The Danish Peace Academy
GANDHI AND NORDIC COUNTRIES
Collected by E. S. Reddy - EReddy@aol.com and Holger TerpLahore,
Sunday [December 14] 1919
My dear child,
I have your letter and had the vest also. May I thank you for it? I am having it washed.
Have you commenced spinning? I would like you to study my article on swadeshi in Young India.81 Will you please learn spinning and religiously give it one hour every day? Your and my forefathers wore only hand-spun and hand-woven clothing. The words spinster (from spinning) and wife (from weaving) are highly significant. I would like you to set an example to the ladies of the ashram in regular spinning. Is Fatima doing any now? If not please tell her and Amina not to neglect it.82 They were to do it for a fixed time every day and so were all the ladies for that matter.
I am glad they all nursed you during your illness. Mutual help and service is really the first step to a truly godly life.
With love,
Yours,
Bapu
Source: My Dear Child, pages 46-47; Collected Works, Volume 16, page 343
[Gandhi wrote on January 13, 1920, to Miss Ada West, who had lived in the Phoenix Ashram in South Africa:
“… Miss F[aering] should be able to live her own Christian life without the slightest hindrance in the ashram. I do expect you whenever you find the time to pay us another visit and I hope that Miss F[aering]’s description of the beautiful surroundings in which we are living has but whetted your desire to visit us. I shall esteem it a privilege if you will give me your own impressions of Miss F[aering] both regarding her physique and her mentality. She is such a self-denying girl that I really sometimes do not know what she does want.
You will perhaps also be able to give me your confidence in this matter.” (SN7027; Collected Works, Volume 16, pages 475-76).
He wrote to Anne Marie Petersen, also on January 20:
“… As soon as I heard that you wanted Miss Faering to join you during Xmas, I had no hesitation in saying that she should respond to your wish. I can thoroughly appreciate the Christian sentiment that friends and relations should gather together and have sweet communion during the Xmas season. I must confess to you that Miss Faering’s presence in the ashram is uplifting for us all. She is such a good-natured loving girl with all the loftiest aspirations that anyone can be capable of. We are all looking forward to meeting her again. I only wish that she will be able to keep her health here and become a better and a stronger Christian for her presence at the ashram. As I have so often told her, her living at the ashram can be justified only if she not only retains undiminished her Christianity but that, in the environment of the ashram, it becomes purer and more ref[ined] than ever before.” (SN7052; Collected Works, Volume 16, page 477)]
81 “Swaraj in Swadeshi”, December 10, 1919; Collected Works, Volume 16, pages 335-37. Gandhi wrote that the immediate problem before the country was to feed and clothe the people, because the purchase of foreign cloth was draining the resources. He suggested reviving of spinning, weaving and other cottage industries.
82 Fatima and Amina were daughters of Imam Abdul Kader Bawazir, an associate of Gandhi during the satyagraha in South Africa, who stayed in Gandhi’s ashram.
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