but how I am to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two

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India of My Dreams

meals a day? To them God can only appear as bread from their soil. I offered them the
spinning wheel in order that they may get butter and if I appear today.in my loincloth it is because I come as the sole representative of those half-starved, half-naked
dumb millions.
Young India, 15-10-31

I recognize no God expect the God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb
millions. They do not recognize His presence; I do. And I worship the God that is Truth
or Truth which is God, through service of these millions.
Harijan, 11-3-39

We are either ignorant or negligent of the divine law by virtue of which man has been
given only his daily bread and no more, with the result that there arise inequalities
with all the misery attendant upon them. The rich have a superfluous store of things
which they do not need and which are, therefore, neglected and wasted; while millions
starve and are frozen to death for want of them. If each retained possession only of
what the needed, no one would be in want and all would live in contentment. As it is,
the rich are discontented no less than the poor. The poor man would become a
millionaire and the millionaire a multi-millionaire. The poor are often not satisfied
when they get just enough to fill their stomachs; but they are clearly entitled to it and
society should make it a point to see that they get it. The rich must take an initiative
in the matter with a view to a universal diffusion of the spirit of contentment. If only
they keep their own property within moderate limits the poor will be easily fed, and
will learn the lesson of contentment along with the rich.

From

Yeravda Mandir, Chap.VI

Civilization in the real sense of the term consists not in the multiplication but in the
deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants, which promotes real happiness and
contentment and increase the capacity for service. One can reduce ones wants by
perseverance, and the reduction of wants makes for happiness-a healthy body and a
peaceful mind.
From Yeravda Mandir, Chap. VI

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The golden rule.is resolutely to refuse to have what millions cannot. This ability to
refuse will not descend upon us all of a sudden. The first thing is to cultivate the
mental attitude that will not have possessions or facilities denied to millions, and the
next immediate things is to re-arrange our lives as fast as possible in accordance with
that mentality.
Young India, 24-6-26

Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, Nank, Kabir, Chaitanya, Shankara, Dayanand, Ramkrishna

were men who exercised an immense influence over and moulded the character of
thousands of men. The world is the richer for their having lived in it. And they were all
men who deliberately embraced poverty as their lot.
Speeches and Writing of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 353

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India of My Dreams

Chapter 14
THE GOSPEL OF BREAD LABOUR
The great Nature has intended us to earn our bread in the sweat of our brow.
Everyone, therefore, who idles away a single minute becomes to that extent a burden
upon his neighbours, and to do so is to commit a breach of the very first lesson of
Ahimsa.Ahimsa is nothing if not a well-balanced exquisite consideration for ones
neighbor, and an idle man is wanting in that elementary consideration.
Young India, 11-4-29

The divine law, that man must earn his bread by laboring with his own hands, was first
stressed by a Russian writer named T. M. Bondaref. Tolstoy advertised it and gave it
wide publicity. In my view the same principle has been set forth in the third chapter of
the Gita, where we are told, that he who eats without offering sacrifice eats stolen
food. Sacrifice here can only mean bread labour.
Reason too leads to an identical conclusion. How can a man, who does not do body
labour, have the right to eat? In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread, says
the Bible. A millionaire cannot carry on for long, and will soon get tired of his life, if
he rolls in his bed all day long, and is even helped to his food. He, therefore, induces
hunger by exercise and helps himself to the food he eats. If everyone, whether rich or
poor, has thus to take exercise in some shape or form, why should it not assume the
form of productive, i.e. bread labour? No one asks the cultivator to take breathing
exercise or to work his muscles. And more than nine-tenths of humanity lives by tilling
the soil. How much happier, healthier and more peaceful would the world become, if
the remaining tenth followed the example of the overwhelming majority, at least to
the extent of laboring enough for their food!
There is a world-wide conflict between capital and labour, and the poor envy the rich.
If all worked for their bread, distinctions of rank would be obliterated; the rich would
still be there, but they would deem themselves only trustees of their property, and
would use it mainly in the public interest.
Bread labour is a veritable blessing to one who would observe non-violence, worship
Truth and make the observance of Brahmacharya a natural act. This labour can truly

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