The Danish Peace Academy

GANDHI AND NORDIC COUNTRIES

Letter, June 11, 1917

Motihari,

June 11, 1917

My dear Esther,

I am here for a day. I received your booklet²⁸ as I was going to the station. It put me in mind of some of the happiest hours I used to have years ago in South Africa. I read the booklet years ago when I found myself in the company of some very dear Christian friends. I have read it again today with better appreciation if one may write in this manner of a sacred work like this. For me truth and love are interchangeable terms. You may not know that the Gujarati (what does this concept mean?) for passive resistance is truth-force. I have variously defined it as truth-force, love-force or soul-force. But truly there is nothing in words. What one has to do is to live a life of love in the midst of the hate we see everywhere. And we cannot do it without unconquerable faith in its efficacy. A great queen named Mirabai lived two or three hundred years ago. She forsook her husband and everything and lived a life of absolute love. Her husband at last became her devotee. We often sing in the ashram some fine hymns composed by her. You shall hear and one of these days sing them when you come to the ashram.

Thank you for the precious gift. I need such thoughts as are contained in the work.

With love,

Yours,

Bapu

PS.

I am going to follow Drummond’s prescription to read the verses on Love²⁹ daily for three months.

Source:My Dear Child, pages 13-14; Collected Works, Volume 13, page 442

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